Yeah I have pretty much done what Greenknight said. They spend an action and go on an adventure. If the adventure took them away from their Domain for more than 2 months then they had top spend another action.
I would humbly disagree. I find role playing via PBEM to be easy. Then again, I’m a writer, so for me PBEM’s are just a way of creating dynamic and complex stories told by more than one author.
I will admit that only works when you have like minded PBEM players. When they want to play risk and roll the dice, then there’s no story to be told.
I can’t find a group to play face to face with anymore. We all grew up, got jobs and kids and can’t manage to find time to all be together at the same time. Yet another reason I hate being a grown up 
Now I didn’t say it was imposssible - I said it was very difficult.
I have played in a very successful play-by-post game (Verge of Extinction, on tequilastarrise.com {defunct site now} - Alternity (Stardrive)) and it was full of good role-playing. It took almost 2 years to accomplish the storyline it was set up to do. PCs advanced a total of 2 levels throughout the “adventure”. It also generated what amounted to a near novel in dialoge and cut scene information (too bad the posts vanished along with the site, Neil Spicer (the GM) really wanted to assemble it as a “novel”, it was that good, really.
But the fact that there is no face-to-face interface (hence no body language) - removes over 90% of the things involved in communcation.
Also the pace of PBEM is inherently slower - no immediate feedback so what can be done in a single 3 hr table top session can take months over the internet to accomplish. This places roadblocks in the way of those of us who suffer from “senior moments” and have trouble remembering our thought processes over such a period of time.
PbeMs can be full of good roleplaying; some very memorable events took place in RoE between both PCs and NPCs. That said, it is clearly different than face-to-face roleplaying. It is more like reading a book than having a conversation.
LOL @ senior’s moments. That’s why I like PBEM’s. Everything I promised someone is noted in an email somewhere for me to look up. I’m nearing 40, all my available memory is used up on epic tales of old adventures, old phone numbers and algebra. (I never did use it..the teachers lied!)
I will agree it is a much slower pace. And I miss pizza and jolt cola until 4 am. But face to face gaming is a rare treat these days.
40?
You’re just a youngster
I’m 50 and still trying to figure out what to do when I grow up.
Oh and I guarantee you use algebra almost every day - you just don’t realize it. Do you try to figure out what something costs “with tax” or if you will have enough money to buy that new game and that shiny new CD?
That is algebra at its core.
Sorry, it’s the engineer in me talking now.
I prefer both PBEM Birthright and face-to-face, though face-to-face BR in my experience is generally adventure-play and co-operative realm play.
Wow makes me wonder what the average age of everyone is here on the boards. I thought I was one of the older ones at 34.
I doubt that, Bbeau! A few of us are only in our 20s, but the game is already 10 years old!
I know, I know. I can remember playing the campaign close to ten years ago for the first time. The DM threw all of the player secrets to Anuire in a pile and had us all choose which domains we wanted. (I picked Tournen)
We really had no idea what to expect or how much fun the campaign setting would turn out to be. It probably became the favorite campaign setting soon afterwards and the campaign we most talked about outside of actually playing.
Many years later I took over as DM and that is it.
Here is a recent thread on the topic. I know there were others (and polls too) but I can’t find them.