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Retention vs Flakiness


Minx
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So I thought I'd come here to get a different perspective because I feel like I'm doing something the wrong way. My RP group is a small (and getting smaller) group of people. We get new talented writers who join up, we plot with them and include them in the overall plot that we are building towards. We ask their opinions on things that should happen and basically include them as much as possible. My players are a warm, welcoming bunch and yet we seem to get talented writers who suddenly get flaky and disappear. If they've been gone for a little while I'll shot them a quick message via Discord to make sure they are ok in real life (because I always expect that to come before RP) in case I have to put them On Leave status but I don't get answers back. Am I doing something wrong? Is there something else I can do to have a higher retention rate of good players? I've recently had to retire far more characters than I'd like and it just feels like our circle is getting smaller and smaller.

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It depends on what 'a little while' is to you ... I get that it's annoying for people who are on every day, but some people only have time to RP once a week, or only get the muse to write in bursts and then have to wait a while. Everyone is different, but I feel like people probably wouldn't be encouraged to come back by being put 'on leave' .

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A little while is usually a month or more of no activity, including just chatting in our discord. It's usually me being worried about their general well-being more so than them missing out on posting. And the "On Leave" thing is mostly for the other players so that they know not to expect anything from the person for a little while until they are able to join us again or they decide to retire from the game. That was something my former writing partner put into place so I suppose I could overhaul it in favor of doing something else.

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So, there's a lot of things this could be about, and what we have here is a puzzle missing all the pieces.

 

Where you're emphasizing talented writers, I'm guessing there's a high expectation of writing quality. It also sounds like that priority might come before all else - not a bad or good thing, just an analysis.

 

Are the other standards exacting, too? Are they clear, or vague? Do you expect long posts but quick turnaround?

 

From what little we know, my first guess would be a burnout problem.

 

It sounds like you're hoping for more of a human connection from this venture, too. Do you reach out a lot, or just to check in? Something I'm glad to have gotten in the habit is highlighting moments that crack me up. Humor's an important way of bonding for me, and it helps me both find and encourage people who can reciprocate that but might be a little shyer.

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I suppose by "talented writers" I actually mean extremely creative people. My group is open to all skill levels and open to most ideas, often encouraging world expansion as well as personal plots. We've been known to make new characters just to fit with new people's visions. I can understand burnout, I guess I've just never experienced it after like three posts and then ghosting for a month or longer.

 

RPing is very much a human connection thing for me. I have severe anxiety and depression so I don't leave my house much so making new friends doing something I enjoy is a huge thing for me. When I notice someone has been absent I try to send them a message to make sure they are doing ok in real life first because I've always felt that comes before play. We usually joke around in our discord server, but I haven't really used humor on a one to one basis I don't think when checking on people. It's something I'll have to try out the next time I'm doing so. Thank you for giving me something to think about.

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On 3/12/2020 at 9:32 PM, Minx said:

I suppose by "talented writers" I actually mean extremely creative people.

 

You could be running into a bit of issue with communication, also. How is your site set up? What kind of verbiage do you use in the rules/expectations layouts? What kind of verbiage do your players use in community chat? 

 

In many corners of the RP-verse, the phrase "talented writer" is a red flag for elitism. This is a problem made worse by how inherently subjective the phrase "talented writer" is - what some people call talent, others call garbage. How much emphasis on 'good' writing is brought up in chat? Do you or members ever pause to praise the 'lesser' skilled writers for the things they do well? Do they compliment the writer who builds interesting, dynamic interactions within threads, even though their syntax and/or mechanics aren't that great? Or are they only complimenting the writers who have the flow of their text down to an artful science? 

 

It never hurts to take a step back and examine how the community reads from the get go. Request site reviews of your introductory process - as the reviewers to focus on what the rules and information available convey. 

 

Watch how your members talk in the community chat. Is the community really as open and welcoming as you think? Being friendly and helpful to new players, in and of itself, isn't truly welcoming. I'll give an example from my own experience. 

 

I used to be one of the admins on a site called Dead Before Daylight. When new members joined, our member base was mostly always welcoming and showed interest in ideas and characters from new members. But after a while, it was drawn to my attention that while new members were warmly welcomed - they weren't really being included. The site's core base had cliqued up in a way that, while largely unintentional, isolated new members. Chat-Play was a hugely popular OOC activity among site members. Members would insert character reactions into the general chat. against both members and other characters. It was a fun, goofy past time pretty much all the members engaged in. 

 

The way we saw it, anyone could jump into all this at any time even if the character was new. And we thought we were being inclusive with it. 

 

At the same time, we kept seeing the relatively quick member turnover. They'd join, seem to be having fun, then vanish after a bit. Then, finally, a member who didn't have any qualms about voicing concerns got in touch with me and brought to my attention how difficult it was for new members to join in on the Chat Play fun. They didn't have an intensive knowledge of the other characters, so they didn't have the hundreds of easy ins to interactions - and the established players would be so into the exchanges that they didn't notice how hard it was for the new member to keep up. 

 

So we'd end up with scenarios where the New Member's character is eating popcorn in a corner, watching the others fight. From the older member perspective, that read off as the newer character just being more interested in observing and having nothing they wanted to add - in reality, it was because they couldn't find a way to do much else than that but still wanted to be included in the interactions. 

 

Do you have any friends that aren't already members of that RP group? Try asking them to join the site and share their thoughts and feelings on what they experience. Or you could even whip up an alias email, discord, and site account to see how your players interact when they have absolutely no idea who you are - like another member recently posted about doing in an "undercover boss" sort of style. 

 

Overall, my final piece of advice here is to make sure that you can step back and examine the whole picture. Many sites fail because the leadership too close to the situation to see the comprehensive reality. 

 

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Firstly, I'd like to say, thank you for the personal example. I feel like it's really opened my eyes because it sounds similar to my own group. We all interact in our discord but I never imagined that it might be difficult for new people to try and participate in our shenanigans, but I can see your point there. What kind of adjustments did you make to make your group more welcoming and accessible to new players? Was it a simple case of being purposefully inclusive of new players or something else that I'm missing (Sorry, it's like almost 4AM so my brain isn't entirely engaged at the moment)?

 

I don't really feel comfortable Undercover Bossing it, but I might have a friend or two I could try to convince to join to see how they think it feels to be a part of our group.

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