Search the Community

So I didn't see a topic that covered this, but I'm currently experiencing a mod on my staff team that over the months have slowly become well... unhelpful and entitled. The mod barely does anything to help the other mods, story, or members. This mod doesn't do anything unless its to benefit their character in story. However, this person feels entitled to boss the other mods around when I'm not online or around. In fact, I've seen this person give important information to non-staff members.. Also this mod plays an important cannon character and has made themselves entangled in almost every character's personal plots. Which brings me to this important question..... This mod has stated to me and another mod; that if demoted they would leave the site to screw up other character's plots. What do you do, when you come across something like this? Do you demote the person anyway and hope that they don't mess up other people's plots if they decide to leave?

In a work environment, staff receives benefit for their labor usually in the form of cash but also in terms of insurance, discounts, and other benefits. But in roleplay, staff members are expected to do the work without receiving anything that you wouldn't give a regular member. I was trying to list the benefits of being staff for a staff request form, but I'm falling short. (Suggestions would be lovely.) The above realization made me wonder why we don't "pay" staff members - in fact, we discourage it. They don't get in-game points to spend in the store each month, or pinned plot threads to thank them for their hard work, or special characters for upholding their position. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the topic. There are many pros and cons to "paying" staff (more cons than pros in my humble opinion) but there isn't really a "right" answer . . . How we chose as an RP community to reward (or not) our hard-working staff could be vastly different from an RP community on the other side of the internet.

So I think I put this in the right place, I'm trying to build a community feel for my site, and I'm aware its one of my members birthdays. Now normally I'd just put up a thread with a google'd picture of a cake etc, but I'd like to do something a bit extra for the member (and all members if I'm aware its their birthday). The shop system we have allows me to create a) gift codes and b ) mystery item things. Would you find it either as a member in general or as a member receiving such as a gift off putting or not?

We all do it. We make or join games and love them so much, sometimes we start as Admin, other-times we move up the ranks to do so. At some point we all realize that we're no longer members. It occurred to me recently that as an Admin on a site you don't get to have the luxury of freedom that members do. There is so much gained when you become an Admin and we all talk about how great it can be, but I want to take some time to talk about what we lose when we do it and how we can deal. .... I'll start. I noticed that in our communities we all become very close. We become friends and allies and we make great games together, but as an Admin I'm somehow separated from that even though I'm the one pulling the strings. I'm THE BOSS and there's a sort of hush that comes over everyone when I appear near the drinking fountain. I no longer get the luxury of being human. I am now an other. There are now consequences to me showing personal weaknesses, or admitting that my responsibilities and RL work are hard and that I'm struggling. It was this way for the admin before me and it is that way for me, and I don't have hopes that it will be different for the admin that come after me. How do you all cope? What do you do to reconcile that some of your community doesn't see you as a person, or as equal to them? What do you to to combat the feeling of being excluded, or manipulated by the communities that you serve? I do my best to write more for myself. If work/life/admin life is hard and I don't have anyone to talk to I distract myself with more responsibility. It's not as fun as having group threads or even one-on-ones but I find it to be very soothing to write just for myself, or to write behind the scenes for things that may come up in the future. What do you all do?

I just started my new site and had a bunch of people join. Many profiles posted right away, but not many threads or posts from the members. I'm pretty lenient on activity, so no worries. People have real life commitments and whatnot, and the board wasn't open yet. But the challenge is that now the site is open and no one is roleplaying. I don't blame any one person at all because people have things going on IRL. But I can't advance the plot or entice new members if I'm the only one consistently roleplaying. What are your suggestions? PS some of the members on my site are members here on the Initiative. For real, I don't hold it against any individual person. I just need to find a way to get active members on the site or to increase the activity of a few of the existing ones.

I started thinking following the activity check thread (and the post I made about people not following basic instructions), how lenient are you when it comes to members bot following coding or format instructions? On one hand, it is such a ridiculous, miniscule thing to get irritated about. There are so many greater problems in the world. But on the other hand, if the instructions are clear, and everyone is following them and it's clear everyone is following them, it's so frustrating when people come along and don't follow the instructions. There were points where I'd have a small bb code template to fill in (name, user group, age sort of simplicity) for claims or whatever, and people would copy the example so it would lose it's coding when when they reposted it and filled it out. Realizing that not everyone was an expert on forums and coding, I then wrote clearly to copy what was in the code tags. That didn't work. So I used bold, red font. That did not work, either. Heck, even with graphics people don't follow the rules. I don't care if you have a PB or not. Just make sure that whatever image you choose fits the avatar box appropriately. Don't have images that are too small, or ones that get stretched, or ones with half the pixels they're supposed to. But alas! For some, this rule is too challenging to follow, I guess, even if I have resources for cropping/resizing images or I offer to do it myself. Over the years, I've simplified things down to relieve my frustration at this. I don't use any sort of BB code or HTML code for people to fill out if I don't need to. (Added bonus is that people can do it on mobile easily.) I'm pretty clear when specific formats or templates are needed, and I try to post reminders for those formats. People still mess things up sometimes, and I sit there and wonder if it's worth the battle.

I saw that other thread about survival horror (locked because it's old, but I'll link it at the bottom of this post), and I thought I'd like to know more about people's experiences and expectations with survival horror sites. I'm interested in actual survival horror, not the "gothic horror" (I think it's called) of vampires/werewolves/demons/witches living in modern society. My survival horror site is in the works, and I'm always open to new ideas to make things interesting and exciting. Pulling off something that is truly survival horror is pretty challenging on an open forum format where people can come and go as they please and there is no limit to the number of members who can join. While I doubt I'm going to be able to invoke a sensation of terror in my members, I'd like to make my roleplay as tense and exciting as possible. In Pine Ridge Creek (thanks to whoever was on Discord and gave me that name, haha), something called the "Decay" is spreading. It's similar to Silent Hill's Otherworld in the sense that everything gets twisted and rusted and bloody, but the mechanics are a little different. Rather than coming and going in pulses, the Decay seeps out and spreads. What it touches is permanently Decayed. One of the things I found a little hard to deal with when I was on a survival horror board years ago was the fact that you are literally always on the run. While this is an aspect of survival horror and some people love it, it's a little too intense for me. You need variety. Unlike movies or books, roleplays (at least most of them) don't have a specific end where the viewer or reader is let "off the hook" and can return to the real world, even if the characters can't. You're done - end of emotional investment. With a roleplay, of course you can take real life breaks, but then you have to return and play with your character again. Constantly running and fighting and escaping becomes . . . boring. You get tired of roleplaying that scenario constantly. Fast paced, always worried about your character, wondering what monster will attack next. And eventually it gets boring. For this reason, I've made the rest of the town that's not touched by the Decay relatively safe. However, there's a clear possibility that monsters may be able to get into the rest of town, and I've put disclaimers up that people can't expect their characters to always be safe just because they're not in the Decay. In addition, the Decay is in the process of spreading, and it's possible that the entire town will become consumed, though probably not for awhile. But having a break from the horror will allow more balance for the members so that they don't get bored as often. I've also introduced a few mechanisms that will help keep people engaged. The main one is the optional point system. People gain points for roleplaying, taking requests, participating in challenges, reaching certain post counts, being active, etc. However, it's what they spend it on that can open up more opportunities for them. For example, characters cannot have guns to start with, but they can be purchased in the store. The gun comes with 1 OoC month of ammo. They can purchase more ammo through the store as well. More importantly, they can purchase specialized ways for their characters to be involved. These "plot occurrences" mean that the staff will work with them and/or choose something to give to the characters that will be relevant to the story. It could be a shiny new item that will help them defeat monsters, or it could be involving the character in some one-on-one storyline that will impact the overall site plot. (There will be different categories based upon price.) Of course there are general board-wide subplots that people can involve themselves in without using the store. The point system will allow them to get extra-involved in something. We also have the IC actions = IC consequences rule. I was on a survival horror site that didn't have this, and it was so stupid. I played a monster, and people could literally come up and do a jig two feet away from my character while taunting him, but my character couldn't do anything without their permission. So essentially they were like the sibling who goes "I'm not touching you I'm not touching you I'm not touching you" while my character just had to sit there and deal with it because mommy and daddy would get mad if my character slapped the annoying brats into oblivion. What have you experienced on horror roleplays? Why did these mechanisms/plots/ideas work or not work? What would you have liked to see? Or really, just talk about anything related to survival horror roleplays. I'm game. Here's the inspirational thread: https://rpginitiative.com/topic/5631-survival-horror-and-monitoring-elements/

Hey guys, I've seen the RP community on this part of the internet move towards having characters and members provide "pronouns" rather than saying sex or gender. I understand that for the members, but I'm not sure about the characters. When I'm RPing with a member, pronouns are useful because then I know how to refer to that person. But when a character is interacting with another character, knowing gender/sex seems more intuitive to me. The last couple games I've played, the characters had to have biological sex stated for the sake of the RP, but in my new one, it's not going to be that big of an issue. This is a bit of a "new" topic for me. So I'm just a bit uncertain if I have characters state sex/gender instead of pronouns if it's going to throw everyone into a fit.

Every roleplay takes place in a world, be it canon, fanon, or original. How do you, as a worldbuilder, go about building your world? There's really no right or wrong way to go about it (in my opinion, at least), so share away! I'd love to hear from canon and fanon roleplay setings, since most of my experience has been in building original worlds and environments from scratch. And who knows, we all might even pick up on some cool tips, tricks and resources in the process!

I can't afford premium. But I also want to roleplay with adults. Does having a site that's 18+ but doesn't allow adult content due to TOS turn you away from a site?

Alriiiighty. I have contemplated quite a while in posting this particular discussion. I wanted to make sure I could word it in a way that didn't invite a heated debate. Lol. As many of you know when joining sites, and making them, a number of things comes into play when you are creating/writing species, locations, powers, etc. etc. Things like Demons, Witches, Warlocks, Sorcerers, Werewolves, Vampires...these all have extensive pre-established lore in hundreds of books, movies, roleplays, poems, video games, etc. When you were creating your species breakdowns, powers, guides, and lists, what sort of inspirational resources did you use? Are yours loosely based on a book, or show? Did you do extensive research in wiki and other sites? How much of it did you twist to make it your own, and how much of it is a mashup of other resources? Linking some of those resources here could be extremely helpful for anyone looking for them, too, so feel free to provide links to some of your favorite power sites, wiki's, show sites, etc.

So we've all dealt with them. Even if you have a tiny member base, and guests are rare, you've dealt with the continued question. Usually they are SO repeated that you cross your eyes at your computer screen and wish you've kept the answer on a sticky note so you could just copy/paste it into chat..but that would be rude, so you type up a response and smile. Don't deny it...you know you do it. Or maybe I'm a butthead. Lol Anyway, aside from the usual "I added it to the F.A.Q." what is your way of dealing with repeat questions? Do you update your information in a continued effort to make the answer more obvious? Do you rage quit? Joking. Sometimes these questions aren't just repeated, they're so easily answered in all of the information you spent so long typing up that you just don't understand how they don't know the answer. I want to hear horror stories....you know...without being rude...so...PG horror stories.

According to a recent announcement by Brandon at zathyrus, it looks like zIFboards (formerly Invisionfree) has been acquired by Tapatalk. In light of this users of InvisionFree will be given 2 options: 1- "Upgrade" to Zetaboards 2- "Upgrade" to Tapatalk's new forum system (seems likely based off phpbb) This, in short, means InvisionFree is getting killed off. If you have an IF board now, you might want to either get a copy of the database while you can to convert over to JFH (or another software) or at least start backing up your essential stuff for the inevitable transfer or loss of the data.

So we got a new member a decent amount of time ago and it was obvious that she was completely new to the entirety of RPing - or Rping on a site, anyway. She was asking a lot of questions that any RPer who has been on a site or two would know. Now, this isn't the part I mind, everyone has to start somewhere and when we say we're an intermediate site we mean that in terms of the writing, not how long our members have been RPing or how familiar they are with the RP world/community. However, after having been a member for a decent amount of time now she finally posted her bio and before I could even read it one of my staffers told me that it was going to be a bad one for me to read and now that I've seen it I know why. The first things you see is that her character was born 57 years ago, but is listed as 25 years old, the lore in her history is completely wrong (which admittedly other people have done on the site before so that isn't the dealbreaker here, it just needs to be heavily edited), but in her RP sample there are edit lines from someone else. Telling her that they edited parts of her RP sample and why they did it. An RP sample is supposed to be a representation of a member's writing style and level, though, if I'm completely honest, we haven't had to deal with too many issues in this section at all since we opened. In my mind, we don't really have an RP sample from her - and it makes me wonder how much of her application she actually wrote if there are so many edits in her RP sample done by someone else. I'm not really sure what I should do here, I could review her app like I would anyone else's and tell her what she needs to change for her character to be approved or my other admin and I could talk to her about the fact that she might be on a site that is too high a level for her. Her RP sample isn't full of "cuz" and "u" but with the edits we know have been made by another person, we don't really know what her writing is like because the person editing it could have fixed all of those mistakes - including ones that could have been in the rest of her app. But as far as the actual writing goes it isn't bad and I don't know if that's because her entire app has been edited or if she was just having trouble with her RP sample and that's why we're seeing the edit notes from another person. There are also some questions about whether she is old enough to be on our mature 18+ site, because she's coming off as quite young. Some things just don't line up for other things as well that makes it seem like she might be lying like she says she's on GMT time but said it was midnight where she was when it should have been 3pm GMT time. Any advice would be awesome and thank you all in advance.

This is a fandom related question, so I will understand if people don't get what I'm talking about, but this has been something that's bothered me for a while now. In the Tolkien fandom some races (Hobbits, elves, Men and dwarves) are more playable than others. There is a lot you can do with the characters. You can roleplay their family life, they can go on adventures, Men in particular can be on the side of the Free Peoples, or be Corrupt, or be neither. The problem arises when it comes to other types of characters, such as orcs, wargs, goblins, trolls and spiders. Although I would like to have these characters in the rp, I am uncertain about how playable they really are. A Men character, even if he/she is a servant of Sauron, would have more freedom of movement to go into the places of the Free Peoples and not get immediately attacked or exiled - they could even 'make friends' or interact with ordinary people so they are 'approachable' by characters that other players have. From my experience on twitter and other places, orcs, wargs, goblins, etc, don't really seem to last long because players are restricted in how they can play them. A lot of the time, they can only really interact with others of their kind (unless there is a storyline that involves conflict with travelers or some such.) and usually, there aren't any other players with those types of characters to rp with. I don't want a player creating a character like that and then have nothing to do with it. The other issue is that there are some character types - dragons, balrogs, 'good Maia', 'bad Maia', Valar and Melkor who are very powerful which could be used to make things difficult for people who play ordinary characters by god-moding and such. (The wizards, Gandalf, Radagast and Saruman are 'good Maia' but I don't have any issues with people playing those because they can interact freely and we know that they are restricted in using their powers.)

As admin (or super fans) how do you guys deal with bad reviews? We had a really low review that included some surprising claims regarding Admin and other players. I have good conflict logs from previous admin but this particular review really caught me off guard by saying that we were unfriendly, neglectful and even downright rude. I've asked my hyper active players and ranked members if they had heard of anything specific. Unfortunately when we switched admin we lost a great deal of active players so there's no way for me to know who felt this way and how to fix it. Any advice on how to recover from such a scathing comment on our ranks?

So I have seen tons of different platforms for forums. Personally I've come to love the way jcink works. It's a little more complicated than some, but in my opinion the end result is a smoother, more visually defined forum. On top of this the admin section, and additions, are incredible and easy to understand. However, the truth is I've only used proboards and jcink, so I have absolutely no experience with any other platforms...in fact I don't even know what other platforms are out there, or how hard or easy they might be to use. What do you use? What do you suggest people try? Am I the only one severely prejudiced against proboards forums just because they're proboards and to me they look a little chunky? XD Does that make me a bad peoples? Lol

So I'm new to the world of opening forums. As it is I've found I have an affinity and specific love for the JCink forums, I've accustomed myself to the coding of them, can do most things within reason without aid, and have over 17 years of RP experience under my belt. Therefore I feel confident in my ability to both provide great storyline and offer wonderful support in a forum ownership position. That being said my only real experience is opening forums that were hosted on another social media site (with the initials VF if anyone knows where I'm coming from, if not don't worry. Lol ), and thus am falling under the category of teaching an old dog new tricks. I've recently come into the knowledge that some forums, if not the vast majority of them, perform what is called a soft opening. From what I've gathered so far this is basically where you gather your friends and such to RP on the site, test things out, find bugs and typos, etc. However, for someone like myself who is only just getting back hardcore into the world of RP, my friend list is relatively short. I'm not sure how to go about doing this when I've not got the filled list of friends that it requires to do so. So here are my questions in full: 001. How important do you feel a soft opening is to a forum? Does it make or break it? Will it aid in getting it off the ground faster? What are some pros and cons to doing this. I'm not just asking people whom have done it, but anyone whom has thought about doing it, or just plain old has an opinion of it. 002. How do you go about doing these sort of things? Especially when your friend list of 'beta testers' is about as pathetic looking as when you open your wallet for spending money and a moth flutters haplessly on passed your face. Are there places to post a link just for a soft opening? Or do you just advertise a couple of places? I find putting your forum up in any actual directories constitutes a full fledged opening, so that can't possibly count. Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Hey, I need a bit of advice. My site is an adventure RP that has two parts: 1. Characters (called “Subjects”) are taken from the outside world and put into a testing environment similar to the arena from the Hunger Games. It has many of the same survival/fighting mechanics, but ultimately characters can be of any age, and there can be more than one “winner.” 2. The isolated town of Mistwell that watches the above in the Documentary. Because they believe the Subjects are volunteers, these Mistwell residents don’t have many concerns for the wellbeing of the Subjects while they’re in the testing facility more than you would for any person on, say, Survivor. The living Subjects are sent to Mistwell to live where they are welcomed into the community like celebrities. The issue I’m having is that it’s a bit of a hard sell when it comes to getting people on board. It’s a very bizarre concept, and although it’s like the Hunger Games, it’s not. All the people who want these mechanics go instead to an actual Hunger Games site. Everyone else just doesn’t join because these mechanics exist, and it’s so foreign to play-by-post forum RPers. I love both “parts” to the site, and one can’t function without the other. If you only play the Reserve (#1), it would get so boring since you’re just in survival mode all the time. And if you only have Mistwell (#2), it’s pretty much the same as a small town RP. It’s about time for us to start another Reserve sequence since our first one ended, but I’m struggling. I want more members aboard so that we’re not just RPing with the same couple people and we can RP a wide variety of characters. But I’m considering stalling it so that we can build up the town of Mistwell. I’m even thinking about marketing the site mainly as a “twisted small town” sort of thing just to get people aboard. I don’t believe that everyone needs to play the Reserve if they don’t want to, and I’m perfectly fine having people play just in Mistwell. I'm concerned that if we don't get new blood, we'll stagnate. What are your thoughts? Do you have any advice? If you do think I should market it temporarily as a “twisted small town” RP, do you have any additional suggestions? Please feel free to ask questions if you need clarification on something, or check out my board (link in sig) if it helps.

As thread title suggests, need some advice about unnecessary drama out of literally nowhere. Let me give you some context. Member A joined a month ago. Member A now has two active characters and three active threads. Her plotter was on fire with interest within a day of posting it, and a number of our old guard of members have joined threads. I wake up to this PM: I think I messed up with <character name>. Or at least her plot. I don't really feel welcomed or liked anymore. I'm considering leaving because I feel I don't amount to much here. All I want to do is make people happy, and write with people. Part of me wants to ask what's wrong. The other part of me wants to say that I don't play mind games. Members have been incredibly warm and welcoming to this player. We don't have a discord. We don't have a place where conversations are hidden. I've checked PM logs, nothing there. There is nowhere on this site where a single bad word has been said about this member. They have been included right off the bat, and are receiving replies to their threads daily. The second character they made had a RP partner within an hour of being approved, for instance. Any of you guys experienced this kind of thing before, and if so how did you handle?

In my experience as both a site admin and a member, different sites have different philosophies about accepting, pending, and denying character applications. So what is it that you look for when reviewing an application to your game? Do you just look for grammatical errors and continuity? Or is there something more that you look for? I think one of the biggest things I look for is direction. I can usually get past some typos and wrong use of there, their, and they're if there is a solid character structure and a direction that the writer wants to take their story in. I usually pend an application if they just give me the basic character with no inspiration for them to grow or move forward, because to me that says A: that there's really nothing that this writer wants to accomplish with either this character or the game and B: this writer will probably end up ditching because they don't feel engaged with the story and their characters because they already applied with a complete story instead of growing into one. And the whole point of roleplaying is to write a collective story and challenge your abilities. I will rarely deny an application - I usually fall back to pending. I always try to give someone a chance and will actively try to work with them to join my community. But there are a few instances where I would consider a straight up denial: if the character is directly ripped from another writer/publication (I don't do canon fandom sites so this isn't an issue for me), if the writer has been disrespecting my community, or if the writing level is in no way up to par (or even close) with the rest of the community.

So I'm working on a 'dashboard' type affair that has differing content based on if you're logged in or not. I'm working on the info for the guest view - and I'm trying to work out what I could put among reasons to join without sounding cliche. So far I've worked out for its genre the site is rather unique (its a post apocalyptic rpg but its mother nature that's the threat), and its set up is unique with active risk vs reward set up. But I'm struggling to come up with more reasons without falling back onto 'friendly enthusiastic staff team' and 'actively being developed while listening to its community' cliches. Probably not helped by the fact that the reason I made the rp was "I had an itch to scratch this thing and there was no other rpgs that would scratch the itch so I made it" Any other ideas I could use?

TL:DR This is two questions really: 1) How do you deal with claims of admin favoritism toward yourself as an admin? 2) What experiences have you had with getting new admin in place of the old, and what were your main concerns, or pain-points while it was happening? Background: I'm still only considered a temporary admin on our site while our main Admin figures out how much time they're going to be able to devote to the site. They've been entirely absent in an admin capacity for some time (three months or more) and log in intermediately. There are quite a few loose ends in regards to major plots and site maintenance (like managing the store) that I don't yet have the credentials to edit or manage. I plan on asking for these, but if I get full-admin status, what do you all use as checks for yourself in regards to being an admin? I bought a store item fair and square with my site credits, but the item says to contact Admin for official details. That would be ME now. How do you all deal with creating fun stories and getting items for your characters without it seeming like favoritism? Should I worry what others might think about me showing favoritism to myself? In addition to this weird thought of favoritism I'm worried of showing towards myself comes the fact that there may have to be some smudging of story-lines and character adjustments (maybe even major plot-points) if and when we transition the full site to me, particularly because previous admin do not want their characters to be anything more than NPCs. Have any of you experienced admin transitions? What was your experience as an admin or a player?

Activity checks are probably my least favorite thing to do but I have to hold them. We just turned 3 weeks old and so we haven't actually had one yet but in our rules, we say once every three months. Do you think that's fair? Also since we have a fandom board I was wondering how others dealt with canons and if they had different requirements for activity checks? Or really just checks in general. My biggest fear is someone will sign in and post in the checks and then disappear. I'm leaning towards them having a certain amount of posts in the last month, how do you guys go about it?

I was thinking about adding a section for "Member Comfort Sheets" (or something? need a better name?) for members to fill out listing the things that they're not comfortable RPing. The sections would be simple and straightforward: I'd like to try: Please talk with me before: I'd rather not: No: Except maybe a little more eloquent on that last one. However, in addition to this, there will also be a disclaimer that certain topics can't be avoided, such as kidnapping, murder, death, etc. since that's part of the board plot. I also will not make characters change their nature. So I don't care if someone doesn't want to RP racism; I won't make another member change their racist character's nature just to RP with them. The pros, of course, are that I get to know my members better and find out what themes they like or dislike. The cons are that I don't want people feeling like "Well I put it on my comfort sheet that I don't want to play it, so you're a horrible person if you won't let me leave a plot because I don't want to play with Susie because she RPs [classism/ableism/etc.]." Ultimately people are going to have to play with each other because their characters could be thrown together in a thread. I could also expand it so that it's not simply a "Member comfort sheet" but a sheet of information about the member, including contact information, list of characters, etc. What are your guys' thoughts?