We need to start a coalition of reliable roleplayers.

or at least honest ones

its a little disheartening when your rp gets a sudden spurt of interest every so often and you bend over backward to adjust a story for them, and suddenly they disappear.

its even MORE irritating when these people have their online status thing hidden, so you really have no idea if they're just ignoring you or if they got hit by a bus irl

@Mercenary Lord

Tell me about. it brother. The invisible status thing is like, motherfucking. talking to the dark. Response rise up from the waters like a lovecraftian message from the old ones. It's more anxiety amplifiing than a angry Austrian trying to annex your backyard.

@Mercenary Lord@ScreenAcne Pssst...

You can see how long it's been since a hidden user has been online if you put them on your friends list.

The woes of running two large-ish, active-ish, high maintenance-ish RPs at the same time.

Seeing a bunch of questions be asked in an interest check that would be answered if they actually read the fucking interest check.

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or at least honest ones

its a little disheartening when your rp gets a sudden spurt of interest every so often and you bend over backward to adjust a story for them, and suddenly they disappear.

its even MORE irritating when these people have their online status thing hidden, so you really have no idea if they're just ignoring you or if they got hit by a bus irl

Just check their recent activity. If they're posting everywhere BUT your RP, they're probably flaking.

My rule of thumb is assume off the hop at least a quarter of my players will drop in the first two months and only be concerned about keeping the core group happy. Overall, people are joining your game, so you shouldn't have to bend over to accomodate everyone and everything. That's not to say not listening to suggestions or being inflexible, it's more like putting your foot down on the rules and lore-related stuff while being flexible about mechanics and player agency. Right now in an RP I've been co-GMing, we're currently trying to find an effective method of adding risk of failure to combat scenarios that are fair but add an element of uncertainty and danger, so we're playing around with ideas related to character skills and needing X number of characters on a task to succeed as opposed to straight up dice rolling, since we found that the randomness could be really unfair and if we were strict with it, we had characters that should have been fine in some situations become incapacitated and by the third stage of a mission, maybe 2-3 of 7-8 characters who started are still able to fight.

Sorry about the tangent, it was to illustrate my point that you can still change things up late in the game if you find it's not working out, especially if it keeps the core players happy.

Shoutout to those annoying people who make Int. Check's and then mention me in them because they saw me viewing the thread only to point out that I'm probably interested and should join.

If someone's interested they're gonna post. If you're going to be an annoying shit, I'm certainly not gonna join. Don't act like a goddamn annoying salesman trying to sell me on your idea; If I didn't show interest, it's because I don't like it.

"People disagreed with my stupid, narrow minded, and quite frankly uninformed, opinions in a rational manner! They must be trolls!"

This is paraphrased from what a certain someone (whom won't be named) posted, but seriously, how can you be this fucking immature?

@Mr Allen J

obviously ur a fucking troll u peso shet.

@Mr Allen J

obviously ur a fucking troll u peso shet.

eat dicks raddum

"People disagreed with my stupid, narrow minded, and quite frankly uninformed, opinions in a rational manner! They must be trolls!"

This is paraphrased from what a certain someone (whom won't be named) posted, but seriously, how can you be this fucking immature?

Oh man, I know this kind of person. You're not the only one annoyed by them, believe you me. I first had an encounter with someone like them two years ago, and recently I've discovered they haven't changed one bit.

It's fine to be passionate and want something, but don't talk out of your ass about everything and act like you know more than you actually do. It gets on people's nerves. Also, don't pseudo-threaten to not join something if a certain element isn't present or changed, it's completely pointless and gets on people's nerves. (In case of confusion; aimed at someone anonymous, not you Allen. I haven't talked to you, but I've seen you around and you're a pree cool guy.)

When personal shit gets in on RPs. That sucks. Like, you. try to be Amy in the army about it and play blacksmith to the emotions. but those emotions always get past the purity test and petrify the posting pleasure.

@Raddum I joined an rp that I glanced at and the GM mentioned me in a post shortly after. I don't see a problem with that as the GM is hoping to get a reasonable turnout and wants to see their project do well. It also shows that the GM feels passionate about their RP, and for some that's all their asking for. (Been in several role plays where the GMs have ditched it)

Besides... If you don't wanna join then ignore the mention. No one is forcing you to join, no one is forcing you to respond, and maybe you may happen to find it interesting and lose the page before subscribing.

Just pointing out that there's another side of the coin to the "no junk mail" view.

@NuttsnBolts

I strongly disagree that it makes them passionate about it. As I've seen some of these people in question let their RP's die. You got lucky, so that's fortunate for that situation, but sometimes people just desperately want to get something started only to get bored a bit later and throw it out; There's no passion in that.

It's just the fact that they do it. Some people get annoyed by small shit; I'm one of them. I never respond to them, as it's not worth the time to do so, but I'll gladly vent about it on my own time. I don't consider myself careless enough to leave a thread I have interest in and have time for without dropping interest; And I certainly can find it again. If I truly had any interest in it, I wouldn't just forget about it, either.

Neither of our sides of this are invalid. You're right that there's some people who might really want to get an RP off the ground and see it through; But my experience has been trashy momentary roleplayers who don't invest themselves for the long-term, instead ditching to go do whatever their latest craving is. I'm glad you were fortunate enough to find someone who wasn't like this, as they're pretty damn rare, at least in my opinion. So good on ya, man.

I gotta say-- I wouldn't want to be mentioned for simply viewing an interest check either. Not at all.

I think it's a bad habit. Also a bad way to gauge how successful your interest check is, as I know some GMs say stuff like "If 3 more people say they're interested, I'll start working on the OOC!" Of course, there's nothing wrong with that, but you should never count lurkers towards that number. That's like counting people who walk by your food truck and stop long enough to read the menu as customers. Unless they actually buy something-- don't count them. And definitely don't sign them up for your weekly newsletter just because you happen to have the ability to know everyone's email address.

There are a number of reasons why someone might decide to lurk without saying anything-- but I think the main reason is probably that they're either not interested or unsure of whether or not they're interested. If they are, they have all the means available to let it be known and keep track of what's going on. The thread isn't going anywhere. The subscription button is always an option. You might have to go to page two of the Interest Check section if you forgot to subscribe, but that's not a big deal at all. Probably easier than the GM sitting on their toppic and jotting down the name of every person that peeks their head in the window.

I would much rather gauge how passionate a GM is about their RP by observing the effort they put into the story itself than mentioning people who could possibly be uninterested. That just wreaks of desperation to me. Have faith in your story and GMing ability. If both are super great, you shouldn't be having to sneak in the extra numbers so people think your RP is more popular than it is. Overall, it just comes across as a bit scummy-- but maybe that's just me.

@NuttsnBolts

I strongly disagree that it makes them passionate about it. As I've seen some of these people in question let their RP's die. You got lucky, so that's fortunate for that situation, but sometimes people just desperately want to get something started only to get bored a bit later and throw it out; There's no passion in that.

It's just the fact that they do it. Some people get annoyed by small shit; I'm one of them. I never respond to them, as it's not worth the time to do so, but I'll gladly vent about it on my own time. I don't consider myself careless enough to leave a thread I have interest in and have time for without dropping interest; And I certainly can find it again. If I truly had any interest in it, I wouldn't just forget about it, either.

Neither of our sides of this are invalid. You're right that there's some people who might really want to get an RP off the ground and see it through; But my experience has been trashy momentary roleplayers who don't invest themselves for the long-term, instead ditching to go do whatever their latest craving is. I'm glad you were fortunate enough to find someone who wasn't like this, as they're pretty damn rare, at least in my opinion. So good on ya, man.

Honestly the word "craving" should in and of itself be considered a huge red flag. Because tonight I really craved a stout, so I went out and bought a six-pack of stout. And yesterday I really craved biscuits and gravy, so I cooked some bacon and saved the fat drippings. "Craving" something now doesn't mean I'll crave it two weeks or two months from now. It's a recipe which spells doom for any RP, unless you like your RPs spontaneous, whimsical, fickle, poorly thought out, and more than likely, temporary.

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Honestly the word "craving" should in and of itself be considered a huge red flag. Because tonight I really craved a stout, so I went out and bought a six-pack of stout. And yesterday I really craved biscuits and gravy, so I cooked some bacon and saved the fat drippings. "Craving" something now doesn't mean I'll crave it two weeks or two months from now. It's a recipe which spells doom for any RP, unless you like your RPs spontaneous, whimsical, fickle, poorly thought out, and more than likely, temporary.

Yep. 'Craving' is like the reddest of red flags because it often describes the motivations of those who use it very accurately. Cravings are intense but short. So if you sign on to someone's 'craving' you can expect to get a lot of attention in the short term but the odds are it won't last.

Speaking of the peanut butter red flag to go with the "cravings'" chocolate, nothing makes me nope out of an interest check faster than a giant list of generic pairings.

That's great you want to witness a pirate and an astronaut smash genitals, but games kind of require more than basing every single aspect of the game around one player being a repressed deli clerk and the other a meth tripping biker or whatever. How do you possibly build a plot around it that isn't thinner than dollar store toilet paper?

"But Dervs!" You cry, "A good roleplayer can build off of that! We can build a really good story and or hot intense romance just starting with my ninja and your alien princess!"

I admire your enthusiasm, hypothetical interest checker who smashes nouns together and hope they work, but the fact you have 50 pairings that are variations of "Billionaire x Sanitation Worker" tells me you have absolutely no ideas for any of them and expect your partner to either roll with a super improvised story that is a really forced romance sans actual plot or to do the heavy lifting.

That and few times I took the bite and decided to see if this could work, I got dropped for having the audacity of working on an actual character sheet and trying to do some world building so the character would make an ounce of sense. I've learned people are far less interested in even establishing the time period, some locations, and supporting casts than they are hoping that the two characters meet and become each other's entire world while everything else is completely made up on the fly, consistency and logic be damned.

In short, a solid 10 on the pH scale. Basic as fuck.

@Dervish Wow, it's a shame you had such a bad experience with the "generic pairings" list there bud D': though I find I prefer to have a rough pairing and fandom list given, and/or a very basic plot outline idea listed with them which is open to both parties collaborating on to world build and create something more solid than have a super-solid one outlined.

Cause generally I found that the ones that had too much detail in the IntCheck weren't actually open to making alterations to that storyline whatsoever and it made for a much less enjoyable roleplaying experience because it was more of a "this is the storyline I want so follow along with it and don't complain" kinda gig o.o

I write vague summaries for my 1x1 interest searches, but when I'm planning a group I don't really do that.