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I'm not going to take part in the discussion of whether or not certain formats are appropriate for the TBGs, but I will provide input on good practice when making a game.

For GMs - Your character shouldn't know the meta, it should go independently from your narration.

          This shouldn't be a problem, because the GM of a game should never, with very few exceptions, have a character participating in the game. Player characters controlled by the GM, or "GMPCs" in most cases add nothing to a game and stand to detract a great deal from one. In most games, GMPCs exist only so that the GM can "have their cake and eat it too" by both running the game and participating it. This is, quite frankly, selfish behaviour. By their very nature, GMPCs are unbalanced and unfair to legitimate players.

          GMs have, of course, many advantages over a regular player. They possess intimate knowledge of all past, present, and future events, along with the power to change these events as they desire. For a fair and enjoyable game, it is important that the this power is not wielded to benefit any specific player more than another.

          Players often develop an emotional attachment to their characters. This is part of what makes RPGs enjoyable, and character death meaningful. In the same way, GMs will develop an attachment to their GMPCs. Of course, this is the entire purpose of the GMPC; the attachment is what differs a GMPC from simply another NPC. And it is in this attachment where the problem lies.

          In a dice-based game, the ultimate fate of characters should not be placed in the hands of those with an attachment to such characters. This causes problems and unfairness, and is why rolling is centralized by the GM. If the GM himself has an attachment to a specific character, it is even more injurious than a cheating player. As I said previously, the GM holds supreme power over the game and thus unmatched ability to favour his character over another. There are many ways this can be accomplished: Changing failed rolls to succeed or simply neglecting rolls altogether, having the character be more 'meta' than other player characters, introducing situations that favour the GMPC, 'accidentally' finding items or secrets that the player characters missed, and so on and so forth. This is, obviously, unfair and leads to frustration among the players as the focus is shifted from them to the GMPC.

          This is one of the most important parts of running a game: The focus must be on the players at all time. They are what is most important. Their actions must matter. If a challenge or obstacle is overcome, is must be due to their efforts. Shifting the focus to a powerful NPC or GMPC will make the players feel that they don't really matter. In many cases, they would be right.

          A 'trustworthy' GM is no excuse for a GMPC. They are innately more powerful than the player characters, which can lead to player discontent even if this power is not exercised. Furthermore, the emotional attachment can make bias towards a GMPC tempting even for a trustworthy GM. I know I don't trust myself with one.

          Lastly, the additional work of playing a GMPC can take time, effort, and attention away from actually running the game.

          An exception to the "Don't use GMPCs" rule is in semi-GMed freeform RPGs, such as (to cite a popular example), Chronicles of Pokemon. In this case, the players have just as much power over the events of the game as the GM, and thus a GMPC can add to the story rather than detract from it.    
   
          Transparent text is awkward, easily circumvented, and rarely a good answer to a problem.

This caused Darkfire yell at me for trying to give players dice. This works as long as you're in trusted party or 1x1. Not on random parties. Remember the D&D parties? Players rolled dice for their characters.

          Players rolling their own dice can, again, be tempted because of the emotional attachment. Such a mechanic is no better than not having dice at all. Dungeons and Dragons is different, because physical dice are rolled in front of the entire party. This could be replicated by having players roll dice in a public place such as the TBGs Chat or Discord, but this has no advantages over simply having the GM do it.

I'm not sure if my subconscious is just trying to justify Teddy from GV but I kinda feel like if you have a more rigid fighting system (more stat-focused / set attacks etc) GMPCs could work OK, if the rolls aren't being rigged and the GMPC's stats aren't higher than the rest of the player's stats?

Quote from: DaEpikDudeI'm not sure if my subconscious is just trying to justify Teddy from GV but I kinda feel like if you have a more rigid fighting system (more stat-focused / set attacks etc) GMPCs could work OK, if the rolls aren't being rigged and the GMPC's stats aren't higher than the rest of the player's stats?

It's important to consider that it's not just the rolls that could be rigged, but also important plot details, powerful loot, location of loot, etc, which is all information that the GMPC could use.

Quote from: TheLastDino

Quote from: DaEpikDudeI'm not sure if my subconscious is just trying to justify Teddy from GV but I kinda feel like if you have a more rigid fighting system (more stat-focused / set attacks etc) GMPCs could work OK, if the rolls aren't being rigged and the GMPC's stats aren't higher than the rest of the player's stats?

It's important to consider that it's not just the rolls that could be rigged, but also important plot details, powerful loot, location of loot, etc, which is all information that the GMPC could use.

yeah, i guess so

Hi, just wanted some advice on a problem. I run a basic, standard, dice-based RPG, and although I followed this guide and made an interesting plot, almost nobody cared about it or even never knew it existed. What can I do to make more successful RPGs in the future?

Quote from: GalaxySugarFoxHi, just wanted some advice on a problem. I run a basic, standard, dice-based RPG, and although I followed this guide and made an interesting plot, almost nobody cared about it or even never knew it existed. What can I do to make more successful RPGs in the future?

I'm by no means the 'word of law' in RPGs, but I can offer you a few tips (despite the fact I haven't had a properly successful RPG yet ).

I think the first thing that I'd take into consideration is the format. In both your Fight or Flight and your Marvel RPs, the different sections of the original post blended together, due to not having any formatting. This could be fixed through quote-boxes, bolded text, indentations, subheadings or similar.

For example, instead of, say:

Quote from: GameMasterRules
Rule 1 ----
Rule 2 ----
Rule 3 ----
Rule 4 ----
Rule 5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Signup
Name:
Age:
Gender:
Looks:
Backstory:

Plot: In the kingdom of yadda yadda, there was a man who yadda yadda'd his way to becoming the yadda yadda of the land.

Instead, you could do:

Quote from: GameMaster

Rules
Rule 1 ----
Rule 2 ----
Rule 3 ----
Rule 4 ----
Rule 5  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Signup
Name:
Age:
Gender:
Looks:
Backstory:

Plot
In the kingdom of yadda yadda, there was a man who yadda yadda'd his way to becoming the yadda yadda of the land.

Obviously just a pretty simple example, but the second one is neater and easier to understand than the first one. The more text there is, the more noticeable the difference between the two methods become.

-

My second tip would be to give a clear goal to the players. For example, in Shards, the original post contained clear information about what the goal was - gaining the shards of power - and then the first gameplay post dropped the players into a tunnel, with the only way to play being to go forwards, basically.

On the other hand, in your RPG - Fight or Flight - also has a goal for the players, but it's quite vague. It simply says to survive, a goal which does not have an end, really. There are also almost unlimited ways to go about it, meaning the players might feel a bit lost, especially without a GM.

The third and final point I'd like to point out is the topic of your RPG - Fight or Flight. From what I can tell, it seems to be an anthropomorphism-based game. Anthropomorphism games are a very specific type of niche that not all people will enjoy. In fact, a lot of people dislike the niche, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case for at least part of the TBGs' population.

These are all just suggestions, though, so feel free to ignore them. Good luck!

Quote from: ItakuGood RP has to have a plot.

If this isn't a necessity for an RPG, and it doesn't make the community as a whole any less likely to play them, then an RPG doesn't need that solid of a plot. It's like a film by Adam Sandler made after Happy Gilmore (or Click if you're really stretching it). You can say they aren't good films, you can say that they shouldn't be made, but you can't say that a large number of people wouldn't be angry if one night you got rid of Adam Sandler. Last time I checked, one of the strong points of this website was that we weren't elitist, yet most of your arguments seem to ask us to be.

Quote from: ItakuDon't follow the trends.

Most trends only form because they are based off of play styles that have been proven to be effective as a medium of gameplay. GMed d20 games were considered a trend until enough people actually started doing them and stopped calling Word and Dark madmen who gave their games too many rules to follow. Joke RPs aren't a trend, they're just the tried and true freeform set up narrowed down to base scenarios that incentivize the act of role-playing over story, because that's what people want from those games.

Quote from: Dark"GMPCs" in most cases add nothing to a game and stand to detract a great deal from one.

Okey doke, call me a madman, but I find the concept of the GMPC both interesting and workable under very important circumstances. This is to say, if PCs are treated mostly as prominent NPCs. For example, how does one of Rekekka's characters from Cornwell Quest differ notably from a Player Character? Rekekka doesn't just have them go flying around and killing the enemies that we come up against. Instead, they're used to further a plot that many other characters wouldn't be able to fill in for themselves. The difference is no one's acting like they are "PCs". Sure, the person playing them knows what's going to happen, but we all know that, and no one's treating it otherwise. What I'm trying to say is that they can work if we don't go pretending that they're just another PC.

Quote from: DarkSuch a mechanic is no better than not having dice at all.

On the topic of characters rolling their own dice, there is a possible way to make this actually work. I said we could just use the Chat on the site to roll so that everyone can see that you definitely rolled what you say you do, but some weirdo who likes spiders too much said he'd rather have it be logged. So. We could. Just. Have someone make a Discord bot. I know it's a lot of work to go through just so that you can stop worrying about people lying about rolls, but having that as an option for dice rolling could open up some pretty interesting doors for potential non-GMed dice based games. So. Those are my thoughts.

Quote from: frishy

Quote from: Dark"GMPCs" in most cases add nothing to a game and stand to detract a great deal from one.

Okey doke, call me a madman, but I find the concept of the GMPC both interesting and workable under very important circumstances.

Madman.

Jokes aside, good points. GMPCs can work, under specific circumstances. In the case of Cornwell Quest I'd argue that most of the prominent GM-controlled characters aren't GMPCs, merely NPCs. They are used not to participate in the story but to facilitate telling it, which is where I define the line between an NPC and a GMPC. Rebecca is a possible exception, and serves as a rare example of how a GMPC can work if handled very carefully.

A Discord-based dice roller might work, but again runs into the issue of being off-site. As stated before in this discussion, not everyone is willing or able to use Discord, and logging the rolls off-site could be exclusive to such players.

Quote from: TheLastDino-snip-

I still hope we can agree that joke RPs were a mistake, right? (I'm talking about endless memes and BWD GRAMERS BECUAZ DERE FUNY!!) The "comedy" of these is the TBGs equivalent of grandayy.

Also, I think I should add something.

Don't beg anyone to join a RP. Seriously, that's not cool - first. I learned it soft way.
Second - it might push people away from RPs.

Quote from: the2000

Quote from: TheLastDino-snip-

I still hope we can agree that joke RPs were a mistake, right? (I'm talking about endless memes and BWD GRAMERS BECUAZ DERE FUNY!!) The "comedy" of these is the TBGs equivalent of grandayy.

hey now dont insult my man grandayy, he's better than dolan dark :eyes:

pog

It's not the best idea to just say, "here's a random world, do whatever you want." Your game will die out pretty quickly without an objective of some sort. Instead, you might say, "here is a castle, find your way out.

This will give users an objective to achieve. You also need to make sure they know where to start. A lot of RPGs will let you start wherever you want, but it's a good idea to set some boundaries. For example, you wouldn't want someone to start their game spying on the evil warlord that everyone is trying to defeat.

That would make them significantly closer than anyone else to achieving the goal. Not incredibly fair, eh?
Basically, have a plan. That doesn't mean plan out every single post. That would be more like a story than a game.

You've quoted the entire first main paragraph, for no reason. Why would anyone do that?

Hi

I've literally just finished creating an RPG based on one I used to play when I was younger but is no longer available. I would love for you guys to sign up and let me know what you think, not sure how to get the link though as they are not allowed in the comments.

Look forward to seeing you in there.

Site is [Removed link as a precaution] if that will allow me to post

Quote from: fred4816Site is [Removed] if that will allow me to post

We generally do not allow others to advertise off-site RPGs. All RPGs must be playable here.
The TBG Forums are for playing and making text based games and RP games here.