RolePlayGateway: WeBlog!

RPGChat is one of the other large roleplaying forums out there, and they’ve been around since about May, 2001. Since then, RPGChat has gone through many evolutions, and has expanded rapidly - they started with a forum, grew into a decent sized roleplaying chat, and finally removed the chat and went back to forums.

You’ll immediately notice the large number of forums, which for most boards isn’t an issue. In today’s roleplaying world, RPGChat’s index fits right in.

They’ve got four basic navigation options at the top of the page, which are images instead of text, which isn’t very good for SEO. The four menu options are Home, Forums, Chat, and Rules. I gave each of them a shot, but it looks like only the “Home” and “Rules” link work.

I’m going to take a look at their code, because using images for links isn’t horrible if you specify the right attributes. Let’s have a glance:

Yikes! Not only does the anchor not have a title attribute, but the image doesn’t have an alt attribute! Search engines won’t be able to understand the context of these links, and the flow of link juice to the two working links won’t be very beneficial.

I participated on these forums for a few months as the username Alighieri, for that period, I became the single most active user in their welcome forum. I posted in several other topics, but got pretty frustrated with the limitation on the length of a post (20,000 characters).

When attempting to post a profile for one of my characters, I was immediately snubbed by the limitation. This makes well-researched posts difficult to make, specifically with the citations that must be put in place for accurate references. Ultimately, I was forced to cut out portions of my character’s history to fit it into the post.

After posting for a few weeks nonstop in the Welcome Forum, I headed off to the The Arena area, where turn-based fighting is largely popular. I opened a topic with a list of the top turn based fighters, placed into a neat little image and posted right into the topic. It took a few days to get any response at all, (save for a few people who contacted me over AIM) and when I did get a response, I logged in to RPGChat to find that I had been banned for “advertising on multiple occasions”, much to my surprise.

However, while my visit was cut short, I met some good friends, and had some great discussions. Unfortunately, the forum does not allow any links to external sites of any kind, and also does not allow signatures, which makes it very difficult to spread the word about the topics you start there. This isn’t very good for encouraging member interaction, and makes it very difficult for momentum of any sort to be gained within the community.

After speaking with someone who had messaged me on AIM prior to my banning, I confirmed my worst fears - RPGChat is a closed community, and is not very open to outside communities or positive interaction with those communities. This is the number one concern mentioned to me about RPGChat and their future, and there is ongoing fear of the community continuing to stagnate without any growth other than direct referral.

I sent a request via the site’s contact form, as listed at the bottom every page, which merely opened a new email to their support address, forums@rpgchat.com - I sent a couple questions in my email, and I identified who I was, but I haven’t yet received a response. It’d be great if we could get an interview with an admin from RPGChat on the history of the site!

In terms of organic visitors, a search for pages on RPGChat has about 16,200 results. When digging through the pages, I noticed that only 477 pages were in the primary index, with the remainder in the supplemental index. That’s scary!

Let’s take a look at their search results:

As you can see from the above search, we can confirm that there is some duplicate content problems. However, from what we’ve seen - most of RPGChat’s traffic is a result of direct referral. We can identify with the importance of defensible traffic, but organic traffic is also a high-quality method of driving laser-targeted traffic to your site, and it looks like RPGChat is seriously missing out on this.

RPGChat has a relatively active forum; 63,708 threads, 1,925,709 posts, and 59,352 “active” members. While that’s only an average of about 30 posts per thread and only about 32 posts per user, they do have some great quality and style elements in their posts that you simply don’t see in many other places in roleplaying forums these days. I think it would be a great move for them to deactivate a lot of their older and inactive members, and send out reminders to these users to come back and join in on the fun.

It also seemed like a consensus that the single best area on RPGChat was the Clans & Guilds forum, which most users simply called “C/G” for short. It looks like most other forums’ version of a multiverse, where roleplay is freeform, and most action is player-driven with rules being defined by the status quo.

Lack of availability aside, RPGChat leaves a pretty strong impression, and if you’re careful to follow their 500 word list of rules, you can likely make some friends and enjoy some great high-quality roleplay. The administration needs to do some overhauling if they’re going to keep the community healthy, but for the time being - RPGChat makes for a great roleplaying destination.

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Yax was very generous, placing RolePlayGateway in the Top 50 RPG websites. Yax runs a great dungeon mastering blog, with a ton of great tips, resources, and links - we recommend that you check out his blog, and don’t hesitate to subscribe to his RSS feed. Thanks again to Yax, and special thanks to our community for making us so great.

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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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I’ve always loved Eve Online. It’s a space MMO, with ridiculous levels of immersion. They tout that it’s the world’s largest game universe, and let me tell you - it’s absolutely huge.

One of our new members has posted her intentions to work on an Eve Online Roleplaying Journal. I think this is an incredibly awesome idea. It’s not new, I’ve seen character journals before, but it just seems to fit in with Eve’s extensive world and role playing experience.

Character journaling is a great way to extend the world of a game and add more depth to both the character and the plot. Be careful that you don’t fall victim to the inactivity that often plagues real journaling! Stick to it, and you’ll reap the benefits of fleshing out your character and having a solid history of the thought processes involved.

Be sure to check out Emywn’s Journal from Eve Online Roleplaying. It looks like it’s going to be something I’m going to have to follow using my trusty Google RSS Reader. Good luck, Kethro - and thanks for the idea!

P.S.: Google Reader is an amazing tool that lets you follow your favorite sites and their content without ever checking the page. You can check out my shared items list to see what sort of things I follow, but check out the official Google Reader page for more information.

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On our forums, we have a resource list of places to roleplay. It’s a great list, but as I’m sure you know - there are tons of places that we have no idea exist. Some are underground, and you can’t find them in search engines, others are private and are only for those who’ve been given the link.

Where are your favorite places to roleplay online? Forums, Chats, MUDs, MMOs - it doesn’t matter, give us the link!

Oh - and don’t forget to send this to your friends. The more people, the better. Please don’t forget to add the link!

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Establishing great gaming relationships with your fellow role-players is an integral part of enjoying the experience.

These days, the rosters of local gaming groups change frequently. Gone are the days when you got together with your close friends and started a gaming group. Role-playing game shops and the internet especially, make it much easier to join gaming groups of people you’ve never met. This leads to a whole new age of problems.

And if you think joining an established group is hard, try forming a new one; it’s much harder. Most people overlook the obvious reason this is so hard; in order to effectively role-playing game with a new people, a high level of trust is fundamentally necessary. The truism is “you can’t game with strangers.”

The Obvious That Needs to be Mentioned
You’ve probably heard it all before, but it bears re-thinking. Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Introduce Yourself - a name and a short description are much better than being ‘the new guy’.
• Be Polite - even as much or more than you are with your parents’ friends. (It works!)
• Learn Everyone’s Names - believe it or not, the more you say someone’s name, the more they like you.
• Share Your Interests and Remember Theirs - beyond gaming. What made those old-time, role-playing games so good were the outside friendships they were built on.
• Treat Everyone with Obvious Respect - even if you have to go out of your way to show it. (Why? Read the next line closely.)
• Give Trust to Get It - it’s a fact of life and yet so many people forget it. Everyone gets the benefit of your doubt, no matter what! If you trust everyone in the group explicitly, the rest of the group will defend you if you are taken advantage of. Honest!

Real Quality Goes Beyond the Gaming Table
I’ll say it again; if you want a great, role-playing gaming group, you must be friends with these people away from the table too. Do things together outside the sessions. Remember those interests I made you remember? This is what you can do with them. The important part is to learn to think of them as people (and especially as friends), not as gamers (or even just as their characters).

The best way to carry yourself is to be considerate, but tough enough to be honest. Make yours an equal relationship with neither taking advantage of the other. This is the best avenue to any friendship.

If you feel you are having trouble fitting in and may be upsetting the people in the group, keep an eye on the quieter members of the group. They usually reflect the feelings of an established group the most, just not verbally. If they look uncomfortable, do what you can to throttle back and be more sensitive; if they look happy or excited, you’re doing fine.

Because everyone has such a personal investment in the game (especially in their characters), avoid all conflict with players and be careful in conflicts with characters. Players often identify quite closely with their characters and take insults and injury to them quite seriously. Remember? “Treat Everyone with Obvious Respect.” This is where ‘tough, but honest’ is most necessary. Make it clear where you stand, focusing on the outside of the game situation. (Such as, “Only my character hates your character’s guts. I like you.”)

Possible Problems
You can go all over the internet and find real articles on how to deal with these: Favoritism, Best-Friend-itis, Turtle Players, Rules Lawyers and Month Hauls. The fact is almost every problem at the gaming table stems from someone not wanting to be taken advantage of, mostly a matter of being subversively defensive or overly generous. Be charitable and in order win their trust!

Finally
The most important thing to remember is that you’re there to share the fun! Nothing more, nothing less.

“This is an exhibition, not a competition. Please, no wagering!” — David Letterman

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A few months back, Rob MacDougall posted an awesome article on the origins of modern roleplaying. It’s definitely worth a read!

RAND analysts revived the practice of serious wargaming in the 1950s, but they moved away from miniatures-style gaming with model ships and airplanes towards more free-form political games where participants role-played world leaders in crisis scenarios. Herbert Goldhamer, in RAND’s Social Science Division, ran four major “role-playing crisis games� between 1955 and 1956 that will sound awfully familiar to anyone who’s ever slain an orc. Players sat around big tables covered with maps, rules, tables, and dice. They took on the roles of various world leaders, while Goldhamer, as game director, played the role of “God� or “Nature,� devising the scenario to be played, adjudicating player actions, and introducing chance events.

This is the same move away from hex maps and miniatures that Gary Gygax and the Daves would make in the late 1960s. Instead of having a strictly limited set of options–move this piece or that piece, fire this missile here or there–players in these games could order any action that might be taken in real life. Briefs for Goldhamer’s simulation games read a little like the back of the Red Box D&D set I got for Christmas 1980: possibilities were limited only by the players’ imaginations.

There’s a lot of information that’s new to me in his post, and it has been a great experience looking over the rest of his blog. Go check him out!

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