Games ending before they begin

It's happened to me three maybe four times this year. Game gets made, character creation followed by a few game posts and the GM just vanishes. I know 2020 was a weird year, probably 2021 will be strange too. I don't so much mind GM's or players quitting, I just hate getting ghosted, if you need to go a quick post saying something goes a long way.

I agree with Scrol, if the person has been a member for less than a week I'm always mentally prepared for the game being abandoned.

Though our Flood game getting ghosted was probably the best thing that could have happened for us 😄

This is true. That turned out pretty amazing, I mean I’m sad he vanished I’d have liked to have seen where it went.

I haven't been here a year yet, but I've already been ghosted by a DM and a half dozen players. At first was mad, but I try to be optimistic, so...

now, I approach each forum like a naturalist trying to learn about the locals. Looking for people I want to play with. (and there are some great people here) But at the same time, I feel responsible for giving new people a shot, just like I was given a shot. So, when I start a new game, I use a 60/40 rule. 60% people I know I can count on, and 40% strangers, new or otherwise.

It's working for me, and the group I can count on is growing.

Been there Shallagrimm.. felt that .. endured that.. came up with the same thought. Was it the last game I ran and before I could get to the start I had like 8 replacements.

So, my two cents, from some actual professional experience. So far a lot of suggestions have a lot of throwing out the baby with the bathwater side-effects.

Concerning 2FA:
I work as a Data Loss Prevention IT expert for a large corporation. 2FA, and a lot of other security measures, have a visible impact not just on security, but also on behavior. For one, everything does get a lot more secure. The side effect? If people don't absolutely need it, some will stop using it. 2FA is a barrier to entry. A nuisance. Especially if they move around a lot (and the session expires) they will have to repeatedly reconnect.

Secondly, telephone numbers are considered PII (Personally Identifiable Information). That means that when storing this information, no matter how much you encrypt it, the site now needs to comply to the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which are part of Europe's privacy laws. I actually work professionally a lot with our legal department on this one. For this particular site, it would mean that it has to be compliant by making a Privacy Impact Assessment, record how the PII is processed, and make possible the Right of Access, Right to be Forgotten and Right to be Informed.

And no, the site being hosted outside of the EU does not make it exempt. Charges can be filed from within the EU if the site is not compliant while processing EU citizen PII.

That said, 2FA can be made possible, it's just going to be a lot of work. Question is, why would we be doing it? So we can try to block a very small group of disruptive users? Baby, bathwater.

Forum badges, post count, etc.
A long, long time ago, in a forum far away, I moderated a huge Blizzard fansite. *huge*. Thousands of new users signing up every day. Naturally, there were trolls. armies of them in fact. And it being the 90's, we fell into all the 90's pitfalls of what was 'cool' at the time. Like the aforementioned forum post count and badges. Oh boy...

The problem with prestige; people want it. People *crave* it. If there is any way of showing off that one person is *better* then someone else, hoooo boy they will go grind that badge, or post so much crap that they will have ten thousand, no, a HUNNERD THOUSAND posts! Wooooooo!

Basically, the post count being shown is enough for a lot of people to start posting crap. Now I don't know about you guys, but in this environment I would rather see quality posts, rather then people making one-liners.

Because if you think people won't do it, you are wrong.

Makes the forum look like crap when people do this doesn't it?

...But that's exactly what will happen. You will see in games that there will be certain members who start posting just to inflate post count. What they post does not matter. To them, their primary incentive has become the post count, not contributing a worthwhile contribution. Think this will not happen? I will tell you they will. I've seen it. It's incredibly silly, but some people will go to any lengths to be that petty about a tiny bit of prestige.

Same with badges. Especially the auto-unlocked ones. People will *game* that stuff man. Guaranteed. Community-awarded? Expect bogus accounts to award the primary one. Moderator awarded? Heh, I had a spambox just for those.

Now, the site I managed and this one can and cannot be compared in terms of user base. For one, different audience and maturity. But what can be compared is that both have an 'inner core' of people who contribute to the meta (what we're doing here) and then there's a lot of people who are just here for their own game sub-forum and ignore pretty much everything else. The latter group especially I can see signing up fresh accounts and getting started. So what the whole badges/postcount would really affect is the first group. You guys hungry for some badges? Wanna compare post counts to see who's best? Because it comes with the disclaimer that with post count comes shorter posts. Especially if you make the mistake of making it visible on *every* *single* *post*.

Baby, bathwater.

So, real solutions instead of being negative Khully?
We need to go back to the core issue; one guy being an arse. Do we want to change the whole site set-up because of one guy, possibly upsetting the ecosystem just to get rid of his particular behavior? Hell no. Try to ban him in some way if you can, but don't change the whole site because of it. It's just not worth it. Active moderation is the best cure. Moderators scanning the new games being posted for this guy and try to catch him in the act will be best. Trying to collect some identifier to ban him on across accounts even better. Can't catch him? It's a shame, but don't hit an ant with a warmaul because of it. You end up doing more damage then it's worth.

I hope I’m not too pointed in saying that your doing it is the first and only example I’ve seen of purposely inflating post counts in the week since it’s been implemented.

Not that that says much, mind. Just wondering if we are tilting at windmills.

I appreciate Khulod's suggestions, especially since they come from personal (and professional) experience. That said, I also don't think listing post counts on a user page is going to incentivize people to post spam or to break up posts. I've been on several forums that list post counts and never seen an issue with it (Call of Cthulhu forums and Star Wars/FFG/Genesys forums mainly).

The active moderation bit is perhaps why. I'm not sure. In other words, if someone spam-posts on the Chaosium forums, for instance, the mods will intervene. I'd rather have the post-count information (how seasoned is this GM?) than not have that information if moderation is the answer either way.

Incidentally, I should also clarify that while the one jerk ghoster GM was the immediate catalyst for this conversation, others have brought up (here and in other threads) the more general annoyance of GMs ghosting games. It's not just this troll; it's a wider issue, and one that showing post counts on user profiles is hopefully going to help remedy.

User post counts only on the users' pages are perfect in my humble opinion because one has to actually go to the users' pages to see them. So using it as a boast, if one was so inclined, wouldn't be very effective. I think it is a useful tool despite its limitations. Definitely better than nothing. Badges, meh, not so much.

::sigh:: If only this were the schoolyard. We could just get five or six of us together and beat the living crap out of him. Inelegant, but much simpler and more efficient.

I started to suggest publically shaming him, but it occurs to me that that would likely make the situation even worse and he doesn't really care; he just starts a new alias and goes back to his old habits.

My next thought was of having GMs formally register as such when joining the site, but that presents some problems as well. For one thing, Keleth (or someone) would have to manually okay the new GM, and too, some newbies might be put off by the idea of having to register as a GM to run a game.

I'm just spitballing to see what sticks here. Maybe a message when registering that tells users that if they ghost on a certain number of games as GM, their access will be cut? But then you have to have someone monitor everyone and that's no good either. And sometimes, very rarely, there is a good reason for ghosting on a game (family or personal illness, work issues, etc.).

I'm very upfront with my players about my schedule (which tends to be chaotic) and the posting rate in my games. I can say only this; we may move slowly but unless the players grow tired of the game or something just doesn't click, I'll be in it for the long haul. I have a game on the Paizo boards that I've been running for over five years now.

I think I want to be the first to turn myself in. Either luck, or real-life or anxiety has thrown me from my online rp responsibilities.

So if anyone has to plead guilty it would be me. And I throw myself at the mercy of the forum!

"Ladies and Gentlemen... we got him."

Well that made my night!

I guess this is a bit of a necro.. but I haven't been on the site much lately due to moving and other IRL stuff.

I have been on this site for a while now, and have tried to play many public games here. Pretty much all of them have either ended before they started or shortly after. It's quite a large waste of time and very frustrating. Mostly I use the site to play with my friends between RL and virtual (these days) game sessions.

However, to address the problem of GM ghosting and such, I think you could maybe add to the game stats to show the number of posts (either total or personally) in each game being run or participated in.

their Should be a way to view how many completed games each person has played this would require at least 1 player and a GM to agree that the game is over.

Have you looked through the public games list? There might be some completed games in there as well.

I'm new here. Didn't know about this problem. Crazy wow.