@JaySherman I have a clear response to your original question after reading some of the replies to your inquiry. Close the doors, board them up, spray paint "DONT DEAD OPEN INSIDE" on them and walk away. If for no other reason than to watch @NOTuseless go absolutely loony. So please, I implore you, shut this game down.
@Coin said:
it was down to maybe a fifth or less compared to peak).
This too is a large factor of course. No sense keeping the doors open for the six persistent people who continue to log in when it was once a much higher population. That's a sign the game has essentially ended of it's own volition.
I think it ultimately comes down to staff willingness to keep things moving forward. If there are plots, roleplay, and activity in general I don't think it's even a question that needs asking. If the head honcho feels that it's time for them to quit, the reins can always be passed to another willing individual or group.
When all of the roleplay is taking place in private rooms, stagnant, or otherwise stalled to the point of overall inactivity then I'd say it's time to either assess the reasoning behind all of this or close the doors. If people are only logging in out of habit and not due to actual purpose then I would say that I'd say close the doors.
Peeve 1: People who don't wash their hands after using the restroom. In the workplace, public, and all the rest of course. In this instance I refer to those who don't wash their hands after using the restroom at home. It takes twenty seconds. Wash your hands you groady bastard!
Peeve 2: When you tell someone not to do something "just in case". Such as back the car into the garage that's on an incline, for fear that they may back into the home or something in the garage since there are a few fixed tables/countertops along the interior perimeter. The next day they go ahead and do what they were explicitly told not to do, and scratch the side of the car.
I had a few more of my own personal rules pop into my head. Wrote a song about it! Wanna hear it?! Hear it goes!
Be consistent. Storytelling isn't just about telling a good story, it's also about being fair. Never do for one what you are not willing to do for another. Whether it is in rulings, addressing a player, resolving actions, or anything else - be consistent. People get shanked sometimes for being inconsistent in the pen.
Be patient, but not too patient. You're running a story/plot/event, you are the leader. Understand that at times emotions can run high even for the player of the character, so don't take anything personally. Likewise don't allow yourself to be walked over. You are volunteering your time for the good of yourself and the game as a whole. Staff should be consulted if things get out of hand.
Pay. Attention. I repeat, PAY ATTENTION. How frustrating is it for you when you're participating in a scene and the Storyteller is clearly trying to run a plot, play their four characters, and very likely responding to their mother via text on their phone? Don't shut out real life of course, but make sure that you're diverting a good deal of your online attention to your audience.
Be concise or verbose, pick one. Either path you choose, make sure that you are adequately explaining the world you are painting around the players. For myself and I imagine others, nothing pumps the brakes on a story like being confused about the setting. How often have you watched someone pose still being in the bar and addressing the group when clearly the Storyteller and other players posed now being outside the bar four rounds ago?
Take a break. You've just ran seven plots in a five days? Take a few days, a week, or however long you feel you need to recharge your batteries. You don't carry the game on your back and you're allowed to take a break; you are a volunteer after all.
Leave your own personal ego at the door. You are not a god. You're nothing more than some old dude/chick sitting around a campfire, telling a ghost story. You'll face criticism at some point, so handle it with grace and remain humble. You'll look awesome and they'll look like an ass.
Take care with "mystery plots". These plots can quickly devolve into "confusion plots", where no one understands what it is you're trying to explain. This is where details come into play. The more detail, the less likely your players will be met with confusion during your mystery. This is a good resource for mystery plots in my experience: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/essay/RPGmystery.html
Try not to recycle plots that you ran on previous games of a similar genre. But why, Faceless?! Because our community isn't vast and the players involved may recognize it. You want things to be surprising, you want to build suspense, and you want things to be fresh. Would you want to play in a plot that you know someone ran four months ago on another game? It feels like you're the runner-up. You're the friend who gets to hook up with your crush, but only after he or she got shot down by their crush. So don't do that to your players.
Lose the snark. While you may be a playfully sarcastic person at heart much like myself, text doesn't often convey the playfulness of it. When dealing with people who aren't your close friends and don't know your personality, you look like you're just being a jerk. So play it safe, ditch the snark.
Edited for clarity.
Have an ending in mind. It doesn't have to be the ending that you eventually come to, but it helps me in planning out a plot. A scenario like a scene in a movie. How did the Terminator end up in that foundry at the end of Terminator 2? Fill in the blanks to that ending and you've established some milestones for a story. None of these milestones may ever be used but you've at least given yourself the general outline of what you'd like the players to pursue.
Use the rules. The books have rules. Use the rules. Knowing the rules of the game both helps inspire some sense of confidence in the storyteller as someone who knows what they're doing, and further makes it possible to help teach those who don't have gold medals in Rules 101. Don't know a rule? Looks like an opportunity to learn something new. There isn't a rule? Make something up that makes sense on the fly. Don't bog down your story mid-scene to get an answer, come back to it later and find an answer from staff or someone else who may know where you can find the rule. Also don't be afraid to take advice from a player who may know a rule. On the flipside, don't be the rules lawyer player who disrupts a scene because you want to show how obnoxiously super-smart you are.
Get to know other players on your game. I don't mean that you have to tell Joe all about your wife, kids, cat named Sally, or your used condom collection. What I do mean is that the more of a visible presence you are on channels and joining in on the general banter, the more likely it is that people are going to feel comfortable approaching you later in pages to ask about the possibility of running a plot. They say one of the reasons the dog barks at the mailman so much is because he can see him, but not interact with him. He's an anomaly in the dog's territory. So don't be afraid to let the other players smell your hand. Some players may want to smell more though, so be careful.
Be willing to accept people outside your clique. It's great to run things for your friends, but MUSHing at this point is social networking. The more you reach out to or otherwise make your stories available to people you normally don't have frequent contact with, the more you network. Networking is good.
Run what you're going to have fun running. As has been mentioned previously in the lists of other posters, most players don't know what they want. So run what you're going to enjoy. If you build it, the players will come.
Give the players options. Fight, talk, run, drop a piano on the villain, whatever it is. Options let the players know that they have control over their destiny. Even if they walk their characters into a possible death, they made a choice.
For the participants out there: don't just offer up the canned "thanks, it was fun" at the end of a plot, event, scene, or whatever. If it was fun, please inform me in a @mail, pages, or right then why it was fun. What did you enjoy? If I get the "thanks, it was fun" and nothing else at the end of something I tend to believe that they're just being polite and something didn't suit their tastes. What could I work on? I'm not asking for an exhaustive review, but give me something to help tailor things going forward for you and others. Was my pacing great but content felt hard to grasp? Was my content awesome but the pacing felt like a crawl? Did I make the common mistake of shooting for Mystery and ending up in Confusing? So storytellers, don't take constructive feedback as an attack.
It's certainly not an exhaustive list, but it's a few of the things that I had spring to mind first.
Only a mild annoyance, but homes that are 60+ years old and designed for small people. I don't mean skinny, fit, or any variation. Broad shoulders and narrow doorways do not mix. Feeling like Winnie the Pooh in here or something.
