I swear I seem to recall this sort of thing being mentioned once or twice in the past, but at the moment I'm drawing a total blank.

Is there a way to make it so a player cannot post in threads (preferably with the exception of their RTJ thread with the GM), yet can still see and read posts being made in the game?

I think you might be thinking of assigning someone to Group Z.




To put someone in any semblance of a "read only" mode I believe they have to be changed into a Lurker.

Hm. Thanks, nauthiz. That was what I was thinking of, I just couldn't remember how it worked specifically and my search-fu was failing at finding it.

Do you know, hypothetically, what happens to an existing RTJ pm thread if the player's character is transferred to GM control, but then the player is made a Lurker? Would they retain access to the RTJ thread, still, or would it poof into the ether?

I do not, unfortunately.

Hopefully someone who does will chime in however.

The RTJ thread belongs to the user, not the player.  If they are converted to lurker, they will certainly still see it and, I suspect. will be able to post in it.  Even if you reassign the character to a different player, they will not see the RTJ thread.

That's why, in games I run, as soon as I accept someone as player, I make a new thread called "Discussion of <character name>" as a place to hammer out the details of the character, rather than doing it in the RTJ thread.  That way, if the player disappears and I have someone willing to take over the character, the new player will be able to see the original discussion.
This message was last edited by the user at 20:07, Tue 07 Sept 2021.

In reply to Zag24 (msg # 5):

This is not entirely accurate.

I don't know what the trigger is (I suspect it's when a player is assigned a character and then posts as that character to the RTJ thread), but at some point a private thread started by a visitor, can become attached to a character.

It then becomes visible in its entirety to whatever player may get assigned that character if it changes going forward.

That doesn't shed much light on SunRuanEr's question of what happens to an RTJ thread if you reassign the character while converting the player to a Lurker, but I figured I'd point out that PM thread ownership/visibility can get wonky.

Yes, this is true.  Also if that Player remains but the Character is removed from them, that Player loses access to it, even if they remain in the game (with a different Character).


Do they still control a Character if they're a Lurker?  If so I'd imagine they'd keep access to their Character threads...  if not I imagine they'd lose access.

This is why I prefer to assign my Players two Characters, themselves (I.E. a Character with their username) for Private discussions that don't involve the Character (and so they can post OOCly as themselves, I find it helps to keep IC beef IC and not spilling into the OOC*), and the Character for, well you get the idea.


* I learned long ago that people in general have a hard time separating IC and OOC in PbP (also in Face-to-Face games to a degree, some are really good at it, some are terrible at it), but having a name change, they more readily mentally separate the Player from the Character, even if they're the type of Player that doesn't do that in face-to-face games.  It's like there is a greater degree of mental separation between Player and Character in a PbP than in FtF.