Standards of Posting in a Play By Post (The DM)

All DMs are going to have different standards that they'd like their players to follow while posting, as well as standards that they use. I'm going to go over some basic standards.

Time/location Stamp. Because of the slow pace of pbp games, I find it helpful as a DM to head every post I make with the date, time (or turns elapsed, for dungeon exploration) and location. Additionally, if the post is not for everyone in the party I will indicate in the header *who* the post is directed towards. This lets me make a single post that covers multiple independent actions or actions occuring over multiple days. Because I'm lazy, my months are simply a number one through twelve with the suffix "month", and the days are one through twenty-eight with the suffix "day". Twelfthmonth through Secondmonth is always winter, the 14thday is always the full moon, and the 28th day of each month is always a festival/fair day (I increase item availability on the 28thday, and there's an increased chance of encounters with lycanthropes on the 14thday). A sample timestamp might look like this:

Thirdmonth, Fifthday

Hex 14.23

9:00 am

or

Thirdmonth, Seventhday

The Fane of Vidmar

Twelve Turns Elapsed

The Hall of the Conjoined Serpents

By providing a time stamp it is easy for my players (and me) to see what day it is, where they are, and how much time has elapsed or how much time they've got left.

Because we're playing online it is trivially easy to link to images, videos, music, or files. Since I run a lot of hexcrawl style games, I will often include a map of their surroundings or their current location at the end of a post in a spoiler box. Likewise, if we're using an interactive map I'll try to link to that in each post.

I have found that the easiest way to handle battlemaps is by using Google Drawings; it's easy to use, access, and can be manipulated by everyone. Typically I'll place everyone initially, and then request that players move their characters at the same time they post their actions. Here is an excellent map created by the DM running a game I'm playing in.

Otherwise, my standards are pretty straightforward and applicable to both players and DMs. Some people use colored text to denote dialogue, but I find that jarring, and usually just rely on quotation marks like the gods intended. I always post in third person, present tense, and never refer to the players as "you", instead calling them by name: "Blargo creeps down the hallway and listens to the door at the end. He hears nothing." as opposed to "You creep down the hallway and listen at the door. You don't hear anything." But that is totally a personal preference. 

Tomorrow we'll get into posting standards for players.