On Player Slots

As a GM, what is your acceptable number of players to accept in an RP? Do you pattern the slots after the RP or just let the SU be open indefinitely until you feel that it will be pretty difficult to handle anymore?

As a player, what does appeal to you better? RP with open SU or SUs with a limited number of slots?

For me, I like to play RPs with an indefinitely open SU part. I can jump in on the story any time I want but I understand it's not always the case as most RP are chapter based and each chapter is dependent on how previous chapters went.

Well, it depends on the RP really. A sandbox RP is likely to have open slots for a long time (like gunpowder did until recently) but a story-based RP offers a lot less. I slightly dislike the competitiveness of limited character slots (mainly because some really good character can get left out), but I understand that they're sometimes necessary.

Definitely depends on the RP.

Roleplays with multiple sides or factions, for example, ought to have more slots. I usually cap most of my RPs between 8-12. One Piece a bit less just because of the nature of the RP.

I tend to find that around 8-10 players is ideal. Just enough for variation, not enough to hold the RP back if we've got slow posters.

I haven't RPed much here, but I've been a GM in other places plenty of times. My old preference was just to leave the RP open and let a large amount of people join for quite some time. And then to close it when I felt the thread was getting a bit too hectic. Over the years, I've come to realize that a small amount is better. I prefer generally to have a group of 6 to 8 players.

Here's the catch though. A bigger group to me offers more advantage due to what I call the "weeding" process. This is when, after the first few weeks of the roleplay, some people begin to drop off in activity or interest. You need larger groups so that when this happens, you will still have enough people in the end.

So I suppose I'd go with 10. It's usually around 2 to 4 players who get weeded out like this, leaving the number of my "core" group that I am more pleased with.

I've never roleplayed with more than about 6 players at once, and I think that is generally a decent number. However as Arylett said, a decent number, 2-4 do tend to drop out. I've been thinking of doing a much larger roleplay in the future, upwards of 10+ and seeing how that goes, but I think that might be a lot harder to keep track of if everyone says interested. We'll see...

Of the two rps that i've GM'd we capped at 7 and 10 respectively and it was already pretty overwhelming and I would've died if not for the co-GMs I was working with
So personally i'm gonna say 0 cause i suck at GMing but in the average RP i'd say 8-12 is pretty optimal

Most of the RPs I typically participate in are actually massive type RPs with about 100 players being the average. What I really like about this kind of RP is that it makes the plethora of characters you can meet intensely varied, and you can pick and choose which ones you want to interact with the most. Obviously this system wouldn't work on PC since most RPs are contained in one thread, and 100 people all posting in one thread would be a nightmare-- but by that principle, as a player, I prefer roleplays with tons of people in it. I just like the freedom of being able to choose who I'm willing to interact with, and being able to meet new people all along the way rather than being stuck with 3 or 4 other people from beginning to end.

As a GM, though-- I prefer only being specifically in charge of about 20-30 people. If I have co-GMs, then I don't mind more than that. In PC style RPs I would probably cap somewhere around 15 though, if only to keep the thread from getting unecessarily cluttered with various posts.

Arylett Charnoa said:

So I suppose I'd go with 10. It's usually around 2 to 4 players who get weeded out like this, leaving the number of my "core" group that I am more pleased with.

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This is a cool concept, taking in the possibility that there are people who will drop out and taking that into consideration when creating slots.

I'll do this for my next RP.

I always cap the player number at π. Who knows what might happen to my roleplay if I don't appease gimmepie.....

For sandbox/open-world roleplays, I'll probably leave signups open and have no player cap, unless it gets grossly overcrowded.

For roleplays that are linearly plot-driven, a close-knit group of at most 10 would be comfortable, accounting for inactives as Arylett mentioned.

Loki said:

Most of the RPs I typically participate in are actually massive type RPs with about 100 players being the average. What I really like about this kind of RP is that it makes the plethora of characters you can meet intensely varied, and you can pick and choose which ones you want to interact with the most. Obviously this system wouldn't work on PC since most RPs are contained in one thread, and 100 people all posting in one thread would be a nightmare-- but by that principle, as a player, I prefer roleplays with tons of people in it. I just like the freedom of being able to choose who I'm willing to interact with, and being able to meet new people all along the way rather than being stuck with 3 or 4 other people from beginning to end.

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Pardon my curiosity but I'd like to know where the presence of roleplays with 100 people can be found. ^^;

Anivia said:

Pardon my curiosity but I'd like to know where the presence of roleplays with 100 people can be found. ^^;

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As far as I know, there are some RP sites that allows for this massive size to be accommodated although you can only imagine the chaos that shall ensue.

Anivia said:

Pardon my curiosity but I'd like to know where the presence of roleplays with 100 people can be found. ^^;

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Varys said:

As far as I know, there are some RP sites that allows for this massive size to be accommodated although you can only imagine the chaos that shall ensue.

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Deviantart roleplay groups..! The idea is you draw your character, and roleplay with each other in a forum specifically made for the RP, on dA chat, or over google docs/skype, so not everything is contained in a single thread like the RPs here on PC are...!

But yeah there are definitely other RP sites that have this huge span of people as well-- iAntiVirus is a good example, though I think that started as a dA RP as well...

I find that having a set number of people works the best, at least for me. This would be around 14-16 for me as it allows for a lot of people to join at first without keeping solid SUs out, usually, and as someone said, then allows for those who find that their interest wasn't as great as they thought it was to leave. This leaves a behind a solid group of people who end up becoming close and a great stroy full of interaction and solid to exceptional writing.

RP sites that have massive amounts of players (like Loki was talking about), generally don't have multiple RPs on them. I think there are two kinds of RP sites. Ones like RPC which allows lots of different RPs within one or more subforums. Then there's site-wide RPs that have a single website dedicated to the entire world for a single RP. Subforums are used for different places in that case. I prefer site-wide RPs in all honesty, but most of the ones I find have requirements I don't care to meet. In the end, it's just about RPing for me.

When it comes to member size it really depends on the RP for me. If I have faith that the RP will be well managed, then I don't care if I join an RP with unlimited spots. My biggest concern with those kinds of RPs is characters and subplots being lost in how huge it is. I don't want to end up being a lost player. I also kind of feel like RPs with unlimited spots would be better suited in a site-wide format, but obvi that's not always a thing that can happen.

When I'm GMing, RP spots really comes down to how much do I think I can handle. The more RPers you have, the more people you have to manage and keep up with. That's not always easy. If I think the RP might be hard to keep organized or keep everyone involved at a certain capacity, I go lower.

I think this is always my biggest problem as a GM. I want enough people that characters can have varied interactions, but also not too many people that the RP becomes overwhelming. Several people have mentioned this, but it really depends on the plot/story that's being told. Some can handle 15 people and some are only meant for 4.

I'm terrible at closing spots because I want everyone to have the chance to join even if the maximum has already been reached. I really shouldn't because my RPs aren't usually meant for that many people, but I can't help myself.

The RPs I enjoyed the most have been 4-6 players actually. Crossroads was like 7 consistent player trainers I think, and the first Checkmate back in the day was... 4? (do you remember that, Retro~ so long ago)

I think 4-8 players is my preferred number to be GM for. And player... actually. I would much prefer a solid core of 4 players who can discuss easily and be aware of everything the others write and do, than participate in 15-20 player RPs which seem to be very common these days. Many RPs don't even cap player numbers, which might work in cases like Trumpets but can make things rather messy in more interaction heavy things like Dust and Titans, in my opinion. It's just what I've learned, exploring GMing for a few years now haha.

So yeah, I agree with what some people write here. A core group of not too many is a nice way to RP on PC.

There are some exceptions to this rule, but I feel that Sandox RPs should usually be open, while plot driven RPs should only have a handful of dedicated RPers, who can definitely post regularly, otherwise the waiting will often cause it to fall apart. Since sandbox RPs are less demanding, they're easier to keep open and still alive, even if one person starts to fall behind.