Skip to main content

Finding Reasonable Players Online: Approach and Experience

When it comes to gaming, online is the wild west.  It is an endless sea of names and nicknames with no real way of telling who is going to be a good player and who is going to be a jerk and drop before the first session after asking a thousand questions.  To wade through this, I developed a 4 point system to find reasonable players.

When posting online games, I post my rules, a description of the game, and a description of me.  I think players should know what they are getting into.  Then I post "The Great Filter".

The Great Filter is a set of directions for how to apply to the campaign.  It is compact and precise and warns heavily against not following the directions, and usually looks something like a recipe with a bunch of warnings.  It tells exactly what information to post and warns about not posting additional or voluminous information.  It requires players to state that they have a good headset, a copy of the core players' book.  It asks for a quantitative explanation (in months and years) of their experience with the system and the online environment. It asks for a short blurb on a character that can be changed later.  It also says not to post character concepts that break the rules.

This recipe, it turns out, is almost impossible for some people to follow.  They post that they want to join, and nothing else.  They post that they have illegal PDF copies of the rule books.  They post that they have "a lot of experience" without any duration in months or years like what is asked for.  They post volumes on multiple characters.  They again and again, break the simple paragraph of rules.  And when they do this, I delete their application post without hesitation.

Sometimes players immediately learn their lesson, reread the rules, get it right, and I let them in.  Others continue to repost with mistakes.  Others never return to post again.  In another case, players post over and over and over again until I have to block them.  The response is always the same: why?!

The simple answer is that I need a test to see if these players are going to have the skills for the game.  These 4 simple hurdles are my "Great Filter".  The first hurdle is that they have to read the rules.  This gets some players right away and they fail.  Second, they have to follow the rules.  A lot of players get knocked out at this level too.  Third, they have to resist the urge to ramble on about their character or lots of characters.  Fourth, they have to give me what I need as a GM in the form I request it, namely their experience in months and years.  I don't even use the experience to judge who can join.  For me, it lets me know how much I need to plan on helping this candidate.

When they mess up, which all players will do sometimes (even me, when I play), I give them a chance to fix it.  If they can't fix it after a second chance, I block and ban them from the game.

Now I am usually pretty lenient with these rules.  If a rule is clear, but there is no warning I might let it slide.  Then I let the player in and add a warning.  If a players messes up despite the rule being clear and the warning about what not to do, they are rejected.  They can't follow my paragraph of rules, so how will they follow the rules in a hundred page rulebook?

Despite "The Great Filter" I still get somewhere between 10% to 20% of my players dropping before the first session.  It is hard to filter for people being flaky with their commitments.  Of the remaining, about 5%-10% will just stop showing up to the campaign without warning -- a very rude thing to do.  Over the period of 9 months of one online campaign, only 1 of the original 6 players remains.  The other 5 slots have occupied nearly 15 other players that have come and gone.  This is a long-term campaign that was described as long-term in the original post.  There is no test for longevity.  Real life sucks away even the best players.

So maybe my campaign just sucks?  I worry about this too, so I ask players for feedback on the campaign -- what they like, what they don't like.  They like the campaign.  I even went to far to ask for contributions to buying tokens for the game, because players won't donate to a game they hate.  There were considerable donations.  Based on my assessment, players like the game.  Every one of the players that dropped, besides a couple that just disappeared, gave good reasons why they left.

I share all of this information, so other online GMs can see that online games are tough.  Be prepared to filter through the applicants in whatever way you choose.  Be prepared for players to leave.  Be prepared to add new players throughout the campaign.  None of this need be a reflection on you.  Online, in the wild west, it just happens.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

5E Starting Gold and Equipment for Higher Levels

The DMG has a rough recommendation for starting gold and equipment for higher levels, but with my groups running one-shots, we wanted to nail it down to level by level. Here's my DMG-inspired table. Generally I allow equipment to be traded in during character creation for half book value, where applicable. I also, as a GM, offer to make custom magic items for players who can't choose. A list of magical items by rarity can be found here  with stats available in the DMG. I also generally allow players to buy healing potions (2d4+2) for 50gp and greater healing potions for 250gp (4d4+4). PHB items are available at book cost at creation. I do not allow other equipment to be purchased except in game. This is generally based off the "high magic" campaign. Level Starting Gold Starting Equipment / Magic Items 1 - 160gp  OR Standard starting equipment 2 210gp Standard starting equipment 3 285gp Standard starting equipment 4 365gp Standard sta

An Analysis of Tasha's Caldron of Everything: Spells

 I am going to be evaluating "Tasha's Cauldron of Everything" for incorporation into my own games. I figured I would go ahead and record this analysis on my blog here so other folks can follow along and glean some useful information from the time I spent. I tried to find an in-depth analysis elsewhere, but at this time none so detailed as this seems to be available. You will not find any of the text in its entirety in this blog. I will be referencing the first printing of the book, so please refer to that as you read along. There are no released errata for the book at the time of writing, although there are errata from other books that affect some of this content. There are 21 spells in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. This includes Booming Blade, Green-Flame Blade, Lightning Lure, and Sword Burst cantrips that were originally published in Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. There are 9 spells that allow you to summon creatures of various types. Three spells are notabl

GM Tip: Changing the Effective Font Size in Roll20

I've seen this complaint a few times in roll 20:  can't adjust the font in the chat window.  Unfortunately, they haven't added controls for this yet, at least not at the level of account I have.  For me the font is just too big, but I know for a lot of people it is too small. I am using chrome to do this, but I am sure it will work in other browsers. The method basically allows to increase/decrease the size of the font/controls by about a factor of 2 easily. To increase the effective font size, zoom in with the browser (ctrl-plus), and reduce the zoom on the map, until it is back to the size you want. To decrease the effective font size, zoom out with the browser (ctrl-minus), and increase the zoom on the map until its back to the size you want. The main limit of this is the limited range of the map zoom, which really limited me to fonts doubling to halving in size. Default size with chat font Decrease browser zoom and increase map zoom to reduce font e