In-Character Games (Role-Play)

[Michelangelo "Spike" Scarlatti]

How do you get your members involved in games that you created for the characters to play?

I always come up with tons of ideas for fun things to do for characters to earn House Points in my Harry Potter role-plays. But it seems like no one ever wants to participate in anything I provide. 

[Kami]

You can't really "get" your members to do anything, I've found, because events become too much effort -- people have time commitments IRL, and events don't allow for people to participate on their own schedule. If you're looking for people to gain house points, you will probably have better luck thinking of long-term initiatives that can be done with as little time crunch as possible. As a for instance: at the end of the month people get points for the # of in-character posts they make, perpetually;  points are awarded to players passively (one point per post); and so on.

[Derek‽]

Role-playing isn’t a subject in which I’m well-versed, but once you introduce points and bring up player behavior you’re moving into the field of ludology (theory and study of game systems) and that’s something on which I have opinions.

Plain and simple: if you want players to participate in an event, you need to provide positive incentives. You said the events award house points, but what good are those? Why do your players want them? As I recall, house points in the books were simply a ploy to manipulate student behavior. Addition and subtraction of points felt laughably arbitrary and all the students got out of it was the honor of winning the House Cup.

I’m not saying having a house point system is bad, but there is a big difference between characters on a page wanting something of intangible value (because an author dictates their motivations and responses) and a real person with those same desires. The characters in your RP might care, but you can’t expect the players writing the characters to care. Maybe Harry, Ron, Hermione and the rest were given the investment into chasing the House Cup as part of their characterization, but do you think JK Rowling had much of a personal stake in it? I doubt she was motivated to write based on which group of characters received the ethereal and ephemeral pride of having the most points.

When an MMORPG has a big event, like a raid, players and developers alike know to expect a payoff in the end. The story might be riveting and the gameplay might be a blast, but the bragging rights of being able to tell others you completed the event doesn’t mean much. Participation will be low if players get word that the reward isn’t special or worthwhile. Players in Destiny, for example, might expect to find a badass new rifle in the end. This isn’t something that only the characters would want, it’s something the players also care about, because it affects their interaction with the world. It has an effect on gameplay itself.

I still don’t know how you utilize house points—maybe they’re just for pride, maybe they’re a currency, maybe they’re something else entirely—but do they fulfill the requirement of providing something of value? Do they keep the players engaged? (Apparently not, for the latter.)

For an HP RP, you could grant participants new items that have some special effect, or exclusive knowledge/use of spells. Maybe they gain admittance to brand new locales in which to visit and role-play in the future—places other players who didn’t participate in the event(s) can’t access for a certain amount of time or without jumping through hoops or buying a prohibitively expensive key.

A player will make the time to participate if they are properly incentivized, but they need something they can’t/won’t get through other means. Having a system for house points in place tells me they already have a way of accruing those points, so a point dump isn’t likely to entice them very strongly.

[Kami]

Damn, Derek, I didn't even think of it that way. You're my new favourite person! 👀

[Michelangelo "Spike" Scarlatti]

Jan 20, 2020 3:20:59 GMT -8 Kami said:

You can't really "get" your members to do anything, I've found, because events become too much effort -- people have time commitments IRL, and events don't allow for people to participate on their own schedule. If you're looking for people to gain house points, you will probably have better luck thinking of long-term initiatives that can be done with as little time crunch as possible. As a for instance: at the end of the month people get points for the # of in-character posts they make, perpetually;  points are awarded to players passively (one point per post); and so on.

Yeah I saw that over the years on my forums that I can't get members to do anything. 

Oh, thanks for the ideas.