Games ending before they begin

I and the admins have been aware of and notified of trend of games being opened and never getting anywhere after character creation, by one or more people behind a number of accounts. This is obviously an unfortunate component of Play-by-Post RPGs (and the internet in general), but none the less sucks. The last thing I want is for people to start up on the site, get into one such game, and feel like it's representative of the site; I'd like to think it's not.

That said, the admins and I are taking some action:
1) Anyone on Discord MUST have their username set to the same as their Gamers' Plane username. This only affects your username on the GP Discord, but will now be required. Anything not matching will result in being removed from the server until you change said username.
2) We're taking an increased look at users who start games and they get nowhere after chargen; if we notice patterns, we'll act on them.
3) I'm increasing what data I collect from users, and suspicious activity will be met with more quick responses.

If you notice any funky details, be mindful of the fact that a fellow player may have a legitimate purpose behind their actions, but if you feel like there's something an admin or I should look at, PM us or send me an email (contact@gamersplane.com). We'll continue to look for solutions to problems like these to make GP as great a site as it can be.

To this end, if anyone is knowledgeable in web security or knows someone who is, please do reach out, and I'd love to make this site better for all of you.

There are no good solutions to this sort of problem, and so we may be left with partially bad ones. I applaud and support the admins in attempting to address this issue in whatever way they see fit.

Speaking of possibly bad solutions, public shaming is one method. A public resource of failed on launch games: game systems, name of the game, dates, and GMs. For fairness, the GM's explanation if given could be added. I think that such a resource, if instituted, should be Locked from comment, and kindness and understanding should be the norm in the tone of any post.

Note: If this advice isn't warranted in this venue, please delete without notice. Thanks!

What if I have two usernames on here and am not on your Discord server? I have one username for Zombie/Apocalyse games I play and run. I have this username for every other game I play and run. And I don't follow your Discord at all, but I'm not sure how that would even work if I was to join your discord.

And honestly, when I run a game on here, if someone applies doesn't have some user history, I generally pass them over when they apply. If a GM is posting they want to run a game and has no user history, I generally won't join. Users start to recognise other usernames here after a while, and those that have some history with the website generally are less inclined to abandon their accounts than people that don't, I've noticed.
It's not necessarily a fair process for new members, but if I get the impression that they're genuine about playing or joining my game, I can always have a chat with them in PM and see if they genuinely want to play or if they're likely to ghost the players mid game.

And if it's Savage Worlds, forget about it. I've had so many DMs ghost their players in games using that system, I just breeze past IC posts for that game anymore.

I know of spambots signing up to forums, but do we know what the motivation might be to start a game, accept players, and then not actually start playing? If there's a scam involved at some point, what is it? Or is it just regular would-be GMs with poor follow-through?

If the problem were that real users of the site were creating and ghosting games, this might be an effective way to discourage them from doing it. (It might also have the effect of making new GMs afraid to even try, so there's that to consider.)

But the actual problem we're facing appears to be that someone has been creating a series of sockpuppet accounts for well over a year, and then creating games that the perpetrator has no intention of running. Most of them are ghosted in late-stage character generation, immediately after the "GM" approves the characters, or after a tiny amount of gameplay has begun. Then the "GM" abruptly disappears, sometimes retiring the game, almost invariably without notice or explanation.

Obviously, the activity level escalated significantly over the mid-to-latter part of 2020, which is probably why it raised suspicions. Everyone knows that there's a certain amount of caveat emptor involved with online gaming and that ghosting is always a risk; however, it reached ridiculous levels last year, to the point where the perpetrator even began taunting the site by advertising games he'd offered (and ghosted) under a previous sockpuppet.It's impossible to say what he's getting out of it, but he seems to be doing it on multiple internet locations. Some of his games have been advertised on Reddit, and I found one on another PvP website after just a cursory search. So he's not only victimizing GP, but this does appear to be a favorite hunting ground.

Good point, didn't think about it particular. For now, I'm inclined to say as long as you match one, you're good.

Can we have a registrar of players who take up a slot in a game and then are never heard from again? Who are these people? Why do they do this? :,(

In my short time on GP I’ve seen games hobbled by promising players fail to make it to char gen. Or if they make it to char gen, they don’t make it to Thread #1.

It certainly takes all the air out of a game right at the get-go!

At this point, and probably ever, I'm hesitant to resort to public shaming. It will only lead to accusations and I won't tolerate that. I'm happy to investigate concerns with the data I have under the hood, but I don't want finger pointing.

How about a reputation system, with some community input?

Basically, you get a small and steady increase in rep just for participating in a game, maybe by posting as per the posting rate listed on a game's page. This would suffice for most people.

Other players in a game can "like" you if you're a great player, to increase rep by a bigger amount. Other players in a game can also "dislike" you if they're having problems, which would drop rep. I think the likes/dislikes would be hidden, and only the rep would be on display.

I have to say, while I have nothing against Funfungiguy, I have concerns about people playing with multiple accounts on this site. The post as character functionality already allows for people to create custom personas for each game, and if someone has multiple accounts with no apparent connection, it becomes very hard to maintain accountability. Imagine kicking someone from a game for bad behavior and not knowing that they're in another game with you because they have a second username. There's potential for abuse there.

I like the "like" part and dis-like the "dislike" part. BGG (Board Game Geek) had tried several different systems (1-10 rating / likes-dislikes) before settling on just the "thumbs up" approach. Both the rating and like/dislike led to people abusing the negative aspect of the system, where someone would just go negative against someone they disliked for no real reason.

Not to say that would happen here, but, I'm not saying it wouldn't either.

Any sort of reputation system is laughably useless on a site where having multiple accounts is allowed. (Side note: I'm pretty creeped out to learn that people other than our nefarious ghosting fake GM have multiple accounts. I can't think of a single reason why that would be necessary, and as has been pointed out, the potential for abuse is huge.)

I, for one, do have a second account. It's Crawllock (which is how I pronounce my user name). I made it entirely to fill in the mandatory one player minimum for solo games, including a game I made for GM Notes and staging posts for other games.

Can't you just close an empty game to keep people from applying and use that for staging posts without having any players in it?

I was aware of your second account and your reason for creating it. But I'm still creeped out that there are people using multiple accounts for posting.

It's hard for a site to run on trust and good faith if it's acceptable to have multiple accounts and there's no way to know who you're really talking to. It's especially difficult when we have someone creating scads of accounts (including multiple older accounts) and all of them pretending to be unique users, posting fake games and tricking people into wasting their time and creative effort.

True, the rep system as suggested could be abused, and probably would need more consideration. I think that having a like system only doesn't really work though, because that puts newbies and problem players into the same boat. Maybe if time were also calculated into rep? But it also doesn't provide a way to specifically find problem players.

Ideally, rep would be autonomous, to be less prone to abuse. In BoardGameArena, which is a board game site, the rep system automatically drops rep when you leave a game without notice, or go afk for too long. But that's not so easy to do in this situation here, where ghosting isn't as easily measured, since they're technically still in the game.

Maybe you could assign rep by using the posting rate as a measure, with those that fail to meet up with it drop rep? Most games would be set as a few times per week for time flexibility. It doesn't really account for legitimate hiatuses, but maybe a hiatus feature could be added in conjuncture, where a player could be marked as being on hiatus.

As a GM I would be happy with nothing more than being able to visit a user's profile and seeing the overall number of posts they've made. I can already see the date that someone signed up, number of characters they've created, and the number of games they've run. I can draw my own conclusions from that, I think.

This would be a great starting point, and maybe the easiest to apply. I'm new around here, but didn't have much trouble finding a game to join. I think that it needs to stay that way, and as a GM a player with 10 posts and 10 games joined isn't as promising as a player with 10 posts and 0 games.

While raw # of posts, too, can be gamed, a chart or table showing posts per week for the past year or so would require much more effort to spoof thus be more reliable.

I like this idea.

I don't see the problem with it at all and can't imagine why anyone else should. I've been using this account since May 2015 and my Horror/Apocalypse account since April 2017. There's never been an overlap between games I'm running/playing. I've never signed up for anyone's game using multiple accounts. I simply like to compartmentalize by gaming activities. and I can't imagine what efforts the Admins would have to undertake to even try preventing multiple accounts but I guarantee it would be an uphill battle and not worth the effort.

Agreed!

:thumbsup: or :like: or :10:

I think it's less of an issue with you personally, and more of an issue that someone could abuse alt accounts very easily. In addition, there isn't much that could be done about it.

I also like the # of posts suggestion. I think breaking it up into weeks like Qralloq suggested would provide a good amount of information to make a decision off of, provided it's presented in a organized way.

Again, I'm not saying that anyone here is doing anything bad with their multiple accounts, but I don't see the utility of it. You don't need different accounts to maintain test games or run different genres, and the fact that it can be done innocently doesn't remove the potential for abuse.

An argument of "I'm not doing anything bad" with multiple accounts doesn't have much to do with the possibility that someone could. Sure, someone could spend a bunch of time gaming the system to get around it, but that's not an argument against it. I sit here now wondering how many multiple account site members I've seen that I thought were multiple people. Who am I really gaming with now?

There's no compelling need I can see right now to need to have multiple accounts. Everything I've seen so far can be accomplished with a single account.

I think some of this is probably not worth the implementation. More detailed info on player profiles would help. I think I good indicator that could be reasonably tracked is # of games withdrawn and # of games kicked from. If I see someone with 10 characters with 7 kicks and 2 withdraws, that's a red flag. But that doesn't stop them from just making a new account if that account has too many red flags though.

How do you tell if someone has multiple accounts? Anyone can create unlimited email addresses. How do you propose that Keleth enforce your one account per one human being policy?

How can any rule on this site be enforced if someone can simply switch to a different account?

I think the real problem, which we've gotten completely away from, is that there is someone who has made multiple accounts on this site who has made dozens of games, most of which never even reached roleplay.

Being ghosted by a player sucks, but it doesn't usually wreck the entire game. It's a lot easier to find more players than it is to find a new GM. When you start a game and multiple players spend time, creative energy and (sometimes) money on rulebooks for new systems, only to ghost it, and then boldly post THE SAME GAME a little bit later:

https://gamersplane.com/forums/thread/19905/

https://gamersplane.com/forums/thread/19193/

How many people out there have been screwed over by this guy? The evidence is pretty significant that they've been doing it for a long time.

The bottom line, as I see it, boils down to this:

1) There's no actual need for anyone to have more than one account, functionally. Everything anyone needs to do can be accomplished with a single account.

2) We have a person who has been posting fake games under at least 17 different sockpuppets and ghosting them for over a year. Having multiple accounts has made that a lot harder to track.

3) A policy requiring one account per person is a common sense policy, especially in light of 1) and 2).

4) We don't need to come up with the details of enforcement before making that policy, and the fact that there are challenges to coming up with the enforcement mechanism isn't a good reason not to enact the policy. If it were policy, then when the person trips themselves up (which they've already done a few times, discovered retroactively), then the violation of the policy makes banning them a no-brainer act.

It's a real problem. But it's not so overwhelming that we can't find ways around it. A friendly post into IC threads about new GMs, much like bowlofspinach does in Introduction threads would do far more good than an untenable rabbit hole about controlling multiple accounts.

Here's the thing. It's not like you can make multiple accounts on the same email; you have to have a new email to make a new account. My two accounts are on different emails. These users that are abusing the system by ghosting games, then making a new email and making a new account, turn around, ghost their game, then make a new email and make a new account. Rinse and repeat.
Unless you're tracking IP adresses, there's no way you're going to prevent people from making multiple accounts, regardless of whether they're using them in good faith or abusing them to troll the website, and frankly plenty of users can hide their IP addresses in this day and age that I seriously doubt Admins are going to invest the effort to bypass that. So preventing multiple accounts from being a thing is pretty much a moot point and shouldn't even be on the table. You're never going to get rid of it. Not in any internet forum, let alone this one.

We need to focus on ideas that hold individual usernames accountable regardless of who the username belongs to on the other side of the screen. If one user has ten usernames and they've been mostly playing off one and rarely use the others, players should be able to see, "Oh this username is active and engaged; I'd play with that person," while the other nine might reflect usernames that aren't active much, and we can decide not to play with that username because it might not be relaible.

As I said, there's one person who has been using a series of different accounts, pretending that each other is a unique person, and posting fake games. They've done it at least 17 different times - quite probably more. Some of them are brand new accounts, and some are old ones.

We can't hold these individual usernames accountable. They don't actually exist. This is a guy churning out phantoms for the purpose of making real users of this site look and feel like fools, and the thing is, he's not breaking any actual rules. I think that sockpuppeting is something that should be against the rules, for the many reasons already given, whether or not anyone here thinks it's "enforceable." It's just plain common sense to say "sockpuppeting is bad" when someone is using an incomprehensible number of sockpuppets to take advantage of good-faith members of the community.

I'm aware of the user you're speaking of. I've been burned twice by joining games they started and abandoned, and it's irritating. They recently tried to join a B/X game I'm running and I at least recognised one of the patterns they use in their usernames and denied their application. So I agree that the problem exists.

But, again, you're not going to get rid of users making multiple accounts. It's never going to happen. It's not even worth discussing here. You can join the opinion that the multi-users are bad, and they should feel bad, but there's no point in making a rule that you can't enforce, because it's a waste of time and doesn't fix the problem.

No offense, but nobody saying "We should ban multiple accounts," is contributing to the discussion in any meaningful way. They're not doing anything to help solve the underlying issue.

I'll respectfully disagree. I think I'm contributing as much to the discussion as anyone else here. I also have yet to hear one credible argument for why anyone needs more than one username on GP.

I mean, I agree that malicious alt accounts should be against the rules, but when there's no real way to enforce that, it's a bit pointless to just say "no alts pls". I guess technically there are currently no rules against alts, but I think that when it's found that alts are used in such a malicious manner, it's enforced. I don't think saying, "no alts pls" adds anything substantial to actually solving the problem, although the clarification may be of interest for some. The main problem is finding out these malicious alts so that they can be dealt with.

With that said, I think that a better way to address the issue would be to provide information so that users can determine if a certain account is untrustworthy, such as with the # of posts suggestion brought up in this thread. The stats could be spoofed, but that would take more effort, meaning less alts for the same amount of effort put in by the creator of said alts, which is an improvement in and of itself.

It doesn't matter. Nobody needs to give a reason and it's not a discussion that's going to go anywhere here. It's a dead issue.

As to the suggestion of the number of posts data, that seems like a start, but doesn't really tell much about the username. I think one person suggested breaking it down to the number of posts per week, but that can be misleading too. One player might make 1 post per week and only join games that run on a "1 post per week" rule. That would be a good, reliable player. Another player might average 2 posts per week, and they would seem like a better/more active player, but if they're constantly joining games that have a "1 post per day" rule, they're actually a pretty lousy player, because they tend to hold the games they play up, which often kills the game.

Maybe a solution to this would be, instead of keeping tabs on how many total posts a player has made, or what their posts per week numbers are, there could be a metric which says how close the player's posting frequency matches the "posts per week" guidelines of the games they join. Do they post about the same number of times per week as the games they join? Do they post more frequently than the "post per week" rules of the games they join? Do they post less that the post per week expectations? Because I'm personally less interested with a players total posting frequency than I am about if they're reliable, based on the expectations of the game.

I'm more interested in people who create games that never were meant to actually exist, personally.

Not quite as dead as you seem to believe.

Here are two reason for multiple accounts:

I did this on another site. I had 2 accounts, the one I played on and the other I let my children use. It was my account and I had the password for it. I wanted to keep on eye on what they were playing and what was happening in their games. Now I will say that this is probably rare but it is a reason for them.

I also did this once for a game I was playing years ago in that it was a spy game and there was a double agent in the party. They figured out there was a leak but it took a while for them to realize a "PC" was the mole in the game as they first examined all the NPC in the game before looking at each other. The final showdown with the PC once they figured it out was a highlight of the game for them. I needed two accounts make it work.

Me too, as long as it does not prevent new players from joining. We don't what a catch-22 scenario where you can't join a game until you got points, and you won't get points unless you play.
I really love to know the motivation that kind of behavior

If it's the person I think it is, they joined about a year ago and started a game using very divisive, politically charged language. Folks basically called them out and said no one's policing your game itself (as long as everyone involved is OK with whatever content you're going to feature), but there's no need to advertise the game in such a confrontational manner. They left the site. The use of "apologist" in the sockpuppet usernames makes me think this is the same person coming back to troll us for being so "biased" against them.

On the reputation issue, I've said it's a good idea in the past. I like the idea of seeing posts per week or some such, probably over time. As for new players, I think runekyndig's right to worry about how they might get into a game. Part of the solution to that might be in the site's culture and norms; I always try to make an effort to accept at least one new player into my games when I run them, and I think that's broadly a good policy for GMs to adopt when possible. One new player ghosting isn't going to break a game, and the best-case scenario is that the player becomes a regular gamer here and even runs their own games.

So first, we're going to end the discussion about multiple accounts for now. Whether you agree with it or not, it's going in circles here, and thus is not beneficial at this point. It's a conversation we can revisit publicly later, and I and the admins will discuss it internally.

So I don't keep track of WHY someone leaves a game, nor when they leave a game. I can and will implement # of posts on their profile, and look into how annoying/slow it would be to implement a count by week/month. I think they are good indicators of activity, and I don't think hurt. If anyone has any feedback as to why I shouldn't implement all/part of that, let me know, I'm open to hearing it.

A lot of the best policies for this site have come from the culture you all have developed, and will continue that way. If we can keep people from joining these abrupt games, we can minimize the negative effect there. I've been pouring through the data I have available, and will be taking some action soon, though I'm restricted, as it was pointed out earlier, switching IPs is pretty easy.

I think both the above would be very helpful.

It's possible it's the same person, but if so, they've been at this for a very long time, since long before the incident you're referring to. "Apologist" was only in two of the 17 sockpuppets, and many of the sockpuppet accounts were already established before the username you're talking about started posting, some as early as two years ago.

Honestly, the best way I've avoided joining their games is just don't apply to a Savage Worlds game, especially if it's a new account. They burned me on two or three different SW games before I figured out that game is a landmine on this site. If someone posts a SW IC and they're using an account with a decent amount of history on it, I'll give it a look. But 99% of any ICs for Savage Worlds is by the person in question with a brand new account and no history.

It's a shame because SW is a fun system that I feel is well suited for PBP, but that's a reasonable policy.
I like that. I've been kind of following that idea already but I think for future games, I'm going to keep this in mind more explicitly.

It's not just SWADE games, though. I've been burned on, now that I go back and think on it, four different systems.

Dungeon World
Lady Blackbird
SWADE
Coriolis (probably)

So great, those of us who have been around a bit know not to join a SWADE game from a new account. What about new players? How long until this unwritten community understanding is no longer an understanding?

Isn't this a problem that deserves some discussion about how we could avoid it continuing to happen? Or happening again from a different person?

I haven't been burnt by this, but is it really that bad? I mean, nobody got hurt.

Sure - I know I sound like an ass for saying "It didn't affect me, so it can't be bad" - I get that. But it seems to me that the worst thing the players have suffered is mild disappointment.

But isn't the simple defence to not sign up to SWADE games run by brand new GMs, rather than asking Keleth to build in more metrics (although I'm not going to refuse functionality)?
This is my main interest too. Why's this poor fellow doing this?

Does the poster suffer from performance anxiety when it actually comes to running a game? Is this some sort of cry for attention? Perhaps the poster is a child?

If someone is playing 'Knock, Knock, Ginger', then perhaps we should be inviting them in to participate as a player (where the impact of ghosting is pretty minimal) rather than trying to find automated ways of ignoring them.

One of the socks is someone who's been a member since 2019, has posted (and ghosted) several games (most SW, but not all), and has even joined some games. (In at least one case, they ghosted there, too.)

Perhaps if we see a thread from a new SWADE or sus GM, somebody suggests to that GM in a reply that perhaps they might want to play in a game to build up some experience (and social capital) before running one?

It's a big mistake to think that the ghost GM is only posting fake SWADE games. There are many other systems he's using.

Is the list of these "sockpuppets" available somewhere?

Pretty much. In the three SWADE games I got burned in, it's not like I went and cried myself to sleep in the shower or anything. But in all three games (one was a western/steampunk game, one was a college horror game, and one was a standard fantasy game) they had you go through this huge elaborate process of making your character, then doing a sort of Session 0 where you develop your backstory, long before you even begin playing with the other players' character in the game. Then after the adventure begins and you set out on your quest, you're just ghosted.

Between the character creation session, and the Session 0 to develop a backstory on how you tie in with the rest of the party, it was like a month or two of posting before the game even kicked off, which the GM immediately ghosted. A month or two of new players enthusiastically posting multiple times a day just to get flaked on is sort of a bit more than mild disappointment. Especially when it takes you three of these games before you catch on to the pattern.

Like I said, it's not like the end of the world, but it got pretty darn infuriating to get burned three times in a row, to the point where players started PMing each other like, "What's the deal with this guy? Is it me or is this the same dude jerking us around? Is anyone else noticing a pattern here?!?"

Yes, it's that bad. This really is a case of if you haven't been part of it, you're in no position to tell people they haven't been hurt.

There is, first of all, the fact that those of us who've been taken advantage of in this way have joined to learn a new system. Often, we've purchased new materials for that purpose. We've invested time reading the materials, and creative energy devising characters. In many cases, we've spent time working with each other to come up with backstories that entwine.

In all cases, the "GM" has been there, interacting like a normal person, urging us forward to complete our characters, sometimes participating in discussions about how we want to launch the story, etc. We haven't just rolled up stock characters like for D&D and applied a point buy or stat roll. We've put in actual time and effort, and then when we've all submitted characters, the "GM" is suddenly no longer responsive.

I am amazed that so few people seem to care that someone is doing this, and that the action items coming from this discussion are basically "let's find a way to monitor players" instead of "let's find a way to protect our players from this abuse."

This is bonkers to me that something like this is going on. Who has the time? Or that much impotent malice?

I don't think we need to engineer the site against ppl like this, we need to convince them to seek help.

I mean I get that this sort of behavior is frustrating, but also pbp as a gaming medium is full of the worst kind of flakiness.

Seems difficult to engineer the site against this behavior or police/moderate it.

But if users just communicate, and the responsible parties are confronted in a respectful fashion with an opportunity to defend themselves, when the worst of offenders are exposed, isn't there just stuff like IP bans to solve this kind of problem?

Fair enough. I'll hold my hands up to it. My sincere apologies for being an ass.

I'm a new member here. I signed up in late November here and another site to try to get started with pbp. The "other" site was a pain to use and a chore to get involved in any games. Here at GP I happened on a solid game with a good GM in my first game. I've added another game and am now GMing two of my own games.

I only bring this up because had I run into a lot of issues with GMs ghosting a new game, it's likely I would have ditched GP and gone with the "other" site or continued looking elsewhere.

I do have some experience in web security (some), and am guessing it's very tough to engineer against this kind of thing. What GP does have though is a solid community. I don't have any idea of the current arrangement of mods/admins, but perhaps simply adding a few more moderators to keep an eye on things and take/review complaints would be useful.

I'm not saying that being careful about new GMs running SWADE is the be all end all solution, just that it's a sensible precaution to take.
I would definitely welcome some new measures to help protect players (especially new members for whom this might be the first experience of PBP and this site).

And yes, as fungi said, this wasn't just a "submit your stock character" type situation, for some of them at least. In one game, there was an extensive session zero for the individual players where I at least wrote a ton of background, answering questions and prompts in preparation for the game over the course of weeks. So that's a lot of effort basically wasted, not just one afternoon making a quick character (though one other SWADE game I was in that got ghosted was basically this and a third one was inbetween those two in effort).

There is. The admin team have been provided with it.This is a good point. The issue of sockpuppets and a serial ghosting "GM" seriously impacts the perception of the site's trustworthiness.

I am not against seeing a total post count as many sites like this have it. I am not sure about the posts per week or month though.

There are times a persons posting amount will go up and down. For example say someone gets sick and cannot post really for a month or even more. They might be a regular poster normally but that sickness and they withdraw from games will make their post per week drop. Also as others said, some may not be in games that require many posts per week and therefore their count will be lower than someone who does. If they decide to join a game that requires frequent posting then they may get overlooked.

We can already see when a person joined so we already have that and if we can see a total post count between the two we should get the information that people are talking about. Is the person new or are they active on the board or not.

I know this can be frustrating but to much policing can also have an adverse affect. I was on a board that started making lots of rules. What I can say is that it caused much frustration and a drop in members over a variety of issues.

Also I am a little concerned of a reputation mechanic (one of the things the board above did). This turns things into a popularity contest. For example: On this board I have had two players join and quit at the beginning games I was in or was a player multiple times (each was 3 or more times). Now that said one of them I just won't allow in my games anymore. The second, I gave one more chance as I saw it and they have been a good player in that game. Now if I was giving "reputation" points both would have gotten negative from me though maybe in other games they are productive active players. This then would have made it hard for them to join other games possibly. Some players will click or don't click with other players, This does not make the other players a problem but if two player's play style don't mesh a person might get a negative rep from the other due to it which would be sad as it could affect the others ability to use this site.

I think being cautious of new SW games from new GMs is a good thing. I hope I didn't imply that I didn't think it was, I certainly didn't intend to.

And I agree that there's probably not a lot of site engineering that can be done to prevent it from happening, though I'm completely uneducated on security. I do think that increasing the moderator team, if there's community and administration support for that, to help keep an eye on these things would probably help a lot.

But for me, the big thing is making, publicizing and enforcing community standards around things that suggest some important principles the community abides by.

Perhaps some type of gamification could be helpful? GMs that are known reliable get a nifty badge, etc. This would have the effect of rewarding committed GMS without "punishing" new folks. A carrot rather than a stick.

This approach would would give player's at least some confidence that the game they're enrolling in has a chance of succeeding.

Those badges would be hard to moderate, though. Who gets them?
If it's mods who hand them out, what if I only ever GM in games with no mods present. If anyone can just request them for their GM, there's no actual quality control so they'd be pointless anyway. If players request them and then mods check through a game's history, then what standards do they apply? That's also a privacy issue, since not everyone might want outsiders to read their game.

Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges.

If someone is advertising a game in the tavern, and you've played with them before, then just write a recommendation. That's what I've seen other people do (and I've done it myself) - I think a kind and public word of recommendation works better than any system badges.

The approach I would take is to have stats generated automatically, but badges awarded manually. Mods would have a list with names and key stats (join date, #posts, #games, etc.) I think it would be fairly easy to come up with a standard way of awarding a badge without having to actively inspect everybody's activity history.

Something like:
gold badge: member 15 months, 250 posts, 10 games
silver badge: member 6 months, 100 posts, 5 games
bronze badge: member 3 months, 50 posts, 2 games

I'm using arbitrary numbers, but I don't think it would take a whole lot of effort to come up with a reasonable system.

I like this approach because it:
-rewards positive rather than punishing negative
-gives a very quick way for Players to have confidence in starting a new game
-gives an opportunity to celebrate GMs for contributing to the community. Perhaps a monthly announcement for awarding badges?

I agree that it's probably not a good idea to have mods peeking in on games, but I don't think it'd be necessary.

Personal recommendations are definitely more valuable, but also much less consistent.

I don't know that this is the best solution, but it may check enough boxes to make it worthwhile.

I don't have anything against the idea of badges, but it doesn't really seem to solve the issue of GM ghosting without hurting newer players. It puts new GMs and GM ghosts in the same unbadged boat, which means that you can't tell the difference between a newbie and a ghost GM by looking at the badge.

So, if you're using the badges to avoid ghost GMs, that hurts newbies since they're also unbadged, and thus also being avoided. If you're giving an unbadged GM the benefit of the doubt, then that doesn't really stop ghost GMs, since they can pretend to be newbies.

But it does give a new player some indication of whether they're going to join a reliable game or not. The thread was started to address the specific issue of GMs starting games and not actually playing them. This type of system may help with that.

The main goal of badges is

1. a way to quickly communicate information that will help determine whether a player is interested in joining a game.
2. Provide motivation for quality GM's to keep doing their thing.

What it doesn't do is address the culture of playing with new folks. I do think that one of the strong points of GP is including new players, and we certainly would want to be careful of stigmatizing that.

Also, perhaps you could differentiate between a New Player and an an unbadged character?

I don't really see any use in badges. They don't help address this issue, they only place a divide between "low-ranked" and "high-ranked" players.

Creating division is a risk. Perhaps that could be mitigated by only applying badges to GMs, as the problem we are trying to solve is with GMs.

I do think that I'd be more inclined to join a game (or possibly have higher expectations) with a GM that has some type of track record of running long-term games, so in that sense I don't think they are useless.

I guess it comes down to the goal:

Prevent GMs from creating games they don't intend to actually start.

OR

Identify GMs that have created games they didn't intend to start.

The first is much harder to achieve than the second. I'm not sold that badges are the best idea either, but I do think providing easily accessible information regarding a GMs history would be a great starting point and badges are one way to do that.

Other ways of achieving that could be:

-A high score (could simply be the total # of replies in their most active thread, or total number of posts, whatever.)
-Community driven awards - I'm less excited about this idea, but its an option
-An "Endorsements" page for each GMs profile. Player's could leave a quick note about their positive experiences with a given GM. I'd probably allow a GM to delete comments. This would combine the earlier suggestion of commenting on threads for IC by GMs you played with before, but wouldn't require you to do this every time.

Every solution is vulnerable to being gamed. But it raises the barrier for entry for somebody to want to create a game with no intention of actually playing. In my opinion, that's the best we can hope for without major changes/inconvenience.

But badges would be unable to distinguish honest new GMs from future ghosters. There's no way to tell those groups apart so all you'd be doing is disincentivizing people from joining games run by new members, which is not something I think is a good idea.
This could be done by listing more details about a GM's previous games on their user page. Stuff like when it was opened, how many posts total in there and when it was closed (if it was). Then people can go to the GM's page and get an idea of their history if they want to.
But I'd be hesitant of assigning quality markers with the intention of directing people away from some and towards others basically just based on how long they've been here.

None of those solutions exclusively raise the barrier of entry for people with dishonest intentions, because that's impossible. They just raise the barrier of entry for new members.

Doesn't your suggestion of making more stats available for GMs do precisely the same thing?

You would have to weigh the possibility of losing new GMs because nobody joins their games with the possibility of losing new players because they keep getting ghosted in games they want to join.

It's just a hunch, but I think GMs who ghost is a larger problem.

Regardless, I think that both of these issues could be mitigated, but only by promoting a culture of welcoming new folks rather than a policy change. I think GP is pretty good at reaching out to new players.

So, based on this and previous discussions, I will implement some "gamification", for the fun of it. No badges, at most maybe fun ranks, which have no meaning other than activity. I've posted previous on various mechanics, and this is making me consider others/more. I'll post once I have some thoughts on how it could work.

One thought that was raised by admins is adding/requiring 2FA (Two Factor Authentication). I know how to implement that via an app anyone can download to a phone, and if we collected phone numbers, I'd make sure they're encrypted on the GP side, so even I would never know the number. That said, it obviously makes logging in a bit more a pain, but does help reduce who can log in. Short of having multiple phones, if we block one 2FA number, it would prevent any other accounts from that number.

This seems like a worthwhile idea.

I'm more partial to oddtrail's solutions than using 2FA. Honestly, 2FA sounds more like burning down your house because you have ants...

Hopefully, the game I started will actually get going by the end of January. Just learning this site so I'm setting things up as I go.

Considering how rarely I have to re-log in to the site, it seems like 2FA would be a pretty small inconvenience.

I administer systems for my company. Some users feel that 2FA is the only thing preventing our company from taking over the world, or at least the reason for them being deficient in their job.

I'm always skeptical about giving out my number and it's almost as easy to get a dummy phone number as an email address.

Kind of, but it's just providing additional info that people can search out and interpret if they want (which some of your suggestions also are). Badges are basically GP telling people who they should play with (and therefore also who they shouldn't).
We're getting into some ethics discussions here xD Is utilitarianism really the only way to view this issue ;)
If when I signed up for GP, it had told me to install an app on my phone first, I would not have bothered. And if it had asked me to put in a phone number, I would have used one of those free online services where you get a one time use phone number to receive a message to for confirmation. Unless I already know this hobby/site is something I want to stick with long-term, those obstacles would be enough to make me reconsider.

2FA certainly isn't a full answer, though I'd argue it's not as easy to get a dummy number. Still doable, but none the less, just an idea to throw out there.

I do think community will always be the #1 answer, question just becomes what else we can use.

But it would make it harder for people to use sockpuppets to masquerade as different people.

Would I have signed up to look around if it was 2FA? I don’t know. I doubt it.

Conversely, if someone signs up and gets ghosted by a sock puppet GM after working hard on character creation, how likely are they to stick around? I doubt I would have given this site a second look if that had happened to me.

Absolutely agree. It's crummy we even need to have this discussion. Thanks for being thoughtful in your approach to finding solutions.

I'd be more inclined to use 2FA once I get a feel for the site, but I'm much less likely to sign up in the first place if I have to give out too much info.

That's a thought. What if 2FA is optional to create an account but required for certain options, like creating or GMing games? That way new users can still join and check things out if they're skittish, but sets a standard that asking people to invest time and effort in your game requires a little more trust.

If I were new to the site, I would've been deterred if I had to give my phone number. In general, I don't give my phone number out on the internet unless it's important.

I prefer 2FA for things that are of higher importance, like banking. When you weigh the cost and benefit of providing a phone number to a website, I generally think that whatever 2FA is supposed to protect me from should be more important than my phone number. I don't really see myself using 2FA for an entertainment site like GP.

Personally, I am not a fan of any ranking systems as it will always create a divide and some form of competition. I also noticed that in this discussion GMs and players are perceived as two different people, however, GM of one game can be and almost always is a player in another, so there would have to be two ratings: GM rating and Player rating. I personally would have a low rating on both as I GM only one game and currently am playing in three games.

I haven't read the already created guidelines in a while but I think that anything beyond that will be circumvented and will create more hurdles to genuine GMs and players. The best thing I think we can do is to make sure that new members are informed about possible ghosting from both players and GMs and that it should not spoil the impression of the platform.

Additional technical measures will make it harder for a more malicious intended user to do their nefarious deeds, but it will also make it harder for a new user to stick around. So, after jumping through all the hoops that we will set up to prevent ghosting, new player still gets ghosted, they will not try again.

As for 2FA, I change my phone numbers fairly often so it would be very inconvenient for me. I wouldn't really agree on submitting any info to a website I am not familiar with and I think I am not the only one.

EDIT: Entire discussion about my points happened as I was typing

That makes a ton of sense. Good point. Description is a better way than suggestion.

We could recommend that GMs post a link to a public game that they've run before, so that new players have an idea of their style/engagement/ruling etc. Seeing an actual game is way better than any stats.

And then provide the following recommendation to new players:

"As a new player, we'd recommend picking a game with a GM who posts a public "reference" game that you can browse through to see if their style/engagement/stats is reliable and the sort of game you'd be interested in.

We also welcome and encourage you to join games by new GMs too in order to support them, but be aware that GMing is challenging and for this reason many games stop prematurely. If this happens, please don't assume this is the norm. Instead, try joining a game by a GM with a public "reference" game that looks good to you.

We encourage experienced members to support the community by joining games run by new GMs to give them a chance to build a public record."

We could do oddtrail’s endorsements idea with no code changes. Create a forum called "endorsements" - users can add threads for people they endorse. Put a link to your endorsement thread in your profile.

I’d happily write endorsements for a bunch of people now.

I like this. It seems like a community based solution to a community problem.

I think I prefer something that keeps GP as close to as it is currently now. Maybe add the # of posts metrics, and a short note to new players about the usage of this metric in avoiding ghosts. I find this community is a lot better than most, so I feel that we should be able to handle these things if we're given enough information to do so.

Do people run many public games?

I like the endorsements idea too and would work well in combo with the public "reference" game. Game Ads could include a link to a public "reference" game and/or endorsement posts. Endorsements might be good for an established member who has never GMed before.

No. Relatively few.

I like this idea and I will probably do that for the next game I'll advertise. I don't think it works for everyone as not everyone might want to make their games public and it can't be expected of everyone. but it's an idea to give some reassurance.
I like this kind of disclaimer/suggestion (could also work with endorsement rather than public games, or both), I'm just not sure where to put it so that people read it. Maybe something short as an auto-reply to Interest Checks could work? But that might also be a bad idea, I don't know.
I think more people run public games than read them

I'd emphasize that there would be no requirement to post a reference game or endorsement. It would just be a suggestion particularly if you'd like to attract and support new members.

Most of my games are set to public 🤷‍♂️

I believe the public/private setting can be toggled, so in hindsight, if you think a game you ran was successful and a good representation of how you would run a game again in the future, then you can make it public later. Although, I would double check with the players to make sure it's okay with them too.

In my experience, it's difficult enough to get someone to read a game they're joining, much less one they have no connection to whatsoever.

I wouldn't expect anyone to read through it in full. But browse through. Read a post here and there to get an idea of style. See how long the game lasted and how often they posted. It would give a player confidence that the game continued beyond chargen. It would sort of a function as a "Badge" that isn't bestowed by anyone. Everyone has their own tastes, so this way you can show what you're like and members who like it can join. But there's no obligation to read through it, it's just there for reference.

This applies to mobile users, but not desktop users? I guess I'm not understanding what purpose this serves. And I agree with oddtrails. I'm not likely to be giving this website my phone number.

Back in high school I was apart of a forum community that had a rep system and I actually loved how it worked.

Essentially there was +reps and -reps you can do to other posters. The more positive your rating the more impact your rep has on someone else.

Rep was represented by titles that match rep ranges.

There was a maximum/minimum rep. Over time you would see that most regulars on the most popular subforums would reach the maximum rep. People who would mainly post in the less popular subforums or did more creeping than posting would fall in the middle or low ranges. The people who did more trolling than helpful community posts would often then fall into the negative/very low ranges.

Obviously this can be gamed and/or manipulated but this also would do a few things:

1. promote posting in the "non-game" forums thus promoting joining the community in a broader sense
2. Allow the community to self regulate, if you as a GM WANT to encourage newer players to join by all means take a lower rep'd user. If you feel like you have been burned too much, limit it to certain rep ranges or require further application questions for lower ranges.
3. Gives some power to respected/consistent users on this site.

Obviously this isn't perfect but my two cents.

Disclaimer: I know I don't post a lot on the community forums like this post is encouraging something I hope to change

Can we put a sticky in the tavern to let new people know that there's a problem with some new GMs? Perhaps include *insert name here*'s excellent post about how to politely bow out of a game too?

Of course, since the serial ghost-GM often uses old accounts, that won't be a very helpful system.

...let new players know there's a problem anyway.

I don't give out my cell number nor do I give it to any site I do not have to for security reasons. I don't doubt your intentions but I would be concerned how this site could be hacked. Forcing me to give a cell number I would have to consider leaving even though I love this site.

I think Adam's suggestion of informing newbies of the potential for ghosts would help address the issue without changing too much about the site itself, or deter new players.

This was my comment earlier. Have volunteers post in each Interest Check thread a kindly worded warning about investing in resources for new GMs, just like Bowlofspinach posts advice in introduction threads.

Yeah, I like this website too, but when I joined and made this account, I gave them my garbage email address that I give when I expect a company will spam me or sell out my info. I don't ever check that email.
I wasn't going to give them my serious business email, and I'm definitely not about to start giving this website my phone number.

I could probably come up with a post for Interest Checks as well, partially based on Chal's suggestion earlier together with other points brough tup in this thread

I think we have some really god suggestions. As I said with the 2FA idea, if it were to ever be implemented, I'd be encrypting any info with the same security I take on passwords and emails. That said, it seems clear requiring 2FA isn't worth the security it could potentially (not even definitely) bring.

I definitely like the sound of having an endorsement subforum. Sharing samples of gming (the public game links) sounds like a good idea in general, not just to protect people from ghosts.

I don't know if an endorsement subforum will get any more attention than the public games index, but maybe user profiles could be clearer about which public games a user has run and offer links to their forums?

Well, the idea would be to link your endorsement thread when you advertise or apply to a game, I guess. The user themselves could also keep an up to date list of their public games in that thread

After surfing around user profiles of members I've played with or are active on the public forums, I noticed their total posts seem to fall into broad logarithmic categories:
1-10: visitor
10-100: newbie
100-1000: junior
1k-10k: estsblished
10k+: master/moderator
Edges are fuzzy and there are of course exceptions.

I looked up all games that I could remember being ghosted. They were all GMs with less than 650, most were less than 150. These were games that had some amount of progress post chargen, but then the GM abruptedly disappeared with no notice. I've only had one game that disappeared immediately after chargen. That GM had less than 30 posts.
I will also add that I have had successful games with GMs from all categories, except master ... I've never been in a master's game 😥😭😜

In fact, my current longest running game is with a GM who had less than 10 posts. I welcomed them in the Introductions forum. They said they wanted to run a game that I hadn't tried before, I said I'd join and the game is still running!

So, I guess if i was recommending games to newbies based solely on the numbers, I might suggest GMs in the 1k+ category for best chance of a game that doesn't end abruptly. Although, I wouldn't discourage joining GMs with less, just that they should be aware that ghosting happens sometimes with inexperienced GMs.

I'm curious if others have had similar experiences or if they'd have different recommendations.

I’m fairly new - I joined last fall.

As a new player I would have absolutely looked at post history had the information been available to me. Being new, I would prefer to work with a GM that knows the ropes, the potential for ghosting notwithstanding. As I become more seasoned I would care about this less, and also be less flummoxed by a ghosting. From a functional standpoint, I think it makes sense to allow new players to pair themselves up with seasoned GMs if that’s what a new player wants, and this shouldn’t really hurt new GMs who have an established post history as a player. It might be nice for people to see post counts per game, although just the simple overall post count is a useful piece of information. It’s an indicator of investment. I would hope that a low post count on a new account wouldn’t stop people from letting them into a game... but I wouldn’t think that’s an issue. The culture here already seems quite welcoming and more data made available shouldn’t change that.

I also add my vote to having a PSA type post saying effectively "ghosting happens, don’t let it get to you, just join another game" in places a new person would see it. Forewarned is forearmed and all that, and good communication goes miles towards mitigating irritation or surprise. I like the word of mouth idea, but I’ve seen sock puppets vouch for sock puppets on other specialty social media before, and it takes a new person awhile to learn who can provide a reliable testimonial. Once again, overall post count information can help people corroborate.

I too was ghosted once after quite some time of character building and a very short game thread. But I could see it coming as the GM was new to the site and started three games simultaniously. So the registration date helped me to gauge the risk of getting ghosted and I think the post count or some kind of rank like Chalrytharendir suggested is certainly a useful tool.
Therefore I'm quite in favour of the idea to display the post count in the profile. Maybe split into the post count as player, the post count as a GM and the post count in the general forums.

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.

I hope it doesn't scare you off. It's not an issue exclusive to GamersPlane, it's just something that happens in the hobby as a whole. A game composed of rando's on the internet makes it easy to flake.

That said, once you get a feel for it and find a few legit games, you start to get a feel for certain users (both to avoid and to join). GamersPlane feels like a closer knit community than others I've tried, which is how I ended up here.

Ok gotcha, that's fine. I am gonna give it a go and maybe make a game. Thanks for the advice.

I've been on Gamers Plane for a long time but have never really had a good experience, but that's not an uncommon thing for Pbp games. Most games I've played don't make it past the first scene.

I wonder if a (positive) Karma system would work. GM and players get karma for reliably playing and running games. A player or gm's 'karma' could be used to judge if they were reliable.

With rating systems, low ratings can always cause distress, which is why I would favour something like an award system, where someone good give out a few points every week.