Also just to moderate the speed at which people can put in new apps. I think it's also a system that regulates itself without needing hard limits; if you're reasonably good at juggling that many characters, you won't have many issues at all. What can be handled is different for everyone, and the easiest way to see is to just keep track of how often you're posting. Some people can keep 20 characters active. Some people can only keep 2 or 3 active.

I am thinking this way lately too.
I thought having a price tag for making a new character would be enough but then people would just make a thousand characters and not even post them before making more.

Is people making characters a problem to be solved, though?

It's more along the lines of "maintaining" characters rather than "making" characters.

My experience incorporates two communities. In the rl rpc I've seen rules state that the first two character are free, but going onwards a member must have at least one thread active on all accounts in order to make a new character; I've never seen them use a site store before. Whereas in the animanga rpc (or the sites that I've been on) character creation is a site store purchase (again, hinges on activity bc a member must post to gain enough coins to create characters.) Which I also find fair. It teaches writers how to efficiently maintain their time & the limitations of said time.

Maybe it's a mindset difference, but some of the arguments come across weird.

I totally get wanting to limit character applications if your argument is limited staff time, and you don't want to spend that time on approving characters for people.

But I'm kinda scratching my head at arguments like, to help you keep pace, or teach you how to manage your time, or because you think the dopamine from making a new character is unhealthy. That sounds patronising.

Keeping pace and managing time are personal skills to develop, not to have dictated to you by animanga roleplay site staff members. I certainly don't do roleplaying so I can have someone tell me I can't have another character because you think I need to learn how to efficiently spend my time.

Not everything has to be a race of perfect efficiency, and wasting your own time on your own terms shouldn't be a problem at all. If you, as staff, think approving someone's characters is a waste of your time, you probably shouldn't be staff. (Alternatively, learn how to efficiently use your time to approve characters.)

Likewise for the idea that it's unhealthy to move on from one character to the next. It's great if you're able to maintain focus on one thing and that keeps you happy, but other people suffer shorter attention spans and need to be constantly challenged with something new to maintain that spark. It's fine if you think that's unhealthy, but let's not put ourselves in the seat of mental health professionals and make health decisions for people.

I don't even write many characters, often sticking to one main character and at best two extra characters. That has mostly to do with that the first character will be written to fit many threads, and if I find there's stories I can't tell with that main character, I'll add another one that has a specific other direction to go in. Because those are necessarily more limited in scope, the number of threads I'll write with them will also be considerably less.


The way I see it, if you're concerned with the time it takes to approve a character, maybe try to streamline the approval process to make it easier on staff members and limit the time spent on that. For example, you could ask people to answer two questions in the biography section: "Who was this character before they arrived at location X?" and "What motivated character to move to location X?"

Then you could either ask people to keep the biography strictly to those answers, or as staff just skim the biography to find the answers to those questions and consider mainly those.

"But Traveller, I'm worried they'll write things that break the setting!" Then you either need to define your setting better so people know where the limits are, or you need to let go a bit and accept that, once you throw other writers into the mix, some stuff may need to bend a little.

It's not like staff are infallible: I've seen staff members introduce characters that conflict with site lore or that don't make sense internally. Like the time I saw an admin introduce a character that was homeschooled in their home country, not knowing that homeschooling in said country is a crime.


Addendum: If you want to limit characters, then please let it be for logistical reasons like limited staff time, or because there are limited slots for specific roles, or because lore-wise there shouldn't be that many people. Don't use character limitations because you fancy yourself a head master here to teach people lessons through limitation.

To me, the main reasons for limiting app creation are basically:

• Preventing FC/canon hoarding.
• Prioritizing a cast of active characters vs a bloat of inactive characters.

These issues can also be solved with regular activity checks, but can take more admin labor the more characters need to be pruned each check.

I will say I think the limit is good in communities that move at a quicker pace, because it is harder to manage a larger cast in a high-paced setting. It's also smart to do this for communities that plan to limit character participation in events (ie, 'two characters per writer may participate in this raid').

It really depends on your community and the member base you're trying to retain.

That being said, I am so far from being a serial character creator that I find the impulse to have 20 characters difficult to understand. I can barely handle two to my satisfaction. Which is to say I can only handle one.

I really have to agree with this- like all points. As someone who doesn't like to be told to do something without logical consistency, the idea that I can't manage myself as an adult who pays taxes, hilarious. I don't mean to rag on anyone here certainly but I refuse to join sites that tell me what I can and can't write with reason to the site's plot itself or that having too many characters is something I need the admins to worry about. I've helped many a admin do app reviews and at most I spent like...a day. However, some people have dyslexia and the like that made it longer. Never did I hear of them complaining about there were too many characters - most people were really responsive, read the profiles, moved on.

The idea of micromanaging to this degree is intolerable to me without a logical reason like above. I do not need to be nannied by the admins. As someone who's had 3 to like 100 characters maxed, I don't see a honest reason besides "time to manage a site" or "I don't like it". The more honest an admin is about something, the more understanding I am about it. This isn't to say that curating your experience shouldn't be on your inclinations or reasoning - but I rarely see that as the case.

The only logical reasoning that I can see restricting character amounts or creating is - I don't like the thing.

Which then leads me to really push people to just say it! "Hey x, I've seen you have been making a lot of characters without posting, I've/we've been concerned about it, and while your profile is fine, do you mind posting on other accounts first?" - while, hard to do, easily lets you and others curate your site. This is YOUR site, curate it however you like! If you don't want weirdmcgee making a character of x type, either it triggers you, you don't like it, etc, deny it. Put in the rules that x is not allowed here. This isn't a diss on those who say x character isn't allowed here or, limited time to do staff and play, etc but acting like it's your sacred duty to nanny others cause you're better at knowing what they need is wild to me anyways.

"What about face claim hoarding" - if you're worried about that, face claim sharing at the start or after x time without the character being active solves that problem immediately.
"Well the dopamine rush." Some people like oranges, some people like skydiving, what they do isn't really harming you if you can keep up with it. If they like something that you don't want to allow, why no handle it on a case by case basis.
"Well I want people to put in what they're taking out of my time to review their 56th cat boy" sounds more appropriate.

I simply believe members can create as many characters as they can handle. Emphasis on handle. Periodt.