RPF Topics & Discussion Thread v.Temp - Now Discussing: Post-Move Players and Recruitment

Hmmmm...a very worthy discussion to be had about recruitment. Looking forward, I think that the Adoptions Program may not be as useful a tool as casual, friendly contact, as others have suggested. Some people might want more help--others might want less. It allows us to respond appropriately to everyone who comes across. And it builds community, which helps increase the likelihood people have a good time (because, remember, that's what it's all about, right? ) and increase retention. Don't brand it as something formal, but make it something like what Xan suggested.

As for casting...it's nothing I've encountered as a player or encountered as a GM. I do think that it closes off opportunities for wonderfully surprising things, which is a shame, but I don't know if I'd go so far as to ban it if the decision rested on me. Societal shunning seems a better approach for the moment. All I know is that personally as a GM, if I'd approached people for ELL and said, "Hey, I think it'd be awesome if you took this team," I'd have lost some incredible storylines in the process. Though there is a knowledge barrier to entry, it's one that I break down individually and collaboratively with players interested in joining the game by using their interests to find a good match.

Glad we're discussing this stuff though. Like ramza said, plans would be good...but I haven't got one at the moment.

Well, the thing is we shunned casting, elitary approaches and so on for a long time . . . we need to be honest about it, these boards have a tradition in duplicity about that. We have blahblahd about how bad it is for ages and got only worse.

I did casting myself, so I am accusing not only others, but myself as well. I cast certain roles for TORR without thinking about it and I made myself guilty of giving my bros the juicy things and then the well-known players my second most juicy roles and then the support roles to the newbies. And guess what? Of all three GMs in that game I was the only one who lost my newbies early on. I blame it at being a first-timer. But I regret that, really.I allowed myself to be cast over and over again. Usually my less liked roles.


I did that Vox Popoli: The Sins of the Saints Special recently with a GM interview (released on Tempboards, SOON!) and Fin (who is so silent on the topic because he is doing his holidays I assume) said something interesting about Newbies.

I´ll quote him here in advance to the interview in simplified form:

Newbies make great games, RPF stars result in mediocre games. That was his policy on it. The reason? The oldbies don´t concentrate on one game as newbies do. They do not come here to do ONE game. It isn´t THEIR game except they create it. So sure, not accepting Newbies makes 100% no sense. It is rather common anyway. We should work on that in one way or another.


So I am divided on the topic. Maybe we should just accept it´s the way we do things? And then hope some GMs swim against the stream.

Eh, I would rather divert the river then try to convert all GM's into salmon, but that's just me. In the end though it will be a personal choice of each GM, we cannot force them to change, we merely can applaud those that do it and do it well.

As for the adoptions program, I went through that thing and all I got was a "let's play a game together so I can be there to help you out if needed." and later "There is nothing I can teach you, the rest you must learn and develope from experience." So, yup. Besides feeling a built in go-to player the adoptions didn't do anything and could be replaced with a "Help me player-kenobi! You're my only hope." thread. Although to be fair I went to the adoptions program after I had messed around in four games and mimicked myself into doing it right.

Still - no offence to Ktala and Sith, you've both done a wonderful job in creating a resource on the old boards and kept it going during a drought.

Okay, I got a press agent! Cool!

Well. Well, well. The thing is, no matter how much we assure ourselves to be newbie-friendly . . . this casting thing is a practice that get´s you banned on other boards. There are RPing sites who regulate GMs and who do not give you a chance to turn people away, except for good reasons!

I see, I totally see why someone looking for a game would go there and not come here.

Then again the "it´s the way we do things approach" from above is fair game. It´s just not the "changing anything" approach. And I mean that not only about this topic, but about any of them. But regretfully I must disagree with the more "liberal approach" of some of the above. From my experience with online RPing, work, life, history and the universe . . . not changing a thing, does not change anything.

So if we keep it all as it is, our approach to Newbies won´t change. I can guarantee you that. If we think that´s a good thing, because we like to be among ourselves . . . so be it! To be honest, I´d feel like a hypocrit fighting about it, as I know these things will not be so important for me in the future. My final game won´t be taking a lot of players from this point on. I don´t need any newbies, so to say . . .


So let´s read through MonoGirly´s first text once again and ask the question we did not dare to ask:

Why is it those multi-community people (you´d be SHOCKED how many that are, really) did not get us more people in the past . . . ,when other games on the web fill up their ranks with TFN-alumni?

The right to turn players away needs to stay untouched, by any means. There I fully support Xany. Considering the games who do not accept any players when posted because of advance casting, I don´t know. That is a strange thing and it is sad it happens, certainly.

Yes, but right now it becomes less and less for less and less people. I don´t see how oversizing the statement changes anything about THE JC - RPF - POTENTIAL TO BE MORE FOR MORE PEOPLE.

Anyway, I am not with you in this Fin.

Does it matter? Sure. Well, do you people care for people who consider joining us or not? If not, this discussion is pointless.If you care, this is what it comes down to. Why is the only stream the RPF is in, the stream of people leaving? Individuals join us, but never groups. Sure. It is strange but true.

But I feel the RPF does not want to discuss that or probably even hear that anymore So let´s turn to the question of adoptions/newbie support and forget about this.

Why?

Seriously. Fin. We´ve been here before. I am tired of this particular point. It´s a rethorical question you ask above. Rethorical to those who know what exactly you are pointing at and it makes probably less sense to those who do not. I know it is a matter of heart to you Fin and to LordT as well. But maybe you are alone with that. Not even sure if I am having this particular itching spot anymore. The RPF is what it is and it seems to be happy with it´s ways. And if a community is happy with it´s ways, there is no need to change them and Fin . . . maybe you don´t even have the right to change them. It´s a noble and wise thing you wish for, but it´s not the only way. Maybe a good way, maybe the best way, but not the one "we" wanna go, probably. You two proposed this a hundred time and fought a good fight to win people for your idea of an "accessibility-crusade", hell you even showed us how well it could work and how much there was to gain when doing things your way (I talk about the SotS and it´s newbie policy, of course) and I think you were always accepted and highly respected for that. But we did not catch that fire. The idea did not infect us.

As a friend I tell you, it might be the time to accept that fact and leave it be. The RPF is a breed of it´s own and it doesn´t wanna change.

Either you didn't get my river analogy or you're using a new one Kira For the sake of clarity then I will rephrase and break it down now. The RPF is the river, the GMs are the little living things that go with and are in a way the flow. Fin is a salmon, he goes against the flow and tries to change it as well, unfortunately a dam to divert the flow is not going to be made with rules and regs for the very reasons we agree with Xan on. Instead we with are left with each individual deciding, will they be a part of the ebbing flow, or a salmon that can spawn and increase.
( increase as settle in the new blood ).

Personally I am not sure if I made this better or worse. But here it is anyway

Solutions. Righty-ho. Is it

a) feasible
b) ethical
c) worthwhile

for some of us to infiltrate other boards, and prod fellow gamers in our direction? They don't even have to be RP boards. I'm sure there's some forum on the Bioware network, for example. which would make a good staging ground for a JC outpost.

I think Mitth point here was right. There are things way beyond the power of a Mod. Or all Mods. Community-consensus can hardly be changed by rules and things like that. We are looking at attitude here. Free will. Tradition. We look at things as complex as the users view on new users.

If users feel somehow superior to or threatened by new users, especially organised new users, they naturally will not want them around. Newbies (I actually prefer the term joiners a lot) are considered the most precious ressource in other communities. I never had the feeling this was especially true for these forums. But Xany is right. Maybe the absence of any fresh blood actually changed that? Who knows?

This one surprised me a bit, Claire. How can keeping his mouth shut do us any service? It´s not as if this is mindless rambling.

Well, those infiltrators are pretty much in place, I´d say. I am - different than Ramza - a very multi-board player. And yes, I am guilty of stealing more than one user from under your nose over the years to bring him to my own little projects. So this is pretty much a common practice, I believe. And a lot better than advertising

I am usually not the right guy for such things, but I would suggest the following . . .

What we need:

1. Rules - I don´t know the rules very well, but I´d say anything in the rules that is even the slightest bit unfriendly towards new people must go.

2. Games - We need accessible games which are open to join. This board had a great tradition in such games. 128 ABY, AFAS, Tatooine AU, Silent City, TORR, SotS, Rebellion - I might not be aware of many more of them, but we need such games for newbies to find a place to play. Hard to do, I know. Someone needs to do them and nobody stood up to create one recently . . . but we will need such games to attract new players. If we find not one GM to do them, we can try a TORR aproach and have GMs team up. Community and MOD support to maximize chances of success!

3. The Great Newbie Initiative - a visible, official "let´s get new people"-intitiative that people know about. A thread with a big WELCOME NEW PLAYERS (all the basic rules summarized easy and fast to read through) and a board wide community effort to make them feel welcome, when they show up. Something visible. something everybody around here knows about. A PR campaign so to say, to make Newbies cool . . . getting rid of the term newbies would be a good beginning. I like the "new players welcome comitee"-user idea, actually.

And then we need a bit of luck and a few new faces to show up.

Yeah, I like this. It might be nice if we had that Welcome Post in multiple languages, too. I know we play in English pretty much exclusively, but it would be a small touch to show that we welcome players from around the globe.

We could also have a Best New Player award, or Stars award.

Does Old English, Huttesse, or Mando'ad count? Cause I could whip two out three of those up, right proper

I can provide a few languages for the welcome. And a few others I know can add theirs (guess who could do Finish? ). I love that idea.


And yes, what Xany above says is true and I think a major point of concern for many users. Actually it is probably the core of what Fin tried to fight with his statement. Casting might pretty much be an incarnation of the "we´re among ourselves"-idea. Let´s face it, The Germans were welcomed with a wave of hostility when we arrived in 2007. Had we not come here as a group and without Sinre´s strong support, we´d have left within 24 hours never to come back. Five to nine Old Blood RPers (I think you can call us that) out there spreading you are a bunch of ego-issued kids. Great for recruiting, is it? When I won my first award I got a "frak off"-pm from a user and that user was not banned for it. The Mod back then had his back. An oldbie, good friend with Mods and influential. He send a few more of those. Royalty, you might say. I was just a peasant. Did anybody help the perpetrator? No. But did anybody intervene on my behalf? No, people looked away.

I could go on like this for pages and although I think LordTs 2009 full frontal attack on this system of discrimination changed a lot, the idea still remains in some heads. No idea how many heads this are nowadays, but a few I suppose.

And now Xany, you found the answer to Fin´s question above (which I would have preferred not to get answered). That is why we all do not point people to this forum. We are afraid we recommend it and then the oldbies line up to push that player out, not because he is bad, but because he might actually be "too good"! How would we look then? Stupid! So I recommend MonoGirly´s game and that big site that blitzed the net recently with quality games. I know that recommendation will never reflect badly on me.

It has been like that for years.


So yeah, we could change. Once I thought we have to and stood next to those who tried to be agents of that change. We could change into a board welcoming newbies. Welcoming newbies could be a consense and who opposes it would face the wrath of the community. An attack on a newbie should result in a greater penalty, not in a lesser one. If a newbie and an oldibe get the same number of votes in the awards, the newbies wins! we could have a "go-to-guy" for newbies and their worries with a direct link to the Mods.

We could expect simply more of us.

I don´t think we want that.

No.


But. Always a but. But, and that is a big BUT I think we shall not forget . . . this change might mean we turn on people we have played with for a long time. People we like and appreciate might get in conflict with us, just because they have an unhealthy, arrogant attitude towards new players. And as far as I understand that, we do not want this kinda change. Fin wanted it for years, I know. Many others did. As I said above, we might have had our try and failed.

This here is only a hobby. And if people wanna play "superior user" because they like it and because they come here to do that . . . we might as well accept it and try to counter it through our own actions from time to time. In the end we will be that strange little community which overestimates itself totally . . . happy with our illusions and isolated. But the "nature" of the RPF will be preserved. The "conservative" path we go there. Many choices made in recent years point towards a "general will" to take that road and I think to enjoy it, we must also embrace this path fully.


On Awards:
You guys overestimate the power of awards on Newbies. I remember how bizarre they were to me. When two newbies from SotS won against all established competition in 2010 . . . what a success for the newbies around here, btw . . . one of them did not even thank people. Because it was so strange. So leave the Awards as they are. They aren´t the solution to anything./>/>/>

What is wrong with our Rules?

Forgot the big part where people get redirected to "How we play games" and get told how they need to proof themselves? That all their achievments elsewhere do not count? Wow, great newbie recruiting stuff. Bordering hostility, if you ask me. The whole tone is like we expect little children to turn up. The grammar part which expects them to be using "proper english" is lovely for people not from English speaking countries. I wanna see your German grammar, people . . . mine is excellent. Anyway, do we really want people with a "not so perfect English" to "stay away"? Because some oldbies do a lot of typos and I love playing with them and all foreigners certainly might not have perfect English . . . let´s get rid of them? To make that point very clear once more . . . two examples on language:


Welcome to [censored]

No matter where you are from, no matter who you are, no matter what language you speak or what religious deity you pray to. If you share our passion for stories, you are most welcome. (This is from a very successful community I know)


English as we speak it (or something like that) . . . is our Welcome when people look at languages. Great. Nothing would probably be better to make it adamant clear that nobody from a non-speaking country shall dare to show up here. Why not a big "foreigners stay out post"? The effect would be the same and that poor guys wouldn´t have to read so much.

There is more. How they are several times "expected" to read through several pages, instead of people getting offered this ressource (that is actually excellent stuff). And submitting CS? All Prison, Tatooine AU and Silent Cities had none and worked excellent, just to mention. So this rule has long been abandoned, when there was no need for it. Our complete rules try to make very, very sure the new users do as we expect them to and do not work in any way to make them feel welcome.

Without being snarky . . . is that enough to begin with, Xany?




So my idea about rules (when have I become the "concrete suggestion man"?)

A warm welcome.

A short introduction to players. Join games by sending CSes, PM anybody for questions, if there is any kinda problem always ask the Mods. We would be so glad to help you. TOS must be obeyed, please read HERE. Then SECOND LAST THING - Many games forbid Godmodding etc. ask the GM about it, if you wanna know what it is [LINK to ressource], LAST THING - Our players have compiled a number of useful ressources for you. Those you find HERE! And there everything goes to which is helpful, plus links to CDG, GDG etc.

A short introduction to GMs. Games needs a story, CS and rules. Example rules & CS to copy-paste. Wishing them good luck. Ressources with LINK. Maybe, maybe a little word of advice that you are more popular as a GM if you play in games, usually.

That´s it. Not a word about English - our temple of worship, not a word about new players, old player division, not a bulk of rules, just the basics, readable in under 5 minutes.

For those who like more (RPers often actually do!), we got nice links to the vast resources compiled over the years.

Then cut the references to English and invite people to use their languages if they want to, but keep in mind people might not understand them, clear up that international people are welcome, and if their English is bad it might be helpful to put it into their sig to avoid misunderstandings. It is kind off a tradition here, anyway.

NEVER EVER use the word N00b, newbie or what. Oldbies manage this community, their games rule, their actions give them authority, because they serve as examples to us all. None of our "establishment"-users needs to be heightened by lowering the new arrivals. They stand out by themselves.



But rules are the smallest of my three points above. The other two points - mobilizing board members and having accessible games - might be a lot more important in my somewhat limited point of view.

I must say I dig the idea of "copy-and-paste" generic rules and CSes. And to make it all a bit less authority and a bit more fun. If the mods agree, I´d like to see a draft of your rules.

@Draco: What you actually mean are not the rules itselt TTemp, it´s the supplements to them. Also the way they are presented they might indeed be an appendix to the rules and almost as important. And yes, I think they are old, very old. And while many things are useful, the language section and everything about it is a bit from above and actually foreigner-unfriendly. The problem is, we think nobody reads those, but that´s not true. Especially people who did this kinda thing see something like this and will totally be interested what we gotta say about it. It makes almost anybody who did this before curious! They were among the first thing to check out for me. And the language thing is an important one. If English is your problem, the reading stops there, probably. I actually tried to keep my origin a secret when I came here, because I wasn´t sure if I was actually allowed to play here.The whole idea of "proper" English is kinda . . . wrong, because I feel that if someone has limits there, he might still find a game to enjoy which simply does not care.

@Xany: Concerning how the community will react to newbies, I certainly hope the change happened. I think an interesting observation is, that those tolerant and open minded were those who stayed around longer. So yeah, let´s hope so. MonoGirly was right about one thing (ImperialHammer once said the same) Time and players are the ressources of this community and newbies are therefore a highly valued thing on most boards like ours. Let´s hope people treat it like that.

So, we talk about Number 1, what about Number 2 and 3 of TTemps suggestions? I´d love to see that kind of an initiative.

You know Draco, sorry TT, I remember after I had been here for a year or two and as Sirak and you have said the 'German invasion' occured I kept getting stimied by why you and others kept having in your sig or mentioning in a post for us to forgive your grammer in english. After all English is one of my weaker subjucts and I grew up with it Still, I had completely forgotten that was even in the rules and it explains why I had seen people making that groveling mention again and again. Probably because they thought the GM's and players were going to descend like a pack of wolves upon their gramatically incorrect usage and take em' out back.

Of course I see myself as the perpetual newbie, and if I had known some of those things had been happening in closed PMs I would have been disgusted with the boards and Mods from that time. Still, the past is the past, and like Xany I hope we have grown as a community past that, that the changing of the guard has ushered in better one's that will defend not only the established but the new as well, in all it's multifaceted glory.