So I was asking about the whole accounts-per-character versus accounts-per-player thing in my last thread, and Melissa mentioned each person having a player account and a separate account for each character.

I've thought about this before in the past and then discounted it, but I was hoping to know what everyone else thought about it. Obviously I don't want to employ a policy that'll scare everyone away, so even though I like the idea, I still want people at my RPG, hahah. xD

I don't know, I kind of like it since you can keep track of OOC posts as compared to posts by each character. But would it be an inconvenience to have a separate OOC account if you only have one character?

Just looking for thoughts and comments again. XD

It seems pointless to me, and almost like a ploy to make it look like there are more registered members than there actually are. Members should, theoretically, be spending more time posting as their characters than posting as their OOC selves, so I can't see how an OOC account would be used that often.

I normally turn off post count in OOC forums, if that's an issue, so that the only posts registered for each account are IC posts. That helps me determine who's spending too much time out of character and not enough time in.

Hmm, disabling post count on the OOC boards -- hadn't really thought about that. Would people post less in the OOC sections, then? I really like the community part of roleplaying, and I love when the OOC boards are at least as active as the actual roleplay areas. I don't mind people who're extremely active OOC and not as much so IC -- sometimes you don't have enough time for a post, but you have enough time to post a few lines on the OOC board.

I've done this before on a board, only I was the only person who did it. I liked it, especially when people needed to send me PMs and stuff. I would know right where to go when someone sent me a PM.

I don't mind having the separate OoC account but I find that a lot of people stop using them after the first week or so.

Maybe then make it optional, then, not required. *thoughtful*

I wouldn't like a site like that. It would seem confusing when you first joined. Like, "Wait, so do I sign up as a character, or is it one account per person?" And seeing different types of user names in the online list would just make me cringe. D: I've made an OOC account for myself as an admin, but no one else does.

Personally, Jae, I think you're making this too difficult for yourself. Just settle for one policy; it's simpler, less confusing, and there are plenty of people who will go for whatever way you decide (account per character, or one account per person).

Christ no! Save me! I'm already dying a horribly death among the APC epidemic that's going on, let's not have a blow-out by adding more reasons to have more accounts. It's bad enough that people have "Admin" accounts separate to their characters.

Give me one name to sign in with and I'm happy as Larry (who happens to be a very happy guy). Force me to take more for more characters and I won't expand my character base. Make me take ANOTHER just to be OOC and I'll tell you where to shove your game. Sorry mate, but it's completely needless. What would be the purpose of counting character posts, anyway?

As the majority of the people I've run across won't join an RPG with accounts-per-player, it looks like I'm going to have to go with APC, even though I'd love to be able to see post counts for OOC posts as well. Gotta give some to get some back, I suppose.

I probably wouldn't bother joining a forum at that point. Why should I have to have a separate OOC account and then a bunch of IC accounts when I can just have a bunch of IC accounts and can perhaps choose one of them to be the one I post with OOC (unless I forget I'm logged into another one, as was the case this afternoon). I do that on most of my sites; I have one account where I always post OOC if I can, and then the rest are just strictly for Rping.

As has already been mentioned, why add MORE accounts to the already large list? Some people end up with ten user accounts, others only have one or two. Why make it so that one person has eleven active accounts and the others have two or three? Makes no sense to me.

To be fair, my co-admin and I have an "Administrator" account on our site which we share when doing our adminly duties. I think it makes things less confusing for members who are looking for site regulation-type posts, especially since both of us have numerous character accounts. It also makes it easier for people trying to contact the admin, since they know exactly which account to PM if they don't know our characters yet.

So I understand why people don't like separate OOC accounts (although, to me, one account doesn't make that much of a difference and as an admin it's nice to be able to see people's IC and OOC post counts), but why not an admin account? I don't really mind either way and it's not as if I was planning to have one, but now I'm kind of curious. This is the first I've heard of it, after all. An admin account is...just one extra account. o___O

*nullness*

I use an ooc account as my admin account, but I don't see why everyone would need one.

As I said in the other thread, StC has accounts-per-player, so I have several character accounts, but I have an OOC account for admin stuff, because I think it's less distracting for announcements and stuff to come from someone who's obviously not a fictional character. And it's easier to keep IC opinions and admin opiions/rulings separate with separate accounts.

Well, that's my penn'orth, anyway. :)

I've actually been thinking about this on AML. It makes it easier for people to see who is who rather than having to keep track of the different characters. I already have this with the staff and it works well because then you know who you're talking to and don't have to guess.

This just further proves my point that APC games are a sea of impersonal bodies that require neon signs to point out who is who. It's also neglecting the useful IF functions, introduced so you don't have to do things like this.

If people need things spelling out to them this much and if you really think your members are so easily confused, then why make it ten times more complicated, by having individual players stretched under 8 accounts each or some other absurd number? Sure it makes it easier on a roleplaying level, but it devastates OOC social--a big part of any game. Joining games and realising I know a bunch of characters but remember none of the player names? It's very worrying.

My co-admin and I have enabled all our character accounts to have access to administrative functions. The Admin account is a nominal, organizational thing on the board.

Perhaps I shouldn't have said "less confusing." Our goal is simply to make things easier. We want our members to focus all of their attention on the roleplays, which get complicated in the plotting in our group. We like to keep everything else simple, and that means knowing exactly where the information is by seeing who posted it--the Admin.

Besides, for the pure practicality of it, I like to create an admin account when I build a new site because I often haven't decided what character I want to play yet.

Oh, and because I forgot to address the OOC part of Panda's comment--our community thrives as much OOC as IC, thanks to a busy Cbox and OOC forum. We also employ an Introductions forum for new members, where they introduce themselves by name and established members reply in kind with their names AND their characters.

(Forgive the double post. I fast-replied.)

I want to point out real quick, that one of the reasons that we have an OCC account is because we have a 'store' that you can buy items with and it was easier to see who bought what with an separate OCC player account. So far it has worked pretty well so far, the keep all there 'money' there and use that to do the shopping for their characters.

I'm sure this would hold more water, if most forum software didn't have the option for you to change your login name after you created it. As admin that's one of your awesome powers.

Having extra forums to compensate for the complexities introduced by APC doesn't make the problem null and void, does it?

APCs are filled with OOC 'reminder' techniques on who is who and APP don't require them. People know people because if they want character contact, they don't contact a character name, they have to find the player and contact them that way. It's an automatic opener to a social environment. It also makes grabbing people less of a hassle, I might add. Instead of having to PM 30 people because you want to touch base with 6 players, (and you should PM all their characters because you don't know who they'll log in as) you only have to PM 5. I think everyone knows how unreliable things like IM can be, especially when it comes to keeping a lot of people on track of one topic.

Then of course there is the problem that has already been mentioned, of people forgetting to log out of one character to post for another. I've even witnessed many people say they were, 'too lazy' to log out and in again--it isn't a rare issue--and how does this lessen the complications of things, when Bob Jones is posting for Calvin Roberts? You get the same apparent, 'issues' people propose you get with APP.

I suppose this is leaking moreover into the other, similar topic over here, but I've yet to see anything to sway me in the slightest toward APC as a good thing. Mixing them up would be...problematic. The main issue really is that it gets confusing--it would work in a chat room environment. You can have your OOC handles and your IC ones, but they're essentially unecessary for the gaming experience and, in my opinion, not even an enjoyable frill, but I'm in the minority on that one, I expect.

I'm having a confusing moment with the store concept. The OOC accounts buy things from the store--who earns them? OOC accounts or character accounts? Do you buy things with the character accounts? Does it matter?

Speaking of things not holding water...IF forums send you email notification of PMs telling you who PMed you and what account received it. Unless you use different emails for each account this should be no problem.

We have a quick log-in box that allows you to go straight from one character to another without having to log out completely, which makes things faster. People still slip up sometimes, of course, but we have them copy the post and repost it with the right account, while we delete the incorrect post. It's a quick fix. We don't have too many problems with it anyway.

I'm sorry--I don't mean to argue. What I'm really trying to get across is that my site is able to make APC work, and work well.

Anyway, at the end of the day, I agree with Panda. Mixing APC and APP would be a terrible idea! ^_^

I use APC because the character profiles are the account profiles, which is something I've actually not seen any other sites do (and it's the main benefit to APC!). Instead of filling out a separate form and going through all the hassle of coding (I love that there's a forum topic for this) a separate topic and having to link it and sort through it and blah blah blah, just fill out the profile fields and go (and for what it's worth, one of those fields is for player name). The huge benefit provided by being able to just click a player's name and read all about the character more than makes up for the added hassle of logging in and out to post.

I dislike having player and character accounts. And just player accounts when it's a roleplay forum. When I made one of my first forums that wasn't just based for the people from my first forum (we were some kind of recluse colony of roleplayers who all found each other but had never been on any other forum or even knew of others existing. XD). But then I gave a link to my friend who didn't post one liners like the rest of them, and he shared the link, and they all came along and created player accounts. And then they all started having more than one character and therefore they said "I can't be bothered logging out and logging back in." And then they were just posting under the name "Ben" whilst their signature had three pictures of Iron Man, Beast and Magneto or something like that (it was a Marvel forum). And that just annoyed me. Firstly because I'm obsessive over uniformity. Second because they were just being lazy.

I have OOC accounts on both the games I play on, but I actually didn't create those myself. I'm an admin on both games, and the head admin created the accounts for me. Now, I don't mind having those accounts, per se, but I rarely log in on them, and I wouldn't have created them myself because of that. In addition, I think that, as an admin, the players feel they should PM my OOC account when they have a question, regardless of which character they see that I'm logged on with, which results in me taking forever to respond to their PM's. I see why they would do that, but honestly, I'd prefer it if they PM'ed any of my characters, because I'm logged on as them much more frequently. So, though I don't mind OOC accounts, I think they are a distraction.

Actually, I've been having a slight problem with that. When I changed my username, everything changed on the outside, but when I clicked into an actual post, it still had the original username. Is there some way to fix that? Otherwise, I think it might be confusing to people.

Nope. That happens on IF. You have to repost everything because it won't update. If it really bugs you, switch to IPBfree, it's remarkably similar and this doesn't happen on that.

Most of the sites i've played on have employed an OOC account system as well as the general characteraccounts. I find it helps especially in identifying who is who on a board, so that you come to know a player as the player and not as the character you play with them with.

This is a good thing for getting to know your players, so that you can know the person and not just the character. Increase community spirit and stuff.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

Less is more. Having player-only accounts works in exactly the same way and surely by throwing in character accounts AS WELL you're just creating more work when you could work just as well with less.

I have to say as an admin and a member I like when staff have ooc accounts. As someone said it makes it easier to take announcements and updates.

Personally I am a huge fan of staying in character. I know a lot of times, like on CW when I was a member I had two characters and when I switched accounts it helped me switch mindsets.

On boards where I had one account and many characters, I'd find myself getting confused, having one character acting like another, or most of my characters acting like myself.

I think it's good to have OOC and IC seperated, and if your site offers enough, I think people will join regardless. Plus, how many times have people looked at a site, wanting to join but you've gotta join up as your character name, and maybe later you decide 'noooo, this just doesn't fit, I need a new name!" or something.

I think joining with an ooc account allows those who are unsure to explore and get to know others more, and hopefully to think out their character more carefully.

Well, there are my two cents hehe.

I think the idea of having IC and OOC accounts is a bad one, because in practice it wouldn't work. Who in their right mind would be bothered switching from an IC account to an OOC account to write 'lol me too' in the OOC section? That's a lot of time spent just to write three short words (or a bit more - or less) - especially when you've got slow internet so pages take a few minutes to load.

I dislike separate OOC and IC accounts so much that I don't even have an admin account on my site. Nothing important (like the rules) is posted in a fancy, impersonal, official name like 'Admin', it's in ruaidhri munroe and laoise casey and lucius malfoy. I've never had someone complain that they don't know who my characters are, especially since I have a thing in the info box pointing out that Emma is an admin and these are her characters.

Now, this isn't a discussion on APC vs APP (so you watch your off-topicness, Miss Panda :p) but I prefer APP. I've never found anyone who actually plays on APPs who gets confused about who plays what character.

To the OP: quite a lot of people do actually like APP (as is evident by Panda and Rhi-Rhi's big game, to mention just the two I can remember off the top of my head) so if you want to do that instead of APC you will still get plenty of people interested.