Re: Game hogs?
Not to beat a dead horse here, but...*pulls out a club and winds up*
I've been on both sides of the FCFS/long-form RTJ process as a player. I've had some good results from both, and I've had a lot of bad results from both. It's a bit short-sighted to assume that this one element, out of the entire chemistry of what builds a game, will determine its success or failure.
If there's a group of prospective players that are spam-casting RTJs to games...so what? Anyone who's been here for more than a few months can very likely attest to the fact that just because you RTJ does not mean you get to play. I've had plenty of RTJs to games that I REALLY wanted to be part of get rejected, with every answer from "I've already filled all the slots" (even though the game ad is only a few hours old) to "Your character concept it too close to someone that's already in the game" (and I got no opportunity to revise the character and no feedback on what was too similar) to "Sorry, I should have taken the ad down, I've decided to fold up the game." If these people are getting away with this, it's because GMs are accepting their RTJs...and that's the GM's prerogative. There's nothing the players are doing that is making that more or less likely to happen. On top of that, I've seen enough posts from people who are trying to start more obscure games and CAN'T get enough players to join to make the game enjoyable that I have a really hard time buying into the notion that there's some assortment of players out there who are RTJ'ing every game that comes along.
Yeah, I'm sure there ARE games that get swamped with RTJs by the same players...because there are games that are being run using systems that are currently very popular and familiar to a huge audience. Why wouldn't a hundred people who love D&D5e RTJ to a new game that started up? A decade ago, it was a different system, but the same phenomenon was happening. That's basic supply-and-demand, the world tends to run that way. Anyone who's being inconvenienced by this supposed problem can find a way to work around it...look for games who aren't taking FCFS RTJs. Look for games that are looking for replacement players. Look for games that aren't the newest, most popular system. Focus on the quality of your RTJ, rather than the speed (someone mentioned sending a short message that expressed interest, rather than shooting off a shoddy RTJ...that works. That was exactly how I got into one of the two longest-running games I'm in, by sending the GM a message saying I was interested and wanted to make sure I got looked at before all the slots filled up, but I wasn't ready to send the whole character write-up at the moment.)
If you're not the kind of player who's ready-made characters are standing by, waiting to be fired off like aerial seeding a lawn, hoping that one or two might find fertile ground and take root, then why would you want to join a game with a GM who is looking for exactly that sort of player? Consider the chemistry of the game, first and foremost...if the GM is looking for players whose style is vastly different from your own, odds are good you're going to have a rough time adjusting to that game. And if you're the kind of GM who prefers well-considered, thought-out characters, why would you take an RTJ that smacks of being a carbon-copy submission with little or no effort put into tailoring it for your game?
If there's a problem here, the problem is a matter of poor judgment from players and GMs, and that's not something the moderators are generally going to get involved with (unless said poor judgment violates the TOU or other site policies). It's not something that's going to be fixed by some new policy, anyway, because it's not that kind of a problem.