1) Believe half of what you see, not what you hear

[indent]Speaking as GM and as a player, I will not join an RP with more than one player that I simply can't work with. This is brutal, but true. I do this for fun and self-development, and while people who are willing to learn and teach are great people to work with because they test you in surprisingly similar ways, people who will not patiently learn or patiently teach, as I discovered in a game reasonably recently (by my own standards), are people that I simple cannot work with. I won't fight other players to 'work something out' - I like to be able to trust others to work with me to find a compromise. A good example, I think, is that of myself and [@McHaggis] in my latest game, literally in the last twenty-four hours. We were both pitching for a mutually exclusive role, but because we have played together in the past and there is a degree of trust, we were able to work together on a compromise that serves both our characters well.

If I didn't know McHaggis previously, this wouldn't have been possible. I would have been reluctant to suggest an idea without knowing how she would respond and without being confident it was a good idea she would work with based on her interests as a player and trust in her, her trust in me as a fellow player and in this case a GM, and an understanding of how she worked.

What I'm getting at (and, I have to say, reluctantly), is that understanding of other players matters. I won't say reputation, as I've played with other players with great reputations and found them to let me down and, I'm ashamed to say, feel I have something of a reputation I've also dishonoured to other GMs through one reason or another - so hopefully no hard feelings either way there. But, ultimately, sometimes you know who you click with and who knows what you're getting at, and that they're good people to focus on. From there, I feel one can expand and take a chance on people who're somewhat untested in a given group without worrying too much as group should carry them in (as I found with the newcomers to the reasonably successful if short-lived Wolf Manor).

Tl;dr - know your strengths, as a group. Then, build on them.
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2) Know yourself, know others

[indent]A funny question. I feel like I've earned something of a reputation, which may or may not be borne out through retrospective appraisal, for murder mysteries, based on Wink Murder and Wolf Manor, both of which were too short-lived, mostly based on my own failures but also unfortunate timing with regards to a personal meltdown. Either way, at least while the two game were running simultaneously, I was highly buoyed and thrilled by people indicating in this section of the forum that they were reading the games that I was driving (though I by no means take full credit for them - good players are as important as the GM), even though they weren't participating in them. They were interested in and actively following the storylines, presumably based on interest in the plot (which was me) or the writing (the players).

Now, it's funny. Even though I feel I screwed both games up, through, as I will freely admit, over-ambitiousness and personal distractions (in both cases), they were, I feel, were well-regarded at the time and highly valued by the players now. Your ([@Gowi]) positive attitude to Wink Murder, which I really feel I personally felt I really let down, both for myself and others, inspires my current profile title, and, apparently, you regard me as a decent GM. That means a lot to me. But, at the same time, while violently doubting myself, and trying to foolishly start a game called [i]Hardly Divine[/i] at an obviously inopportune time for me to take that commitment seriously (while asking others to do the same), I maybe have something, at least among my friends, as something you might call a 'reputation'.

So that's the background I'm coming from as I return to RPG. Nobody is perfect. But people that 'get' what I do seem to really 'get' it, in spite of my very obvious flaws. Then again, people who might've been judging me might've kept schtum out of politeness or understanding or both or some other reason. You never truly know what people think of you - but there are some people, I find, you can rely on time and time again to take a punt on your ideas, or who bring their ideas to you based on mutual understanding of what kind of response each can expect. I don't want to say 'strangers are bad' and I try to make a point of giving my games nowadays space for newcomers to prove themselves.

Tl;dr - I don't think forum-wide reputation is a thing. Knowing the circles you're working in and the expectations and eccentricities of them is key, not that I advocate elitism or exclusionism.[/indent]

3) Hope for the best, prepare for the worst

[indent]My reputation is, I think, a mixed one. Some things I drop out of just because it doesn't 'click', and some games I've had to allow to die because of my own failings and distractions. I fully expect people to take my strengths and weaknesses on board as they assess me as both a player and a GM. The thing is, RPing is so frequently random or dependent on factors beyond one's prescience that it's simply not a reasonable proposition to judge people forever based on their mistakes nor to be so over-awed by players who seem good only to find oneself feeling let down. All of this stuff changes from game to game anyway: I recently tried an NRP properly (rather than previous half-hearted efforts) to find myself simultaneously bogged down in the difficulties and thriving on the opportunities. Everything is always in flux in this field and to try to control for every variable is a fool's mission.[/indent]