Harry Potter Role-Play

[Michelangelo "Spike" Scarlatti]

When you look for a Harry Potter role-play what sort of things draws you to the forum? (name everything you can think of that makes you want to stick around and role-play on a Harry Potter role-play forum.)


How much time do you give people to get a character application written up before you call it quits and let someone else take on that character? 


Do you have new people give a role-play sample before you allow them to create an account to join your forum? Or do you just let them join?



What else draws you to the forum and makes you want to role-play there?


Where do you draw the line on letting people join as a long lost relative of a canon character?


If you do a Harry Potter role-play with lessons, do you set a certain amount of real life months and call it a school year in role-play? 
My friend and I decided 6 months real life time would be a school year in role-play. We want to have some actual lessons. They will be simple and some will be fun. 





I'm trying to think of everything I may have done wrong in my old Harry Potter role-plays and make it better and add it on this one.  I had every type of complaint that my themes were too dark to the role-play boards should be opened for guests to see.



Any other advice to make this really good? I'm not big on having tons of plugins and such so I would rather keep that side of the forum thing simple. I know I am pretty sure people will nit pick about my forum not having the right plugins and such. 

All I can say is that I am trying my hardest to make sure I covered all the complaints from the past experiences. 

[jessitap]

If there's one advice I can give as an admin, its to keep your priorities based on the community you've built. You will always get people complaining or demanding things. Many people want everything to be catered to them and exactly how they want it. Its impossible to satisfy everyone so just think of what the community needs as a whole and do that. But I find that as long as you explain why you unfortunately aren't going to add their request, most understand and are reasonable people. If they aren't, then that's probably not someone who would benefit your community anyway.

Also if you're worried about doing things a certain way and if people will want to join you, don't worry so much. Like-minded people will find you. You'll be pleasantly surprised. (:

As for lessons, I do 6 months too (well 5 lol) and it works just fine. Good luck. (: 

[Michelangelo "Spike" Scarlatti]

Feb 13, 2020 17:19:55 GMT -8 jessitap said:

If there's one advice I can give as an admin, its to keep your priorities based on the community you've built. You will always get people complaining or demanding things. Many people want everything to be catered to them and exactly how they want it. Its impossible to satisfy everyone so just think of what the community needs as a whole and do that. But I find that as long as you explain why you unfortunately aren't going to add their request, most understand and are reasonable people. If they aren't, then that's probably not someone who would benefit your community anyway.

Also if you're worried about doing things a certain way and if people will want to join you, don't worry so much. Like-minded people will find you. You'll be pleasantly surprised. (:

As for lessons, I do 6 months too (well 5 lol) and it works just fine. Good luck. (: 

Thanks for the input. 

How do you feel if you have a lot of boards when a forum is brand new? Is that a turn off or should I not care? 

The reason for a lot of boards on my forum is: 
My forum that my friend and I are working on has three countries which that means each country has a school. We wanted to have a huge Harry Potter themed role-play and have three schools this time. 

[Kami]

1. When you look for a Harry Potter role-play what sort of things draws you to the forum? (name everything you can think of that makes you want to stick around and role-play on a Harry Potter role-play forum.)

You ask this question further down, more generically, so I'll answer there. I am not going to specifically answer this for Harry Potter themes because a) that is subjective, b) there are a billion HP forums so you'd need to figure out what your hook is personally, and c) by and large good user experience is applicable to all websites including forums and isn't genre-specific.

2. How much time do you give people to get a character application written up before you call it quits and let someone else take on that character?

None of the above. I'm a first come, first served sort of admin because in the last 15 years I have seen more 'claims' re-released after the claimer ghosted than I have them being finished and submitted.

3. Do you have new people give a role-play sample before you allow them to create an account to join your forum? Or do you just let them join? 

As a rule, no. Roleplay samples are not indicative on the way someone would actually play on the forum because a) they are writing solo and b) want to put their best foot forward and so the RP sample tends to be longer and of more narrative/introspective quality compared to what people actually produce. RP samples are also inherently kind of skewed toward people who are native speakers, or at native fluency, of the language the RP is written in which eliminates a lot of people from being accepted. Some of the most fun and dedicated people I've RP'd with have spoken English as a second, third, even fourth language and an RP sample would have prohibited them from joining to begin with.

They only exception, sort of, to this is with canon characters. I ask for a 1-3 paragraph sample (roughly the same as an average in-game post) that demonstrates they understand the site's plot & how it affects the canon they've chosen + any deviations from the source material. However, they can do this after joining as there isn't a great way to vet people beforehand.

4. What else draws you to the forum and makes you want to role-play there?

I'm going to make a list:

• Most important for getting me to take the time to read more instead of leaving immediately: legibility. This touches on people saying your themes were 'too dark', probably. Basic web accessibility requires a certain contrast between background and text + a minimum font size. If these are missing, then you will get complaints of this nature because people can't read what is being written without straining themselves.
  
  
• Secondary first impressions: theme aesthetics & functionality: I am less likely to join a forum with a basic theme. I prefer themes that help set the mood of what I'm writing & relate to the content. HOWEVER this should never ever be a primary concern of yours because functionality > aesthetics. If you make a pretty theme but it's broken and unusable, it's a worse user experience than just having a default theme.
  
  
• #1 to Get Me To Stay: rules and plot: If your plot is generic and doesn't have decent hook that would be easy for community members to build off (and I mean, not having a specific "event" for them to react and take action for or against -- a big red flag for me is if the plot is vague and just has a wording about 'a new evil lurking' or something like that), I won't join because it's too open-ended. 
  
  The expectation is generally that the players will influence where the plot is going, but leaving it too open ended tells me that the admins don't have loose guidelines for where they'd like the story to head, and that will be a problem if activity ever needs a boost.
  
  As far as rules go, I'm not interested in rules that require me to write a specific length before considering my post good enough + rules that require me to post multiple times per week or day. I work full time, have a long commute, and have other obligations. Rules that are unnecessarily aggressive are also a turnoff (I've seen some rules where they'll write, "If you don't like it, leave" or things like that -- no) as are rules that try to be too buddy buddy cutesy. Just give me what I need to know in the most concise way possible.
  
  
• Other Factors: I need to be able to see what the community is like, both in and out of character. If boards that the community participates in are hidden, I am not going to take the time to register an account to see if my playstyle / personality are a good culture fit. Why should I? You'd be asking me to invest time in a community that I can't see until I'm a part of it and that is asking too much.
  
  Similarly, staff should maintain a degree of professionalism when interacting with members without being too stiff. What this means varies for people, but I have seen a lot of sites implode because of one extreme or another -- if the staff are too stiff, they're too intimidating and no one wants to post; if the staff are too personal, it makes the environment ripe for inter-member conflict.
  
  I also really hate it when RPs in particular use custom post templates. So many of them are not accessibility friendly, so I as an admin disallow them on my sites -- I've already expended effort into making my theme accessible and mobile friendly, I don't want that to go away just because #aesthetic 

5. Where do you draw the line on letting people join as a long lost relative of a canon character?

I have never in my life allowed this.

6. Any other advice to make this really good? I'm not big on having tons of plugins and such so I would rather keep that side of the forum thing simple. I know I am pretty sure people will nit pick about my forum not having the right plugins and such.

Honestly? No one cares about plugins, what they care about is user experience. Some plugins make your user experience easier; for example, if you wanted to give people Wizarding Money every time they made an in character post, you could do something manual and have them post in a thread and you adjust a custom profile field to reflect their new money count.... or you can use a plugin.

It all boils down to what you are wanting to accomplish. If you don't need to track money on your RP, then of course you shouldn't have the currency plugin. People "nit pick" about plugins when they're struggling to have a good user experience. So if you don't want to use a lot of them, make sure your user experience is simple and doesn't require the user to jump through a lot of hoops to accomplish.

At the end of the day, what people are looking for is a good user experience:

- Is it easy to understand?
- Is it easy to do?
- Is anything broken?
- Is it readable?
- Is it visually appealing without detracting from any of the above points?

How do you feel if you have a lot of boards when a forum is brand new? Is that a turn off or should I not care?  

Absolutely awful do not recommend. Having a tonne of boards will spread your activity out too much and look like you're less active. What looks more active at a first glance, one board with 100 threads or 100 boards with 1 thread each? Plus this is overwhelming from a user perspective -- remember user experience: if you're new somewhere, your first instinct is to gravitate to where others are to get a feel for how to best interact. If everything is spread out and things are virtually empty and people aren't interacting together, new users are less likely to jump in.

My forum that my friend and I are working on has three countries which that means each country has a school. We wanted to have a huge Harry Potter themed role-play and have three schools this time.  

This is super ambitious but you need to remember that what is fun for you and your friend is not necessarily easy to learn for others. You are expecting people to do a lot of prep work in this case before they even play (they need to be familiar with HP, they need to read all of your original story for the countries and schools and be familiar with how they're different from hogwarts) AND on top of that you have 283572947857 boards for them to use and they're supposed to just pick? I can assure you that will likely hinder most people and prevent them from participating, even if they have enough interest in your premise to join.

Add gradually. Start with the MAIN parts of what you want (the three schools, by themselves -- you don't need subboards for all the different locations in the school unless there are private 'house' boards -- are your primary targets. I'd add a 'wizarding world' for each country if you intend to accept characters who are not teachers or students. + a handful of OOC boards to encourage community interactions).

If you see a NEED to add more boards (let's say there's a significant amount of RPs taking place in Location A to the point where any other location gets lost in the mix), then add a new board or subboard.