Rules and the Boot

[CalibansEnthusiast]

I'm starting my first group RP on this site here, and in comparison to a lot of others, I'm a Nazi. I'm putting in a controlled posting order, because a roleplay I was in previously spiraled into chaos. How much freedom do I give? How tight is the iron fist?

I'm big on consistancy, so a post every two days or so. After a few pokes, and no response, and no reasoning for the absense, I have a number of already manufactured solutions for removing such characters. If the player comes back later, how do I deal with it? "Sorry, buddy, you didn't follow the rules. So when we got jumped by X Faction, your character took fire and died. Don't feel too bad though, because your character served as a meat shield for Character Y, saved their life."

How strict do I go on scrutinizing applications? And do I just, "fix this and we're good." Or reject them outright?

Any help at all would be appriciated.

 

[Jorick]

Strict posting orders tend to strangle roleplays to death, so avoid anything like a strict rotation like "Player A posts, then Player B, then Player C, then GM post, then back to Player A, etc." One slow player holds everything up in that kind of posting order, and that's no fun. I would suggest going by rounds instead: everyone can post in whatever order they feel like, but only once (or twice if they really need to respond to something another player said/did, but no more than that) per GM post. Set a deadline for your own posts, say every 2 days at maximum going by what you said about post frequency, so each posting round is then 2 days long (or can be cut short and you post early if all players also post early enough) and begins with your own, and make it clear to your players that you expect them to post once each round. That way you can allow flexibility for player posts while also keeping on a quickly paced schedule.

People have lives, and sometimes shit happens that makes them unable to get online, so you should allow at least a little leeway. Don't immediately kill them off for missing one post. Give them a buffer of two, maybe three missed rounds of posting before you off them. As long as you lay down the law in the rules of your roleplay then they've got no leg to stand on if their character gets killed due to an absence that they did not warn you of in advance. Don't bother with nonsense like "they died for the greater good," just say they were inactive for too long so their character died, as per rule number whatever. If at all feasible for your roleplay concept, perhaps allow them to make a new character to rejoin if this happens once, but if it happens again then they're clearly not as reliable as you would prefer so that would be grounds for a real boot from the roleplay.

Don't reject people for not having perfect applications. The "fix this and we're good" method is pretty much standard practice, because turning away anyone who isn't perfect means turning away tons of good players who maybe messed up a couple little things. If someone gives you a character to look over that clearly goes against the world they're supposed to be part of in the roleplay, or violates your established rules, or otherwise demonstrates a failure to understand or adhere to the basic tenets of your roleplay, then that is good grounds for outright rejection. Anything less than that, like having an outlandish character history or messing up some technical aspects of a character sheet, shouldn't be enough for you to say "I don't want this person in my roleplay" unless you're a total douchebag perfectionist.