GMing is one of the most challenging, yet rewarding, aspects of roleplaying. As anyone who’s ever attempted it can tell you, it does not take much for the entire roleplay to come undone and for many GMs, new and old; it can be frustrating to see something you have poured your heart into erode before your eyes.
Fortunately, there are things you can do to give yourself the best shot at success and a long and healthy roleplay. I’m here to share what I know and try and give you guys who might be having a hard time some of my experience and observations doing this GMing thing for a not insignificant chunk of my life and hopefully offer some tools and ideas for you prospective GMs out there to have the best shot at success and help the roleplays in this community flourish.
Some quick background, my name is Dervish; I’ve been on RPG and doing this GMing thing since 2012 more or less constantly, and currently I’m running The Elder Scrolls: Vengeance of the Deep, a roleplay currently over half a million words, 19 active characters across 12 players that’s been going for nearly 2 years and should be reaching the end of its narrative sometime late this year if all goes according to plan. Other than VotD, I’ve run a bunch of different roleplays over the years, some lasting only a few months, to some that crested over the 2 year mark. Each one has taught me a lot of valuable lessons and given me hard earned experience that I want to share with you so you hopefully don’t have to go 7 years before you figure out what works for you.
Let’s get to it!
The key word for this entire chapter is preparation; if you don’t do the work ahead of time, you’re going to be screwing yourself so hard they’re going to ban masturbation in the Western hemisphere. I’m a bit of a maniac and I’ve sometimes taken two months to get the groundwork done before I started a roleplay, but that’s excessive in a lot of cases. What you need to do are prepare a few key areas;
- 1. Build your world and gather resources.
2. Develop a story.
3. Decide on Game Mechanics and Standards.
4. Write and format your OOC.
5. Post your interest check.
Seems pretty straight forward, right? It is, but there’s a lot of moving parts that you need to have squared away before you even think about throwing your game out into the world; a half-cocked game is going to fail, every time. I am of the opinion that a big reason roleplays fail is because the GM launched a game with only the bare minimum of thought into the entire thing and when the players have to start waiting around for the GM to try and catch up with things like character sheets, rules and standards, or even the opening post, you’re risking players jumping ship before the ball even gets rolling.
Players tend to have various levels of patience, and while this guide is mostly with an Advanced or High-Casual roleplay in mind, there’s definitely lessons for everyone. Unfortunately for a lot of Casual and Free players, there isn’t going to be a lot of wiggle room for waiting. If you’re more or less keeping players waiting for several days without setting and sticking to deadlines, they’re going to bail to one of the dozens of other roleplays that might catch their eye. It’s your job to stick out from the crowd and show competence and dedication. It’s really not complicated as long as you prepare. So let’s get into that handy list up there;
1. Build your world and gather resources.
So you have a great idea and you want to play a roleplay with it. Fantastic! That’s why we do this hobby; to take something creative and share it with other like-minded hobbyists and create a game and story about it. Whether it’s an original idea or fandom, the basics are more or less the same; you need to create a setting for your story and put the pieces together to make it work, which will involve things like researching your setting to be able to run it from a place of authority and things like gathering co-GMs to help you manage your game.
Fandoms have an easier time getting started because of the simple reason that everyone who is interested ideally has a good idea of the setting and world, as well as what’s in the realm of possibility. With an original story, you need to consider your genre and really cut the herd off at the pass; ask yourself what you would ask as a prospective player and answer those questions. What are the races you can play? What’s the technology level? Where does it take place? Everything like that needs to be addressed for you to effectively build this world and ensure you don’t run into problems like players showing up to your low fantasy setting and ask to be dragons or an anime protagonist. You’re probably not going to get everything covered or think of everything, and that’s fine! One thing I found can be kind of useful is creating an FAQ section on your OOC and any time someone asks a question, post it and the answer there for other players and edit the OOC accordingly.
Another big thing is try not to information dump; I find it helps to write more than you need to and trim back, and if there’s stuff like world information (say a faction or race you want to elaborate on more) that isn’t necessarily important for every player to know right off the hop, toss it into a codex or information section buried in hiders. Players tend to be grateful for having an abundance of information if they don’t feel they have to memorize all of it but might need to know something for making their character. As a rule of thumb, try to make stuff reader friendly where possible.
So those coGMs I mentioned; you can run a game by yourself, but that’s in much the same way that it’s theoretically possible to operate a tank by yourself. You’re just going to have to work way harder and be responsible for doing absolutely everything. Ideally, a coGM is someone you have natural chemistry with and you already spitball ideas back and forth and they have a good work ethic and ability to keep pushing forward. They’re going to be the ones helping create NPCs, writing posts, going over character sheet submissions, and managing players. It doesn’t have to be a one-person show; there’s going to be times where you really don’t have it in you to write and your coGMs are going to be the ones who keep your games rolling when you’re not at your best. Just don’t take anyone who asks, or friends who are really flakey and unreliable. Remember; the goal is to have your RPs last a long while and be healthy. Depending on people who by nature are unreliable is going to destroy something you spent hours upon hours of your life working on. I learned early on that there needs to be a GM you and a personal you; don’t let personal feelings ruin your judgment. If someone isn’t sticking to your standards or rules, do not give them special treatment. You will start to sabotage your own game.
So your pieces are starting to come together. Here’s about where you consider actually coming up with your plot and characters, so let’s move on!
So you have a great idea and you want to play a roleplay with it. Fantastic! That’s why we do this hobby; to take something creative and share it with other like-minded hobbyists and create a game and story about it. Whether it’s an original idea or fandom, the basics are more or less the same; you need to create a setting for your story and put the pieces together to make it work, which will involve things like researching your setting to be able to run it from a place of authority and things like gathering co-GMs to help you manage your game.
Fandoms have an easier time getting started because of the simple reason that everyone who is interested ideally has a good idea of the setting and world, as well as what’s in the realm of possibility. With an original story, you need to consider your genre and really cut the herd off at the pass; ask yourself what you would ask as a prospective player and answer those questions. What are the races you can play? What’s the technology level? Where does it take place? Everything like that needs to be addressed for you to effectively build this world and ensure you don’t run into problems like players showing up to your low fantasy setting and ask to be dragons or an anime protagonist. You’re probably not going to get everything covered or think of everything, and that’s fine! One thing I found can be kind of useful is creating an FAQ section on your OOC and any time someone asks a question, post it and the answer there for other players and edit the OOC accordingly.
Another big thing is try not to information dump; I find it helps to write more than you need to and trim back, and if there’s stuff like world information (say a faction or race you want to elaborate on more) that isn’t necessarily important for every player to know right off the hop, toss it into a codex or information section buried in hiders. Players tend to be grateful for having an abundance of information if they don’t feel they have to memorize all of it but might need to know something for making their character. As a rule of thumb, try to make stuff reader friendly where possible.
So those coGMs I mentioned; you can run a game by yourself, but that’s in much the same way that it’s theoretically possible to operate a tank by yourself. You’re just going to have to work way harder and be responsible for doing absolutely everything. Ideally, a coGM is someone you have natural chemistry with and you already spitball ideas back and forth and they have a good work ethic and ability to keep pushing forward. They’re going to be the ones helping create NPCs, writing posts, going over character sheet submissions, and managing players. It doesn’t have to be a one-person show; there’s going to be times where you really don’t have it in you to write and your coGMs are going to be the ones who keep your games rolling when you’re not at your best. Just don’t take anyone who asks, or friends who are really flakey and unreliable. Remember; the goal is to have your RPs last a long while and be healthy. Depending on people who by nature are unreliable is going to destroy something you spent hours upon hours of your life working on. I learned early on that there needs to be a GM you and a personal you; don’t let personal feelings ruin your judgment. If someone isn’t sticking to your standards or rules, do not give them special treatment. You will start to sabotage your own game.
So your pieces are starting to come together. Here’s about where you consider actually coming up with your plot and characters, so let’s move on!
2. Develop a Story.
So now you’ve built your sandbox, what are you going to be doing with it? This all really depends on what you’re looking for in your world. An RP set entirely in one area, like a school or a town, obviously needs to have a narrower focus and more development on the areas the RP revolves around than something that’s say world hopping or a big epic quest. I have this motto I tell pretty much everyone; the GM builds the foundation and frames the house, the players put up the brick and drywall and together you build a house. With that in mind, let’s go over some basics of how to develop a story for a roleplay that I find keeps you on track and gives you the best shot at having a game progress.
Unless you’re playing a pure sandbox where everyone’s making up their own stories, coming and going, etc, you’re going to want to basically think of the major plot points the group will need to cover. A trap I’ve fallen into a lot, and I think is more common than not, is that GMs want to give players freedom to drive the plot and to let their choices dictate where the story goes. In my experience, that is the exception rather than the rule; a lot of players aren’t sure of how much agency they should express, others just want to be players along for the ride, and generally people won’t take as much initiative as you might hope. It’s not that players are lazy or uninterested; they just aren’t as familiar or comfortable with your world as you are and people have a lot of different skills and motivations. More disappointingly, if you do find players who want to take reigns and drive the plot forward, many can be difficult personalities who might be driving the RP in directions you didn’t want or think was appropriate.
To give a quick but non-specific example of this, there was one RP I saw that stuck out to me because early on the RP ran into a problem player who, in my opinion, had a character that wasn’t setting appropriate who decided to try and make his character and others go the exact opposite direction of the plot because “it made more sense for the character”. This caused the RP to kind of tear itself apart in the infancy and the GM struggled to get it back on track after the problem player left. You as a GM always need to maintain control of the plot or you might not like where other people will decide for you where it should go.
So what this all boils down to, by default, treat the plot as linear. You should know the major story events before you even start the roleplay so it always gives you goals to work towards as a GM so you aren’t ever stuck not knowing where to go next. As a rule of thumb, the Keep it Simple, Stupid rules should apply. Never make your story beats too complicated or drawn out; absolutely everything you do will take longer than you expect. This covert ops mission you did in 20 minutes in a video game will take over a month in a roleplay. Instead of needing Cindy to go around and collect the 3 keys to unlock the temple door so Bob can fight the three guardians to get the alignment crystals to unlock the vault of the Ultimate Weapon of Manliness while Joe plays backgammon with the demon lord to win the freedom of Princess Chumbucket, try to condense it down to something like the group needs to beat the demon lord to free Princess Chumbucket so she can unlock the temple door to the Ultimate Weapon of Manliness. Ultimately the goal is what matters, so streamline the process of getting to that goal.
For both story and character stories, I have a really simple but effective process I follow; A happens because of B, resulting in C. This can be chained together to make a story pretty effortlessly while following a logical train of thought so nothing’s come out of nowhere. To give a quick example of this,
Bob’s village was attacked by King Headcheese, so Bob decides he’s going to become a warrior. Bob finds a mentor who was a retired hero, and Bob begins to learn the ropes for his journey. Bob sets out to find companions because he can’t do this alone, so he heads to the next town over. Bob liberates the town from the Feta Footsoldiers, so he is joined by Cindy Cinders. The two carry across the lands setting things right, so King Headcheese sends Generic Antagonist Boss 1 to confront them. Bob and Cindy Cinders barely escape with their lives, so they decide they need a magical artifact that can counteract the evil…
You get the idea. That was just some rambling idea off the top of my head, but you can see how it starts to put things together. At the bare minimum, flesh out all of the missions or quests or assignments for the first part of the story before launching a game because you are going to have to do a lot of handholding until players are settled and you start to form a solid group. Start the game off in something that forces characters together (like breaking out of a prison, or you were all hired to do the same job) and then start to open up player agency as the story progresses.
Don’t be afraid to ask players if they have ideas for what they want to do with their characters or how to involve them with plot points, because a good philosophy to have is that it’s not just the GM’s story; it’s everyone’s. The more a player feels like their character feels involved and important, the more loyal they’re going to be to the roleplay. One thing that’s worked pretty well for my roleplay is to have players fill out a wishlist survey for what they want for a particular story arc and then plug that information into a timeline spreadsheet and when the story hits a certain place on the sheet, start involving those players and helping make their stories come to life.
It’s important to always keep the major moments in mind for a game and work towards those. It’s all the stuff between and the details you can be flexible with, but if your story ultimately ends with the death of King Headcheese, you need to figure out the major moments that let that happen. Do what you can to avoid “winging it”. One of the most important parts of GMing is organization and consistency, so if you give the impression you’re just making it up as you go and it’s kind of directionless, you’re likely to lose a few players or have your game stagnate. Just don’t get bogged down in one place for too long.
So now you’ve built your sandbox, what are you going to be doing with it? This all really depends on what you’re looking for in your world. An RP set entirely in one area, like a school or a town, obviously needs to have a narrower focus and more development on the areas the RP revolves around than something that’s say world hopping or a big epic quest. I have this motto I tell pretty much everyone; the GM builds the foundation and frames the house, the players put up the brick and drywall and together you build a house. With that in mind, let’s go over some basics of how to develop a story for a roleplay that I find keeps you on track and gives you the best shot at having a game progress.
Unless you’re playing a pure sandbox where everyone’s making up their own stories, coming and going, etc, you’re going to want to basically think of the major plot points the group will need to cover. A trap I’ve fallen into a lot, and I think is more common than not, is that GMs want to give players freedom to drive the plot and to let their choices dictate where the story goes. In my experience, that is the exception rather than the rule; a lot of players aren’t sure of how much agency they should express, others just want to be players along for the ride, and generally people won’t take as much initiative as you might hope. It’s not that players are lazy or uninterested; they just aren’t as familiar or comfortable with your world as you are and people have a lot of different skills and motivations. More disappointingly, if you do find players who want to take reigns and drive the plot forward, many can be difficult personalities who might be driving the RP in directions you didn’t want or think was appropriate.
To give a quick but non-specific example of this, there was one RP I saw that stuck out to me because early on the RP ran into a problem player who, in my opinion, had a character that wasn’t setting appropriate who decided to try and make his character and others go the exact opposite direction of the plot because “it made more sense for the character”. This caused the RP to kind of tear itself apart in the infancy and the GM struggled to get it back on track after the problem player left. You as a GM always need to maintain control of the plot or you might not like where other people will decide for you where it should go.
So what this all boils down to, by default, treat the plot as linear. You should know the major story events before you even start the roleplay so it always gives you goals to work towards as a GM so you aren’t ever stuck not knowing where to go next. As a rule of thumb, the Keep it Simple, Stupid rules should apply. Never make your story beats too complicated or drawn out; absolutely everything you do will take longer than you expect. This covert ops mission you did in 20 minutes in a video game will take over a month in a roleplay. Instead of needing Cindy to go around and collect the 3 keys to unlock the temple door so Bob can fight the three guardians to get the alignment crystals to unlock the vault of the Ultimate Weapon of Manliness while Joe plays backgammon with the demon lord to win the freedom of Princess Chumbucket, try to condense it down to something like the group needs to beat the demon lord to free Princess Chumbucket so she can unlock the temple door to the Ultimate Weapon of Manliness. Ultimately the goal is what matters, so streamline the process of getting to that goal.
For both story and character stories, I have a really simple but effective process I follow; A happens because of B, resulting in C. This can be chained together to make a story pretty effortlessly while following a logical train of thought so nothing’s come out of nowhere. To give a quick example of this,
Bob’s village was attacked by King Headcheese, so Bob decides he’s going to become a warrior. Bob finds a mentor who was a retired hero, and Bob begins to learn the ropes for his journey. Bob sets out to find companions because he can’t do this alone, so he heads to the next town over. Bob liberates the town from the Feta Footsoldiers, so he is joined by Cindy Cinders. The two carry across the lands setting things right, so King Headcheese sends Generic Antagonist Boss 1 to confront them. Bob and Cindy Cinders barely escape with their lives, so they decide they need a magical artifact that can counteract the evil…
You get the idea. That was just some rambling idea off the top of my head, but you can see how it starts to put things together. At the bare minimum, flesh out all of the missions or quests or assignments for the first part of the story before launching a game because you are going to have to do a lot of handholding until players are settled and you start to form a solid group. Start the game off in something that forces characters together (like breaking out of a prison, or you were all hired to do the same job) and then start to open up player agency as the story progresses.
Don’t be afraid to ask players if they have ideas for what they want to do with their characters or how to involve them with plot points, because a good philosophy to have is that it’s not just the GM’s story; it’s everyone’s. The more a player feels like their character feels involved and important, the more loyal they’re going to be to the roleplay. One thing that’s worked pretty well for my roleplay is to have players fill out a wishlist survey for what they want for a particular story arc and then plug that information into a timeline spreadsheet and when the story hits a certain place on the sheet, start involving those players and helping make their stories come to life.
It’s important to always keep the major moments in mind for a game and work towards those. It’s all the stuff between and the details you can be flexible with, but if your story ultimately ends with the death of King Headcheese, you need to figure out the major moments that let that happen. Do what you can to avoid “winging it”. One of the most important parts of GMing is organization and consistency, so if you give the impression you’re just making it up as you go and it’s kind of directionless, you’re likely to lose a few players or have your game stagnate. Just don’t get bogged down in one place for too long.
3. Decide on Game Mechanics and Standards.
So this subsection is probably one of those areas I think GMs really slack on. One thing I notice about a lot of GMs is that they’ll take literally anyone who shows up, quality of the character sheet or bad posting habits be damned and then it becomes that surprised Pikachu meme when the player who joins a dozen RPs a month and drops them just as fast does the same to them. Don’t just be happy somebody showed up; what you want is players who are dedicated and of a consistent standard. Know what you want and stick to it.
Figure out your writing standards. High-casual, a little looser? How often do you want people to actually post? Do you want people who are exceptional at spelling or grammar, or are you a bit more relaxed? Figure out what you want and enforce it.
If you do a high-cas roleplay and suddenly you have someone doing one liners, give them a warning, and if they keep it up, politely ask them to leave. It’s your roleplay; when someone joins, they agree to the standards and rules you set out. Do not let people argue with you or tell you that you’re wrong. If they aren’t happy with it, they can find another RP or make their own. That’s the beautiful part of this site; there’s a lot of options. Your goal is to make a game that lasts and you’re happy with. Do not let Bilbo Bumfuck show up to your RP writing like they decided to huff paint in the third grade and that the Fellowship of the Ring needed more Space Marines with plasma cannons instead of sissy-ass swords, and then you end up holding the game up because Bilbo Bumfuck decided not to post for 3 weeks and then keeps making excuses of why he’s not posting.
Why are you tolerating Bilbo at this point? Eject him back to his paint fume den to rethink his life. You need to focus on the players who actually are trying their best and are the most devoted. They’re the ones going to form your core group of players.
Likewise, you’re going to have to settle some ground rules for the in game mechanics. If you’re doing a fantasy RP, set equipment and spell standards. If you give people the option to take the Staff of Neverending Hellfire, someone is always going to go that route because it takes a lot of work to get people to lose the video game mentality; you’re not in this to win, you’re in this to tell a story. Nobody wants to write with someone who always has to be the strongest , the smartest, the most badass etc. Do you think that guy who made the hilarious bard assassin who has sleep apnea and a crippling fear of the dark and two rusty daggers he inherited from his deadbeat grandfather is going to stick around when Bilbo Bumfuck declares himself invincible with Thrice Enchanted Armour of the Gods and the Staff of Neverending Hellfire? You best believe that if you let power players have their way, anyone who tries to do something flawed and unique that makes your RP stand out as something unique and memorable is going to get frustrated or drowned out by someone who tries to turn your game into their video game power fantasy.
If you see someone apply with something that isn’t something that you as a GM want to see, then tell them. I think it’s absolutely asinine that GMs don’t review character sheet submissions. A lot of those RPs I see just have a simple message saying “accepted” with absolutely no feedback. If it helps, think of vetting players and their characters at bare minimum of having a ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service’ sign. I’ll go more into this in a later section, but you kind of have to touch upon it when talking about standards.
Basically, it’s up to you as a GM to have a vision and to respect yourself and your prospective players enough to have some rules and standards and stick to them. If you don’t, you’re going to have people take control out of your court and a lot of arguments and the game may never recover. And again, set deadlines for posting and stick to them; do not wait for everyone if they aren’t posting. If you have 3-4 players constantly posting and keeping involved and 3 who aren’t, don’t sacrifice the enjoyment of those who are active for those who couldn’t care less. If someone can’t post or is going to be late, they need to tell you. Be patient and understanding for those players, but if someone’s being lazy, you don’t owe them anything. Your RP’s survival matters more than someone who’s probably going to drop in a month anyways.
If you don’t tell Billy Bling he can’t have a solid gold suit of armour, he’s going to do exactly that.
So this subsection is probably one of those areas I think GMs really slack on. One thing I notice about a lot of GMs is that they’ll take literally anyone who shows up, quality of the character sheet or bad posting habits be damned and then it becomes that surprised Pikachu meme when the player who joins a dozen RPs a month and drops them just as fast does the same to them. Don’t just be happy somebody showed up; what you want is players who are dedicated and of a consistent standard. Know what you want and stick to it.
Figure out your writing standards. High-casual, a little looser? How often do you want people to actually post? Do you want people who are exceptional at spelling or grammar, or are you a bit more relaxed? Figure out what you want and enforce it.
If you do a high-cas roleplay and suddenly you have someone doing one liners, give them a warning, and if they keep it up, politely ask them to leave. It’s your roleplay; when someone joins, they agree to the standards and rules you set out. Do not let people argue with you or tell you that you’re wrong. If they aren’t happy with it, they can find another RP or make their own. That’s the beautiful part of this site; there’s a lot of options. Your goal is to make a game that lasts and you’re happy with. Do not let Bilbo Bumfuck show up to your RP writing like they decided to huff paint in the third grade and that the Fellowship of the Ring needed more Space Marines with plasma cannons instead of sissy-ass swords, and then you end up holding the game up because Bilbo Bumfuck decided not to post for 3 weeks and then keeps making excuses of why he’s not posting.
Why are you tolerating Bilbo at this point? Eject him back to his paint fume den to rethink his life. You need to focus on the players who actually are trying their best and are the most devoted. They’re the ones going to form your core group of players.
Likewise, you’re going to have to settle some ground rules for the in game mechanics. If you’re doing a fantasy RP, set equipment and spell standards. If you give people the option to take the Staff of Neverending Hellfire, someone is always going to go that route because it takes a lot of work to get people to lose the video game mentality; you’re not in this to win, you’re in this to tell a story. Nobody wants to write with someone who always has to be the strongest , the smartest, the most badass etc. Do you think that guy who made the hilarious bard assassin who has sleep apnea and a crippling fear of the dark and two rusty daggers he inherited from his deadbeat grandfather is going to stick around when Bilbo Bumfuck declares himself invincible with Thrice Enchanted Armour of the Gods and the Staff of Neverending Hellfire? You best believe that if you let power players have their way, anyone who tries to do something flawed and unique that makes your RP stand out as something unique and memorable is going to get frustrated or drowned out by someone who tries to turn your game into their video game power fantasy.
If you see someone apply with something that isn’t something that you as a GM want to see, then tell them. I think it’s absolutely asinine that GMs don’t review character sheet submissions. A lot of those RPs I see just have a simple message saying “accepted” with absolutely no feedback. If it helps, think of vetting players and their characters at bare minimum of having a ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service’ sign. I’ll go more into this in a later section, but you kind of have to touch upon it when talking about standards.
Basically, it’s up to you as a GM to have a vision and to respect yourself and your prospective players enough to have some rules and standards and stick to them. If you don’t, you’re going to have people take control out of your court and a lot of arguments and the game may never recover. And again, set deadlines for posting and stick to them; do not wait for everyone if they aren’t posting. If you have 3-4 players constantly posting and keeping involved and 3 who aren’t, don’t sacrifice the enjoyment of those who are active for those who couldn’t care less. If someone can’t post or is going to be late, they need to tell you. Be patient and understanding for those players, but if someone’s being lazy, you don’t owe them anything. Your RP’s survival matters more than someone who’s probably going to drop in a month anyways.
4. Write and format your OOC.
As you probably noticed, this entire guide has a peculiar formatting to it. It’s colourful, it uses hiders and pictures, it has defined sections and line breaks…
Oh Dervs you sly dog, you’ve been formatting this guide like an OOC post! Roll credits.
But seriously, I’ve talked to a few people and they aren’t entirely convinced visual presentation matters when it comes to the OOC. To that I say, click on the “view raw” tab at the top right of this post and try to read the entirety of it that way verses having breaks and hiders to try to organize it and make it more digestible. As of this point, I’m just shy of 3,500 words of this guide and can you imagine what kind of nightmare it would be reading it as a giant block of mono-coloured text? You’d lose your place, it would blur together, and ultimately just look unpleasant and like I’m the RPG equivalent of a rambling hobo in a subway who’s trying to convince you that the turnstiles steal your soul and the only way to prevent that is to pay him 5 dollars to baptize you in a rain puddle. Point is, if something’s easy on the eyes, it’s easier to follow and people are more engaged.
Your OOC should be similar.
The sad reality of this forum is it’s so busy that there’s literally dozens of RPs vying for players, and if your game looks like you spent ten minutes on the toilet hammering it out on an iPhone, it’s going to show and people are going to think “well, if this is literally the product of an ill-advised trip to Taco Bell, what’s that say about how this person is going to run the actual RP?” and they’ll move on. It’s like a job posting, in a way; you’re trying to convince people that you’re willing to put in the effort and time to make their time and effort worthwhile. I don’t know about you, but I’ve joined a lot of RPs only to find them die within a month or two and after spending several nights working on a character, it’s infuriating and depressing. You best believe first impressions matter for where I’m going to take my chances, and someone who clearly took the time and effort to make an attractive OOC that has a great hook, an interesting story, and provides all the information I want is going to get me to hop on board than something that’s riddled with typos, an utter lack of basic formatting, and a lot of indecisive language like the GM isn’t even sure what they want.;
“So uh, this is my lord headcheese strikes back rp idea. I need like 4-20 players who are adventures weho need to fight him and save the world. We can talk about races and equipment I guess, my character is nigel thornscock and he is an atheist paladin who hates god but also uses divine power. Idk.”
I guarantee you’ve seen something that looks uncannily like that. I bet you that that RP never got off the ground or died because it’s clear the GM didn’t put any effort into it past the initial idea. And that’s the thing… you cannot run an RP if you’re going into it unprepared and half-assed. You’re trying to convince people you are worth taking a chance on. If you look like you just rolled out of bed, wrote down your Nyquil-addled dream as an interest check and did absolutely nothing else, you’re not going to get anywhere.
So, yeah. Take time to make the OOC. Presentation matters; take a few nights on it, at least. Sleep on ideas and see how you feel about them when the initial hype goes down. Find some thematic imagery to spice up sections, colour headers, use bbcode formatting. The benefit of doing all of this is that it not only makes it easier and less daunting to read, but it also gives your prospective player an easy reference if they lost their place or want to check on say the standards or looking up some world information. As I mentioned before, look at your OOC like you’re a player looking at your game; what would you want to see, what questions would you want answered? Try to cover all of that stuff. Make appendixes or codexes for world information, create a sort of in game plot summary or character dialog to make a cook to draw attention.
As you probably noticed, this entire guide has a peculiar formatting to it. It’s colourful, it uses hiders and pictures, it has defined sections and line breaks…
Oh Dervs you sly dog, you’ve been formatting this guide like an OOC post! Roll credits.
But seriously, I’ve talked to a few people and they aren’t entirely convinced visual presentation matters when it comes to the OOC. To that I say, click on the “view raw” tab at the top right of this post and try to read the entirety of it that way verses having breaks and hiders to try to organize it and make it more digestible. As of this point, I’m just shy of 3,500 words of this guide and can you imagine what kind of nightmare it would be reading it as a giant block of mono-coloured text? You’d lose your place, it would blur together, and ultimately just look unpleasant and like I’m the RPG equivalent of a rambling hobo in a subway who’s trying to convince you that the turnstiles steal your soul and the only way to prevent that is to pay him 5 dollars to baptize you in a rain puddle. Point is, if something’s easy on the eyes, it’s easier to follow and people are more engaged.
Your OOC should be similar.
The sad reality of this forum is it’s so busy that there’s literally dozens of RPs vying for players, and if your game looks like you spent ten minutes on the toilet hammering it out on an iPhone, it’s going to show and people are going to think “well, if this is literally the product of an ill-advised trip to Taco Bell, what’s that say about how this person is going to run the actual RP?” and they’ll move on. It’s like a job posting, in a way; you’re trying to convince people that you’re willing to put in the effort and time to make their time and effort worthwhile. I don’t know about you, but I’ve joined a lot of RPs only to find them die within a month or two and after spending several nights working on a character, it’s infuriating and depressing. You best believe first impressions matter for where I’m going to take my chances, and someone who clearly took the time and effort to make an attractive OOC that has a great hook, an interesting story, and provides all the information I want is going to get me to hop on board than something that’s riddled with typos, an utter lack of basic formatting, and a lot of indecisive language like the GM isn’t even sure what they want.;
“So uh, this is my lord headcheese strikes back rp idea. I need like 4-20 players who are adventures weho need to fight him and save the world. We can talk about races and equipment I guess, my character is nigel thornscock and he is an atheist paladin who hates god but also uses divine power. Idk.”
I guarantee you’ve seen something that looks uncannily like that. I bet you that that RP never got off the ground or died because it’s clear the GM didn’t put any effort into it past the initial idea. And that’s the thing… you cannot run an RP if you’re going into it unprepared and half-assed. You’re trying to convince people you are worth taking a chance on. If you look like you just rolled out of bed, wrote down your Nyquil-addled dream as an interest check and did absolutely nothing else, you’re not going to get anywhere.
So, yeah. Take time to make the OOC. Presentation matters; take a few nights on it, at least. Sleep on ideas and see how you feel about them when the initial hype goes down. Find some thematic imagery to spice up sections, colour headers, use bbcode formatting. The benefit of doing all of this is that it not only makes it easier and less daunting to read, but it also gives your prospective player an easy reference if they lost their place or want to check on say the standards or looking up some world information. As I mentioned before, look at your OOC like you’re a player looking at your game; what would you want to see, what questions would you want answered? Try to cover all of that stuff. Make appendixes or codexes for world information, create a sort of in game plot summary or character dialog to make a cook to draw attention.
5. Post your interest check.
As a personal rule, I always have the OOC done before I do an interest check… if I even do an interest check. You don’t want to post an interest check and then disappear for 2 weeks because you didn’t finish the OOC. Remember that time you saw an amazing movie or game trailer and then the movie or game disappears without a word for 5 years? It’s kind of like that, only nobody’s going to be interested in a half-formed nebulous RP idea when there’s like a dozen other games that popped up this week. Do your OOC, get it all polished up, and then take sections of that and use that for your interest check.
Use that hype and momentum of 20 people showing up and being like “OH I’M INTERESTED I CLICKED OFF PORN FOR THIS” and then watch as like 5 of those people actually show up in the OOC. That’s okay; declaring interest is cheap. Actually making a character sheet requires effort and those who do are the ones you want. Don’t bother hunting down people who declare interest and don’t show up; you got more stuff to worry about. You basically have to act like you know what you’re doing and that you’re ready for anything. Have confidence in your ideas and your convictions to run the roleplay and you’ll do well. Don’t go chasing after people because you’re disappointed more people didn’t show up. You can always pick up more people if your RP is running; as long as you have even a small number of people who are keen, you’re golden. If it helps, think of it like an RPG where you have to pick up your party as the story progresses.
This is also a fairly good place to mention this, but set yourself a player cap if you’re new to this; my comfort level is about 6 people when I start an RP, but I tend to get a lot more interest and applications, and I end up taking about 9-10 people instead because I anticipate drop outs in the first couple months. Imagine my surprise and slight horror when that didn’t happen last time. All I can say is thank god for coGMs. If you don’t get enough people to fill out your roster, don’t fret! You can always pick up more people later, but please for the sake of your roleplay, don’t just abolish your standards and character guidelines to take anybody who shows up to fill out your ranks. Remember Bilbo Bumfuck? That’s how you get Bilbo Bumfucks. You want Gandalf the Gangsta.
As a personal rule, I always have the OOC done before I do an interest check… if I even do an interest check. You don’t want to post an interest check and then disappear for 2 weeks because you didn’t finish the OOC. Remember that time you saw an amazing movie or game trailer and then the movie or game disappears without a word for 5 years? It’s kind of like that, only nobody’s going to be interested in a half-formed nebulous RP idea when there’s like a dozen other games that popped up this week. Do your OOC, get it all polished up, and then take sections of that and use that for your interest check.
Use that hype and momentum of 20 people showing up and being like “OH I’M INTERESTED I CLICKED OFF PORN FOR THIS” and then watch as like 5 of those people actually show up in the OOC. That’s okay; declaring interest is cheap. Actually making a character sheet requires effort and those who do are the ones you want. Don’t bother hunting down people who declare interest and don’t show up; you got more stuff to worry about. You basically have to act like you know what you’re doing and that you’re ready for anything. Have confidence in your ideas and your convictions to run the roleplay and you’ll do well. Don’t go chasing after people because you’re disappointed more people didn’t show up. You can always pick up more people if your RP is running; as long as you have even a small number of people who are keen, you’re golden. If it helps, think of it like an RPG where you have to pick up your party as the story progresses.
This is also a fairly good place to mention this, but set yourself a player cap if you’re new to this; my comfort level is about 6 people when I start an RP, but I tend to get a lot more interest and applications, and I end up taking about 9-10 people instead because I anticipate drop outs in the first couple months. Imagine my surprise and slight horror when that didn’t happen last time. All I can say is thank god for coGMs. If you don’t get enough people to fill out your roster, don’t fret! You can always pick up more people later, but please for the sake of your roleplay, don’t just abolish your standards and character guidelines to take anybody who shows up to fill out your ranks. Remember Bilbo Bumfuck? That’s how you get Bilbo Bumfucks. You want Gandalf the Gangsta.
So you’ve made your OOC and now your interest check is up and you’ve probably spent all night smashing that refresh icon on your browser to see if anyone’s showed up.
They’re here. IT’S SHOW TIME.
So, you’re going to want a character sheet skeleton. You’re going to want to cover the basics, such as;
- Name
Age
Race
Appearance
Equipment
Skills
Personality
History
You know what’s important to you, but try to make sure it’s stuff that’s relevant and worth referencing. I personally don’t care what garbage 90s pop song you think is their theme song, and I think putting a sexuality section is basically going to encourage shipping before the game even starts instead of letting relationships develop organically and thus derails a lot of the plot and creates a lot of unnecessary friction between players, but that’s just me. Point is, you should have this whole thing ready to go for when people show up at the interest check.
As players start putting in their applications, and this is important, do background checks on the players. Just do a quick check at their posting history; do they seem like they’re agreeable and friendly, do they stick with a roleplay for long term? Great! You want them. Are they someone who joins and drops roleplays like Taylor Swift drops exes? Do they argue with other players? Avoid them; you don’t need to put up with that and it wears everyone else down. It doesn’t matter if they wrote the next cultural icon for a character, if the player has a garbage personality that you know is going to cause problems, don’t take the chance. I cannot stress that enough. You want dedication and a good attitude; literally everything else can be worked on if a player is agreeable and understanding.
To make life easier for yourself, as submissions come in, don’t just sit around picking your nose. Actually read them over and write notes on all of the characters. Compliment strengths and things you like, and critique the parts that don’t work for you in a polite manner. The goal is to shape the characters into ones that are going to work for your RP and the best way to ensure your game survives the first three critical months is to make sure that you have enlisted players who have excellent personalities, actually post regularly, and their characters fit the standards and setting you’ve established. You do want to give feedback for every player and character that comes in, both to show that you’re actually reading and interested, and also to demonstrate what you’re looking for in your game. For that reason your characters should already be finished and posted in the character tab so people can reference what you are looking for. And since you should be doing critiques after the deadline, you don’t want to save it all until then to read everything and write feedback for every single one of them. It’s exhausting and time consuming.
Always manage your Bilbo Bumfucks with extreme prejudice
And here’s the hard truth about GMing; it is a lot of time and effort and hard work. You need to be willing to do all of that, you have to lead by example and show that you believe in your roleplay and you want to go the distance and that you are not going to let your players down. You’d be amazed what that kind of mentality can lead to; I never expected to find a roleplay group as close as the one I have now and while we’re not posting every day, someone is always writing something and its very collab heavy. People are invested in the story, in each other, and they have an interest in characters and plots outside of their own. We have days where we just give positive feedback for one player and their character and we take time to talk about the posts that go up; it’s very involved and really encouraging for everyone.
And as a GM, I highly encourage you to try to do this. When posts come up, talk about what happened, things you liked about it and the character. People are putting a lot of work and effort into their posts and characters and it’s always encouraging to see a game that does that. I realized the importance of this when the one and only @Stormflyx took time, completely unprompted and totally unexpected, to heap praise on other players and their characters when she was only a player herself in an RP I was in.
It was a transformative moment for me and it really helped dictate to me the kind of GM I wanted to be going forward; that environment of support and encouragement has built friendships that transcend my roleplays and has made the entire story that’s been going on for almost two years now as engaging today as it was the first. We’ve all grown and developed the story together and keep pushing ourselves to be better because we’re inspired by others. I’ve had so few people drop out of VotD because of this environment, I know I’m hyping up my own RP for this, but it’s the truth; I honestly think this is one of the key ingredients for having a fantastic and long-term roleplay. It just took someone with a big heart and a strong initiative to show me that.
I think as a community, it’s something that we should strive to make a standard because it’s deeply rewarding and it builds bonds and involvement that cannot be matched; it shows players that their hard work is being recognized and that people genuinely enjoy their characters and their stories. If you take nothing else out of this entire guide, please take this section to heart; it’s what’s going to make RPG stand out from every other roleplay forum.
Ahem. Back to looking down my nose at the unwashed mashes because I’m tooootally not hiding my own insecurities as a writer.
You just always want to be a step ahead of players at all times; do not make them wait for you for long. You need to set and stick to deadlines. If you notice posting momentum is slowing down beyond what you’re comfortable with, make an announcement that a week from today is going to be the move along to get posts up and stick to it. You don’t want to threaten to kick people for missing these deadlines; the goal isn’t to threaten or discourage people for not keeping up, it’s just a gentle reminder the game has to keep going and the show must go on. The only time you’re really going to want to kick people for being absent is if it’s been several weeks with no activity and they’re really falling behind. Find out what’s going on, ask if there’s anything you can do to help, and if you can’t figure it out, it might be time for you guys to part ways. There’s nothing wrong with that; it happens! I actually had a player drop out earlier on in the roleplay come back because they got their life back in order and it was all through mutual respect and understanding.
Generally, after you survive the first three months and get the core group of players established, the ones who are heavily invested and posting regularly, GMing becomes a lot easier. You aren’t having to deal with player conflicts very often, people are ideally self-starting their own posts and character story arcs, and talking to each other socially. At that point, most of GMing is just doing those pesky move along posts. You’re going to have to figure out the ebb and flow of your players; you have to be able to mix up the game a bit and feel the room when things start to get stagnant.
So let’s say you’re noticing a significant dip in the posting rate; you had people post on average 2-3 times a week most of the time, but suddenly you’re down to a couple posts every two weeks. It’s time for you to step in and move things along. If you’re in a fight sequence, wrap it up. People can’t just write action scenes non-stop, it eventually gets exhausting and it blurs together. If you’re in a quiet town moment where characters can explore and do personal development and more social bits, then start moving the story along. Bring them to their next mission or location, introduce the next story beat. You’re going to want to iron out your pacing, and this is where the deadlines come in handy. If you notice these dips, give people a week to wrap up what they’re working on and start writing the next move along post and then carry on. If players are posting frequently and having a lot of fun, let them have some time to do it. I love doing collabs, and sometimes it’s fun doing a big group collab in those moments.
While I’m thinking about it, a great way to get players into character and to fill time while you are working on the opening post or the next big move along is to have a big group collab, like around a camp fire or something similar that’s low-key social. It takes care of that time consuming meet and greet thing that can take forever to get through in roleplays while saving the official start of the roleplay for a more focused and forward-facing direction. It’s important when you start a roleplay to keep the momentum going and not get bogged down with virtually identical conversations of a character introducing themselves to three others; start the game off strong and then let the characters get to know each other over time, force them to work together and interact.
An easy way for me to kind of get around that is when I start roleplays, the characters have already known each other for a short length of time because of a mutual cause or job. Just get the characters in once place and give them a push so they can’t stand around and chat for long. If that involves mall ninjas beating the shit out of Cindy Cinders for wearing Crocs & Socks in a slice of life roleplay, so be it. You don’t want stagnation right away; the characters have an entire roleplay to get moments to learn about each other. Don’t blow it all off the opening posts.
In the event you have a difficult player or an argument, step in and try to resolve it. Talk to the person in private and figure out where they’re coming from and see if you can resolve it. We all have bad days, sometimes it comes through in a bad way in the RPs. We’re all human (except for me, but shhh)and we’re gonna stumble from time to time. That’s okay! The key is to be calm and mature about it, don’t get pulled into petty drama and gossip. If you have a problem with a player, talk to your coGMs and discuss what you should do about it. This is where Discord comes in really handy; you can talk to your players and GMs in real time and actually build a pretty close community if you use it properly. Not every game needs a discord and if your players aren’t really established first, it’s not going to be of any benefit.
But anyways, most of the time, a polite warning will suffice, or a light punishment for more serious things if the player isn’t being reasonable. Ultimately, you might have to let some people go, and while it might feel bad, just remember that kind of toxicity spreads to other people. If you show you have a zero tolerance policy for certain behaviours, it’s going to keep your game clean and welcoming. Ultimately, you want a supportive and friendly environment that people want to spend time in. Don’t tolerate someone for being an asshole; I recently heard about a game’s discord where a not insignificant number of players left to start their own separate discord because problematic players weren’t being dealt with despite complaints.
Just drill this into your heads now; you cannot make everyone happy, and if someone’s being an asshole, do you really want to put up with that in your game? People won’t stick around if they don’t enjoy their community, so if you keep fostering that kind of negativity, don’t be surprised if only negativity remains.
Hopefully this 6,600 word essay of how I personally have found success GMing is going to be something that’s useful to you and help foster a healthier and happier roleplaying community where games last an eternity, people feel engaged, and we don’t have to keep wondering if the games we’re joining are going to last or not. I want to thank you for taking the time to read this, hopefully finding enjoyment at my awful sense of humour, and you learned a few things. The main thing is to prepare yourself, organize everything, and plan ahead before you even start and know exactly what you want from your players before getting into it and then keeping the game’s momentum going and weeding out poor behavior before it spreads and you should find yourself surprised that several months have passed and it seems like your players aren’t going anywhere. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, want to know why the sky is blue, anything at all, my inbox is usually empty and sad because I’m more of a recluse than Obi-wan Kenobi and just as likely to disappear into a bathrobe at the first sign of conflict.
As always, stay excellent, and I wish you all the treasures in the world in your roleplaying futures.
Now go out there and make some stories that you’ll remember for a lifetime, you nerd.
12x Like
13x Thank
13x Thank
