Well, I had a little debate over whether to put this here or under "Roleplay Talk," and I ended up here.

I'm in the process of building an RPG -- most of the information is done already, but we're stll working things out. There's a section where people can post as their characters and stuff and so far we've decided on accounts-per-player and we've come up with a system that works so that player accounts can post as characters.

There's been a question like this at the RPGC and the replies were pretty much mixed 50/50, but I've seen this thread and have been wondering if maybe there's a different trend here on InvisionFree, which is where my forum will be hosted.

It seems that no matter which way you go, there are people who will think that each method is messy or disorganized. I really like both methods, but as seen, if you have in-character extras then it can get a little messy.

I like having one account per character because you can customize the account per character. It's easier in sections with in-character extras (such as an IC message board), and you know which character is posting even before you start reading the post itself. But I sometimes forget to switch accounts when I post, I'm less likely to know players by their OOC names, and as a result I'm probably more likely to not care enough about the other players to stick with them.

I like having one account per character because I feel like I can get to know the person behind the characters a lot more easily. I feel closer to someone who posts on the OOC boards as "Amy" than to someone who posts under he character name. I know some people just like to roleplay and have no interest in getting to know the other players, but meeting people is one of the major reasons I RP nowadays.

Anyway, I'm just hoping for some opinions on this. xD

This was something we talked about before we opened the board and this is what we came up with. We do accounts per character but we do have an OCC player account [there are reasons for this one]. As for knowning who character belongs to who, because we are on IPBFree we just set a custom profile field with a player name section and then made it a requirement to fill out when you register an account. It seems to be working.

I'll admit that using an account-by-character system can get confusing when trying to keep track of who's playing who, since I normally have two or three characters on any site I'm on (at least). But that can easily be rectified by an alters list, which we have on my board.

However, I strongly feel that an account-by-player system, where a player uses the same account to play different characters, will be more confusing in the roleplay aspect. Of course, I've never RPed on such a site, so my judgment may come too quickly. Is there an obvious way to specify which character is being written at any given time? Aside from writing it out in the post, of course.

Another idea for keeping track of who's playing whom when operating in an account by
Character system is to either put in the signiture of each Character account "Played by _Insert name_" Or alternatively in the OOC account "I Play-_Insert Character list_"

While i don't personally employ this at the moment i have played on sites that have used this and it can be quite effective to avoid those "Now who are you again" moments.

On my site i'm using a list to keep track of who's who, though should my site expand further player wise, i will probably impliment the system i mentioned above. it works well for larger sites in particular.

That is a good idea. An alters list or "who's who" would get kind of tedious to keep up with on a large site, unless the admin were on top of adding new members right as they joined.

I've been on sites before where I haven't actually known who was posting, because there was one account per player, and all they'd done was changed the name. You can say Oh, OK, so this is what CHARITY is doing.. but at the same time, their avatar is of HOPE. It's like BUH... *confused*

I voted for option three; I have a strong dislike of APP.

I've thought about this before, but how do people seem to like it?

I use accounts per character, because character profiles are in the account profile, and to deal with the who-plays-whom issue there's a profile field for 'Player'. I think it's the best of both worlds, and it works out pretty well for us.

I think accounts per character work a lot better because when I'm RPing with someone, I like to be able to see their signature and all that. If I need to know who the person is, I just check in their profile and their name is right on the top. Though, I have been to a few sites that had a thread up and listed everyone and who their characters were- and that worked just fine as well.

As stated before, StC has account-per-character. Some of us (not all; I haven't yet felt the need to insist on it) have OOC accounts as well. For example, both admins are admins under their OOC accounts.

I use the signature to show who plays which character: In the OOC account, I have a list of the characters played, and in my IC accounts, I have 'This character played by Sharpiefan'.

It seems to work, or at least, I haven't had anyone scream at me that I'm doing it wrong and they won't play any more so there! :D

I much prefer an account per character, but I wouldn't be opposed to using only one account. Having a different account for each character allows you to use graphics for the avatar and sig that reresent the character. Also, you don't have an account that says hawt.tommalie and the post is talking about some Christy person. Or whatever. You know? All accounts on my site must be a real name; the character's name. Anything that isn't gets deleted. A good way to get the bots, too. ;)

Not to mention when a member has more than one character with different accounts, that makes it look like there's more members. ;)

Technically speaking I voted that I wouldn't join an account per character game. While I will and HAVE joined an APC game, strictly speaking, I will not join with more than one character, because then I'd need more accounts and I'm not prepared to screw around with that. So it is, technically, one account per player, because it's just me and my one character.

I find them unecessary, bothersome and more confusing than APP. We've had this discussion fairly recently, actually. People are not idiots and given half a chance I'm sure they'd know who played who. Especially if they had a signature with links in, a run down in their personal profile, or hey, we dared to get social. Once you know the player, you know who they play and you don't need a big sign saying, 'This is Bob!'

Of course, both games have issues along the same vein.

People get "confused" (I like to call it, 'lazy') by who plays what character on APP, and people get "confused" (again, read: 'lazy') over which player owns which characters on APC.

I don't see what possible need you would have for wanting to immediately!!! see which characters are held by which players. Memberlists on APC games can be grossly inaccurate as per what characters there are. A post with the character's name in the first line is an easy enough signal, as is a roster in the Accepted forum. If you really need to know who plays who, then I'm sure the time will be taken to find out. The world doesn't end if you don't find out in the next five minutes.

I play because I want to play. I want to make it clear who *I* am--I'm the writer, my characters are my tools--I want people to know me first, my characters second. That's how I operate. And if someone I'm playing with has to read my post to find out who I am writing for, then that's a good thing. At least then they're reading my posts, despite not necessarily responding. Plus, you know, if they read my posts and were still confused, I'd wonder how they managed to get into a game I was playing on. >>

APC screams Accessories over Substance--a love of pretties over the actual writing-- because the whole confusion deal isn't holding enough water for me to really believe it.

I play seven characters on my site.

Two are in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
One is the Junior Undersecretary.
One is an Unspeakable.
One is a criminal.
One works at the Daily Prophet.
One is a Muggle Studies professor.

APC allows me the organizational flexibility--relating to each one IC--to put them in the appropriate member groups to show other members at a glance who they are and what they do.

I favor APC because of that. The character is more important than the player, and I'd rather have a system where you have to find out who the player is than what character you're reading.

Panda summed up everything I would want to say and more on this subject.

So much word. <3 Plus you can prettyfy APP sigs and stuff quite easily. A lot of members on my games have done it and made their sigs include images of all their characters. I've known some people who make a banner image for their character that they post above each post with the character. And heck, at the very least people have a list of all the characters they play in their signature.

Also, I don't get this:

Unless the other writers are really poor writers, I'd imagine the characters' names would be mentioned in the thread. >__> I know when I write I don't just use "he" or "she" all the time; I use character names. I can also generally tell what character is in a thread even before I read any names, either because I've been talking to players OOC or (even more often) because I can glean that information just from the tone of the post itself. Each character has a unique 'voice'. But still, people do name names. :B

Doesn't take much to figure out what characters are in what thread at all--unless you're super lazy. All it requires is to actually read or skim a little and voila!

On RotE we have a couple of threads that have over ten players in them and like...12 characters. xD Doesn't get confusing at all.

I also agree that the confusion excuse holds absolutely no water and is a lame argument--in cases of both APP and APC. Let's find a legitimate reason. xP

In any case, APC is just not a feasible option for me and my games at all. People play an average of 7 characters on them, but more is not uncommon at all. I know plenty of people who play 25 characters and up, including myself. Just thinking about all those accounts, as both admin and player, gives me a headache.

It wouldn't stop me from joining another game, though, but like Panda I'd only play one character. Registering and logging in and out all that is too much of a hassle for me. I like having my one account, checking the "stay logged in" option, and never having to deal with that again. <3 When I join a new character, all I have to do is fill out a form and add them to my signature. Hassle free. When I need to post a character, I do it. No logging in and out and in again, no risk of posting under the wrong account by mistake. Hassle free.

As for account names...

If you don't want ridiculous names, you can make a rule abut it. ;D Simple. Don't want any "Sexylovuh48874383" accounts? Make a rule. Problem solved. People make rules regarding APC user names, anyway, so it's not a stretch at all and seems like a fairly obvious solution to me. O_o