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My site has been open around two months now. We're small, but our core member base has been amazing and active. We're a marvel based site, set right before Infinity War, and recently I've had a horrible time with members. Since the hype for Infinity War started right before its release, I've had an influx of people coming through my site, which normally would be great, except all of these people are causing problems. In the past two weeks I have had to ban two members for copy pasting applications straight from wikipedia, another member for being belligerent in the discord, and another member who joined, demanded that I share skin codes with them - demanded that I link them to everything on the site - and then posted an application that was again copy pasted from wikipedia. They promptly cussed me out when the application was denied. I have been running sites for years and years now, seriously for the past four years, and have done mod work before that. I have NEVER had so many issues with this, with members who have no regard for how a role play works, refuse to even read the rules, and seem to be just around to stir the pot! I have changed our site rules to make sure that things are clearly spelled out, but this still seems to happen once a week! Has anybody else experienced this lately? Is it just new fans coming into the marvel genre with infinity war hype? Are trolls out to get us? How do you handle belligerent potential members?

We have a member on our site that just... clogs the general chat room with stories of themselves all the time. And you can't escape this person. You go into the plotting channel to plot with another member, they pop in there, suggesting things, immersing themselves into a conversation that has nothing to do with them; someone asks a question in the help channel? They're in there, sometimes genuinely helping/answering questions, but other times, not contributing anything helpful (we've asked them two times now to not chat there if they're not going to answer questions); You come on the general chat after a long day from work just to talk with your friends? They'll be there. And they'll tell you a long-winded story about what they're doing at that specific moment or what they accomplished that day. Anything you say, they'll change the conversation to be about themselves. It's possible to talk around them (by ignoring whatever they say, and just continuing the convo between the lines), but it's annoying. And as a staff, we want to encourage others to chat in our general chat channel, not be deterred by someone who's constantly gotta have the conversation revolving around themselves. And we want them to be involved in the chat, too, but the way they do it is just... killing everyone else's willingness to hang out there with us. We want them to contribute to the chat, but we want them to acknowledge what's happening to other people or other's stories. Sometimes people just need to vent, and that's fine. Acknowledge them, don't ignore what they're saying only to contribute something that turns the conversation to be all about yourself. The only break we get from this person is when they're asleep, it seems. Otherwise, they are always around, hanging out in the chat. The other staff and I are not really sure how to handle this situation. We don't know if a warning is the proper thing to do, but if it is, what should we say to this person without sounding like petty jerks? What points should we avoid, but which should we drive home? What should this member's punishment be, if there should be a punishment at all? No one talks in our General Chat Channel anymore except for us and them and a few other members that can deal with talking around this person, and we want to change that asap. As always, thank you RPG Initiative community. You guys are always so helpful ❤️ Anonymous poster hash: 9628e...c8c

So, there are: Discord, cbox.ws, chatango, and shoutbox that I know of in terms of "forum friendly" chats to use on forums. Are there other chats friendly for forum usage that people use or does the aforementioned list about sum it up?

I'm gonna try and keep this short. or as short as possible, bc I don't wanna accidentally drag anyone thru the mud. tldr cliffnotes version, I have a member that is... seemingly cherry-picking my site lore and ignoring and or outright attempting to rewrite, only for themselves, the parts of it they don't like. every time someone asks them to change something, they get all up in arms about how we're stifling creativity and being rude and mean and are gonna drive people away, blah blah, now they apparently feel 'unsafe' because people keep 'yelling' at them. one did, tbf, but this player had gone around in circles w them for at least half an hr about a piece of lore, which they wrote, that was written a certain way on purpose and they had completely sidestepped the restrictions for, before bluntly informing them they weren't staff and didn't know what they were talking about. just the sheer level of insistence that they were right and the other player was wrong was almost enough to make me snap at them, it was just all around an admin's worst nightmare, and I wasn't even on until the tail end of it. I'm stressed out irl, so I could just be being oversensitive about it all but just talking to them makes my blood pressure skyrocket, and idk what to do now. I want to work with them but I'm questioning if its even worth it.

The golden rule of drama and running a roleplay has always been to never let OOC drama impact the running of the board. Normally that refers to a person creating OOC drama among the community, where the solution is simple: they either pull their head in, or get kicked from the community for being negative and disruptive. But what about when the OOC drama only affects one person? And what about when that OOC drama is entirely offline, thus: not disrupting the community? That one person needs to just suck it up and deal with their real life crap outside of the board, right? But what about this: what if that person is you: the administrator? And the person causing you this offline drama is a member of the board? I had this dilemma in 2010, and it still puzzles me as to what was the right thing to do. The situation was beyond complicated: my best friend and housemate (and also a member of Tally) screwed me royally, kicking me out of our house, lied to me about why it happened, told our mutual friends it was because of things I'd never done (that she was actually responsible for), took money from me for rent but never actually paid the rent---and basically our friendship of nine years imploded in the most horrible of ways. I've never been more heartbroken in my life than I was after that. Once I'd found somewhere to live, I realised that she was still on Tally. She had connections there, friends that she RP'd with, and all that had really changed was that she went silent any time it was clear I was on the board. Meanwhile, I felt sick just looking at her usernames in the thread lists. Every time I saw them it was a reminder of how badly I'd been burned by someone I really cared for. Is that a good enough reason to remove someone from your community? At the time, I didn't feel it would be fair. I felt that our OOC problems were exactly that: and I did nothing about my severe discomfort in having her around. We didn't have a group chat outside of the CBox at that time. The people she RP'd with most stopped threading with me, and those closest to me stopped threading with her. No one ever discussed it, it just... happened. She finally left when she found it too uncomfortable to stay. What would you do in that situation? Wait it out? Or would you reclaim your space?

I've seen a few topics that discuss awards and trophies for members, badges and the like. People seem to enjoy them, so I'm considering bringing a system into Dead Before Daylight. So for those of you that run an award system, what kind of trophies do you give out specifically? For example, do you give awards for post count milestones like here on the Initiative - and if so, how do you handle those on sites that are account-per-character? Is it a cumulative award where, say, the player has 3 character accounts that have 25, 25, and 50 posts respectively - so they would have a 100 post badge on their OC account; or do you award per character account? As my site is an urban fantasy I'm very interested to hear how award systems on similar kinds of sites are run - are there awards for making certain species etc. However, I'd like to hear about any types of awards, what actions awards are given for etc regardless of site genre - that way this thread creates a pool of ideas that hopefully everyone can find useful.

Ok so on my advertising little stint I go on every once in a while I'm always hesitant to reply to those sites that say JCink or JCink only. In their posts I'll read they are just wanting the adult content to be available, but it made me wonder. Is it more than that? For those of you that chose JCink only, may I ask why? It seems these same people don't have any problem running around a directory as amazing as this one that is self-hosted, why must is the RP just for Jcink? Thanks in advance for the answers! I'm just curious really. Wondering if this if should be my next project. "I was able to self host, and so can you." ❤️

Hey guys! So I just wanted some opinions on app reviews. I know a lot of sites won't have the same kind of app reviews because our site has a lot of powers and species that other sites don't have but I think this applies to all sites who do app reviews. As an admin: do you do public reviews (post the review in the thread of their application) or private ones (through PMs, either on site or on discord? And why do you do them that way? Also: does one staff member review the apps, do you split them up, or does more than one staff member look over the same app? As a member: do you (or would you) prefer app reviews to be done publicly (posted under your app) or privately (the admin PMs you about edits that need to be done or issues with lore, etc)?

I've seen so many responses around here where people don't want the staff members of a site to engage them in conversation when they register. No saying hi in the cbox first, no pulling members into plots or shooting them PMs with ideas, etc. What if a site had a question on registration where members would choose an option from a drop down: a. Yes, please engage me in conversation! b. I'd like to take my time - I'll initiate contact. c. I'm indifferent And then the staff knows how to treat each person. With obvious exceptions for things like sending important messages overriding option "b."

On my site, we have activity checks from the 5th to the 10th of every month. It requires players to fill out a simple form and provide their latest post with each of their characters. Those that don't post in our activity checks get their accounts deactivated, and then a month later, deleted. This one particular person always misses the activity checks and then comes back on to get their account reinstated like 3 days after it has ended. And then they don't post afterwards. At all, ever. It's been a loop of three times already that we've deactivated their account only to have them come back on and reinstate it, but then never post to stay active or remember to post in our activity checks. We've warned this person about their activity, reminding them that they need one post to stay active onboard and they only need to post in the activity check with their one character. I don't think that's asking too much? However, it seems that didn't work out as well. This person is always complaining about being too lazy or too busy to post... and the staff and I are kind of tempted to suggest they come back at a later time when they're not too busy or lazy to post.... because what's the point of joining a roleplay if you're not going to roleplay? As a staff, have you ever dealt with someone like this? What was your solution? How did you handle the situation? What happened with the player - did they improve or leave? Thanks! Anonymous poster hash: d21d3...8da

I'm sure we've all encountered them. Those people that do nothing but talk about how they need to post, but never actually doing so. Needless to say, it gets old. Especially if it becomes a daily or hourly thing. "I need to post..." And then nothing. An hour later: "I need to do posts..." "I should write." "I should work on posts." "I should get tags done." "I need to do replies." Over and over and over again. Without any posts getting done. Just the repeated "complaints." How do you handle it? Do you get after them, do you ignore it? What is the limit? When do you break? What do you say when you do finally snap? Do you ban them? Ban the words? Filter it so you don't have to hear it anymore? Just ignore it and hope it goes away? Of course, there's nothing wrong with them doing this. If they want to waste their own time, that's on them. It's the fact that it's annoying as hell that generally gets to people.

And have you ever done it?

You know what? Fuck you. Yeah, you. Mr. High and Mighty that thinks that setting your name as Guest and going on to people's cboxes to complain that their ad broke your rules is worthwhile. How the fuck are we supposed to solve the problem if you don't indicate where you are from? Bonus points: The ads you are complaining about? You said yourself that there were MONTHS between them. Rule of thumb is ads dropping once a month. Two weeks in some cases. So what if you're a fucking resource site. You allow guests to post... And you "pend" their ads if they don't follow your rules (which, by the way, no one ever reads those.) You literally clicked the link, and took the time to type out a paragraph (with no capitalization or punctuation, real professional,) to complain about how we've posted three ads. Total. Over the course of several months. Because we weren't in your "directory" so any future posters didn't know you had some magical "pending" stamp on us. Probably because we posted as guests. Over the course of several months. Advertising - And this includes on your precious resource sites - should be simplistic and easy. Fucking delete the goddamn ads that break your rules. Who the hell has the time to track down everyone that might or might not copy your fucking form? The form that, by the way, varies on every resource site and contains absolutely no useful information that can't be obtained from a good ad or a click of a link. For fuck's sake. At least tell me which site you are from so I can potentially fix the issue. But you won't. Because you don't want the problem solved. You just want to complain. Which is why you opted for "guest" in the cbox instead of something more helpful. Fuck. In four YEARS CW has had fewer than 500 views on our ad rules thread. No one fucking reads them and for good reason. They're pointless and stupid and all the same.

Hey guys. I need some advice. Since we opened our site, it's grown quite large and, to account for the extra work, we've recently brought on some new staff from our existing member base. However, it's come to our attention that one of these new staff members isn't respected by some members of the community. We'll call this staff member Red. There was an incident with Red a few months ago when she was still quite new staff that was a huge misunderstanding (not Red's fault, per se, just a communication issue that rocked a lot boats). It ultimately led to another new staff member, Blue, stepping down because she disagreed with how we handled it. Emotions were running high at the time and a lot of feelings got hurt. Because of the fallout and the stress it caused the team, we gave Red a warning so that she could learn from it and we could move on. If it happened again or no improvements were made, she'd be demoted from staff. The crisis was averted and we've since grown a lot stronger as a team and know what to expect from each other now and what things aren't acceptable. It aired out a lot of issues that we were able to fix. For that, I'm grateful. However, drama of the same nature has since popped back up, and though it's much smaller and more isolated than last time, it's still there. Red has made a lot of improvements, and her work on the staff team is valued! But some of her communications with fellow staff are...increasingly passive aggressive, which is causing stress among the team. And we know she can't work with certain members because they don't respect her authority due to things that happened in the past (both the past incident and things that supposedly happened before our site) that are out of our control. And, frankly, we don't know what to do about it. We value Red as a friend and a great writer, but it seems her presence in the team is causing anxiety. And I find myself making excuses for her because of that. We just don't quite know what to do, so I'm asking for some advice. How do you deal with drama within the staff? Have you ever asked someone on your staff team to step down? Would you do so in this case? And how do you do so while still communicating that they're a great member of the community, but maybe not the best for staff? Anonymous poster hash: 2daba...d6e

How do you integrate new members onto your site? It's always something I'm looking to improve on because new members are so important to the growth of just about any RP forum. One of the things I struggle with is getting the new member to RP with someone other than me because I find that if RL consumes me and I'm their only link to the site, the new member goes MIA. Of course older members are willing to RP with new people; it's just a matter of getting folks to take initiative and connect and RP with each other. (Not in and if itself a problem I'm currently having, though I've struggled with this in the past.) I'd love to hear some ideas you guys have had that worked or didn't work, and how you've resolved issues.

When do you go about looking for additions to your team? How do you go about finding someone to promote? Do you have applications or just approach people blindly? Do you hire from off forum? Have you had any particularly successful methods? As always, horror stories are appreciated! (Trying to get back into the swing of regular discussion posts!)

Whenever I'm gone, my members go utterly, utterly silent. They don't even put in an effort to chat with each other. I'm a pretty talkative person and I like being involved, I like hanging out with them, but if I'm away, everything is dead. Is this a consequence of me forcing myself into conversation too often when I'm around? Am I actually prohibiting them from getting to know each other? Or is the issue something else? I feel this is a common thing admins have dealt with as I've heard the same thing from others. Anyone ever solved this/Remedied this?

Tally came back in November. If you've been around the RP community for a while, you might remember it from 2006-2013, we had a good long run that ended when I got a sudden case of "overwhelming life things". So the board (and the community) has a history, even though we've only been back at it for a few months. The current memberbase is about half-half... half from the previous run, and half new since the reboot. We kept all of the character canon (except the parts people wanted to shed from their characters), and we fully acknowledge the events RP'd on the site before. The first few weeks, when it was really strongly the "old crew" coming back (because I'd mass mailed the old board before I even thought about advertising anywhere) I created a "reunioncity" discord channel to catch up characters and brainstorm what's happened since. Now the community is more balanced. But one of my members insists we have a clique. She claims there is a distinct "old crew" and "new crew" where the "old crew" gets favoured and the "new crew" is left to fend for themselves. This... would be very worrying for me except that I do not see it. I know exactly who the new members are and who the old ones are, and I see them mixing just fine. I chose a "new crew" person for the one staff position I've opened up. New members are getting engaged with veterans and those who only joined last month, the Discord is active and friendly and generally a happy place. Yet she still claims that she feels "left out" because of her newness. The other day we were having a discussion while I was skinning the theme for the IPS board. I was complaining, as I do, that skinning is hard. One of my members (one who has stuck with Tally since that first week in '06 gods bless him) brought up the horror of my theming existence: the black and green skin. Not just any black and green skin, but the HORRIFYING HORRIBLE PIECE OF POOP that was so bad I actually took it down after a week. It was eye-hurty. Another member who was there at that time (it was like, '07?) jumps in with a LOL. These are the only two members that go that far back, so they explained to the rest of the class about this skin and what made it so "epic". We tried to find it on webarchive, but thank goodness it never got captured. But it became a Thing. Tally's tagline for the reboot was "back in black", a reference to the AC/DC song. So of course... the crew starts shouting #BackInBlackAndGreen at me. Hilarious. I'm hella amused. I do my token protest, but it's all in fun. And the above member jumps into DMs and says "Can you make them stop talking about the black and green skin?" Which I'm very confused by. She says, "It's very exclusionary when the old crew talks about things that the rest of us weren't here for." Um... maybe? We do go to the effort of explaining the in-jokes, and note that by this point several newer members had jumped on the bandwagon and were also chanting for the black and green skin. So I mention that to her, and she says: "Yes but it's not just about me either. It's about the optics. You have guests that can view this too." Yes... yes I do. And what they're seeing as a community bonding over a common joke? Is that bad? We're not in there refusing people the ability to participate because they weren't there. My co-admin wasn't even there at the time. And I don't dismiss it out of hand, because perhaps I do have a level of blindness given that I was there. She tells me it "creates an atmosphere and a conversation that I can't take part in, and that others will feel excluded from as well". But if no one else seems to have an issue jumping in, is that the case? Or are there other people hanging back that I'm not seeing? I genuinely don't know. She suggests banning any conversation to do with Tally prior to the reboot. I think that's a bit extreme. I ask her if in two years time I'll have to forbid talking about anything that happened now for the sake of new members and the optics. She says that's different. I don't see how it is, and it matters to me because---trust me. I plan on being here in two years time. Then she brings up the "reunioncity" channel. I say I'm thinking of deleting it because I feel that if anything, that creates a noticable divide between the new and the old. Not that we don't tag newer members in it to enjoy our crazy stories of the good old days. But... wouldn't it be better to have these odd rambles (and honestly it doesn't happen that much, we talk more about what's happening to the characters now) in general where newer members to the community can learn the in-jokes if they want? Rather than locking it away in a channel that kind of screams "old crew only"? And that's where the conversation ended, abruptly. I was told to forget anything that was said because she'd clearly made a mistake. But I'm still confused. Should I be limiting the discussion on what happened at Tally prior to the reboot? Should it go to a separate channel? I feel like we've actually done a good job of integrating the previous community with the newcomers, it's just this one person who seems to feel that there's a divide. What would you do in my position? What would you do if you were the member coming into a partly-established-but-new community? What would you want done?

Let's just say I'm asking for a friend of a friend.... There's a creep beyond the outer edges of my RPing circle (aka, the same large site that we all RP on), saying creepy things to someone who in tangentially within my circle, bragging about the creepy things he's done while claiming he's beyond that and he'd never do it again. Problem is... there are screenshots of him admitting to emotional and mental abuse. I don't want to overstep my boundaries as someone who isn't involved (it's just that a friend came to me asking for advice), but I'm torn between waving a giant flag and metaphorically contacting the media (aka telling my entire server to make sure they block this guy), or risking site staff kicking me out for brigading. What would you do? Anonymous poster hash: 64338...5ec

Most games have the rule IC Actions = IC Consequences. We all know this... but do we all, really? What do you do when a player doesn't understand? What if they complain? How do you keep the playground safe and functioning without blowing your whistle and looking like a headmaster with a power complex? Tell me your horror stories! Help me feel better about my own players totally freaking out when there are IC consequences to their IC actions! -_-_-_-_-_-

We discuss ideas and thoughts about how to do things right in our RPs, we rant about people who do things wrong as players or staff, so let's talk about where to go if you want to learn how to do things better. I am absolutely in love with Script Medic on tumblr: https://scriptmedic.tumblr.com The woman behind the blog works as a real life medic (she uses an alias because of concern that her day job might not like her doing this blog), and she answered questions about medical realism within a writing setting. You want to hurt but not kill your character, she'll advise you what sort of trauma would be fitting for the situation they're in, what sort of recovery process and timeline they'd be looking at. If you want to know what symptoms someone is likely to show if they're dealing with a particular ailment, she's got you. She writes master posts to cover things like post apocalyptic medicine, tropes that TV and movies get so very wrong, things like that. Basically she's a great resource if you want to add an element of realism behind your medical stuff in your writing. So, anyone else have a favorite blog they hit up when they need information? Please focus on other people's stuff, not your own. We already have places to toot our own horns here, I'm looking for stuff outside of our merry little community here. <3

Activity. You can't be too demanding because people have lives. However I realize my issue isn't so much with actual posting (as long as it's not entirely neglected), but with having no sign of life whatsoever. One can take all the time they need as long as I know they'll be back, but if you join all excited, we start plotting this and that, then poof for weeks I have no idea what to do with said plots. Especially as an admin who cares about plot consistency. Is there any diplomatically acceptable way to say a board has a fairly lax posting requirement, but if you're entirely gone with no warning I can archive your threads, reopen wanted positions etc in a shorter amount of time? If you are busy but still want to play I'm with you, if you don't care anymore it's not fair to make everyone else wait forever. Or not?

I think everyone agrees having too many IC sections isn't a good idea because they're going to look empty. If your setting is a fairly large city, however, simply having one for each neighborhood is going to be a long list. How do you avoid that, especially on a new forum? I'm considering having sections just for the most "interesting" areas, but I'm afraid it'd look and feel messy. I also know some divide locations by types (shops, houses etc) instead of geographically. What do you think? What good solutions have you seen around?

There are some gaps in the lore of Middle-earth, namely regarding the 7 clans of dwarves. My problem is that we only really have trusted information about three of them (four, if you count the Petty-Dwarves) as they are the only ones which Tolkien actually wrote something about. The most well documented are the Longbeards (the clan that Thorin and his family belong to), the Firebeards (a clan which caused a lot of trouble for elves in the First Age) and the Broadbeams, a clan which lives near the Firebeards (as I understand it, there are somethings that aren't clear about them because some of the lore only exists in the History of Middle-Earth books and wasn't used in the Silmarillion , but I still use it as a guide.) The Petty-Dwarves are a group of dwarves which were exiled from their clans and are possibly a mixture of all - they aren't as sophisticated as the ones which stayed with their clans. My problem arises because other than the names of the other clans, (and the possible locations of where they lived), Tolkien never revealed any information about them. When companies in the past have created role-playing games, they have made up their own lore regarding it. This in itself wouldn't be a problem because I don't mind filling in gaps - the problem is that those games are old, the companies either don't exist any more, or if they do, they don't produce the games. The most recent official role-playing game is The One Ring, and I'm not sure if they've expanded their information on dwarves yet. I have found a wiki made by fans which document the information found in the discontinued games, but I don't know how accurate it is. The way they've written it is a bit of a mess (and not of the same quality as the information found on Tolkien Gateway - as it's non-canonical, the people who contribute to it have not really added any information other than referencing in the books and the names that Tolkien gave the clans.) Although I've tried tracking down the guides and found them, they are hideously expensive because they've been discontinued. I was wondering what you do this situation. Is it acceptable to write the lore yourself even if it's non-canonical? How have other fandom rpers handled creating their own lore to fill in gaps?

You know how it goes -- new member starts looking at the site and gets extremely excited at the possibilities and what your board allows. Next minute, you realise that there are very few characters that are "average". You have a population that is littered with interesting half-breeds and "special" abilities.... but where did all the humans go? How do you solve that without placing heavy restrictions on new characters? So far I have: Introduced a "what we need/don't need" topic to guide people to fill gaps When new people come on board we do guide them (in chat) toward things like half-blood wizards, etc And we plan to: Adjust the species information so that the postives and negatives (with excellent potential for plotting) are more equally balanced Now -- I don't want to move to a points/shop system. I don't want to put down restrictions beyond "we don't need more of these". And I'm at a loss as to how I can incentivise creating halfblood human wizards. So what other options/ideas are out there?