Advice/Help Posting Orders?

[animeloulou]

I'm currently GMing my first group RP and wondering how best to implement a posting order, or even if I should? I know the benefits of a posting order (making sure everyone has a chance to contribute, even with differing time zones etc.) but I don't want the RP to come to a halt if someone drops out suddenly.

Thoughts?

 

[rae2nerdy]

So that’s two separate issues but I will address them separately.

1. How do you make posting orders?
It depends on the size of your group if you have a fairly limited number of players that have radically different hours of availability than do a list format (ex. Susie posts, Jan posts, Lauren posts, back to Susie)

If you have a larger group with people who have similar hours of availability. You can do posting days. So Bob, Karen, Joe, Lark post on Mondays and Thursdays. Betty, Greg, Hannah, Fred post on Saturday and Sunday.

2. How to handle drop outs.
Set up a specific policy for what to do if a person can't post at their designated time. Usually I do a time skip at the end of the week so whoever wasn’t able to post can just write an overview for their character and move on.

 

[Crayons]

Yes make a posting order. It's simple. Everyone takes a turn to post based on the order in which they make their initial posts and then just carry on from there. Just tell people they must stick to posting order, and then beat them with a dead fish if they don't do it.

Give people a time frame after which you will skip their post. For example: a week. (Depending on how fast you want this to go) If they don't either post or provide an explanation just move on without them. You can wait for them if you want, depends how much they are holding things up.

This site is crazy in that posting order isn't the default norm.

 

[Ayama]

As an alternative to what Rae said, I usually go for posting rounds rather than strict posting orders when the group gets larger (basically everybody posts once between each of the GM posts).
The theory on that is that everyone has a week (or whatever) to post, but no one should be stuck waiting on any particular person as all players can post at any point during that week. It's very dependant on your players and the size of your group though.

​

 

[Whisker]

I'm in the 'No, don't make a posting order group'. Getting people to post (especially with the world going topsy turvy) in general is difficult enough without tacking restrictions on and having others wait for other people if they have time to post right then because they may not get it later.

It has been my experience that most rpers (particularly the ones on the upside of 18+) have a pretty good idea of when, where, and to whom they want to post. Only in the rare instance has anyone had to make slight adjustments because someone posted before they could finish or a bunch of posts have come up at once. Essentially, the structure I'm most familiar with is the one Ayama suggested with posting rounds so no one is stuck in a PO traffic jam waiting for others to finally post.

 

[Onmyoji]

I quit a lot of group roleplays because they had no posting limitations. As other players were in different time zone from me I always woke up to the point when rp went 50 posts ahead and my character completely forgotten. It's not fun at all when most players are in the same time zone and you're not, they keep talking and making decisions completely ignoring you because you're not online at the time.

The only group rp I spent playing more than a year had a strict posting order. We threw dice to determine who posts first and kept that going for a while. For our group it worked well.
But then things started to happen irl and we started having huge lags between posts, so we implemented something similar to posting rounds Ayama suggested. There was a week to reply, but other players could still post within that time. And GM kept track of what the characters were doing to not move ahead too fast without players that couldn't reply asap. Also worked well for a while.

So it really depends on the size of the group and players within the group, but some form of posting regulations should exist, otherwise people will quit because they wouldn't get a chance to get in between the few that are most active.

 

[Idea]

My RPs don't usually use posting orders, but even then they can still fall into the pitfal of a missing post halting a bunch of people (as anyone currently interacting with them may have to wait for their response regardless of there being a posting order), so here's what I do: In my RPs, I leave a warning saying that, should the RPer leave the RP (voluntarily or otherwise) their characters are subject to becoming NPCs.
-> A period without IC or OOC activity and I will attempt to contact the player and possibly issue a warning.
-> A longer period without IC activity will get the player's character controlled by me temporarily. This is irrespective of the player being in the OOC, or having legitimate reasons to be absent.
-> If a player goes for an excessive period without IC activity, they can be kicked out of the RP, and their character will be incorporated into the RP as an NPC, permanently GM-controlled. Even if the player at some point is given a chance to come back, there is no guarantee they will be able to use the same character they did before.

This way it becomes possible to move the story along without having to find some contrived explanation as to why the character just suddenly vanished out of existence, or is suddenly being ignored.

Hope this helps. Best of luck, and happy RPing!

 

[Archie]

In any RP, people will drop off. A hard posting order makes everyone else wait while that one person has quit (very few people say "I'm quitting", most say "I'll post soon!" and never do). This encourages even more people to get bored and quit. At the same time, no posting order means people can outrun the party. One RP I hosted had one guy post literally after every other person had posted. I eventually just made him the GM and filled him in on the secret lore.

The best way to do it is for the GM to manage everyone's speed. People who aren't posting should be asked if they're still going to post (or their characters just become NPCs), people who are posting too much should be told nicely to please chill. There are a lot of people who do this very well.

The good news is that people generally follow a posting order anyway out of habit, and because you need something to respond to before you can write a good post.

 

[rae2nerdy]

Additionally you can have a spam rule and a policy for writing characters out of action as the GM.

So if someone has not posted for a preset time their character is automatically written out of the scene. You don’t have to injure them or anything just have them called away by someone offscreen.

Additionally tell your players they can’t spam the thread. They can only post a certain number of time per day. Or they must wait a certain number of posts before responding.

This way you have a solution put up in the beginning and if someone pitches a fit later in the process you can point to the policies and be like “You agreed to X when you joined the roleplay”

 

[StrixDesmodus]

Personally, I'd never join a roleplay with a posting order or any similar policy. Not only is it too restrictive for my recalcitrant self, but it gets in the way of any semblance of a natural plot flow.
Want to have a one-on one conversation between characters at a natural pace? Nope.
Want your character to speak out of turn? Sorry Charlie.
Don't know of anything your character could possibly do when your turn has come? Filler city!

My solution to rapid-fire posting is to impose a sort of a "cooldown time" where you have to wait a certain amount of time after the last person has made their entry before you can post yours.

 

[Grey]

I don't have a strict posting order outside of combat, but I do two things most commonly that seem to work.

1. Ask players to only post once, in any order, until my next post.
2. Tell players they can post freely until a particular date, or until a certain scene is concluded, or until I say otherwise and move things along.

Generally I find a cohesive group of players will self-organize during moments they're left to their own devices and post with a more naturalistic flow. And if someone is being left behind, I encourage them to ask in OOC for a brief halt to catch up or I remind everyone to be considerate of them myself.