I'm planning to run a campaign on rPoL in a month or two (when I have more consistent prep time), but I'd like to start the game now so I can organize it and get acquainted with the GM interface. Are there any rules I should be mindful of regarding how long a game sits dormant before recruiting players and actually playing? And is it possible to change the title of a game (and possibly add/alter category tags) after creating it?

I don't know of any time limits requiring you to begin recruiting players within a certain time, but I've also never created a game from the ground up so I've never worried about that.

As far as changing names/tags on a game, yes, you can do that.  There are some people out there who, rather than have deleted games show up when people search for information about them as a GM, will instead recycle their games...delete all the old information, empty the roster for the game, change the name and/or system, etc, and start all over from the very beginning.  It's not the norm, but to the best of my knowledge, there's no policy against it at all.

If you set your game up TOO early/leave it sitting unpopulated for too long, it may get bumped into the equivalent of RPOL's recycling bin, but even then, you have time between then and when the game is officially deleted to bring it back to 'active' status.

As for changing the category tags after creation, it's as simple as going to the GM Menu > Edit Game Details.

100% editable.

Well, I've had one sitting since before the pandemic, so I think you're good.

Literally no downside of doing this. Go for it.

Thanks, all!

Just to lay some of your worries firmly to rest Thorkas, I started a game in 2016, wrote nothing in it except the Title.  I finally made an NPC named GM two weeks ago and started the first 'test' thread 10 days ago.

I think you've got some time to play with.

In reply to evileeyore (msg # 7):

Wow...talk about a gestation period...*grin*

In reply to evileeyore (msg # 7):

...Yep, that's got me beat. Good on ya for getting it rolling.

Getting it rolling?  Oh no, my bad.  It's no where near ready to be even in the vicinity of "Getting St" and "Rolling Ave".  I have this love hate relationship with writing, I love to hate doing it.

But once everything for campaign prep is done and ready to be posted into the proper campaign threads... then, then I'll think about whether I have the time to run a game.  My schedule flip-flops so hard sometimes, I barely have time to post in games I'm playing.

It's one thing I like about this site. You can do all sorts of pre-planning for a game, organizing things and setting up various threads for whatever, and there's no time pressure. Even if the algorithm decides that a game has been inactive too long, it's a simple matter of clicking a single link to turn it back on.

Ya, I have 3 games sitting with 3 posts in them so that I don't forget what the idea was.