Advice/Help Interest Check Clinic

[Grey]

This is a little selfish of me, but I'm stumped (and honestly if anyone else wants to talk about writing better checks I'm happy to see if I can help).

Now I've been doing this long enough to understand it is, mostly, a combination of numbers game and popularity contest - enough pitches and bumps with some lucky timing will draw people in, and making yourself widely known on any site is a big interest driver. But I've been out of the game for a little while, site demographics have shifted a bit, layouts have changed.
So naturally, I'm wondering; leaving aside things like time of year, brand recognition, and dumb luck, what's missing from making my checks appealing? Dice is always low activity but I swear I used to have better luck getting players and making converts of lifelong freeformers, and the spike in D&D's popularity has definitely boosted the presence of those games and their players here on RPN.

Below are two checks, one for a custom system and one for a well-established one. Tonally, thematically, they're wildly different. Nine Billion Names is for sure more obtuse on the surface but I think it looks fun. Year of the Spy feels like it should have low barriers for entry, being set in the real world with what feels to me like an obvious potential range of characters. I've seen less detailed checks drum up bigger numbers, faster.

What do you fine folks think? Does something about these put you off? Is something missing? Are they overwritten or too specific? What would it take, schedule permitting, to get you on board?

Year of the Spy

Note: this will be a slightly modified core Chronicles of Darkness game but that wasn't an option on the system dropdown. INTERNAL COMMUNIQUE: House Committee for Inhuman Activities DATE: June 1985 TO: [REDACTED] FROM: [REDACTED] RE: CODE UNREAL CITY Rawhide has approved your unit for...

www.rpnation.com

Nine Billion Names

In the furthest reaches of Hell, where the greatest prayer-wheels spin and howl, where towering shrines belch sweet smoke or flow with sunlike nectar, where the the great spires of the Ur-City are shrouded from sight, there is a monastery of little repute. Here, where the blasted plains meet...

www.rpnation.com

And if anyone else feels like putting together a check is a struggle, wants people to take a look or offer advice, feel free to post as much. I think it's pretty obvious there's no silver bullet solution but you never know what you might learn.

 

[Crayons]

Hmm good question, and good idea for a thread!

Now, I'm no expert on making Interest Checks, nor do I look for dice-based RPs, but I can give you my opinion based on what I would want to see in an Interest Check. Hopefully it will help a little.

IMO - what I would prefer is for the expectations for the player, and information about the system to be right up front. The flavour text, while ... flavoursome ... is only going to be something I would want to read after I know if the RP suits my requirements. These would be things like: posting length expectation and rates, number of characters you're looking for, experience level. I would also want to know: what is this system and what it involves, for example d20 based system, simple mechanics, complex mechanics, homebrew or Straight Outta Rulebook etc., and also the genre/s that you're going for.

After that, put your IC intro or flavour text.

I feel like when people are browsing interest checks, the first thing they want to do (or at least in my case) is know: "Will this RP suit me?" and only then "What is this RP about? How does it work?" because if it doesn't suit me, I'm not going to look further. I don't want to waste my time (I don't mean this in a disparaging way at all) getting all geed up on flavour text if at the bottom the interest check says "I only want people who can post six times a day, 1000 words per post."

Personally, I could do without flavour text/intro at all. But I have no idea if that's how other people feel, I might be an outlier.

Anyway hope that helps! Good luck!

 

[Grey]

Thank you, that is useful to know. I usually think of the flavour as necessary to hook people's interest and I'm not terribly stringent about posting requirements, but I might revise that.

 

[still watching fma]

I actually loved the spy one, but I'm also really new to ttrp systems. So my barrier to entry is not knowing how to play it.

 

[Grey]

I actually loved the spy one, but I'm also really new to ttrp systems. So my barrier to entry is not knowing how to play it.

Ah, you know, I usually include some kind of caveat about that and missed it that time.
I always take a rules-light approach for play-by-post games and I aim to make learning a system as easy as possible. Sometimes you don't even need to learn it.

 

[still watching fma]

Ah, you know, I usually include some kind of caveat about that and missed it that time.
I always take a rules-light approach for play-by-post games and I aim to make learning a system as easy as possible. Sometimes you don't even need to learn it.

I prefer that kind of style as well(rules lite), but dnd just seems to attract people easier. xD

if the spy one gets a few bites, tag me in :3

 

[Syvvaris]

While DnD has had a surge of popularity in the recent years I would say that DnD has not CoD or Crucible. One of the biggest issues you have might be because of the system you're trying to play. While I know how to play DnD 3.5, 5E, Pathfinder and Starfinder; picking up another system and making the time investment to read learn and create is sometimes a daunting task for a story that may or may not take flight.

EDIt: Also both stories seem really interesting. My issue with Year of the Spy is the setting. Which may be an issue, the setting is 1970's and modern. I'm more of a time to go Fantasy or Sci-Fi.

The Nine billion names.... besides the system would be the morality setting behind it. People going into Hell with a scroll that has the possible names of The Creator. Going into this game seems like it would be fit for the morally corruptible or villians and at the end there is going to be a twist.

So for me, what would turn me away from these RP's:
1. Different System I would have to invest time in learning. There are pros/cons to this and the con is learning how to play with the possibility the RP never taking place. It's like creating a DnD character just to never play it.
2. Settings: Some people want to play exclusively fantasy. Others Sci Fi, and others Modern times.
3. Morality of the Campaign: Playing a straight good, straight neutral, straight evil campaigns can drive interests; but some people don't want to play an evil or a low-morality kinda campaign.
4. Giving a potential plot twist at the beginning of a campaign: Nine Billion Names really does seem the main plot is going to have a major plot twist at the end of it. You can see it coming from the beginning so the adventure would seem more like a how do we get to the twist, then a let's see where the adventure takes us.

 

[baggysack]

I've been trying to brainstorm suggestions, but it's hard to be objective about interest checks. I'm going to tentatively second the "less flavor" strategy since being able to convey your expectations in the least amount of words is probably your best bet for "advertising." I would also suggest visual aids like artwork that reflects the tone/setting as well as emphasizing (bolding, italicizing, etc.) proper nouns, especially with fantasy games.

A formula I've seen with successful checks revolves around three sections. Section 1 is the in-character flavor text: "The year was 1985..." Section 2 is exposition on the premise and what players can expect: "'1985' is a (genre) game set in..." Then Section 3 describes the expectations, the rules, etc. But the checks also have more in common - they're almost all modern-day, Instagram-model-face-claim, narrative-driven games which seem to attract the most interest as a whole, so this might just be correlation not equaling causation or whatever.

I'm extremely unversed in this site and tabletop games; I don't have a lot of experience with the sort of audiences that would be interested in your games in-particular, so I apologize for having super-generalized answers. The only anecdotal advice I have is, if you get any interest, more-than-1-player interest, I would start the game soon. It may be because it was within a sub-forum, but the best roleplay I was ever in accrued interest after the interest-gauging phase; the expectation was for 8 players, we started with maybe half of that, and then the others came in a couple weeks after when they saw an active game where players were having fun. There's so much about roleplaying you can't predict, anyway, and people can get desperate for a game - even here, it seems like.

...this post turned out bigger than my confidence in it, aha. But I do hope it helps, and I'm eager to hear others' advice on the subject.

 

[Grey]

I tried applying some of the advice I was given here. We'll see how it plays out.

Pirates of the Darkening Skies

This RP will be for 4-6 players, a group of misfits, cutthroats, and scoundrels with hearts of gold. The system is easy enough to learn, a dice-pool system that's easy to use but has mechanical depth if you want to engage with it. No prior experience with this game or dice games required. All...

www.rpnation.com

 

[still watching fma]

Yay you got some takers.

 

[Crayons]

Looks good! Hope you get all your players and it goes well.