How do you keep (online) players in the group?

[S'mon]

I recommend you set a time limit for your game: "This game will run 3 months" - that can help everyone maintain commitment.

Send out daily posts. Fill in the blanks, keep things moving. Handwave lots of stuff.

Recently I've had more success with text-chat games where we schedule a couple of hours a week to all meet online & play; you can get more done in one session than in a month of PBEM.

 

[Kafen]

I play at my game forum. Pure PBP....

That being said, I have a few observations to make.

- Be assertive as a GM - I advocate assertive role as a GM for simple First Contact reasons. People have to like the campaign...which includes the GM for them to become regular players.

- Dun dun dun! Drama... You need to have it. You need to make it relevant to individual players. The players do not have to be kings, but they have to be important - more important than your average NPC.

- Relatives Importance, players encountering exceptional NPCs should be able to invest emotion into the characters. Details, story, and lore... You need it to deliver the extra-ordinary nature of the NPCs. The NPCs need to deliver it. It draws players into the story and invests them in your campaign.

These are the only thing you can really control in my experience - since 2003. And, it's what draws players to you and keeps them on your friends list in chat clients.

 

[Rechan]

Where does one every go to play DnD online?

http://forums.rptools.net/viewforum.php?f=11&sid=2bfd3d6b0e54fdff56ea3ddad4dc006b
The Tangled Web - Online Pen and Paper Roleplaying
http://www.myth-weavers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=141

I also DMed for about 8 solid years on text-based medium. It worked well, but for games that need a map/grid, it just doesn't work.

 

[Treebore]

Dang! I have been lucky! Same groups of people for a couple of years now, in one case, my game, 3 years! We use SKYPE and Maptools, we play C&C, L5R, Hackmaster, and others as time goes by (Warhammer, Traveller, Gear Kreig) etc... and I have a lot of house rules too! Especially for C&C! Heck, we all do!

However, I think that is a good thing, because I think having players who are OK with house rules may indicate that "right kind" of player. Plus, with SKYPE, we often spend a lot of time ust plain old BSing before AND after game sessions, so we really have become a bunch of friends as well, despite living at one end or the other of the US or Canada.

So stick with it, you already have a core 3? Awesome! Keep going! You will get the 4th, eventually, it just takes time! If we weren't already all groups full at 6 players I would invite you all to join! Don't give up! It will come together.

 

[Hussar]

Treebore, did you know these people in real life before you played online?

Kudos to you either way though. Wow, I went through so much crap when I first started doing online gaming. Maybe it was the site I got my players from. Bunch of very immature individuals unfortunately. WAY too much drama.

 

[Treebore]

Treebore, did you know these people in real life before you played online?

Kudos to you either way though. Wow, I went through so much crap when I first started doing online gaming. Maybe it was the site I got my players from. Bunch of very immature individuals unfortunately. WAY too much drama.

I didn't know any of them. Two of them knew each other from gaming together 5 or so years before, but had moved far apart. Like one went to Taiwan for a few years and the other moved to the extreme N/E of Canada. They now have a game on Wed. that involves 2 others from this previous group and 2 new people from our other groups. I played in it as well for a while, but just couldn't handle playing every night of the week, so I had to have at least one night open to take care of personal stuff, so I dropped out of it. I had also dropped out of the Monday group, and started the Hackmaster as just a short try out, but its been going for 3 months now, and fortunately real life hasn't been making me need Mondays off yet. So we will see how long I keep running or playing things on Monday night, because down the road they want to do Dragon Age and Traveller on Monday nights, and I can only hope I can stay in the group when that happens.

But I was like you guys, very discouraged, lots of people flaking out, etc... It took close to a year, but all of a sudden I started finding people it all worked with and I went from having hardly any gaming on line to being able to play every night, if I could.

So don't give up, keep looking, it will come together.

 

[Orius]

If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that keeping house-rules and custom changes to a minimum is the best strategy. Not everyone agrees on what is and isn't a good change, so keeping as much as possible to the base rules gives everyone a common ground to work from.

I'll agree with this. House ruling an online game makes it harder to get and keep players IME. Players don't seem to like to read through all the rules, and the further you go away from the core experience, the harder it is for them to get into the game. I ran a moderately house ruled game once that didn't work very well at all IMO.

OTOH, a DM should have the freedom to limit what books are allowed. If the DM wants to stick with the core 3, then the players shouldn't insist on bringing in something else. The DM needs to be consistant about allowed sources though.

I wonder if Hussar's approach would really work. I've done the opposite myself, try not to piss off the players too much so they'd stay but they seldom did. Maybe being a hardass would scare off the poor players before they jump into the group and mess things up.

 

[Vegepygmy]

320 potential online players for you here, Rechan: Members - The Online Dungeons & Dragons Meetup Group (Live Oak, CA) - Meetup.com

 

[Rechan]

320 potential online players for you here, Rechan: Members - The Online Dungeons & Dragons Meetup Group (Live Oak, CA) - Meetup.com

Oh wow, Veg! That's neat!

 

[Xris Robin]

Man, I know the frustration. You're my fourth online game, and the previous three all broke up. I haven't played a complete anything yet.

I pretty much have to play online for various reasons, and man, finding a group to game with is hard. How do you know you want to play with these strangers? And once the game starts, how do you keep them together? It's just as annoying when you aren't the DM, too, when people drop out.