Because you are the administrator of your game. Your community relies on you to lead the way, to take the lead in developing it, and when it's in trouble, to front the rescue effort. So let's say your RPG forum {this can also apply to non roleplay forums; my warrior cats forums have both and have suffered slumps more than once} has done well up till now but is showing signs of low activity. So, when you bring this up, what is one thing that at least one person will say as a possible reason for the slump?
"It's a bad time of year. People are too busy to roleplay."
Really? What time of year would that be? Maybe...
It's January/February. It's post holiday blues, and people are all back in work/school, nobody has time to roleplay.
It's March/April--spring break time. Everyone's on vacation or doing family things, nobody has time to roleplay.
It's May/June. Final exams, graduation plans, who's got time to roleplay?
It's July/August. Summer time. People are having summer vacations, going away to camp, and, you know, spending time outside! Who's roleplaying?
It's September/October. People are all going back to school, taking up classes again. Nobody has time to roleplay.
It's November/December. Holidays--Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hannukah, just about everyone is too busy shopping and preparing for holiday events and vacations. Nobody has time to roleplay.
And so when the site goes down the tubes, at least you can sigh and say it had nothing to do with anything you did wrong yourself. I bet a lot of sites that aren't around now might still be up if their owners had taken responsibility for the issues and really looked into turning things around rather than saying it was a "bad time of year" and waited for it to improve.
In my experience, NOTHING ever comes of hoping without doing. Stop telling yourself it'll get better on its own. Look critically and objectively at your site. What are the patterns governing the low activity? Where are players stumbling the most? The information is all there, you just need to uncover it. It won't be easy, but nothing worth doing is. And if after all that, you try your hardest, trying everything and the site STILL must close, at least you can then say you tried your hardest and best. {By the way, it's never too late; see my articles on reviving a dead forum!}
The time to act is now.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
It's an epidemic: Why "plague" plots fail in RPGs
I have covered a lot on this blog over the months and sometimes find myself struggling to grab onto something new to write about. Fortunately the RPG world is not only full of surprises, but is endlessly deep and convoluted. Today's subject: "plague" plots.
Wha? Yeah, I am talking about what is usually intended to be a wide scale plot on the RPG in which a deadly contagious disease is ravaging the lands, taking victims by the hundreds/thousands/whatever is mass scale to that particular game. It sounds like a great way to create widespread misery, suffering and panic--and clear out a lot of underused characters in the process. This is what makes it so alluring to gameowners. Kill two {or 2,000?} birds with one stone!
So they ask their players: Hey guys, how about a plague hits the town? The reaction is typically enthusiastic. Who wouldn't want a twist like this if the game was, maybe a little slow, or even just needed something new. Plagues make history. They're THE plot material, and the best part is, no real complex plotting or character motives need to be worked out. People start getting sick and dropping dead and the rest takes care of itself.
Nothing can go wrong with this, until somehow it just goes wrong. More like it doesn't go at all. I've seen it again and again. Now, time for a disclaimer! YES I am sure that somewhere, somehow an RPG has made this work and work beautifully. About as beautifully as two thirds of a town's population dying in incredible pain and ugliness. An RPG somewhere made this work for their game to what was considered great success.
I'd love to see such an example, because in my more than a decade of PBP roleplay, I've seen several attempts to make it work and not seen one take off in more than a minor way. At best, what is intended to be a major plot settles for a minor side story, with a handful of players participating and less than a handful of characters actually dying, unless NPCs are used, and then who really cares anyway? None of them were actually characters. So, other than a bunch of red shirts and maybe an amount of real characters you could count on your fingers, nobody is actually dying of this plague, not even largely abandoned characters or underplayed ones, and so, it is the plague plot itself that dies.
Nobody wants their characters to actually DIE in the plague.
But I noticed something. Pick any battle going on in the game that's reasonably large and you see characters dying left and right. Not to mention death in childbirth, a very popular way to kill off female characters, I have observed. It isn't that people are unwilling to kill off characters. It's that they don't want to do it by disease.
Why? I thought I'd write about why, seeing as it might save people the trouble of trying one of these plague plots for their game--at least, on a large scale, and then being disappointed when it flops.
Killing characters by a disease involves deciding beforehand that the character will die, and then carrying it out slowly and painfully. People develop emotional attachments to characters they play, to the point of actually going through grieving processes, though muted, when they kill them off if they had played them enough. People seem okay to do it as long as it's over quickly. Death in a battle is pretty quick, as is childbirth. The character can sometimes linger to say a few parting words, then go, and their suffering, if horrible, was at least brief. Killing off by disease will prolong what is usually a painful process. There is no hope, and a million chances to regret one's decision to do it, and emotional pain when they realise what they got into and that they cannot get out of it. I had a lot of people who initially decided to do it, begging halfway through for their characters to pull through as a survivor. Some actually got uptight when pointed out the "this thing takes no prisoners" rules they had agreed to themselves at the start. A few people did play it out, to great emotional effect. They were excellent mini-plot threads. They were anything but a large scale plot.
Larger isn't better, but a game benefits from having both large and small plots, and when you plan out something big and it fails, it can translate to a lot of wasted energy, even on something as easy to plan as, "If your character gets this disease they start to vomit blood, and in 3 days they're dead."
But you want to try one anyway? Well, I have nothing to suggest that can guarantee its success and my main suggestion is to avoid these plots as major plots. Unless you're using abandoned characters as fodder, and even then it can fail, because people will be playing them again and there's every chance to get reattached. If you want to try a plague, start small, don't play it up like it's the 'next big thing' for your game and you may very well get a few devoted players with strong resolve to give a drawn out, horrid ending to their beloved characters.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!
Wha? Yeah, I am talking about what is usually intended to be a wide scale plot on the RPG in which a deadly contagious disease is ravaging the lands, taking victims by the hundreds/thousands/whatever is mass scale to that particular game. It sounds like a great way to create widespread misery, suffering and panic--and clear out a lot of underused characters in the process. This is what makes it so alluring to gameowners. Kill two {or 2,000?} birds with one stone!
So they ask their players: Hey guys, how about a plague hits the town? The reaction is typically enthusiastic. Who wouldn't want a twist like this if the game was, maybe a little slow, or even just needed something new. Plagues make history. They're THE plot material, and the best part is, no real complex plotting or character motives need to be worked out. People start getting sick and dropping dead and the rest takes care of itself.
Nothing can go wrong with this, until somehow it just goes wrong. More like it doesn't go at all. I've seen it again and again. Now, time for a disclaimer! YES I am sure that somewhere, somehow an RPG has made this work and work beautifully. About as beautifully as two thirds of a town's population dying in incredible pain and ugliness. An RPG somewhere made this work for their game to what was considered great success.
I'd love to see such an example, because in my more than a decade of PBP roleplay, I've seen several attempts to make it work and not seen one take off in more than a minor way. At best, what is intended to be a major plot settles for a minor side story, with a handful of players participating and less than a handful of characters actually dying, unless NPCs are used, and then who really cares anyway? None of them were actually characters. So, other than a bunch of red shirts and maybe an amount of real characters you could count on your fingers, nobody is actually dying of this plague, not even largely abandoned characters or underplayed ones, and so, it is the plague plot itself that dies.
Nobody wants their characters to actually DIE in the plague.
But I noticed something. Pick any battle going on in the game that's reasonably large and you see characters dying left and right. Not to mention death in childbirth, a very popular way to kill off female characters, I have observed. It isn't that people are unwilling to kill off characters. It's that they don't want to do it by disease.
Why? I thought I'd write about why, seeing as it might save people the trouble of trying one of these plague plots for their game--at least, on a large scale, and then being disappointed when it flops.
Killing characters by a disease involves deciding beforehand that the character will die, and then carrying it out slowly and painfully. People develop emotional attachments to characters they play, to the point of actually going through grieving processes, though muted, when they kill them off if they had played them enough. People seem okay to do it as long as it's over quickly. Death in a battle is pretty quick, as is childbirth. The character can sometimes linger to say a few parting words, then go, and their suffering, if horrible, was at least brief. Killing off by disease will prolong what is usually a painful process. There is no hope, and a million chances to regret one's decision to do it, and emotional pain when they realise what they got into and that they cannot get out of it. I had a lot of people who initially decided to do it, begging halfway through for their characters to pull through as a survivor. Some actually got uptight when pointed out the "this thing takes no prisoners" rules they had agreed to themselves at the start. A few people did play it out, to great emotional effect. They were excellent mini-plot threads. They were anything but a large scale plot.
Larger isn't better, but a game benefits from having both large and small plots, and when you plan out something big and it fails, it can translate to a lot of wasted energy, even on something as easy to plan as, "If your character gets this disease they start to vomit blood, and in 3 days they're dead."
But you want to try one anyway? Well, I have nothing to suggest that can guarantee its success and my main suggestion is to avoid these plots as major plots. Unless you're using abandoned characters as fodder, and even then it can fail, because people will be playing them again and there's every chance to get reattached. If you want to try a plague, start small, don't play it up like it's the 'next big thing' for your game and you may very well get a few devoted players with strong resolve to give a drawn out, horrid ending to their beloved characters.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Yeah, well we don't allow that anymore.
After years of playing on roleplaying games, participating on forums, observing both from the outside, and helping administrate forum RPGs as well, I have come to recognise a pattern that almost all of them follow if they last a few months or more. It doesn't matter if they are beginner/all levels, advanced, small or large. It happens whether they are stably staffed or full of drama. It happens regardless of what genre they are.
They all grow stricter over time.
Now, this may sound like a generalisation, and I am sure there are games/forums that are outside of this "natural law." {This paragraph is a disclaimer, you might note.} I cannot recall one in my recent memory.
The typical RP forum will start off as a free and easy RP, with a basic set of rules. Soon after the game's inception, the rules will usually be adjusted. This is generally just because it was hard to foresee all issues before its start, and once it kicks into gear the staff can see what they feel needs tweaking. But once the game is stable and going several months, the rule accumulations don't stop.
They seem to come in the form of word minimums appearing, character applications rising in difficulty, format rules either appearing or increasing in number, even such things as profile format rules. There may also be character number limits, posting limits, limits on character traits/types/powers {game breaker powers--powers that if allowed would change the entire game dynamics--would obviously need limiting, but often the limits come down on something that was allowed for a long time} the list goes on.
Even when the game is dying and it is obvious that the overburdening rules are contributing to its demise, they are not usually removed or changed, or at least not significantly. There may even be additional rules created at this phase, like mandatory activity checks.
Why does this happen?
I'm still thinking on this, it'd be nice to know since it's a killer of so many games. But what I have observed is that whenever our own RPG lifts a rule or loosens it at all, even a little, there is often vehement protest from a small but vocal porportion of the member base.
My advice: if your game needs a boost, loosen that noose. It could very well be it is choking on its own limitations. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
They all grow stricter over time.
Now, this may sound like a generalisation, and I am sure there are games/forums that are outside of this "natural law." {This paragraph is a disclaimer, you might note.} I cannot recall one in my recent memory.
The typical RP forum will start off as a free and easy RP, with a basic set of rules. Soon after the game's inception, the rules will usually be adjusted. This is generally just because it was hard to foresee all issues before its start, and once it kicks into gear the staff can see what they feel needs tweaking. But once the game is stable and going several months, the rule accumulations don't stop.
They seem to come in the form of word minimums appearing, character applications rising in difficulty, format rules either appearing or increasing in number, even such things as profile format rules. There may also be character number limits, posting limits, limits on character traits/types/powers {game breaker powers--powers that if allowed would change the entire game dynamics--would obviously need limiting, but often the limits come down on something that was allowed for a long time} the list goes on.
Even when the game is dying and it is obvious that the overburdening rules are contributing to its demise, they are not usually removed or changed, or at least not significantly. There may even be additional rules created at this phase, like mandatory activity checks.
Why does this happen?
I'm still thinking on this, it'd be nice to know since it's a killer of so many games. But what I have observed is that whenever our own RPG lifts a rule or loosens it at all, even a little, there is often vehement protest from a small but vocal porportion of the member base.
My advice: if your game needs a boost, loosen that noose. It could very well be it is choking on its own limitations. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
An Open Letter to Authors who Don't Like Fanfiction Of Their Work
This is in no way referencing the wonderful Erin Hunter, or J.K. Rowling or any of the other multitudes of authors who openly welcome, or at least tolerate, fan fiction of their work. The Erins I admire for providing a large space on their own website {on Harper Collins} at no cost at all, for fans to do just that.
No, this is addressing the authors who are so determined to clamp down on any reference to their work with 100% iron control that they forbid any fan fiction at all from even being posted up on the internet.
Dear Authors who don't allow fan fiction of your work:
What a hypocritical stick in the mud. Nobody's an island, everyone gets their ideas from somewhere and even most of Shakespeare's plays directly derived from earlier works not his own, often almost completely. Whatever gave you such vitriol against your own fans who are so deeply inspired by your work as to want to express their own creativity about it, while giving you full credit AND free advertising? You control freak, you don't DESERVE those fans. Go write something and shove it into a private vault if you don't want the world to ever do anything with it.
As for roleplaying about your work, I'll be glad never to come within a mile of anything about it. There's lots of other stuff I can get inspired by and lots of authors open to those who like to weave their creative works into the mythos of human storytelling culture. Pity on you for missing out.
Sincerely,
Wynnyelle
No, this is addressing the authors who are so determined to clamp down on any reference to their work with 100% iron control that they forbid any fan fiction at all from even being posted up on the internet.
Dear Authors who don't allow fan fiction of your work:
What a hypocritical stick in the mud. Nobody's an island, everyone gets their ideas from somewhere and even most of Shakespeare's plays directly derived from earlier works not his own, often almost completely. Whatever gave you such vitriol against your own fans who are so deeply inspired by your work as to want to express their own creativity about it, while giving you full credit AND free advertising? You control freak, you don't DESERVE those fans. Go write something and shove it into a private vault if you don't want the world to ever do anything with it.
As for roleplaying about your work, I'll be glad never to come within a mile of anything about it. There's lots of other stuff I can get inspired by and lots of authors open to those who like to weave their creative works into the mythos of human storytelling culture. Pity on you for missing out.
Sincerely,
Wynnyelle
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