RolePlayGateway: WeBlog!

We had about 10 hours of downtime today; we’re really sorry about that! We went down at about 9am (EST) this morning, with an estimated downtime of three hours. However, due to some unforeseen problems with DNS propagation, we were down later in the evening. We’re again, really sorry about separating you from your roleplay!

So to compensate, we provide you with our new server. That’s right, a brand new server. Everything should be running noticeably faster now. If you notice any new problems or issues, let us know! (Because there’s a chance that we missed some things. Maybe.)

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Like Martin Reed writes on CommunitySpark, it’s important to make your community stand out from the competition. We recently announced over $300 in prizes for the winners of our forum posting contest, which puts a unique spin on forum contests.

Rather than counting posts, we’ve decided to use an algorithm to give each post a score, and take a total of each users’ scores over the contest as it runs for the 30 day period, from November 30th to December 30th. This is going to be perfect if you want to get some last minute Christmas shopping done!

If you watch the current standings of the contest, you’ll see the scores go up in almost real-time, they’ll be adjusted and recalculated every 10 minutes or so. Share this with your friends, too - we have no objection to people working together and posting back and forth in forum games, then sharing the prize if one of you wins.

Also, we’d like to announce that account merges are now made available. If you have any duplicate accounts that are not for specific characters, send me a PM and I can get your accounts merged for you (and even keep the one that has the earlier registration date ;] ).

There’s only one day left in the short story writing contest! Be sure to submit your story before the deadline!

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We recently added some new features to our forum that should make using our site an even easier experience.

Now, when you’re viewing topics, you can type and send a reply on the same page. This makes posting from school or work a lot easier!

New to the site as of today is a “Current Activity” section of sorts, which you can find at the top of every page. It displays the latest announcements from the staff, as well as the most recently popular topics and the most recently posted topics.

Just in time for the upcoming $300 posting contest, isn’t it?

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At about 2 AM this morning, autumn finally arrived on RolePlayGateway. We added a new fall theme for the forums, and included an additional style that you can select in the user control panel. All visitors to the site will see the full blown fall theme, while registered users who have selected a specific style will only see our leafy background.

I started a discussion on DigitalPoint about seasonal website themes, so if you’re into seeing other people’s designs, go there.

What does everyone think of the new style?

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I’m sure everyone has noticed how slow the site has been getting. Pages sometimes take a very long time to load, and it’s making your role playing experience a bit less awesome. This slowdown can be attributed to the massive growth we’ve been experiencing in the past six months. We’ve had an average of nearly ten people per day registering for the site, and the total amount of activity on the forums has been skyrocketing.

While we’re not going down any time soon, we’d like to make your time at RolePlayGateway as epic as possible, and part of this involves being ready for more growth. To do this, our server needs to be upgraded to handle how awesome you are.

We’re currently accepting contributions towards this upgrade, so if you feel so inclined, by all means donate to our fund. Be sure to spread the word to your friends, as even the smallest donation will make a big difference! You can use the big button on the right to chip in to the fund. There is also a similar button on the top of all the other pages on the site, so you can do the same thing there.

Thanks a ton to everyone for being so supportive and making RolePlayGateway so successful!

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We just shuffled our main page a little, moving our introduction closer to the top of the page, and adding a beautiful anime-lady. We adjusted our introduction (but it might need a bit of tweaking, so please, comment!), and added a large section about what role playing games are. We also shifted the “News” section down, but it’s still there.

Do you think people who are coming here already know what RPGs are? Was it a good idea to add the section? Do you like the anime girl? Please, give us your feedback!

Oh, yes. Suggestions are welcome too.

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Running a role playing game online presents a large of amount of flexibility in the way you run the game. You no longer need individual sessions where all players are present, and there are a plethora of options as to where you are going to run it - if you want to run it in any one place.

One of the number one questions I receive relates to the medium for online RPGs. There are tons of different ways of communicating online, mainly grouped into a few categories. We have instant messenger, chats, message boards, and emails. There are a few custom services out there, but I’m going to touch on the four that I’ve mentioned.

On RolePlayGateway, we have a set of roleplaying forums as well as a roleplaying chat. When you’re running an RPG, there are a few items you should consider when deciding where you’re going to keep everything.

Forums have the benefit of being static and always available - users can post to forums at any time during the day and be sure that other users (and roleplayers) can see their message. Forums are also very flexible, they allow you to embed images and other multimedia within your posts, allowing you to share any experience with your players. However, it is post based - forums are often not the quickest way to communicate, as it is not a live feed of information like a chat.

Chats, on the other hand, have the benefit of being real time. Games can be run in chat (and instant messenger) on a moment’s notice, and work best when all of the players can be available at the same time. Because it is real time, short blip-based sessions such as character conversations and interactions work extraordinarily well with chats. Players can get the chance to interject into other player’s actions and statements without the worry of too much time going by. It is for this reason that the longer posts, such as those that exceed a paragraph, are often too large and unwieldy for chats - players end up waiting too long for each post, and will get bored.

Longer posts do very well on forums, where writing an individual post can take half an hour or longer to refine and perfect - just enough time for the players to go look at other games and other topics before they come back and begin formulating their response.

If you’re running a game with a detailed and/or complicated storyline or characters, it is always good to post something on a forum for player reference. This lets the players have a place to communicate out of character (OOC) - such as when they won’t be able to make a chat session, or when they want to discuss plans for character interaction, growth, or development. Even if your game is already on a forum - it is a good idea to create a place for OOC discussion. For chat-based games - this gives a perfect opportunity for players to jump in at the middle of a game with little trouble, as they simply need to read over the history of the game on the forum, which they can do at any point in time, and less time is needed explaining the game to the player.

Instant messenger works well when dealing with one on one sessions, such as when two characters are the only ones in an interaction or a meeting needs to be private. These interactions can be summarized or written into a cinematic format and then posted to the forum, for other players to enjoy as well. Instant messenger (as well as Private Messages) does very well at asking questions of the other players, which is convenient when you have a question about how they’re playing a role or a reference they made in character.

There are also emails - many games aren’t run by email anymore, but email is still a very valuable tool. RolePlayGateway like many forums offers you the ability to subscribe to topics. Subscriptions will let you receive an immediate email update whenever someone replies to the thread. This is extraordinarily helpful when there’s an RPG with only a few players that can only reply every once in a while, but it requires that people, y’know, actually check their email. RolePlayGateway also has the special ability to instant message you when there’s an update to a subscribed thread. All you need is a Jabber account (GMail accounts work, too) and to set up the notifications. We’ll send you a message as soon as there’s an update.

What methods have you used to manage your online roleplaying games? Are you a fan of forum or chat? Both? What helps you determine where you’re going to hold your game? Discuss!

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It’s official - if you have internet enabled on your phone, you can now load RolePlayGateway Role Playing Games in a mobile-friendly format.

The site automatically detects who you are, so you can use the normal www.roleplaygateway.com to do this. If it’s shorter on your fingers, using the URL gwing.net will work just as well. Add it to your phone’s favorites and get access to your favorite RPGs on RolePlayGateway from anywhere.

Every feature on the site will work completely and without any loss of functionality. If you experience any bugs or issues, please - let us know!

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Did you know that we have a feature that lets you share any topic with any of your friends?

We all know how addictive RPGateway is. Don’t be alone in your addiction - there is strength in numbers! Share things with your friends and get them addicted, too.

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