Perfectly good roleplays with good writers and great characters and relatively good Gms, roleplays that seem to be rolling along well can go down the toilet in a flash. And then leave you scratching your head and wondering why. Because no one seemed to have a problem with your roleplay, and everyone seemed to have a grand old time plotting and all that lot. But then they just sort of...stopped posting. And you, the Gm, never really messaged them to ask them why. Because is it your job to remind your members to post?

People forget to post for many reasons. Perhaps they have a bit going on in their lives, and they just don't have the time to check all eighteen of the roleplays they are in every day. Maybe they have gotten lazy and don't get on often. Or maybe they were waiting for someone else to post, and the other was waiting for them to post. If the member in question still comes on, but doesn't post, then they are killing your roleplay. And I don't know about you guys, but that irritates me to no end. What do we do about this?

How much of this accountability thing is the job of the Gm? And how often should it be implemented? And where else should it be implemented? If we know the member is on another site, say deviant art, then should the Gm take it upon himself to give the member warnings if they don't seem inclined to get on Gateway all that often?

Also, as a member of a roleplay, should one message the Gm if things are getting slow and no one is posting? Or is that rude? Or should he message the other member if he is waiting on them to post? Is that a job of a good roleplay member?

What do y'all think?

This has come to be a real pet peeve of mine here on RPG. Player disappearances seem very common. I invest a lot of time and effort and creativity into creating a character and joining a roleplay - not to mention making one on the occasion I do - so it's really disappointing when a good, quality roleplay that I and other players got really excited for dies off because of people vanishing. And GMs can be as guilty of this as the players.

I think roleplays are absolutely a team effort between the GMs and the players. So all those participating should keep up communication OOC; that means if a player disappears without any notice whatsoever, it should be the GMs job, as part of maintaining the roleplay, to PM that player with a friendly "where the heck are you? D: "
It's understandable that life can, at times very suddenly, get in the way of IC, and also understandable that someone may one day lose interest in a roleplay - but it should be simple etiquette to at least be honest with everyone and let the GM know you'll no longer be able to participate. Likewise, if the GM is no longer able to maintain the roleplay and if players are still interested in it, he/she should at least try to find someone to take over as GM or let everyone know before disappearing.

I think stalking disappearing players to other sites is a little much - and nagging them out of impatience certainly shouldn't happen either. But if there's a maximum number of days players are allowed to go without posting and someone exceeds it, by all means toss them a PM. And if a player is worried about the pace of the roleplay, sure, give the GM a heads up, because it's partly the GM's job to keep the roleplay enjoyable for the players.


So, tl;dr: 1. be polite, let people know if you're gonna disappear, and 2. roleplays are a team effort, which means keeping up communication and feeling free to ask questions/toss around PMs. C:

Haha, I actually just ranted about this to someone.

GMs create the world that we all play in. We create characters, and place them into the world. What needs to happen, however, is some idea of a plot. More than a plot, a direction. Something resembling the Heroes' Journey, even.

I can't tell you how many times I have been intrigued by a premise, made a character that I think will fit the world, but then once more people join, I realize I have no idea what the main conflict is, what the consequences are if my team and I do not succeed at x goal, and things slip into the Gobi Desert of Poor Pre-RP Planning.

One thing that I would like to try in my next major RP is to have things plotted out. I'm a Screenwriting student, so things like inciting incident, first act break, mirror moment, second act break, climax, etc are all hammered into my brain. What I mean by that is if my GM leads the rest of us into posting, giving us a rough idea of what to expect then I'm much less likely to become uninterested and wander off to something else.

Think of a first checkpoint. The party needs to get to a certain location alive. The GM drops us in the middle of action. That's much more exciting than us all sitting around together talking about embarking. The GM knows where he or she wants us to go, and has provided a map (not one that tells all the points, just up until the next "checkpoint") and therefore, I feel much more included and engaged.

I suppose this fits right along with Opera's comment.

Once the players are engaged like that, I think it will be much easier to keep in contact with everyone like that. Staying in touch, sending out messages even every day to encourage people .. just staying positive, staying in contact, babying, hand-holding when you have to .. it's all about getting through that Gobi Desert, to the Elixir on the other side.

-VV

ViceVersus wrote:Once the players are engaged like that, I think it will be much easier to keep in contact with everyone like that. Staying in touch, sending out messages even every day to encourage people .. just staying positive, staying in contact, babying, hand-holding when you have to .. it's all about getting through that Gobi Desert, to the Elixir on the other side.

This is a bit of a tangent from the topic, but I've found that I actually rather enjoy having my hand held in a roleplay. C:
No really! Specifically, something I've only discovered this past year is GMs posting in a roleplay not only with their character(s) but also with select posts purely for narration. Narrating a roleplay~! I think it's a fantastic idea; it really is hand-holding... Leading the characters along and giving all of them something to react to, so no one is left out even if someone's character is apart from the group. It also serves to assure the players that the GM has a real plot and/or checkpoints in mind, as VV emphasized. It keeps everyone engaged and interested even when the action and character interaction is lower.

[url=http://www.roleplaygateway.com/roleplay/you-have-to-burn-…]This roleplay[/url] is meant to be an exercise in that! It has only one objective for the entire story, and I, the GM, am not a character in it, but a narrative force that basically tells the character where to go.

Let me propose something. If the Design team could develop a concept for a system that would send you a PM every day or so (or however the GM wants to set it up) that auto-sent reminders to people that they are in a roleplay, that they've subscribed to the content .. I think that might effectively get rid of our problem, because to my experience it's just straight up too easy to forget how many stories you've signed up for.

Hmm ..

I bookmark the OOC threads of all the roleplays I'm in, and have my Bookmarks page bookmarked on my browser as RPG. I've always wondered how many people here actually use subscriptions/bookmarks. '__'

They're really handy, I use 'em. xD

Anyways, this is a really good discussion.

It is, one hundred percent, the player's responsibility to post in a consistent, timely, and polite manner in whatever game or role-play that they have been kindly invited into by the GameMaster. Equally, it is also the responsibility of the GameMaster to send messages to each player who might be behind in their posts. Communication is essential. Those who simply vanish from role-play without explanations are cowards. At the least time should be taken to explain, or simply notify all those concerned, what is happening and why they are unable to post. Whether the player is having a temporary delay or is choosing to leave is not relevant to this most basic function of courteous action.

The Player should also take the responsibility to know how many role-plays they are in, what their limit is, and to stay within that limit. Accepting, or applying, to too many role-play invitations is one of the high reasons I see for I-Forgot-To-Post Syndrome. For myself, my limit is fairly precise. I generally have one role-play that I participate in for fun, as a Player. I also tend to try to provide one game as a GameMaster in order to give back to my fellow role-players when I can. And then, perhaps, I might also tutor an ambiguous number of English students about some of the finer aspects of the great role-play art.

For myself, that is my limit, and it is enough.

Animality Opera wrote:Specifically, something I've only discovered this past year is GMs posting in a roleplay not only with their character(s) but also with select posts purely for narration.

This is the precise and implicit function of the GameMaster. A GameMaster who does not do this has generally failed their primary responsibility to the role-play. Now...it is true that some players are more comfortable than others. Some players have different...expectations than others about how a game or role-play should be handled. They may also have expectations about what their characters can, or can not, do. Even in something that is called the sand-box style the GameMaster's voice, not any of their characters, should be regularly heard by the Players. Each of the characters in a role-play should feel the...movement of how the GameMaster is urging the role-play forward.

In all honesty, I am in a role-play currently where if I were not an experienced GameMaster, I think that the role-play would have fallen through several weeks ago. Some GameMasters are not experienced in what is required of them or perhaps what the players might like. When this does happen communication is important, as noted above.

My general limit is one week. If a player skips a day and does not post I tend to send them a private message immediately. Depending on the situation if they say that they can not have their post in by the day-after-next then I will then make a temporary post for them and then edit it later with the player's input. If the player vanishes with no communication for one week, their character is moved for them to propel the plot. The character then tends to fade from the plot because the character is not mine.

ViceVersus wrote:If the Design team could develop a concept for a system that would send you a PM every day or so (or however the GM wants to set it up) that auto-sent reminders to people that they are in a roleplay, that they've subscribed to the content ..

My own...limited experience has been that players prefer speaking to real people rather than to automated calculation processes. My presumption is that automatic reminders will simply exacerbate a problem which is already steeped into the human condition. I use bookmarks and notifications. To me that is enough and I personally believe that any truly dedicated player would find it to be enough also.

Good luck with your attempt at Narration, Sato. I hope it goes well.


Speaking very generally I have come to something of a Rule-of-Thumb regarding games and role-play. That is, "The more people that are involved the more chance that something will go wrong." Some times a player will have to bow out of a game. Some times a GameMaster will require a break due to unforeseen circumstances. The greater number of participants the greater the likelihood that something of this type might occur. This is one, but not the only, reason that I prefer games with a small number of players. Three, perhaps four at the very most, is usually the right number. Others' experiences may vary, of course.

But, yes, I agree with the growing point of this thread that courtesy and consistency are important in the matter of personal accountability.

Also, Merry Christmas thread readers.