Announcing Play by Post RPG: The Website!

[Dark Lord]

Hi everyone, and welcome!

Whether you’re curious and new to Rifts and/or Play by Post; someone who was previously interested but dissuaded for one reason or another (one individual in particular); or an ex-member of the previous iteration of this community. This post is to help orient you to a recent decision by a majority of GMs/DMs who were previously running games under that iteration. I’d imagine that the full helping of internet drama would be easy enough to get via DM at this point, but the short version is an overwhelming majority of the GMs were prepared to quit their games rather than continue under the prior administration. It was either leave or let the community die. A lot of people were very angry, myself included, and it was the straw that broke a lot of camels’ backs.

The core principles of this community won’t change. A commitment to slow but regular gameplay, long-term story arcs, and high-quality writing in every game one joins. I’ll add to that a commitment to treating everyone with respect, which I hope to model for however long my tenure as administrator is (the next admin rating poll will serve as my vote of confidence). That to my mind is the only meaningful difference between what has come before and what will come next, although a number of us have been discussing ideas for other improvements and will be rolling them out for public discussion eventually. There's a lot of excitement that we're trying to keep tempered for now- the main priority here is to ensure continuity of as many games as we can salvage. I and the other GMs will also continue to vigorously enforce the rules we’ve set out for this community, so don’t think this means you can slack off on your grammar, punctuation, or post rate. 😊

Over the coming weeks (probably months) I’ll be doing a review of basically the entire site. I'll also be open to any feedback or ideas people might have. My immediate goal will be restructuring the patron incentives and payments to more resemble a non-profit co-op, which covers Tiree’s expenses and a very very below-market rate for his time spent doing tech support (something I insisted we include). It will be charged annually, and be much much less than you’ve been paying the previous admin (I expect no more than $5/person/year for the most expensive tier). I have a plan to scale down the benefits commensurately, but nobody’s going to lose anything they already had or already bought. I’ll be opening a discussion thread about that once the dust has settled a bit.

Beyond that, I hope to delegate as many of the centralized administrator responsibilities as possible (for points, or

(player points instead of explorer points; I know, it’s not the most mature name we could’ve come up with. If anyone feels uncomfortable message me and we’ll fix it but the goal is to set a vibe of not taking ourselves super-seriously. We are not interested in creating a community that makes anyone uncomfortable)

as we’re rather juvenilely calling them for now), and increase the incentive package for GMs by adding free patronage tier upgrades. I’ll write up some proposals for community review, and we’ll do anything that affects the overall PP economy as democratically as is feasible. But I think just about everything else I intend to keep fundamentally the same. The quad ends at the end of this month and will be evaluated normally- we might be a little disorganized as we determine who has made the transition and who hasn’t, but I think if everyone bears with us and their GMs we can continue to make some magic happen. As always I have a very open door policy on feedback, especially if it’s critical, but on the condition that it be respectful. I will make every effort to match that in response, but please be patient with me as I expect to have a very full plate for the next couple of months and will likely be trying to be brief without sounding like a jerk.

If you are new or old, consider joining and/or running a PbP game with us. I hope to have a slightly revised newcomers’ post up soon, but in the meantime welcome and feel free to say hello in chat.

[Dark Lord]

Our first order of business is to get an accurate head count of who will be making the transition with us. To that end, I'd like every GM to post here once they've got an idea of whether their games will retain enough PCs to remain viable. Ideally, with the new total number of active PCs you'll have and the usernames of everyone who won't be joining us (including AGMs). We'll need to do a fair bit of maintenance and I expect it'll take some time to get organized, but with luck we'll be able to get back to our games and process the upcoming end of the quad without much more than a bump or two.

[Dark Lord]

Phase World: Galactic Adventurers
GM and AGM slots filled, should have a full slate of 8 PCs going forward.

[General Disarray]

Roughnecks Should have its full transfer of current players at 6 with 2 Openings.

Nightbane is just getting Started. It has 3 players and one in the approval process leaving 4 openings after that.

[Dark Lord]

Since virtually the entire community is coming with, I think we can dispense with formal check-ins from everyone (but thanks GD). Instead, please post here any AGM and GM vacancies you want to fill. I really, really don't like GMs running multiple groups. I think it leads to burnout. If you actively want to and are sure you can handle it, that's fine. All I ask is that you let me know if and when that changes. The more time we have to find a replacement, temporary or otherwise, the smoother we can manage things in the long term. With that in mind, please post here if there are GM needs we should be looking to fill.

I'm also going to request that GMs/DMs invite me to your group chats. It's only a request- those of us most directly impacted by recent events certainly understand the value of having a space without the admin to have frank discussions. But I also think it's the best way for me to become proactively aware of problems and work to solve them. Not everything trickles down to the main chats, and if people need to go out of their way it's just one more hoop they need to jump through when something's going wrong. I only want to lurk, and to respond to questions specifically directed my way, but I do think it's important that I try to keep my fingers on the pulse of what's going on with all the games. Feel free to tag me in main chat if you want to discuss further or need my gmail.

[Dark Lord]

Potentially useful links can go here until/unless I find somewhere I like better.

https://pesa-nexus.de/rifts/rifts-table-index.htm - Rifts Index