Author Topic: New rules and guidelines needed?  (Read 16300 times)

Offline ShadowViper

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New rules and guidelines needed?
« on: April 11, 2013, 04:30:23 PM »
Play by Posts are being ruined by people simply not being considerate. We all need to work together to have play by posts actually updating and progressing smoothly, rather than stalling out months at a time because of people just dropping off the face of the earth without letting anyone know.

Honestly, if you're involved in a Play by Post you should be checking it once a day, at least every other day.

Is there any way that regular activity can be enforced, it would likely mean us all working together sort of thing? The slowness and stalling is really starting to ruin Play By Posts, and will only drive players away.

I mean honestly, taking a month or more to progress through a single small dungeon room is rather ridiculous and this seems to happen pretty much with every single Play by Post. For example, of the four Play by Posts I'm currently in, only two have progressed smoothly and very few times of inactivity.
« Last Edit: April 11, 2013, 04:33:53 PM by ShadowViper »
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Offline veekie

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #1 on: April 11, 2013, 04:37:28 PM »
It's simply how PbPs tend to be, sustaining a regular, daily post rate across a period of months is difficult for people who log in at different times and have variable RL responsibilities. Only way around it so far is to have the other players on instant messenger so you can prod each other into action, and give rapid feedback on complicating circumstances/coordinate to get more done in the same amount of online time. Most people don't camp out in a subforum refreshing, they'd more likely make several passes a day, and if there's no update in that time, they have nothing to respond to.

Short version: It's just how PbPs tend to be.
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Offline Nanshork

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #2 on: April 11, 2013, 04:39:11 PM »
Short version: It's just how PbPs tend to be.

This.  I've been playing PbPs for years, and it just happens.

Offline ShadowViper

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #3 on: April 11, 2013, 05:05:35 PM »
It happens because it's allowed to happen.

You don't have to camp out your computer all day and refresh a sub-forum, but if you have a spare ten minutes or so, hey go ahead and check the play-by-posts you're in. Or if you're really busy, maybe it's a good idea to only join one play by post.

How is it fun to spend(waste) time creating a character only to spend 3 months in a single dungeon room only to have the play by post eventually fall apart after another three months of inactivity?

Play by Posts need to start being treated like a regular irl table top game.

Edit: And in my experience, this isn't just one Play by Post that this is a problem in, it's nearly all of them.
« Last Edit: April 11, 2013, 05:24:23 PM by ShadowViper »
I hear it's amazing when the famous purple stuffed worm in flap-jaw space with the tuning fork does a raw blink on Hara-Kiri rock! I need scissors! 61!

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Offline Nanshork

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #4 on: April 11, 2013, 05:37:03 PM »
It happens because it's allowed to happen.

You don't have to camp out your computer all day and refresh a sub-forum, but if you have a spare ten minutes or so, hey go ahead and check the play-by-posts you're in. Or if you're really busy, maybe it's a good idea to only join one play by post.

How is it fun to spend(waste) time creating a character only to spend 3 months in a single dungeon room only to have the play by post eventually fall apart after another three months of inactivity?

Play by Posts need to start being treated like a regular irl table top game.

Edit: And in my experience, this isn't just one Play by Post that this is a problem in, it's nearly all of them.

How would you enforce it?  Kick people out of the game and hope you get new players that will post more often?  Shut down the game altogether?

Offline ShadowViper

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #5 on: April 11, 2013, 05:43:37 PM »
No, I'm talking about new forum wide rules/guidelines that would pretty much blacklist players who prove to lack consideration for their fellow players, or are incapable of using common sense.

Seriously? Is it fun for all of you to continually keep making character after character after character just to have campaigns die because your fellow players can't be bothered to update regularly?

At this point I'm pretty much done with play by posts, unless something changes. Which is a shame, play by posts could be really awesome if people just started using more common sense and being more considerate of their fellow players, it really isn't that hard. And the fact that this is even a problem is pretty ridiculous especially when it's so easily solved.
I hear it's amazing when the famous purple stuffed worm in flap-jaw space with the tuning fork does a raw blink on Hara-Kiri rock! I need scissors! 61!

" 'Giving up' kills people. When a person refuses to give up, he earns the right to walk down the road of humanity." - Alucard

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #6 on: April 11, 2013, 05:52:41 PM »
Eh, I've seen it happen in practically every thread ANYWHERE, D&D, freeform, or whatever. It happens. Rules aren't going to help.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #7 on: April 11, 2013, 05:53:54 PM »
In all honesty the only way that would happen is if everyone enforced it together because I don't see the mods wanting to do that much work, and I just don't see that happening because making and enforcing rules/blacklists would be a significant amount of work.

Offline littha

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #8 on: April 11, 2013, 05:55:23 PM »
Short version: It's just how PbPs tend to be.

This.  I've been playing PbPs for years, and it just happens.


Offline Garryl

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #9 on: April 11, 2013, 05:59:08 PM »
What would be better would be suggesting ways to deal with it once the game has already started. Sirpercival and MetroMagic's Jewel of a Quest game is discussing asking each player for a general sort of description of how they would act in general circumstances, what tactics they use, etc. That way, the other players can decide what an absent player's actions would be and can enact them if the absent player stays absent for a while, thus keeping the game moving.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #10 on: April 11, 2013, 06:03:21 PM »
What would be better would be suggesting ways to deal with it once the game has already started. Sirpercival and MetroMagic's Jewel of a Quest game is discussing asking each player for a general sort of description of how they would act in general circumstances, what tactics they use, etc. That way, the other players can decide what an absent player's actions would be and can enact them if the absent player stays absent for a while, thus keeping the game moving.

This works, I've been in games where the DM took over my character because life made me unable to post and that worked fine.

Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #11 on: April 11, 2013, 06:12:48 PM »
I wonder if an informal agreement whereby players consent to being PMed by the DM/other players when it's their turn to act, or possibly give some other contact info to direct a "poke" to would help?

Offline ShadowViper

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #12 on: April 11, 2013, 07:31:46 PM »
In all honesty the only way that would happen is if everyone enforced it together because I don't see the mods wanting to do that much work, and I just don't see that happening because making and enforcing rules/blacklists would be a significant amount of work.

That's the idea, everyone works together to ensure that all PBPs progress as smoothly as possible with as few periods of inactivity as possible.

The blacklist would'n't be that much work, just a sticky thread were players/DMs post the names of players who have proven to lack consideration for their fellows players.

Because really, it's simple. If you don't have the time to regularly update/check a Play by Post, then you shouldn't join it(or create it if you're the DM).
I hear it's amazing when the famous purple stuffed worm in flap-jaw space with the tuning fork does a raw blink on Hara-Kiri rock! I need scissors! 61!

" 'Giving up' kills people. When a person refuses to give up, he earns the right to walk down the road of humanity." - Alucard

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #13 on: April 11, 2013, 07:44:31 PM »
And then you get people being listed for circumstances beyond their control.

Effectively, ostracising people on top of whatever other problems they have.

So no.

Try something other than getting rid of people that aren't posting to your standards. :/

Offline ShadowViper

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #14 on: April 11, 2013, 07:56:40 PM »
It's not about ostracizing people. If something comes up and someone becomes busy, cool awesome, not a problem. But tell your fellow players.

Basically, if people just be considerate and use common sense then they don't have to worry about getting placed on the blacklist.

I hear it's amazing when the famous purple stuffed worm in flap-jaw space with the tuning fork does a raw blink on Hara-Kiri rock! I need scissors! 61!

" 'Giving up' kills people. When a person refuses to give up, he earns the right to walk down the road of humanity." - Alucard

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #15 on: April 11, 2013, 08:03:06 PM »
Thing is, there are situations where people won't have access, and you're saying that, because of that, they deserve to be blacklisted for not putting a PbP first. Err...

Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #16 on: April 11, 2013, 08:17:43 PM »
I think a black list is a really really bad idea.

My experience thus far is that the situations where someone slows down a game rarely have anything to do with a lack of consideration and/or common sense.

It is also my experience that the DM is sometimes the one with RL issues, and blacklisting the DM is incredibly counterproductive if your goal is to actually play the game. 

Offline ShadowViper

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #17 on: April 11, 2013, 08:44:03 PM »
Thing is, there are situations where people won't have access, and you're saying that, because of that, they deserve to be blacklisted for not putting a PbP first. Err...

The great thing about doing this on a forum where we can edit our posts is that we can remove a name from the blacklist should that be the case.

Only people that have to worry about getting blacklisted are those that have a habit of dropping off the face of the earth.

I think a black list is a really really bad idea.

My experience thus far is that the situations where someone slows down a game rarely have anything to do with a lack of consideration and/or common sense.

It is also my experience that the DM is sometimes the one with RL issues, and blacklisting the DM is incredibly counterproductive if your goal is to actually play the game.

The idea isn't for several campaign specific blacklists, but for a general play by post section blacklist. It's intent being to warn people about those players that can't be bothered to be considerate of their fellow gamers and have a habit of (for one reason or another) slow games down to a crawl.

Because let's be honest, if you're playing around the table with a group of people and one of them is always playing on their computer and holding the game up by constantly saying "Hold on just have to kill this last wave of zombies, just have to finished this blog post, just have to finish this youtube video, etc," wouldn't you be pretty quick to tell that individual to knock it off or find another game?
« Last Edit: April 11, 2013, 08:48:47 PM by ShadowViper »
I hear it's amazing when the famous purple stuffed worm in flap-jaw space with the tuning fork does a raw blink on Hara-Kiri rock! I need scissors! 61!

" 'Giving up' kills people. When a person refuses to give up, he earns the right to walk down the road of humanity." - Alucard

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #18 on: April 11, 2013, 08:55:50 PM »
Look, no-one has agreed with your idea of 'forum-wide blacklist for people not posting daily', so try thinking of less extreme examples. Hell, there are people that ARE on daily, but have other things to do than post in PbP's and finite time to do it in. :/

I think the difference between a PbP and a tabletop game is that one of them is there 24/7 and non-urgent, the other is assembled based on time and is supposed to be the main focus of your attention whilst you're there. >.>

Offline ShadowViper

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Re: New rules and guidelines needed?
« Reply #19 on: April 11, 2013, 09:02:12 PM »
Look, no-one has agreed with your idea of 'forum-wide blacklist for people not posting daily', so try thinking of less extreme examples. Hell, there are people that ARE on daily, but have other things to do than post in PbP's and finite time to do it in. :/

Then maybe those people should avoid joining play by post campaigns. Perfect example of people refusing to use common sense and being inconsiderate. "Well I'm rather busy, but joining this play by post shouldn't hurt" and then three months later that same person(after having dropped off the face of the earth for that three months without saying anything) pops in saying "Hey! What ever happened to this campaign? It was pretty cool"

A blacklist is not really that extreme. More just a warning to other players on who they should avoid playing with. That's it.

But if you have a better idea, I'd love to hear it.

The goal here is to get play by posts progressing more quickly and smoothly so that they're not dying off or having long periods of inactivity simply because some people apparently can't manage their time or don't care about wasting the time of their fellow players.

Edit: The main point being that there needs to be some type of incentive/consequence for people not being considerate of their fellow players and wasting the time of their fellow players by not using common sense.
« Last Edit: April 11, 2013, 11:09:26 PM by ShadowViper »
I hear it's amazing when the famous purple stuffed worm in flap-jaw space with the tuning fork does a raw blink on Hara-Kiri rock! I need scissors! 61!

" 'Giving up' kills people. When a person refuses to give up, he earns the right to walk down the road of humanity." - Alucard