Re: Poor RTJ responses by GMs
Having taken into consideration my mistakes from last year, nowadays I look at three things when deciding on who is going to be in my games.
1. Is the character concept something I want to see developed? Am I, as an observer, interested in what will happen to this character? With all the time I'll be spending with the players' characters, I need like the players' characters as much as the players do.
2. Do I get along with the player in our communications? Do we have a natural rapport, or is speaking with the player a chore? Generally, I like to speak to each person who has sent me a RTJ, to know more about their character, or to help their characters better fit into the setting. It's easy to figure out who is going to min-max and who's going to be a stick in the mud during this process-as well as who is going to be fun to play the game with.
3. Does the player want to tell a good story? How collaborative are they in the RTJ process? If the player isn't willing to help tell the story I want to tell, then they belong in a different game. And I encourage people who don't get into my games to join together and create their own games. Here's a bunch of people who want to play X setting, why not?