Finding Universes to Join (and making yours more visible!)

Whether you're looking for more readers of your stories or more players to help tell them, RPG offers a number of different ways your worlds can be discovered. Aside from being selected for a featured slot at the top of our list of public universes, some attention to detail can help boost your story's visibility to visitors and potential players.

The first handful are really easy — they're available in the menu at the top of every page! I'll go over them in order of most visited to least visited (by non-registered visitors to RPG), and include some tips on how to maximize the attractiveness of your settings to new players & readers alike.

Table of Contents

1. The Front Page
2. The Universe Index
3. The "Places" Page
4. The "Scenes" Page
5. The Tag Pages

1. The Front Page

Perhaps the most obvious of tools is the RPG home page, which displays settings newcomers to RPG might want to jump into and start playing. To keep the likelihood of roleplayers finding settings which will have other active writers able to respond quickly, we display the most recently active settings first!


To keep the most-frequently used landing page on RPG attractive to people who haven't yet joined the site, there are a few requirements for a Setting to be listed on the front page, but they're easy to meet:

• An image has been provided (the small graphic used to represent the setting)
• A synopsis has been set (the text displayed when characters enter the location)

Once a post is made in a location meeting these requirements, it'll show up at the top of the list on the front page!

Some Useful Tips:

• Write your setting's synopsis in the Narrator's voice. Newly-created characters will see this message as their very first writing prompt, so it's helpful to give them something to build on when writing their first post:

  An example synopsis wrote:You arrive in a dimly-lit cavern, surrounded by sound of a steady drip... drip... drip. The air is cool, but damp, and you get the feeling that you are not alone.

  
  
• Use a unique, easily-recognizable thumbnail for your location's image. Not only will this help players quickly recognize the setting in lists throughout the site (like in the chat's room directory), but it can help writers get a feel for the environment at a quick glance — especially helpful for newcomers, who might not yet be familiar with the setting.

2. The Universe Index

One of the best places to find a newly-created Universe, the Universe index displays the roleplays themselves, but you might not know that it can be sorted, too!!

By default, the Universes displayed are those which meet certain requirements, as this page is second only to the front page in traffic by first-time visitors to RPG. The requirements are not unlike the front page, with a few additions:

• The Universe must not be tagged private or storage
• A thumbnail must be set for the Universe (like the front page)

It might surprise you to learn that Universes can be sorted, allowing prospective players to hone in on a style that suits them! The links within the red box below are all clickable, so give them a try.



3. The "Places" Page

Sometimes overlooked by regular members, the sitewide Places list is an even more in-depth look at active settings to roleplay in. A lot of first-time visitors to RPG land on this page first, so it's important to make your Settings attractive and engaging if you want to convince them to create an account.

You'll be presented with a list of most-recently active Settings, and even a link to your character's IC mode (if you have one there). Players often discover new settings through this page, using the "Create a Character Here" button to select the location as the starting place for their story in your world.

Note: you might notice that currently, a huge number of Settings have "none" as the flavor text! We're hopeful that more people will start to fill these out, but we'll be considering filtering these out (like the front page) in a future design session.

4. The Scene List

A more recent addition to RPG is the list of Active Scenes, which shows the most recent posts across all roleplays! This is perhaps the most useful tool for new players to quickly find active locations they can start writing in, and is a good at-a-glance way to find posts to respond to.

You can see the location's thumbnail, the list of characters tagged in the post, and the amount of time that has passed since that post was made.

5. Tag Pages
While not available in the header menu, the RPG tagging system is an easy way to find roleplays based on a specific topic or idea. By clicking any tag (such as at the top of a roleplay's main page), you can be presented with a list of Universes that share the same tag.

Of course, if you just want to browse, you can view a full list of tags on the main tag index!

Tags can be added and removed from Universes at any time, and it's a good way to quickly link new members to a list of roleplays that match the interests they've shared in their Welcome Forum post.

Conclusion
We'll do our best to keep this guide updated, so be sure to add your own tips and tricks as replies to this message and we'll incorporate them into the main post.

Happy Hunting!

I just wanted to bump this thread to remind GMs and Builders of various Universes that in order to have your Settings displayed on the front page, you must 1) set a thumbnail, and 2) write a short-form synopsis of the location (it can't be "None")! I've been seeing a ton of activity, but few settings are getting promoted to the front page as they haven't finished populating the location details.

Remæus wrote:To keep the most-frequently used landing page on RPG attractive to people who haven't yet joined the site, there are a few requirements for a Setting to be listed on the front page, but they're easy to meet:

• An image has been provided (the small graphic used to represent the setting)
• A synopsis has been set (the text displayed when characters enter the location)

Once a post is made in a location meeting these requirements, it'll show up at the top of the list on the front page!

Thanks for the explanations, I had dropped the ball on my setting this summer after a demanding fall in terms of work, I'll make sure to expand and update is so that I'll finally be able to find players!