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GMing (Or "You've decided to play God")

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GMing (Or "You've decided to play God")

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby MayContainPlagiarism on Sun Dec 20, 2015 12:15 pm

Please note: This guide is an adaptation and update of one submitted three years ago. While most of the information there will be here as well, I do recommend reading it if only for the value of Bosch's particular insight. Thank you.

Well, hello! I'm MayContainPlagiarism (MCP for short). Don't let the number under my username at the top-right of this post fool you; I've been roleplaying for a solid decade, and I've been writing for the last seven years. I'm certainly not the resident expert, as this website and community has members that have been doing this much longer than I have, but I'd like to at least think that I'm qualified to (re)write this guide.
I'm going to share as many opinions as I am facts, and I'm likely going to do a poor job differentiating the two. Take all of my advice with caution, and feel free to disregard any section of this guide. If you have your own advice, or would like to suggest addendums to any section, you're more than welcome to say so below.

The best place to begin, I think, is to define two very important terms and their associated acronyms.

An RP
Short for "Role play," an RP is a group effort to write a story in which each member contributes in equal parts, whether it be through antagonists, protagonists, suggesting plot arcs, writing exposition, or any of the other dozens of things individuals writers do for their fiction.
Note that the actionable word is RP and not RPG. Unlike Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout, STALKER, or whatever else, the "Game" is omitted. Roleplaying is not like playing a game, at least not in the traditional sense, and referring to an RP here as an "RPG" implies that there are victory conditions, or ways to win and lose. The goal of RPing, at least in this community, isn't to win, even in stories that pit different writer's characters against each other. No matter how opposed your characters are, you are never working against other people in your RP.

A Gm
The Big Cheese. The Grand Poobah. The Pope. The Game Master.
If you've ever played Dungeons and Dragons, Shadowrun, Deadlands, or any other pen-and-paper RPG with dice and books and all that glorious stuff, you're probably familiar with the concept. The GM is, most often, whosoever creates an RP. While they can name co-gms and delegate responsibilities and authority accordingly, the Game Master is the god of the RP. He or she decides what the RP is, and are typically responsible for creating the example character and writing the exposition that begins the story, as well as controlling the antagonists/plot to progress towards whatever the RP's intended goal is, if there is one.
The GM is always in charge. By joining someone else's RP, you have given implied consent (and, sometimes, literal consent) to follow their rules and desires. They have the power to veto characters, question posts, and, if need be, even ask you to leave. It's considered good form, no matter how great your ideas are, to respect the GM's wishes and try not to upset their plans without some kind of discussion beforehand.
Ultimately, the GM shouldn't be needed to arbitrate the rules. Their role, typically, is just to coordinate the plot and ensure the story progresses smoothly. It's rare that they need to step in and lay down the law.

Should I be a GM?
Yes!
Or no. It isn't always a pleasant experience, and it certainly isn't something anyone should rush into. But I think GMing is fun, often rewarding, and a good way to meet writers with similar interests.

What do I need to be a GM?
GMing is not always easy, and sometimes a great idea fails because the GM just isn't prepared to handle everything. A good RP requires an Idea, Dedication, and Communication, and missing any pillar lets the whole Parthenon collapse.

World Building
This is one of the most important, and I think one of the most fun, aspects of making a good RP. Tolkein and Lucas are still celebrated (even if only in secret) today because avid fantasy and scifi readers are constantly discovering new details about the worlds their favorite movies and books take place in. There's always something interesting to learn about elven culture, or the name of the wrinkly guy added in the Special Addition to Jabba's palace. World building is important to garner interest in your RP, and so your characters have somewhere to live. It's important for understanding character motivations, conflict, and the more believable (or, at least, understandable) your world is, the easier it is for everyone involved to write about it.

Start with genre. Is this a fantasy story? Scifi? Is it highschool drama slice-of-life romantic comedy? Is it a buddy cop story? Don't sell yourself short; there's no wrong combination of genres, and it's important to understand every genre that applies to your RP so you can advertise and describe it correctly.
"A scifi crime-thriller fantasy about cyborgs hunting vampires."

Once you have your genre and theme, you need to make the idea yours. There are millions of LotR-inspired fantasy RPs; what makes yours special? To take from this guide's inspiration directly,

Bosch wrote:You need to work out the politics, history, groups technology, magic, races and everything else that goes into your world. It is impossible to cover everything though, so take your best stab at it and have an open door policy when RPers have questions. You may spend a long time coming up complex lore but neglect to mention the preferred mode of transport.


To continue the cyborgs-vs-vampires idea, "The vampires are in a future street gang based in China. It's the shattered remains of the Yakuza after major counter-crime operations in Japan destroyed the organization. It's a realistic science fiction story; there's no magic, and everyone is a human. 'Vampirism' is the result of a disease."

Plot
Plot is very important, but secondary to world building for the sole fact that you have no control over it. At the end of the day, you only control your own characters; if the other writers in your RP decide their characters have no place hunting down Japanese vampire-ninjas and they'd rather work as stock brokers, your plot has gone from action thriller to... I'm not even sure what the proper genre is for "Sitting around brokering stock."
The unpredictability of writers is never an excuse to create an RP half-cocked, however. If you've come up with a cool setting and you want to make an RP out of it, you probably already have a good idea about what you want to happen in the story. You have an idea about antagonists and conflict, and how and why the protagonists are involved.
My best advice, while it isn't applicable in all scenarios, is to start strong. Have your RP open with a bang: Yakuza ninja vampires stage a major bank robbery in Beijing while stealing rocket launchers and military equipment in Seoul. This causes the international counter-terror program to get greenlit by NATO members, and SHDS disposal team 1 is finally activated after a decade of training. The characters know they're going to taste action for the first time, and their writers know these Yakuza guys are bad news.
Whatever you do, try to avoid characters sitting around. No matter how innocuous, always have something for your characters to do! If your RP has good writers, this shouldn't be so much of a problem; people that have been RPing for long enough tend to make proactive characters that will pursue their own goals and interests in down time. Unfortunately, newer writers tend to wait for the plot, and drag the whole RP down when their character sits around copy-pasting from other posts or rewriting their character sheet.

As the GM, the plot is more important than you are, and it's certainly far more important than your own characters. You need to be prepared to sacrifice life and limb for the plot, and the enjoyment of your other writers. Whether an antagonists dies too early, or you lose your favorite character to bad luck, it's more important that the story be enjoyable for everyone than for your own characters to survive it.

Subplot
Much in the vein of plot, this is important. It makes your world more believable when some of the characters are two-faced, or different protagonists work together because they have wildly different motivations that are accomplished the same way. Subplots give your villains depth, and give characters more to consider and act upon. Again, an RP with a good setting and good writers should be laced with subplots; every character in your story should have their reason for being involved in the plot, and dozens of other interests. Most of the time, these don't need to be decided by the GM; writers will create characters with enough depth and humanity that it's baked in.

What causes the vampirism disease? Whose fault is it? Who wants to see SHDS disposal team fail, why? What NATO countries voted against activating it? These kinds of questions have nothing to do with cyborgs beating the hell out of vampires, and all the explosions and hilarity that ensues, but they're important questions and ideas that the plot should have the option to pursue.

When is it time to make my RP?
Whenever you're ready.

Creating an RP
There's a lot of information to fill out here. I'll go line by line, using my hypothetical SHDS DT1 idea for examples.

Title: SHDS DT1.
This should be short and sweet. Something to catch someone's eye, and is easy to type up (or make into an acronym) so you can tell people about it. It needs to accomplish everything a book title accomplishes, but you don't have the benefit of a fancy cover to help draw interest.

Description: The year is 2100. A disease causing vampirism has afflicted millions. Remnants of the Yakuza gang make dangerous plays across China. You are SHDS Team 1, and vampire-ninjas must be stopped.
That's not my best work, but it covers all the bases. You're fighting vampire Yakuzas in China sometime in the future. Again, this should be short and sweet. Include as broadly as possible the genre and general exposition/setting/plot.
Feel free to include a tag like "Mature" or "Literate-only" so prospective RPers know before clicking on your RP what to expect.

Tags: Please be appropriate. Don't include any tags that don't apply to your RP. If you're unsure, that means no. For the SHDS, this would include "Vampire," "terrorism," "scifi."
If your RP is going to include adult content, it is a common courtesy and a rule to tag appropriately. "Adult" and "mature" should be included, even if just so you can cover your ass.

Roleplay thumbnail: Again, this should be related to the RP. For the SHDS, I would photoshop the words "SHDS" and an eagle on a shield, the symbol of my fictional agency.

Setting: Earth. 2100. Space. New York. This can be anywhere. Please note that, by default, any post made in your RP will happen in this location, so don't make it too limited if you expect the plot to move.

Character approval: Require Character Approval.
If approval isn't required, anyone is free to post as soon as their character is submitted. Not only is this potentially destructive, as trolls would be free to do whatever they wanted to your RP, but the ability to reject characters is very, very important. Sometimes people will skim an RP and submit a character that doesn't fit in any way, shape or form. Imagine if someone submitted a wizard vampire-hunter from the 1890's to the SHDS, and they were automatically approved!

Is this RP original? Truth be told, nothing is original. Unless you're blatantly ripping from somewhere, however, click no.

Rules: Self-explanatory. There are a lot of accepted, general rules, like never taking control of someone else's character. You may wish to enforce a posting order, a particular writing style, or prohibit swearing or adult themes. A simple, bulleted list is often sufficient.

Introduction: This is everything! You need to describe the setting, plot, universe, history, politi... Everything everyone needs to know about your RP needs to be written here.
You may wish to include an example (or mandatory) character sheet, with all of the information you need before a character can be approved. Sometimes it's as simple as name, gender, height, personality, why/how they joined the SHDS. Sometimes it's a book in itself. Neither is wrong, but sometimes one or the other isn't appropriate for a particular RP or group. If you google good RPing character sheets, you should be able to find quality, comprehensive examples.

It can be tempting to include a series of pictures, or links to songs, to help set the mood or get the imagination moving for your readers. While that is a noble pursuit, you want to avoid sacrificing important content for superfluous content. There is a swathe of RPs covered in gifs of actors, epic movie battles, flying dragons, and twinkling night stars that seem to think the pictures somehow justify failing to make any attempt to explain the setting. Not only does it clutter the page and make text more difficult to read, but for those of us that aren't blessed with fast internets, it's a real hassle.

When in doubt, remember these two phrases:
"More information, less animation." A picture might be worth a thousand words, but that doesn't mean diddly squat if those words are all "Cool, an explosion!"

"More innovation, less recreation." As discussed elsewhere in this guide, original ideas, even if they aren't particularly good, are more interesting and are generally better received than emulating another writer's style, or trying to take their story entirely.

The First Post
99.9% of the time, it's the GMs responsibility (and privilege) to make the first post. This should never be taken lightly. The first post sets the tone, post length, writing quality, and begins the story.
Again, Bosch explained this concept very well and I don't see much point in trying to reinvent the wheel:

Bosch wrote:These are all about setting the scene and letting people establish their characters. Here is where you want to describe your big event that will kick off the RP. Excitement will be high at this point so you want to capitalize on that.

For example, [SHDS] could start off with a group of Vampires taking hostages including an [SHDS] member (perhaps you could take this character and make them a bit of a Billy Badass). The RPers are scrambled to take care of it but before they can get there the Vamps detonate an explosive device killing all inside. Including your Billy Badass character in an “opening episode” plot twist.

Oh no. The RP kicks off and the characters have to chase down leads across your Sci-Fi world, maybe mop up some surviving Vamps or provide first aid to survivors. The important thing is everyone has something to do.

You could also set up a couple of throw backs. Maybe Billy Badass survives the explosion, gets turned and comes back later as a Vampire Cyborg with a grudge. This is something good GMs are able to do, they leave little lose threads that can be picked up later in the story, sometimes they come off, other times they don’t. People tend to remember the ones that work out though and it can give the impression you have a grand masterplan when you actually got lucky. Given the interactivity of RPing and quality of the story, credibility can be somewhat stretched and your RPers won’t call bullshit if plots get dropped or merged into others. Often these things develop organically, maybe a one shot character turns out to be popular with RPers so next time you were going to use a faceless NPC use the popular one.

Another thing you want to do (if you are this way inclined) is try to set the theme in your first few posts if you going mega happy RP crack a lot of Jokes in the opening posts or if you want the opposite write like a depressed Raymond Chandler.



Engaging your writers

The OOC
Like a good brothel owner, it's the GM's job to make sure everyone is having a good time so they come back tomorrow night and keep spending their cash. Engage your writers! Talk about the RP in the OOC thread to make sure everyone is following and enjoying the story. Make your writers feel like you appreciate their time, and be understanding of their issues. You can also use the OOC to crack jokes and make observations, related to the RP or otherwise.

PMs
If you're going to host a massive plot twist, but it involves the participation of a character or you want the approval of a writer before you go throwing monkey wrenches, use the private message system to discuss ideas. Nothing kills interest in an RP like an unexpected twist, that you intended to be fun and exciting, depriving other writer's of enjoyment because they suddenly don't feel like they have as much influence on the plot as they thought. Try to give every writer their own opportunities to get involved in twists and action, and encourage anyone with ideas to PM you instead of asking in the OOC, where their great ideas would get spoiled.




But, wait! I followed your guide, and no one is joining my RP!

That sucks.
We've all been there, and honestly there's no good way to advertise or recruit. Sometimes your only choice is to be obnoxious and mention your RP (and its need for members) constantly, but it's often better to include a link to it in your signature (so it's seen with every RP/forum post you make). I personally like to remember writers from RPs I've enjoyed and contact them to see if they're interested, but if that doesn't draw enough recruits, try posting in the interest checks (if you haven't submitted the RP yet) or roleplayers wanted forums.

My fanfic Harry Potter idea is great! How do I make it stand out from the others?

Well... don't make a HP fanfic. It is always better to pursue original ideas and settings, and RPG encourages its members to try to refrain from unoriginal RPs. While you certainly aren't prohibited from submitting such an RP, and you certainly won't have trouble finding applicants, GMs find themselves far more welcomed by the community at large if they are original and offer something new.

And, finally, to steal directly from Bosch one more time:

Bosch wrote:GMs love giving people choices but sometimes wuss out on consequences. Lets say in our example RP an RPer has a choice between saving two RPers, only one can be saved. Some would see this as a binary choice. A or B. Good RPers will see many more. Maybe their character says “Screw this, I hate both these jerks.” And leaves the room. Maybe the character says take me instead. Maybe they try to save both and everyone dies. The point is you have got to be brutal with the consequences of these decisions.

It’s vital you make it clear from the get go that you plan to have situations like this where one character can completely screw over another (in the name of drama) and that death is very likely. Some people might get annoyed their character dies but always keep in mind your allegiance is to the story, if that pisses some people off along the way so be it, but when it’s all said and done and you’ve run an awesome RP people will want to be involved with your next one.


Thank you for reading, and thank you Bosch for your original contribution to the community. Live long and prosper. Hopefully this guide will be of some help to someone at some point.
Do you feel like you're a bad writer? PM me, and let's talk about it. :)

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MayContainPlagiarism
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