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RPG Management Best Practices


StormWolfe
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Good Day,

 

I would like to get some feedback and discussions on RPG management best practices. We have done things a certain way for so long, I feel like my sites are getting stale. I run a western set in Hollywood reality, a fantasy (blend of numerous fantasy genres), and a Hollywood 1980s style action-adventure set in current time. We're a very small group of writers and most of us are at all of the games. The lore is minimal at the western and action adventure but there's a massive amount of reading before joining the fantasy.

  1. How do you use Discord for your sites? Especially for Nova since it emails out posts to members so it's easy to see tags and whatnot.
  2. Having seen the thread about fast post replies, are tagging or posting requirements a thing of the past?
  3. How do you keep your players motivated or is it not an issue?

I am hoping this thread will provide me with some inspiration. I can tell from reading the various threads here and participating in some of the discussions that I'm very old school!

 

Blessed Be and Warmest Regards,

~ Stormwolfe

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Someone somewhere went to sleep and dreamed us all alive.
Dreams get pushed around a lot, and I doubt if we'll survive.
We won't get to wake up, dreams were born to disappear.
And I'm pretty sure that none of us are here.
~ None of Us Here by Jim Stafford ~

 

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RPG-Initiative

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Management practices are up to the time a person has and how much you want to get done.  

 

Discord is a free chat system that is used differently site by site.  If you want to organize your chats better than chatbox, this is a great system. Jcink emails out too, I don't like tagging boxes personally but you can create a channel with subchannel just for tags.  You can have channels for your sites, with ICC, OOC, Tags, mini announcements and what have you on each board. It's for an organization that's free.  And with each site, it will be underneath their own channel.  It may be helpful to you but depends on you want to use it and how your members take to it. 

 

for activity, it depends on the site. You should have some requirements. The sites you have sound like they are more original character based but a site that has a canon base like fandom would need more of activity rule. Just be considerate of people's real-life situations but if there is a major canon involved then you may have an activity rule.

 

Motivation is the hardest thing to do. You want members who are self-motivated or a good base that is. Like a community, this feeling is hard to achieve.  In order to keep people motivated make sure you are an active admin, the head admin above all should at least be seen and heard from daily. Make sure you follow all of your rules. Plot with members. You should also try to post with each member, even if it's something as small as notes or cellphone calls. if everyone feels welcomed and loved by the staff, they are going to be motivated. If your staff tries this with you, it will help motivate the enter site.  High morale makes for a more motivated site.

 

 

 

 

 

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CW doesn't have a board Discord. We still use the Cbox. It is, in our opinion, more guest friendly and easier for people to turn off if they don't feel like chatting.

 

Tagging in terms of making me know I have a post is totally appreciated and goes without saying. We let newbies know that we'll literally never find the post without it. xD We don't have post requirements, really, but we do have a word count. It's there mostly because staff has had terrible experiences in the past where without one we got crap to reply to. (It can happen with a count, but it at least scares off the people that reply with one sentence and call it done.)

 

Motivation is always the hardest part. Be involved. Getting started is always rough, but you can only motivate if you are pumped and ready to go. Plot with members, post with them, talk to them. Encourage want ads and take some yourself. Post your own, make sure you have ways for people to get involved and a variety of opportunities available. Make it clear that you WANT them there. This can be done by doing any of the above. A member that doesn't feel like they're able to participate won't stay. Make sure there are posting opportunities - All your threads shouldn't revolve around the same plot. Give people opportunities to branch off and do their own thing.

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Nova software seems to be becoming more popular, but it still is largely unknown for many forum RPers.  While there may be things you can do to bridge the gap in order to make forum-natives more comfortable with your set up, do understand that there are trends and fashions and preferences that aren't going to work on your software, and trying to adapt too much will weaken your board.

 

To answer your questions:

 

1. My Discord is broken into several sections: general (for chat and stuff), open threads, announcements, tags, Shepherd family*, and skin feedback.

 

* Shepherd family is a group family that anyone can join, but in order to make it so that we don't plug up the general chat with discussion of one particular family, we have a separate channel.

 

2.  I have never liked posting requirements more than what is absolutely necessary to keep your board functioning.  But they do need to be there for the vast majority of games, otherwise people won't be active.  I used to have a Hunger Games site and one time I decided to go for a "casual Hunger Games" and I made the activity requirements very relaxed.  Nothing got done.  Nobody posted.  Ultimately, there's a balance that you need to find between what you need and what is too much for your members.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by tagging requirements, though.

 

3.  I . . . need help in this.  So I can't comment much.

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18 hours ago, Uaithne said:

I'm not sure what you mean by tagging requirements, though.

 

@Uaithne  I'd say that roughly 95% of our scenes are written as joint posts. Instead of a posting requirement, we have a tagging requirement that determines how long people have to answer tags. The minimum timeframe is once per week per tag (a person with 3 characters in 3 scenes would need to answer all 3 tags within one week of receiving the tag). We are very flexible as long as everyone communicates regarding when they can write their tags and if there will be delays in responding.

 

People are welcome to write solo scenes and we also do storyteller scenes to set up the action and give background on the plot that the characters can learn about. We just ask they do joint scenes for major interactions and dialog intensive scenes.

 

Far more info on our process than y'all probably want to read!

 

In general, we are very laid back. The requirement for answering tags is only there to keep scenes from stalling or being hijacked by that player! 😉  All we really ask is to be kept informed.

 

Regarding motivating my members, I've tried everything that I can think of. They still pretty much sit back, blink, and wait for me to tell them what to do. And honestly, I'm not a jump on a player's case type of GM. If they write something that doesn't dovetail with the plot, I try to adapt the plot and go with the new flow. If I can't, then I ask for a bit of editing. We're open to everyone contributing plot ideas, leading plots, doing character driven side-stories within the main plot, etc. On this one, I'm at my wit's end!

 

I want to thank everyone that has responded so far. I've enjoyed reading the responses and am taking notes on things I might want to change a bit. I didn't realize how out-of-date that I was on everything from terminology to game management! Besides, I don't feel anyone is ever too old to learn new things. Retaining the knowledge might be problematic... LOL

 

~ Stormwolfe

 

 

  • I read this! 1

Someone somewhere went to sleep and dreamed us all alive.
Dreams get pushed around a lot, and I doubt if we'll survive.
We won't get to wake up, dreams were born to disappear.
And I'm pretty sure that none of us are here.
~ None of Us Here by Jim Stafford ~

 

sagas-button1.png.467e9214ee1a2d2a24c0030301948c27.png 

 

RPG-Initiative

*your one-stop RPG resource site!

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Discord is like the backbone of our site! Mine is a forum roleplay, but I have a discord set up for OOC, with channels dedicated to specific ships (my RPG is Star Trek), character creation, lore discussion, art and so on. I think it really brings people together and regarding motivation - its a good place for members to give eachother feedback and motivate eachother with new ideas.

 

I also have Discord specific rules, like don't spam and flood the chat, respect eachother in the voice lobby, don't stir debate with controversial topics, avoid heated political discussion etc etc. I think this is important, as sometimes site and roleplay rules don't apply for a live chat enviroment.

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On 11/27/2017 at 12:00 AM, Stormwolfe said:

 

  1. How do you use Discord for your sites? Especially for Nova since it emails out posts to members so it's easy to see tags and whatnot.
  2. Having seen the thread about fast post replies, are tagging or posting requirements a thing of the past?
  3. How do you keep your players motivated or is it not an issue?

 

First up: never be afraid of being oldschool! There's a lot of us floating around. What's important most of all is that you're open to new ideas---but only implement what you feel is effective and useful on your board.

 

I do have Discord. I love Discord. I also have a CBox, and both are used quite heavily. I got into using Discord through some gaming communities, so when I came back and reopened my site, I wanted to have that same level of casual interaction available. But I didn't want that at the expense of on-board communication that guests could jump into as well. Although you can set up a widget to your Discord for guests and all that, personally I hate the default widget and prefer to separate the two communication systems.

 

I don't really believe in post requirements in as far as word count and such goes. I trust my members to return the effort they were given, and it's a system that works really well for us. I'm working very hard to reduce the amount of restrictions present and leaning more toward trusting members and addressing issues as they arise. So far, we're golden. I don't think they're entirely a thing of the past, but it depends highly on your membership and the expectations that you set.

 

I generally find that player motivation = your motivation. If I am present, enthusiastic, and active---so are they. Members love to see for themselves that the admin is very invested in the community, so I do everything I can to reinforce that. And that tends to be enough to keep them coming back. :D

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You guys have given me a lot of information to think on! I am certainly going to bookmark this thread because I think as I move forward with revising my fantasy game, I can put some of these suggestions into practice.

 

Blessed Be and thank you all!

~ Stormwolfe

Someone somewhere went to sleep and dreamed us all alive.
Dreams get pushed around a lot, and I doubt if we'll survive.
We won't get to wake up, dreams were born to disappear.
And I'm pretty sure that none of us are here.
~ None of Us Here by Jim Stafford ~

 

sagas-button1.png.467e9214ee1a2d2a24c0030301948c27.png 

 

RPG-Initiative

*your one-stop RPG resource site!

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