Are you trying to kill the GMs?

Our usual gaming group got split up when people moved, but we have been trying to find a way to continue playing despite the distance. We came across this and it was looking great. Except for an incredibly blatant problem. The GM has to do everything. Maybe everyone else is superman, but our current GM and her husband both work full time and have two children. While she can create a wonderful story, where would she have the time to input the characters that everyone else created? Not to mention the backgrounds and NPCs. Is there no way to split duties? Not all GMs are control freaks who drag players along. My own husband and I spent over an hour trying to see if we could let him upload his own picture and character information. As far as we could find using the help and a look through the forums, there is no way. What fun is there in playing a game where you can't dictate anything about your character? I hope I'm wrong and just missing some obvious function. Please correct me if I am. But, this game isn't very player friendly which makes a game harder on a GM.

Ok, in hindsight I should have done more searching. I finally found how to promote multiple GMs. No thanks to a complete lack of any sort of help documentation or any sort of forum search. My suggestion is that you please make that clear as to how you promote multiple GMs. While giving players power over their own character would be better, at least having a complete help documentation would go a long way. Like an FAQ. Still, you can close this thread. Having multiple GMs isn't perfect, but better then overloading an already busy GM with more work.

Why is this getting downvotes? There is confustion with the site and Alisa is trying to get help. As someone who's new to the site it's helpful to ask questions and hopefully get suggestions or at least answers to where some of these details might be. Anonymous downvotes don't help anyone. If you have issue with what she's said at least follow her lead and "correct her if she's wrong".

If I had to guess, then I would say that it was the tone of her posts; not to mention the title of the thread comes off as needlessly hostile. However, I can only speak for myself here. I'm not sure what 'follow her lead' means, but I found trying to correct adults over the Internet is like tilting at windmills. Besides, aren't the downvotes a form of correction?

Yeah if I hadn't kept reading other people's post I'd have taken this as criticism that while warranted was not really earning the ears of it's targeted audience. Now I can understand where she's coming from, I myself being a full time college student, working a part time job, helping to raise 2 children, and keep a house standing GMing isn't exactly going to ease into that workload. Now yes it'd be nice if Roll20 did have a function where you could have a GM and a secondary GM, heck that would be awesome if they definitely had more than that tutorial video, a documentation would be great! But as it stands they don't, but now that there are people talking the creators will consider that, it's a nice idea.

Good points Drohem! I was merely referring to the last sentence from her first post. "I hope I'm wrong and just missing some obvious function. Please correct me if I am." Her tone comes across as frustrated which means she's probably tried to solve this problem on her own for some time (and apparently with her husband). The title is definitely off-putting but again frustration coming thru pretty hard there. I think the issue is the downvotes are merely an expression of "agreed/disagree". But if people took the time to downvote her 6 times in her own thread (across 2 posts). Then they obviously didn't see as many problems with the process. Perhaps I come from a different community but to me if I feel that if it's worth 6 downvotes (which it was when I originally posted), then it is very unlikely someone didn't have at least some piece of valuable input. There are quite a few GMs/DMs on here who didn't start this thread. I was hoping at least for some suggestions from others as to why they aren't as frustrated (or maybe they are and they've simply found other solutions which again would be greatly appreciated). The problem here is we have an adult who's asking for help (or even correction if you will). And downvotes aren't a form of correction without some responses that also have upvotes. The problem with downvotes without corresponding dialog is you are doing nothing but adding to her aggravation. As a reader this gives off a vibe that this community is too good to help someone who is having trouble with the system. I'm definitely not trying to attack you Drohem. I think you've raised valuable points about tone & thread titles. Something we could all do well to remember is that this is a community of people who are passionate about RPGs. And sometimes passion gets the better of us. We have to be good about both controlling our own tone as well as responding to others who've let their frustration get the better of them.

I agree totally with digitalcassette here, we as gamers should promote a community that is helpful and takes care of one another's problems, or at least provide reasonable solutions to them. I believe the title wasn't meant to anger anyone but be more of an attention getter. I would like to help out any way I can in promoting this type of community. @alisa, from the perspective your wrote your post in, it sounds like you are a player trying to ease the labors if you're GM, very adament of you. The way I give players more control is through the journal, this is where they post their character sheet and any special info that I may need, maybe this will help you out some.

Good points Drohem! I'll agree to disagree on the downvotes issue. Sometimes, silence is an effective form of communication as well. A person is not obligated to respond when someone else speaks. Personally, I am a 'control freak' GM so I don't feel that her issue is much of an issue. Although she did have a valid concern and suggestion concerning the program's functionality, it was overshadowed by her frustrated and dismissive tone.

I'm with Alisa on this, but I'd also say that there needs to be a way for the GM to assign players as less than a GM, but more than a standard player. I know my GM has been frustrated that he has to do absolutely everything, but he doesn't want to to give the rest of us GM power, simply because we're just random people he met through the LFG forum. To me, this makes perfect sense. I wouldn't really trust a group of strangers on the internet right off the bat, either, but it does make a lot of things hard when we can't bring in our own spell effects or artwork without first uploading it to imgur (or similar), then having him go there and upload it. Perhaps an interface to give the players a little bit more control, but without full GM status would be good. Come to think of it, I should probably make that a separate suggestion post >.>