Now that I've made the decision, I can offer a few more insights as to why I elected to do so.
The version of "A Twist In Time" I ran was a bit different than my predecessors. One of the more significant changes I made when I took over the game was based heavily on the idea that I could drop hints and clues during the course of the narratives, hints and clues that would be and could be of significant importance later on (in this particular case, of sufficient importance as to seriously influence the outcome/success of the player characters).
In a tabletop game, that is always a difficult story effect to use, because a GM never really can know what or how much the players might pick up on (or not!). That being the case, it is always a significant risk to use that tool as the foundation for whether a group of players would succeed or fail. Even if one uses that tool in a tabletop game, one inevitably ends up planning it as only one of several paths to victory, so as to avoid frustration.
In this case, however, I felt I could get a way with quite a bit more in using this tool. First and foremost, there was the fact that a player could ALWAYS go back and see all the posts that had been made, and when pieces fell into place, could present those conclusions in-character as sudden inspiration. Also, "A Twist In Time" was ALWAYS intended to be a very challenging game for the players, and so I felt a little more pressure could be applied to the players...a bit more than I would otherwise consider a good idea. Finally, the pacing of the game, mandating one post a day, meant that one could throw in story elements, clues and hints that would be relevant in a matter of weeks or, perhaps, a couple months; rather than, say, a year or more if the play-by-post operated by "looser" rules.
The timing of the crash literally gutted this whole scheme.
The players were literally a couple days away from the first of two truly NASTY combats (and honestly, probably the nastier of the two). I had laid all the groundwork for it. All the hints (even a few I did not intend on, in consideration of Celestia's combination of good sense and sheer luck/timing) were already out on the table.
And I had just subjected two of you to the "warm-up" encounter, which would lead to the larger one.
Yes, that encounter was, indeed, only a warm-up. Honestly, you all caught me by surprise when you elected to split up; and Mind Blade masquerading as Lone Wolf made the encounter impossible to avoid. It was an encounter met to drive home that the situation in Ragadorn was
extremely dangerous, and not merely just for Lone Wolf alone. Up until that point, the Paragons (the player characters, for those who did not follow the game) had had a pretty easy time of it. Between their own formidable abilities and the Veil that protected their identities, not too much had really threatened them (in fact, there IS a challenge in coming up with something that will threaten 395 levels of player character...). In all the various occasions that DID threaten them (particularly poor put-upon Sir Calym, who always seemed to make himself a tactical victim through no actual fault of the player
), there was at least a clue or two suggesting what might be going on. I never especially counted on the players picking up on those clues at the time, of course; but figured that the posts were still there to be looked at later (especially if, as a GM, I nudged you all towards doing so).
I suppose it is possible, if not statistically probable, that you would have been able to face that impending encounter and gotten both yourselves and, in particular, Lone Wolf out of Ragadorn alive without having that back-information available to you for reference. Honestly, however, I kind of doubt it. I had never intended the one Order of Black Serpent master killing two of you (if he had faced you all together, I doubt such would have occurred at all). But I
was pretty certain that the Order of Black Serpent grandmaster would take one or two of you down, especially since you would have literally had to impose yourselves between him and Lone Wolf.
Even if you had done so, there was still more to the whole adventure. And another, final encounter with the Paragon's own nemesis behind the scenes, which would have required the knowledge and clues that had gone before.
When the site went down, and particularly when it became clear after a week or so that it was not coming back any time soon, I looked at the overall adventure plan as objectively as I could. I looked at it from three points of view: the first that the players might retain very little memory of the groundwork laid; the second that the players might retain a very sporadic set of memories of the groundwork laid, with only a few holes that might be filled by Intelligence checks and the like; and the third that the players managed to retain most everything.
The third point of view I felt I had to discard outright, as there was little evidence to suggest that level of optimism might be justified. That is not a reflection of any view of the intelligence or memory of any of my players. Honestly, the only two players in that game I knew particularly personally was the players of Celestia and Mind Blade/Dusk. The problem with them was that they simply were not knowledgable enough about the setting to really pick up on and connect any of the clues I was throwing out there (I introduced both to Lone Wolf through them joining "A Twist In Time"). Since I had never gamed that much before with any of my other players, I felt that the third point of view was not only an unwarrented level of optimism, but also that it imposed an unfair level of expectation on people who I did not know well.
The second point of view was more possible. However, even at best it would only bring the risk level down to the level of using this same storytelling tool at a gaming table for a game that had run for a few months (as this one had). As I mentioned before, the idea of strongly basing the success of player characters in a game on their ability to retain, or access/review, clues introduced into the game through earlier posts is an idea that I tend to consider too risky for any tabletop RPG. It is not a risk that I would take in a situation that did not provide archives as a potential fallback.
The first point of view was the most pessimistic, of course, but also seemed the closest to probable (if not definitive) reality. I looked at whether I could feed you all again all the information I had seeded through a few months worth of posts...but realized at that point I might as well .PDF my GM notes and email them to you. With that in mind, the last thing I did was spend about a day trying out the encounter three times, assuming all the characters at that point, but none of the information/clues. The outcome of those three tries was, well, not so good...
In the end, I am of the view that, this being a game, it is better to end things at a point where it is definite that everyone is/was having fun rather than try and push things to a bitter end that no one, neither me nor any of you, would thank me for. It was not a waste. I think you all more or less enjoyed the game for the months that it lasted. It allowed me to try out a few things I had only theorized about and those lessons hopefully will make my future play-by-post games better. It interested a couple new people in Lone Wolf who were never before interested in the setting. To have run things forward would have been akin to crashing the plane into the mountainside just so that we could have claimed the dubious "priviledge" of having stayed on the plane literally from the beginning of the flight to the very end.