Bringing Life to RPG Forums
This morning I woke up to a couple of Discord messages from RPG members asking how to get more involved in the community. I am extremely vested in helping make this a place where all my favorite people aren't going to vanish, and I also want to help bring new members in. However, humans are finicky creatures, and we judge first by the cover of a book. In this case, the cover is the very dead RPG forum. I know that when I see a forum that's dead, I don't even bother looking at anything else. That's just me, though, but I feel like I am not the only one. So, let's get down to it!
This morning I woke up to a couple of Discord messages from RPG members asking how to get more involved in the community. I am extremely vested in helping make this a place where all my favorite people aren't going to vanish, and I also want to help bring new members in. However, humans are finicky creatures, and we judge first by the cover of a book. In this case, the cover is the very dead RPG forum. I know that when I see a forum that's dead, I don't even bother looking at anything else. That's just me, though, but I feel like I am not the only one. So, let's get down to it!
Participate, participate, participate!
- Weekly Sunday Prompts This is a vastly in-character character development tool that is updated every Sunday. It's designed to dig deeper into one's character through prompts that you may, or may not, have thought of before.
Freaky Freewrite Friday Are you stuck in a rut and you don't know what to write? Free-writing has been proven to help release writer's block through senseless freeform writing with no rules, grammar, or fear of being judged.
The Writing Forum in general is a good place to stick your poetry or whatever kinds of literature you like to create.
What's Playing? Are you listening to something in the moment and you just want to let everyone know? Post the video here!
The Discussion and Debate Forum It's so much more than just politics, and you can find passionate arguments in just about everything. You can also discuss things here like TV shows, and yadda yadda. FOR INSTANCE the What Show Are You Watching? thread that I totally JUST put up.
The Help Forum is a place that everyone is welcome to offer assistance in. If a new member is asking for something and you've noticed that none of the staff has gotten to it, offer an answer, send a staff member a PM, and just let them know that help is coming!
Parts of the Forum That You're Probably Not Using!
- Character Journals I, for one, love to journal my character's experiences because I am such a huge dork.
Forum Roleplay If you don't want to put a lot of effort into creating an entire Universe, why not just open up a forum RP? You can find all of the genres here, and if you don't, you just plop it in Uncategorized and get it going. You can even put some fun roleplay games in here like a fill in the blank or something akin to that.
The Academy Are you looking to spruce up your writing skills, character development, etc? Well, jump on in. On the other hand, if you feel like you have something valuable to offer to the community of roleplayers, post up a guide in the Library! While one-size-fits-all does not fit roleplayers, you can pick up a pointer or two in a place that you least expect it. You might just help someone that was looking for that one tip you never knew you had to offer!
Forum Games! I think that speaks for itself. If you have a good idea for a game, thread it and let's play!
I know that there are more places on the forum that I have missed, but these are j just the ones that I can think of that can give the forum new life. The truth is that when the forum is dead, it gives the appearance of a dead site. Which is not true. I would also encourage suggesting changes.
RPG Chat
If you don't have the RPG App downloaded to your phone, you can find those instructions here. There are rooms for everything from gaming to memes to just chatter. I don't have much to say on this because I am not an avid OOC person, but we could use friendly chit-chat every once in a while. :)
This is by no means an exhaustive list of how to get more involved, but I feel like it would help to liven the forums up a lot more than it is now. This is just me answering some questions from a couple people and putting it out there for anyone else that might be wondering what they can do.
