With the moderate term success rate of most games being what it is, I'm sure more than a few players keep throwing things at any wall which presents itself in the hopes that eventually something will stick.

I wouldn't be too worried about not getting into a game that was FCFS because the GM closed applications before you even had time to know the game was recruiting.  In order for games to be successful it requires a lot of work, quite a bit of persistence and strategy, and a good dose of luck.

I'd bet a few bucks that if you tracked the success rate of those games that you could have potentially been a part of but missed the opportunity, you'd find way more hits than misses.

So I wouldn't stress about it too much.  The games that have deliberate, specific, RTJ requirements and lean towards recruitment windows measured in time vs size of the RTJ pool (which gives people not so quick on the draw the chance to apply) have been, in my anecdotal experience, more successful overall in the end anyway.  So you're probably not missing out on much except for whatever joy can be had from going through Act 1, Scene 1 of various stories over and over and over without likely ever seeing Scene 2.

I don't select the first backgrounds.

I choose those who show interest.  Usually an RJT or PM saying 'Hello, I'm interested. I'll start working on my background"

Is good enough for me, I give people time to create their characters.  Sometimes it takes a little work to come up with a concept that is going to work for a certain story.

I respond with 'Welcome' and this is what I need now (usually a name, but that can change) and an idea (which allows me to create threads that the character might have interest in going to in game (also able to change).

Still, I understand that the game systems, genre, and/or story background  impacts who and how many show interest.

I wasnt making another vent thread, there is a thread for that. I presented an issue... people agreed...


I would absolutely think a limit on 'pending games' or 'games joined' or even 'games you have an active or accepted RTJ in' would help this.

If they can only join so many, say 5, they wouldnt spam their premade rtj to every game they see just to drop 95 present of the games they are accepted into... or even just to not notice most the games they are accepted into.... only to keep the trend up. I am all for using the law of probability, but when it overwhelms the system and other peoples probability is impacting mine... I'd like to see a more fair ratio of probability spread around.

This is a measurable phenomenon, if RPoL keeps track of these stats. I suspect the magnitude of this problem - to the extent it is a problem - isn’t as great as you’re suggesting. In any case, maybe the forum admins know the relationship between RTJ rates and drop rates. That’s a good question to ask.

In reply to Shinoskay (msg # 16):

I don't believe it would fix the problem.  Players will drop one game and jump into another.  They would be giving you stories they had issues with so now instead of not getting first dibs on new stories, those left out are left with stories with issues which will lead to another thread with someone complaining that the only available stories are the one that have issues.

I have to agree with Sarge67 in saying that it simply wouldn't fix the problem.    I don't really see how you could limit the number without people whining about it, saying that they applied for a dead game or that they weren't accepted.

As far as why a player might place the same character into play in multiple games is a rather simple one.    There's no guarantee that you'll ever get to play a character, irregardless of how many games you apply for.

In reply to Shinoskay (msg # 16):

RPoL does not track how many games a user joins, nor are we prepared to limit how many games they can join.

Especially not when they might join five games, reach their limit, then have four of their GMs vanish without trace, meaning that they can't join any more games until they contact the Moderators and get themselves removed from those games (which will, incidentally, take at least a week).

I can guarantee that we would soon have threads complaining about how the game limit was stopping them joining that one game that they were really interested in.  Followed soon after by threads from GMs complaining about how they weren't getting any RTJs because so many players had maxed out their game limit, or were saving slots in case the "perfect" game came along.

Furthermore, who is to say what is an acceptable limit?  For some players, their limit is one game.  For others, it is five.  And for still others, 25, if their games are slow moving ones (not every GM is looking for daily posting).

This is really the point to be made. For instance, I've got nine games on my played list right now, which doesn't count dead games I've removed from my list. I consider myself a fairly slow poster, and I've got no trouble keeping up, because almost all of those games are slow.

No two games are equal. Some are lightning fast, some post only once in a blue moon. Trying to limit the number of games someone plays in by some arbitrary number can't possibly treat all games (and all players) fairly. And even if it somehow did, five is incredibly low.

in the  end... The  main thing here, is the guy was gettign froze out of some  games he wanted to join.

 Yes..there are  players that hop on the  'new game wagon", then hop off  after they get  board, or something shiny distracts them.

 there cannot be a limit, because this place is  made for gaming. In the end..it comes  down to the  GMs...

  If you  are  running something 'pre-made' , and it  has a set cast of characters ,then you have to  go with that, it does  leave you open  for the  drop outs...and now you are stuck  with trying to fins someone who  fits that slot.

 If you are runnign a Homebrew? There is no reason to restrict the Number of player.. you can restrict   classes  or types?..But Numbers are needed, because  its  rare to keep players  of a while.

 My most active game  has  1 player  from the first start, 8+ years ago... I have 6-7 vets  who have been there  a while..I have even had  2  come back recently, after RL sucked them  away  a couple years ago.

 As a Player?..don't  fell bad if you can't get into a game, there is a good chance it won't even be there in a few months..As a GM?  Unless the player seem 'bad' in your interview, give other players  a chance.

In reply to donsr (msg # 22):

Personally I always restrict the number of players in any game I run, homebrew campaign or otherwise.  If the game features a small ship with a crew of six, then I recruit six players.  If I need replacements later, then that is when I will recruit them.

Even for a game that doesn't require characters for a specific number of roles, l still restrict numbers to a level that I feel confident with handling.

yep bignadon...That is the whole thing in a nutshell.. you should restrict  by the Number of  folks you  have in  a certain trope ( crew of a ship.. squad of troopers.. part of adventure folks)

 If you have  'first come first serve' there is a damn good chance  you  miss out on some good players..

I understand  restrictions  in my D&Dish  game , I won't use Psionics  and I try to keep Mages  low.

 In my sci-fi game, ( homebrew)  , I try to   keep folks 'normal' and not have outlandish characters... we do have some aliens, but to play that , they have to come up with a very good backround as to 'why"

The GM has every right to choose 'first come, first served' if they want. Or to limit the number of players that they accept. The players should have the right to join as many games as they think they can handle, as it becomes between them and the GM whether or not their level of participation is sufficient for them to be permitted to stay.

Not that my opinion matters, but I'm all for supporting ron's notion that there's no reason for the admins to step in and tell a player they can't join anymore games. That seems needlessly restrictive.

Not getting into a game isn't a reason to punish others for what a given individual hasn't managed to find, IMHO. It's an unfortunate situation which basically suggests that you should probably apply to more games, or if the community isn't producing enough of those games... you can either choose to run them or to hit up the GMs Wanted section to see if you can drum up interest in someone else running them. There are lots of options.

It isn't my responsibility as a GM to ask my players how many games they're in and which titles. If I want to go with FCFS in one game and choose the best background in another, I'm well within reason to do so. What I won't do is save a spot for the RTJ with the best sob story or the longest list of missed opportunities.

Recently, I rejected access and the applicant left with a rude parting shot. My advice to those with sour grapes is to just say "Thanks anyway" and leave it at that.

I think that a lot of players feel a sense of entitlement and forget about the person running the game, and that person's ability to enjoy the experience as well. It's a very different thing, running a game, and the enjoyment comes in different ways. Getting so focused on your own experience that you fail to consider others is rarely going to hold water with people who spend the bulk of their time considering everyone else within the scope of their game.

Obviously not everyone is like this and some GMs have their own issues, but in my decades of gaming, I've seen this in live tabletop, virtual tabletop, chat games, here, everywhere. It's pretty common, so I'm with Eggy: it isn't the GM's responsibility to worry about if one player is applying to a million games or whatever, just the suitability of the RTJs they see to the game that GM is running.

I have made a few very excellent friends of folks I've encountered more-or-less randomly over RPoL. I've also met a handful of folks I'd like to never see again, but that's a whole different kettle of fish. I will not try to put myself across as altruistic here: many of my games are explicitly designed with a specific player (or set of players) or character(s) in mind. This is no less awful that writing a role in a film for a specific actor even before they've been cast in it.

That aside, due to the fact that many folks have lives outside of RPoL, on those occasions when I open my games up to new players, I prefer not to use first-come, first served simply because of the multitude of excellent characters I've seen from folks who aren't the fastest gun in the west, but can write well nonetheless. What I will typically do is accept RTJs with concepts and writing samples-only for a period of time (usually one or two full weeks) and then select the players that I feel are a) the best fit for my storytelling style, b) have presented concepts that seem likely to work well in the kind of game being run (which is always somewhat different from A in a handful of ways that don't matter to most people), and c) will not detract from my ability to enjoy the game as an ST.

I think too many people lose sight of the fact that the folks who run games on RPoL do it because they enjoy it and we all have a responsibility to ourselves to not try to cram our games full of players who seem likely to make the game no fun for us. Yes, of course, the game is for players to enjoy. This is apparent, but the ST is there to have fun too. If we were being paid, it'd be a different thing altogether, but we are not (thank goodness). I certainly have no wish to turn my primary hobby into a second job.

Yeah, I'm not personally fond of FCFS but I can see why some use it and don't see any reason why people shouldn't be able to take advantage of that method in their games if they so desire. I've also noticed that some people are quite quick to RTJ, but it often ignores a lot of what's actually in the RTJ thread in the game, the game intro and other such resources, all in the name of speed. That never appeals to me, since it's doubling up on the work I need to do to accommodate such a player and sets a poor opening impression.

Selection is the privilege of the fact that the GM takes on the most responsibility and workload compared to everyone else involved in the process. Players are free to either partake based on what the GM has laid out, or move along in their search to other pastures perhaps more appropriate to their own desires.

As others have said, I couldn't care less if the player has applied to a dozen games.  The only RtJ I have any interest in is the one for MY game.  The only time I might ask a player about other games is when they are a borderline case for being accepted, and then I will ask for the name of a game that I can check to see their style. *

I will confess (and am not ashamed to do so) that I do play favourites.  Players that I know and like from other games will get priority when applying to a new game.  I consider these players to be my friends.

*Way back, RPoL didn't list games on the Main Menu with the GM name, only the GM alias.  So I got this RtJ and asked the guy what other games he was in.  "Well," he says, "I play Aaron in [game name]."  Which was odd, because I was the GM of [game name] and knew that this guy did not play Aaron, or any other character in the game.  When I mentioned this, he asked why I had two different names (GM aliases were listed with the games, remember, not the GM user name) and threatened to report me for having multiple accounts.

Ah... good times.  :)

Man... Some people, ron. Some people.

I have an opposite view on this. I have given up on filling RTJs with a deadline. To me it means there's just going to be 10 times the number of RTJs and mine won't have a chance to stand up. (I also have the irrational suspicion that a DM that demands such a big number of RTJs sees the players behind them as essentially interchangeable and replaceable, as non-entities.) I've grown tired of putting out my soul for display and pouring my heart -and losing sleep- into a 500-800 words RTJ, that will just be erased -and even will go unread- once the deadline expires.-Yes because many of these RTJs are also quite in-depth, detailed, and time consuming-. Even worse to see those same games having to replace players a couple of weeks in. Yeah, pretty encouraging.

Nowadays I center my efforts into Wanted GMs, both to find games and players. I also check the occasional players wanted, and will seek to join a game that looks fun and has a reasonable RTJ process, but never, never again will I waste time, effort and emotional investment on an RTJ that will be tossed without a second glance again.

I dont think people are really considering the actual issue here, what I have presented as the issue, and really anything beyond "nani! you want to tell people how many games they can join?"

There is clear evidence of an on going, at least 10 year long, issue... multiple people have presented this issue and even many of you have made side comments of its existence.

I am an everyone person, I prefer fair equality where everyone... no matter if they have all the time in the world or just a little time once in the week... I, and others, see an issue and I'd like actual discussion on an effective solution.

There is only one solution, find a small group who agree with you and put together an online group centered around playing together regardless of game, try out a game, if it flops, move on as a group.

Anything else is likely to do more harm than good.

Run more specific games? This must be a problem that affects popular systems with more generic settings as-presented, since I've never encountered it.

I'd imagine the perpetrators just go on and spam their favourite stat block (honestly they're not really a character if they're not adapted to having lived a life in the world of that one game setting) to all games of their preferred system, making the first step to a solution being to put in the ad itself that certain classes or whatever will be a harder sell. If someone ignores that and spams you a generic one of those, simple enough to say "sorry, that's not what we're looking for, see ad". It's something that needs to be fixed from the GM side (well, ideally those types would have a revelation that their tactics were wasting everyone's time and they could maybe give the next shiny game a day or so to see if their impulse to join remained, but presuming these folk are looking for something not specified in the ads, specifying things in ads might weed a few out before they pounce on a game with few slots 'in case')

Unofficially, friends could share warnings if they've seen the same character join several games of a type and then vanish, presumably in search of some perfect game not yet obtained, but there couldn't be a public implementation of that sort of list that wasn't vastly open to abuse and/or picking up players that just had a rough patch IRL.

Well, a lot has already been said, and I've kinda been following along.  Just to bring things around a bit, I'll start from first principles:



Nothing is wrong with this kind of thing IF and only if the players doing this can follow through on their commitments to the games they are requesting to join.

Hmm... that might sound a little harsh, but it's true.  Sure, folks are going to drop from time to time - real life in the real world is like that sometimes, but if a person really can keep up with that many games, there's nothing inherently wrong with them applying.



One of the players I regularly play across a table from plays variants of the same character no matter what game it is.  That player has grown comfortable with that character type, and plays the part well.  Folks rib him about it, but he never fails to bring something worth having to the game. Personally, I'd rather my players be happy to be playing than worried about how they're doing as a player because they're playing a favorite character type.

Playing carbon copies of the same basic character type in several games would get a little boring for me, but I see where someone with a lot of time to play on their hands might be okay with it.

I get what you are saying about first come/first serve, but here's the thing:  the GM sets the tone for his or her RTJ requirements.  Some of the GMs here are downright devious about it - long-winded complicated processes that suck all the fun out of applying, Sisyphean questionnaires, and stuff like that.

I ain't down with that.  I basically want to know just this:  are you willing to play with others, are you able to accept the decisions I will make as GM, and can you parse and write a passable sentence in English?  If so, I will take care of the rest.

That game that just filled up so quickly that you were so interested in?  It probably had folks following it from it's proposal in Game Proposals, Input, and Advice who were there almost from the beginning and knew the RTJ was coming before you.  Nothing is quite like expressing interest early on to help win you a seat at the table.



Game mortality is a thing.  It just is.  GMs have been looking for the secrets to success in the long run for as long as roleplaying games have been around.  It hurts when a game just abruptly dies, but we learn to move on to the next adventure.

Are you meaning to imply that the reason these games crash is from the sheer weight of these 'game hog' players weighing it down?  I tend to think that's not the case - most games die because the GM fails in some way, or just from sheer bad luck or timing.



I really can't tell you how you should feel, but perhaps a shift in perspective might help you feel differently if you in some way are unhappy.

Judging is a thing folks do, and being hasty about it happens a lot, too. You can only judge for yourself based on observation and evidence, but in a medium like the internet things are not always as they appear.  Dig a little deeper before forming your opinions, and never ascribe to conspiracy what can easily be explained by human greed or stupidity.



I might get my hand slapped for saying this, but here goes:  from what I've seen, the crew that run this place don't make rules needlessly - they tend to act from a position of respect for the (actual real world) law and from experience with resolving problems that have occurred in the past.  Beyond that, they're all about folks having a good time playing games.  That attitude seems to work for most of us.

If you see a bunch of folks always throwing their virtual hats into the ring and then subsequently see those games die, maybe you should be grateful you didn't get to waste your time on something that was going nowhere, anyway.  Think of these folks as the canary in your virtual coal mine, if you will.

This place we share together is a bazaar where we haggle, horse-trade, and enjoy ourselves.  It is a marketplace of fantastical ideas where we can purchase enjoyment with our time and our contributions to those games being the only currency necessary.

You rolls the dice and you takes your chances.  Evidently you've been in some good games in the past.  The time will come when you are in good games again.

And what do you see as the issue?  That lots of people RTJ and you don't stand out next to their RTJs?

Circle back to your OP:



That's roughly how first come, first served works. The first people that get to it are the ones who are able to take those slots. And if those GMs want to run things that way, it's their business. If that doesn't work out for you, that's unfortunate, but that doesn't necessarily mean those are the only games for you.



So what's the problem, then, really? Nothing, basically? This isn't an issue of egalitarian representation on the site. There are almost 5,000 games out there and there are advertisements running all of the time. If you've been around long enough, you know which ones to avoid and which ones to pursue, and if you've got more than a single genre/setting/system you're after, then you're in an even better position. There is no real lack of games or opportunities, so what is it you're really driving after?

Unofficially and privately, yes.  Any public warnings would violate the site's rules, which expressly forbid public rating, blacklisting, or criticism of specific players and/or GMs.

And the major problem with this is, of course, that it's all a matter of personal opinion - not everybody views this as a major issue.  It affects some games or systems more than others, and some people never (knowingly) encounter it.

So one solution, as mentioned by DarkLightHitomi, is to find a group of like-minded friends and work with them to find/create games that meet your needs.

Another option is to jump in on a new game with a placeholder RtJ: "Hi.  I'm interested in this game and have an idea for a dark elf witch-hunter character who would fit perfectly.  If you're interested, I can give you a fuller write up tomorrow.  Thanks for considering me."  Register your interest, beat the rush, and save yourself doing all the work until you know that the GM is at least interested enough to answer your initial message.