I'm just curious, but... why do people feel the need to restrict things? I've seen restrictions at wolf rpgs that ban a certain colour of wolf (when the colour is not vital to the plot, and does not influence their magical powers or anything), or when a forum bans joining as a certain type of creature.

I'm just curious but... shouldn't you be trying to get members? Who cares what they join as-- having a new, active member should be what you want, right?

Am I the only one who finds this sort of thing (banning people from joining as something) extremely stifling? It's like they're trying to beat all the creativity out of you just so their numbers are even!

Banning a certain gender, originals, canons, species (humans, elves, etc), or anything else just bothers me a lot.

Wouldn't it make more sense to allow a new joiner to join with whatever the heck they want, but maybe... restrict a person's second or third character?

Or even just say 'Hey guys, we have a lot of elves here, could someone try joining as a werewolf?'

I mean, I know I wouldn't immediately close the tab I am viewing an rpg on if they asked me nicely, rather than stated point blank 'no, you cannot do this.'

And I mean, I get it, you want to keep your numbers even and prevent it from becoming weighted, but... is it really THAT important? I mean, honestly, nothing is equal in these days. If you go to school, the construction course you take might only have one girl. If you head to downtown Toronto, depending where you go, you'll see a different population, a mix of ages, genders, etc.

But does it really matter in the grand scheme of things?

Anyways, I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on this. :]

I totally agree with you. I don't see how or why people can put such heavy restrictions on what characters they want to have. Things like "no males" or "no more blondes" seems rather absurd.

I have only had one site where I had so many members that putting a restriction on admittance seemed logical. And even then, I didn’t do it. I will take every new member I can. If they show an interest in the plot, want to be active in the community, and will contribute to the plot, I would love to have you. Your character can add something! If there are 4:1 with more guys than girls and this new member wanted to make a guy, go ahead! As long as he isn’t some model who is smarter than Einstein and everyone loves him, I am good. If you make a real character, a person with depth, I couldn’t care less if we had one more guy. We have a member with a character with a unique person controlling them and thus, we should get unique, different results from that character.

I would be much more prone to having a rule like, for every two characters of the same gender you need to make one of the opposite. Even, if you make a male your next character must be female. But even then, if a person had been RPing for years and they have a handful of token characters that they have developed, I am much more inclined to allow it, simply because there will be much more plottage from that one character than from any character made to follow a rule.

well. most people put these restrictions on their forum to keep a balance between the different types of characters and stuff, cause really, it's no fun to just RP with a single majority type of characters. however, on my site, if it should come the need to, i'd rather just put like a notice like.

"we need more ____. a [insert reward] for whoever makes ____." instead of just banning making other races. it actually does ruin the forum to some extent, especially if you already had a character in your mind, which i seem to find always happens to me before i join a forum. if i see it has a restriction on the type of character i want to make, it's a major turn-off.

to some extent, it almost ruins the forum atmosphere.

The only thing we [as admin] restricted was on a HP rp. And it didn't pertain to new members, it pertained to those already on the board. We asked that they didn't make any new Slytherin characters [sorting hats tend to be predictable, let's not lie] because the ratio was something obnoxious. However any new members joining could lean the sorting quiz however they wanted -shrug- it worked and we ended up lifting the ration a few weeks later.

If a forum can't accommodate a character that I have thought up and want to play with, after I have read the rules and plot typically, and then come to the dreaded restriction, I wont join. Not to sound all like, pretentious, I like to write what I know and what I like. And if I don't know it and don't like it... well... my posts won’t be good and I won’t be able to get into the plot. So perhaps it is better that I didn't join.

The wolf color thing I've done before, because I've only run realistic sites and solid colored wolves were fairly rare in the area of that role play (as they are in a lot of areas). So there was a limitation on them if we got too many but it was never really enforced >3 People were pretty good about not giving me a black and white pack.

Atm on my site I have restrictions on special species, because it is a wolf role play and not a scavenger role play, but the scavengers are fun and add to drama and plots. So we limit the scavengers, and as more wolves join the area, more scavengers are allowed to be role played. Same for lone wolves, because otherwise we'd have a big giant group of antisocial loners and no one in the pack. It's really just a realism thing, though, and to keep plots going when they pop up. The loners and scavengers are just special things. If someone requested to have a loner or a scavenger when there's no spots open I'd probably say yes -shrug- But with the limit its easier to keep things well balanced.

On the other hand, banning things on other types of forums and banning certain things - to me - doesn't make sense. Like banning boys when there's too many on a people role play; there's never an equal gender ratio irl. Why try to make a perfect world? I'd never do that even if I had a big giant site full of girls; I'd make a boy and start a trend ;D

I was once on an RP which I joined with my male character (Ian) and they told me that if I wanted another character, it would have to be a female. Ok, so I joined with my character Jolie, who's MTF. I'd been dying to play her out in an AU setting, and thought this was the place to do it. Nope, they told me that for their purposes, she was a male character, because she still had male anatomy when I joined her. I respectfully disagreed, and eventually they did accept her, but she was railroaded (by an admin) in the very first thread I put up for her, and I was unable to do anything with her about midway through, so I quit.

I'm hesitant to agree, Tammi, since your post swings from palatable to extremely biased. Pointless stifling, like, uh, outlawing white werewolves for no reason in a werewolf RP that has no other color restrictions... yeah, it's kind of dumb, but it's the admin's choice. What you've apparently failed to realize is that if someone upholds that rule, they've most likely realized that it will be costing them a few (or more) members down the line. I'd like to believe that not everyone is so desperate for members that they're willing to toss their positions to the winds just so Jimmy Jackass can have his "omg wite wearwolf!!11!"

And seriously, that "all the creativity comment" made me RAGE hard. I can only hope that you were kidding, because that sort of comparison is ludicrous at best.

I need to stop reading rants.

{Disclaimer: If I was running a werewolf RP, I'd make sure that everyone was ON FIRE because I hate werewolves, but that's not the point so stop reading the goddamn disclaimer jesus christ I haven't even said anything in like a sentence oh wow this is like 5 sentences but all run into one giant run-on sentence man I hate periods and why the hell are you still reading this?}

I restrict lightly/moderately, depending on what the site needs at the time. I won't restrict ages, gender, or similar physical things. They tend to even themselves out over time. I will restrict jobs when they become too popular, and certain canon things, because they tend to get really imbalanced and it's harder to correct. (Has anyone else noticed that members who register as a female character tend to die off faster?)

At one point there were around forty members on AG, and probably ten of them were in Level 2 (Magical Law Enforcement). L2 went on the Currently Restricted list because we were on the verge of a police state, haha. Sometimes, in order to encourage creativity with characters, I've had to close off options like that. Not everyone can be an auror, business owner, or reporter. On the same note, not everyone can be an animagus, veela, or legilimens.

It's not like I restrict these things just to keep a balance; if there are too many of one character type, it's harder to carve your own niche at the site. It's like..."Yay! Another young female auror to go with the other six! I have...absolutely no idea what I could do with you that hasn't already been done! Sorry, but I'm going to plot with this guy over here instead, cause he's an original."

Along with the Currently Restricted list we have an Excellent Opportunities list; jobs and character types that we could use at the time. Hopefully that shows I'm not just playing a numbers game. I want everyone to fit in and really be an important part of the site, and sometimes that requires a closed job opportunity.

Personally I find it more restrictive to tell your members that they can only make certain types of characters after they join. I find it more honest to say up front "We're not allowing that occupation at the moment, but we could use someone in this job instead. Besides that occupation, you can do what you like. (And I don't care if your character is male or female)."

Honestly . . . this doesn't bother me a whole lot. Sure, I think it can be a little annoying and I won't join a board if this is too extreme, but in general I don't care too much. Personally, I've never done this because I usually put up the stats (number of male, female, age groups, etc) where everyone can see before they join and then they can make their own decision as to what group they ought to play.

I like when admins say things like "we need more x" but they don't put a ban on things because it tells me what they need. If they do put a ban on things, then I either work around it if I really want to join or I leave. Pretty simple for me.

Well ... no, actually. What I want is a new, active member who wants to play in my game. My game concept has, for example, no vampires. So somebody shopping around a vampire character does not, by definition, want to play in my game. My game world is my creation, which I choose to share with other people. Why should I let someone 'beat all the creativity out of me' by forcing it to have vampires?

On the topic if creativity, I don't get this fetishization of original characters. To my way of thinking, it takes far more creativity to take a known character and make him/her fresh and new than it does to just say 'my character is creative because ... because ... I created it.' (The Quicksilver in my game has easily ten times the creativity of any OC I've ever seen).

That said, I don't know why an admin would forbid something that has no relevance to the game concept, but it's their game and their concept, so maybe they know something I don't. They have the right to say what form their creation takes, just as players do. If a given character and a given game don't fit together, there are plenty of other characters and plenty of other games.

I've never banned anything completely, but I will put a restriction on the amount of a certain gender or year to join, at least until they even out. Although, I generally don't have that many problems. And if someone really wants to join, I generally let them join, cause I'm nice like that.

Everyone is biased. o__o We all have our own biases and started roleplaying at different forums, different times, etc. Pointing out that I am biased is a bit redundant, and is sort of like pointing out that masking tape is a pale tan. It's implied. P:

Perhaps I did not phrase my post properly-- I was just expressing my thoughts on how necessary it is to ban things concerning ones appearance, species, etc. At the same time, I offered my own opinion, which yes, is biased.

My bias is that I lean toward the 'that's silly to ban things!' angle. Meanwhile another person might have a completely different bias.

I am by no means trying to be subjective. Part of my post is expressing my own opinion, so of course, it's biased. ;]

Whoops! Heh, those were examples, not like... saying people should let you join with some specie regardless of your plot.

If your board is a high school rpg, I might use Grades 9, 10, 11 and 12 as examples for being restricted. If you restrict anyone from joining as a grade 12 because you have six more in that group than the next highest, that's another example.

If your game does not have vampires, you wouldn't restrict them in the sense, since they don't exist in the board! :3

I've only banned certain things when I've had WAAAAAAAAAAAY too many of that particular thing. Mainly female characters. Like, just extremes; like some websites have 2342398472983472983 females and three males? that's when I ban females, just as an example. On my wolf sites I always ban albinos, only because they're so freeking rare.

I have placed restrictions on my site in the past. We are running a high fantasy realm and we had TONS of Vampires. As they are an addition to the high fantasy world, I had no issue with blocking vampire applications until some of the others ceased to be or left the boards later.

Another block I had to put on was for Dragons. They are exceptionally territorial and a small place like Illiria (our main play area) could only accomodate one without them both stripping the land bare in their hunt for food. When we had a dragon in residence, I had no choice but to stop others from joining.

I only ban things for practical reasons and it would never be something as petty as gender, age etc

^ totally agree about the male/female problem.

Having a 3 to 1 ratio of females to males gets really tiresome.
Especially when you play a lot of males.
So I've banned females usually at least once on all my boards.
Recently though because my races consist of angel/demon/lost soul.
There has been an upspike in slutty female demons... how cliche so not only are they females but really stereotypical demon ones WHICH WE DON'T WANT. So, we've closed that at least twice.

Well, I think it depends. To ban a gender or an appearance trait (like having black hair) is kind of pointless.

However, say... the forum is over-run by vampires. Think like... 10 vampires for every 3 humans. Then that would make sense.

Or if there are 10 females for every male... That also makes sense to ban females.

Or how about certain grades in high school rpgs? Say, like... 10 freshmen, 11 sophomores, 25 juniors, and 27 seniors.

In all those cases, it would make sense to temporarily ban vampires/females/juniors/seniors until the count goes up a bit.

However, to ban someone based on hair color/age is a bit... pointless.

Case 1:
On a town RP I know of, musicians were restricted because there were more of them than ANYTHING else. So a small ban would make sense there.

Case 2: When there's 76 girls and 32 boys, maybe not a ban, but a suggestion to strongly consider making a boy? Because when you're the only guy on a site of girls, your character will get attacked with relationship plots.

Case 3: When people are generally signing up as way too many of the same thing and you need more of the less popular choice to get a plot started, then you REALLY need to consider restriction. =P

I think it's dumb. xD But I could care less about balances and ratios. I figure if people join a bajillion females to the game and then want a heterosexual romance plot and can't get it because there are no males--hah, they have only themselves to blame and they can figure out the obvious solution on their own (and the way I see it, that goes for anything, not just genders). P: As it is, my games have twice the number of males to females (yep, you heard me right--we have more males than females), and it's not a problem at all. Then again, the people aren't obsessed with the whole romance thing. And when it comes to other balance issues, they tend to figure it out on their own.

Besides, yes, games do lose members that way, but aside from that--it seems pointless. If I reeeally want to play a female but I have to join a male first, a male I really don't wanna play...what's to stop people from joining the male just so they can join the SUPER AWESOME FEMALE THEY UBERLY WANT and then...neglecting the character they didn't really want. It just seems unnecessary.

I don't exactly see a problem in restricting certain things. Nor is everyone running an RP actively looking for new members.

We regularly restrict things in our games. We also generally close the game after we have a certain number of people join. And despite this, the quality of the games I play is good enough that we usually still have a 'waiting list' of sorts, in case someone drops.

I completely agree with you. Now, don't go popping into Owen's and say "But you say 'now accepting all ages and fine arts'" That's simply up to entice people to come in and make them think hmm, these people are open to anything. yay! Make sense? I'm never changing that part of the image even if we only have one guy and 50% of our student population is in art. Who cares? as long as you're RPing what you want on my site, I could care less.

It *does* irritate me when I have a character in mind, and then they aren't allowed. But I do see the point of it; over population of similar people makes it not so fun. Balance is good!

EDIT: I wanted to add that if a site has a ban on something I would like to play there, I don't join. I would rather not join at all then join a character I don't really care for. =]

I can see both sides of it. On my board, the only thing I limit is special powers. I haven't said "you can make a character as long it doesn't have this, this, this, or this power." I've just made it clear that we're not going to accept every special that someone applies for. Mostly, this is because in the world the game is set in, there aren't many people with these powers in the first place. ^_^

I can see both sides of it, too. Right now, on my board, we have a healthy mix. We're a little bottom heavy on the freshmen and sophomores (on a college site, not high school), but I think we have a healthy mix of male and females on the board. Sure, we could use some more of everything.

Now, if it gets too out of hand, I won't restrict, but I will encourage new members to pick up a different type of character, whether male or older or whatever, but I won't outright restrict. A lot of that is personal experience with my board, though, too, because I have some older characters that are fine and dandy interacting with younger ones. In the college level, the split isn't as great as high school, and the difference between an 18 year old freshman and 22 year old senior is whether they can drink or not legally.

Well I get the points of both of the sides...

I personally don't see anything wrong with restricting some things (that make sense) but it is a bit of a turn-off to enter a board that seems nice but see they have a ban on females, just as I was looking to play a female character. But the restriction is there for a reason so can't help it. I won't dwell on it or feel extremely annoyed or curse the day the members of the staff were born.

I have never restricted things on my board but if I see it's necessary then, most likely, I will. I'm selfish enough to do that. :p

Also, I'll point out that restricting female characters from a game is simply ludicrously laughable to me...but generally in the games I'm in, there's me and one or two other female players.

I don't think I'd restrict anything, but I'd definitely warn members that I'll be raising the standards for any application that involves something we need less of. So basically -- it'll be tougher.

Well, I restrict the amount of people who have a DeathNote in my RP. why? Because if everyone has a DN then no one will be chasing anyone. I'm also dropping one of what I thought was a crucial rule...but it drops the mystery and suspense down a lot. I'm dropping my 'People with a DeathNote need permission to kill' rule...because to be fair, I'm going to have an admin-regulated one, and someone who is planning to join will have a regulated one. But then, only two others will be allowed a DN. There's more fright and mystery if Kira figures out your name and face and then writes it down. No character should be permanent in DN...

Went off on a tangent there...Oops. :sweat: Ok, well, I think a few things should be regulated/restricted, if the board has a lot of them. EX.- A board is predominantly female, so the admin tells everyone that for a short time, no female characters will be allowed until there's a few more males.

I think to a certain extent, there needs to be some sort of restrictions on every board because if there's not you get people trying to join with characters who just won't fit. For example, if you're running a high-school RPG then you're probably not gonna want characters who aren't high-school ages. I pretty much always put a restriction on age, but it's only ever a minimum age because I'd prefer that the original characters on the board are over 18.

On my current board I don't let people choose their special abilities, they get dealt out at random, that way I don't end up with tons of people of one type and next to none of another. I know some people don't like the admin having this kind of control, but I'd rather people know that it's random selection done by the staff when it comes to powers so that I don't end up with people coming in expecting something and complaining of they don't get it.

But I don't see the point in restrictions on things like gender and appearence when it's things like you've got a few more of a specific gender or most of the characters are blondes or something. For gender I might put out a request asking people to join as a specific gender if the ratio's along the lines of like 10: 1. And for appearence, I only ask that people don't use a face that's already in use, but that's pretty much standard.

Right now at my board, we're run over by 1. Skywalkers 2. Sith Prestige & 3. Females. We've put in our Header what we need and what we don't want to see, but at this point, we are not planning any sort of ban on types of character. It's pretty silly, in my opinion. I've been on sites in the past where I've finished a female character, but I hadn't registered while I was writing the application. Then they put a ban on the female characters, and I'm stuck with a character I've been working so hard on. I was upset, and angry. Even when they stopped the ban, I didn't join.
If push comes to shove, I won't blame sites for putting a ban on certain types of characters. I would only blame a site for putting a ban on their site if the ratio was somewhat close. I've seen some where they only need 8 of one to even their ratio out, so they just ban everything else. It's insane. Only do it if it is absolutely necessary!

The whole banning thing really turns me off.

In my opinion it depends on the plot and the setting of the rpg. Some restrictions turn down people but on some sites, restrictions are needed.

My best example I have seen are on Harry Potter forums. If you don't put restrictions on the house. Some sites end up having 4 characters in one house and 12 in another. This really gets boring as it gives more chance to that house to win the House Cup.

Though like I said it depends on the kind of rpg in question. If you go to hard on restrictions though it gets boring. Especially in fantasy rpg where certain races have different abilities.

As said, if it has an effect on the plot or there's something really out of balance. . . some things need to be restricted. It's important to keep things running smoothly (you can't have 200 mage characters and 1 non-magical person when that's intensely unrealistic for the game), but it's also important to give people as much creative freedom as possible.

If someone's forcing new members to join as red-heads or females (unless there are 20 males and 1 female), than it's kind of ridiculous.

This is why there is a thread at Meliora that states what type of character's we'd really like to see. People often ask what a site needs when they consider joining. It's good to have this info available because you can express what you want without forcing it on people, and those members that'd like to help out with shortages and such can do so. Of course, this isn't as helpful as restrictions if you REALLY need a certain type of character.

I think it all depends on the site itself or the types of characters that are allowed. On the sites I usually run we have a few rare species of characters on there. Right away in our rules/species list we state that these characters are indeed rare and have limited spots available and therefore PM an admin before making one to see if there are any spots left.

On my old site we were over run by supernatural hunters (mainly female). Things like powerful demons, psychics, and rare creatures were already capped.

If I do restrict a certain type of character it is because it makes sense because what's the point of having 50 hunters and 10 supernatural creatures?

Usually I ban until an activity check and then see what opens up. As we get more of other types of characters I then open up the bans again. I also require that anyone who has a rare creature to be active and post once a week (I use the same rule for popular canon characters that a lot of people like to play).

It is unfair for a member to take the spot of something like a psychic and then not play them for a month when someone else would really like the character but can't have it cause the spot is taken.

I prefer a nice ratio of characters on sites I play on. Like one right now I'm the only solely good sided character. Everyone is neutral or evil. Yes it means a lot of conflict but no alliances or someone to have common ground with.

I can understand where both sides are coming from on this issue, and while I don't like implementing bans on certain characters, at least one board I've posted on has done so (and it was still fun to play on).

I think character bans make more sense in non-original settings. For instance, my (fledgling) board is based on a book series which has ultra-powerful races in its mythos, so currently I've told people that such characters will only be played by an established member with a really, really good application.

However, I don't think I'd ban characters based on gender, hair colour, etc. I'd rather restrict characters based on the rarity of a character's race or class or how powerful a character is.

I also offer rewards to people who choose to make "weaker" characters or character types that aren't yet in play on the board (currently, we have lots of openings, so I'm not in a hurry to ban certain races.)

i'm happy to say i've been banned form every site i've been on. though i would say everyone of the sites were led by childish admins who didn't know right from wrong, i feel no one gives a damn....that is all...

That's an interesing attitude. Are you absolutely sure that none of the bans were in any way your fault?

After having a game with restrictions on character types, I can report that this didn't happen. One experience out of a dozen, maybe, but it isn't something people default to. I thought I would have this problem with AS when I had a rule on original/canon arrangement. If you joined with a canon, then you had the choice of canon or original for your next. Then if you joined as original, your next had to be canon. This was, back in the day, the direct result of underplayed/under-represented canons in a canon friendly game. When the plot had wide open opportunities for canon characters, people were too 'afraid' to take the leap.

So I pushed them.

What happened was a bigger influx of canons all of which were played, developed and even carried over onto AS:MM when it opened. I don't think there was a single instance of players taking on a character because they had to, then abandoning it. On the game I'm running now, I don't have restrictions, but I wouldn't rule it out if things got out of hand.

While canon/original isn't the best example of my next point, too many of one character type can make a game unattractive. I've been part of sooooooooooo many HP games where they're all Irish, or they're all American, or French, or from London, yet they have never met each other before. A game can stagnate without variation and I think it's a good idea that the staff realise this and try to do something about it. Basically, a player who is unwilling to bend won't join. What you get instead is a player joining who knows just how they can accomodate you, or are willing to take the leap because, hey! They like your game.

I can understand the difficulty of having a character in mind before you join and not being able to play them as-is, but you are a player on the outside looking in. Have you taken the time to look at how many of x-type this game has? Have you considered how your character will be different enough from all the others they have? Have you considered why your character has enough going for them that this game would benefit most from this character exactly as is?

If you have, then you have a strong case to appeal against the ban and you can deal with it admin to player with all your ducks in a row.

Well I agree with you. I know that there should be a balance I guess, but I don't like the fact that I can't be what I want (though I usually play males). I think it should be encouraged. The fact there could be a rule that you can't have more than two female characters or something like that. Not to ban the gender all together.

On a forum that I joined a few months ago (and now admin on xD) there was a restriction to only accepting one member group of a possible 12. There were 6 male, 6 female - high school cliques. I joined, and then as soon as I was accepted, they opened up the other cliques. xD Pretty typical, but I didn't mind. He's been one of my most awkward characters ever, and it's pretty fun to play him. But since I became an admin, I've noticed that several of the cliques fill up quicker, so instead of waiting until ten more people join the one member group, we set the others to limits, but then if more than five cliques were closed off, we opened them back up, and just said that we'd "appreciate if people signed up as..." etc. [= So I don't really like to force - just encourage.