Kestrel

The Library

Will 'o the Piper

Although Sigmund's shouting fell onto deaf ears, Charles' telepathy seemed to take effect. One of the three children, presumably the oldest, stood still and looked dazed. “Why am I here?” The child thought, which transferred directly to Charles' mind. This farmer's son his spell seemed to be broken, as he questioned his surroundings before asking in thought “Are you a ghost?”

With the other two Charles reached, however, it felt to the knight as if his voice was being drowned out by the music which echoed in the children their heads. The younger the child, the louder the tunes felt in their head. The songs, according to the surface thoughts of the hypnotised kids, brought up associations with warmth, love and safety. It was as if they were walking towards a motherly figure. However, the deeper Charles would peer into the minds of the kids, the more heavily he would find himself affected...

Rendezvous Crash

Andre's flash of his weapon, rather than intimidate, caused roaring and laughing throughout their environments. When he and Vologhn retreated into an alley, the crowds seemed to disperse. Some stalked them, but were quickly caught in the webs Vologhn dispatched. However, it wouldn't be long until they found the narrow alley to be blocked by a small group of, probably drunk, men. Their voices all shouted over each other, and although their back was safe, people had even gathered on the roofs and balconies.

One man stepped from the crowd, under the support of more yelling and laughing. The town was like a a family of angry monkeys. “You're not the smart type are you.” The man yelled, above all the other noise. “We don't take kindly to strangers here.”

The crowds seemed to be conflicted between supporting and heckling the man. Although far fewer had bothered to circle around the alleyway than stand in the main street, there were still about twenty different unsavoury types who were clearly looking for a fight. Were some of them not human? Or were they eluded they would have a chance?

“You better run away now, freaks.”

What Causes Roleplays to Die?

Queen Raidne said
Certainly a lack of posting can be claimed to kill all RP's. But why don't people post?

Contra had a nice list on this pre-guildfall. There's a variety of reasons, but generally the issue is a lack of investment and susceptibility to "Well if they don't post, I can't post." Which I like to call chain-quitting.

What can you do in creating and running a roleplay to avoid these things?

Get people more invested in your RP. Make their actions feel significant, move your events quickly instead of lounging 4 pages at the local tavern doing nothing of note (taverns kill RP's) godmode the fuck out of drop-outs, have a good amount of luck, but most importantly; communication. OOC's are fantastic for that, but skype- or steam-groups work as well. It doesn't have to be about the RP, even, you could ship Winnie the Pooh characters with George of the Jungle for all I care. As long as it brings people together, it'll help you a lot. They become more invested in the social dynamic of your RP, which is a great reason for them to keep coming back.

The beginnings of games are far more fragile than ones that ran a couple months, but in the beginning you should always have a plan for drop-outs. They're going to happen. You're going to lose people in every stage of your RP booting up, including the first months of the IC. This is why doing things like making a plot reliant on certain characters is a no-go, unless you as a GM feel like juggling it all (at which point people often feel you're focusing the RP more about your characters than theirs and the whole thing falls apart.) Something I found to work quite well, was to find ways to brutally murder dropped PC's, because it gets people to think and talk of how they'll be killed, we can have the scene affect the active characters by having it play out in front of them, or even use it to mix up the plot.

There's a lot more things to do, but little time to write it down so yeah this may or may not be continued.

Godmoding: Never Appropriate or Necessary to Forward the Story?

Revelation; every single GM with a story that goes anywhere godmodes simply by using timeskips, in which they assume nothing to change the course of events happened, and by such control your character.

It's like a super-bad word but I've pushed a number of stories simply by things like "Character X their attention was caught by event Y." Technically that's god-moding. And I've even forced some, Fonz forbid, auto-hits as a GM when a character didn't get out of the way after a first warning or wrote their selves stuck. Sometimes you have players that require that push. You don't do anything major, but you do push people into a situation that forces them to respond. That's not a bad thing, some players need that. As long as you don't take someone's freedom. A perfect example of this is a GM I had that, IC, forced my character to choose A or B because if no choice was made, the story would drag on needlessly, but when I made my character choose C, they applauded it and rolled with it. You can push someone to action, as long as yu allow them to choose that action by their selves.

The Library

I don't forget. Most of the time. idk I post slowly and sporadically You can leave advanced but advanced never leaves you.

What's Bothering You?

The law prohibiting me from simple yet effective solutions.

The Library

Oh yeah.

I'll prolly post nearing the end of the week. Or weekend. This week's schedule is college's way of telling people "Bend over." and I don't write very well unless seated.

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People who's native tongue is not English?

To be honest, it's gotten to the point I write more in English than in Dutch.

Character Creation or Role-Playing?

If I preferred making sheets I'd just not submit them.

The Library

It mostly came down to armour being useless otherwise. So yeah... that was a thing.

Gender Roles in Fantasy/Historic Roleplay, where to draw the line

In my experience it's a lot, lot harder to create a game that doesn't have gender equality. While we do all play pretend, a lot of people feel uncomfortable writing or reading it. Same way; when I established a setting that is zealously religious; there were far more atheist PC's than NPC's. People will take modern conventions with them into roleplays regardless of setting. Sometimes even without intending to. Be it gender roles, be it belief system (or lack thereof.) The fewer reference points people have, the harder it becomes for them to RP. It's fandom vs. original all over again yo.

Generally, I wouldn't dare to create an RP with gender discrimination in casual and I would think really hard about it whenever I try that in advanced. Is this element worth the hassle? Is my game attractive enough to deal with the loss of players based on the setting's gender equality? Will I feel like explaining people I'm not sexist just for creating a sexist setting? If the answers to this are yes, then let's go. If any of them is no, well, gender equality it is.