I hate your forum. Please unban me! ;_;

That's about it--right there. As a matter of fact I may just wind up writing an entire series of articles on this subject. Heretofore I've written most of my pieces here about how to be a good forum/RPG manager. But most of us out there aren't managers on most forums we frequent or even any of them. We're members, those folks who just join a message board community to enjoy what it has to offer, make friends, roleplay, whatever. Forums offer a wide variety of things. But one thing any forum, of any size, brand or genre can become, is an abusive forum.

You get perma-banned for posting a typo/being "illiterate"/posting a topic in the wrong board by accident/Or maybe just because the admin was in a bad mood that day.

And next thing you know, you're begging them to let you back for more. You feel you can't live without your beloved community, who treats you like dirt but on a good day, say they love you and give you virtual cookies. Then they turn on a dime and you're insulted, banned, whatever. And you're in tears, begging again.

I've covered much of the warnings signs that an admin is moving into tyrannical or abusive territory, but haven't yet addressed their enablers--those hapless people who get tangled up in a community that does them more harm than good--yet they can't just leave.

Why?

Well, someone I was discussing this with likened it to a form of spousal abuse--why does an abused significant other, even one who's unmarried and without children or financial needs--keep on coming back anyway?

It just has to be plain old human psychology, turned around to become your worst enemy.

Let's see if I can use this blog to assist any of you out there who may be stuck wasting a large chunk of your time online {or even time overall} taking it up the rear from a forum community that is abusing you.

First, I will outline some of the signs that a forum's disciplinary policies or style may be abusive. Bear in mind there's a "sliding scale" of acceptability, occasional trolls or arguments happen everywhere, and ALL forums must keep the peace in order to be successful. Some message boards including RPGs are stricter than others, and there is nothing wrong with being strict, in and of itself. Some people prefer a high degree of limitation and order in an RPG in particular because of the way it might shape a game's atmosphere.

It's more in how these rules are enforced.

The number one easiest sign to see is insults, belittling, nastiness, putting people down. I mean if that's not the most effective form of abuse online I don't know what is. You can't hit someone through a computer but you can sure as hell berate them. And you should NEVER have to put up with it on an online community, unless of course you enjoy flame wars, and in that case, you know what you are getting into when you join THAT kind of a community.

This isn't about that. This is about, say, an RPG, for example, that purports to be friendly, helpful, creative and fun. Say you're new, and you broke a minor rule by accident, maybe you posted a RP post in the wrong style. How does the staff react? Is it like this:

"Hi, I see you're new here, welcome to the game. I just wanted to point out that posting in first person is against our rules here. Here's a link to our rules {link} and some examples of roleplaying threads using an acceptable style {links} I strongly recommend reviewing them, and if you have any questions just let us know."

Or like this:

"Um...ok...WOW. I see yet another illiterate n00b failed to even bother reading our rules. I truly pity you if you actually thought you were going to be able to keep up on our game. Try LOOKING around and reading the required material, and oh, also try writing at least a first grade level, your typos insult my intelligence."

I've seen examples of both on many different sites. If you see the first one, it's a good sign. If you see the second, don't walk away--run. Any staff member who treats someone like that at the outset isn't going to improve how they treat you later on.

Abuse isn't limited to staff either. A forum could have the nicest staff, and yet the members could be total monsters because the staff aren't on the ball. Poke around in the general board or other out of character area of the forum, where member interactions are freest and most obvious abuse, if any, tends to therefore take place. Is a typical new topic like this:

"Hey guys, how is everyone? I had a great time at the beach today, here's pictures my friend took of us parasailing!"

Or is it more like...

"Okay. I just want to make one thing clear. I CANNOT STAND HALF OF YOU GUYS ANYMORE! You whine and moan about your problems and then when someone tries to help, you screw it all up! I can't take it anymore and I hope you guys {You know who you are!} go to hell!"

Did a staff member do nothing to stop that second topic?

...Did a staff member POST that second topic?

First example=wonderful, typical fun topic for general discussion. Second one=if it isn't promptly removed and given a warning, you're on a forum with bad morale and it probably won't improve unless the site comes under new administration, which very rarely ever happens. You're best off heading for greener pastures.

What do your general experiences on the forum tend to be like? Do you take a verbal beating in the general board or get yanked around by passive-aggressive roleplaying partners who drag you into their drama and somehow manage to make you feel like a horrible human being, ending in you often signing off from the site in tears? Only to come back tomorrow, and present yourself for yet another round of abuse?

This...IS supposed to be an "escapist" hobby, right? I don't know about you, but I don't like escaping to something even worse than anything going on in my real life. If you are dealing with this on a forum, you're a victim of abuse. If you tolerate and engage in frequent fighting on the board when all you wanted to do was roleplay and joke around, you're a victim of abuse. If members and/or staff often put you down, call you illiterate, {Very common!} diss your writing style {I don't mean constructive criticism, I mean plain insults} you are being abused.

Every board has the occasional member who gets out of line, so if a member mistreats you, let the staff know. If it is clearly dealt with, and it doesn't happen again, then you can probably rest assured the problem was a one time issue. If you find yourself going up against this crap on a regular basis after that and staff just aren't doing anything--or worse, they're taking part in the insults--congratulations, you're a victim of an abusive forum.

And you and only you can stop it. If I were you, I'd handle it this way: the quick easy severing. Don't bother posting a long winded {or any} leaving note. Just hit the delete button on your account, and breathe a sigh of relief that never again will you have to subject yourself to abuse there.

Move on. There are literally thousands of other forums around, and hey, if you don't find one that's exactly to your liking, you can always make one =)

Stay tuned as I try to post up more about Abusive Forum Syndrome and how you can identify it, and break free of it. Let's start empowering ourselves by just saying no to abusive message board communities!

It's all fun and games

until someone loses an RPG. So you have a thriving community on your RPG, yet...almost no actual roleplaying. Your members happily wile away their precious free time on "Ban the Person Above You" and "Count to a Million!" while your roleplaying boards sit empty.

What to do?

First, count yourself lucky to have a thriving forum community, even if it's a small one. You've accomplished what a lot of prospective forum owners fail to do even when they pump out money for professional software and SEO advertising. Chances are good that all you need is a little tweaking.

The reasons why people join an RPG and then don't roleplay are many, but it tends to be a vicious circle. They join, then see that hmm, there's only 17 posts in in-character area but over 12,000 in "Spam Your Ass Off." Members follow where the action is! A forum is always a community first before it is anything else, whether that something else is an RPG or a trading post. When you walk into a party, do you go sit or stand around by yourself or do you join the crowd over at the other end of the room? Same principle applies.

Here are some tips that might help you out.

First, if your board has post count turned on on all boards, switch them off for all but the roleplaying boards. Members like seeing their numbers go up. Numbers are sweet. Don't reward them for posting "lol" on the "Post Your Funny Pet Pictures Here" thread, reward them for roleplaying.

Second, cut the number of roleplaying front boards {or boards altogether} in half, or more. Crowding the roleplay areas all in closer will make it look more active, AND it will push the members in closer to each other.

Third, start up a plot discussion board and start some brainstorming threads, then mention to your members as they are discussing Lady Gaga's latest antics, that you have a swell new bunch of plot ideas you are inviting them into. Mention also that their characters could have a strong role to play if they jump in and see what it's about.

You can't force people to roleplay. But you can entice them. You must.

Admin, Incognito.

I hear the question come up pretty frequently: Should an admin create a second, member account to roleplay with their members and interact with them like "one of the guys" {or girls or both} while they keep their administrator account reserved only for staff functions?

This is a personal choice, but not one I would make. I don't do it, because you're essentially creating two personas on the game, one as a member and the other as an admin. While you then "escape" the natural fear of authority that will always attach itself to an admin, you don't spend that time cultivating your presence and persona as an admin on your site, which only strengthens members' fear and sense of alienation from the leader of their game. An admin, in my opinion, shouldn't be trying to escape difficult issues on their board, they need to confront them and improve them as best they can. Avoiding it doesn't make it go away, and having an admin/staff who openly communicate with their members on a regular basis goes a very long way.

It is human nature to fear authority to some extent, the bigger the authority the bigger this natural fear, which is why this situation is worse the larger the forum is. But if you show them you're really a nice old human being like the rest of them, this fear will mostly fade and you'll make some friends and make your board a warmer place at the same time.

Honesty is also the best policy.

Those Members Need A Kick In the Pants Sometimes

Say, do you manage your own RPG? Do you know this type of player: They want to roleplay, so they come to you, and ask if you'd like to roleplay. You say sure! Your game's just starting out, they put up a great application and can't wait to get started. This is going to be a blast!

So you start up the thread with a little plot beginning to get it moving. And then...you find that you have to keep on coming up with stuff to keep it moving. I don't mean half or even most, I mean virtually ALL of the ideas, twists, any plot movement, is coming from you. The other player's character is following your lead. They aren't doing much of anything on their own to impart any kind of spin on the RP. You might as well be roleplaying solo...in other words, writing your own fiction.

Try doing this with 5 different players, all who offer no or very little of their own plot power and instead rely almost completely on you. Even when it's more than 2 of you in a thread, you're doing the heavy lifting. And your well of plot ideas is quickly running dry.

It's no surprise. Coming up with constant streams of new plot ideas for 5 different threads on a daily basis quickly wears almost anyone out. The mind needs a break, like the rest of the body. But your members are offering you no relief.

Ah, inert members. It's like those chemicals, what are they, the noble gases? They don't readily mix with other elements, and basically don't react at all unless you like, fire them up with electricity or something...yeah. Basically, unless you force them, constantly, to do something, they don't do much of anything.

Most players are followers. They have little self motivation and basically want everything laid out for them to do. They come to be passively entertained in what is supposed to be a cooperative writing game. They can be great supporting characters in a plot, but they need a leader to follow.

You can't transform a follower into a leader type--an active, reactive player who produces their own sparks of creativity and helps inspire the masses to creativity. True plot-movers, leader types, are rare. And in my experience they can be a mixed bag. Some want TOO much freedom and can take over your game if you're not careful. Many can be argumentative and their ambition can get in others' way. That incredible energy that we often all wish we had!

There's the possibility that some of those passive players are not as passive as they seem, but feel too intimidated or restricted to try their own ideas. Are your rules allowing for them to be creative like you are? Double check. Ask them what ideas they have for their character and what they'd like to do with them in the game.

And you can only sustain a finite number of sub plots. So, the first thing to do is stop creating new characters or threads for every new player who requests it. I recommend no more than 10 active characters at any one time...if only I took my own advice...And once you have your limit established, hold firm. Invite the next new player into the already ongoing plots, where hopefully they will start up something with the players already in it, and you will be there to supervise and make sure they get settled in. Sometimes, the right two characters can inspire normally passive players to greater heights.

I would also use a plot discussion board to get maybe a little something heating up there. It can't hurt. Two or three players previously depending on you for their entertainment may strike up something better when given the chance to brainstorm among themselves. They may even inspire you in turn.

It's a cooperative effort!

Dead Zone - Why do so many RPGs fail?

It should probably say, 'why do MOST RPGs fail,' but I haven't actually done a count, so I'll just be vague. I think you guys all know what I mean anyway--you've seen it...searching for a good game, you click your way through a wasteland of RPG forums who died in their childhoods, with only a handful of members and a few hundred posts to their name before they gasped their last and joined the multitudes in the many strata of dead websites.

I always feel a little sad when I see a forum that didn't just die, but never got to live. Many times, there is ample evidence that the board was well put together, with a lot of care and time poured into it. Many times it's a game I myself would've joined had it just had a few people still posting to it. Nowadays when I want to try a new RPG and can't find one already going I start a thread in my own forum's multigenre section, which has always worked well for me. However, it doesn't erase the carnage out there...thousands of RPGs gone to waste. I have offered to affiliate with some of them, hoping a button link exchange might rejuvenate them, but more often than not, my offer goes unanswered as even the admin has given up visiting their own site.

Why? What happened? What DIDN'T happen?

A lot of it could be chalked up to some failure on the management level. Too little marketing, poor setup of rules, making the game too complicated--the list goes on as to why so many forums misfire. But I don't think it explains it all.

The truth is, it's just too easy for anyone to start up their own independent RPG forum.

Too easy? How dare I imply that it should be made harder? This is the internet, freedom reigns! But hear me out. I'm not saying it's a bad thing that anyone can go start their own RPG at the press of a few buttons. I am saying that this is the cause of a lot of forum failures--they call it oversaturation.

This is common in any market--eventually, the supply exceeds the demand. It means that unless your RPG {or whatever you're marketing} is truly a cut above the rest and you know what you are doing, it's unlikely to thrive, as it cannot rive above the masses of other competing games.

One way to get around this is by creating an RPG for which there is interest, but few or no other games exist yet in its genre. This is referred to as a "long tail" approach in marketing jargon. If you create a Warriors RPG, wolf RPG, high school RPG, Naruto RPG...you have literally hundreds of other sites vying for the same member pool as yours. What does your site offer that those hundreds do not? Think about it. "Build it and they will come" doesn't apply when there are 300 other available houses on the street. Are there REALLY no other sites in that genre that you want to play in? Ask yourself: why do I want to make my own game? Is it because you really can't find what you want anywhere else? Because you have this awesome idea that you just have to share with the roleplay world? Or...it just seems cool to be an admin? Because the cool starts to wear off quite quickly once your game is under way. Managing an RPG is wonderful when it works, but the key word is "work": there's a lot of it involved. If you go into it, go into it prepared.

I highly suggest that people look, and look hard, for an existing game of the type, size, style and genre that they want, before up and deciding to make their own. If you choose to make your own, make sure there's at least enough interest in it to sustain it. Know your market. One effective way to test the waters is to try it as a thread in a multigenre game, and see how much interest it garners; then if you decide you want to take this one step further, you'll also have a ready pool of members to go join up with you!

It's a dog eat dog world out there. Or is that cat eat cat? :P

Why do so many RPG forums have so many boards?

Because they don't know how to set up a forum.

I'm not talking about a board-for-every-locale setup being inherently bad regardless. Places are subjective. If you wanted to set one board taking place in a busy shopping mall, you could create one board for the mall, or you could create 30 boards, one for each store, and the food court rb_tongue.gif Which is ideal? Well, that depends. Does your whole RPG take place only in the mall? I'd split it up if so--though for starting sites, probably not with 30 boards. If the RPG takes place in a whole town, probably just one board for the mall would do well. Over time, if that mall board became hugely busy and several significant locales arose within it that became game landmarks, I'd set up a few sub boards for them: the food court, the record store, the clothing store, etc. How many would depend on how much activity there was, but also, secondarily, on how many landmarks came to stand out.

Sites just starting out should have very few RPing boards, as few as possible, ideally no more than 10 to 20 in all. {The same goes for OOC boards.} This is regardless of setting or type. Too many boards discourages activity, it does not encourage it. The more boards you have the more your members will spread out, and this lessens the chance that they will encounter one another.

Those rows of zeroes also make a board look really, really lonely. {And hiding the zeroes with code looks worse.}

Less is more.

"We want a plot. But it better not be boring and it better be fun."

Or, how to, and how not to, create and run a large scale plot for your RPG!

Most people join an RPG hoping that it already has an interesting storyline, or ten. The beauty of play-by-post is its ability to build complex plots that can develop your characters far more deeply than other kinds of RPGs. Some RPG forums run their game more open-ended and allow players to create their own plotlines, others force a more rigid adherence to whatever happens to be going on at the time.

My experience is that a plotline should always be optional.

Now I don't mean that the game setting should be optional. I mean that when you sign up and create your character, and get started, you should be able to come into the game's world, in any plausible way you choose as long as it gels with the setting, doesn't break powerplaying type rules, and doesn't otherwise disrupt ongoing storylines in ways unpleasant to the existing members. If I have a smashing idea for my own startup storyline in the game-verse, out of the way of the main storylines, I'd sure not stick around if I was told I couldn't play it.

That said, a game can often lose momentum from time to time and probably the best way to counter it is to create a game-wide main plot. So you decide, "I'm going to do this. My members are begging me for a plot!" So you brainstorm and create this original plotline, several chapters outlined and events packed in all along the way. You make sure to keep it under wraps, only letting the other staff know, and then maybe only the ones who need to know, because why give it all away? That'd spoil the whole thing.

You start the plot, introducing some new character, disaster, event, mass attack, what have you, and then watch as it just somehow doesn't work.

What happened?

Maybe it's more like...what didn't happen.

If you did all the above you probably went about it all wrong. An RPG is not a novel. It isn't even a short story. You have no idea how things are going to pan out, and to create a long elaborate plot dependent on several events that are in turn dependent on certain characters doing certain things, I recommend you put down the Word document and do something a lot more productive: look at your game.

I go by a sort of rule when I RP: I think "one step ahead." This is true whether or not I'm planning out a plot or just RPing on the fly. Plotting a roleplay is like trying to plot real life...almost. It's certainly almost as messy. If you structure it in a rigid story outline, it will fail two steps in, by which time at least most of the characters will not be acting as they were required to.

That's the beauty of it, you know.

So you still want the plot to wind the game up in a certain circumstance by the end. That's reasonable. But it must be FLEXIBLE. Keep a general bunch of notes on what you'd like to see happen, but really only plan your characters' moves one step ahead. Then, take a step back and assess what could come of it that would forward the exciting plot. It is touch and go. An added benefit is that nobody has to be locked out. Newcomers can hop into it, and still events will transpire. If things get slow, reassess where things are, and what each character wants the most. Keep a running brainstorm thread in your plot discussion board {you have one, right?} and invite members whose characters are in it, or want to be in it, to discuss their ideas and what they plan to have their characters do. Suggest what X might possibly want to do, in X situation that would cause some exciting things to happen, and as you get better at this, you'll be able to suggest ideas that would "nudge" the plot in the direction you think is most exciting. I guarantee it will get your members excited.

But what about the surprises? Well they sure have a place in a plot! I'd keep them solely restricted to what your own characters are in control of, or you and a few others you plot closely with. Like anything else in the plotline, it has to remain flexible. If the players are roleplaying their merry way right through one of your carefully planned surprises, remember the main reason why you started up this plot in the first place--making it fun for them--be happy you are succeeding, and then quietly adjust whatever surprises you have in store, to fit with the story's new direction.

There will be enough surprises for everybody here.

A good main plot for your RPG isn't this separate thing planned out by the staff and then shoehorned into the game from nowhere, where members are told they have to follow the script, or even that certain members can't even be a part of it. That sort of junk is destined to fail and leave your members feeling cheated out of a fun story experience.

A successful large RPG plot should be written the same way as any other part of your RPG: by the whole of your member group, arising out of existing situations, with some novel things thrown in here and there. It should be optional, flexible, and natural.