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Last year I scratched an itch and created an entire RPG - designed the premise, wrote the rules, built out a forum, scrungled over code and customizations, and ... didn't open it. 😄 I showed it to a couple friends, but the point was, it was just fun to make something. The actual RPG I run now, I made with a team of people after the site we were writers on went down. We wanted to keep writing with each other.

Other than being scared of being the one to "lose the farm", it's stressing about the possibility of getting yelled at by rp directory/advertising mods for posting ads wrong. I seriously sweat over this.

My biggest fear is putting a lot of work into yet another site, and it dying all over again. i love writing lore and developing things within the rp. but i always seem to get two members who post a lot, and plot with one another, then leave and its like the site dies when they leave. i try to push activity and give things to do, but no matter how much i push and pull nothing happens. it makes me feel like i made everything for nothing, only for it to just sit offline and collect dust.

I'd like to get my community members involved in more OOC activities! Posting as our characters isn't everything! It's nice to be able to connect with other players outside of threads! I've put up a few challenges and even started a new "bingo" game for OOC fun on my primary site. So new goals are going well! I'd like to also learn more about coding where it concerns site skins. I know enough to manipulate and create from scratch some things, but not others. And scripting is lost on me except for VERY basic stuff, so I may try to pick up some knowledge there as well as time permits!

I've lost a few roleplay buddies through the years but the one that stuck with the most that I'm still sad about is one that just... disappeared one day. They were active in the community, and they had gotten the news that they were going to have a child. And further into the pregnancy they just... disappeared and didn't come back. Obviously having a child is way more important but they removed me on all socials we shared, everything. It sucked to not be able to even keep in contact as I considered us friends and I still wonder to this day how they're doing.

I met some of my closest friends and soulmates in my rp years of 2015-2016 and since then - no matter how long we may go without talking sometimes - we still talk like we've never missed a beat. One of them still rps with me to this day, but almost all of the rest have fallen out of the rp scene and have moved on to mostly video gaming and doing different hobbies. But we still keep in contact, share memes and everything. If it weren't for them, they wouldn't have shaped who I am today as a person, and they helped me through tough times through the many years I've known them < 3

The primary limitation was 'vaguely humanoid'. Could be an anthro, a human, a mech, an elf, a centaur, a ghost, a faun, made-up aliens... They got mad they couldn't be a sentient tire. Yeah.

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. 🤫

Here's a question that hasn't been asked in some time. I know we have people here who run fandom sites. I'm curious how you go about managing yours. Do you allow canons? How do you use or manage your canons? Are you original characters only? How do you come up for plots for non canons? Do you allow non canons? Everyone does something differently that works for them and their specific fandom. I'd love to learn more about what you do, why, and how.

We've all done it, especially as we're just getting our feet wet. What are some of the mistakes that you've made as an admin. For me, its been not trusting my instincts about people. I've messed up something fierce by allowing the wrong people to join and make my sites unenjoyable.

Find and add a couple more players. We've got six and it's a little thin. I don't think I could deal with more than 10, but a few more would be good. Get everyone involved in the main plot so they feel that they're an important part of it. We started an invasion of Earth storyline and hadn't really had a plot that spanned the whole game before. I think that'll help. Do more chatting with other people in the community. I've already started on sites like this and on reddit and it's going well. Mostly everyone is very friendly. Maybe start a social media account for the game, like X (Twitter) where I can post a "post of the week" or something.

When it comes to thinks I sweat about... there is a laundry list! Making a site for it to never take off Making a site, having some activity and it dying Being told I am plagiarising when I'm definitely not Not advertising right Advertising and all my links being broken... Much more... I have anxiety disorder! LOL

My first RPG was actually the first every Harry Potter roleplay site! I was twelve at the time telling them I was 16 years old. I should not have been reading the things I was! LOL

Hello everyone. My name is Cheeca, and I am 35 years old. I am Indigenous to Turtle Island, and currently working on reconnecting with not only my people but the Earth Mother, as well. I am a Child and Youth Care worker, currently working in the school board but would love to work in hospital. I am currently working on my own book series, but that is taking a long time since there is so much involved in writing it. I have been roleplaying table top since I was right years old while rping online since I was twelve. I have admin everything from Real life to Harry Potter, Twilight to Teen Wolf. Honstly, I just like living a peaceful and quiet existance with sprinkles of adventure.

My first ever site went mostly dark after half the members left for reasons I still don't know to this day. It took me almost a full year before deciding to try another site. Lucky for me my favorite RP partner still wanted to write with me and invited me to join her on this other site! I'm so happy now 😄

Lately I've stressed about membership. For a couple of months after I opened the site, it really picked up and was fun and becoming pretty popular - then all of a sudden people were falling off. I've always preached an understanding of how busy real life can be (I'm a big perp of this too, getting married this year and starting a new job has taken a lot of my time), but it scares me that a lot of our membership has really dropped off, and it just makes me wonder if there's even any interest for it anymore. I have a few members who have clearly stuck around and want to get back into it too, but I don't know. It makes me nervous. I love my site and I love the characters I've developed, and I want to keep it going. I really miss the people who have stepped out because they were the ones who really helped the site blossom.

Wow. Been a while since I've dropped by The Initiative Anyway, SP was hosted on SMF waaaay back in 2010 through 2013, I think? It was good, it did what I wanted, but honestly, the amount of times I break shit and SMF is all interconnected, so break one thing and the whole site goes DED. MyBB doesn't do that \o/ break the front end, and the Admin panel still works and I can fix it without having to dig into files or ask for help from the hosting service lmao. But we've been on MyBB for the past ten years, and its been great 😄 I love it! I'm no ones coder, but I can hack my way through basic crap, and I'm pretty proud of both my sites and the work I've done on them. Also, if you go with MyBB, get the plugins 'xThreads' and 'Template Conditionals' because between the two, you can do pretty much anything to your site. Its beyond awesome! Takes some dedication to learn, but there is tons of help available 😄 @c.widow's site is a beyond awesome example of the things that can be done with the two plugins 😄

someone joining the site and then consistently asking questions that are stated in the rules and are redirected to the rules multiple times, only to not read them at all. and then go on to break rules because they didn't read any rules regarding the system they're using.

Definitely when it no longer feels fun and is having an impact on real life. I'm currently in the process of closing down one board because it was just frustrating me. I have moved to a new board and for now am mostly solo staffing (my hubby is helping out, but staffing is otherwise not his forte). I must admit I feel much happier again as well as refreshed. It's nice to look forward to writing and actually having people who are also happy to write. Given that is the whole idea, it kinda struck me that it was not the norm for a good while before, despite how much I loved the old board.

Generally, I prefer to focus on the story as well. I like exploring romance though, don't get me wrong. I really just like to flesh out my characters, or put them in testing situations to see how they handle it, then develop as a result. A friend once said that they like to break their characters to see the beauty within, and that has kind of stuck with me.

THIS! I have played a handful of older characters during my time as a RPer and it's honestly been so much fun. Being able to have that character share wisdom, make comments such as "back in my day", and just generally at times acting as if they own the place due to their status as an "elder" has been fun. If you've been considering playing an older character but haven't jumped in yet, now's the time!

A group of friends and I wanted a place where we could hang out and have fun writing. We couldn't decide what kind of genre we wanted to write, so we decided to build our own site where we could explore a bunch of different ones and world build to our hearts content. Honestly, it's been really fun

The only time I explain a ban to someone is if they will react with maturity. A lot of people sadly do not show this, especially when they treat people like shit usually or just treat a public area with a venting channel (now deleted) their entire vent room. I've had someone do this recently in a video game server. It was to contain it in our Discord and they kept going outside of it with guilt trips of no one joining their vcs to sing, being rude to people who tried to comfort them, and more. These types of people I do not contact on why they were banned. One of my fellow mods messaged them after on why and it made them more upset which I foresaw thanks to experience in dealing with people like this in the past. Wish I didn't. This person was an adult, mind you. The mod said it was the right thing to do [to msg them on way] but it made it worse due to their mental health. They have this idea that I was the villain and my friend/mod was the messenger when I fact I didn't want to msg them on why. They wished bad things to happen to my moderator which was shocking to see, as were others on the team when they saw the screenshots. No one is professionally trained to deal with certain people and it shouldn't be required to explain why they were banned. Especially when the rules are clear. They are responsible for reading those. The same person said we broke our own rules when I had implemented a rule before they even joined that in severe cases, there would be no three strikes or warnings before being banned immediately. This was one of those cases.

One of my closest friends, who happens to be a part of my ro community since "day 1", has been one of my closest friends in real-life even though we've never been able to meet face to face and live in two completely different countries. She has actually asked me to be the 'godfather' to one of her children.

I'd like to see more older characters, and by older I really mean 60+. In most games I've played in, there's few older generation, and sites are normally full of 18-30 year old characters. And I get it, I have no room to talk as my characters currently range from 16-45ish. But man, I'd just like to see some variety, like..there's surely old people in the background xD

I don't really believe in word count, anymore. I used to think having a word count really pushed people to post good, hearty posts that their partner could work off of. But I've realized over the years that some people just don't put a lot of filler in their posts. I personally like bigger posts with written out scenes and getting a good feel for the character/atmosphere. But I also understand some people don't like that, or can't accomplish that. So the way I see it anymore is that as long as your partner has something to work off of to give you a post back..no word count needed.

I am honestly a bit naive about this, and tend to have good faith in everyone until a site has already exploded (or imploded, as the case may be), but I'm definitely taking lots of notes from this thread on things to avoid, both in attempting to run a site myself and when scouting somewhere to join.

@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.

Fully white skins. Don't get me wrong, they're aesthetic as heck but they blast my eyes off with how bright they are. Other things are: tiny scrollbars, tiny letters, weirdly placed buttons for boards (this one isn't so bad, but I'm an old lady and some layouts I just keep getting lost on), tiny clicker. Basically, anything made small for the sake of aesthetic. I'm blind. I do like boards that have little banners for their areas. I think it's kind of immersive and cute to see what that little world looks like. I dunno what size of banner would bother me, but I've enjoyed the ones I've seen so far. Mini profiles you can customize are cute, too. Extra pic/job/sexuality/money/status/quote fields. It doesn't really add anything, but it's fun to fill out.

I was feeling very nostalgic for horse rp sites that I used to be a part of when I was younger. And sure, there are several others in the community right now, but there wasn't one that was strictly realistic in particular so...I decided to model mine after rpgs of the past and here we are!

Back in like, 2012-2013 I think...I remember being a part of this wonderful wild horse roleplay site. Made a lot of good friends over the years of being on it, then all of a sudden one day someone had gained access to the admin account and absolutely destroyed all of the coding on the forum, making it impossible to access any former threads unless you were on mobile. I think it was something personal against the admin of the site themselves, but I never really got the full story, or I don't really remember all the details. Eventually they just ended up closing the site down and deleting everything. It's so sad knowing all of the characters I'd created were just lost to time. There are scraps of memories from that site here and there but I'll never be able to read the writing on those forums again. I was able to keep in touch with other people from the site for a while, but they've all since vanished too...only one (my best friend from those days) is a Facebook friend now so at least I know they're doing okay.

I'd really love to play on a site set in William Gibson's Sprawl universe (from his trilogy of Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive). But it seems like the closest I'll get is the sites based on Cyberpunk 2077, which even though it cribs heavily from Neuromancer just isn't the same.

This is my confession I suppose. I had a very active board. It was thriving. I was a stay at home mom at the time but then me and my ex broke up. I had to get a job and I just slowly, very slowly stopped giving the board the attention that it needed. I did have one very amazing, active admin. He did keep the board alive but after I had just basically ghosted the board, it wasn't thriving the same. One day when I felt as though I could finally give the board the time it needed my admin and I revamped the entire board. I let him have a lot of say in any of the changes I was making as he had kept the board afloat in my absence. During the revamp we were speaking regularly, and we were exited to reopen because the board was like 3 years old at the time. Then one day, he just vanished and I never reopened the board. The board is still around. No members but also isn't offline.

When the work and stress of the site outweighs the fun of RPing. Sure, all sites are going to be work, but if you're not getting anything out of it then why do it? If an admin is just going through the motions it will be obvious to the other writers.

Currently I am only on one site, two of my characters are canons of the HP genre but my originals are named Roody (a house elf) & Rhys O'Farrell. I'm actually not sure what made me choose those names, they just sort of came together. Sometimes my characters names just pop into my head once I get the basics of them going, this can be both before or after choosing a face for them. I'll often tailor it to their background, the lore, their species or powers. Sometimes the name will even change during the creation process. I'll use name lists based on heritage. If a character is Russian I'll look up Russian first or surnames, I'll search up fantasy names or futuristic names and find something that fits them.

I am in a mix of being very socially anxious and also being in the "scew it" camp. As much as I really like to reach out to people in groups and ask them if they want to rp with any of my characters, I am terrified of doing it because my brain is trying to tell me I am "annoying people" by just asking! Even if it is one of the most common thing to ask people on a roleplay site XD "Do you want to roleplay?" It's what everyone's there for! I still do it, though. I still reach out. It doesn't really get easier, but dammit I will keep throwing my brain at the problem anyway because I know how happy I get when other people reach out to me, so I want to do it in return as well even if it scares me half to death!

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!

- When it starts to affect your real life or that of those around you in a negative way. Just like everything, roleplay is meant to be something positive. It's here to bring people many good things, but it can also affect a person's life in a negative way, through many various means. I'll try to list some of them below. - When a person begins to become to obsessed with the roleplay world they ignore the real world. - When a person gets too attached to other people within the roleplays, and can't seperate reality from fiction. - When people are harrassed by others because of events that happened in a roleplay. - Catfishing (People who pretend to be romantically attached to another person, but are lying because it's just roleplay.) -Rp Hacktivists (Derived from combining the words 'Hack' and 'Activism', hacktivism is the act of hacking, or breaking into a computer system, for politically or socially motivated purposes. These people will attack anyone for their goals, and try to get them to suicide because they were hurt or dissed in some way.) As you can see, there are some means that can lead to negative results, but hopefully that doesn't happen to anyone here...

This!!! too many times on fandom sites I've seen people take a canon and what they have done essentially turns that canon into a CW Teen Drama version of that canons, sometimes even use actors from those shows to play canons in their mid thirties. Too much: Shipping and smut focus. I don't mind ships in general and when done organically its beautiful. However, too many times I've seen people go completely off the rails over this ships and completely ignore all other posts they owe just to post with their ship and 90% of the time its just smut. Then use the excuse 'its what I got muse for' Yeah..... you owe 5 threads a post for the last month some of them its the only thread they got and need for activity but you've been posting a sex scene sometimes 20 times a week.... got it. Not Enough: Character's who don't or wouldn't like each other interacting. I have had some of my best threads come from my character interacting with another one that I know will either instantly annoy them or they'd just plain out hate from the start. Had many interesting plots, storylines, even ships form from characters that absolutely despised each other from the word GO.

My biggest fear is that being an admin is going to snuff out my muse for the site. I've had this happen in other places where I get so wrapped up in doing the admin work that when it comes time to post I'm just...spent. I'm ready to get off the site and not have to look at it for a while. I really don't want that to happen to me again, which is why I've made my current site so lax. I'm just trying to save myself haha

I'm probably going to mirror what a lot of people have already said but I would also suggest trying to approach members differently depending on what cues they give off. Such as members who seem like they are hyped and reply positively to plotting requests but don't actually respond well to discussing plots. In those cases try to switch to a tactic of simply throwing the two characters in a thread together. Instead of focusing on detailing plot ideas, since this doesn't work for some members and does for others, ask if they'd like to throw the two characters together and you can whip up a starter. Most of the time you'll find those types of members are a lot more receptive to a less plotting, more rping approach. While others will be more receptive to plot discussions and with those members you probably want to take the approach of plotting something feasible and then getting the thread started. I concur with a lot of peoples suggestions with throwing up a site event, usually an event that involves sign-ups and staff pairing members together to RP the site event. This also helps to encourage members to RP together when they might not have interacted prior. Keep up the effort of RPing with your members via various means and I do think as time goes on and your site becomes more stable you will see your member base "mirroring" your styles. More people will start plotting and mimicking the tactics they see from the staff. At least, those are my experiences.

I mean okay if that’s the reasoning you go with but I mean... but if you think of Princess Leia the first and only person you think of is Carrie Fisher. No matter what she will always be the face of Leia. Her death doesn’t change that. She lives forever in our hearts and eyes as Leia. She can never undo that (Not that I figure she would want to even if she were still alive).

That's a fair point I hadn't even really thought of! That's the reasoning that most people have given to me when I asked so I jumped onboard and always felt really uncomfortable about it.

Seems pretty harmless to me to allow that. I think the whole face claim thing in and of itself is kinda disrespectful in a way as you often can't get consent from the people depicted or the artists who created the photograph. Arbitrarily drawing the line at the subject of the image being deceased doesn't really make any sense to me.

I use deceased face claims. I use young versions of older actors who have passed on at times, for example, Alan Rickman and Marilyn Monroe. And why not? They’re just a visual representation of a character. Why is that considered disrespectful?

To start: I am going to specify that I lost an RP partner, but that partner was not a friend. (Long story ahead) So, I was on a board where we played Vampire the Masquerade and I was new. I made a Setite because I love them. So there's this player who's been on the board a while and has an established Setite who wants to plot and I'm like COOL. We exchange skype and he messages me a bunch of times to tell me what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong. (Irritating but oh well) and the game continues. Around March to May he suddenly stops logging in. Its weird but it happens. Then all the sudden a player who wasn't very active logs in and writes this huge blurb about how we're all scum for harboring a murder and that we should be ashamed for being friends with a criminal and they're leaving the board. We're all like What The Fuck. During the rant the person dropped the name of the Setite. Because I had him on skype I had his real name. So I googled that shit and saw an arrest in Kentucky for a man suspected of killing an elderly bus driver in a home invasion that had gone unsolved for ten years. I was blown away. Took six years and more shit than I wanted to think about; but every couple of months I would remember that and look up the trial (He was convicted of that and other unsavory things) but yeah: I lost an RP Partner because he was convicted of Murder

I prefer writing male characters, though mine are always "nice guys" in the positive sense. My last figure is/was a female, but it was because I was the only man on the board. The women always kvetched about their experiences with my gender, so I forced myself to choose a female canon to fit in. It ultimately did not work, so now I am back to drawing up young men again.

This varies a lot for me. Some of the people in my current roleplay community have gotten me into the idea of character playlists! Which is basically just a bunch of songs that make you think about your character or put you in the mood to write them. These help me out a lot sometimes - other times, it's just a little too much for my brain, and I need silence and to be left alone to get the words just right.

I always get a huge kick out of folks bringing in canon characters (we're a supernatural fantasy RP, so they bring in... you know, someone from Supernatural, which we're not about) but lightly disguised. Often with the same face claim. Cracks me up every time.

Admins who put time limits on face reserves for others while having anywhere from 2-12 face reserves for themselves without a time limit. Additionally, requiring multiple posts a month when half of them don't even bother with that on one character.