Mod Cooperative

A while back I modded a game with two other players, then down to one, then the second came back as a player. This was all well and good, and the game ran down eventually a few years ago.

Fast forward to last week and one of the former players got in contact (I made the mod journal so I got the notification) about if it was ever possible to re-open the game. I've been missing the game since virtually the moment it closed and we started talking and are going to do it.

I have of course contacted both past mods and asked if they were interested in returning to co-mod or had any objection to my re-opening with a new mod team.

I haven't heard back from them, and I'm just wondering how long I need to give them to reply to me before fully moving on with the re-opening with the new mod team? It'll be a week since I contacted them before anything serious happens and likely somewhat longer before the game will be fully ready, but I'm not sure I shouldn't allow a bit more time.

Looking for some more advice but this one's far less thorny than my last one.

I have a player whose character has a large family. They are wanting to play one of the same character's children for another line they would like to bring in. They have said that they will not play 'with themselves' as in one on one scenes with those characters for AC, that all - or at least most - interaction with the characters will be in group scenes. I can't see a reason to say no to the request, but I just wanted to get some perspective. I will add there are two other family members in game, as well as the line they are planning with a different character which is why they want to bring the new character in, so I don't have any worries that they will end up using this situation to fudge on AC.

I had to go through a lot of old journals to find one that had access here!

Anyway, I'm modding a small game. No real pb challenges or anything like that - first come, first served, etc.

But someone has applied for a character that, unknown to them, another person was considering. The person who applied (as far as I know, anyway) wasn't on the lines comm and didn't know the other player was talking about joining, they just set up their character and applied, then found out when they joined the lines comm.

Note: the character was not held by the first person - they were just discussing the face on the lines comm. I believe the discussions are still ongoing.

Now the second player knows about the other player, they've asked me what they should do.

My own instinct is to either say "go ahead" because if the first player wanted to use that particular face so badly they should have held the pb, or ask the players to deal with it themselves and if they can't to come to me - where I would likely rule in favor of the second player as they have the character set up. This would also include encouraging the first player to join with another face.

I've just never had this issue come up before, so would like some outside perspective that I'm handling it okay so far and that my instincts are heading in the right direction, or if I'm going the wrong way - either is certainly possible!

This is mostly curiosity rather than annoyance, but in general, if you have a character journal at a gpsl, is it usual etiquette to only use that journal for the gpsl or is it accepted that you can seek other lines with that journal? I just found it a little odd seeing it, personally, but I don't know if general gpsl rules are different to communities.

So I have a small gpsl with a niche interest (would rather not go further into detail on what it is). Long story short, there's a particular player with said niche interest who ragequit the game a while back. However, they are trying to come back, again and again, with new characters. To the point of asking for lines against players that they have antagonized and hurt in the past while pretending to be a completely different player, or at least not disclosing that they are the player from before.

I don't know what to do. We basically allow everyone in who applies. I can't think of a good reason to refuse them membership.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to handle this issue?

I've recently found myself in a sticky and uncomfortable situation that, quite frankly, I need some advice on from other mods. Currently, I've waited about a day and half for an OC applicant to make some kind of OOC note or disclaimer stating that they've used information from a canon character wiki with only minor changes made and a link back to the page. I asked them to do this because I was not comfortable accepting the application as-is (because, let's face it, dire warnings from high school and college of plagiarism ran rampant through my head), but the longer I'm waiting for the changes to be made, the more I'm uncomfortable with the whole thing. Long story short, is what they've done considered acceptable in the RP world and is what I've asked them to do also acceptable or should I be flat out rejecting this application?

Updated (6:37am EST): An idea that I've thought about since initially posting this—Offer the applicant the alternative of playing the canon character but allowing them to diverge from a certain canon point. This would also include an entirely different PB and allow them to use the PB of their choice instead of the PB that is canon. It just seems to me that if all they're doing is slapping on alternate name and only changing the surname of the canons alias that maybe they should play the canon character and just diverge from the canon. This seems reasonable to me, but thoughts would be immensely appreciated.

Is it just me, or are there only a handful of RP options around these days? Everything is either a) Harry Potter, b) superheroes, c) supernatural-themed, d) celeb/faux celeb. And the few games that don't follow the "norm" are basically gpsls with little to no activity going on.

This isn't a complaint, really. I'm genuinely curious. Is that all the majority of people are interested in?

Any tips for getting a game off the ground which doesn't include the aforementioned settings?

I am looking for someone to bounce ideas off of about a Cthulhu Mythos/cosmic horror game - I keep getting lost in my ideas and need someone to kind of help sort out some kinks. (My original idea was for a panfandom boarding school game and I keep trying to go back to that but I'm not sure how.) Any up for plotting or just unraveling an idea?


(Also potentially looking for a co-mod? If it turns out to be a functional idea.)

( When it's so bad that no amount of rewrites will bring it up to code )

Okay so I have gone with trying to start up the gpsl again.

I'm actually fairly new to this kind of thing, so I do have a few questions.

Can anyone help me find the html (or whatever is needed) to create a friends button? Is it at ~rp_tutorials or somewhere else?

I want to use a layout from ~coding, but I have no idea where to actually go to put it. Can anyone help with the appropriate FAQ or some advice?

I'm sorry to be so clueless, but I can get to A, just not always B. I also feel the only actually stupid question is the one you don't ask.

Crosspoted to rpadvice

I have a problem I'd like some advice on.

I was setting up a gpsl. Unfortunately, just before it was due to open, I got sick. The game was the last thing on my mind at the time, and I've only just felt up to coming back online. I would still like to make it happen, but I don't know if people will be put off by the game not opening when I said it would.

Crossposted to rpadvice

Seeking advice.

A friend and I are trying to get a community off the ground. It's a celeb game, adult themed but not entirely smut, for a niche area of celebrities rather than an "anything goes" type of community. We have advertised it a few places, but don't seem to be able to find the people who would be interested. Any advice on where to advertise/how to find the people we are looking for?

Crosspoted to rpadvice

I'm a co-mod of a long-running (extremely long running - we're in our 10th year!) X-Men Movieverse game that is currently on Livejournal. Due to various reasons, we're discussing the possibility of moving the game to another journal platform, such as Dreamwidth. This would be a HUGE move on our part, and we're wanting to gather all the information we can before we look at an actual player vote.

So, dear fellow modlies, those of you who have migrated a game from LJ to another system, how was it? Good and bad points, please. Did you lose players? Gain players? Was it worth the hassle or did the game die as a result of the upheaval?

(for reference, while we're a small game in terms of players [39 players with 67 characters], but we have a huge amount of prior history and associated links and journals ([the wiki might give you an idea]. Such a move would be a lot of work for us and we want to be sure it's worth it.)

I have been trying for the past year or so to come up with a panfandom game that will actually last, or even gain enough characters to start in the first place for that matter.

I've played in games that were already established and active, and while they were fun, they only gave me ideas of games I would like to start. I don't think I'm doing anything differently, and I try to make the premise and design of the mod journal as interesting as I can, but I still get only a few bites.

I'd like to give it another go, but I'd rather not go through all the work it takes to set something up if no one's going to give it a chance. It seems to me that it's hard for a person to start a game that lasts even if the premise is interesting.

My question is... How do I start a new game that will actually get off the ground if everyone is only looking for established games to play in? I'm open to any and all ideas you can help me with. Please help me. I have good ideas, I think, but they just never seem to work out....

Fellow panfandom mods! I have some questions for you. I'm looking for general opinions about activity in a fast paced, plot heavy panfandom setting for a large game (35+ players, 200+ characters). What kind of rules regarding activity do you think are fair? How do you go about enforcing them? When a player is not up to that activity requirement, how do you handle it? Do you have rules about hiatuses? How do they come into play when it comes time to check up on activity? Any opinions or just sharing how you've handled activity checks successfully in the past would be helpful to me! I'm just wondering if the way I handle it at my game is the best way or if there are other ways out there that might be better for myself and my players.

Thanks!!!

( This is a little bit long, so I put it under here. )

So, I'm thinking about starting a game.

I've got a couple of ideas floating around in my head for plot, but my real problem is gauging interest. Essentially, I'm thinking about starting a game because no games exist for this fandom anymore and I really want to play with it. But I also don't want to go to the work of creating it if no one's going to want to play. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to go about seeing if there'd be a player base for it?

(Fandom's Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon, by the way. It'd most likely be a mixture of anime & manga history.)

This might be a weird question, but what do other people do when in character threads are becoming too filled with drama (sometimes bordering on crack) and veering away from the premise of the game? (Keeping in mind that the game in question is 1.) Glee-based, so a certain level of OTT stuff is expected and 2.) an AU where the characters have super powers) But there are a few story lines going on currently that just don't fit the overall tone of the game I want to present. I don't want to be SUPER CONTROLLY MOD, but I want to encourage more overall character development and less focus on angst smutty shipping lines.

So, are there any suggestions? (I've got a few game-wide plots planned, and we do random threads every now and then to get people interacting with character they normally might not.)

So some of this is rehashing what I've said before in comments over in rp_tutorials, but it's gotten buried and I feel it deserves its own post. ( Advertising tips - avoiding missing/blocked images ) ( Stop losing your notifications ) ( Getting Greasemonkey scripts to work in Chrome )

I'm in a bit of a conundrum. I've been running a game for about four months and everything is still really active, but due to school and time restraints, we've lost quite a few players, mostly those that are essentially OC's (name only characters and family members of canon characters). When I took a game-wide poll the players left decided that instead of us trying to recast those characters that we just relaunch the game, omitting the storylines that said characters were involved with and moving things around.

Here's where I'm having a problem; I've never re-launched a game before and everyone that I know who has has only done so after the game has died plot-wise (i.e. things died down, they closed, re-did some things, and re-opened after a few months or weeks). What is the best way to go about relaunching the game when it's still open, we've got active plots going on, and we have a ton of holds and apps in process?

Any help or advice would greatly be appreciated.