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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! -_-_-_-_-_-

If you had the chance to talk to your younger self, when you first started staffing, what advice do you think you'd dish out? I would probably tell my younger self that not everything has to be perfect, that mistakes are bound to happen and not anything to get twisted up about. What about everyone else?

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?

So, I've been thinking a lot about role play samples. On TNI, we really don't do anything with them, aside from having them there. I guess it can be useful to see that the person knows what they're getting into and perhaps getting a feeling for how they write, but I have never used it like that. So, questions: Do you use RP samples? What for? Do you like or dislike joining sites that have RP samples on their app? What requirements do you put on RP samples? What requirements make you roll your eyes? On a site where the characters are animals (cats, wolves, horses, ect), should samples be required to be of that animal, or are human samples okay? On a human RP, would you accept a wolf rp sample? EDIT: I think I've heard plenty of the "against" side, and would love to hear more from people who do use them, if there's anyone else who would like to give input.

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?

I've been working on getting some affiliates together for my site, and I've been pondering a lot of questions. Many sites I've seen have quite a few with both static and scrolling. So, I'm wondering, how many affiliates do you think is the appropriate number to have? Where do you put the buttons? Do you have static, scrolling or both? Currently, I have my affiliates in the description of the adverts forum. I'm not sure how big I want it to be, though it will stretch to take as many buttons as I want to put. I'm also concerned that scrolling affiliates will be visually distracting. So. Experiences?

Food for thought. I've tried running roleplays both ways, where I have a character, and where I don't. Pros of having a character with the rest of the players: I'm down in the dirt with them, so to speak. We're playing through this shit together. I'm just like one of them! Probably less intimidating for new players (aka people who don't know me yet) Cons of having a character with the rest of the players: Well that's just another profile sheet to fill out, ugh. I am not the main character, and yet, players' characters will follow mine like lost lil ducklings Players think I know what I'm doing in-character, just because I know everything out of character. Pros of not having a character: I AM FREE FROM THE TYRANNY OF MY OWN PROFILE SHEETS I enjoy observing the beads of sweat as my players over-analyze every single comment I make while trying to figure out what their characters should do. I can play the monster of the week without ending up in a weird situation where I'm writing my character versus my character. Cons of not having a character: I no longer get alerts for the thread because I stopped checking because I wasn't needed and now everything is stalled and I'm oblivious. Thumb-twiddling. So much thumb-twiddling. I have no idea how excruciating my profile sheet is because I haven't filled it out for myself. Now, in your experiences, what works better? What do you prefer?

Hey Initiative Fam! I'm looking for ways to do something nice for my members. I once changed an image on the main site page to rotate with an image of at least one picture of the member's character. And they loved it. I've heard of people doing music videoes and other things, but wondering if any of you have any ideas? I'm not sure I could pull off a music video :). Thanks!

What are the little things we tend to forget about when it comes to staff duties? And what are some of the little things that you found were really important to members, staff and the site? I'm trying to make a comprehensive list and make sure we are hitting everything important, but I feel like I miss some of the little stuff sometimes and don't want to overlook anything. Do you have a designated person for each duty? Or is staff expected to be proactive? And what has worked the best for you in the past/currently? Any and all suggestions would be great! Thanks! <3 BAMF

Checks...ugh I dread them like no tomorrow and honestly if I could get away with not having them I would. Unfortunately, I have a few claims that have to be kept up with. The most important of them being canons since they are very popular but sadly sometimes they are taken and abandoned. With the player coming back on after an AC email has gone out then disappearing until the next one. So I'm weighing the option of leaving a traditional check to a passive one to help with this issue and I'm in need of some guidance from boards that run passive activity checks and how you do them. I'm under the impression that you don't announce checks? Due to people coming on just to pass and poof after. Are they better/easier? How often do you run them?

For my next site, I was thinking to give shipper apps a try. Because traditional app + plotter sounds redundant, and while I love profile apps, I'd like to have a "first post to approve before sorting" (part of my battle against the spam flood -.-). Also it's cool to try different things. However, admittedly I don't have much experience with then, so I'm asking you, do you think they must have any special requirement, besides "this is my character, please plot with me"? Are they supposed to be short, to have friends and enemies, anything specific? TBH I don't like the "friends and enemies" thing, and I wouldn't enforce a length or a limit, what I want is just to keep all character information organized in one thread... Sounds right to you?

To what extent do you support administrators making a site to their comfort levels when it means introducing unusual or "silly" rules? Many years ago, there used to be an X-Men site that forbid pretty much everything. I'm not joking. Swearing, violence, discussions of supernatural (including ghosts), characters who have sex out of wedlock, pretty much any sex at all actually, gay or homosexual characters, etc. This site got a lot of flack for it. For years any time a "ridiculous rule" thread came up on a resource or chat site, you could guarantee that this site's absurd rules would be quoted at least once. And then somebody pointed it out: why did it matter to the rest of us? The admin of the X-Men site was a Jehovah's Witnesses, and all the things that were banned were done so because they were against her religion. If she didn't have that site to play on, where would she play? And at least she wasn't coming onto other people's sites demanding us to cater to her preferences. This was very true, and I'm grateful somebody pointed it out to me. A little while ago in another thread here on the Initiative, I saw that people came across a site with the "no male players" rule, and I distinctly remember this being a matter of discussion on another site where people found the rule ridiculous, and others jumped into defend the rule because the admin had set up a "safe space" for herself and her members. Now these two examples (Jehovah's Witnesses vs. all-female safe space) occurred years apart and the RP community as a whole changed so much that to compare the reactions people had between them would be like comparing apples to oranges. But it did make me think about what is considered acceptable and what is considered ridiculous. Personally, I don't think that administrators should outright exclude people, though setting limits and expectations is perfectly acceptable, even if I don't agree with them. There's a difference between saying "We don't want to see these behaviors" and "We don't want to see the people who stereotypically may exhibit these behaviors even though we have no proof that any individual person of this stereotyped group has or will exhibit these behaviors." Prohibiting behaviors is understandable. Prohibiting innocent people is ridiculous. Besides, aside from checking IDs, how do you keep people of one gender away from a site? And would you allow biological men who identify as women to join, or are they "too manly" to be a part of the site? Too many technicalities and inefficiencies with those sorts of rules. But I digress. Is it okay to exclude certain types of people to make the staff and desired member base comfortable? (I think it's obvious, but I'll note here that said excluded people are innocent in the sense that they did nothing to deserve an otherwise reasonable ban, such as cheating or bullying.) To what extent is this okay?

This is something that I've discussed with my co-admin a few times over years, site plots vs sandbox. Our last board we had a huge site plot going on and people seemed to really like it and it was a lot of fun threading out though I'll admit it was a bit stressful at times. This time though, on our second board, we've decided to try out being a sandbox with a very light plotline just so people understand our setting and it's been a success as well. I wonder...are you more likely to join a site with a big plot or sandbox? Which does your board have?

Branch off of this thread: How do you dictate whom a character belongs to if they've been created for a wanted ad? How do you handle someone that has taken a wanted leaving the site? What are your individual rules regarding wanteds? Is there anything specific you've found smooths the process out or has proven worthless?

I had this topic one up recently and thought it’d be a good discussion! When are design changes good to keep things fresh and new, and when are they messing with the consistency of the site? For example, do you like the banner or main graphics to stay the same or do you like a new one every month? How do you cope with skin or layout changes? Are there things that are too big a change and negatively impact your experience? I know if I had to find a whole new way around a site it would be a pain. As a member should you be on notice of changes and if so how long? How big does a change have to be to give notice?

Branching off of the site plot vs sandpit discussion because I think Achera brought up a decent point. I've found the same thing, it's why I have a zillion characters on these kinds of sites because otherwise I get bored. I had thought that maybe you want to limit how many people are involved in any one subplot (with the idea that the subplot forwards the main plot in some way) but to make sure that everyone gets an equal chance of being involved, you have several subplots going at once. I can imagine that running into the same issues however, not to mention it sounds like a lot of admin handholding to me. So how do you manage your site plot? Do you have any tactics to ensure the site plot moves forward at a steady pace or do you just accept that it'll move forward very slowly? (Maybe that's your preference!) How about getting people involved? Do you struggle with it? Do you have any tactics to make sure people get involved or can get involved?

- or - Let's not do the time warp again.... How do you manage time in your RPG? This has been an ongoing bear for me. I do not do well on sites that have multiple timelines running simultaneously. I confess to being a linear thinker and having a marked preference for telling my character(s)' stories in chronological order. But this can become a boggle too as people wait for an event to conclude so they can write the next segment. At one site, we're moving things forward in monthly clumps. For example, we send out a notice that writing in early July should be concluding and we're starting Mid-July events. The goal is to continue with telling the stories in a linear chronological fashion but also give everyone the option to keep their characters active while events play out. In my experience, there is not a perfect way to manage in-game time flow. I would love to hear back from people about how they go about managing this. I'm always looking for better solutions to make writing and participation in the stories better for my players. Thanks! ~ Stormwolfe

I love writing threads set before the current forum time frame that the forum has ever been set in. Typically, I've always just posted them in the usual forums with a year in the thread title or the description. In the forum I'm building, I've installed tags so that past threads can be tagged and thus, easily found. But I'm curious, do people prefer another way of doing this? Is it preferred for past threads to be in a separate thread? Thread prefixes? Tags? Apathy? I genuinely do not have a preference in any direction, so I'm curious about what other people think.

Alright, so I have no idea how to put this lightly, so I’ll be frank. I’m looking for feedback on how to handle this, not plan reactions with no real insight please. Unfortunately my staff has to deal with a situation where one of our members who is around 23-24 is dating a minor who is 17. While this is typically something I wouldn’t care too much about, it’s the fact that the elder party has admitted to writing explicit material with the minor. To boot, the minor is also on our site. While this activity hasn’t been found on our site, it’s the fact that they have done it that is worrying. We run a 17+ site that does allow explicit material, but it is heavily regulated so minors cannot partake or even see it. Considering this member has decided to do this elsewhere, it’s a bit concerning on a site where it is possible to have a minor, even if they are a year off from the legal age. So this begs the question of what should be done? Since this isn’t found on our site, should we even do anything? My staff believes that this is illegal due to it being an online relationship so the Age of Consent rules that are typically by state do not apply. It become the standard 18+ because we have software platforms like Jcink that regulate people who can even visit the front page if they’re a minor. So our assumption is that this is illegal. I’m in the personal mindset to ban the older party, if not both, because I see it more as a liability for members who may be a minor to have what we believe is a predatory behavior. Any feedback is appreciated!

Weird title but allow me to explain... There are some things that should go without saying. But they get rehashed over and over again because people either think they are still important or that they are, somehow, a selling point when they should be something present regardless... For example: Any site advertising themselves as LGBT friendly. Shouldn't that go without saying? (OOC, of course. IC is another matter.) Along these lines, any mention of not having cliques. You can't guarantee that and that shouldn't be the selling point of your board, that should just be how it is.