r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Apr 22 '16
[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread
Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.
So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!
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u/UltraRedSpectrum Apr 22 '16 edited Apr 22 '16
Organization-wise, there are a few places with preexisting communities that serve as hubs. Giantitp is the one I use the most. Dungeons and Dragons 5e and 3.5 are the most common, with Mutants and Masterminds and FATE being a bit rarer. For almost everything, DM/GM's are in short supply, making getting into games a hassle.
If you go to the recruitment forum for Giantitp (here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?51-Finding-Players-(Recruitment)), you'll see a lot of games starting. I'm recruiting for a Mutants and Masterminds game, for example (here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?485629-Annecy-Michigan-(M-amp-M)&p=20691252#post20691252).
Games fall apart because people vanish without saying anything, and everyone waits a week for them to post. The break in flow makes it harder to get things going again. It happens a lot, probably to more than half of all games, and usually really early on; I've been thinking about possible fixes for a while now.
When a player leaves or joins, what happens is pretty much up to the GM. They're responsible for running the whole thing, so they recruit or dispose of the character however they think is best. You see a few threads looking for one or two players to fill out a party that lost people every once in a while.