Yes, my name describes me: Sightless is as blind as they come.

As in life, I'm about to ask the sighted members of RPOL a question of comparison. DMs/Storytellers/Gamemasters one and all, thread runners of all ages, how long did it take you from first getting on RPOL, before you figured out enough to run your first thread/ game/ insert whatever   title fits here?

Right, back to beating my head against the electronic wall for a couple of   hours. I eagerly await answers.

P.S. if you have blind questions, R-Mail me, but please don't post them here, thanks.

I took a stab at it fairly early and figured it out as I went along. That is kind of necessary, as the GM menus are not available to mere players, so it's hard to get experience any other way except diving in.

Still a bit of time in a game or two as a player won't hurt and gives some experience with what the players can do on their end.

I became an active participant in five games as a player before attempting to run my own game. Still early on in the endeavor and it's rough sledding. No easy answers. Figuring it all out as I go. Thankfully I'm just running a solo adventure for a friend who's patient with the process because he understands I'm just cutting my teeth. It will be a good while before I create a game that I open up to other (random) forum members.

I started on a totally different site before coming here. I ran games there for a time. The migration to this site was slow for me, but I have not really been back to them in years.
I ran a few good games here before my health got to bad for me to run / play anymore. I think about a year before I ran my first game here, as far as time between being pure player and being GM, had the help of others who were GMs on this site, which helped allot.

I failed into starting a game first day, but it took me a week to figure out how to replicate that.

It took me an entire month to be comfortable enough to actually invite people to the game I started.

In reply to Sightless314 (msg # 1):

I started back in 2001-ish, maybe 2002 at the latest. When I started, I kid you not. I created game, and even advertised it. Back then there weren't checks in the players wanted board, you just couldn't spam, and had to link the game in your post. So, my problem? For eight months! I didn't know the existence of RTJs. Nor did I know about PMs.

So I thought, yeah guess no one likes my game. I still know the name of the game. I can't cite it, but trust me, it's the first game I created, and it might be possible it's in Shannara's off-site list of games that don't die. Another topic entirely, but I had to resurrect the game to actually GM it, and when I looked at the RTJs it was, IIRC sort of this passive aggressive string of applications. Some of the, however, a lot actually, were very passionate. I felt SOOO bad for doing that.

So RTFM is a phrase I had to learn in 2005, and it applied to RPoL. I always played games without reading the instructions prior. After that point, I learned to read as much I felt I should, before I did any serious writing, or gaming.

My sight is poor without glasses, but I rely on my sight so much, because my friend is Anosmic, and  she has glasses too. Her name is Anne, both IRL, and that's very handle here. She's hard of hearing, and has poor sense of balance and limb position. So her sight is the only sense we can share some semblance of equality. My hearing is sharp. She dang near needs a hearing aid (not really...).

So I'd say if you did it in less than eight months, you definitely beat me. If you did it in less than 26 months your probably beat me as well.

Keeping a game is the hard part. It's such a wonder those few that chug on through the years. At least for me...a wonder I mean...a wonder to me...one I appreciate.

I signed up in 2002, poked about for a couple of hours to learn how things work, and created a game... Day One.  Slight advantage though, I was moving it from another site, and brought my players with me.

That one lasted several years, and actually reached a satisfactory conclusion - the heroes won the day, and witnessed a battle between two gods, a lot of people were saved from slavery.  There was a wedding between two player characters (albeit offstage).

Another advantage was that there were less features to get to grips with in those days.  :)

In reply to bigbadron (msg # 7):



Thank you for adding that last part.

Like others, I came here after losing interest in another roleplaying site, which gave me a leg up on someone entirely new to the medium.

I think it took me a few days before I started my first game, but most of that time was spent learning RPoL's culture rather than the technical aspects of the site. However, while being sighted certainly helped, I would say that my general Internet-aptitude was more of a factor than anything else, as it doesn't usually take me very long at all to adapt to a new site.

My co-Gm in a Y!group game moved our game here, and she made me a GM in the game the same day I joined. This was probably 2003-04 so there weren't as many features. I don't think I screwed up too badly, but we decided to get a third GM who would delete PMs after reading them... deleting PMs for everyone.

I'm in the same situation as Ron. I came over with the great migration from playbyweb in 2003 or 2004, brought my players with me, and did not have as many features to figure out. It seems to me that it only took an hour or two to understand the basics. Other things like maps, html coding, game wiki, et cetera were either added by jason later or took me time to figure out. But they were not essential to enjoy the site.

I'm still not running my game, emphasis on my, and I've been here for over 7 years.

I'm co-running a few games, and keeping the light on in Heru's Tinkertoy (an experimentation game to test board features), but I'm not running my game yet.  Just so much to write up for it and I'm the sort who works best with external deadlines.  So if I had players lined up and waiting?  It would have been launched five years ago when I first decided to start it.  But absent a burning reason, the passion to create is not there.

Contrast with a game I'm co-GMing where I agreed to come on and handle the rules, and then all things applicable to the rules (character generation, creating enemies, etc). and then started posting updates as the GM was busy, and when the GM had to step back due a family emergency, well, now I'm defacto running the game,  A game I originally was going to join as a Player, but the GM expressed a desire to run in my favorite system and didn't feel comfortable with the rules so I volunteered to assist.

Luckily it's survival horror and I can sandbox for a while until either the GM returns bearing plot, or I decide it's been too long and I have to pull the trigger, declare him AWOL, and figure out some plots of my own.

I ran - and co-GMed - games back in the day (I've been a member... oof, nearly 20 years now?).  And it was all pretty quick after joining.  I was much more confident and, ironically a WAY worse GM back then.  Not saying I'm good now, just saying I was WAY worse back then.

Somehow, I slipped to just doing games with close friends, running various systems to try out ideas that never really pan on super-longterm.  I have one game I've been in forever with one of my closest RL friends.  It's only been the last... year or so that I've even joined other people's games. Still mostly play with close friends.  The games I'm in?  Are fun!  I'm in a slow-burn Superhero game, a slow burn fantasy game, and a pretty decently paced survival horror.

I've considered doing a game... I plotted and started a Star Wars D6 game.  I've considered starting a survival horror game of my own, but don't want to feel like I'm being disrespectful to my current GMs.

Honestly, I've made some great online friends here over the years.  Lost contact with some, still in contact with others.  That's one of the best part of role playing for me, playing or running...