EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION: If you are a new person who hasn't even gotten to participate in an RP thread yet, or someone who hasn't been involved in a thread for a long time, the following does not apply to you, and you should ignore it completely.
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I know this is a busy time of year for a lot of folks, myself included, but the activity rules still stand, and I just wanted to post this as a reminder of that fact.
Inactivity rulesIf you don't have time for RP, that is totally cool. No hard feelings, go and live life to the fullest. Same goes if you just don't
feel like doing the RP. Wanna do something else? I am totally unoffended. It does not affront me. That said, I do not want to cut off friends, lose friends, alienate anyone, or do any other stupid crap just because of RP. Please don't be mad at me if you feel this following post is targeting you. All I'm asking for is
communication and
consideration.
I always feel like I'm being a heel when I post something like this, but I'm going to choose not to feel that way from this point on. I think it's a reasonable courtesy to to expect an IM, PM, or chat message to somebody (anybody, not necessarily me) if anyone's going to have a stretch of time when he or she is not going to be able to post at least once a day.
It's not that much. Catching up on a day's worth of posts just takes about ten minutes. Writing a post might take another ten, if that. I think this is reasonable to ask of members of a text-based role-playing group. (YOU SIGNED UP TO READ AND WRITE, IT'S IN YOUR CONTRACT, or would be if we had contracts.) And I'm not complaining if you don't post EVERY single day—There's a huge difference between missing a day once in a while, and being in a constant pattern of not being around at all, posting once every other day, and generally not communicating.
Anyway, I can only speak for myself on this, but I'm not ashamed to admit it:
I don't have a dollar to my name anymore that isn't going toward food or gas. I can't afford anything new in the way of entertainment, so RP is for me one of my only non-school online activities right now. However, when any one person stays
just involved enough to slow things down, and keep me or others waiting entire days with our characters' actions hinging on less active people's replies, that pretty much wrecks it for me.
Not posting for days, or even a week at a time would be fine if we had dedicated RP nights like back in the days of yore, but I just plain don't hear from some of you enough (
:[ btw) to organize that kind of thing anymore.
So, yeah. This is the quarterly "play or don't play" call. You're welcome to come back at any time if you're not able to be active now; we can even work around a character with no problem for a while if needed. All I want and need (and feel is reasonable to ask for) is communication.
Pleeease talk to me.
That being said, here's an exercise in power-communication now:
If you're actively reading these forums, and noticing this post (which you cannot physically not notice right away if you are reading these forums since I've made it a global announcement) please reply as soon as you possibly can with a simple "I'm here and I'm in" or whatever if you want to continue to be in upcoming threads as an active participant.
If you do this, I'm going to assume you have read the activity guidelines again and agree with them, and will not be mad at me for carrying them out (or for assigning a dirty, five-o-clock-shadowed enforcer to do my dirty work and carry them out for me, same diff).
That is all. Reply, pl0x.
(Also, now hiring dirty, five-o-clock-shadowed enforcers to help me run the RP. Apply within. No, seriously.)
