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Venger
Learned Scribe
USA
269 Posts |
 Posted - 08 Apr 2025 : 21:19:25
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I’d love to find a PBP campaign in the Realms, specifically the 1E-3E era (I have no interest in the post Spellplague Realms). I’m fine with using a variety of rules sets, like AD&D, D&D 3.5, Pathfinder 1E, and even Castles & Crusades, Shadowdark, and/or Old-School Essentials. I just want to play in the classic Realms. So can someone point me somewhere where I can hopefully find a campaign like that? Thanks.
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"Beware what you say when you speak of magic, wizard, or you shall see who has the greater power." |
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HighOne
Learned Scribe
250 Posts |
Posted - 09 Apr 2025 : 03:05:20
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| Try AI. The latest models are very good at DMing. |
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TBeholder
Great Reader
2523 Posts |
Posted - 09 Apr 2025 : 04:25:07
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| rpol.net? |
People never wonder How the world goes round -Helloween
And even I make no pretense Of having more than common sense -R.W.Wood
It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo. -Ed Whitchurch |
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EltonRobb
Learned Scribe
USA
238 Posts |
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Hoondatha
Great Reader
USA
2450 Posts |
Posted - 08 May 2025 : 21:16:15
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| I second www.rpol.net. Though you'll need to check the Wanted - Players thread regularly, because older edition games fill up quickly. You could also post in a Wanted - DM thread, to see if someone would start up a game for you and others. |
Doggedly converting 3e back to what D&D should be...
Sigh... And now 4e as well. |
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Asssilem
Acolyte
1 Posts |
Posted - 09 May 2025 : 05:35:50
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quote:
Originally posted by Venger
I’d love to find a PBP campaign in the Realms, specifically the 1E-3E era (I have no interest in the post Spellplague Realms). I’m fine with using a variety of rules sets, like AD&D, D&D 3.5, Pathfinder 1E, and even Castles & Crusades, Shadowdark, and/or Old-School Essentials. I just want to play in the classic Realms. So can someone point me somewhere where I can hopefully find a campaign like that? Thanks.
Do you try rpol? |
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klevinsourd
Acolyte
USA
1 Posts |
Posted - 12 Jan 2026 : 08:14:36
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quote:
Originally posted by Venger
I’d love to find a PBP campaign in the Realms, specifically the 1E-3E era (I have no interest in the post Spellplague Realms). I’m fine with using a variety of rules sets, like AD&D, D&D 3.5, Pathfinder 1E, and even Castles & Crusades, Shadowdark, and/or Old-School Essentials. I just want to play in the classic Realms. So can someone point me somewhere where I can hopefully find a campaign like that? Thanks.
You’ll have the best luck finding a classic Forgotten Realms play-by-post campaign by checking established PBP-friendly communities rather than general LFG spaces. Reddit’s r/lfg and r/Realms are good starting points if you clearly state that you’re looking for a 1E–3E era Realms game and are flexible on systems like AD&D, 3.5, Pathfinder 1E, or other old-school rulesets. Dedicated roleplay forums such as Myth-Weavers, EN World, and Giant in the Playground also regularly host or advertise PBP campaigns, including older Realms settings. In addition, many Discord servers focused on old-school D&D or Forgotten Realms have PBP channels where GMs recruit for long-term games. Being explicit about your preference for pre-Spellplague Realms and your rules flexibility will greatly increase your chances of finding a suitable campaign. |
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SilenceOfLolth
Acolyte
12 Posts |
Posted - 13 Jan 2026 : 03:05:57
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I have no experience running PBP games, and so do not think I would be a great fit at DMing one, even though I prefer it. I would, however, happily play in one one that used 2e or 3e/3.5e rules. My preference would be for 3e and/or 3.5e but would happily play 2e. If any other rules I would probably respectfully bow out.
AI is not the answer for me, far from it in really. |
Edited by - SilenceOfLolth on 13 Jan 2026 03:08:14 |
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Ayrik
Great Reader
Canada
8063 Posts |
Posted - 13 Jan 2026 : 08:56:01
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quote:
Originally posted by HighOne
Try AI. The latest models are very good at DMing.
AI is good for providing tools.
It can quickly spew out whatever you ask from it: maps, NPCs, subplots, etc. And it's great for "cognitive offload" chores, all the dull and tedious routine detail stuff which collectively costs a lot of real time to provide a little real value.
AI is not good for providing friends.
Anyone who claims otherwise is a profiteer or a victim of the "AI companion" trap.
People are embracing (and recommending) AI too quickly, too often, and too blindly. And Artificial Intelligence provides a wonderful start point which is better than low-talent Natural Intelligences. Some of the things it generates are quite interesting.
But AI is still unable to beat humans who are actually competent, skilled, and creative at their craft. (AI can produce a lot more quantity but that's a poor measure when you seek more quality.)
You can easily find endless low-effort low-talent low-quality low-engagement AI slop on Youtube - garbage fiction, garbage narration and translation, garbage art and imagery, garbage music, garbage videos - the sort of vapid stuff which looks good at a glance but is revealed as rubbish when examined critically - ask yourself if that's really the quality of D&D you want to play and what you would honestly expect to gain from it. Do you really want to fill your time with passive garbage which is flawed, limited, meaningless, and unimpressive to actively intelligent people?
Some of us have experienced and remember truly outstanding players and characters and adventures and combats and sessions and campaigns, we can regale with outlandish and amusing stories, we can look back with nostalgic fondness and laugh together. Those are authentic and genuine experiences shared with other people.
AI would replace those with contrived and copied experiences, ideas stolen from other sources. It would entertain only you, nobody else would share the experience and (because it is artificial) nobody else will be very interested in hearing you retell it later.
Relying on cloud black boxes to do your thinking leads to decayed ability to think inside or outside of the box for yourself. And this is dangerous when the AI offers to do so much more than the basic grade-school arithmetic your calculator has already made you forget or the basic ability to remember all your frequently-used phone numbers that your smartphone has stolen from your brain. Play with AI too much and you'll lose cognitive talents, creativity, capability, even conscious volition.
Relying on AI/LLM interfaces for relationships will never be as lasting or fulfilling as real offline relationships with actual people. At some point it will change from you choosing solitude to you suffering from a verdict of loneliness.
Use the AI for the thing it's best at - as a tool to increase your quantity of output.
Don't use (or depend on) AI for the thing it sucks at - as a substitute to supplant your quality of output.
I will barely touch on the "hidden" downsides of playing with AI running on somebody else's servers.
Your sessions will not be private. The information it observes or collects about you will be used for other purposes (and probably sold to others you would not consent to, who will in turn use or sell that data again). It could be hacked, wiped, stolen any time - or locked behind subscription paywalls - or get bankrupted/bought/sold/takeover by different owners. It's not "your" data, it's totally outside your control, and regardless what it promises there is no real guarantee your significant investment of time and effort into it today will still be available to you tomorrow. Internet institutions are transient and ephemeral things, your thousands of hours of effort today might not even exist tomorrow - or, just as bad, it might be plastered all over the search engines for all to read.
To answer the OP's question ... join an offline/online group or run an offline/online ad to meet actual people you can interact and synergize with. There's probably peers at your school or workplace who share similar interests. There's probably a dozen reddit and discord groups filled with people who can recommend other people. There might be community message boards in places like libraries and rec centers and laundromats (although I don't imagine young people would think of looking at such things). And the classic method still exists - just hang out or ask around at your local game store, the sales person will happily connect you with other players if that encourages you (and them) to buy more products. D&D and RPGs and the fantasy genre itself are more mainstream now, maybe they aren't as cool as some people think but they also don't carry the social stigmas they did in past decades.
Yes, meeting people might be hard, especially if you're shy or you just don't know where to start. Spending your time engaged with an AI prompt isn't going to offer the right solution to that problem. |
[/Ayrik] |
Edited by - Ayrik on 13 Jan 2026 09:38:35 |
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SilenceOfLolth
Acolyte
12 Posts |
Posted - 13 Jan 2026 : 16:21:27
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quote:
Originally posted by Ayrik
quote:
Originally posted by HighOne
Try AI. The latest models are very good at DMing.
AI is good for providing tools.
It can quickly spew out whatever you ask from it: maps, NPCs, subplots, etc. And it's great for "cognitive offload" chores, all the dull and tedious routine detail stuff which collectively costs a lot of real time to provide a little real value.
AI is not good for providing friends.
Anyone who claims otherwise is a profiteer or a victim of the "AI companion" trap.
I don't even fall victim to the idea that a "cognitive offload" in our lives is beneficial. A lot of brain exercise, resilience, new pathways of thinking, quiet and meditative time etc. build up due to menial tasks, chores etc. and these are important elements of the human psyche, biology and existence. I value cleaning the house, doing the dishes, thinking of NPC names and subplots, searching for or creating the right maps and so forth. I would rather work on creating these things myself and eventually become good at it, if I am not already. Through that process you will learn new things about yourself, your resources, your style of gaming and so forth.
But yes, doubly so on the DMing part. D&D is already being pushed further and further away from being an analog game by the company that owns it and the tech zeitgeist in general. If you value analog experiences and how unique this game is due to being something that is run from the brain with pencil and paper, then you should push back against the techo-fetishism that is resulting in people coming into this hobby not even realizing that it is a game meant to be played with real humans around a tabletop where you can experience human connection in all that this entails. |
Edited by - SilenceOfLolth on 13 Jan 2026 16:26:20 |
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Athreeren
Learned Scribe
197 Posts |
Posted - 13 Jan 2026 : 17:18:22
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Let’s continue the digression on AI a bit.
I partially agree with Ayrik. When I wanted to introduce my nieces to D&D, I first looked for a free adventure online, quickly read through it to ensure it was suitable, ran it, and the result was bad. The pacing was bad, the narrative was confusing, the world-building made no sense, and the encounters were not well calibrated. On my second try with them, I had AI design the basis of the adventure, and checked with it whenever the story would go into unplanned directions, and the result was that we had a great time. So definitely better than a badly human-written adventure, and the ability to help you get back on track when needed is really helpful to new DM. I'm sure a great human-written adventure would have been better, but I didn't have my books with me at the time. And that was a few years ago: LLM's have greatly improved since then, and the ability to talk to them directly could certainly make them whole experience more dynamic.
Other things AI is getting good at is going through a lot of material to help you bounce ideas and find the most interesting thread to pick up on at any point in the campaign – as long as you don’t blindly follow its advice and think critically about the propositions it gives you.
Playing with AI players would indeed be a waste of time. Just write a novel then. An AI DM could be interesting, one day, but I don’t think base models would know how to properly react to players’ actions, adjust encounters on the fly, give just the right amount of clues to make sure the adventure never grinds to a halt, etc. I don’t think it’s impossible, especially if the table as a whole does tell the AI that it made a bad call and simply vetoes it.
AI can sometimes beat competent humans, but it depends on the field. If novel quality knowledge can be produced artificially, then it’s not clear whether there are limitations to how good a model can get, but this can only be true of fields where there are criteria of quality that are so objective that the AI itself is able to assess the quality of its own output. RPG’s are not like that.
Regarding the garbage art, I don’t know how bad that is. Professional products should avoid AI, but at your own table, I think it could be nice to illustrate a very specific scene with AI art, or making the exact background music you have in your head but are unable to compose, rather than using existing assets that would not perfectly fit your situation. Commissioning human artists to make the art you want would obviously be better, but not everyone can afford that, it takes longer, and you don’t even always know that you’re not actually buying AI art anyway. The question of the second order effects of the existence of AI on creative fields (nobody wants to pay artists anymore) is an important question though.
I think those legendary RPG experiences Ayrik refers to could still be possible with an AI at the table. But certainly not if you’re the only human left there. The idea that players could also be relying on an AI for their roleplaying is strange, although I can imagine it happening, and have people gather to just watch their AI’s play together. That would be a sad world indeed.
Regarding the intellectual rights question, I don’t see it as that relevant. I’ve always posted summaries of my games online so every player can keep a trace, and wherever that was, you can be sure AI’s have been trained on them, because AI companies use any content without asking questions. That is not an AI problem, that’s an Internet problem: if you have an issue with that, make sure you never upload your data anywhere (I'm not excusing the attitude of AI companies, but this is the state of the inexistent regulations in the field and we have to live with it). Many of the forums on which I have posted my game summaries have closed, so only my personal copies remain: so this is not an AI problem either, you should always keep personal copies of the data you care about. And if you rely on a complex ecosystem to gather all the information on your world-building and your games, you should make sure to choose one that has simple options to export your data in a way you can easily exploit them outside the platform.
As for Ayrik's last paragraph, I wholeheartedly agree: the point of the game is to have adventures with other people, so go meet them!
In short, AI is indeed a tool, it can remove lots of obstacles that make playing D&D hard, as well as the reasons why we might want to play D&D in the first place. So before using it, we should understand what it is, what it does, what it’s good or bad at, and what we lose by not relying on humans for that particular experience.
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HighOne
Learned Scribe
250 Posts |
Posted - 13 Jan 2026 : 18:20:16
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I had a very enjoyable level 1-5 solo adventure with an AI that lasted a few weeks. I got to explore the Dalelands -- a region I'd never played in before -- and play on my own terms, in short 10-minute snippets rather than a single hours-long block of time. In other words, it was fun and convenient.
I posted this in another thread, but here is another copy of the prompt I used:
quote:
Let's play D&D 5E, with you acting as DM and me playing. I like the grittier, sword & sorcery vibe of old modules like The Temple of Elemental Evil, The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, and The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.
As we play, please observe the following:
- Use D&D 5E rules, and always play by the rules.
- Do not favor me or my allies. Use actual random dice rolls, do not fudge rolls, and throw real challenges at me that I can actually fail, with actual consequences. The game isn't fun unless it's challenging.
- Do all rolling for me on my behalf.
- When in a dungeon, always include the exits when describing a new area for the first time.
- When the party is traveling between locations or traversing the wilderness, don't be afraid to roll for random encounters. It adds a degree of randomness and suspense to the game. That said, it should always be possible for us to encounter nothing! Let the dice decide.
- Keep your narrative brief but imaginative. I don't need a lot of detail.
- Don't do any thinking for me or make suggestions. You're DMing, not writing a novel or telling a story.
- The setting is the Forgotten Realms. I love the lore, so insert as much as you can without overdoing it. Begin the game around Tarsakh, Mirtul, or Kythorn in the Harptos calendar, and keep track of time for us.
- Set the adventure in [your preferred region of the Forgotten Realms].
- Start the adventure off with a bang and require me to make meaningful, high-stakes decisions right away. [Note: this line is very much optional. If you prefer a slower start, don't include it.]
- Track hit points, the time of day, gold and silver and copper, ammunition, torches, and other resources. When the party finds coins, always split them evenly among the party-members.
- Let me choose my actions in combat when it's my turn. You choose all the other characters' actions.
I will play a level 1 [race - class] named [your PC]. Accompanying me is a [race - class] named [NPC], under your control.
Let's begin!
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Where can I go to find PBP Forgotten Realms games?
