The best thing, IMO, in this situation to do is to limit players that aren't great role players (yet) to roles less significant to the story. Those players are typically the ones that quit due to either boredom, peer pressure or a sense of failing.

Nah, BYOND doesn't have that good of a RP community. People fall in and out of the RP games, if not due to their own short-comings or boredom, or due to others'.

I've seen this a lot in my experiences as a roleplayer, and as a roleplay environment manager (cool title right?)

People get excited at the idea of promise, and they get motivated enough to start doing things, enough to take a role and make plans. Then, they suddenly fall off with little to no warning. Thats a lot of people as well, not just a small portion.

I'm sure there are a few causes for why this happens, but what I think it is boils down to human nature and commitments. The more responsibility a position puts on the person, the less worthy it seems unless some kind of payment follows. If these positions you're referencing are vital to moving things forward, the pressure will likely cause these guys to second guess their decision; "Oh.. I dunno about this, maybe I'll go play another game."

A lot of people don't follow through because they don't see promise in continuing to put effort in there. On that notion, I believe its best to mellow out the responsibility somehow, add in a reward to the position you're emphasizing, and have some long term effects.

One thing I'm interested in (being the creator of a roleplay-oriented game), is the prospect of recording everyone's reputation, like you say. I think this, combined with the promise of perks for good reputation, could be a good incentive to keep motivation high and continue on through roles.

Does this mean you'll have a sort of 'history' log of previous RPs? ex: After a decent RP event, make the RP event log a 'book' in-game for future reference.

Would be a interesting dynamic at least.

NNAAAAHH wrote:

Does this mean you'll have a sort of 'history' log of previous RPs? ex: After a decent RP event, make the RP event log a 'book' in-game for future reference.

Would be a interesting dynamic at least.

Actually, I'm in the process of dumbing down the game now to the point where no one cares if someone goes missing. Still plan to have ratings though. Before the idea was to have the game almost feel like a movie, where you have like, the main hero with his little tag-alongs, a main antagonist, with an evil apprentice here and there, and then a bunch of minions ( these minions wouldn't be controlled by players ). Now I think I'll work to accommodate large amounts of players, like SS13, to where if someone leaves or doesn't show up, no worries, there are still about a dozen more people ( on both good and evil sides ) to have decent role-play.

At first I set out to make this game really controlled and directed, almost like a movie. Someone writes a setting and characters, players fill in the roles of those characters, then you have a designated "moderator" who just makes sure people are role-playing correctly and answers questions and is also in charge of "special effects" like spawning a group of monsters or causing an earthquake. All while the Lorekeeper records what happens every time everyone RPs, so that at the end, the setting and characters will have turned into a complete story and you could upload and share it with other people so they can read your epic tale.

But that's pretty stupid. I must've been high or something when I thought of this. What if the lorekeeper decides he's no longer interested in seeing the people role-play out his story? No other lorekeeper will be like "Hey I'll finish it for you", they'll be too busy working on their own stories. What if the moderator is a no-show? You don't want the lorekeepers and role-players doing it, and if you get another moderator in there you'll have to give them time to read the setting, learn the characters, and understand what point everyone is in the game to understand how to moderate it properly. This concept is just far too reliant on, on average, somewhere around 10 people being very enthusiastic and dedicated to the scenario they've become apart of and I just don't see it happening.

This is why I shouldn't think of new games at almost mid-night, that's around the time my brain shuts down and I can no longer do things, like determine if an idea is good or not. I'll just try and find a way to make it less dependent on EVERYONE and more dependent on the FEW that will consistently come back to role-play everyday.

I think you have the right idea here. I find myself wanting to guide things in my design as well, to the point of handing out a template to fill. That is at times though, I'm much better about it now.

I believe a game designer who creates a roleplaying game should adopt a very freedom-oriented mindset. Your ideas are probably great, but you arent giving them to actors, you're giving them to people who have their own ideas too. They want to create story chances are. Leave the progress to them, and the quality will be relative to their skill.

Even the best script will fail when executed by a bugged compiler =)

Rely on quality roleplayers, thats a leap of faith.

The unspoken and unwritten system that seems to work over at Eternia is that no one person is vital for roleplay to continue. In the event that they go MIA or simply quit, there's always another person willing to take their mantle, or someone to replace them. And this system seems to work pretty well, and keeps the new players in the spotlight if the old players get tired of it.

I think you should design your roleplaying game based off the idea that everyone is replaceable. Otherwise, yes, you will have problems.