Leaderboard

Man this hits home a lot right now for me -- learning to adapt to the fact that no, the site can't be what it was 10 years ago and still thrive. I've always been a very strict admin and I'm learning to let go of that for the sake of the rest of the site, what little is left of it, in hopes it can be brought back from the brink.

I try to just put myself out there. As someone wisely said up above if the conversation isn't flowing offgame, it will probably be a ingame problem too. With advertising I honestly convince myself (it's not as easy, I know) that my board is effin' amazing and that people ought to love it, so I have to spread it everywhere, obviously. Sometimes it works. 🤫

@Daisy To say that the whole thing is because they're dead that they can't come have no say in whether their image is used is a little uncalled for? I feel like there is a better word I just can't think of it. Really, saying that this is the reason is silly. Alan Rickman isn't going to go onto social media and say "I would like you to stop using my images from movies and photoshoots, especially if they are of Snape or the Sheriff of Nottingham. I do not want to be associated with this character anymore. I am Hans Gruber and only Hans Gruber." Celebrities are fully aware that their face is immortalized in a movie or TV Show or magazine. They sign contracts and make money off of those things. I mean consider Lucille Ball getting out of her grave to be pissed off that she has thousands of memes of her: I think she would actually be MORE upset to find out that none were made because people weren't sure about her feelings on the subject. She worked hard for her career and on that show. For it to be ignored because she was dead would be extremely disrespectful to the legacy that she built. I feel that way for any celebrity that has poured their life into their work. Just because they have passed doesn't mean that they should be ignored. The only place that you are going to get a grey area from me is for modern day models, especially the freelance ones and the ones that their image is literally their livelihood. Unfortunately, these sorts of people are not ones that you get a highlight on a discord server and find out that they have died.

I also run a sandbox site. Our group events, centered around festivals, holidays etc took a while to take off. Now it gets crazy up in these events and I love it. They all seem to get withdrawals in the 2-3 weeks between the next event. Plus it really helps make connections, find potential romantic partners and give a nice place for slower characters to find a place and head off being picked up in the activity check. One thing I would like to add, and thanks for the ideas here, is to have global and local events that people can then use for plotting. I'm going to introduce that. We have it to some extent but I would like to do so more regularly. We have also just started doing monster fights. You need to sign up for that and we used one D20 for a simple damage roll. The first try was somewhat successful but I need to work out better rules to make it more dynamic. But there is interest to do another. We effectively quarantined an area so it became a boss fight. Lastly if you have something you would like to introduce you could do it much like the smaller events. At some point I want my site to be open to humans knowing about supernaturals. I set it that they were close to this but haven't progressed this plot as I feel it has such far reaching implications politically and socially that I'm not sure anyone wants to get in on those aspects. I would do it like @Xochiquetzal mentioned and make it so it needs to be used/acknowledged as the norm from there on. Oh and don't be afraid to throw curve balls into your events. Our Valentine's Bash had cloned cupids that shot tiny arrows at random people and it made them want to kiss the closest person to them. The kiss could be platonic or more. It was a riot. Also get ideas from your playerbase. Mine are full of fantastic ideas that I add in or note down for later use. Of course I make sure to credit when it isn't my own idea.

I enjoyed the answers on this thread as they were good suggestions! My own suggestion to help would be to organise smaller scale group things, to help people come together who may not have done so by themselves. An example would be, for an urban type of roleplay, creating clubs. Like in real life you can join the local arts and crafts club, make that a thing for characters. If you have any sort of school thing going on, make the students attend classes. The trick is to make this something that's recurrent, and not a one time event. Knowing that every tuesday your OC bob has to/can attend his HOA meeting can help new players too by giving them something to do without feeling awkward trying to introduce their character I feel!