Search the Community

Things like your site plot + any important offshoots of that! I just updated pretty much all of ours for the first time since our opening last year - expanded our site plot, edited our FAQ, added a newbie guide... and I think it's all very helpful! The site plot I might end up updating every season as new things come into play, but I'm not quite sure. How often do you update your site docs, and what do you normally change when you do?

We are coming up to our first year on WAB (which given my life this past year is an amazing feat)! I want to do something special for my amazing members. What are some things you guys have done for anniversaries?

We are usually told that activity breeds activity, and in any lull we should post more in order to encourage others to post and to give them a good example. I have seen this advice on resource sites several times. However, in my experience the administrator's activity doesn't make much difference. It doesn't count, because it is one person vs many others, and no "incentive" in the world would really make people change the way that they're approaching it. I am opening new threads, promoting new plots or twists to the existing plots - also asking my members what they would want to see/ take part in/ feel more inspired with. In the past I used contests too, but the ones who were active were winning them, and the ones less active weren't stimulated to be more active by the contests. What's your opinion? How much do you think that "Activity breeds activity" is true and why yes or no? Which are your solutions for stimulating activity and enthusiasm?

My husband just got the full set of these in the mail, and is planning to use them for LARP and tabletop. I'm considering using them for play by post gaming. Has anyone else done anything like this before (maybe with the original set produced by White Wolf in the 90s)? Any potential pros and cons you can see beyond the immediately obvious?

This is bouncing off of this thread But of greater breadth. Keeping your financial capabilities in mind, how do you feel about paying money for your hobby? Whether it be paying for hosting, forum software, themes, assets, domain names, or anything else. Do you have a limit on how much you will spend or what you will spend it on? There is an argument made by many (?) people that because something is a hobby, you shouldn't have to spend a lot or any money on it. Do you agree with that statement? Finally, how do you feel about donations? As a member or as a staffer.

This is probably a dumb thing to ask, but I didn't see any forum that would relate to advice, haha! Anyhow, so I have this really good friend who I always help make sites with, and she always helps me make sites. But lately, all the sites that I've helped her with hasn't gone well. Well, I decided that I was going to make my own roleplay site without any assistance (I was very inspired, and I'm super stoked to open it tomorrow), but I didn't tell her about lolol. Now I'm feeling pretty sneaky and guilty on if I should offer her a staff position on it, or even be like "hey, do you want to join it?" She's had a history of exploding easily and getting angry over little petty things (we had a fight about 2 years ago that resulted in her cutting me off completely over an item in a SIM Game. She later apologized to me this January, and we've been friends since) and disappearing off the grid, leaving me as the only staff to run the site. Any advice?

So this sort of thing might have been discussed before but I haven't seen it & I'm curious about other peoples' opinions! Especially since it has happened on numerous sites I've been on. From a staffing perspective - how do you deal with members who join your site and appear to be really enthusiastic judging by OOC interaction in cboxes or discord, have their character approved, create a plotter and then ... nothing? They don't seem to reply to the plotters of any other members, start threads with any other members, etc? Sometimes they only try to plot with me, the admin, and nobody else, which I always find odd. It's like they're waiting for people to come to them rather than putting themselves out there a bit. I try to respond to every new member's plotter in the early stages of a site's life but that's not always possible. Or is this something only I've ever experienced? Lol. From a member's perspective - do you ever find yourself in this situation, i.e, joining a site , creating your character and then not really plotting with anyone? If so, why? Especially if you've been welcomed OOCly by everyone and involved in OOC conversations via site discords/cboxes and all that malarkey. EDIT: Rather than 'deal with', encourage is probably a better word.

So I have an odd problem on my current site. A character was accepted which had a number of similarities to mine. At the time, this comprised of a few major in points in common in their history, which struck me as an amusing coincidence that was No Big Deal if that was where the similarities ended, and so, I accepted the character. However, as time goes on, it has become apparent that these two are almost interchangable. Their history wasn't fully detailed in their app (fairly, nor was mine), and it appears they had almost the same early family drama, socio-class, relationship with their parents, motive for joining [organisation], career path, etc, that has been detailed in my posts and in my extended character material, as well as the same major defining life event, and a very similar track record after the start of the RP, as well as some degree of plot-line overlap, a large number of personality traits, world views, methodologies, in common, together with almost identical psychological issues stemming from said history in common. Trouble is, I'd already accepted this character based on what I knew at the time. They claim this is an old character that they're reusing, and it's clearly their favourite, and they have a lot of plot-lines and are very entrenched in the board with several taken want-ads, but, it's starting to make me very uncomfortable on my own site. Had I of known then what I know now, I would have asked for certain major revisions, unfortunately, alterations to the character is now highly difficult given the nature of their taken want ads and completed threads, and as their main, archiving the character will likely result in them and their friends leaving the site, but I'm still uncomfortable. Does anyone have some advice that may be useful? Anonymous poster hash: 05154...e84

Hey guys, I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on how their admin style has changed over the years? What would you like to get back to? What would you like to avoid from the past?

I have incorporated "Discord Challenges" to earn points and to give people things to do. It's random trivia, questions about the site and it's members/characters, ect. We also play the online version of Cards Against Humanity together, winner earns points. I have seen a Bingo card in play before; where you do something like "replied to open thread" and you fill in one of your squares. I am always trying to come up with new ways to entertain the members and be interactive. Does anyone else have anything that they do like this? I'm new to owning a game but like to keep something interactive going. ^.^

Since no one else has started the topic....I will 😄 Do you think that a staff member should endeavor to RP with all members? Why/why not? If yes, does this extend to attempting to having some kind of plot with all members? So going beyond the initial first thread. Things that are self-evident: large RP sites where it's not humanly possible to RP with literally everyone! If you're in that scenario, do you instead make an attempt to RP with most incoming members in addition to your usual crowd? Why/why not? If you're a member, do you think that staff members should make an effort to RP with you regularly?

This has been a big problem when looking for members for my own rp. They'll like the premise, and be interested up until the point when they find out that my community has concrete game-like mechanics. Here's my problem with that. In my opinion, large-scale roleplay needs stats and/or mechanics of some kind to be successful. Sure, you can get away with having no stats when it's just 1x1 rp and both players are skilled rpers who don't powergame or anything like that, but how rare is that? So-called "open" or "consent-based" rp assumes that everyone is a perfect roleplayer. Sure, it may be a good forum for collaborative storytelling, but that's an entirely different beast from roleplaying in my mind. What are your thoughts? Am I completely wrong and no-stats rp is the best? Am I right? Somewhere in between? Let me know.

Hello, Initiative! I come here again for your collective wisdom. I was wondering what's your general opinion on invite-only roleplays? To add some context, I have opened a roleplay recently (and closed it recently) that in a practical way operated like that, but it didn't have limited openings or anything of the sort, so it was basically "hey, wanna play? Come on in!". For the next idea I'm working on, though, while we can in theory stretch to infinite numbers of characters, there would be a small group making up the center of the plot, and, realistically, even for meaningful secondary characters there would be a limited space (one person can only have as many siblings, for example). So, it would probably be a mix of invite-only and a few wanted ads to fill the spots the people I plan on inviting can't/won't take, but for ease of argument I'm putting it down as invite-only. What do you all - members and admins alike - think of those? Okay? Unfair? Okay with some challenges? I would love to hear anyone's opinion! Thank you in advance! (P.S.: Hope I have posted it in the right place and explained it decently enough, let me know if there's something I need to clarify)

As my board starts getting, hm, more than two scenes, I'm wondering what's the best way to handle the timeline. To elaborate: RP moves slower than real life. A scene that lasts a few hours IC may take weeks or months to be concluded. And that's fine! But when a scene is supposed to have an impact on the setting and/or a development in other scenes, and meanwhile new plots are being started, you need to know what comes first. Now, the site has a Timeline. Things happen in an order and that's not random. What I'm not sure is how slow or fast it should be. The options are: - timeline as fast as RL. New scenes, unless otherwise specified, are happening at the time when they are started. Meanwhile, old plots are still being played, and you write new stories without knowing how previous ones ended. - slower timeline: all current plots must be wrapped up (or at least, if something has more impact than a random chat, we must establish how it will end and how it will affect others), before we can start playing in the following month/season/whatever. This is the most accurate option consequences-wise, but not everyone likes having a widening gap between IC and OOC time. I'm currently looking for inputs, from my players but also from people on sites such as this, since I'd like to know both what people likes, and what are possible solutions I might not have considered. NB - Please don't suggest timey-wimey / fully fluid time solutions. I know they are popular but I cannot stand them. A bit of vagueness is okay, a mess of paradoxes and having no idea what happens first on the other hand is not something I want to deal with.

This probably seems like more of an issue to me now because I've been super busy on the admin side of things since September. We had our anniversary even in Sept. that I planned and ran for the entire month, then I had Halloween, and for some reason, I thought it was a great idea to run a mini event in November too. Then in December, we decided to commission a skin and since we were changing the skin we thought it was a good time to get all the changes that we wanted to make all in one go so all of December I was busy doing that along with one of our mods. We just got our new skin two days ago and it's amazing and I love it and now I feel like everything is done. However, I constantly find other things that don't necessarily *need* to be done, but I want to get done. And once I think of it I'm compelled to do it to "get it out of the way." and A lot of times this comes before posting. I'm not inactive, not by any means, but I feel like I get distracted too easily by staff things that can wait instead of posting (even though I really want to post). So how do you guys balance staff jobs/obligations and posting?

I'm really curious about peoples' take on this. I recently opened a small, very chill community second to my main site, and a couple of people we've had to ask to leave on my main site have found their way to this community. Over on my main site, we worked tirelessly with these individuals who just weren't up to the writing quality we were looking for in the community and we ended up deciding to gently ask them to leave, providing them with resources to help them find a place that might be better suited to them. I'm not sure I have the energy or desire to work with them extensively on this site, too, in hopes that they might improve and was wondering what everybody's take is on asking a member you know isn't going to mesh with your community to leave before they can get in deep. I never like asking people to leave and always feel guilty, but seeing them interact with the community and start filling out applications, I can already tell it's most likely going to be the same issue. I wouldn't be so hesitant if it were a serious behavior issue that I've dealt with in the past, but obviously that's not the case with this. It's really poor writing quality, a ton of hand-handling, and what in the past became a source of frustration for staff and members trying to interact with them. Do I give them another chance on this new site even though I'm seeing the same signs again? Or do I save people what could be a potential hassle and headache? Anonymous poster hash: a9d8a...4d3

So, I've had this experience before, but I thought I perhaps haven't always dealt with it in the right way. Basically, I have an app that is a copy and paste job. No reference to the setting, and a generic bio that could be lifted and placed into any fantasy setting. No reference to where or when they were born, or anywhere else for that matter. The only reference to an actual place is 'the Academy in the city'. Ok, what Academy, and what city? My draft PM is: 'Hello there and welcome. Unfortunately your application needs some work before it can be approved. You will need to take a read of our lore at <link here>, and better integrate your character into the setting. For example, there is no mention of where they were born, or any other location or quirk of our setting. The only location actually mentioned is 'the city'. You'll have to specify what city you're referring to, and similarly flesh out the rest of the application. Kind regards.' I don't know, to me it comes across as kind of mean, because it's basically saying 'I know you didn't read shit, so go do it' kinda thing. Is there any better or simpler way to express this? Kind regards and thanks in advance.

Has anyone else ever had to deal with friends joining your board and wanting special perks? I'm dealing with this currently, they broke a rather big character rule on the board and I, like any admin, reached out and told them it wasn't allowed. If I'd allowed this rule to be broken it would open up a can of worms and I don't need that stress. So now they are being passive aggressive towards me in rp and real life. I don't feel like I did anything wrong, I addressed them like I would any other member on the board. I don't think giving perks to friends is a good way to run a board and really it has a major potential to blow up in your face. The rules we've set aren't hard but they should be followed by everyone, including staff but for some reason, this isn't clicking with them. Them acting like this though is really annoying me to the point that I don't want to interact with them unless I have to as a staffer. Friend wise, the passive aggressiveness has to go. I can't allow them to do something and tell the next person no. Anonymous poster hash: 03cea...f8f

Okay, I know that talks about quality, as well as boards calling themselves "advanced", don't get much sympathy, and I do understand why. My board is *not* labelled as advanced. I don't think much of word counts, I just ask that you write something your RP buddy can react to (so a short post where you do or say something meaningful is cool, while 1000 words of internal musing that your partner cannot perceive are not all that okay). As for writing itself, the only thing I demand quality-wise is that one doesn't use chatspeak and does their best to write intelligibly and with proper punctuation. I am not a native speaker, so I know I shouldn't be too harsh, since I surely make more mistakes than I can notice. However, there is still the fact that forum RP is a hobby focused on reading and writing, and there's a threshold after which a post is actually painful to read. It's still "intelligible", but it takes some effort - say, articles are either entirely ignored or used randomly, verbs, nouns and adjectives are used interchangeably, spelling isn't just occasionally wrong but a perpetual mess... It doesn't look like something one's likely to improve with experience, either - by playing you may expand your vocabulary and train your creativity, but odds are you won't learn basic grammar if you've managed to ignore it until 18+ (but most likely 30+). Not only it spoils the fun for me, but I suspect that people who actually love writing would be less likely to join. So I guess I should be more honest and say the board is "intermediate" or "literate" or add any sort of rule about writing quality. I hadn't done it at first because I assumed that, if either didn't care about writing at all, or you struggled terribly with it for any reason, you wouldn't be interested in joining a game where literally all that you do is reading and writing. I assumed that, and obviously I was wrong. The board is extremely new so adjustments are acceptable, I think. Well, I hope. However, even once established that, while you needen't be Shakespeare, you should not be such a poor writer to break immersion, how do you enforce that in a way that is somehow objective? Also, since some of the offenders are indeed native speakers, how bad is it if it's a foreigner that tells you that it's "courageous and deliberate" and not "courage and dillibirate"? Anonymous poster hash: 635bf...7ac

We were chatting about this in discord and I thought it might be topic worthy. Do you invite guests into your discord? Why/why not? If you invite guests into discord, do you require that they join as a member within a certain time frame? Why/why not? What about members who become inactive? Do you clean them out? If you're a member, not a staffer, what are your preferences on the above?

It's always a sad day when you reach a point that you have to part with your site. There can be lots of reasons for it - you have creative differences, you're burnt out, major drama went down. etc. Whatever happened, you've decided to leave and let the home you've helped build from the ground up go on without you. You didn't shut down the site, you just walked away and left it in the hands of someone else. This is something I'm going through right now, and while I'm sad about it, I do wish everyone from the forum the best and hope their continued efforts are successful. So I'm wondering, how do you cope with letting go? After building a site from the ground up, putting countless hours of effort into a site, how do you move on without holding on to negative feelings? Do you have any tips? Any suggestions on how to keep your spirits up? Any clues to keep from being disheartened on future endeavors?

Certain times of the year are quiet for roleplayers. If you've run a board for a full year, you learn to pick the times and don't panic as much as when you're new to it---but they can still be concerning when they happen. You find yourself wondering if it's the board that's gone quiet, or if it's part of a wider trend affecting all boards. Is there something you could/should be doing to bring activity back, or is it just a matter of wait it out and welcome the crew back when they get here? How do you survive the quiet phases of the year? How do you tell the difference between a trend just on your board, and a trend for the wider community? And what do you do to encourage and push activity during these times?

We all know that part of running your own site tends to be the advertisement you do, but the question is which advertisements do we find is the most worth it? There are tons of ways to get your sites name out there, the problem is picking and choosing which ones actually help you, while leaving out the ones that do absolutely nothing for your sites name or advertisement. -Top Sites -Resource Directories -Replying to RP Searches -Affiliating with other Forums -Advertising on other forums Ad boards -etc. etc. What have you found to be the most effective tool in advertising your forum? How many hits do you think you get from certain locations? Are some of them just not panning out for you? Do you have any idea why they might not be panning out for you?

OK, so, I could use some advise. I have an admin in the community I help run that has become a speed bump. About a year ago, she started going through some things in her life, and stopped really contributing as a staff member or a player. She said she needed time but a few months ago said she was ready to come back full force. But in those few months there has been no change. She does not give feedback on application reviews until she has been pressed, sometime for days, to give an opinion, and when she does she give one or two word replies. She barely posts for her characters, and plays several important canons that are honestly holding up plot for almost everyone. She hasn't performed any of her staff duties since her return. We are lucky if she logs on once every few days. Now, she is a friend in real life, and I know what she is going through is hard. I feel like if I approach her, she will fall off the tightrope she has been walking. But several players are starting to complain... what should I do? Any advise out there?

I'm looking for some help. The site I manage seems to have an unspoken rule on our site that is basically "Use the gender & pronouns of the faceclaim". I say this is unspoken because we have had no official rules on the matter, but the players complain if a new member joins and the gender pronouns don't match what the actor/model has requested to be used for them IRL. Someone recently joined that used a MtF (Male to Female) transitioned model as a gender-fluid character. All of the imagery they use is from the time while the model was still identifying as male. I found evidence after some research that the model previously went on record as preferring male pronouns, then some interviews that were more recent that they transcended gender, but since they have transitioned fully to female and currently use she/her pronouns. The player is staying true to their character concept of gender fluidity and has swapped the use of their pronouns as how the character feels, therefore they use both he/him & she/her depending on the character's gender in the moment. I've received complaints about the character and nobody wants to play with the new player because of THE UNSPOKEN RULE being broken and them not staying true to the faceclaim's identity. After a week of deliberation, I spoke to the player about it asking their intent and if they were willing to use a different faceclaim. The player is unwilling to use another faceclaim, despite my suggestions at us finding a genderfluid model or actor (even though I researched for hours to find many, and to find interviews to confirm their genders) and they want the character archived. Although this particular instance has ended (in an unsatisfactory manner let me tell you I really liked the character concept and wanted to see more genders represented on the site) I feel like this problem will only continue. I am happy to confront my complaining players about their weirdness on this issue - because I know for a fact they are all more than happy to change their faceclaim's sexuality, so it feels a bit, idk hypocritical to get all over a new player for their alteration of a faceclaim's pronouns even if that faceclaim is trans? What do you think? Do any of you have restrictions on faceclaim use particularly if the writer is changing the face-claim's biological sex, sexuality, gender identity? How do you handle unspoken community rules that affect new players? Anonymous poster hash: e3cb9...e84