Shadzar - I honestly do feel your frustration. I've been there. When I first started building my online group is was a very painful experience. Players that would sound interested in joining, soak up lots of my time getting their character ready, only to flake out at the last minute. Or players who would try wildly innappropriate characters. Or players who wouldn't make the slightest effort to learn anything about the setting that was being played.
Oh yeah, I totally feel your pain. I used to be where you are now. But, I'm going to impart my little bit of wisdom that I gained from that experience. No amount of banning, building walls, or being hard nosed will make these people better players or people that you want to share your table with. It just won't. Their playstyles and yours (and mine) are just incompatable.
My solution was to advertise my games being the biggest douchebag I could possibly be. That weeded out 90% of the flakes. My online adds were brutal (and, I'm not exactly the most sensitive person in the world in the first place). Lots of THOU SHALT NOT and YOU WILL BE ON TIME, and that sort of thing.
Plus, I made a very coinscious effort to be very clear what the players could expect from me. This much time is what I'm willing to spend on the game, this is how much flexibility I will give you, this is how much prep I put into the game. So one and so forth.
Once I did that, I had a much better time recruiting players. If the player was willing to bull through all the assinine social roadblocks I put up, he or she was likely to be a pretty good player. At that point, I relaxed an awful lot and became much more likely to be flexible with people's concepts.
It worked for me. I've managed to put together a fantastic group with incredibly creative people who continually surprise me and make my game something I look forward to every single week.
But, man, it took a LOT of hair pulling to get to that point.
From the response of most people in regards to my approach to DMing and trying to find players it seems I am already on that path, and thanks for the hopeful words, it just seems that I am in a location that differs greatly in playstyles. Heavy min-maxers/ckarOps-ers hack-n-slashers. (Why i was looking for that good lobby feature out of a VTT)
and THANK YOU for NOT using that mention tag. That thing annoys when it is in a thread I am already in and reading.
I am putting myself out there as willing to run a game and make it work. Sadly only one person liked the idea to continue, and I am not really running solo games, nor are they in playing them, so looking for new players again once tax-season is over, and just winging it until then.
Some people can easily accept that a DM is that final arbiter without needing ANY justification, while others simply cannot.
It is those that can accept it, I find make the better players because you end up not having to communicate about things and finite elements, they seems to already be on the same page, or, like myself, like to find out in the game why something doesn't exist in it because there is some good plot going on there.
I'd LOVE it if someone did this for me. Even if I totally disagreed with what they said, I still want to hear it. So, in the interests of leading by example, that's why I now email an honest critique to the DM in question. Keep it polite and whatnot, but, be honest.
Just stick both replies to you together for ease....
Comment cards are a lost art. I can't tell you how many places they have gone from, but I surely would love to get them and actually use stuff like that in ongoing campaigns for XP awards. But not just for the DM, but all players. Players can sort of assign an MVP award of XP to one player per session. You most times find the group is split on liking part of a game, but it is to be expected too.
Ahh the days of a constant group and devoting an hour after the game to discuss the session.
No, that doesn't mean such discussion magically makes why the DM doesn't like something come to light, or make it become included in the future either.
