How many members?

How many members do you aim for?

My game is only a fortnight old and so far I have five truly excellent members.By my book everything is ticking over nicely and everyone seems to be having a good time. As far as I’m concerned if there’s just one person out there willing to play the game I’m winning.

But a lot of what I’ve seen other people say I get the impression that most other people seem to want loads and loads of members.So, I’m throwing the question out to the group. I’m curious as to see what the general consensus is.

 

I feel that I need at least a hundred fans of my RP. By this I mean people who are highly active (as in they log on every day) and who are positive and help share my site on their own.

 

The right number of players depends on the game. Something set in an expansive 'verse needs lots of active people to keep it interesting, other settings are more intimate and can thrive with a few dedicated people. I find having a core group of people who are enthusiastic, welcoming, and inclusive is more important than how many people are involved. The star trek sim I was xo of before I started my current sim had a problem where the co was very cliquey, and if you weren't part of her inner circle, you weren't given anything to do in the plot unless I forced the issue. So while we had a lot of players for a trek sim, it didn't take long for a lot of the crew to give up and either just stop trying or out and out quit.

 

Wise words indeed! In fact that's a really constructive view. I whole heartedly agree with your comment about there needing to be a core group of 'enthusiastic, welcoming and inclusive' members. I don't think you can overstress how important that is in any community. I've seen my fairshare of cliquey games and seen what it can do to a community. (It's part of what fueled my desire to strike out on my own again after so many years).

I guess real question then is this; what's the minimum number of active members necessary to make a successful community? And how many members does it take to be seen as a successful game (from the outside looking it?).

 

I'd say four to five active people can make a place feel alive in something like a star trek sim, as when you have much less, you find yourself writing with the same person most of the time. This gets old quickly, and I've found most people start to get stale when they're only writing with one other person. I might be comfortable with the smaller groups like this because I also have a lot of Tabletop gaming experience, and if you get much more than that at the table, people start getting left out and things take so much longer.

 

We had 100 users our first day of launch but we were splitting from another site due to administrative differences. Really we were aiming for 100 over the course of 2 months.

 

@Brittlez, 100 members sounds stunning.That sounds like an overwhelming number of members. It must be very difficult to keep that many people organised. Writing together etc. Do you have a very large staff to cope?

 

We have 2 Moderators and 7 administrators . We are at 326 members currently but due to an issue we lost a few but I am hoping that advertising a lot will bring more people in. As long as no one is giving any one problems things are smooth. They have my facebook and email if anything is needed. I literally put myself out there to make sure they know I'm not just an Administrator but their friend as well. We have our tasks divided up as well so its easier to manage our site. Also on our staff is our deities.
This is how we've divided things
Adminstrative Staff
Darros – Head Honcho
Mamushi – Behind the Scenes help
Gatekeeper – Code Monkey
Luthene – Head of Moderators


Triune Staff (IC Administrators who are gods)
Century
Angela Rose
Moliira


Moderators
Dalanesca
Nemesis


Deities
Rhea
Chae
Bryn yr Gwyn


Complaint Department
Darros
Luthene
Moliira
Dalanesca
Nemesis


Item Creation Committee
Rhea
Angela Rose
Luthene
Dalanesca
Moliira


NPC Guilds
Moliira
Nemesis


Site Events
Angela Rose
Luthene


User Events
Moliira


Advertising
Angela Rose
Luthene
Dalanesca

Wiki Staff
Century

 

@Brittlez,

Thank you! I'm still somewhat stunned by the prospect. But I also see how dividing the duties up like that makes the whole thing more manageable. It's impressive and says a lot about how out there all of your staff must be to prevent any of your members from feeling like they're lost amongst the crowd. Kudos to you all!

 

Thank you! We really do try our best. I mean there are days when the staff don't play nice together but when we need to come together to get stuff done we put things aside because we love our site. We love our people as well even if they don't like to admit it :P

 

I agree with "It depends on the site", but it also depends on the members themselves.

I would wish for a larger member base - in time, our highest was about 40 members and about 100 characters, to which NPCs are added. Our lowest, at the start, 6 members and about 14 characters - again, plus NPCs. Now we have 9 members with about 56 characters, plus NPCs.

I wouldn't mind a community of 4-8 open-minded people, who communicate all among them, write all as many characters and NPCs as needed in the story, and are active and invested in the story, vs. 20 unreliable ones who are only writing 1-2 characters each, posting once in a blue moon, vanishing without notice, not plotting together, expect all the NPCs to be written by me when it should be a shared endeavour and they care only about their precious character babies instead of the whole story.

The downward of having a small community of 5-6 people or less, however, is only that when 2-3 people happen to get busy at the same time, the site might die. I have witnessed such a death.

 

I have always written many characters, even when I wasn't staff/command team/whatever, but I've seen people who have a hard enough time keeping one character straight and well fleshed out, and when they try to write more they're all the same. I adore people who are willing and able to write multiple characters, but not everyone can do it. Regardless, active, reliable, and commutative players are a must.

 

Let's see.

Genetic Drift has been open for a month and a half and have about 30 active members with over 200 accounts. I say about 30 active because we'll get a rush of members and some won't last a week, while others bounce in and out at will. Our beta started off with five dedicated members and we just grew from there.

That said, we don't particularly care about growth. It won't stop us from advertising, but I'm not going to panic if we suddenly drop to just a handful of people again. It's more of an interest level thing at this point. If people want to join us? Great! If not, we'll keep going til we are bored. :D

 

Strange. I think a writer should be able to write any kind of character needed in a story. It just takes a little research and practice - practice makes better always.

 

These sorts of games attract writers at various levels of skill. Those who have practice, experience, and skill will be able to juggle many nuanced characters, and those who have time and care to put into this hobby will gladly write many characters. But those who aren't there yet can only get there because we support them and allow them to grow at the pace they can keep up with.

I would rather have a timid novice focusing on one character, if that's all they're comfortable with, than pressuring them to help with npcs and burn out. And I would rather have an inexperienced player with only one character they take their time with, than a string of paper dolls that all act the same but wear different faces.

 

After the last game that I was in for a number of years burnt out I flitted around for a while. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t stick with anything for very long despite having had the best intentions. The only thing for it was a long break from RPGs altogether. When I returned I joined a game that sadly didn’t last all that long. But the relaxed atmosphere, the admin’s patience and the fact that I was allowed to take on just one character (that totally spammed all the boards with loads of threads) let me recover my mojo. I have infinite gratitude and appreciation for the admins out there that do have the patience for it.


It’s very easy to take so much for granted when you’ve been in a few games. I still remember making the initial transition from PBeMs to PBP games and how bizarre that felt. Whenever someone isn’t instantly au fait with how things work I try to remember that and act as the sort of admin I wish I’d had at the time. That’s what I’m aiming for with II at any rate. Which is why I’m not so bothered if we start off small or stay a small group.

 

Our community has always been pretty small. We have about 55 characters, and maybe 15 members? I'm not sure. I find this to be a wonderful amount while everyone is active and posting, because it's enough to keep stories moving. However, lately there has been a bit of a lull. I'd love to see some new faces. The ideal number of members would probably be somewhere around 30 since Comhcheilg is a pretty big open world sort of board, but I'm not against more people than that if it does ever come to it.

 

10 dedicated members sounds good to me.

 

Not everyone's had as much practice as they might need to feel comfortable with multiple characters. If someone only wants to play one character per game at a time, there's nothing wrong with that.

 

I prefer to focus on quality over quantity. My game's very loose and there's no app, so we get a lot of beginners, which is fine with me. I don't mind helping people practice. Some people come around once every few months, post a thread, and are gone again in a week--again, fine. Some people play a dozen characters, others just two or three. Again? Perfectly fine. So long as there are things going on and people are having fun, I'm not too worried.

I've been working on advertising in an attempt to keep things fresh with new blood, not because I'm chasing statistics.