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Character Caps


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We have a cap! But our cap is 50. So. Very rarely is it an issue for people. 

 

We also have a new "3 posts OR 3 days" rule between when you're allowed to post a new app after your most recent character's acceptance, but this is mostly to give admins a little breather. (ex. if you post 3 times in before 3 days have gone by you can post a new app right away; if that's not something you can do, just wait the 3 days!)

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I’m going to be the opposite and admit I like caps. They’re not a requirement for me as I’ve joined plenty of sites that leave it up to the player. I’ve even run games in the past with both caps and no caps and I’ve generally found that as long as it wasn't too restrictive most players I encountered didn’t seem to care either way.  

 

When I use a cap it generally depends on the genre of the game. Like for panfandom I might cap players to only use 2 or 3 characters from a specific fandom but I wouldn’t have a cap on the number of characters played over all. Same goes for an original game with a set of canons but allows original creations. I would limit players to 2 or 3 canons but they could be free to create as many originals they could handle. While in real life games on the other hand, I prefer a cap for total number of characters, generally around 10 to 15. This is just to limit face hoarding because played bys are more commonly used in that genre.

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I don't like character caps and I feel like they can potentially cause people to leave.  The only board I'm on is my own and given the number of characters I have, it'd definitely be hypocritical to put a cap on others.  This being said, with vital canons tied to multiple members we might send a friendly message to ask if the person feels they will be able to keep active with the canon.   Considering board wide plots as well as personal plots, I don't think it's necessarily bad if some characters are currently more active for a while than some of the others they have.  So long as there is communication with people about those threads, I don't mind so long as thee are no hard feelings with the members they are threading with if the characters have not been posted in months etc.   As a personal preference, I do like to see members develop their characters at least a little bit before making new characters, though, even if it's just jumping in/starting a thread or two.

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I don't know how common a term it is in the RP community, but I support what I call "soft caps" on forums. 

 

What that is allowing members to make as many characters as they want but there still being a bit of a limit. 

 

So for example, on DBD my members can make 12 characters as a free for all. They can join the site and make 12 that same day (as a drastic example) - after that they can still make however many characters they want, but they have to use the points they earn from actually posting to "buy" any characters past 12. 

I just feel like that's fair. My players earn 10 points for every post. It costs 300 points for every character after 12. So one post with each character would earn them 120 points - and we allow our members to combine points from all their accounts to buy whatever from the shop. With that kind of easy leeway, a member who can't accumulate the points to buy a new character slot has over extended themself and is very likely causing problems for other players as well. 

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I'm a fan of soft caps. When people join, they get two free character slots. After those, there are post requirements to get your next one. We don't have a full on character cap though. If you want to rp a whole army then please be my guest. All I ask is you be active with them.

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I would expect a cap for canon characters so that one person doesn't take up all of the desirable ones and leaves very few or none at all for other people to choose from. This also stops people from say, playing most of the characters that are related to each other, or have a similar social rank. I've known a writer to take control over a bunch of powerful/important characters and then use it to control the community. It might be wise to also limit characters based on how easy they will be to get interactions with other characters.

 

Aside from this, I don't think that there's a problem with people creating as many characters as they want to as long as they aren't holding up other people by never replying to threads they have going, or taking most of the popular face claims, etc. And yes, I have some characters who I only write occasionally - this is based on inspiration to write them, or whether or not I have threads involving them with other writers.

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None of my games have caps or limits or requirements. Make as many characters as you want.

 

I don't even require that people keep up with all those characters. I'm not the boss of you, and micromanagement is not my style. You do you.

 

Thing is, I play a ton of characters. Over 100. Most are in threads, but some aren't, and that's okay. I often cycle characters in and out of play as I need them, and it means I always have a character ready for any situation. This is the norm on my games, where most people have upwards of 10 characters. And several have characters in the 100s. 8D

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I’m apparently in the minority - I like caps! I don’t think they stifle creativity, I think they encourage it. You only get x amount of characters to play and explore the world in, so you need to get creative to make them as versatile as you can. it forces me to think outside of the box for my characters. And encourages me to use NPCs more often. I have limited points of view in this rp so I’m gonna use them to the max. 

 

It’s not stifling creativity - it’s just asking you to focus it. 

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I don't want a cap IF they're actively posting.  Not posting all the time with every character, either; Dr Doom's post activity isn't going to be the same as, say, Sabretooth.  Some characters aren't well suited to be played constantly.  I have an NPC account to RP an entire villainous organization just to bulk out other posts for people needing henchmen. 

 

Right now I have 12, because I have a variety of interests, and am a site admin, and fill a variety of roles as hero and villain.

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I don't like caps unless there is a darned good reason to have one.  Personal preference or "I once knew someone who made 25 characters and he couldn't handle them, so now no one is allowed to make 25 characters" aren't, in my opinion, reasons that caps should be in place.  Good reasons would be along the lines of a smaller or more confined plot that has fewer characters in the setting.

 

That said, I have joined boards that have caps and I'm okay with that as long as the admin isn't a butthole about it.  What I like less than caps are the whole "you must post with every character once every week" sort of rules because I don't always have a reason to post with every character.  Some characters I treat as primary and some as secondary.  Even then, there are primary characters who I like to give a break to every now and again.

 

So, for me, it's less about telling me how many characters to play and more about telling me how to play my characters.

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Haha. Like word counts, I just say no to character caps!

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On 8/2/2018 at 10:28 AM, Kazetatsu said:

However I have seen lack of character limits abused, you know that player type who makes characters but never plays any of them, and I do mean absolutely never. I think sites that have that issue a lot should consider some sort of reasonable limit 5-15 ic  posts or so for making characters over the limit number, just like how we can't put our sites in the directory here without having some presence in the community.  If a site has open threads a character can jump in to I don't think its too much to ask.

 I knew a guy who was a Serial Character Creator. 

 

A panAnime site I was on decided to impose character caps because of said guy (who was a wonderful RPer and all-around great guy on a personal level). The major issue, was that these characters created at every stroke of idea would get used for a thread, get themselves wrapped up in something important plotwise, and then be shelved so the next shiny could have some fun. So a "soft cap" was imposed, that you could create a new character as long as all* (rather most) your previous characters were active and/or not holding up Plots. 

 

This ended up being an epic fail, and I've never made a hard-rule about character limits/earnings ever again. I am however, definitely open to imposing limits on singular members on a necessary basis - limits that would be between myself as admin and the member them-self. 

 

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On my sites I've always allowed members to have as many as they are capable of handling and if they cannot keep active with all of them then I'll have them put them into an adoption thread for other members or ask them to cut down. It's annoying when you have a plot with one character and then they become inactive on that account yet still post with other characters.

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I'm absolutely for soft caps, of "make as many as you want, but you need these requirements to make more then this many characters". I think they're helpful for myself because I'm super impulsive and having soft caps keeps me from making impulse characters. If I'm willing to do the work to reach activity requirements, then it probably means I really do want to keep them. 

 

 I'm not  huge fan of hard caps, though I don't think it'd keep me from joining a site unless it was a cap less then five (since five tends to be the amount of characters I play at one given time on a site)  

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I have the rule that you can have as many characters as you like but you need to have 5 IC posts with all of your current characters before you make a new one. Just to make sure that characters don't get left by the wayside.

 

I also stress in both my site overview (which people read before they start) and in my rules that we are a quality over quantity site. If they can handle a lot of characters and write them all well AND keep to the activity requirements on the site I have zero issue with them creating three dozen of them. If, on the other hand, they are stretching themselves thin, I then have a leg to stand on regarding the quality/quantity argument and I can go and talk to them about it and (if need be) come up with a really awesome plot for killing off one of their characters (which members seem to really like if they're looking to get rid of one of them lol)

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