So what is it.  From my experience, I would say between 60-70% of games here on Rpol are abandoned by there GM.  Most with the GM just quit posting.  No explanation or excuse.  Leaving the Players languishing, hanging on for some gleamer of hope for weeks and even months.  That any day now the GM will log in with a logical explanation of where s/he has been all this time.  Unable to take even a few moments before now to drop the players a line, saying where they were at.  An want to take up the game again from where they left off.  Sure, like that's going to happen.

So what do you think?  Is this a big problem in your experience, on Rpol.  I want to get your $.02 worth on this subject
This message was last edited by the user at 12:39, Fri 24 June 2016.

In reply to MacWolf (msg # 1):

Yes is it a big problem on the site, very much so.

I've been the abandoning GM, I've been a player who was abandoned. Part of the issue is that ultimately we do not LIVE on rpol. It's a place that we have to log into.

Sometimes life gets in the way, jobs, family or just plain health stop regular posting for a couple days.

Depression or other emotional and mental situations might make posting meaningfully a chore.

You might just not be inspired. There might be a player who is making the game not fun for you.

And once you get in the habit of not posting, or fall out of the habit of posting, you can extend that past the reasonable level.

But, ultimately, it has no effect on anything actually life-shattering. World still spins and the sun comes up.

In reply to MacWolf (msg # 1):

Yes, it's a problem.  But it's no bigger here, IMO, than on most similar sites.  It's not even a bigger problem than VPS (Vanishing Player Syndrome).

The issue is, as RosstoFalstaff said, that nobody is actually paid to come here and GM or play - it's a hobby, an amusing diversion, not a job - so RL will always take priority.  And nobody is forced to come here and explain why they can't come here any more.

I think you can go a step beyond that and say that RPOL, by its very nature, attracts people that are otherwise fairly busy or reclusive.  The long-term format of games is also a major weakness for games dying, by its very nature.

I, too, have been dropped and been the dropper.  I've tried to dramatically improve my communication about such things as I've gotten older, but that doesn't actually seem to affect the rate at which I have to drop games.  It just makes it a bit cleaner when I do.

Sadly this is the very reason why I joined RPOL
I attempted to get a "Standard" PnP game running but never had time to do more than a session every 40 or so days, Not conductive to actually running a long term game. One of the players accepted a job that would take him out of the country for an extended period of time. That person happened to be part of RPOL and told me about it. I moved the game online and was able to at least get more than a few sessions in before RL took over and the game folded anyway.


Now my second attempt however is going strong as I learned from my mistakes. I'm currently working on a third, however since the concept is from scratch and not one I've been working on for years i'm not comfortable getting it off the ground yet.

I suppose saying nothing is less DRAMA then trying to explain?

While I have yet to stop GMing a game that is moving, I have had times when it felt more like work than fun.

I've had a few frank conversations with other players/GMs over the years and there's a bit more to it than that.  Some people feel a certain anxiety that comes with being a GM and feeling like you have to post.  When you can't post, you find that you can't face the pressure of posting, so you don't post... which means the next time you should post, you feel even more pressure and even more don't post.  It leads to a weird avoidance thing that results in you vanishing.

I've not done any really deep psychological study of it or anything, but it's kind of like how people with OCD cleanliness issues are the ones most likely to end up on Hoarders (or whatever knockoff is still on the air).  When things build up, you don't know where to start, so... you just don't.

I have some of that to me, so I make it a point to communicate about my absences, plans, schedule, etc.  My entire posting for a week might be explaining why I haven't posted, but that's better, in the long run, than just not posting.  I can totally recover from a week like that.  I can't necessarily recover from missing two weeks and then having to catch up.

That sounds like me and Yahoo messenger. I used to go on almost daily. Then one week I didn't (forget why) and it spiraled to the point I don't go on at all. But I do think about it occasionally.
On my game, I have had that feeling, but my feeling of responsibility kicks in and I post Something, if just in OoC explaining my slow down. I am a tad OCD (like in my side quote) and suffer depression. I know this and do what I can to keep it together.

We all feel down from time to time, and I recognize the symptoms in myself, but it comes down to two words that are somewhat out of fashion these days: Duty and Responsibility.

When a GM creates a game, they are making a promise to their players to provide them with entertainment and to tell a story to them, or with them, depending on the game style. The GM then has a duty and responsibility to the players to provide what they promised.

If you invite guests around to your house for dinner, you don't decide to go out to the movies instead and leave your guests knocking at the door with no dinner and no explanation.

When you promise to read your children a bedtime story, you don't read two paragraphs and then walk out of the bedroom and watch TV instead cos it's less boring.

Yet for some strange reason, far too many people think that's perfectly acceptable behaviour in a game.

If I GM a game, I'm there until the story arc is completed (or until the players abandon me). If there is some reason beyond my control that prevents completion, or I'm so dejected that I really can't face it, then I would man up, log into the game, explain why I can't continue, and apologize to my guests for not being able to deliver the promise I tacitly made to them with my invitation to play.

I also shoulder the same responsibility as a player. If I sign up for a game, I'm making a promise that I'll play a particular role for as long as that role is needed in the plot. How would it be if an actor walked out with half the film in the can?

Again, if there is a particular reason why continuing is impossible, I log in, explain the problem and give an apology. I don't just vanish without a word.

We all have RL to bear, we all get disillusioned, but there is never an excuse for rudeness.

This is why I do not apply for games that require extensive rtjs anymore.  I have spent hours/days working on an rtj only to have the gm quit the game a couple days after starting it.  It is frustrating to put that much effort into something only to have the group die that you made it for.

As a GM and a player, I try to do my best to give the group when I have to leave. I do it mainly because it's courteous, but also because I want to have a good reputation. People take chances on you when you join a game, just like you take chances on them when you accept them. I know that, as a player and GM, if I see the name of a poster who disappeared on me once then I'm not going to apply for their game or accept them into mine. I expect other people do the same.

That's just my take on it, though.

In reply to icosahedron152 (msg # 9):

Bravo, as both a GM and a Player, I wished more who play here at RPOL felt that way!



The same for me as well.  An for me, sometimes not even getting a response to such a RTJ, that they have even read it.

All good points. But remember, RL takes priority.

I was just informed that one of the players in one of my games passed away just over a week ago. He was also a GM. Apparently, he'd been in poor health for awhile, and finally lost the battle.

So when a player or GM vanishes on you, keep in mind that something serious could have happened to him or her. Not all of us have someone that will jump on line and inform the community. That also applies when a computer dies, or we lose internet access.

Also, there's no test for maturity or responsibility when someone joins RPoL. Not everyone has those qualities... yet. They simply don't see RPoL as anything more than another video game or a lark that they get tired of as soon as it requires a bit of work that isn't fun.


That's just the nature of online rpgs.

Anyway, if a GM disappears, you can always try and find a new GM to take over. If there are enough players that keep posting, the admins can turn the game over to a new GM that steps forward.

Not unless the new GM was already a co-GM, they won't. All you can do otherwise is agree on a new GM amongst yourselves, copy what you can from your current game, and set up a new one.

There is another possibility which may not have been mentioned yet: People die.

Yes, this is a grim suggestion, but is it not a feasible suggestion? The vast majority of us do not know each other outside of our website personas, so we would't know if a fellow gamer had kicked the proverbial bucket. Games can last periods of years on RPOL, and many tragic things can happen to person over that span of time.

This is why I actually started GMing my own games on here. I got tired of losing GMs and wanted to be in a lasting game. I still play, but not quite as heavily as I once did.

Unfortunately, drobob, it doesn't entirely solve the problem, because our games still suffer from Player Abandonment Syndrome... :(

True. But the story can still go on. Each of mine have had dropouts, and either I'll get new ones in or just continue with the smaller party they have.

I think it's easier to find replacement players than to find a replacement GM.

This is especially true for the less popular settings and rule systems.

It cuts both ways equally.  Having players drop away without notice, or having to step in, can really wreck a game.  Its hard to salvage a deep drama story for a game when one of two of the key players have to be removed.  If that happens pretty far into a game, it can be a total disaster.  I've had a fair number of, at least in my own mind, great story ideas derailed by the focal player quitting the game.  Most of the time it means ditching a good amount of preplanning with no hope of salvaging it.

But, as has been said, its the nature of relying on other people for a game.  Some are unreliable, others are very reliable but may have unfortunate circumstances force them to back out. Have to just accept that as part of the game.

Very true, gd. This is why I try to not make any PC more important than others in my stories. That can be difficult sometimes though.

Once I started with nine players and had two left at the big finish. But those two stuck with it and we made a good game of it.

I'm not a big fan of replacement players. In part because I tend to run mystery-horror games (Call of Cthulhu mostly) and it's really hard for someone to catch up once the story's progressed through a few scenes. Besides players here seem very resistant to taking on existing characters, not to mention pregens.

Players and GMs drop here because there is a sense of animosity.  Simple enough.  That or life gets in the way, which it does happen.  There is one site, which I won't mention here (seeing the Mods watching and I'm learning slowly but surely), that keeps the animosity aspect of gms/players dropping out from happening as much.  This is why, even though I run one game here on RPOL, I most likely will not be starting anymore here on RPOL because of the previously mentioned reason and its lack of easy of access to check from phones.
This message was last edited by the user at 02:40, Fri 09 Sept 2016.

In reply to Sittingbull (msg # 22):

Animosity? How so?

In reply to Gaffer (msg # 23):

Likely means anonymity from the rest of the post
This message was last edited by the user at 14:15, Sun 03 July 2016.

I mean off of this site.  Your best friend could be playing in a game you are running on this site and he wouldnt know it, althought unlikely of course.  If the GM bails on the game the best friend would never know.  At least in a setting where there is no disappearing, there is less game sudden deaths and when they do happen at least you get a reason.
This message was last edited by the user at 02:41, Fri 09 Sept 2016.

The difficulty of player replacement depends a lot in the specific game.  I can be done in ways that aren't massively awkward to work around, although that doesn't click with every game system or GM.  I'm in a game that's well over 50K posts and has been running for more than 5 years.  Other than the GM, I'm the only one remaining from the game's beginning...but he designed the game in such a way that characters could be removed or added pretty much any time.  He doesn't expect new players to 'adopt' orphaned characters, preferring that they come up with their own.  Not every player that came in worked out...some had notions of what they expected the game to be, rather than reading the material on what the game actually was.  And when they discovered the game wasn't going to cater to them, they dropped out.  A lot have dropped for health reasons, or personal crises...a few came, tried it, and felt like it clicked.  But it can be done.

Replacing a GM presents a totally different challenge.

It is 'site' not 'sight'.  Sorry Sittingbull, I don't mean to come off as a ass.  But you misused the term, twice in the post above and also once in your post previous to that.  I just thought you should know.

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 26):

Facemaker, that sounds interesting. I am fishing for a few ideas at this point; in generic terms, how were "vanishing PCs" handled?
At what point did he stop waiting for them to come back, if they didn't bother to let him know?
Thanks

My rule of thumb is two weeks without any word warrants removal from the game.

I tend to treat GM absence the same way, unless I know them to be reliable from other games.

In reply to Gaffer (msg # 29):

This man is a smart man, listen to him. Personally it depends on the expected posting rate and all that good stuff. RL comes first, but drop a notice please!

1-2 weeks is good.

No, all my GMs kind of follow me around on Skype. Let that be a lesson to my fellow roleplayers. Skype makes it easy to get together for a game. It also makes people kind of hang around with you all day between game sessions and can get weird. I spend so much time just shooting the breeze now.

In reply to TheSnowpanther (msg # 27):

My Dyslexia thanks you.

I think I am now suffering from GM abandonment syndrome.

There was an epic level of awesome attached to a game concept. Build your city RPG fashion! "I'm all for that! Bring it on!" I said. Only to have been seemingly abandoned after about 8 posts into the game. Alas!!

I feel very bad reading this since throughout the years I've had chronic issues being a GM who causes abandonment syndrome...

Its not an excuse, but I suffer (less now with help from therapy, but more-so when I was dropping games a year back or earlier) from anxiety and depression. My depression would make me fall behind in life in general and lose focus, causing my RPoL work to really fall behind on top of real life stuff... and then my anxiety would kick in and make me worry how the players would react and fear posting or trying to start things up again.

I would worry so much about trying to post again, and being a good GM for them, that I became a horrible GM by just not posting altogether to avoid the anxiety feelings. This on top of wanting to do the best job possible and the depression making that hard fueled this further (feeling like its not worth doing what you can't do in the best way possible).

I went through that vicious cycle more than a few times and probably burned more than a few poor players through those events, for which I'm sorry.

If there are any old-time God Game players in the crowd who had me as an Ao, my apologies to you, since that is mostly where my responsibilities fell through and games died under my watch.

I hope to start things up again sometime in the future and finally break that cycle with a successfully completed game, but only after I know I've got a better grip on my problems.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

I'm a GM.  I do what I do because nobody else is doing it.   The players kind of need to accept that I will do what I can... and when I can't, I won't.  RPOL is an obligation I accept, but it's not as high a priority as many other things in my life.  Typically, I keep everyone in the loop, and expect the same in return.

Still, there comes a point where it feels like I'm spinning out more apologies than play.  That's usually when I kill my games.   I'd love to have a stable, no-crisis kind of life, but I don't.  So, the players have to accept it for what it is.

I GM one game...and I'm slow and inconsistent, but I will stick with that game until such time as I'm the only one left in it, because the game owner made me a co-GM knowing that he was going to have some health issues and expected to be faced with having to endure an extended absence from RPOL.  And I promised him I wouldn't let the game die in his absence.

He's been gone long enough that the odds are REALLY good he's never coming back.  I've got an outline for how I want to play the game out, and bring it to a conclusion.  But my RL schedule is erratic at best, and I struggle to keep things going.

Luckily, I've got a couple of players in the game who are understanding of that (or have been thus far, at least).  They'll occasionally nudge me to keep things moving, which I appreciate, but nobody's gotten to the 'update the game or I'm leaving' stage (which I wouldn't appreciate).  I could easily see how someone would feel like I've abandoned the game, considering there are weeks when I'll post two or three updates, and then I won't post anything for a month or more.  But GMing doesn't come easy for me, it takes me a while to psyche myself up to write updates, and while I'm good if I've found a 'rhythm', I'm also easily thrown off that rhythm and then it's really hard for me to get back to it.

So, I'm pretty forgiving of my GMs.  I get it.  I'm going through it.  But because my players don't give up on me, I'm not giving up as a player on any of my GMs, until such time as the game gets deleted or the GM announces they're discontinuing the game.

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 36):

You're a real trooper there, friend. I can't imagine that there are too many folks out there willing to step up to the plate like that these days. I don't have a clue what kind of game it is you're in, but if you need some help, I'm in-between projects right now and got some free time, so if it's something I know the offer's there.

I don't really have experience here on RPOL yet, but having played on <other site> and <different other site> quite a bit, I certainly have a fair bit of experience with this. It doesn't matter if everyone knows each other IRL. I have a group of friends who have all been mutual friends for basically the past decade or so, and even games that consist only of us, with a dozen ways to contact each other outside of the game, including knocking on their damned door, we still have about a dozen abandoned campaigns. It happens even when all the players are good friends and nobody is dying and you ought to have the perfect setup.

Main culprits:
- Changed work schedule. This tends to affect virtual tabletop games more than pbp, but even pbp can be affected when suddenly there's someone who can literally only post once per day at most, because they're working the whole time everyone else in the group is available to post.
- Depression. Personally, I find this to be a feedback mechanism, where getting depressed leads to posting less, and posting less contributes to greater depression, until suddenly you've not posted in three months and the game is dead.
- But more than anything else, the real issue is that people are really quick to write off a game, and just 2-3 days of the GM being incommunicado (plenty of legit RL reasons for a short unannounced absence!) can be enough for players to give up on a game that's been going strong for months, and so when the GM returns, the party has already partially or even wholly disintegrated.

Anyway, that's my personal experience with things.

have a core player that has flaked out, and they have multiple charactors in different threads... so it's affecting multiple groups. they had been acting pretty douchy towards me and another new player, earlier... so i think they just cant handle the fact that there are new vibrant personalities in the group, and their charactors aren't the ones making the biggest splash, anymore

My philosophy has evolved during my time here,
Originally, I would post super length posts with tons of description and narrative and I would burn out and vanish for a while while I recovered.

Eventually, I ended up cancelling two of my games and leaving the site for about six months. I returned and made a commitment to posting, even with simple one liner if it keeps the games moving.

My players have never been happier and I'm excited every day to hop on and play along.

I run Games, and I feel they should be fun for everyone involved.  I still write huge narrative posts from time to time, not out of obligation, but because I'm enjoying myself and get excited enough to write them.

My players can expect a fun game out of me, even if sometimes the dice isn't in their favor, or they are on their fifteenth bard...lol... I'm here now.
This message was last edited by the user at 06:28, Fri 23 Sept 2016.

My experiences here seem very different from those of other players, like Inneliese for example. I just looked at my RPOL homepage. I counted seven games there in which I am a player but the GMs have been AWOL for months. That doesn't count the three games which were deleted seemingly because the GMs lost interest. Besides those, there are the three games which I run (and get updated by me twice to four times per week), one game which I quit but where I continue to lurk, a few other games in which I lurk, and A Serious Waste of Time. By far the largest group on my homepage is the collection of games in which the GM has vanished.

What causes this? Well, one possibly is that people just die. We rarely know our fellow gamers outside of RPOL, and the games here can last for years at a time. It's almost inevitable that someone is going to die during one or more of these games, and we will have no way of knowing that it happened beyond a mysterious and frustrating absence.

If disappearing GMs is becoming such a problem for you, I suggest looking at a GM's track record before you sign up for their games. Wanted: Players puts this information out to you at the bottom of every ad. Alternatively you can search a GM's history by using the Browse/Search the games link on the main page.

For example if you see a GM that has a few games with a couple hundred posts, and a handful of deleted games with about the same, it might give you an idea about that individual's likelihood of success or failure in sustaining a game over time. Looking at those games can also give you an appreciation for the types of games they run. Of course, there are variables like the number of players, type of game, and quality to consider, but I find that if a GM hasn't managed to take a game past at least a 1000, let alone 2000 posts, it isn't likely to happen this time.

Of course, we have to give new GMs a chance from time to time.

But I have managed to virtually eliminate both GM and player disappearance from my RPOL experience by cultivating a network of friends to game with. Here are my tips for doing this:

- When you find a good GM that runs a lasting game let them know you're having a good time. Play in other games they run if possible.
- Let your fellow roleplayers know when you think they made a great post. They might invite you to their next game.
- Recommend good games to your friends.
- Recommend good players to your GMs.
- GM a game of your own. Invite other players that you know to it to give it the best chance of success. Take a chance on one or two new people.
- Encourage your players (the ones who post well and regularly) to run games of their own, and support them by playing in their games and suggesting players.

When you do all these things, you effectively create your own community on RPOL made up of people who more likely than not share your style, your gaming interests, and between you, you have trust and mutual appreciation of what you bring to the virtual gaming table.

Doing these things, I've created a great network of players and GMs. Every game I play in is run by a current or former player (and they all know each other), and almost every game I'm in I have another current/former player or GM in there as a fellow player. Since I've done this, I haven't experienced this phenomenon of people disappearing - and those that have left have always returned. One of them ran my first game on RPOL seven years ago. Three of them played in the first game I ran.
This message was last edited by the user at 13:34, Wed 12 Oct 2016.

Thank's Waxahachie, those are some good tips to keep in mind from now on when figuring whether or not to RTJ to a game, etc..
This message was last edited by the user at 08:35, Sat 17 Dec 2016.

I've by and large given up on finding games to play in because anything I might be interested in...the GM wants a novel or something similar.    I'm of the opinion that low level characters (in particular) should have a very limited backstory.   As a GM, I tend to prefer a picture and a paragraph.

It's easy to expand a character's background as you go.   I'd rather not have to start out that way.

Hunter, I’m not sure whether you’re talking about GMs making a novel of the game, or just about making a novel out of your background description, so I’ll address both issues.

There are two types of game out there:

1. Hack and slash, like the original D&D, AKA ‘Roll Play’, where all you need to know about your character is his name, class, and stats; the GM puts traps and monsters in front of you, and then you just roll dice to learn what happens.

2. Storytelling, AKA ‘Role Play’, where the GM and players collaborate in telling the story of their characters’ adventures, based on their backgrounds, personalities, thoughts, feelings and interactions - playing a role like an actor.

There are plenty of examples of both types of game out there, so I don’t think there is a need to give up on your hobby.

However, this site has, by its nature, a written format, and you need to write in order to communicate with your fellow gamers - even in the hack and slash games.

Consider how much talk goes on in a typical face to face game. While the players are rolling the dice, they are also talking - about what their character is doing, where he’s standing, whether his weapon is drawn or sheathed, what he thinks about the all-too-straight-and-inviting corridor, etc.

In this medium, all that stuff has to be written down (which can feel like an essay or novel, sometimes), but if it isn’t written down, misunderstandings arise, or the GM runs out of information to work with - are the PCs walking down that corridor or not? Does their lack of posts mean that they’re quietly following the elf, or does it mean they’re standing still and waiting to see what happens to the elf? The GM can’t see the players picking up figurines and moving them across the table (unless you’re also running on a medium outside Rpol), and there is no background chatter apart from what is written. Consequently, lack of player input can kill a game quickly.

Even more so in a storytelling (acting) game. Plays, screenplays and novels are driven by conversation. If the characters don’t converse in a storytelling game, the game is dead in the water.

As for expanding a character’s background as you go, that can be a nightmare for a GM. The last thing a GM wants is to have two NPCs conversing in German in order to keep their plans secret, only to have Player Three suddenly announce “My character learned German when he spent two years over there as an exchange student...”
Even if you’re not guilty of that, certain other players are, and I can understand why a GM wants to nail down exactly what your character’s prior experiences are before the game starts.

However, I can also agree that you don’t need several pages of description. A few paragraphs ought to be enough to describe a character’s background - and if it isn’t there, it didn’t happen.

Remember also, the GM uses your character background to decide what to throw at the characters - what will challenge them, what will interest them etc. If all she’s got to work with is “My character is an Elf and he hates Orcs”, she’s going to struggle to create an interesting game for you, even if it’s a hack and slash.

Exactly this.  But many RTJs do feel like they want a novel rather than a simple who, what, when, and where.  It doesn't help that I tend to write what are often short and very precise posts.

In reply to icosahedron152 (msg # 45):

I'll weigh in on the 'expand the background as I play' thing...because there are different ways that can be taken.  The first is as outlined in your example...characters exploit blank spots in their background to insert whatever advantage they feel they need in the moment.  The second...which is what I commonly see...is more a matter of coming up with specifics to flesh out general notes...

As an example, in one of the games I play, it's a near-future sci-fi game with a military setting.  One of the characters is a Marine sniper.  On starting, he'd never been assigned away from Earth, but he had a decade and a half of experience in the field.  The GM didn't make the player go through and delineate where on Earth the character had served, for how long, or what the precise nature of his assignments had been...but at various points in the game, the player dropped hints to expand on the 'decade and a half of combat duty on Earth'...comments about the rocky surface of an asteroid reminding him of his assignment in the Middle East, or the overgrown jungles of another world being even worse than South American rainforest...

I like that style.  I have never been the type to nail down every detail of my character's backstory, even before I started playing on RPOL.  AFTER RPOL, I'm even less inclined to detail the entire history, because so often, games fold up shop a few scenes into play (I've lost track of how many games I've joined that never even made it through the first scene, or games I joined that had been running for a while and folded before MY first scene had finished).  I'll put together all the relevant details that I feel I need to start playing the character, which often includes a lot of stuff that only exists to clarify the really key details (like my Scion FBI agent started playing football in high school...which made him popular enough to be noteworthy for standing up for kids who were being bullied when most of his teammates ignored them or were the bullies, for instance)...but there will be other details that I'll weave into the character (working with the GM) as I go along...and I work really hard to keep those details plausible and not just convenient for whatever occasion my character is facing.

I get it.  Building a character can be an arduous process...and some GMs elevate it from 'entertaining intellectual exercise' to 'overwhelming onerous burden'.  If I feel like a GM wants too much from me before I can even join the game, I won't even bother with an RTJ to that game.  I've had a lot of luck with GMs who understand my style of character creation and work with me on it...even though I suspect some of them have become more stringent in their requirements because some other players aren't as conscientious about 'plausible expansion' of character details and try to write in anything and everything they can.  But there ARE GMs out there who don't expect you to write a novella on your character's life story before you can join the game.

As a GM, I usually try to get the PCs to give me high-level backstories on the order of one or two paragraphs.  They typically need a good reason for any major advantages or disadvantages (not all, just the big ones) and a reason for being in the current situation.  Any more than that, and I probably won't bother reading it in the first place.

As a player, I used to write long backgrounds, but that's fallen away with time.  If nothing else, a background is a static thing and I often find that a long background doesn't necessarily mesh well with the dynamic character in play.  My characters tend to find a voice over their first several posts, and that voice can change a lot as I feel them out.  Having a big backstory locking me in to a certain personality when I find I'd rather play a different one is far from an advantage for me.



True - which is the focus of this entire thread.



Also true. Character generation (including the RTJ part) should be fun. If it isn’t, it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the game.



And that’s the key to any ongoing character development - working with the GM to create a plausible story, with no sudden surprises. I don’t believe a GM should ever be surprised by something a player adds to a story. Players, OTOH, can be surprised all the time by the GM. :)

As a GM, when I cast out for new players that aren't already known to me, I generally prefer the RTJ process to be relatively quick. I don't do the whole "first come, first served" thing. I'm selective, and I let people know that up front. As such, I don't really expect them to craft an elaborate background if I haven't even accepted them. But I will ask for a writing sample of a few paragraphs, and I feel like that's reasonable. It doesn't even have to relate to the game in question. Anything they've written for a game. The written word is our medium, and I prefer to have players that can write and express themselves decently.

After joining, I do go through a somewhat more lengthy process that asks for some detail and history, though. I find if people don't do it before the game starts, a lot of them will never get to it.

Everyone is making some good points here.  I think everyone could learn a good deal if they read this topic.

In the time that I have GM'd and played here, my father's had two heart attacks and been in a huge car accident.  I've lost two uncles, an aunt, several cousins, and a couple of friends.

You never know how these things will affect you until they happen to you.  Depression is a terrible thing.  It's not sadness... it's that everything that used to have some joy in it, no longer does.

The urge to roleplay, or run a game, just dies in the face of the black dog.

If anyone's ever wondered why I've poofed at times, there it is, among other things.

Having been there, yes, it's a reality.  Sometimes the drive and desire to play is just sucked away and vanishes, and you have no idea where it went or how to get it back.

And its not just depression, when you're older, and especially if you're male because our society has certain expectations of us, through the deaths and stress and crises you're supposed to be the one managing things, the rock and the support for everyone else.  And of course that feeds right into that depression, which you're not supposed to have because you're supposed to be the one everyone relies on.. yeah, when you're facing it you just can't sit at a keyboard and think about what happens when the Halfling Hero jumps on the Troll's back.

So you have the young GM Attention Span Of Caffeinated Ferret problem, and older GMs with the Dragged Down By Life Events problem.

I suppose the trick is to find the sweet spot in the middle.   But asking a potential GM about the health and financial security of family members might be going too far.

I say this as a heterosexual male, I love you man. +1000 to everything you said in your whole post.

I feel the exact same way.

I've found the solution to the problem that subjects this forum is play in a few games until you find those reliable people and simply stick with them.

My other solution is to only run modules when I start GMing a game. Then I'm not heavily invested and devastated if people disappear.
This message was last edited by the user at 23:04, Sun 04 June 2017.

For me, it's often that same combination of Duty and Responsibility.  I'm the primary breadwinner, I work a twelve hour shift at night, but I work a schedule that's two days on/two days off sort of thing.  On the surface this seems great, I can devote a lot of time to gaming every couple of days.  But if I spent the last two working days getting little sleep and then need to catch up on chores, want to hang out with my husband/friends, do anything social, or flipping sleep, Rpol gets shoved further down the list.  Besides, you Do Not Want me to exhausted-post.  It's like drunk posting, but with even more spelling errors and incoherency.

And trying to force myself to post doesn't yield the best results.  I want the time I spent gaming on Rpol to yield really good results, because I can go back and read what I've written, and I don't want to to be a bunch of gobbledygook.

Just wanted to chime in to say thank you to those that contributed their thoughts to this thread. Having joined only a few months ago, I was (and continue to be) super into it, but was quite disappointed that my first game wound up grinding to a halt due to GM disappearance after only a few weeks.

Thankfully, as some have already mentioned above, the group of players who were involved in the game turned out to be quite the dedicated and likable bunch, and so I managed to rescue the PC I'd invested so much in and bring her with me to another game run by a member of that same group. Real life always take priority of course and real life woes trump all hobby concerns. Nonetheless, it was good to hear the human voice and reasoning behind silent disappearance. Best wishes to those that have encountered the various troubles named in this thread!
This message was last edited by the user at 22:12, Thu 08 June 2017.