I've been talking with a few friends of mine on the XIN boards. They including myself want Mugen Hall to be rebuilt. However, it's very difficult because I have to weed out at least 70% to 80% of the general XIN population. It's a combination of the n00bs, the idiots, the cheaters, the drama starters, etc.

The massive OOC drama of the members is the leading cause of board deaths within the XIN RP community.

I do feel XIN itself has a great potential to be made into a great role-play forum. But, most of the members aren't good role-players. They've watched way too much Naruto, Ikki Tousen, etc.

I have a general idea on what to do.

1. Present Mugen Hall to a new group of people and not to the general XIN population. I credit GreyScale for presenting that idea.

2. Not advertise the board on the LifePoint1 website. Because that's where most XIN players have been getting their information in regards to the XIN boards.

3. Not advertise on the other XIN boards.

4. Ban the individuals that caused the drama on my last board. I credit Lazarus for that proposal.

I was wondering if there are any other effective suggestions.

Make a system of RP (stat system comes to mind, but that might not be your thing) that is either advanced enough or a long enough read that only the dedicated members will stick with you.

I've seen that having and exhibiting high quality posting tends to scare people who won't live up to those requirements. Of course that's not fool proof.

I'll definitely have to provide them with what quality posting means.

Well, without having a particularly clear idea of just what XIN is (something like Mortal Kombat?), I don't think I can offer any specific suggestions such as 'Institute X Rule' or 'Ban Y Players.' What you might do is look at whatever elements of XIN seem to attract/generate the most problems -- get handled badly, are misunderstood, serve as the focus for drama, etc. Then find a way to alter/codify/explain/regulate them so that the hassle is at least minimized, if not removed.

That's some of the things I'm planning to do. That's a problem I have noticed with the other XIN boards. XIN is somewhat as violent as Mortal Kombat. But there are no fatalities or killing in XIN. That's one aspect the other XIN boards fail to see. The board I dubbed as "XIN 2" is notorious for failing to see that aspect. XIN is pretty much going up against the system. But, I decided to put my own personal twist into the concept of XIN such as the adding of realistic aspects such as plausibility, logic, rationale, human behavior, etc.

I think I've gotten a grip on what attracts the most problems in XIN RPing.

My biggest problem is the OOC drama. I can quell the drama associated with the things in XIN RPing that causes it. While that is hard to quell, it is doable.

But, the other drama... It's out of my control... That drama is one massive OOC soap opera. That doesn't take place on the board itself. It's been taking place on PMs and IMs. At the end, it leaves me wondering why activity has been halted, etc.

The soap opera itself has been the leading killer of XIN boards. Quelling that drama is near impossible.

For example, I recently gotten enough information/evidence to suggest my former co-admin (who I'll call Alice) is one of the reasons the board died. I have reason to believe she's a drama queen and is constantly looking for attention. She made all these "seductress" characters on my board which had no depth to them. All those characters were doing were hooking up with guys. At the same time, she was leading players into falling for her while she was in a real life relationship to boost her confidence.

I learned that Alice may have sent naughty pictures to a friend of mine, the admin of the board I call "XIN 3A." I think it was during the time Alice was still dating this one guy, who was another staffer. And she got all angry because he was harmlessly making a playful flirt to another girl. But, it was Alice who led all these guys on.

That's one part of the soap opera.

EDIT: The naughty pictures were of herself from what I heard.

Gah! Seriously?

Yeah, that just reinforces my suggestion of advertising to a new group.

You could make the forum invite only for a little while. You know, invite only people that you know aren't connected to the other XIN-ners. Allow the forum to become fairly large, and then make it public. I can see why you wouldn't use this suggestion, though.

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Also, if you are very strict on the strength of abilities and the amount of abilities, you will keep out the Narutards who are used to having 2398 abilities (each of which are overpowered). Limit the amount you can use those abilities per battle/thread, too.

One of the things that is cool about XIN is that it isn't DBZ. In DBZ, abilities are used every second. As compared to XIN where fists were used way before any abilities.

I'd be better off advertising to a new group and build up the member base. I should be caring about the quality of members rather than the quantity of members. And you're right, one of the other problems I noticed with the XIN boards are the people that have watched way too much Naruto.

XIN and Naruto are different...

XIN and Dragon Ball Z are different...

You don't see Naruto-esque things performed in XIN.

You don't see Dragon Ball Z-esque things performed in XIN.

I do find Naruto and DBZ to be enjoyable, but I noticed a lot of XIN players take that to the extreme. Makes me want to shudder.

Think about it this way. The easier it is to defeat an opponent, the more godmoding and more OOC fights there will be.

Both of which you don't want. So, yeah, less DBZ/Naruto violence, more fist fighting.

At least, that is what I'd like to see.

That's actually true too.

Also, I learned this interesting thing. While XIN is combat heavy as it is one of the important cores (not the only important core), most XIN RPers don't know much about combat. They're all wanting to be the "best." But, they don't really know what it means to be the best.

Combat itself is complex. Perhaps RP combat is even more complex. Because there's so many technicalities included. Most of the combat they have seen are either from XIN or the various anime series. They're not exactly the best examples to get combat knowledge from.

Someone has said that you should make a rule about quality posts.... Give an example that you write or someone else that you know writes and basically say what is good about it:

- correct grammar
- fitting words
- little to no typos or spelling errors
- long enough length to reply to without it rambling too much

Then maybe make an example of a bad post and give why it's a bad post.

- grammar is shoddy
- words are mixed up
- lots of typos or spelling errors
- too short of a reply to really reply to

I've seen other boards use this technique and it can work pretty well.

Also, perhaps make a rule that any fights with DBZ/Naruto-like elements in them will be strictly monitered by you or another admin? If something goes too far... like being ooc or godmodding, you can make an admin post in it and say 'please stop godmodding because it is against the rules. this is a warning.'

Basically make it discouraged to godmod.

As far as combat... perhaps you can make people's stats and abilities something that they can't decide. Sort of like a random lottery.

Say ten people register in one day and they all get their stats. Say two of them are fairly strong, but not the best. One is really fast, but is not strong at all. Three are really weak in almost every area except for mental capacity. Four are kind of just average... not too strong or too fast or anything else.

And, as far as training themselves, perhaps you can make those that want to train record all the threads that their character is training in and for each thread, they get a certain amount of points, and, after awhile, whatever it is they are working on makes them able to run faster/be stronger/be smarter. Perhaps, though, you can make the amount of threads needed vary for each one and no one can train for more than one thing in one thread.

I definitely like that idea.

My next dilemma is how to weed out the members that cause the soap opera... More specifically, how do I find out who's part of the soap opera? Who's causing the soap opera and the drama?

That's something that you can't really do. Advertising to another crowd - say here at RPG-D for example - would help.

If someone who is very dramatic comes along, then you do have the right to ban, suspend, or warn them as the admin of the forum.

It is also not uncommon for admins to post 'help, these members are being drama llamas!' threads and most people here would not be shy to trying to help you if you explained the situation. That way you could get an opinion completely outside of the board itself - unbiased, that is.

You could, also, encourage members to inform you if someone is being a drama llama and why and then give examples. This, however, could be dangerous since some people don't like other people ooc on boards so they make up lies about others and spread them... and that's a whole other problem right there.

To put it simply: there are things you can do to make it less likely that drama llamas will come along, but this does not guarantee that they won't. There is no permanent solution to this that is known... to me, anyway.

That would be the best idea so far. My co-admin at the time "Alice" looked to be a pure drama llama. The drama wasn't evident on the board itself. It mainly carried out through PMs and IMs. Around the start of this year, we had our first quest to kick things off. It was a great quest with a very solid storyline. I needed Alice's help because her character was crucial and we needed to speed up the quest. She should have known that the quest takes first priority. When I needed her, I see her online on her basic player accounts picking up guys. Apparently, she felt that hooking up characters up with all these guys took priority over the board's first main event.

I'm probably going to make it where players are limited to possibly 4 to 5 player accounts. Most of my players never abused it. However, I saw that Alice was making all these accounts. She made two at my request because we needed more baddies. But everything else, Alice made these characters that looked to be the sole purpose of hooking up with guys.

Also, the falling out with Alice and her then b/f, who was another staffer also hurt activity. I trusted one of my event characters to him. Alice was griping that he was playfully flirting with another girl. I do admit that doesn't score brownie points. But, compared to what Alice was doing and was allegedly doing, it was very much the lesser of the two evils.

Alice's b/f had nothing but nice things to say about her. He'd bring Alice up, talked about how much he loved her, spoke highly of her, etc. I do believe him because he was calm and cheerful. While Alice always sounded so pessimistic.

When I rebuild, I'll probably ban her from joining. I do feel she was using the attention she's received on my board to compensate for the lack of attention she received in real life. And she's been harassing a friend of a friend on XIN 3A.

I do know I'll be banning this one player named "Karl." I already mentioned him a few times in a few threads. He is also one of the main reasons that activity on my board took a massive hurting. I've already talked about Karl long enough.

But in a nutshell, a good portion of the soap opera between members didn't come from the board itself.

Mainly people didn't tell me about it until it was too late.

I had even found out of a love triangle involving two of my staffers and a member on XIN 3A.

That's an example of how I learned that "online romances" played a major part of the soap opera.

I limit players to four characters straight off, until I know they can produce the goods: give decent posts with decent grammar, and keep all their characters active. When I know the players a bit better, I will allow them more characters. So far, the most character one player has is five - my fellow Admin wanted a particular canon character because he's from her first fandom, which is pretty small anyway, and I was eventually persuaded to take a fifth character because he was going to be needed eventually.

And there are at least two other players on there who have four, who I would not hesitate about allowing to have a fifth character. So the suggestion about limiting character numbers is a good one, but be prepared to be flexible for your good players.

That's pretty much the best way to go. Frankly, I've been getting annoyed at players dropping their characters because they got "bored" and made up new characters. My members did that in moderation and so forth. However, my co-admin at the time made up all these characters on the board.

She made these two characters up that are sisters. Yet, the two characters were no different and had no depth to them. Alice was spitting out one character after another, yet they had no depth. All of them were seductresses. I strongly felt she was making these characters only for the sake of hooking up with guys to boost her self confidence. That's one of the things I should have done in the beginning.