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Featured Room |
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Featured Chamber
Crossroads
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How to be a Room Host |
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So you wanna run a room, eh? You think you're MAN enough for
the job? You think you can handle the heat? The pressure?! THE
CONSTANT DEMANDS?
Really?
You do?
Oh, wow. I mean . . . woo . . . I was just kidding.
Running a room isn't that difficult. And luckily, you have your handy-dandy Guide to Hosting to help you through the process. Let us begin, appropriately, at the beginning.
The Room.
First and foremost, you need a room. For this room, you need a room Theme. What is a room theme, you ask? Although probably not because it's pretty self-explanatory, but I'll tell you anyway.
You can either have a genre-specific room or a general-play. General play means you can have just about any kind of cee in the room, with only the occasional guideline (i.e., all-fantasy or all-science fiction). These are the easiest to run, usually, because you don't need to keep an eye out for inappropriate cees.
Genre-specific rooms are all those rooms that have a specific setting. Like Star Wars, Star Trek, all that good stuff. These are a little more difficult to run, because there will always be some dipweed who thinks that even though your room is hardcore Heinlein scifi, it's still okay for them to make a furry sorceress. More on that later.
If you're going to have a genre-specific room, you need to keep in mind about canon cees. Canon cees are those based off of characters in television shows, books, anime, comics, etc. Generally, you should only have one version of each canon character in your room. Many genre-specific rooms make people sign up for canon characters to avoid multiples.
Details, now. You don't want your room, genre-specific or not, to have a too detailed setting. When you get too specific, then that leaves less room for your RPers to stretch their creative wings. It also means that your target group is going to be much, much smaller. So be flexible. So maybe you don't want furry sorceresses in your Heinlein room. What about furry engineers? Give your players a little leeway, or you got no players a'tall.
Setting: Usually the way a room works is you have one specific setting - like a tavern, an inn, a club . . . yadda yadda - where people can congregate and meet. This doesn't have to be the only place where you can play, but it's very handy to have one. It's a place where new players can sort of warm up and get used to the people in your room and etc. Like I said, though, it doesn't have to be the only place. I've seen rooms where people made up whole entire worlds. If you wanna do that - go for it! Just keep in mind that not everybody is going to read your homepages, or even your splash page blurbs. I can't tell you how many times I've had someone come in and say "So! What's this room about?" Makes me homicidal.
Design: You might need to find somebody with some sort of webpage design skills, or learn how to do it yourself. For the most part, to get your basics down, you don't need to know a whole lot. There are plenty of people who can help you - all you need to do is ask!
For your room, you will need:
- Room graphics: this is your title graphic that goes at the top of the page, the line divider, and a custom communications panel. You can, if you want, stick to the default line dividers and comm panel, which leaves you with just the title graphic. But c'mon! Custom graphics are awesome! There are various ways you can go about getting them - if you can't make them yourself, than I, Merlin, bravely offer myself to help. As long as you don't need a custom-drawn, hand-crafted, painstakingly intricate graphic, I'd be glad to whip something up for you.
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Room webpage: Again, this isn't strictly mandatory, but it's usually a good thing to have. This lets you get more in-depth with your room setting and rules. To be honest, most people won't go read it. I'd say maybe 10% of chatters will check out your homepage, and that's being rather generous. But it's still a good thing to have.
- E-mail address: It's good to have a room e-mail. It doesn't have to be fancy - you can get one free from any number of sites. It'll mainly be there in the event that somebody's being harassed in your room and the mods/hosts aren't around to help, or if someone just has a question.
Rules: You need to find a place to post your rules. On the splash spage is the perfect place to do it. Your rules need to involve the usual stuff - picture size, the age limit of the room (as a general warning. You don't need to check the ages of every chatter that comes into your room), and the rules of conduct. If you have a genre-specific room, you should keep in mind just what sort of age group is most likely to play there. For example, you probably shouldn't have a Pokemon room that's rated NC-17. If your room is geared towards a younger crowd, than you should have rules about no nudity, swearing or sex talk. It may not be your fault if a young'un enters your room despite the rating, but if that young'un's parent catches them in a room full of naked pictures and swearing, than it's the staff at Silvercrossings that will catch hell for it.
Being a Host
You are the Host. Your Word is Law. You are the End-All and Do-All. You are the MASTER!
That having been said - don't be an arrogant putz about it.
Remember, it wasn't too long ago that you were a mere plebeian chatter just like them. It's probably pretty safe to say that most (if not all) of you out there in Cyberland have fallen under the iron fist of a tyrranical room owner. We all know how much that sucks. So - don't be one. Your goal is to get people chatting and RPing in your room - let them! Be friendly! Greet people! But! You are the room host. If you see somebody picking on another person, you have to stop it - even if you agree with the heckler.
Treat everybody like your friend. If somebody does something wrong, then PM them and say "Dude! That's so heinous! Please stop." Conversely, don't favor your real friends over the newbies in the room. Try to be as impartial as possible, and get both sides of the story.
The trick is to balance comradery with the chatters with hostness. It's not nearly as hard as it sounds, as the majority of your chatters are nice people. You'll get the occasional evil blowhard, but remember - you can, if you absolutely have to, ban them.
My last bit of advice on the subject of Being A Good Host? RP with them. Nothing makes a body more inclined to return to an RP room than getting into an RP straight off the bat. Play with the newbies, people. It will make their day.
Moderators: You need at least a couple of 'em. These should be people that you trust, and that you can be sure know the rules and setting of the room well. Your moderators have authority in your room - make sure they're not going to abuse it. They should be reasonably diplomatic - and by reasonably diplomatic, I mean capable of handling an obstinate or nasty chatter without going "F--- YOU! F--- YOU!!! I'LL BAN YOUR A-- SO FAST YOUR HEAD WILL SPIN!" Since your mods can't really ban people, threatening to ban and then not being able to carry out that threat not only makes them look like losers, just the threat of banning will make other people in the room uncomfortable. Choose your mods well, for they will be the ones who take care of business when you're not in the room.
Banning: Think of it as a last resort. The more you ban, the worse your room reputation will get. But like I said - don't let people walk all over you. I go by a two-strike rule, personally. When people misbehave, I warn them once. If they keep at it, I warn them again and tell them they're going to be banned the next time they do it. If they do it again, they get banned, that's it, no negotiations, just "I told you. You can come back in (X many) days. Goodbye." And you know what - I've never had to use that rule. Most naughty chatters will get huffy and indignant and leave when you ask them nicely to stop being an jerk. That is not a bad thing.
That's about it, really. It's not as hard as it seems - half the battle's getting the room up and running, and there will be plenty of people willing to help you with that, should you need it. Which brings me to my last and final point - you're not alone. Keep in mind, you got an entire community of fellow room hosts that you can turn to if you're having trouble, AND the Silvercrossings Staff. If you need help, don't be afraid to ask. We don't bite.
Well, I do. But I brush my teeth every day and I've had all my shots.
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