Advice/Help I have never hosted a RP before and I am getting curious...

Azerothii

That one smol paw
For like six and a half years, I have been playing other people’s rps and stories that I slowly start to get curious about what it is like to host your own roleplay.

I personally feel intimidated when I think hosting one but I really want to try it.

Can you give me tips on what to do and what not to do when hosting a rp?
 
GMing can indeed be quite a difficult experience. I say this not to discourage you -GMing is an important role and greatly appreciated- but as a warning, because becoming a GM means carrying a lot of extra stress for what may seem like uncorresponding reward. Even if your RP is quite successful, which most just aren't, you'll still have to deal with trouble makers. Sensible decisions will still be criticized. Life will still pull away players. Plot lines and worldbuilding will go ignored.

So when you and make your roleplay, rememeber you carrying with it a good deal of responsability and it will not be easy. You CAN succeed. More often than not you will fail, for reasons completely outside your control. Being able to GM means first and foremost being able to carry that weight and accept that failure can very well happen and when it happens, but still giving it your wall to make your roleplay and the player's experience the best you can.

Now, the question itself is WAY to broad to properly answer, but I'll try to give some quick advice (I'm tired, so won't be writing too much...)

1. Involve your Players
This is perhaps the most important piece of advice I can give you regarding this topic, involve your roleplayers. Keep in mind that nobody is roleplaying for you, they roleplay and are in your roleplay for their own reasons. Because of this players will only invest if they feel invested in. Pay attention to the player's characters and take a genuine interest in them. See how you can take their facets like personality and backstory and how you can give them spotlight, weave them into the plot and aknowledge the presence and efforts of the players.

2. Remember the little moments
By my experience a good chunk of roleplays are made or broken in the little, iddle moments. Sure, you will want fantastic emotional scenes, thrilling action and so on...but all roleplays come to have moments when the characters just sit down and talk or just have some free time or something of the like. Your skill at handling these roleplays will often determine whether your roleplay becomes a zombie and eventually rots to death or whether you can break out of that without being too jarring and manage to get a continued good experience.
Now as for concrete methods here, I must admit it is one of my weak points when it comes to GMing...

3. Make sure you are available
This goes both in terms of schedule and mentally. Schedule-wise it's simple and you would think obvious: if you happen to be busy, don't start a new RP. If you going to be busy in the near future, don't start the RP until it's dealt with. Keep plans to make sure that even if you aren't able to be with the players that someone can adress their concerns.

But there is also a mental aspect to this. Avoid making roleplays on a whim. As a rule of thumb, if you have an idea and really want to make an RP out of it, wait 3 weeks. if you still want to make that RP so badly after that, go for it. If you don't it's because you were "drunk on hype" at the time, which would only have resulted in you loosing interest in your RP after the three weeks...


4. Balance listening to your players and knowing when to put your foot down
As a GM it is important to stick to the core elements and rules of the roleplay, but to have the flexibility to seriously and critically consider the feedback from your players.

5. Don't abuse your position as GM for your own benefit. (rule of thumb: any rule that applies to a player applies to you as well)
Kinda goes without saying, but a good chunk of GM problems often come from the GM using their authority as thread owners to put their own needs or themselves even on a sort of pedestal. Making their characters the central focus, giving themselves exceptional powers, altering the rules willy nilly, deciding what to approve or not based on gut reaction rather than respecting any criteria by which players can actually abide by...

A rule of thumb that helps with this is making it so any rule for your players is a rule to you too, better yet if it goes double. Leading by example as one might put it.



Anyways, I hope this helps! I may come to edit this later refining or adding more advice, but until then best of luck and happy Rping!

PS: I also have a guide on making better interest checks, if you'd like to check it out: Tutorial - Principles of A Good Interest Check
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top