Role-play advertising

[Guest]

I get the general idea that it is frowned upon to go around advertising your role-play, though mostly because there is not a place to do so (minus the "plug your role-play in three lines or less), so it is considered spam pretty much anywhere.

My suggestion is this: could we have a stickied thread in each of the role-playing sections where we could advertise open spots in role-plays? The GM of the role-play would PM an IC moderator with a short description of their role-play and the spots that are available (or just a statement that any characters are welcome). I don't think this should work with role-plays that have just started, as that is what the interest check is for. It is more for role-plays that lose a player in the later stages. That seems to be one of the main reasons for a role-play to fail.

So, for example, Emoria has been going for quite a while. Its member count has fluctuated quite a bit over its time. Some of its arcs have had to be abandoned because of members who quit or just simply disappeared. But, with this system, I could PM an IC moderator with a description of Emoria and the spot open (i.e. The Valinyx arc of Emoria needs a player to either play the existing sage lord character or create a new one to takes its place, along with a description of Emoria and that particular arc). The moderator could then add it to the stickied thread for other members to see.

Another example is Sephiris. I am kind of in a sticky situation because the only person I've been role-playing with in my arc has disappeared (twice). While I don't have permission to have others take over his characters, it would be nice to advertise that I would like to have someone to role-play with. Currently, there isn't anywhere to advertise that.

Thoughts, suggestions, or improvements?

[Gadreille]

It seems too much to ask a moderator to update a thread. Yet, the "plug your RP in three lines or less" doesn't seem to work at all, seeing as there are advertisments that are no longer valid. I suppose the way GM's can write "accepting" in the RP description is cool, but it would be nice to explain exactly what you are accepting. Hmm... Yea, sorry, I didn't help at all.

[Fate Flyer]

If this is more so for long-running role-plays, we'd have to establish how old a role-play must be before it justifies advertising open spots. Also, what if a role-play is pretty old but only has two or three posts? Do we get really specific with it or just allow anyone who wants/needs to to advertise they have open positions that absolutely need filling?

I think, if we do this, only GMs who need people to fill in should be able to advertise. If a role-play simply allows new members to join whenever, then of course they won't need to advertise. It would only be for occasions when role-plays are down a player and need someone to fill that position (or something similar).

I see Ryona just replied to this with what I was about to say. I foresee it being difficult to keep up with each sticky thread in each RP forum. We would have to constantly get feedback from the GMs who have advertised in the sticky thread to hear if they got anyone to join, so we can remove their ad (otherwise their ad would just sit there forever, and someone may come along and ask to join the RP when that position has already been filled). It also might not even get attention from role-players, since they aren't guaranteed to check it. It could be rather difficult to implement successfully.

[Bird of Hermes]

I do like this idea, but, as Fate said, it would be difficult to implement.

It would have to be updated regularly and we would need a pretty clear criteria for who can be on it, who can't and when a role-play should be removed. What I foresee with this would be too many inactive role-plays staying on the list or role-plays that perhaps have their members already. We would have to purge the list every-so-often. Much work would need to go into it.

What I am getting at is that we would need to make sure the list would really be needed and would be useful to the members. The idea is good, but I don't know how it would work in practice.

[Digital Muse]

Wouldn't a new post in the interest check of the original RP with the specifics of a needed character to be filled bump that thread to the top and garner more readers?

[Guest]

Wouldn't a new post in the interest check of the original RP with the specifics of a needed character to be filled bump that thread to the top and garner more readers?

That is a good point, I suppose, but only if someone reads it. And I guess if they are really interested in joining a new role-play they will. And I can see all of your points on why this endeavor would be too difficult to maintain. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

[Kalon Ordona II]

Why don't we just make a subforum somewhere for Advertising Role-plays?
That way, we won't have to edit a list of role-plays in a topic. It'll be a self-managing list because the active advertisements will be at the top.

I don't see such a place as being a problem even if people try to abuse it, because we'd just catch the needless double posting. And we do have three OOC mods, three IC mods, and two Globals, so we're covered no matter where we put it.
The only con I can think of is that it might take attention away from the Interest Check areas, because people might only check the Advertisement subforum, thinking those are the only active ones or something.

On the other hand, I too would like a place to feel less constrained about plugging role-plays. Interest check doesn't seem quite right if you're trying specifically to get more players for an existing role-play.
FOGgers are good about keeping rules and guidelines, so we could put a sticky inside about how to use the Advertising subforum.

We don't need a subforum in each role-play category either, though we could do it that way if there's no better place to put it.

Does that sound like a good solution? A new subforum somewhere set aside for Role-Play advertising, with loose guidelines and an honor system?
I'd say it's worth a shot, if it won't take too much away from the Interest Check subforums.

[Chainlinc3]

Honestly, I think the same basic purpose is served by A: Having a descriptive title/subtitle and B: placing an [OPEN] sign in the OOC thread when it's accepting new members. Between the two of them, those tasks let people know if your RP is open and if it is at least mildly interesting to them-- enough to give a click and read more, at any rate. If you REALLY want to make it easy on prospective RPers, you could even throw a "tl;dr"-styled section in the beginning to give them something between the one-line subtitle and the entire OOC.

But... that's just my two cents.

[Dax]

I thought had posted something here last night, but I guess I didn't... odd.

Anyway, basically what I was saying is that it could be feasible to have those threads at the top of each RP section, since we have 3 IC mods. It could work two ways: 1. It works how Silvone asked: Gm's post in the thread and update it when needed, and any IC mod that sees those ads can just edit the OP or 2. GMs just post in the thread and update the posts themselves, but that could lead to forgotten, useless posts, etc.

Or, like Kalon said, we can have a subforum, but it has to be plainly put that its an advertisement for RPs that have already started and its not advertisement for new RPs, so that we dont have new players that those subforums are better than IC checks. We might even need to provide a link to the IC posts to fix the possible confusion. But its nothing complicated or too confusing.

I think either, feasibly, could work.

[Lord Revan]

Well I do not really have an opinion on this. However if it is feasible, and the IC Mods are willing to do it, maybe it could be tried.

The reason I am responding Dax, is actually because of how you said you thought you posted. What might have happened is you posted, but as you were writing, someone posted in front of you. When this happens you get prompted that there was a response while you were writing your post. It gives you the option to modify or go ahead with what you wrote. If you do not hit save, and just hit the home button or back button you lose your post.

Hope that helps.

[Guest]

I definitely like Kalon's suggestion better than a sticky thread in each section, but Chainlinc's seems the most hassle free and least confusing. Not only does it not require any work except from the people in charge of the role-plays but it also utilizes the already present forum features. Interest checks could also have (Open) in the title or description just as easily(where new members are more likely to check for open role-plays rather than the OOC) and bumping them with an additional "We're looking for someone to fill this spot" does not seem like spamming to me, if it's just once and immediately at the time of needing a new player(s). Even the first post can be edited to let people know right away so that they don't scroll through only half the posts and come upon the ones where previous people filled those positions and accidentally think that they're too late to join.

Everything else is nice but kinda superfluous. I don't see why the interest checks could not fulfill this purpose.

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