Most RPs work with RPers reserving on the signup thread, and for some RPs reserves aren’t even required. Especially since an RPer reserving a character is still different from signing up. (Sometimes even when someone reserves they don’t signup their character, or they may take a long time to create that character)
For most RPs here we write a post on This thread with a poll to see who may be interested, and use that to see if there is an interest in the RP. And if there’s enough interest, the RP creator will create the signup thread, tagging those who said they may be interested, and allow for anyone else to may be interested to come signup.
Correct. People would reserve and signup their characters on one thread. From my experience, it wouldn’t make things messier. Every RP I’ve seen/been part of have had reserving and signing up included together, and as long as there’s not random chat included on the thread (basically anything that’s not involved with reserving or creating a character, or important announcements for the RP as a whole) its not messy at all.
Personally, I consider having them as separate threads to be messier, for the forums at least (since at least for us forum staff, we have to treat them as both being signup threads).