Forums » RP Discussion » "Voting" Players Out - Messy Situations

A few things lately have reminded me of a messy circumstance that came up in my early RP days. I'd like to get some opinions about what happened.

I was the creator of an RP thread that got fairly popular, at least by the standards of the little RP site it was on. It was an open adventure that anyone could join at any point. Several people played in it, and it grew to being the single longest (by number of posts) RP thread on the site by the time it crashed (and burned, horribly, but this isn't about that) and even spawned a "sequel" or two that other players set up.

Most of us playing were fairly rapid posters would were frequently online at around the same time every day, or nearly every day. That was a problem for the one guy who would be gone for a few days to a couple weeks at a time. He kept getting left behind. We kept getting frustrated trying not to get too far ahead, but wanting to continue the game.

I didn't think it would be fair for me to ask him to leave the game, even though people were increasingly complaining about his unpredictable and mostly-absent schedule. I was also even more conflict-avoidant then that I am now, and we could never tell how long it would be before he was on again. And the others... didn't really listen to me much (there are reasons why it eventually crashed and burned).

My solution was to have a vote about whether to keep waiting or carry on without him and do our best to smoothly phase his character out. It was leaning significantly to the latter when the site admin stepped in. She had always been pretty laid back, a bit passive, but overall helpful. With this, though, she was livid. She reamed us for being awful enough to even consider kicking someone out of an RP they were already in, told it made her sick that such a thing would happen on her site, and temporarily locked the thread as punishment.

I know that I could have handled the problem better by now. At the very least, I really should have discussed the problem with guy. Since that time though, I'd always felt awful about it and assumed that the admin was right: that we had been awful bullies for wanting to remove him just because he couldn't be around as much as us and we were selfish for priorizing our own fun over his feelings. More recently though, I've been wondering about that, and especially about the severity of the admin's response.

So... what are your thoughts, folks? And I think it should be okay to share similarly messy situations or things that could have gone better.

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List o' Better Ways to Deal!
(Because why not? Maybe it'll help me keep things in mind that much better.)

• As I mentioned... talking to the person first
• Upfront rules/expectations at the start (From Novatrix, sland, and Kim)
  • Specific frequency expectations with "don't join if you feel you can't meet this"
  • Statement of "if you disappear (for more than X time?), the rest of us can move on without you"

Hi hi, I haven't been on this site in a while but I saw this come through on my phone so I wanted to answer or comment on it while I have the free time.

I was in this situation once and though it wasn't an admin telling me this, it was the rper's friend who stepped in to tell me I was rude to do so.I have this personal rule/law for this kind of situation. And this is for simply myself. If I don't have the time to rp. Or I find myself absent in an to more than I care to be (especially in a quick rapid posting thread) I will have to quit that rp. Its not fair to everyone else if I can't post as much as them.

In addition to that rule/law depending on the speed of the rp, I need to be on and able to post at least once a day or 3x a week. Because I know how it can be waited on or waiting on someone else. I also put in a rule of my created RPs that, "if you know you have school or any home issues that will keep you from posting the minimum amount then please do not join. We don't want you left behind and you should be considerate of others." Something along those lines. I follow that even if I'm on the other end.

So I think I'm my opinion in if you have more than 3 hang ups then you should stop. But that's just my opinion. That admin should have taken everyone I a account and not just the left out rper.

It's a cautionary tale about why RP prenups matter ("If you join you agree we can move on if you vanish") but that admin was a jerk, and anyways I bet nobody in this story was even old enough to vote. You didn't deserve her taking it out on you and I'm sorry it happened.

If you want messy situations I encounter/cause them all the time, but of my "early RP days" the spiciest one had to be when one of my favorite partners got really sexually frustrated or something and started refusing to RP unless I introduced him to women. (All for the sake of his muse, of course.) I knew better than to actually do that, but I really liked our stories, so my solution was to convince some guy friends to catfish this idiot so I could get on with my roleplay.

It got out of hand.

It does sound like the admin overreacted.

It's true that the absent guy probably felt a little bad, but at the same time, there were many others who were ALSO feeling bad and chafing at having to accommodate him. Sometimes things just don't work out for totally non-malicious reasons, and it's okay to recognize that and politely call it out. I can see ways for a public vote on this subject to look and feel horrible, and see ways for it to be fine and just look like a matter-of-fact working out of a community issue.

In hindsight, the problem could probably have been avoided by discussing and establishing expectations on the front end. It's much harder to create new rules than it is to enforce pre-established ones that everyone opted into by joining. But when everyone seems to be on the same page, sometimes it doesn't even occur to you to do this, especially if you've never run into the issue before.

Thanks, folks. I'm still glad I was able to learn from the whole mess, but now I also feel a little better about how it all played out.

Indeed it wasn't something I'd really thought about at that point. It was just about the first game I'd ever started! Even among the first I participated in. Holy crap that all happened over 15 years ago...

Thank you especially for all pointing out the whole setting things upfront thing; though I have definitely come a long way, how to handle disappearances and other schedule mismatch issues has been something I've commonly still forgotten to address. Granted, it's not as big of an issue in 1x1's... but the last time I tried making a group RP (only to realize I don't have what it takes to handle it right now, so not happening yet), I think the issue was only addressed because someone else thought to ask about it (very glad they did!).

And, sland, if I remember right... the busy guy was the only one of the bunch of us who might have been old enough to actually vote. I remember most of them being pretty close to me in age, but I think he actually had a job to maintain.

Personally, I also feel that the admin very much overreacted on this one. Sometimes it's necessary to consider things like that, even if it hurts. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of one, after all; however, it sounds like an overall case of misunderstanding that could've indeed been talked about with the person keeping the RP delayed. I know that I would eventually understand if people were waiting on me, and they wanted to phase me out in a graceful way (even if it hurts a bit). Life sucks and is hectic, and the older you get, the less time you have... Depending on the situation, of course.

Regardless, I have to also agree with setting up rules beforehand so situations like this rarely happen. If nothing else, you're much more experienced now and have moved on from this, which is more than I can say for myself sometimes.

But on messy situations? I recall a time where one of the volunteer admins of a RP group I participated in tossed a new "no sexual acts" rule at all of us. It clearly wasn't approved by the main admin because even she seemed shocked about it. We eventually went along with the new rule for a while before we ditched it entirely. It was plain as day that this person only tossed it at us because no one was playing with their character in those situations while everyone else had at least one situation or suggestive act under their belt; later on after I had left, the sexual RPs continued since someone finally noticed the volunteer admin's character. Yet we didn't question it at first, or at least I didn't, because we were all close back then (I was even decently close to the main admin for a while; I was also best friends with the volunteer admin for three years.)

Needless to say, the situation was one of many wild stories and other misunderatandings that ended up with friendships ending and the whole group eventually going under because of poor leadership skills and drama.

What didn't help is that was the very first RP group I had participated in. Since then, I've only participated in one other group RP, which was just recently; otherwise, I've been avoidant of them, no matter how interesting they are.