Noivian
Drinker of coffees
Heya, all. Noivian here. I wanted to take a moment to talk about a few things that not only apply to me, but perhaps some other hobbyist role players out there.
Something that I noticed going around is discussion about people dropping from role plays, especially when the role play is just starting up, leading to the premature death of the role play. This leaves many GM's frustrated and unsatisfied with their ideas, half-baked and waiting to be filled out. Now while there's no true solution to this problem, as there's no feasible way to force people to do what they don't want to do, especially not legally and not over the internet. Instead, I'd like to suggest an idea to perhaps deter potential instant droppers.
Now, none of this has been field tested in a role play, but in theory it's rather sound. I'm suggesting that every character sheet or whatever you use to learn about your role player's characters include a section for the Drop Factor. What is the Drop Factor, you ask? It's just a term I gave to the concept of dropping, both how likely an individual is to drop along with how likely it is a certain role play might lose role players. The Drop Factor is simply a scale of 1 - 10, where 10 signifies a role player is least likely to drop from a role play and 1 signifies a role player is most likely to drop from a role play. Drop Factor ratings can also signify how long a role player will stay interested in the role play, where 10's will stay interested longer, even during periods of inactivity and 1's are likely to drop shortly after posting a character, or perhaps won't make a character at all.
I'm not by any means encouraging anyone to go out and start labeling role players by their Drop Factors, or create lists of RPN members with Drop Factor numbers. That's not only mean, but also highly subjective. It's possible a person might be a 3 in one rp and a 7 in another. This is why Drop Factors should always be self-assigned.
Drop Factors for role plays work in a very similar way, but are assigned entirely differently. Role play Drop Factors are assigned by taking the Drop Factors of each role play member (including the GM) and finding the average. So let's say you have a mutant lab experiment role play, and your members have Drop Factors of 7, 7, 6, 9, and 4. Your role play Drop Factor, how likely your role play is to hold interest, would be 6.6. It's a fairly average role play, and will perhaps last a few weeks, give or take. Just because someone has a high Drop Factor, doesn't mean they're guaranteed to stay until the role play dies or finishes.
1 role play's generally last a few days, perhaps a few hours. They're generally based off fleeting ideas, are not fully thought out, and rarely make it past the interest check stage. 5 role play's are the average mutant/science lab/high school role play that makes up the bulk of the role play world. They last perhaps a week or two, but almost always fizzle out before completion, or complete so quickly that it doesn't feel like a real ending. 10 role play's generally last months. These were the former Hosted Projects, before the system switched over. Sometimes a good role play will last years, if given enough room to grow and proper grooming from the GM's. Of course, there's always exceptions to these estimates. A 1 might be cycling through role players and characters so fast it keeps afloat for a month, or a well planned out 8 might sink a few days in, from any number of reasons.
While we're on the topic of Drop Factors, I'd like to address the other two thirds of my topic title. While it might not take as much room as the idea of Drop Factors, it basically runs off the same principal. The idea is that in role plays with multiple GM's, accepting characters would be a bit more objective. Going back to our mutant idea, let's say you had your character sheet divided into three segments: basics, personality, and mutations. Each GM would supposedly look over every character sheet and score each section 1 - 10, with 10 being the best score. The scores for each section would be averaged together, and the sheet's averages would have to meet a certain threshold in order to be accepted. Of course, individual scoring is entirely opinion based, but this makes it harder for one GM to strongarm the others into accepting a character they probably shouldn't. Theoretically, the GM's should collectively set benchmarks at 1, 5, and 10 with examples of the kind of quality they're looking for at each benchmark, so as to make scoring more fair. That way one GM's friend wouldn't be auto-admitted because the GM gave them perfect 10's. I mean, it's probably going to happen, but this makes it less likely.
TL
R: Use numbers behind the scenes to make acceptance more fair to the role players actually invested in the role play.
Something that I noticed going around is discussion about people dropping from role plays, especially when the role play is just starting up, leading to the premature death of the role play. This leaves many GM's frustrated and unsatisfied with their ideas, half-baked and waiting to be filled out. Now while there's no true solution to this problem, as there's no feasible way to force people to do what they don't want to do, especially not legally and not over the internet. Instead, I'd like to suggest an idea to perhaps deter potential instant droppers.
Now, none of this has been field tested in a role play, but in theory it's rather sound. I'm suggesting that every character sheet or whatever you use to learn about your role player's characters include a section for the Drop Factor. What is the Drop Factor, you ask? It's just a term I gave to the concept of dropping, both how likely an individual is to drop along with how likely it is a certain role play might lose role players. The Drop Factor is simply a scale of 1 - 10, where 10 signifies a role player is least likely to drop from a role play and 1 signifies a role player is most likely to drop from a role play. Drop Factor ratings can also signify how long a role player will stay interested in the role play, where 10's will stay interested longer, even during periods of inactivity and 1's are likely to drop shortly after posting a character, or perhaps won't make a character at all.
I'm not by any means encouraging anyone to go out and start labeling role players by their Drop Factors, or create lists of RPN members with Drop Factor numbers. That's not only mean, but also highly subjective. It's possible a person might be a 3 in one rp and a 7 in another. This is why Drop Factors should always be self-assigned.
Drop Factors for role plays work in a very similar way, but are assigned entirely differently. Role play Drop Factors are assigned by taking the Drop Factors of each role play member (including the GM) and finding the average. So let's say you have a mutant lab experiment role play, and your members have Drop Factors of 7, 7, 6, 9, and 4. Your role play Drop Factor, how likely your role play is to hold interest, would be 6.6. It's a fairly average role play, and will perhaps last a few weeks, give or take. Just because someone has a high Drop Factor, doesn't mean they're guaranteed to stay until the role play dies or finishes.
1 role play's generally last a few days, perhaps a few hours. They're generally based off fleeting ideas, are not fully thought out, and rarely make it past the interest check stage. 5 role play's are the average mutant/science lab/high school role play that makes up the bulk of the role play world. They last perhaps a week or two, but almost always fizzle out before completion, or complete so quickly that it doesn't feel like a real ending. 10 role play's generally last months. These were the former Hosted Projects, before the system switched over. Sometimes a good role play will last years, if given enough room to grow and proper grooming from the GM's. Of course, there's always exceptions to these estimates. A 1 might be cycling through role players and characters so fast it keeps afloat for a month, or a well planned out 8 might sink a few days in, from any number of reasons.
While we're on the topic of Drop Factors, I'd like to address the other two thirds of my topic title. While it might not take as much room as the idea of Drop Factors, it basically runs off the same principal. The idea is that in role plays with multiple GM's, accepting characters would be a bit more objective. Going back to our mutant idea, let's say you had your character sheet divided into three segments: basics, personality, and mutations. Each GM would supposedly look over every character sheet and score each section 1 - 10, with 10 being the best score. The scores for each section would be averaged together, and the sheet's averages would have to meet a certain threshold in order to be accepted. Of course, individual scoring is entirely opinion based, but this makes it harder for one GM to strongarm the others into accepting a character they probably shouldn't. Theoretically, the GM's should collectively set benchmarks at 1, 5, and 10 with examples of the kind of quality they're looking for at each benchmark, so as to make scoring more fair. That way one GM's friend wouldn't be auto-admitted because the GM gave them perfect 10's. I mean, it's probably going to happen, but this makes it less likely.
TL
R: Use numbers behind the scenes to make acceptance more fair to the role players actually invested in the role play. 
