It has come to my attention that many people try making an RPG without actually knowing how to get it done. They apparently live by the ‘if you build it, they will come’ mindset.
That doesn’t work in reality, kids. Especially when you don’t even bother to build ‘it’. Slapping together a board and putting a name on it doesn’t count as building anything. From the sheer number of RPGs like that, you’d think a monkey could make them. Lord knows a monkey could run them better. There are three major components to building and maintaining a good site. The leadership, the game, and the members. This is written from the leader’s point of view, from someone who’s spent a year and a half learning what not to do and finally hitting upon the right stuff.
I take a lot of my leadership habits from what I've learned, both on other boards and in real-life. I've learned a number of things over my years on this Earth. I’m certainly not perfect, and I’m usually a heckuvalot more involved, more heavy-handed than I probably should be, but damned if I’m going to change my ways this late in the game.
I follow the doctrine that the leadership, the staff, is to appear of one mind. They should appear to be unified in action and direction. From the members’ perspectives, we should never argue nor should we fight. Arguing weakens the position of the losing staffer, while fighting just plain sets a bad example. If we do not present a unified front, then the members will see us as weak and indecisive. If they see us as weak and indecisive, then a lot of the necessary idolization goes away, resulting in the members respecting the staff less and our power to run the site decreasing. They’ll simply walk away and find a different game to play.
That is not to say that there should be no argument. Or rather, that there should be no debate. Argument is simply heated, emotional verbal attacks. Debating is presenting a case and debunking the opposition cases. This is, after all, what is allowed on the board. Just because the members cannot see it does not mean that the rules suddenly cease to apply. We are to be role models for them, and we can’t do that if we’re constantly bickering behind their backs. See the above for what happens then.
This is a philosophy I have acquired from the military. They teach officers not to berate someone in front of their juniors. It makes them lose credibility; makes the men lose trust in them. This is easily transferred to the civilian world. I have stated and referenced what happens then. It is not the ranking officer who loses credibility in these exchanges, but rather the junior. Similarly, when an Admin has to chew out the Staff where the members can see, it makes the Staff look weak and ineffective while the Admin starts to look like a heavy-handed dictator.
That’s not what the staff is here for. We are here to keep the peace and keep the game running smoothly for the members’ enjoyment. We may enjoy our jobs, and we may be able to play the game, but the job of making things fun for everybody else comes first. We are not paid to do it, but this is a job that demands more than just about any out there. The job requires hours upon hours of work and effort poured into it, it requires creativity, and it requires a degree of professionalism that is rare amongst humans in general, much less teenagers. That is why members respect us. They respect us because they know that we work hard and do what few can do just so that they can have a game to play in their free time.
The game has to be entertaining. It has to be fresh and it has to be well-balanced. You don’t necessarily need to make up an entirely new system each time you make a new board, but you do have to learn to ditch what doesn’t work. I have noticed, however, that people come for the game and stay for the community. In the early stages, it is up to the leadership to maintain this community and direct it down the path they want it to grow. You can’t simply sit back and wait for members to post; you have to take action yourself. By the time the members get to the board, you’d better have the entire game finished. It doesn’t necessarily have to be polished to a high shine, but they should be able to get all the information they need on-site. Don’t ever steal from another site, either. If you’re swiping their ideas, your members are better off simply joining the site you’re stealing from. You will never be able to make a game better than the one you’re stealing from.
Your game is also going to need a gimmick. Something that makes it stand out from the crowd as an original piece of work. Without the gimmick, the site will do nothing but fail. There simply is no other alternative, no happy medium.
For members, I’ve found that posting ads doesn’t work. Best case scenario, you get a handful of people. Worst case scenario, those people are morons who aren’t good enough to make it on the site you’re advertising on. You do it wrong, and you’ll wind up in trouble on the other site.
No, you have to court members. You have to single out the people you want, those players who have creativity and intelligence, the personality type you are looking for. Befriend them. You don’t want anybody on your board to not be at least on good terms with you, because otherwise that breeds dissension and distrust. Bad things for a game to get. Befriend them, and then let them see your game. It’s slow, it’s difficult, but courting members has a much higher success rate than simply blindly advertising.
Naturally, the staff has to be the epitome of what they call for. They have to be smart and well-liked. If you honestly are not bright, then don’t start up a game. Join someone else’s and let them do all the work of bringing you entertainment.
Make a spite-site and I’ll track you down and kill you. Those sites made when a group of members leaves another board never last long, are almost always inferior, and are quite simply imitations of the original, altered to “Fix what was broken with the other site.”

It's just a rough draft, mind you. I'm posting it to let folks give it the once-over and poke holes in it. The original form of it was my response to a staffer's resignation on MC:CAN. This form is in response to folks making a knock-off site offa MC:CAN. Rather frosted me, it did.

I totally agree with you... I've been to not one, but *two* RPGs that have gone down the tubes due to the reasons you've stated. Mainly management reasons. "Dark Liger's Zoids RPG" and "When Zoids Clash." Two very *bad* RPGs...

The former was a rather lame site with Zoid data that was both laughably inaccurate and/or stolen from MMM, and pictures stolen from Pheno's. Me, Tilly, and Deadborder got it shut down for TOS violations. XD The characters were also stupidly cliched, and the site also seemed to be trying to incorporate a Vampire/Werewolf/Feaudal Japan RPG into their Zoids themed game as well. x_X

Suffice to say, even though they got back up after they took down Pheno's images/MMM's data, the latest posts on the site are from July 25th. I think it's safe to say that it's dead. :ph43r:

The latter site was also poorly maintained, stole Pheno's images and ZEB's data. That site is also dead.

Like you said, running an RPG is a lot harder then one would think.

I think I might have had WZC on my browser. If I don't miss my mark, it was the site I'd joined and told them that I'd simply be there to 'trol the joint and try beating 'em into shape.
I'm either a sadist or very bored. Take your pick.
Okay, so it wasn't on my browser. Was there anybody by the name of Jerao or Jess involved with it? Possibly Kairu Yamato as the Customs Master?

WZC was run by Jess, and Kairu was the customs master. Jerao just attached to it like a leech. The trolling part was kind of amusing since she locked your intro post when you were just telling them what was wrong.

Yeah, thought I'd recognized the name. Good to see that Tilly hadn't actually joined the game. Had me a little worried.
Next version of this thingie should probably have mention of BLX. Black Liger's RPG. I learned a whole helluvalot of what not to do killing that site off, from the public humiliation-bannings to the staff fighting on the board. Not to mention it was way too raw, what with only the most rudimentary zoid bios and mods that horribly unbalanced the game. I learned a lot from killing that site, and learned a lot from paying attention to the Admin on MMM.
Yes, I was once a n00bmin . . . and now they won't listen to me when I tell 'em how it's done. Pansies can't take hard words.

Actually, Deadborder and I *did* convince Tilly to join us on WZC... we weren't interested in actually RPing *seriously* on the site, just messing around...

That would be Morris Dingo the Leonard-clone. Maybe he budded off him, or something. Either way, the one battle I got to fight was actually kinda fun. I missed fun battles, and ZE was so dead at the time...

Good advice, though it needs proper paragraph breaks. Board eat your formatting, there?

I'd recommend seperating that post into more visually appealing paragraphs. The lack of a space between them hurts my eyes x_x;

I agree with you about dealing with the staff, losing face is not something any staff member would want and many boards (especially fledgling RPGs) seem to have inexprienced staff... Dark Liger's RPG comes to mind. They were basically just an offshoot of Ferrum Bestia (which IMO, was a kind of subpar RPG to begin with).

My problem with *Zoids* RPGs is the apparent lack of any character to character interaction. It's all battles. If I wanted nothing but battles, I'd play Zoids Versus 3. I believe Phelan mentioned something about "power playing" in one of his write ups, which I agree with.

As for Jess... after she left her Zoids RPG she started up a Digimon one. Posted a topic about it and everything at ZGC :lol:

As for MC:CAN... was that RPG advertised at MMM? And orginally made up of MMM members? I was offered a staff position (kekeke) on one of those sites after I made a post about the Eisen Dragoon in Zoids Discussion. Once MMM gets up, I'm gonna' take a look at PM box :lol:

Ah, slumming. I once tried doing that. Wound up doing Project N00bzone, wherein I gathered data on the N00b's so-called mind. They were pissed when I posted the Project on their board . . .

As for the formatting, I just go with that old-fashioned no-blank-lines formatting. Putting extra lines looks sloppy and unproffessional, unless it's between chapters or graphics and text. Stems from my learning to write offline and a stubborn resistance to learning other styles for writing essays.
MELCON can bite me.

Good sir or madame, MC:CAN is not to be confused with MC. While they share the same address and even a couple of members, to compare MMM and the current incarnation of MC:CAN would be as comparing apples to oranges. I've never advertised it on MMM, nor will I. Instead, I approach those who I think will do well on the site. I avoid n00bs that way.
For one thing, mine's a bleedin' RPG. Not a glorified arena. While we do have battles, they're hardly central to the gameplay. We've gone and made the battles into RPs, though some are better at it than others, and they usually have some sort of effect on the RP storyline.
Like when Greg Clark CPCed a modified Iron Kong dead-on and killed the pilot. Wound up that battles were suspended in the Empire for a week or two before they cleared the ZBC. Now Greg gets to high-tail it to the Republic or get hisself in a real mess o' trouble. I'm a firm believer in blowing smoke up the character-shielders' asses.

I know what you mean. I like battles to be fun, not a listing of split-second counterattacks that no sane person should be able to pull off (but your character can, because he's perfect and can read the other person's narrative). If the other person plays more serious, I'll get as serious as I can, but I have much more fun with a semi-silly battle, where both characters are trying to win, but also there for the RP side of things.

And if you try and start some chracter interaction, it always seems to turn into manly posturing and/or people showing up to "fix" problems for you to show off how cool their character is. Never mind you might have wanted to RP out the solution...

I've had ideas for Zoids RPGs. I might do something with them one day. But I'm lazy, and I know that's not a good combination. Thus, they sit there.

Shut up, Siegfried. I'll use you someday.

Does this have any connection with that another zoids rpg thread in the advertisement forum?

Hm? No, that just reminded me of what I'd been meaning to get around to doing.
There's a reason I adjust the first and second players' moves to eliminate the second-round advantage whilst judging. You'd be surprised how many gripes I've addressed on my site, though I haven't fixed 'em all. A lot come from the bottom up, not the top down.
Tilly, if this were a guide to role-playing, I would've included a number of gripes I have about what some folks call 'role-playing'. I'd also put in something about having a standard policy of requiring that people request permission to enter into RPs, first . . .
. . . Dagnabbit. Okay, now I'm gonna go get to work on that Guide to RPing. It's amazing what work I won't do for my site.

Very interesting commentary there. I can;t help but agree on a lot of the points there.

As far as I can tell, people partake in online RPGs for teo basic reasons: One is to characterise and role-play. The second is to powergame in an environemnt that is a lot harder to control and show off how kewl/powerful/awesome/whatever they can be. In my experience, the latter seem to outnumber the former, which is a rather sad situation.

They problem often lies in a cfertain lack of control. Looking at WZC as an example; there was one chracter who was the leader of the game's Generic Backdraft Gorup, Now this guy took it as a licence to go around killing people in borad daylight, attacking people, running into battles and taking htem over, running vendettas and publicly decalring his allrigances. His basic recruitment policy was to walk up to total strangers and say "Do you want to be a mamber of my secret criminal orgnaisation? I will make oyu my Colonel"

Yes, you too can be a colonel in an organisation with four members!

And this guy got away with it. How? Becuse the board rules said that you couldn't kill another player's chracter. Basically, the guy would act like a toal moron in public (Threatrening a woman in a video shop with a dozen witnesses and the cleek callign the police, for example) and there would be no probles with it, becuse the chracter was compltely protected form harm.

In the real world - or a sensiblky run RPG - this guy would have probably ended up doing life. Or being shot dead by SO19/SWAT/TRG/whatever. But it never happened, of ocurse. No, everybody on the board was gicen free reign to do whateve idiotic things they wished and get away with it.

On Zoids Endless Battle, an RPG that I'm on the staff of, there's been some degree of success in curbing that sort of silliness. The staff (Specifically the "Storytelling" members) tend to watch out for that kind of silliness, and tend to interject into a sotry when it happens. Or, if there's issues, they will deal with the situation.

One example saw a member of the BDO (Played by somebody mentioned elsewhere on this thread. I won't say who, however) invited a pair of total strangers into the secret BDO arena. When one of them declined her invite to join the BDO, they let them walk out unmolested. Yes, just figure that one through. Somone was lead to the arena, aallowed to walk in, have a look around and walk out. Brilliant work there.

Now while none of the Storytelling staff got onto this thread after the , they did follow up. The BDO interjected, "arresting" the second "Outsider" and bascially smacking their member aorund; amongst other htings she was put under 24 hour surveilence and forbidden to leave the BDO's compund until furhter notice. Brilliant!

ZEB has an interesting policy on chracter interation; they pay rewards to chracters for RP threads - these rewards vary depending on the qaulity of the thread and the RPing, but are gnerally more then the payouts for wnning a battle. So you get MORE from RPing and interacting then just Zoid battles. OTOH, if oyu write three pages of mindelss dross of your chracter being "So kewl", that won't get you jack squat.

But then, ZEB also has some of the toughest (and most strictly enforced) chracter submission guidlines around. Go fig.

Mr Guy: Did Jess say anything about leaving her RPG or just plug the new one? She kinda up and vanished from WZC and was never seen again. Then the board just... died.

OTOH, the toight of a Digimon RPG run by her... (Shudder)

Rick R.

*Nods* Ya, we don't do the character shielding thing on MC:CAN. Paying folks for RPing is actually a pretty good idea. I'd swipe it, 'cept it feels rather counter to MC:CAN's nature. Still, it does encourage RPing a lot.
I don't know how tough my entry system is as compared to other sites, but it's not all that easy. I should probably get into outright chasing off the lowbrow mouth-breathers, but we only had a couple come to the site . . . they're so much fun to torment. Like li'l site mascots who get beat up every time they show their masochistic hides on the board.

Nope, didn't mention anything about leaving or why she did. Just plugged the new one (which was against the rules). I was kind of curious as to why she didn't mention anything and removed the link to WZC from her sig but I didn't ask why.

If you want to take a look, here's the link. Only four members :rolleyes:

Dude... that's awesome a Digimon RP. I mean wow you get to make up your own partner, and everything, which I did in fifth and third grade, and I'm way out of Digimon, but this is just neat. I may join, not sure yet, but that would mean coming back and fourth between Zoids and Digimon. :lol:

And another thing. I've seen this on several sites, and I'm not saying where this one's from. It's not important. Telling people not to ask the staffers to do their jobs is in poor form. If the members have to start bugging you, clearly you are dropping the ball.
I know the rules say 'bug.' But they also didn't say that the members were allowed to ask the staff to get the job done. But that's just me and my German work ethic.

its the fine line between asking the staff and bugging them. I feel that if something liek a submiasion has been sitting for a hwile with no comemtns or anyhting, then yes, it is fiar to maybe post a reply to ask aobut it. If its been sititng and you then PM every member of the staff to take a look at it, then its not okay. But certainly, I feel that for the most part you shouldn't have to go aorund "bugging" the staff to doi their jobs.

Of course, any RPG where you need to do that for day to day tasks - and I have seen such occur - probably is in real toruble allready.

Rick R.

Keyboard be hatin' eh?
If it's sitting, I'm pretty sure the staff deserve the n00b salvo. Submissions, like where the person gets to join the game and actually play, should be handled as quickly as is possibly. It's not fun to just sit around and watch other people play, and if someone's stuck doing that they'll just wander over to another site that lets them play.
Hence my making someone revise their bio ten times or so if I kinda don't want 'em on the board. Only the dedicated ones will usually keep coming back to face the woodchipper.

The keyboard is never, ever my friend, Solaris.

One random observation - and being lbunt, one of the bigger issuies I have with the ZE RPG - is how many online RPGs; lack goals. Not as in "there's a story going osmehere" goals but the idea of persaonal goals ofr the chracters. There's a lot of RPGs that just go 'HERE HAVE KEWL STUFF NOW' at the point of chracter cration. I've seen way too many palces where oyu can jsut walk in as some newbie black-obsessed orphhan and have a Genosaurer or a Blade Liger to begin with...

..which means, what? What do you work to? Gettign a Genobreaker, I suppose. Yeah, big whoop. Huge goal. Yeah, I'm working to improve form an Uber Death Machine to a more Uber Death Machine. Thrilling.

And its a pet hate that this means that there's no reason to take a small Zoid to start with. Why does MMM (or ao many other RPGs) even bother putting up bios of Iguan or Godos or hte like, espeically if htey write those bios in such a way that amoutns to "Har har htis Zoid is Lik SO WEAK and UTTERLY LAME" when ther'es no reason why anyone would want to use them? Oh , I suppose some one might want to role-pay or have a challenge... but you'd probalby find that they'd be in the minorty.

Give chracters goals... and ones that can be acheived through RPing, not jsut battling. You want a Genobreaker. Fine. You start with a Hellruner. OYu have to earn the breaker, bub.

Rick R.

Oh bloody Hell yes. A buddy of mine, Jules, solved this by making the 'weak' zoids roughly as powerful as the 'strong' zoids, with the main difference being size and ease of use. He actually made me do the Geno Saurer, Breaker, Liger Zero, and Berserk Fury 'cause otherwise he would've lost his mind. ((You can see why we used him, eh?))
The fact that characters can start off with organoids was a major turn-off for me. As I see them, 'noids really have no place in a good game. They're just . . . bad ideas. They don't fit with NC/0, there're only a handful in CC/GF, and not many folks have put forth the effort required to make a good Ancient Zoidian-based RPG.
Then again, that's just me and my heretical ways.
Well, some people make the token effort at long-term personal goals. After all, somebody has to get revenge for that destroyed village.
Eventually.

Well, my organoid's a joke half-muse that escaped from a parody...they can be fun characters if they're used that way, rather than just straight up "this makes my Zoid more cool".

Yes! They will avenge hteir parents and their desotryed home town after they get an organoid and a Genobreaker jet and become the greatest Zoid pilot ever and join a team and that team wins the Royal Cup and they plkay with htis cute kitten.

Ahem.

Yeah... Organoids. Now THERE'S my biuggest single pet hate of all Zoids RPGness.

I've seen several differnt ways of handling Orgnaoids in RPGs. All of them blew major chunks.

Everyone starts with an Organoid

AIEEEEE! IT BURNSSSSSS!

OK, can anyone see the flaws here? You can't? YOU GO TO PRISON! NOW! Ahem. Right, here we go.

As Solaris said, Orgnaoids are rare and valuable little critters. There are, what, four of them in all of CC? And two dead ones in NC0 who may be two of the same ones as before? Yes, I thought so. Heck, Irvine saw Zeek as bieng so vauable that he spent the first half of CC trying to run off with the little booger. Yeah.

And in the battle story, they're flat dead things found in every Rev Rapter, Genosaurer, Gunsiper and Storm Sworder.

A world were everyone has an organoid is so painfully unbelivable and uplayable as to not be funny. It quickly becomes a gmae of "my organoid is better then your organoid" as everyone tries to out-organoid each other. Its not enough that you have to write a "kewlzies" bio or get the kewlest Zoid, no... you need to have a cooler Orgnaoid with more outragrous abilities. And, seing as Orgnaoid rules rarely have too manyt restrictions of WHAT oyur litle bipedal plot device can do, then it becomes jsut a game of one-upmaship.

(If you don't belive me, check out this. And bear in mind that the orgnaoids are LESS cheesy then they used to be.)

The second thing is that it often leads to cases of people spending more time talkign to their organoid then they do sdpend RPing. I've seen RPs that basically amount to people standing aorund having telepathic conversations with htier organoids and all but ignoring each other... or their organoids intreact while the humans stand around and look stupid.

Blaugh.

Only Spechul people/Zoidians can have organoids

A fair premise, right? Of course, since the guidelines as to how you got to be a Zoidian/Spechul Person/Gen-Active/Mint in Box Giant Vamp/Other (please specify) are often rather... losse, and the way to get to one is often rather easy, its not thatm uch of a limitation.

One RPG had a ten paragraph minimum for hisitry if you were an anchient Zoidian (And thus had an orgnaoid). Seems fair? Possibly. Of course, since you could write ten paragraphs of mindless dross, and all Anchient Zoidna backsotries shared a common trend (Being locked in a frost-freev fridge ofr a few centuries) that they were lla just small variations of, then it wasn't that hard. The net result": An RPG where the orgnaoid-less humans were in the minoroty.

Organoids aquired through a competition/tournament

Well, yes, that's a FAIR methodology. I mean, there's no chance that the Orgnaoid will end up in the hands of the people who battle the most often, have the biggest Zoids or are friends of the board owner and other staff (You know which RPG you are. Don't prentend to hide it).

Bollocks.

"Tournament to get a Zoid/Orgnapoid/Megaweapon you design yourself/plot device/whatever" are never a good idea.

Quest for Orgnaoid

This one is possibly the best of them, which is like saying that there's a best Police Academy movie. If a quest is handled well, and there's good RPing involved, and there's a genuine risk of death/dismemberment/long term loss/whatever to the player and the like, then maybe just mayve its justified.

Except it rarely is. Most RPGs quests consist of "say a few things, stand aorudn and look kewl and get a shiny hting at the end." And the approval meahtoidology is rarely any good. IU saw one instnace where a newbie player with five posts and a Diloforce saud "I wanna go quest for a Beserk fury." And it was approved strauight away.

Yeah. Defintly under control.

The end result is that Orgnaoids can be found lying aorund anywhere. As can Bio-Megaraptors, apparently.

Ahem.

I, peronally have seen a fifth Orgnaoid Methodology that I infinitely pferer over the other ones. It is...

THERE ARE NO ORGNAOIDS

And that makes Rick Happy.

Rick R.

*Huggles Rick*
That is all.

I agree organoids are overly cliched(spell?) most people have 4 or 5 organoids on this RPG and most have super dooper uber Kewziez weapons/ abilities. Why ill admit im no exeption mine has lock-on at any speed but only because everyone else has and it would be too hard in an organoid battle with all these super dooper uber Kewziez weapons/abilities going around. I personoly also think somewon nedds to change the organoid rule 1 MAX per person and that somehow you have to earn them. (maybe special quests held once a month by RPG staff?)

Excuse me, Rick, but I dearly hope you`re not refering to Metal Machine Music. If you are, I`m going to have to dismantle any arguement you make, piece by piece.

If it`s all the same to you, I`d rather not have to do that.

It's funny...Mach was made to be cheesy, and yet he's nowhere near as cheesy as a lot of RPG organoids.

Someday I should make a PROPER spoof character. Problem is they insist on turning into half-good ones and arrrrgh...

((I'm Goldblade, by the way.))

Yeah. While MMM's not perfect, I'm gonna have to back Sh33p on this'ne. If the folks fall into the category of friends of staffers/staffers, it's because MMM promotes based heavily upon piloting ability.
Well, that's not accurate, either. MMM looks for intelligence in their staffers (though not in their members) and intelligent people are usually the best pilots.

That said, I have been on an RPG where it was true that they all but used favoritism to determine the 'noid's winners. I was just bright enough to avoid those places after I killed BLX.

At no point did I say it was MMM. I never stated it was MMM. I just was stating an example, that's all.

There's a lot of htings I don't like aobut MMM, but I'm not going to turn this topic into some sort of flamewar or debate. All I'm doing is pointing out the shortcomings and failings of various methodologies used for gaining organoids.

That being said, I stand by my opinion. Holding a tourney to get a new organoid/zoid/part/plot device/grilled chese sandwitch is NEVER a good idea.

Rick R.

I want a grilled cheese sandwich! You made me hungry, you meanie!

How about you get an organoid free, but you get a random one out of a bunch Tilly made up as drawn out of a hat? That'd certainly make it...interesting :p.

...that would be truly terrfying. I love it.

Rick R.

Never say never, m'friend. Especially if the tournament's really just a thinly-disguised opening to role-playing.

Sorry to revie this, but I was doing some trolling of old stuff, and I came up with something else that grates/irritates/whatever me. Solaris, if you’re still here, I’d be interested in your thoughts.

This one is one of my faves, the Admin/Owner/Staff Character. Basically, it’s when the guy(s) running the board also have characters on it. They basically come in several forms, some good, some bad.

The first up is the Key NPC. This is someone who is not played as a “regular” PC and is not subject to the normal character creation and startup rules. These are people who do key things in the world, like running the ZBC, Generic BDO, PKB and any other three-initial organisation you can think of. They’re really just plot devices that need to occasionally take on human form to do stoof and interact.

I’m all in favour of these, if they are well handled. Basically, if they’re used in a restrained, sensible manner, they’re good. If they’re used to arbitrarily smite people, they’re bad. If they run into random RPs and take then over, they’re very bad. I have seen all of these done.

As a side note, I feel that positions like leaders of big organisations should be run by staff-controlled NPCs and NEVER by regular PCs. I’ve seen the insanity that can occur when the latter happens. Take WZC where both the GBDO and ZBC were run by macho powergaming morons.

If I ran an RPG, and I had to have a GBDO (Or even an NUBG), I would make sure that it was firmly staff controlled… and that GBDO members that made public arses of themselves would find that they were quickly no longer members… or having a visit to mister Woodchipper.

Type two is the Admin Player Character. This is a regular or garden PC who just happens to be played by the person running the board. No different to any other PC on the board, right? Or at least in theory. It can either go very right or very wrong.

(Note that I’m going to include characters that were played by staffers who got promoted from regular members to staff after they started playing. While not “born” to a position of power, these characters can quickly get out of control if not handled right.)

If it goes right, it’s a great opportunity for character interaction, role-playing and general fun and games. I’ve seen a broad range of admin/staff controlled characters that have been very well thought out, well-played and kept on a tight reign. One of my personal faves was a character controlled by the board’s owner who was one of the weakest characters on-site. They had never even won a battle, despite being in several. The staffer knew what to do, but they deliberately under-played her. That was fun.

This is good.

Bad is when the characters played by the staff are made out to be “better” in some way then regular characters. The most obvious case is rewards that are based solely on the character being played by a member of staff and not for any roleplaying abilities. They get more money for being staff controlled. They get more Zoids or Zoids that you can’t normally have for being staff controlled. They get organoids, parts, whatevers simply for being staff controlled.

A case in point would be the three (or four. I forget. They were all the same) characters played by the owner of one RPG I’ve been trolling on. Each one of them was an incredibly capable, incredibly skilled and incredibly gorgeous woman who was the centre of the universe. They would liberally walk into any thread and instantly take it over, making it all about them. You couldn’t run, you couldn’t hide, you couldn’t interact, you couldn’t RP. You either had to hang off every word they said or just go find another thread… which they’d walk into anyway.

Aieee!

Another one is one board where the owner controlled a character who was the literal centre of the universe. The RPG’s setting was based around an idyllic, paradise-like city created by this one character in her noble efforts to overthrow the evil regime that had done all the evil bad stuff and the like. The character herself not only blatantly broke every rule that the self same owner had laid down for character creation (no orphans, no villages burned down by bandits, no god-like abilites and no swords unless you know how to write a sword user well – and trust me, she doesn’t), but then gained extra gear and Zoids (yes, including those not normally available) during the course of the board’s life BECAUSE SHE WANTED THEM.

Oh, and get this: All sales made at one of the board’s weapons shop flow into her character’s personal account. Yep. Real fair.

This character was RPed in a way different to those above. This one never interacts with characters out side of a small clique of other similarly munchkin moderator-owned characters, all of whom are played by people the owner apparently knows from off-board. Great stuff.

(Update: said character is now entered in a Zoids battle tourney on said board. The tourney has been stacked in such a way that she can’t loose. Noice.)

So, as you can see, there are different ways the staff can handle characters. Pay attention. This is important.

…if RCZF was an RPG, what would that make Uncle Bob?

Rick R.