Definitely an idea worth exploring !
I feel a key issue to resolve is one of immediacy; ask yourself why people would want to play this way rather than (for example) through a virtual tabletop where the action happens "in real time" so to speak. Many years ago I ran a play-by-mail game for a short while, but the reality was that technology overtook it. Why wait two or three days between turns when you can play face-to-face, by email, through Discord or videoconferencing.
The earn-as-you-play mechanism is something I find totally fascinating. To have equal starting "XP", perhaps you could create a second layer token in Hive Engine that players could delegate HP to ? Rewards could be in that token, and when a character dies, retires, or the adventure ends they could then cancel the delegation and convert the accumulated token back to HIVE.
I'm sure there are gaps in my knowledge of how all this works - the GM would probably need a decent sized pool of tokens to start with that could be allocated as XP each session, and the system would ideally be trustless in some way to minimise the risk of a DM rug-pull..
Well, play by post RPGs are not for everyone. I think for people that enjoy creative writing and RPGs it can be very enjoyable though. So it's a kind of cross-section of 2 minority hobbies when you compare it to other kinds of games and hobbies.
It's similar to how you get more people who enjoy videogames or movies and youtube than say reading books, or creative writing. I don't pretend to change that. There are many play by post D&D games though, on other sites (just check out https://www.rpgcrossing.com/ or the many other sites like that out there), and there are people that enjoy them for sure, although a minority. I have played and run in different kinds of play by post RPGs, and in my experience they are slow to advance but in terms of gaming time last about as many months as my face to face RPG group games did. I think of them sort of like writing clubs focused on RPGs. I also enjoy boardgames and all sorts of games but, basically, I am aware of different audiences for types of games, but I still think play by post games can be enjoyable for the right kind of players.
About the equal starting HP, I was thinking players would open up separate accounts for each player character. Honestly I'm not the best writer myself but I have played with people and followed games with people who write game posts that are very interesting to read and I thought having players and DMs but also outsiders who could reward posts directly with hive would be interesting and motivating.
There are many very talented writers on RPGcrossing for example, and honestly I think it would be great for people like them to come over to Hive and be able to earn Hive with their games, and provide content and community.
I would be interested in trying out a PBP game, and I have something like 5 hoarded account creation thingies (on my main account @oblivioncubed) so could help folks set up as well if someone doesn't have enough RC to claim an account.
Sorry for the late reply, I am still figuring out how to navigate Hive and didn't see this until now. That's great! Do you want to just start playing and starting the story with us two while we see if other people want to join in? I can start a solo quest for you too and when other people want to hop in we can talk about what kind of game and story we want to do. What do you think?
Also, just to clarify, my GMZorn account will be the one I will use to continue on this idea from now on.