Good point Aiden, and yes, our discussion of the pitfalls makes them obvious and easy to avoid, one reason I wanted to highlight them ;)<br/><br/>Though even the most well-meaning and polite and usually regular player can have the unthinkable happen and apparently 'vanish without good reason' (in reality something pressing or even extremely unfortunate might have befallen them, such as -heaven forbid- being hospitalized), so please don't think badly of people just because they leave without saying why.<br/><br/>Lithos - but with ten times the number of players there should be ten times the inspiration and fun encouraging people to post. Well, not<em>ten</em>times but you get my point.<br/><br/>As to a game where people can enter and leave as they wish, I recall 'Tales From The Slave Quarters' by Bloodrose and Cecilia. This was a fantasy setting based around a brothel and it was easy for guests to enter, do a scene and leave, or for slaves to do likewise, the 'leaving' being them just going 'off duty'. That game lasted months and I used the same technique for my Maid Mansion game set in a hotel with guests and maids filling identical functions.<br/><br/>The drawback to that is the game is really just about smut with some social interaction in an essentially static setting. I recall that the GMs of 'Slave Quarters' did start up a plot involving some poisonings of clients for political reasons (there was a war going on) but that plot foundered very quickly.<br/><br/>A group game that had flexible character entry and exit options but which also had a plot that outlived such entrances and exits would be wonderful but I fear it would also be extremely hard to run. I'm open to any ideas though.<br/><br/>(EDIT since Zadaris posted as I was typing): Good planning works wonders, I agree. Maybe 2 GMs would help share such a load?<br/><br/>For my two pence I would rather design a game that was fun enough so that people<em>wanted</em>to stay and if they left their characters could be NPCd or taken over.<br/><br/>All that negative stuff aside and having picked up some good tips perhaps we could move on to talk about genres and settings and our preferred playing styles.<br/><br/>I tend actually to be pretty limited in the characters I play, its my failing I know but there you are. My characters are almost exclusively<strong>white middle class females, most often British</strong>as well though I can play any nationality once I've browsed a few websites for an evening. I have<strong>only played males twice and I'm not terribly comfortable doing so</strong>, though one of those being a 'masculine spirit entity' was/is a lot of fun to play. I'm having a go right now at playing an artificial person (one from the Aliens universe) which is a lot of fun but quite difficult.<br/><br/>As to sexuality<strong>I'm happy playing straight, bi or lesbian characters</strong>and<strong>I can submit to both females and males, and dominate females</strong>. I'm not so good at dominating males and have just started doing so in a couple of new games.<br/><br/>Most of you will know that<strong>I prefer a contemporary Earth setting</strong>. I can do some sci-fi if I know the setting (which is not many) and some fantasy (also not many).<strong>I'm fine with Japanese and anime settings too</strong>if they are not too fantastical. I have this almost OCD-level obsession with hygiene so historical earth settings (say earlier than around the 1940s) I struggle with because people didn't bathe often enough and women didn't shave their legs or underarms... its a weird point to make but its one of my squickier oddities.<br/><br/>Having said that I would be prepared to have a go at almost anything if it was well planned and executed and the players were skilled and committed.