Guides & How-to
Play by post: How do you play D&D by text
Dungeons & Dragons is usually pictured as five people around a table, or these days five people on a voice call, all talking over each other on a Tuesday evening. That is a great way to play. It is also the way that dies fastest, because the actual Big Bad Evil Guy of this hobby has never been a dragon - it is four adults trying to find three hours that work for everyone.
Play by post is where a lot of players end up. You write your turn when you have ten minutes. Someone else writes theirs at lunch. The story moves forward whether or not everyone is awake at the same time.
It is a different rhythm and it isn't for everybody. This guide covers what a text game actually feels like, where they happen, how dice work when nobody is watching you roll, and the specific thing that kills most of them (it isn't boredom).
What is play by post?
Why play this way?
Where the games live
A turn, from both sides
Rolling dice when nobody's watching
Pace: the thing groups argue about
Combat, the slow part
Writing a post people can actually answer
Does D&D actually work in text?
Finding a play by post group
Start the thread
What is play by post?
Play by post (PbP, a tabletop game played entirely in writing rather than out loud) works on a forum, a Discord server, or any place where people can take turns posting. Instead of saying "I check the door for traps", you write it. The Game Master writes back, in their own time, and tells you what you find.
That is genuinely the whole thing. Same rules, same character sheets, same dice, same arguments about whether that was a Perception or an Investigation check. The only difference is that an exchange which would take twenty seconds out loud might take a day in text.
The format is also older than most of the people playing it. Players were doing this on bulletin boards decades before Discord existed. What changed is that the tools got much better, and much easier to find.
One important distinction: "play by post" and "live play by post" are not the same thing. Play by post is asynchronous - there is no session, people post whenever they can, and a scene might take a week. Live play by post (sometimes called live text) has an actual session time. Everyone shows up at 7PM on Thursday like any other game, and then plays it out by typing at each other for three hours. It is still a text game - no microphones, no cameras, nobody has to find a quiet room - but you are back to scheduling. Which one a group means matters a lot, so if a listing just says "text game", ask before you commit.
/images/general-media/1787851419_BEgdXlFf.gifYou can give the expression "keyboard warrior" a whole different meaning.
Why play this way?
Nobody has to be free at the same time. This is the big one. A group spread across four timezones can run a campaign for years. A parent with a quiet twenty minutes after bedtime can play a full character and never miss a session, because there are no sessions to miss.
Quiet players get louder. If you freeze up on a voice call, or English isn't your first language, or you simply need a minute to think before committing to something - text gives you that minute. Some of the best roleplay in the hobby is being written by people who barely speak during live games.
The campaign writes itself down. Every scene is a searchable log. No more "wait, what was the innkeeper called again?"
There is room to actually write. Some people came to this hobby for tactics and some came for the story. If you are in the second group, text rewards you. You get space to describe how your character stands, what they are not saying, what they notice and choose to ignore.
And now the honest part, because a guide that only lists upsides is a sales pitch:
It is slow. A fight that takes forty minutes at a table can take two weeks in text. A story arc worth four live sessions might take six months. If your plan is to reach level 10, be realistic about the calendar.
Games die quietly. Nobody announces they are quitting. They just stop posting, the thread goes cold, and everyone feels vaguely guilty about it for a month. Ghosting is how play by post games end, almost every time, and most of the advice below exists to prevent exactly that.
You lose the table energy. The overlapping jokes, the collective groan when the natural 1 lands - text does not fully replicate that. Some groups run a voice call once a month alongside the posting to get it back.
Where the games live
The Discord default
Most new play by post games live on Discord. It is free, your players are already there, and threads keep each scene tidy instead of blending everything into one channel. Add a dice bot and you have a working game in about five minutes.
Pros: Zero setup cost, instant notifications, and the group chat and the game live in the same place.
Cons: Chat is built for short messages. Your beautiful three-paragraph post gets pushed off the screen the moment someone drops a meme.
The forum tradition
Dedicated forums are the original home of the format and plenty of them are still going. Forum software handles long posts properly, gives each character its own page, and keeps threads readable years later.
Pros: Built for exactly this. Proper thread structure, decent search, and many forums have a dice roller attached to the post editor.
Cons: You need to convince everyone to make an account somewhere they don't already visit. That is a real barrier for a group of five.
The VTT option
Virtual tabletops can run text games too, and they bring maps and character sheets along with them.
Pros: If your group wants tactical combat, seeing the battle map removes a huge amount of "wait, am I in range?" back and forth.
Cons: More setup than a text game strictly needs. Skip it unless combat is genuinely the point.
You do not need all three. Pick one and start. A Discord server with three channels beats a beautifully configured VTT that nobody has logged into since Tuesday.
A turn, from both sides
Here is what an exchange actually looks like. The GM sets a scene:
"The cellar smells of vinegar and something older underneath it. Three barrels sit against the far wall, and the middle one has been moved recently - the dust on the floor is scraped in an arc. There is a door behind it. Iron-banded, no handle on this side.
What do you do?"
And a player answers:
Boblin crouches by the scraped dust, holding his lantern low, and traces the arc with two fingers without touching it. "Someone's been in and out of here more than once," he says, mostly to himself. He keeps his back to the wall as he edges toward the barrel - he would rather not have that door open behind him.
Investigation: 17 (rolled below)
[OOC: If there's anything obvious about the hinges I'd want to know before we move the barrel. Happy to hold if Torvin wants to check for traps first.]
The player describes intent, not outcome. Boblin traces the dust. He does not discover the secret passage. What he finds is the GM's call. Writing "he spots the loose brick and pulls it, revealing the tunnel" takes the discovery away from the person running the game, and it is the fastest way to annoy a GM in any format.
In-character and out-of-character are clearly separated. The prose is the character. Anything marked OOC (out of character) is you, the actual human, talking about rules or scheduling. Groups mark it differently - [OOC:], double parentheses, a separate channel - but every functioning group marks it somehow. Mixing the two is confusing to read and much worse to search through six months later.
The post ends with a hook for someone else. Boblin explicitly leaves room for Torvin. This is the skill that separates the players everyone wants in their game from the ones who slowly stall it: your post should make the next person's post easier to write.
/images/general-media/1787852213_xy2CPf1t.gifYour post is a door. Leave it open
Rolling dice when nobody's watching
Four options, roughly in order of how often you will see them:
A dice bot. You type a command, the bot rolls publicly in the channel, everyone sees the number, and nobody can quietly reroll. Half a second of effort. This is what most Discord games use.
A forum's built-in roller. Many dedicated play by post forums have a roller attached to the post editor, which timestamps the result and locks it to that specific post. Very clean, zero arguments.
The GM rolls everything. Some GMs prefer this for pacing. You say what you are attempting, they roll behind the screen, and they just narrate the result. It removes an entire round-trip from every single action, which in a slow format is a genuine gift.
The honour system. You roll your physical dice at home and report the number. This works completely fine among friends and is the lowest-friction option of all. It is a worse fit for a game full of strangers, and that is not an insult to anyone - it just removes a source of doubt nobody needs.
One habit worth stealing whichever you pick: roll for the whole action, not one step at a time. Instead of "I attack" (wait a day) "okay, roll" (wait a day) "18" (wait a day) "you hit, roll damage" - post the attack, the roll and the damage in one go and let the GM sort out what landed. Compressing round-trips is the closest thing play by post has to a cheat code.
Pace: the thing groups argue about
Agree on a posting rate before the first scene, in plain numbers. "One post per weekday" is the most common standard and works well. "One post per day including weekends" is a fast game. "A couple of posts a week" is a slow burn and can absolutely still work, as long as everyone knows that is the deal going in.
The number itself is not the point. The point is that everyone holds the same expectation, so nobody is quietly frustrated on day three.
Then add the two rules that keep threads alive:
Say when you will be away. One line - "travelling until Sunday, feel free to move Boblin along" - costs you nothing and saves the game. Absence is fine. Silence is what kills it.
Let the GM skip you. Give your GM standing permission to have your character do something sensible if you haven't posted in a couple of days. Four people should never be stuck waiting on one. Most GMs use this gently and sparingly, and the groups that have this rule finish far more scenes than the groups that don't.
If any of this sounds familiar, it should. It is a session zero, just with posting rates on the agenda alongside the usual boundaries and safety tools. Have one. Text games need it more than live ones, not less, because you cannot read a room you never sit in.
Recommended reading: Library: Session 0 checklist: How to build a DnD group that lasts
Combat, the slow part
Combat is where text games grind, because initiative means everyone waits their turn, and in a format where a turn can take a day, one round can eat a week.
Ways groups deal with it:
Block initiative. Instead of a strict individual order, all the players go, then all the enemies go. Anyone can post whenever they like within the player block. This roughly halves the waiting on its own.
Conditional posts. Write your turn with the branches built in: "If the ogre is still standing, Boblin throws the flask at it - otherwise he pulls Torvin behind the pillar." The GM resolves whichever applies. It feels strange exactly once, and then you will never go back.
Fewer, bigger fights. Experienced PbP GMs tend to cut the encounter count hard and make the survivors matter. A random corridor scuffle is not worth ten days of anyone's life.
Or move the boss fight to a call. Some groups do everything in text and hop on voice for the big one. Hybrids are allowed. There is no purity test here.
Writing a post people can actually answer
You do not need to be a good writer (your GM is not grading you, and nobody is expecting literary history). You need to be a useful one. Four habits cover most of it:
Give other people something to react to. End on an action, a question, or an open door. A post where your character silently thinks about their backstory for four paragraphs is a dead end for everyone else.
Don't move other people's characters. You can describe Boblin reaching for Torvin's arm. You cannot describe Torvin flinching. Same rule as not rolling for the GM.
Match the group's length. If everyone else writes two paragraphs and you write twelve, you are not being more engaged - you are creating homework. If everyone writes twelve and you write "I attack", same problem in reverse.
Post something rather than nothing. A short post keeps the thread alive. A perfect post you never finish writing does not. This is the single most useful habit in the format.
/images/general-media/1787851678_zkLlK0d8.gifDon't overthink it - type, send and keep the game going.
Does D&D actually work in text?
Yes, and D&D 5th Edition is by far the most common system in play by post games - partly because it is what everyone already owns, and partly because its structure survives the format fine.
Worth knowing though: 5E's combat is the fiddliest part of it, and combat is the part text handles worst. Systems built around conversation, investigation and drama, with lighter mechanics and fewer exact positions to track, often run smoother in a format where nobody can just point at the map. If your group is open to it, the Library is full of alternatives and a rules-lighter game can be a genuinely better fit here.
But if the answer is "we want to play D&D" - play D&D. A slightly clunky game everyone is excited about beats a perfectly suited one nobody cares about.
Finding a play by post group
Look for a listing that states its system, its posting rate and its tone up front. Those three things tell you almost everything about whether you will enjoy it. "5E, one post per weekday, heavy roleplay, low combat" tells you exactly what you are signing up for. "Epic adventure awaits!!!" tells you nothing at all.
If a listing mentions a session time, that is a live text game rather than an asynchronous one - which is great if your Thursdays are free, and useless if the whole reason you are here is that they aren't.
When you apply, write two or three sentences in the voice you would actually post in. In a text game your writing is the audition, and GMs are mostly checking one thing: can this person write a post that gives everyone else something to respond to?
Sure, we might be a bit biased here, but this is exactly what Groupfinder was built for. There is a "Play by post" tag you can filter by, so you can skip every game that needs you free on Wednesdays at 7. Set your system, set your tags, and see who is recruiting.
Pros: Free, filterable by tag, system and timezone, and built for this one job rather than being a message board with a hobby attached.
Cons: The platform is still growing, so there are more live games listed than text ones. Posting a player profile helps fix that faster than waiting does.
Start the thread
Text games do not need a calendar, a headset, or three uninterrupted hours. They need one person to open a thread and a few people willing to write a paragraph a day.
If you are the GM, post your game and put "Play by post" in the tags. If you are looking to join, post your player profile, mention that you are after a text game, and bump it daily so it stays near the top. Then go write your first post at whatever hour suits you.
Your future self, at 11pm on a Tuesday with no group call to join, will thank you.