Haven't Staffed In A Few Years...

So I was an AVID RPer about 5 years ago. Then I started college, which drained all time for energy since i took off more then i could chew, then in the space of a year, i dropped out of college, met a man, married said man, and moved out into the woods. between work, and MMORPGs, and marriage (which don't let anyone fool you, is a lot of work in and of itself) i kind of seperated a bit from my RPG and with it Staffing proclivities.

I Just recently started RPing again, around 7 months or so, and this time I've got my husband in on the gig. He's a brand new baby bird RPer, but he's learning so quickly and I'm so proud of him. But my own innate sense of "OMG your doing it wrong!!!" has overwhelmed me, as it usually does on sites that I'm only a member on, and we decided that we wanted to start our own site.

Fast foward to about two weeks ago, when we started working on our X-Men site in earnest. We are currently preparing to open this weekend, and I have questions to staff members who didn't trake the five year hiatus that I did.

What is "hot" now?
In RPing the past few months, I've seen that everyone is CRAZY addicted to dohtml. I have it on our site, primarily because I like the style that it lends my profiles, and the plot, and the timeline...and pretty much all of my site documentation is dohtml. But I've noticed that people like to post in the html as well. And I'll be honest with you, it irritates the crap out of me. Probably because I'm old school I can deal with it a couple of times, but after a while I'll shy away from any RPer that uses these as a rule. My question: Is this make or break for a site currently? Will I be able to say in my rules that HTML isn't allowed IC and not chase off a ton of members?

PLOT:
Do people generally still enjoy large overarching story-lines? Or are they mainly little individual plots that people play with one another's characters? For a while on the site that I was playing on, there were boardwide plots, but possibly because of admin's being busy, they never really got off the ground, and no one seemed to ask about them, they were content to go along with "Oh, I have a boyfriend, but that guy is hot too...and while we are at it so is that chick." I'm not against that, but I LOVE boardwide plots, and this being an X-Men site, My husband and I have a TON up our sleeve. Is this all going to be for naught?

...I forgot my other questions...I may come back with more later, but I think for now these are sufficient.

I wouldn't begin to presume to know what is hot or not these days. I have no idea. I don't even care. I can tell you exactly what two whole writers like; me and Cyn. That's it.

And that's what we do.

As long as you stay true to your priorities, and have fun? I think that you'll do ok. Really, it's not a business, we're not here to rake in cash, or impress the Dow Jones..so the take away has to be in fun, in satisfaction over stories you love, and in finding like minded people. People that will like you, like a certain style, a certain flair, a certain lean to things. It's more a weeding out than an an active try in attracting others. They'll, believe it or not, find you, not the other way 'round. Least that's how it's worked for us...

That is helpful Cambryn. I guess my largest concern at this point is that I know I can be a little rigid at times, and militant. I'm trying desperately to avoid that this go around, lol.

What is "hot" now?
In RPing the past few months, I've seen that everyone is CRAZY addicted to dohtml. I have it on our site, primarily because I like the style that it lends my profiles, and the plot, and the timeline...and pretty much all of my site documentation is dohtml. But I've noticed that people like to post in the html as well. And I'll be honest with you, it irritates the crap out of me. Probably because I'm old school I can deal with it a couple of times, but after a while I'll shy away from any RPer that uses these as a rule. My question: Is this make or break for a site currently? Will I be able to say in my rules that HTML isn't allowed IC and not chase off a ton of members?

I don’t think it will since anyone who isn’t dohtml savvy tends to just post without using any kind of template at all and the only places that I’ve seen HTML still in use is for plot ads, journals and things of that nature since not all forum hosts are dohtml compatible and that’s all many know how to code with. Enforcing a rule that states that you must use templates when posting would probably turn some away as well as refusing to post with anyone that doesn’t use templates, but it doesn’t sound like you’re against just plain old posting without the frills.

PLOT:
Do people generally still enjoy large overarching story-lines? Or are they mainly little individual plots that people play with one another's characters? For a while on the site that I was playing on, there were boardwide plots, but possibly because of admin's being busy, they never really got off the ground, and no one seemed to ask about them, they were content to go along with "Oh, I have a boyfriend, but that guy is hot too...and while we are at it so is that chick." I'm not against that, but I LOVE boardwide plots, and this being an X-Men site, My husband and I have a TON up our sleeve. Is this all going to be for naught?

Here I will say that you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot force him to drink. You can have very engaging plots and sub-plots and still only have a very small percentage who will participate and be involved while the rest just meander along with their personal plots and casual everyday type of post. I personally LOVE board-wide plots and try to get people involved in them as much as I can, but you can only prod so much before they start thinking of you as that annoying gnat that just won’t go away. My suggestion there is not to get discouraged if that happens and work with the people who DO want to be highly involved with the board-wide plot and make it too tempting for the others to continually ignore.


People can be very finicky at times and once they get an idea in their head, they want to run it until it’s completed. They can be sporadic in their participation, but the important thing is that they are getting involved somehow and are enjoying themselves on your site. Good luck and I hope that your site is successful!

Most writers I know are, when it comes to their 'babies', their creations. We pour a lot into making a setting, a story, a scene. Shrugs. We're a little bit jealous and whacked out by seeing our vision mauled and manhandled by those we perceive as not getting what we're trying to create. Cyn and I are. We're at peace with our weirdnesses. And yes, that is a word. But as we've gotten older we're both a bit more chill. A bit. Maybe.

Look at the whole of the RP as a first draft rather than a finished product. That'll help you not be rigid at all.

Too-rigid admins are the #1 killer of RPGs that are already up and running. Being strict can help and be necessary to some point if you are running a roleplay for highly skilled writers, but the important thing is to not view it as a fan fic. Also, resist the temptation to add new rules. Just don't do it. Each new rule you add is like a brick sealing the game in and eventually cutting off its air supply.

What's "hot" ? Blindly copy-catting what everyone else is doing, regardless.

What's changed? Some of us are seeing the light - roleplays should be about reading and writing first, and common sense second.

I don't see how that is a change. There've always been people in roleplaying who have stood out from the herd.

I wouldn't worry about a game having HTML vs. not HTML. We don't have any HTML or Do HTML, we get thousands of posts. I think if people out there are splitting hairs about joining this or that game based on what kind of formatting it has for its posts means that probably none of those games they're trying to pick from has much to make it distinct.

What you want is something fresh and different. And if you're short on ideas for that, go out looking at as many different kinds of forums, roleplaying games and other types of creative sites as you can. It will widen your view and get you thinking new ideas.