Role Play Management - Hooks and Entry Points

Many times, a role play author will have a spark, yielding a great character, an exotic setting, or an ingenious plot. A role play will be created, and, ultimately, will flop. While there are many reasons for a role play to fail before it gets off the ground, there are some preventative measures that creators should take right in the intro post. One of these measures is the inclusion of hooks for entry points.

Lets start at the end: What is an entry point? When a player creates a character and drops that character into a role play, wherever that character appears, is, intuitively, the entry point. The problem with entry points is that not every player can automatically think of a good one. So, no matter how good the ideas behind that role play were, if other players can't think of a way to join it, then they wont!

The remedy then, is a hook. While terminology may vary, here a hook is any extra detail included that may foster an entry point. More specifically, it is a detail designed to do just that: a logical conclusion to that detail is the presence of another character, meaning that any player may grab that hook and jump right into the role play.

Here are some examples of hooks, and the resulting entry points.

Scenario - A boy is running away from the authorities. He now stands at the side of a highway.

• Hook - There are cars driving past, but none even slow as they pass him.
  
• Entry Point - Then, to break the pattern, a man pulls his car over to let the boy hitch a ride.
  
  
• Hook - Across the six lane highway is a heavily wooded area. Not far into the woods, there is a faint column of smoke rising.
  
• Entry Point - A hunter has started a fire in preparation for the night.
  
• Entry Point - A woman is preparing dinner in a brick oven in her cabin.
  
  
• Hook - The authorities widen the search, and contact neighboring towns. Officers are dispatched all over the area.
  
• Entry Point - One officer is told to watch for a boy crossing the highway.

A hook may have a variety of easy to imagine entry points, or it might serve to spawn some obscure ones. Regardless, the hooks give interested players immediate options of where to join.

It is necessary to note that hooks can be employed by other players as well, but should be kept towards the beginning of a roleplay. If each player drops one or two hooks in their introductions, the desired number of roleplayers will accumulate quickly enough.

It is also possible to use hooks to revive dying roleplays where one or more players have left and their characters were left behind.

To clarify, whoever is using this technique (the role play starter) would only write the hook. The entry points are up to the players joining to imagine and employ, should they choose to do so.