Is it just me? - Page 2 - OG Myth-Weavers

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Is it just me?

   
So I GM much more than I play, and one thing that kills me is when it gets a couple months in...past the launch (where many games die)...past the initial thinning of players (flaking, personalities, etc)...into a good rhythm...and THEN I have a player drop out.

I play freeform so much of the game is dependent on the characters and losing one could mean the entire game needs to be reworked, and that is a tough thing for me to get my energy up for.

It's also depressing because by that point I've gotten to know the player a bit and we've work-shopped the character to a point where I'm excited to see them go through what we have planned.

Usually Real Life is the cause.

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Anyone else ever look through your "friends" and see who has dropped off the Weave...depressing.

I've been here for 12 years, I've seen a lot of folks come and go. Some I miss, others not quite so much

Communication is my biggest peeve with online gaming. Sometimes it feels like people believe they don't have to treat online gamers as actual people because they're online and faceless and so they just ghost when real life gets in the way or when they just don't feel like it anymore and it's incredibly frustrating as a player and GM! Often enough I find as a GM I will be forgiving of any and all reasons for not posting (including, I just don't feel like it at the moment) so long as the player has actually told me so, thus I don't understand at all why people ghost. (Of course I am not now referring to genuine excuses for not being able to give a heads up like an accident, hospital stay, house fire, loss of computer etc).

I have a couple of long running games here on the Weave and it's taken a lot of sheer stubborn-headedness and a willingness to swap out inactive PCs with new ones to make it happen. In my Serenity game I have only one PC who was with me right from the start. But it's been a good seven year run which is something special Having said that, I've also had to just recently end a game of mine after about a year because I'm just not feeling it anymore myself. It's sad, but it happens to everyone.

The only real way around it is to accept that it's going to happen, and keep on trucking until you've found yourself a solid core of dependables. That way you can bring in new people to yourself safe in the knowledge that at least four of your players are not going to flake and perhaps find more gold nugget players in the mine! It's a perserverence game, my sympathies for the frustration and best of luck for finding your people. It's worth it, I think.

Stay classy, be considerate and communicate! That goes for everyone.

I'm starting to notice a trend around here. I have seen several people over the past year begin similar rants about people ghosting, games dying, etc etc. These folks go on and on about how frustrated they are about other people's lack of communication or dedication to a game. We all share that frustration, we have all had games fold after an exciting start. Many folks on this thread gave excellent reasons for these occurrences.

Whats the trend? Well, I noticed the the OP never even responded since his rant in February. If you look at his profile he has a little over 300 posts since joining in 2010 and its been almost 3 weeks since he had any activity.
This is not an attack of the OP, but factual observation.
I've seen other people complain about this very same thing and upon researching them, they seem to be strikingly similar in activity and ironically enough seem to display the same noncommittal behavior that they complain about in the first place.

I have no problem with people venting their frustration about this topic or many other important topics in life, but don't stop there. If we as human beings truly want to effect change, then we need to be part of the solution, help fix the problem, don't just complain about it. @drezdock, if you check back in and see this post, get into a game and stick with it. Network, find other like minded players that are dedicated to a game. GM a game and dedicate yourself to it, we need more good GM's around here.

I say this to anyone in life, don't just complain about something, do it constructively and be part of the solution.

Happy gaming everyone

People lose interest, happens to both players and dms. Though, when it does happen simply excuse yourself and X out of the game. Try not to ruin it for the other players. I've dropped out of games and have had people go afk on mine, you can always redo the game ad phase or offer it up to another dm depending on the situation.

Players like to make character ideas and dms like to make adventure ideas, sometime once they are put into play, especially in a pbp setting their not what either group was hoping for... but again, X out and don't just go afk. However to point out a different point of view some people can post to much and others not enough, take an encounter with a dragon, dm posts a 3 paragraph description and play says, I attack. Yeah interest in that player can start to drop and vice versa, theirs many different resons while people loose interest but hey a simple.. yo dm this is getting kind of boring and not what I was expecting can go along way.. or the dm tells the player, what's up man you still having fun with this charscter..

Idk, guess that falls under lack of comunication, but it is an Internet site and sometime people might just be surfing around checking stuff out until they relize it's not for them.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TheRoot View Post
@drezdock, if you check back in and see this post, get into a game and stick with it. Network, find other like minded players that are dedicated to a game.
I just wanted to highlight the importance of this part specifically for GMs who want to keep their game running when players falling out is the issue. I'm in an off-site freeform DBZ game that suffers from the same sort of thing. We've had a good handful of people come in, post once or twice and get wrapped up in something with another player, then up and vanish. We've also had people who will, at times, post abysmally slow. (Full admittance - I fall into that category myself.) But we never actually shut the game down, even when the posting from everyone went to a dead stop for two full weeks while I was in the middle of a move and two other players were in the process of starting new jobs. Instead, we fired it back up and kept moving forward as soon as we were able.

Part of the reason we accomplished this is the fact that we all keep contact with each other offsite as well. We use Discord specifically, but it can be done via any group messenger or audio chat. We all give one another gentle reminders when we're falling behind on our posts and make sure to do so at the earliest opportunity. We discuss the game with one another off site, plan out story beats ahead of time, etc. (The game runner in particular does this a lot to keep things on track.) All stuff to keep us engaged at least a little in that game even when we're not actively able to play. The results speak for themselves - the game moves forward, the core of us who are most interested still playing, and those of us who have schedules that sometimes interfere with our ability to post are still able to contribute and be involved even if we hit a days or weeks long lull.

"All things die [Anakin]. Even stars burn out." As morbid as this Star Wars quote is, it's a truth best faced as early as possible in life.

Sorry not sorry for completely nerding out on you there, O.P.! :P
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@Iselin: Faceless people can be people too. I agree or I wouldn't be here.

Quote:
Originally Posted by UnderPressure View Post
Admittedly I don't have a lot of PbP experience, but both games I've been in (one of which I was GMing) fell apart due to people flaking. It's also a problem with online play in general. My guess is that it's so easy to join a game, a lot of players just never really take an interest. They join on a whim, and they leave on one too when the novelty weas off. I'd just like if people were kind enough to notice the group they're leaving.
The other side, I think, is that it’s so easy to drop off. I suspect that a lot of the time, people don’t really make a decision to drop a game. It’s just something that they’re not into at that moment, there are other pressures on their time, and they put it off for a day. And then another day. And then another day. And eventually it’s easier/less embarrassing just never to get around to it. It creeps up on them.

I will say (Warning: personal hobbyhorse!) that this is another reason why I think GMs should be more forgiving of people reusing character concepts. (All the usual caveats apply: must fit setting, etc.) Because a fair amount of the time, you might have played a character before, but you might not really have had a chance to get into the character as much as you would like, and that feeling can be more frustrating than if you never had a chance to play a character concept at all.

But in general, it helps to recalibrate your expectations. If you have fun for a few months, that’s a very successful game, even if it never really reached a natural conclusion.

I find most GMs are okay with a recycle concept (admittedly I don't play D&D and pathfinder here so I can't speak for those GMs) so long as the character has clearly been rewritten to fit the new game. What I object to is clear and obvious copy&paste jobs that are just lazy and inappropriate. It sucks as a GM to put so much work into building a world only for players to do that kind of thing.

This is a common problem but part of the advantage of online play is the low need for commitment. You shotgun it, with more games but less play time and chance to succeed.




 

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