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Random question: What do you do when somebody comes up and tells you that another member is portraying something wrong, but you don’t have the experience/education/knowledge to actually know if that person is wrong? Couple of examples. Firstly, once long ago I had a member who made a gay character, and somebody complained about it for some reason I don’t really recall. There was a specific reason related to the character—I think the complainer had interpreted the character to be mocking gay people or something. So I acted upon the complaint and ended up scaring away the person with the gay character. In hindsight, I realized that I had not acted appropriately and that the person playing the gay character hadn’t actually been mocking gay people but had been playing that specific character appropriately for the situation/personality/history that the person had created. Oops. I had just been afraid to offend people that I hadn’t really thought about it. Secondly, I’ve had people who grossly misrepresent mental illnesses. Such as characters with multiple personality disorder / dissociative identity disorder (MPD/DID) who switch back and forth rapidly, or the bipolar characters who are literally two separate people smooshed into one body. But back then, I knew that the characters were portrayed outright wrong. The problem was that had they been wrong but not so obviously wrong, I wouldn’t have been able to tell that they were inaccurate representations of these illnesses, so I wouldn’t have been able to correct the person. Which would mean that we’d end up with poorly written and potentially offensive characters on the site, which in turn may scare away people who might think that we knowingly supported a stereotyped or offensive character. I ended up banning all characters with MPD/DID because I couldn’t tell if they were really being portrayed accurately and I was tired of the people who played them very wrong and didn’t do any research. I remember once I ended up with somebody who made a rapid-cycling bipolar character, but I didn't realize that people could rapid cycle (because I had always heard that the dramatic switch back and forth was more of a myth), so I told her that it was wrong. Then she was like, "Er, no, this is what I have, and I rapid cycle." And I was like. Oh. If she hadn't been nice enough to call me out on it and just slunk into the shadows while dismissing the site because I was being "dumb," I wouldn't have ever known better. These are all things of the past and it’s not something I’m currently struggling with, but I was thinking about it recently. What do you do if you don’t know if something is wrong? How have you handled similar situations? What are your stories?

I'm in need of some advice, I'm sure a lot of you have dealt with that member that comes along and wants to completely ignore or try their best to skirt around your sites rules and lore. I'm dealing with this right now and they are being very very forceful and literally trying everything in the book to get us to allow them. They are even calling it a "special request" which is beyond annoying because that's a can of worms we have no intention of opening you know? My question is how do you deal with these people? It's like they refuse to hear the answer is no even when you flat out say it is. Anonymous poster hash: 9420e...7ad

Who likes / has used / would consider stock photos not only for site graphics, but for characters as well? Personally they're my favourite resource when looking for faces. Not only they are actually free of legal hassles, but they don't come with all the baggage that celebrities have. I'm trying to encourage their use in my boards, however I realize that it's not a popular choice. Thoughts? Experiences?

I cannot be the only one! I know a lot of roleplayers out there think "I can do this better" or "Man I have a great idea I want to RP out". How many of you have actually ventured into an attempt to own your own forum? Were they as unsuccessful as mine? Because, let me tell you, I failed so hardcore it was actual comical. What are some of your horror stories and fails when it came to your adventure into forum ownership? Note this is not a bash thread, and if you're coming here to bash a member, or someone else, for the fall of your forum, this is not the place. Just here for those of us who pushed, tried, and fell on our faces.

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?

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

All boards I've been on use PayPal for donations. But, a bunch of banks around here have started offering PopMoney and it looks pretty easy to use. I just, you know, haven't heard of it until now and wondered if anyone else has any experience with it.

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.

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 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.

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 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/

So an element that I had originally thought up and will be re-implementing into the Zombie site I'm considering making. An important element of survival horror is that you are kept on your toes and that you can't start out with the "ultimate zombie killing/surviving everything". While I know that everything is about the "story that you build" more than anything but I want to be sure that there is an element of thought put anything and that "pre-planning the inevitable" doesn't happen. I have a plan in place that weapons/vehicles etc must be apped before they can be used IC. Another element is that it's completely open world which means that no thread may be private. My question for those that run horror sites: How do you incite your players to actually partake in the horror element? What are your methods to get your members not to just mill around? For those that play in Horror settings, what are your big draws? Do you like when a site forces you to think on your feet or do you only like one hundred percent control over your story no matter what?

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?

So on my site, I'm currently having the problem of how much freedom I should give my staff. I've kind of gotten the feeling from them and others that they feel like they are being controlled too much and like I'm being a bit unreasonable. However, in the past on other sites, I have had the problem with giving too much freedom to staff, and they have gone and done tons of stuff that I was definitely not okay with. I'm really worried that I might have staff do this to me again, so I've always been pretty controlling and always want to know what they are doing (Unless it's something small, I'm not that controlling) before they do it. So while I want to give my current staff more freedom and make them feel like they can really contribute, I'm also afraid that if I give them too much freedom they might end up taking that way too far. So what do you think, how much freedom should staff get on a site? How much freedom do staff on your site get? Or if you are a staff member on a site, how does it make you feel either having or not having freedom to do what you like?

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.

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.

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'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.

In your opinion, should certain genres or site-wide topics be banned? What are they? Why do you think they should be banned? Several years ago, I saw a school shooting RP. The roleplay focused on the characters (primarily the victims and innocent bystanders, if I remember correctly) leading up to the shooting. I'm not sure what they did after this plot ended since their plot really was a school shooting and nothing more. Did they RP the months following it? Did they start over at a new school? I don't know. I'm not sure how long that site survived. When I saw this site, I was weirded out about it. There are some topics that might be okay to write about in fiction but don't translate well to RP. It's challenging because 1) members might not have the respect or writing skills necessary to carry out the complicated emotions behind a situation such as this, and 2) many people live vicariously through the lives of their RP characters, and a site like this might encourage people to glorify the situation of a school shooting (or whatever the plot may be). But at the same time, people have the freedom of expression and the freedom to write what they want. Tasteless as it might seem, these sorts of things can also be used for exploration and understanding and closure. Some people struggle to come to terms with various events in our world, and writing it might help them in ways that we don't really understand. Others might find the topic fascinating and, since it's taboo, can't really discuss it with many other people IRL or online. Where is the line drawn? If people have school shooting RPs, can they have Holocaust RPs? Would roleplaying the Rwandan genocide be okay? What about something related to terrorism or sex trafficking? I don't have an answer. I would never join an RP like any of these because they aren't my taste and I have no desire to play them, but just because I wouldn't join doesn't mean that they shouldn't exist.

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.)