RolePlayGateway™

[Ylanne]

At various times, I've been involved with forum roleplays where most roleplayers posted at least once a day and often more frequently that that as well as forum roleplays where most roleplayers posted at most once every three or so months. (That's the current pace of When the Lion Wakes, which is still running almost two years since it began in March 2010. And that reminds me that it's actually my post. Lovely.) More typically, I've seen roleplays with frequency demands or requirements that tend to fluctuate between once a day and once a week. My personal stance on this is that it should be mutually agreed upon by the roleplayers, and is subject to revision by general consent if warranted.

For well over a year now, I've mostly retreated from the majority of roleplays on this site due to a number of unfortunate circumstances that have affected my schedule to the point where this type of posting frequency (at most once a month) from me has become normal. I'm fairly certain that has drastically limited my opportunities to participate in roleplays, but I also don't want to be the bane of existence for a group of roleplayers who without me would be posting several times a week.

Anyhow, I was wondering the thoughts of the community on the matter of setting a posting frequency.

[Kestrel]

Lemme answer this to you from a GM-perspective (kinda how I respond to everything nowadays)

It's all nice and well if it can be agreed upon by the players but the thing is... Doesn't happen. If these things don't solve (or destroy) their selves beforehand it's usually up to the GM. Personally I'm in a game on this very site that has the 3-month (if not more) interval and I'm totally cool with that. However as a GM that caters to many different audiences, the thing is that getting players gets harder the more a site grows in activity... Much less maintain player interest. If I start out a game that starts out with a 3-month interval I can guarantee you it will die. I'm one of the more relaxed GM's on this; I'll control or temporarily remove a character if a player doesn't show up, but I also kill it off if this has to happen too often and the player in question keeps holding up their co-players. Because if you, regardless of reason, hold up the game and I, as the GM, don't do anything about it; other players will drop.

I avoided determining an exact times, because that's bound to change over the course of a game; it's natural they slow down. However unless you have a very tight-knit/synchronised group, in a GM-position you're sort of forced to push things along and well... Sometimes you just really don't want to keep covering and instead remove characters from the game indefinitely. To prevent bitching on this people often put a maximum interval in the rules and I think this is perfectly acceptable to do so. It sucks for you, I get that, but at the end of the day you're a minority and therefore of relatively little importance in the numbers game. Games need players in order to survive.

[tinyartist18]

I don't approve of posting orders. I know it's a bit unrelated, but this seems an appropriate place to vent my animosity. I think that is a horrid way of running things, and places the power of completing a RP often in ONE person's hands.
That said, I've never had to deal with characters not posting often. My most active site is not this one, and all the RPers are in the same, very close, group of friends. It's really easy for us to maintain a consistent momentum, with relative breaks. If one person shows interest in a dead RP, we'll pick it up pretty easily.
That said, I echo Kestrel's thoughts on kicking inactive players out. I would give them chances (hey, things happen) but if it ultimately becomes to the detriment of the entire RP, they're gone.
The system that I think is best, although I haven't been able to use it is a week-by-week quota based on the length of posts. I don't like dictating a specific post length, especially because I find that discussions become very forced if they have to become three paragraphs per response (or whatever). I generally say that you have to post at least five "small" posts (1 sentence-1 paragraph) or three "long" posts (2+ decently sized paragraphs).

[ViceVersus]

Hmm. I'll speak to my experience as a GM, and from stories I hear from other peoples being a GM. That was an odd sentence. Anyways.

When I make roleplays, the first thing I do is try to determine the availability of all the players. There are some folks out there who are just crazy in how much they can post. When constructing the roleplay, I try to make it very clear that sometimes I don't post much at all. A week is generally my role, with four days if I'm feeling ambitious.

As for Kestral's point about removing players, I know someone currently GMing a very expansive and involved storyline here on Gateway who was constantly frustrated by a player who just wouldn't post. It was putting everyone else behind, and they would keep skipping her turn. The character wasn't integral to the story, but if she were I think there'd have to be talks about perhaps taking over the character for the sake of the story.

Another option for post frequency is to think of it less in terms of "let's get this many posts in this period of time" and more in terms of "take as many posts as you need to get to x point in the plot."

For example, when I made my last roleplay, YOU HAVE TO BURN THE ROPE, I designed it specifically to circumvent my problem of sometimes falling off the face of the Earth. My position as a GM was not integral to the active posting. I played the narrator, of sorts; a faceless voice that appears once everyone else (there were five other players) would post. The other players were highly active and would sometimes post two times a day.

I would appear at checkpoints. The players would have a goal to reach (in this case, to burn the rope) and within that goal, smaller ones - like choosing a weapon, reaching the end of a certain hallway. The players could take as many posts as they wanted, they could interact in any way that they wanted, as long as they ended up at that point - which is where I would reappear.

Just some thought!

-VV

[Eyeris]

Wow, its even a 1st person RP. Neat!

As for the topic... I guess it comes down to preference. Personally, I would never be able to stay in an RP where everyone posted once a month @.@ need more instant gratification than that lol...

I feel like the GM should establish some sort of relative standard, so those joining can have some sort of expectation in mind for time the game will occupy in their lives, and how long the have to wait before the GM will intervene and find a way to continue the story, should it be held up by an individual.

It support the abolition of posting order. Everyone's schedule is so different, it makes more waiting time and less writing time overall. Also, like in Vice's game, making the story less-dependent on specific individuals (including the GM themselves) would have gone a long way in many-an-rp I have watched die.

Personally, my life/hobby balance makes my ideal posting frequency between 1-3 days. 3 to allow for the triple-doubble I am occasionally scheduled for. Once a day when I have a lot of time/am really productive :3

[Jag]

Personally, the answer to the question depends on any number of variables for a given RP. First and foremost, the comfort level of and familiarity between the players is a major issue. In games like Echo, From the Ashes, and One Last Summer where most of the players know each other well and carry a feeling of community and family, we're willing to wait much, much longer on each other than in other situations.

In games where the players don't know each other and there are no specified rules, I feel like each player should strive to post once a week. In a game with 5 people, that's almost a post every day to which one can look forward.