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| What do YOU want in an RP? | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: August 25, 2012, 10:17 pm (1,104 Views) | |
| Matttheman89 | August 25, 2012, 10:17 pm Post #1 |
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Assassin
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Simply put, I want everyone to talk about things they enjoy most when they're RPing, and how they prefer it to happen. Character interaction, fighting, story, whatever. Just put down anything you'd want to see. If we all put down ideas like that, it'll give the people who actually start and run RPs around here a good idea of what they need to do to make their RPs better suited for everyone. |
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| oniskieth | August 25, 2012, 10:33 pm Post #2 |
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The Silver Light
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1. I want my character(s) to be a part of the story. I don't want to be getting told to go to point a, then b, etc. I want my character to make decisions that will actually affect something not. "And fred didn't go to B, so he cant do anything else plot related." 2. A plot that makes sense, and isn't overly complex. I'm not saying that I like simple plots, but for an rp a simpleish plot is helpful because the posters can follow everything thats happening. If they haven't posted in a few days it won't be difficult to get caught back up. They won't blink three times at the screen and say, "what the fuck?" whenever something new happens. 3. Fair play. One character doesn't get superior opportunities/plot items without an opportunity for other characters getting the same/similar treatment. 4. Active posters. I know this can't be controlled by the people making the rp, but I think somebody should only join if they know they'll be able to post more then once a week. I know things come up, but it is a kick in the nuts to everyone else. 5. A setting everyone understands or are familiar with. 6. The world to have an established pantheon/god system/religion/whatever the fuck you want to call it. Edited by oniskieth, August 25, 2012, 11:04 pm.
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Katherine's Approval
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| Onime No Ryu | August 25, 2012, 10:51 pm Post #3 |
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
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Whenever I come up with ideas for RPs or think about the self-storylines I want my characters in other RPs to go through, one of the first things that come to mind is "oh man, imagine how epic this battle will be." But it's not just the aspect of fighting. It's the story behind it, the reasons why the characters are fighting and why those battles are so intense. Saying that you like to RP just because you like to RP fights is basically saying you like to prove how superior you are, or how much better your character is, or how much better your writing ability is, or whatever, by trouncing some other player or some puny NPC. And unless there's a reason behind those fights, they're pointless and they don't accomplish anything. This is why I hate how PvP fights devolve into "he dodged and countered" and then "he dodged the counter and countered with his own counter" and drag on for fucking ever. There are several reasons to actually fight. One, for sport. Just to have the fun of a stimulating "conversation" of sorts with another character where you have to stay on your toes and be creative enough to come up with something that will win or prevent you from getting your ass kicked. Two, for progression. Beating an enemy to get an item, to clear a path, etc. These are somewhat contrived by plots, and in light of recent events I realize that they're not usually all that fun or necessary either. There are ways that they can be made interesting, but it's very hard to do because we're writing, not playing a literal game where we can get satisfaction out of experience points, money, or equipment drops. The third and probably the best reason to have any kind of battle is for story and development. Instead of two characters randomly deciding, "hey let's fight," they actually want to, you know, HURT each other or at least prove some kind of point through brute force. When two characters have different beliefs, goals, or clashing personalities you have a conflict--but that's only the very basics, the first step. What they need then is a reason to act on that conflict and ignite it. If one character is good and one is evil, or if there is a reason for personal revenge, or an insult to honor or whatever, those are some reasons, although granted they're not always good ones. But even these little reasons can build up over time, and when a character reaches a legitimate breaking point, that's when it's time to fight. But I think the real way to ignite a basic conflict into a battle of epic scale is to put something on the line, have something at stake. If you don't fight the monster, he'll brush you aside to get to the orphans behind you. If you don't stop the warlord here and now, he'll decimate the kingdom. If you don't shatter that doomsday crystal, the evil gods will descend and tear asunder the fabric of reality. When you have something at stake that's worth fighting for to your character--differing depending on their personality of course--that's when you have a worthy battle. In addition to a stake riding on the outcome, a character also needs development. The conflict has to change them in some way. And finally, to make the battle really worthwhile, a character has to have a burden. This is different from having something at stake. A burden is what drives a character to keep getting up and fighting even when they could just step down. If the evil gods destroy the world, it's not your fault. You're only a human and they're divine beings. How could anyone blame you for losing to them? But what about that promise you made? Or what about that person you swore you'd meet again? What about all the things in life you have yet to do? What about all the things you've learned on your journey, what about all the friends you've met? A character must have a conflict with their enemy. The conflict must cause the character to change and develop by challenging the way they think and act and what they believe. There must be something that the character wants to achieve, obtain, or protect, something at stake that is worth fighting for. And finally, the character must have a burden, a drive, a motivation, a dream, a hope, a goal, that will make them raise their fist time and time again. When you have all these things, that's when your battles will really be worthwhile to watch and read and enjoy. Channeling raw emotion into the writing will turn it into something that grasps the heart and intrigues the mind. There are other things I like and want out of RPs as well, but I'll just leave this for now so that other people can analyze it. |
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| Primera Espada Yggdra | August 26, 2012, 1:01 am Post #4 |
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The Kitty Cat, Mew!~
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Well... I was wondering if we could have some sort of hotsprings arc? They seem pretty fun to me. |
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| MagiusNecros | August 26, 2012, 9:02 am Post #5 |
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GILGAMESH FAN KING
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NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Anything but that! |
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Arch-Necromancer of the Gilgamesh Army- “I am who I am. The pain of others, I do not feel. The sorrow of others does not touch me. Death feeds me. Death pleases me. I am the essence I consume. You fools will become corpses here, because I wish it to be.” Curse: Cursed with hourglass eyes that show how life slowly dies before him Wields: Living sword Ragnarok and the Staff of Magius Signature move: God's End Overlimit: Ultimate Spellchain(Flare, Holy, Meteor, Grand Cross, Almagest, Dimension Zero, Big Bang) Transformation: Turns into a great black dragon YT Account:http://www.youtube.com/user/MagiusNecros?feature=mhee
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| MagiusNecros | August 26, 2012, 9:45 am Post #6 |
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GILGAMESH FAN KING
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I like ones that move the plot along in a good pace, as in: We reach an obstacle defeat it and move on to the next thing. Preferably not taking 20 posts to walk up stairs or kill something. I like it when we are given the freedom to envision each situation in our own way through a character's viewpoint and not repeated battered by another RPer or it's creator. Saying: It isn't long enough or this is not what I expected. I like RPers that can adapt to each situation and bring something new out of each situation. I really dislike it when another RPer complains about everything another character does and those that can't adapt to the situation. |
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Arch-Necromancer of the Gilgamesh Army- “I am who I am. The pain of others, I do not feel. The sorrow of others does not touch me. Death feeds me. Death pleases me. I am the essence I consume. You fools will become corpses here, because I wish it to be.” Curse: Cursed with hourglass eyes that show how life slowly dies before him Wields: Living sword Ragnarok and the Staff of Magius Signature move: God's End Overlimit: Ultimate Spellchain(Flare, Holy, Meteor, Grand Cross, Almagest, Dimension Zero, Big Bang) Transformation: Turns into a great black dragon YT Account:http://www.youtube.com/user/MagiusNecros?feature=mhee
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| Onime No Ryu | August 26, 2012, 10:08 am Post #7 |
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
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As far as making decisions with effects goes, do you mean that the character's decision affects the plot--such as, maybe a guy who's a good fighter causes the bad guys to change their strategy for fighting the party--or are you leaning more towards characters having a more specific and lasting impact on the world itself? Like, if you slay a dragon terrorizing a village, that village should hold a big party in your honor, and then maybe when you go to the next town, you overhear the innkeeper talking about some dragon slayers? As for not being able to do something plot related depending on where a character is and what they're doing, I sort of disagree because it depends on the plot and exactly how far removed certain characters are from it. In the case of having a plot that most common citizens know about--for instance, if the plot is to defeat a super big bad who's trying to take over the world, everyone will probably know about the war going on and how each side is progressing, or they'll at least have access to rumors or newspapers declaring such. This way, even if the "main" party is off in a lava mountain somewhere actually fighting the big bad himself, other characters can still take actions that have an effect on the plot. Maybe they're nowhere near the lava mountain, but maybe the bad guys have a scouting outpost in that forest over there. Or maybe the evil army has seized a village and is using it as a supply base. By going to those places and doing stuff, they can create a small effect that ripples out and becomes a large effect, perhaps even affecting a crucial part of the big bad's plan. However, if the plot is very location centric--like a dragon has suddenly swooped down to attack a city, and the plot is "defeat the dragon," how can you get in on that kind of plot if you're not in the city? It just wouldn't make sense to suddenly run over there from two towns away, especially if you haven't seen the dragon yourself. If you had branched off from the dragon-fighting party somewhere, there are some circumstances such as not seeing, hearing, etc the dragon and whatnot that would keep you out of the plot. It's kind of unavoidable. |
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| Garm0099 | August 26, 2012, 10:40 am Post #8 |
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Marksman
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I agree with this list mostly, especially the pantheon one. Pantheons are a way to give some characters motivation, or even a way for people to have more abilities (see priests/clerics/paladins). They don't even have to do anything in plot if you don't want an 'Angry Gods/Elder Gods' plot arc, generally they can just be created and then set aside for the characters to do whatever they wish with them.
Yep, agree with the stuff here. I already do some of it, ie: planning fights out with my character before hand because then when I get to actually do said event after planning it for so long, IT FEELS SO GREEEAT :D. Same thing with motivations for characters. Although it is the player's job to make up the motivation for said character, it is the GMs job to act on it. Use it on/against them! While I'm here talking about, I like seeing characters having flaws about them. Not tragic flaws like in Greek mythology mind you, but something that sorta limits your character every now and then. Then after some personal character of your own, you rise above said flaw and you are a better person for it. TL;DR Character Arcs
Uhh... Er... MOVING ON!!
I agree and disagree with the decent pace thing. What I mean is: yes, it would be good to be able to move at a decent pace, but sometimes it's just not possible. I personally prefer to write on my own time and not feel pressured to write something since I generally prefer to have a good quality post as opposed to something I spat out quickly to appease someone. On a separate note though, I agree that adaptability is key, both between player/GM and Player/Player. Although it may be easier to ignore some character because they didn't follow the plot railroad you have made, maybe you should try diverging a bit, let them have their fun alone and then try to ease them back into the plot. On the p/p point, it is much easier to adapt to each other during conversations so I won't address that, but combat, as stated by Onime before, should not be an endless counter-fest. If logically your character would be hit, have him be hit, THEN you retaliate with an attack of your own. Yes you may feel like you'll be at a disadvantage, but unless the RP is hyper-realistic and they aimed for a hamstring or something, you generally can go on and just say -4 hp or something. Even if it is hyper-realistic, most of the time you could say adrenaline rushes in and now you are stronger and faster (slightly) then before. Well, those walls commenting on your posts pretty much explains what I want as well. If I think of anything more, I'll be sure to post again :) |
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| Perascamin | August 26, 2012, 11:20 am Post #9 |
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A Legendary Ocean
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I know that everyone in an RP is going to have to unite together eventually, but one of things I really enjoyed about Chronicles of Hyrule and the Fire Emblem RP was the fact that for a good deal of time, there were separate groups. It gives the characters involved in the certain groups more time to get to know each other and really gives you more of a chance to do my favorite thing--character interaction. Because everyone is split up into different paths, you have more time to focus on the specific characters within your group. Basically, that increases the rate at which a character's back story can be fleshed out and for the involved characters to build up bonds. When everyone is grouped up at first, it's just a huge cluster fuck and kind of awkward to write for, and everyone wants to move the plot along a lot faster because everyone is doing the same thing. I find that when there's more time to just relax in an RP, the writer really gets a chance to work on his/her writing a lot more because it's not just random battle post #48. You can only learn so much from the battling aspect, until you get into the deep character development that really helps writing skills. Also, the greatest benefit we as a community get from back stories being developed via character interaction, people don't really want their characters to just go and stop existing after they realize what they can do with said character and actually make a "bond" with the character they made. It's like full synchronization once everyone gets into their character. |
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In War; Victory. In Peace; Vigilance. In Death; Sacrifice. Dawn Eros (hot mama): Spoiler: click to toggle | |
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| oniskieth | August 26, 2012, 11:51 am Post #10 |
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The Silver Light
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Have you ever played Dragon Age origins? In that game the character's decisions affect the world at large. You can choose whether or not people die, which will drastically change the way the story flows. I know you and NT like to outline entire rps before they start (well...not the entire rp. Just a few chapters), and somebody usually does something that fucks with your outline. Instead of trying to correct the course we've taken to flow back onto the outline try to flow with whatever the character did. This can open possibilities for the story that the moderator didn't even consider.
Exactly. It's like the ending of Avatar: The last Airbender. Everyone is off doing their own thing to help. Not circle jerking on the big bad together.
Yea...it really depends on the story. An example of this is Matt in the most recent CoH. He came to gerudo fortress to fight General Kuattro after "feeling his magic" or something similar from ordon. What the fuck .__. I guess if there were multiple groups there'd have to be equal opportunities for everyone to do something, but it would obviously be annoying if one character randomly decided to walk off to do a personal story quest (or something) then gets pissy that nothing is happening around them. |
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Katherine's Approval
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| Onime No Ryu | August 26, 2012, 2:13 pm Post #11 |
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
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There are a few problems with this that immediately come to mind. I agree that a plot needs to be simple, at least in the beginning, and has to be built up over time. However, simplicity is subjective. What I find easily understandable may not seem so to someone else. At the same time, a plot that is too simple is boring. If you just told us that the plot was "Go save the princess," how many people would honestly play if that was ALL you told them? Another problem is that even if an RP STARTS simple, it will unavoidably become more complex over time. There's no getting around it. It just will, because that's what happens when ideas grow and overlap from multiple people. We start with "Go save the princess from the evil dragon." The characters have to get some information along the way, obviously, or they can't even do that simple task. They have to find out WHERE the princess is, WHAT the dragon is like, what powers it has, etc, HOW the dragon fights, or what it is weak to, and how they'll get their hands on that weakness, and SOMETIMES WHY. You don't always need a reason, but it usually feels much better to know why you're fighting and why someone does what the do, to gain that understanding. So let's say you've answered all these questions. Now, our simple plot has turned into this: "Go save the princess from the evil dragon, who lives atop the black fiery mountain. You must defeat the dragon with a magical draught, because no weapon will pierce his scales or draw his blood because he is a magic dragon and is immortal. You must find the draught in the misty forests beneath the fiery mountain, and to find the forest you need to leave by the west gate of the town." This is still, in my opinion, very simple. BUt I guaran-damn-tee you that SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, would complain that this is too much to read when the plot is just saving the princess from the dragon. Now just imagine if saving the princess from the dragon wasn't the ONLY thing we had to do. The complexity would continue to multiply every time--and this is before we even take CHARACTER CONTRIBUTION into account. What if a character says he can't leave town because he needs a weapon or armor? What if the party needs to find a new member because they don't have enough people to fight the dragon? Each and every situation that each and every character brings to the table adds more and more complexity to the plot. And eventually someone says it's too much, even if it's actually not. That brings me to another problem. You say that if plots were more simple, people would not quit the RP because "I don't understand," or "I'm not reading all that!" But really, this doesn't come down to the story. This comes down to the player as an individual. A Player needs to be MOTIVATED, they need to have a defined REASON for wanting to play, and they need to experience SATISFACTION while playing so that they have a reason to keep striving for their original reason. And some people are just plain LAZY. They WILL NOT keep up with an RP, they WILL NOT read the necessary information, because they are STUPID LAZY PEOPLE. We can't TEACH someone to be motivated. That comes from inside them, not from anyone else. We can, TO AN EXTENT, give them motivation by finding out what they want out of the game and coming up with some kind of way to tempt them with it. But other than that, we can't do anything if someone gets lazy. Lazy people should not be here, and if you want a certain kind of motivated person in your RPs, you should state so very very very clearly. I used to think that those RP sites who say "U CN'T JOIN UNLESS U POST 2 POSTS EVERY DAY" were pompous, stupid, unaccepting, and misunderstanding of their players. I used to think you needed to pander to your audience to an extent. BUt now I realize that this is only the case in a situation where you are REQUIRED to "sell" your product. This is supposed to be a hobby for us. It's supposed to be fun. If it's not fun, something's wrong. Having an RP with only 4 members may mean things don't progress very fast. But if those 4 are dedicated, I assure you that this RP will be FUN and will be SUCCESSFUL because the players all understand what is expected of them and they WANT to play. |
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| NTNP | August 26, 2012, 2:57 pm Post #12 |
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Admin
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@Oni: 1. A lot of that has to do with who the character is. For example if we are in a fantasy world, and your character starts as just some random peasant with no real 'ties' to the plot other than just being present it makes it really difficult to really become tied into the plot except after a dozen or so adventures where it is less that "they" are important and more that "their exploits, powers, friends etc" make them worth remembering. Now alternatively if you started out as a knight, being sent on this mission by the king (whom is hiring everyone else) and he/she takes a leadership position within the group then bam they instantly become important to the plot because they have a reason for being there and a reason to be impacting the story. As far as the decisions they make impacting the plot, a lot of that has to do with the decisions that they actually make. Many stories, events and situations do not provide many options for deviations from the plot that make any damn sense. Say if the party of heroes is asked to go into a cave to fight a troll that kidnapped the children of the village, there are really only 3 likely solutions that could happen and only realistically one that will. First the party could choose not to save the children and ignore the plot, which is fine but unlikely since the RPers tend to dislike making their own plots and would prefer to do what was presented to them. Not to mention if it's a heroic party then someone will probably demand they go and then they'll go either way. So ignoring that, there are only two real possibilities for change left. The party will either save the children, or they wont. Most admins will frame the events involving the battle with the troll where the party fights the troll, wins and the kids go free. But in regards to "impact of decisions" here is where the main problem comes in with this system: There is only one likely solution to the event above, the party will save the kids from the troll and will be treated positively by the story. In the case of myself or Onime, we will likely PLAN that the party will save the children. But what other decisions are you going to make? Kill the kids for spite? Defeat the troll by feeding it children coated with poison? Ignore the plight of the children, even though some of the party members are known for being good guys that don't enjoy watching children die for giggles? Hell no, that's not going to happen realistically. So a lot of times that is the main issue, the setting just doesn't provide multiple options or multiple solutions. 2. I both agree and disagree. I believe that the current events going on at any given time, such as go "clear the dungeon, defeat the monster, save the villagers" etc should be simple. At most it should be identified as "go to A, do B, attain C return to A" without too much deviation so during the actual event everyone should KNOW what they are doing. However the plot itself, such as "Why is this happening, who is causing it, what is our end goal(s), how do we go about attaining those goals" are probably better if they are a little more complex. 3. I couldn't disagree more. It all has to do with the character and their role in the plot. If the majority of the plot is following a group of soldiers as they fight against the evil empire, of course their leader is going to have a greater "claim" to the opportunities or plot items than random soldier number 13 who just joined a week ago and has yet to make a single useful action. Take the monstrosities that were the "Sages Medallions" from CoH. Jake, being the leader of an army that defeated the former owner of the Fire Medallion has a much greater claim to the item than say... Leo, who while technically being present hadn't been posted for a week and didn't provide any meaningful gains. Or for that matter someone like Matt, who lead his group has a greater claim to being called "the Zora's Hero" than say Ponti's girl did because he was front and center. If you are a leader, you get more opportunities and items. If you are a follower then you get the left overs and have to share all the "rewards and gains" with your bosses. If you want equal and fair gains in the narrative, then earn them by being every bit as important to the plot as the other movers and shakers. 4. The main problem is a lot of people don't end up liking their characters. Reasonably I think that all RPers should be required to plot out their own personal "character arc" that they want to accomplish during the narrative and then take the steps in the story to show it happening. Generally people end up thinking less about how they will actually play their character, the relationships that they will forge, the impact the setting has on them and instead ends up creating some sub-par piece of crap with an impressive set of combat moves or abilities but nothing else really. And once that initial "wonder" of beating the hell out of someone fades they stop posting because they don't care about their character, what they will do or what will happen next with them. Authors need to care about their creations or else they shouldn't even bother making them. 5. I disagree, the setting needs to be a unique, interesting and new place. Take CoH, relying on the settings, places, characters and position on the sliding scales it made a lot of potential plots just not work well, or they have to be shoe horned in. Take Yannis the evil prince of the empire, he was literally shoe horned in my disregarding everything in LoZ and basically just ignored the things that didn't help. 6. I do agree that the various pantheons being explained is fairly important, especially in my RPs where generally the gods are real and usually not the types of things that you want to become involved with. But I do try really hard to keep the gods defined enough to explain religion or locations associated with them. @Peras Hmm, a lot of people disagree with you on your first point Peras. Not everyone wants their character(s) to be sorted into small groups. Generally there are a lot of problems with being sorted into small groups. When one or two RPers stop posting for a small group of 5 or less characters, it causes that entire group to stop being able to function while if the same occurs with a large group (10+) then the effect isn't felt as heavily. I personally try to use small groups who serve a single, larger group. Using FERP for an example, everyone was part of the rebellion while at the base but would be sorted into smaller groups (of about 1/3rd the total population) to do missions. I feel as though that is probably the best system, everyone is a group at HQ but in the field they are independent. But it still brings about the same issue as before with drop out rates. I do agree however that small groups do make a very good catalyst for character interactions but as proven in FERP, it can still be done in large groups. But in order to do so, the characters must group themselves into small groups first and then begin having conversations in order to provide the chance to show off their individual backstories (something else I love) and more important jump start their own personal story arcs. @Magnius: I think that a lot of people feel this way, but in the same breath also fear the idea of creating the next striation themselves as your are describing. A lot of times admins feel as though they have to direct the other authors in certain directions because if they don't then nothing seems to happen. A good example is that "20 posts to walk up the stairs" situation. If the admin creates a setting where the party is meant to go up the stairs and find the gemstone of destruction or something, he or she might describe the stairs, the room that it leads into (a table, a chair, the doorway, the stone walls, a rug and a small stand) and leave the rest of it up to them. The admin expects within an hour or two, someone will walk up the stairs, find the gemstone and come back down. But no... they spend 20+ posts walking up the stairs, looking at the room, talking and then just stop posting. All the while waiting for the admin to pop in, make something freaking start glowing. Then the characters STILL wont just open the thing up and find the gem, no instead they'll post about how they started opening up say the table and then start waiting for the admin to tell them what they found and how. A lot of it has to do with the fact that the players are afraid to make changes or accomplish goals without the admin just controlling it for them... which leads to railroading which is also complained about. Talk about a lose-lose situation. @Onime: I do like your idea about the reasons why fights occur. It makes pretty good sense actually. 1. Sport, enjoyment or evaluation. 2. Progression, development and character growth. 3. Story or character development. I believe that if we used a system like this more (less battles, but more important ones) that we might have a better narrative all the way around. Reasonably if we all just skipped all the "fights" except for the mini-bosses and boss battles that occurred in the narrative then we probably would have a much better story along with more time for other activities. Extending that to the idea that all battles must come from a conflict existing between the two parties involved is also rather interesting. A lot of times the reasons for conflict are kinda stupid in truth. I'll use Onime's LoZ RP where the "Bombers" kidnapped the Gerudo King. Once the Bombers kidnapped the Gerudo King, there was a giant battle in town. There were a few characters for which it made sense for the fight to occur, such as the Gerudo King's servants fighting trying to get him back or the Knights who were wanting to arrest the Bombers for their actions. Yet there were probably 3 times that many people in the conflict itself, mostly because "well its a fight so of course we joined" and truthfully if this was being described in third person without us all being able to see that certain people are "playable characters" and thus obviously important, good guys then for quiet a while you should have no idea who is the good guys, bad guys or just wandering psychopaths that enjoy killing and fighting to the death because they can are. A lot of times it seems like battles just happen because they can, dependent just about entirely on the fact that the characters are trained fighters and the authors want to show off those abilities. Edited by NTNP, August 26, 2012, 3:10 pm.
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| Primera Espada Yggdra | August 26, 2012, 4:00 pm Post #13 |
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The Kitty Cat, Mew!~
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Fire Emblem RP!? I would like zat! |
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| Onime No Ryu | August 26, 2012, 5:23 pm Post #14 |
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
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BIG POST AHEAD
This is definitely an issue in some cases. I remember in all the CoHs I've ever played, and also pretty much in any RP that BlackOmnimon/Arcvalons/etc ever ran, he always always always favored Matt. I dunno why, maybe he had a gayboy crush. But it was so fucking annoying when Matt did nothing but be a generic good guy, while other people did different things, more interesting things, or maybe had some development, whatever. And then when the time came, Matt got a reward--okay cool, he DID do stuff, you can't dispute that. But other people did stuff too. What'd they get? Jack shit. However, the problem of having a Game Master who doesn't treat everyone equally is a rare one. What is the far more common problem is one that I've already mentioned--PLAYER MOTIVATION. YOU CAN'T COMPLAIN THAT SOMEONE GETS THE MAGIC SWORD WHEN HE CLIMBS THE MOUNTAIN, DELVES INTO THE BOOBY TRAPPED TEMPLE, AND SLAYS A TROLL JUST TO FIND THE DAMN THING WHILE YOU SAT IN AN INN AND SLEPT ALL DAY. I find it incredibly annoying when a player obviously wants something and yet they do so little to earn it. I don't want to point fingers because we're here to grow, not to argue, but I just need an example. I've chosen Best's character Ira in the most recent RP, AWD. Before I get started I want to say that I HONESTLY APPRECIATE BEST, because even though he can only post like once in two weeks, he still POSTS, and he still gives me a reason to believe that he WANTS to be here and he wants to have fun. His posts are pretty good, and even if his characters need work, he's shown me in the past he's WILLING to make efforts. While Best as a person has some undesirable quirks, all of us have those in our own way. But for the example I've chosen, it is very easy to see what Best wants Ira to BE, to be ABLE TO DO, and what he's aiming to ACCOMPLISH. You can tell in everything he wrote about and for Ira. He wants Ira to be an expression of both anger and confidence, he wants Ira to be a little arrogant but to have the power to back it up. He wants Ira to be able to freely express himself, and have the means to keep himself alive if someone so happens to not like his expression--for instance, he paid the fine when his character got stopped by the guard. But not until he made some smart ass comments and threw up on the guy. It was very plainly a kind of passive agression. If Ira was able, he would have certainly fought back, but Best knows how I do things when it comes to NPCs under such titles as "Guard Captains." Now, we're all pretty indoctrinated on tropes, especially the anime variety. And we know that in order to get strong, you have to get lots of experience and training arcs. To get those things usually means you have to do a lot of stuff, especially a lot of fighting. However, when an opportunity came for Ira to get those things, he sat on the bench instead, literally. He waited and he watched. Now this might be IN CHARACTER, which is PERFECTLY FINE. But considering what I'd already seen of Ira, I have a hard time believing he's the "wait, watch, and calculate what you want to do" type. He seems more like the type who might consider his options, what's in it for him, but then he'd jump right in. And he didn't, not until a specific moment came. When the boss character showed up, Ira was suddenly ready to go. And I'll tell you why--remember that Ira wants to be powerful. And beating a powerful enemy PROVES you're powerful. But he jumped into this battle, expecting to prove his strength, without ever having made very many prior efforts to SHOW how strong he was or how strong he wanted to be. Now from here the example takes a turn into the metaphorical, so please TAKE NOTE OF WHAT I JUST SAID. IF Best had come to me all mad and pissed and said "Why didn't you let me fight the boss more evenly instead of having it basically shrug off everything and look at me like I was dog shit?" I would probably tell him that unlike other characters who had been fighting or making other worthwhile efforts, he hadn't proved to me that he was deserving of that privelege of power. And he probably would have gotten pissed. Players get pissed ALL THE GODDAMNED TIME because they DON'T GET WHAT THEY WANT. And more often than not, THE ONLY PERSON THEY HAVE TO BLAME IS THEMSELVES. Yet they don't want to acknowledge that. They think they are entitled to stuff, and they're not. No one should be favored. But no one should be lazy either. People should be willing to put forth effort, and in order to do that they need motivation. We can't teach you to have an inner drive. That's something you have to find for yourself, and if you can't find it inside yourself to make that effort in order to enjoy something that you call your hobby, maybe this isn't the hobby for you after all.
THIS. SO MUCH THIS. THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS. As we've already seen in my prior posts, however, this depends on MOTIVATION. And people have to find this within themselves individually. We can only help them so much. But there's also some responsibility placed on the creators/mods of the RP, and I supposed since I've already said so much about motivation in my other posts, I'll go into those here even if it's a little off subject. There are certain things that an admin can do to improve motivation. One of them is to find out what your audience likes, just like we're doing here, and to adjust your story and setting so that you can get as close to what people want to see as possible. But you can't do this at the cost of your art--if we never tried anything new because we wanted to keep everyone satisfied, we wouldn't ever make any discoveries that might satisfy people's needs even better. Another way to increase player motivation is to offer some kind of incentive. Video games do this with experience points, item drops, catchy victory tunes, and other strategies. It feels good to accomplish another level, it feels good to hear that ding as your experience counter goes up, and it's nice to be able to collect things from monsters and use them to make cool items. However, RPs are writing projects with gaming subtleties, not games with good stories. You have to find a balance between incorporating these systems and staying true to the actual writing aspect, and this can be difficult. A lot of people who RP ABSOLUTELY HATE stat systems and dice rolling and probability calculations, and they have a few good reasons. Videogames use computers to do all of that for you. DnD takes place in real life, so it's much easier to prevent cheating and you're in a group that can physically help if you need them to. In an RP things aren't that simple and they don't work so well. Even though I've never seen it work myself, I still think that if you could find a good system, stats would be a very welcome addition to RPs. So we can't really give them experience and stats, so why not give them items? Well, think for a moment about why exactly such items are needed. Healing potions are needed to heal injuries done by enemies. That's easy enough. But if you can just instantly heal broken bones, it takes a lot of the threat and the tension out of battles. If they don't work very fast, then what's the point of having them to begin with? And what about other items? Armor, weapons, and things like talismans that improve your abilities or something are all items used in a battle. They help you reduce an enemy's HP faster and keep your own higher because you take less damage. But if health and damage are considered as numerical values, then what determines those values? It falls back to stats, and we've already seen the issues with those. Well giving them stats is hard and so is giving them items. What can we give a character to help motivate the player? Don't get me wrong--there ARE still certain "items" you could give them. But you'd have to shift your mind-frame from gameplay to creative writing and you would ALSO have to consider our own unique quirks as an RPing community. I'll get to those in a bit. The next and probably the BEST thing you can give players to motivate them, in my opinion, is RECOGNITION. Cboxes are implemented because they make communication easier--perhaps too easy, because we end up just talking all the time about things. But what if we talked about what was actually happening in the RPs? What if OUR CHARACTERS talked to each other about different things within the RP itself? What if they took note of things other than themselves? What if they took note of OTHER characters? What if we honestly and truly READ all the posts that other players make? What if we try to be a little less selfish and take an INTEREST in what others are doing? "Hey, did you see that thing X did with his character?" "The thing where he tricked that enemy? Yeah I saw that." "I thought that was pretty cool." "Me too." And just like this, Player X has received some recognition--people LIKE his character, they LIKE what he wrote, they LIKE his ideas. I think if people actually gave me the feeling that I was liked, respected, admired, or at least treated me like a friend, I would be much more inclined to post, post well, and post often. BUT ONIME, you scream, YOU ARE THE BIGGEST CUNTBUCKET WHEN IT COMES TO ASKING PEOPLE TO POST. YOU SCREAM AT US ALL THE TIME. I know, I'm sorry. But I want recognition too. Everyone wants recognition. And sometimes the only way to break through the walls of other stupid shit is to do something drastic to get people's attention. I understand people have school, and that people have other issues they want to talk about--I will be the first one to admit that I like to come here to vent about problems in my day to day life because I feel like it helps. But imagine, if we all put just a LITTLE bit of effort into RECOGNIZING the efforts of EVERYONE, imagine how much good it could do. If NTNP puts just a LITTLE bit of effort into recognizing the efforts of Me, Matt, and Oniskieth, and if I put a LITTLE bit of effort into recognizing the efforts of NTNP, Matt, and Oniskieth, and if Oniskieth--okay you get the picture right? A little + A little + A little ____________ A lot It all adds up. And I think it would make people feel better to have their efforts recognized--or, even if you DON'T LIKE someone's efforts, maybe you could GIVE THEM SOME ADVICE AND CRITIQUE? It would still show them that they and their characters and their writing MATTERS TO US AND WE WANT TO SEE MORE OF IT. And that would in turn revitalize them and encourage them to post more. Now, to go back to what I mentioned about items before. Getting into a different mindframe. In videogames you have items, levels, exp. What do we, as a community, have in our RPs that people want or need more of? Well, the first thing I can think is SKILLS. We like to put our special attacks in a little numbered list, or at least the crew from LS does. But what determines when you can learn a new attack? Usually we do this on a sort of honor system. As long as you train and work for it, you can get as many skills as you want. So, Skills could be an item to be gained. Another thing we have here is the AIO system. It gives money for posts. Money is also something given in videogames, in order to buy items. SO what if we used the AIO system to give characters money, and then they can use that money to buy skill slots? Other items that this could work for are "enchantments" or "forging," to make their equipment better. Lots of folks like to either use unique equipment that wouldn't be sold in typical weapon stores, or else they have a specific reason for sticking with a particular weapon all the time. Maybe we could let them buy an enchantment--such as, causes fire elemental damage--or let them forge their stuff for a price--make your sword stronger or whatever. The PROBLEM with this is that it MIGHT fall back to stats again unless you figure out another way to do it. The PRO of this is that it's still something you could do that would make sense and give some motivation. Another thing I can think of is TRANSPORTATION. No one likes spending 5 posts to get somewhere because the two locations are days and days apart and you have to walk all that way. What if there were trains, or carriages, or magical transporters, and you could use your money to buy a ticket or whatever and then zoom off? Maybe you could pay MERCENARIES to become your NPC allies and help you fight? What about items that don't have to do with stats but still give you some kind of information you can use to find your enemy's weakness? For example, a simple magical spyglass that tells you "This enemy is weak to FIRE magic!" What about information, like "You can find the guy you're looking for by going here!" What about things like treasure maps or other side quest type things that give players stuff to do? I think if we used the AIO system and sold those things, we'd have a use for the money we get, and we'd also have extra motivation to post in order to get that money. Of course, you'd have to lay down rules and regulations to keep it from being abused, but I think it's an interesting option. And I think that's all I have to say about what we need to do to get people to be more active posters.
I can understand where you're coming from with this, but I can't say I agree entirely. Probably the first thing on your mind with this was CoH, and the Zelda universe. Basing your RPs on pre existing universes like those found in books, videogames, and whatever else is certainly an option, but I think we've used it too much in the past and I believe, as writers, that we've progressed beyond this point. I think that only with an original setting can we truly accomplish what we want to do with it as writers, without worrying about some other canon or making it fit into the limitations of another universe. However, I understand the problems associated with creating original universes. On the part of the RP creator, that's a shitton of work to do. You have to build a world from scratch. I know how hard it is, I've done it multiple times and all of my worlds STILL need shittons of work. On the part of the players, it takes a lot of effort and motivation, which we've already discussed, to read through the information they need. Even seemingly simple stuff can add up to a mountain of text to be shifted through. You might need to know the background of the world, what's happened in its history. You might need to know the pantheon and how they're worshipped. You DEFINITELY need to know who the major NPC figures are, how the magic works, and what the map looks like. That's only a fraction of what one needs to come up with to create a living breathing truly functional world, by the way. But I believe that all that effort is worth it. The harder you work at something the more satisfying it is to see it come to fruition. But once again, we can't teach motivation. You just have to find it.
I personally don't see this as ALWAYS necessary, because sometimes the gods may not be specifically mentioned simply because they don't play a part in the story. But yes, this goes back to world creating. It's very good to have, and makes things feel much more immersive. It's just very hard to get done, and it's hard to make players read it all. Other than that I can't really think of much to say here, since it's more opinionated.
The difficulty here is acheiving a good balance. You want any obstacles the characters face to be challenging, but not hopeless. You don't want it to take ages, but you also don't want them to just faceroll it. So my first question here is: What, in your opinion, is a Good Pace? A post from everyone involved and then the ending? A certain number of exchanges between the party and an enemy? Please clarify. The thing about having the freedom to envision is that you want to make sure the players know enough that they don't come up with something completely outlandish. It's one thing for a character to come up with something like, say, a hidden door in the wall when the admin never described anything of the sort. That kind of change I could adapt to and wholeheartedly encourage. But if the admin tells you that you're trapped in a room with only one exit, for you to suddenly find a convenient hidden door is kind of cheap, don't you think? So sometimes a little bit of extra description is used when telling the characters about the room, and yes it does take some of your freedom to envision out of it, but it's meant to prevent abuse by the players. Adapting is definitely something we need, but it's also something hard to do, especially if you're trying to think on the fly. I've never been really good at it. So my second question is: What's your advice for being adaptable? What would you suggest to improve one's ability to adapt? As for when RPers complain about other RPers and their characters, I think that sometimes complaints DO need to be made. Sometimes, certain people just make really, really bad characters. And I don't mean bad writing. You guys have dealt with Badwolf before; I don't personally know if he's still like this, but I remember when I first RPed with him, all of his characters were horrible about godmodding. They were also badly written, and they seemed to make it a point to just outright annoy other players sometimes. In a case like this, complaints are warranted and something needs to be done, because one person is ruining the fun for other people.
I understand that with life issues people can't be here every hour of every day, but I also think that if you really consider this something you want to do, you should be willing to make time for it somehow, someway, in order to fulfill the "responsibilities" (which I use lightly by the way, since this isn't a job) that are expected of you. If you can't do that, I think you should definitely make sure that everyone you're involved with and the admin all know that you're not going to be available at certain times. You could also have a sort of absence-buddy, who could summarize things while you're gone and maybe help control your character when you can't. But establishing that kind of partnership relies on you to initiate and maintain it, and also relies on the other person, so you need to not only pick carefully, you also have to find your own motivation. See my other posts for more on Motivation.
This is a good point that people should take note of, and I would also like to add another suggestion. During the tournament battle in AWD between myself and Peras, when it seemed like the battle was getting close to the end I made the effort of PMing him and sorting out what we both thought would be a fair ending to the fight. I might be biased because I won, but I still got Peras's input and he seemed okay with it at the time. I think if all players took the initiative to talk with their opponents about PvP battles and how they want things to play out--not just in terms of win and lose, but also by discussing what kind of character development they could both get out of it, that these battles would become so much more interesting. And while I'm on the subject, using PMs can also be a really great way to sort out how you want certain scenes, battles, and other events to go so that posts don't feel so disconnected. By deciding what and who should do what and when and why, you can create a much more seamless story. It's also a really good way to set up awesome combo attacks for battles.
I agree that splitting characters up into groups is a good way to build bonds between them, and that it also makes things more easy to focus and follow up on because you're not keeping track of fifteen people at once. However, the problem with this is that it often conflicts with what Magius pointed out earlier, in that it slows things down and they don't always move at a pace good enough to keep up with everything else that is happening. So, how do you think we could balance that?
I agree with this as well, but the problem is that people need to get INTO their character in order for it to work. All too often I see RPers not treating their characters as living things, but as pieces on a board to be moved around so that you can "win" the game. Roleplaying isn't a game like chess, it's a story with game-like elements used in order to help it maintain a balance among a community of people. In order to write better roleplays, we need to be better writers, and one aspect of that is getting inside your character's head and giving them all their own little quirks and flaws and human aspects, and seeing them as a growing, living thing that continues to develop and change throughout the story. If you don't get deep into your own character, and treat it almost like you would a child, how can you get into the heads of other peoples' characters in order to bond with them? With that said, you shouldn't baby a character and give them everything they want just because they're YOUR character. Overcoming a challenge is part of writing a better story too. |
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| Perascamin | August 26, 2012, 6:17 pm Post #15 |
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A Legendary Ocean
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Hmm, I'm just going to give my own little example of what split groups should be. In the start of an RP, let's say we have two different scenarios a character can choose from. One of the scenarios could be a Lord of Lady's estate, and another could be a country side town. The thing is, we need something interesting happening in both settings so people will WANT to be there. In this way, we won't be forcing people to be in one place, but rather we're giving them a choice in their origin--for the main story. Back stories could still be very relevant in the sub-plot for the players, but where they begin would be THE DEFINING MOMENT for their reputation at the very beginning. Whether they're branded a traitor or hero, or just a common thug it'll still end up being relevant. Now, for a way to balance groups..Honestly, I don't want to point fingers, but with the loss of Sin we really don't have to worry about that anymore. However, were one person in a group of five to halt said group, then I suggest we just dismiss what they said and move on. People should take initiative and tell us when they're going to be gone. We can't stop things like losing power for a certain amount of time, but if you can please do it. On an unrelated note...I think we as the Lost Sanctum community have already judged the writing of the Espada of Alexandria community as poor in quality. This...kind of makes it hard to react to a character because it just doesn't flow very well. If you want to improve on your writing, I'd suggest looking up to our best writers such as Matt, Onime, or NT. Just read their writing, and learn from it. Don't copy the style, just learn from it. |
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In War; Victory. In Peace; Vigilance. In Death; Sacrifice. Dawn Eros (hot mama): Spoiler: click to toggle | |
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| NTNP | August 27, 2012, 7:37 am Post #16 |
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Admin
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So pretty much the same initial setup that I used for FERP where there are events, separate but equally tied together, that give players choices as to how they start the narrative. From there if you take the intended path (and thus are given the anticipated reward, which connects to the above explanation of why it sometimes feels like your character doesn't actually make choices, because they are already anticipated and planned for) resulting in the character joining the narrative in a certain way. It can work, although if the story requires everyone to be unified for a certain event that "sets up" the plot then that doesn't always occur. As far as the quality of the EoA... I don't really think that calling them low is really fair. They just write in a different way than what we have used in the past. Its structured a lot more like script writing with actions, sentences and transitions being entirely separate events rather than them being structured like a novel. They could easily be combined though. Below I'll give an example from WD just because it was the first post I saw: Original Post in script form: Spoiler: click to toggle How LS would write it: Spoiler: click to toggle I included the needed transitionals into the post in bolded words to help make the various connections. Generally speaking, if written in the paragraph format it becomes a lot easier to understand since most of us are a lot more used to having things written in paragraph format, akin to that of a book or short story rather than a screen play. Plus it also allows the poster to have a lot easier time reading through the post along with being able to show off the effects of an action on the outside world. Also thanks for saying I'm one of the best writers on the site, it's very nice to receive recognition like that which ties in rather nicely with what Onime was talking about regarding helping to 'build' each other up. Also Ygg I made a Fire Emblem themed RP where our characters eventually joined a rebellion attempting to take back over their country from an oppressive neighbor country that had conquered them years ago. It was pretty good baring a few minor errors in balancing which occurred on my part, in particular allowing for forging that was inexpensive resulting in some major problems in making the battles challenging enough for some while easy enough for all. But it was a lot of fun having a system that stressed character interactions in order to build up supports with each other. It was a lot of fun, but required a lot of time management problems and required me to be present a lot of the time to run the fights. |
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| MagiusNecros | August 27, 2012, 2:10 pm Post #17 |
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GILGAMESH FAN KING
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Sorry I'll try and write walls of text and attempt to detail every rock I see and explain all the unique textures and how various insects are crawling around. I will improve my short responses for you all.
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Arch-Necromancer of the Gilgamesh Army- “I am who I am. The pain of others, I do not feel. The sorrow of others does not touch me. Death feeds me. Death pleases me. I am the essence I consume. You fools will become corpses here, because I wish it to be.” Curse: Cursed with hourglass eyes that show how life slowly dies before him Wields: Living sword Ragnarok and the Staff of Magius Signature move: God's End Overlimit: Ultimate Spellchain(Flare, Holy, Meteor, Grand Cross, Almagest, Dimension Zero, Big Bang) Transformation: Turns into a great black dragon YT Account:http://www.youtube.com/user/MagiusNecros?feature=mhee
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| Garm0099 | August 27, 2012, 4:46 pm Post #18 |
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Marksman
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I wouldn't say we all use a script style of writing. Me personally, I prefer writing walls of text (w/o spaces sometimes which I need to work on) that has descriptive words. I also feel I should work on showing events my character does rather than tell them like a list. Any other things you guys want to point about my writing style? I like criticism/praise so I know what to work on and what to keep up. |
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| oniskieth | August 27, 2012, 7:20 pm Post #19 |
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The Silver Light
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Not to be rude but your post was more of a wall of text then Nt's revised version. |
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Katherine's Approval
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| The Best | August 28, 2012, 9:52 am Post #20 |
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Scout
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Your sarcasm is unappreciated. These people are genuinely trying to help you, the least you could do is say thank you instead of replying with a smartass remark. |
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| NTNP | August 28, 2012, 12:41 pm Post #21 |
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Admin
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I really wasn't trying to cause a problem nor criticize anyone's work, nor make a sweeping characterization of every single member of either site. I was merely pointing out one of the ways that the two sites seem to differ in writing system in general. However if it was taken as a personal attack by Magius, I apologize since that was not my intention. I am pretty sure you do this for fun and if you prefer to use a script writing style, as long as it is high quality, interesting to read and descriptive then I doubt anyone will have a problem with it. Garm I do agree after looking for one of your posts in a World Divided that your writing style is more similar to that of a narrative based work than anything else. |
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| NTNP | August 28, 2012, 4:39 pm Post #22 |
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Admin
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While highlighting responses from what everyone else has said in this topic, I realized that I never actually answered the initial question being posed. I suppose I’ll give it a shot and try to make this a little briefer than my usual tirades. I wish that characters didn’t just join the party without any sort of effort. Look at almost any narrative, be it that of a novel, a television series or even a videogame. Baring the few instances of generic, non-story important characters anyone who will end up in our party had to be EARNED. By that I mean that they don’t just walk up, see the event and decide to risk their lives from that point on with absolutely no regard for their own survival or that of their personal reasons for living. I feel as though RPs really should strive to maintain that aspect as well. There are three reasons for this that I will explain. First it would provide the RPers a very good, simple way to both establish their characters along with pushing their own personal character arcs into the narrative quickly and effectively. After all, so many stories that we have created can result in our characters not really existing beyond “character A” and the story wouldn’t change in the least. Secondly it would provide RPers a chance to really connect with their characters. Imagine that if you (as the author) in order to have your character join the narrative that you had to take a turn as essentially being the admin for a while. You would have to set the scene where your character is introduced, you would have to have a reason WHY your character would be willing to move out of their comfortable lives. And even more than that, join a party of likely dangerous warriors who have likely committed crimes, multiple murders and all sorts of violence in order to make it to that point in the story. So that likely means that just to “join” you would need to really know the reasons for your character’s existence along with what you wanted to do from there. An example of this might be that a young woman approaches the party in the streets of a city, bloodied and injured begging for them to protect her before fainting. When they reach a safe point, she explains how a person is after her (thus a secondary character has been established) for a particular reason (thus a motivation) like she was a thief and decided to betray her contractor because he had her steal something that could violently hurt others. From there, she begs the party to help her protect herself from her former employer and possibly eliminate a minor character, whom probably just injured her earlier. Third it provides both the character and his/her/it’s author the option to become more invested in their character. At no point would the author feel like just another reindeer so to speak. Instead they would have had to really invested a lot of time, thought and caring since they likely just spent a week’s time running the various RP’s party around introducing characters, situations and events that had to be accomplished in order for his/her character to join the cast. I feel like that would really help make people WANT to keep RPing when something like that happened. Lastly, I feel as though this would also increase the open-endedness of the storyline. Usually there is JUST the main storyline and anything character arc related is viewed as nothing more than a distraction. However what if everyone had a lot of character arcs were strung together and the main plot was only intricately tied to a few characters? Like say if the plot is chasing around a villain that destroyed one town (perhaps where a few starting characters were from) on their road to conquering the kingdom. Killing this man and stopping his rebellion would unquestionably be important to those characters, but with this system the rest of them that they met along the way might have other reasons. I’ll use a stereotypical group for an example: The Avenger: That was his destroyed home town, and they also killed his parents… of course he’s going to seek revenge in order to get over their deaths! But along the way, as a form of belated recruitment, we also have to deal with the fact that the Avenger is also in a desperate need for a friend and companion and as such struggles to create a strong, positive if rivalry filled relationship with another. The Hero: While it was his hometown he had been away for a long time and just returned to find it in ruins, while angry at its destruction and the death of his childhood friends his true reason for seeking out the villain is because he won’t stand for this destruction to happen everywhere he had traveled. Of course, no one can really be a white knight all the time. Over time we start seeing some of the ill effects of this simplistic desire to help people in the forms of bandits seeking revenge for fallen brothers, former villains coming out of the woodwork wanting retribution on the Hero and of course the most painful, seeing his former failures being brought up to life as his own belated recruitment. These are the only ones from that town. Now let’s add a few more likely characters that you’ll meet right out the gate. The Lancer: After seeing the destruction caused by the evil overlord, the lance chose to join the army to fight this enemy. When going toe to toe with the “Dragon” of his army, his unit was destroyed and he barely survived by fleeing. Unfortunately, for him, he learned later that some of his men had survived and were taken prisoner to suffer what little of their lives remained being tortured and suffering because of his failures. Licking his wounds and disgraced, he seeks out not only his enemy but the man that took everything from him. Obviously the process of recruiting this guy should be rather straight forward, but you can bet a man that has lost everything will have nothing else to lose. Perhaps he is dead set on attacking the enemy’s mainbase (or a major one, depending on the narrative) and the party will either have to find a way to stop him, redirect him or join him on this would be suicidal assault in order to gain his trust enough to join the party. The White Mage: As beloved by all living things, the White Mage chose to seek out the overlord and his armies in hopes of bringing to an end this conflict once and for all. She has seen so much suffering that the only thing left to her is the decision to aid the heroes and the King’s army in defeating this foe before all is lost. But you must be asking yourself, why would she need anything to be recruited? Well first my rules. But secondly because there are a lot of people out there that aren’t in it for the right reasons. Before throwing in her lot with the party, they would need to prove their good will (perhaps time and time again) by performing tasks akin to her beliefs. Or perhaps it would just require a single act of true kindness, like say saving her from a prison that the overlord had created and freeing not just her but everyone else locked up within. That’s a pretty good initial set to be intricately tied to the main plot when the story begins along with providing some good motivations for secondary characters along with the primary ones. While other characters might be met early on, they don’t necessarily need to be recruited into the main party all at once if so chosen. In the example above, it would make good sense for the Hero and the Avenger to meet the Lancer and then join up with him to attack the prison where the White Mage is held captive. Plus for those that are listening, none of that really has anything to do with the admin. The Lancer’s author would likely describe the siege on the location. The White Mage the dungeon within to free the captives and herself from imprisonment . Here are a few more that we might end up seeing pretty quickly that aren’t tied into the main plot quiet as much. The Chick: A young woman sought by the overlord (as they always seem to be) for either a mysterious power, their beauty or because of their birth rights. She is trying desperately to survive the constant onslaughts from the overlord and his minions and joins the party in order to escape her would be capturer and to avoid a rather unpretty end if he cannot have her. While she might appear to be just another damsiel in distress, in time we learn that she too carries a dark secret… The Big Guy: As a former minion of the overlord, he knows exactly how cruel that his “master” could be along with how vicious his dragon is. Choosing to jump ship at the nearest port (perhaps the heroes, perhaps after being issued an order he was unwilling to do) he is now on the run from his former companions. The “good” army is never going to take him in, there is just too big of a chance he might be a spy. Plus he did a lot of bad things as a soldier for the overlord. So he chooses the heroes’ party in order to avoid his former teammates (and leader, the Dragon). But of course, they seem to find him rather often and force a fight from time to time making it a little harder on the party having him around. Thus the group has gained a member, but also gained a quirky mini boss squad to deal with. The Rogue: As described above, our thief was hired to take something precious which she did. But after learning it’s true purpose and the identity of her employer (the Dragon perhaps) she decides to turn tail. Yet here is the problem, she can’t just toss the thing because A: its worth a lot of money and B: if someone else found it then they might just give it to him anyways. Returning it would probably result in execution, plus now the Dragon knows where it is and will be looking for it there. So she has no choice but to keep it and perhaps find out how to use it to the party’s advantage. After putting them into a spot initially, the rouge is saved by the party and they choose to team up. But it’s only a matter of time before greed or the Dragon’s men come to make her pay for it. The Dark Mage: Not everyone needs to be so tied in with being a good guy. The dark mage cares only about power, and about attaining as much of it as possible. While he considered joining the overlord, he knew enough to know how things like that usually go and didn’t want to suffer from a “you have failed me for the last time” stabbing. Or being killed so a subordinate could rise up the ranks, so once the heroes got a bit of a rep to them, he sought them out and joined immediately… but on some conditions. There was a particular thing he wanted, pieces to a magical ritual that would grant him overwhelming power that might even put him even with the Dragon if not the Overlord himself. If the party would help him attain those things, he would help them in destroying their common enemy no matter whom it is… after all, the issue isn’t the overlord for him. The party is just the means to an end so whom he kills matters very little in the end. The Adventurer is YOU: And there is finally always someone in it for their own personal reasons. This guy showed up, ready to throw down for the first cause that blew his way. Usually the exact same type of guy that we usually see and that I hate. But he is savable. Ask yourself “why is he here?”, “what made him come here?”, “what does he want?” and see if you don’t come up with a result that is better than usual. Maybe he wants fame as a hero, so he is here to slay the dragon and conquer the overlord. Well what kind of things might he want to do in order to attain those goals? Maybe he would want a personal reward from the King (to be knighted or made a noble) and as such his requirement for joining would be that they would have to go out of their way to meet this person, show off their exploits to him in some way and gain peerage for it. Or maybe the goal is money. If that is the case, then there has to be something he might want along the way. Perhaps there is a boat load of cash that the overlord has. Heck if you are like me, perhaps he has a tragic dream of something unattainable, like to see a lost love again or to regain his honor. And now how do you come up with a compelling reason to join the narrative and start the story, well simple explain how he came to this land and show the result of his last attempt to get what he wanted. Maybe in another kingdom he is a wanted criminal for his greed and has bounty hunters on his tail. Maybe his attempts to gaining “renown” in another land resulted in him botching a quest, getting his friends killed and now he has to atone for his sins by making it up to a family member in the town that they met him in. For the more abstract reasons, the goal could hinge on something harder to attain. Perhaps he NEEDS to establish a positive relationship with another person. Perhaps he NEEDS to save the day to make up for his failures. There are all sorts of ways to play this character, just like those above. But in general that is what I want, a narrative where characters have a good reason for joining the plot other than “I was there” and they have goals outside of that created by the main plot. I desperately want to see an RP where: the characters have a personal reason to become involved in the plot, their own motivations for doing what they are doing and from a narrative perspective, having to take over the wheel for a while when they create and introduce a new character resulting in the entire plot being dedicated to their character for a while. It would make it where we didn’t have ‘disinterest’ as often, since if you dedicate that much time and energy into the process then you’ll become invested in seeing things play out. And it would give the various side plots much more relevance since, for certain characters along with the party since they were so involved with it, a sense that this isn’t any more or less important than the plot laid out by the admin of the story. |
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| Kazemitsu | August 28, 2012, 8:14 pm Post #23 |
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Assassin
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What I want in an rp...swords, sorcery(but not super saiyan), a decent plot that can evolve into a better one once a certain big bad is defeated and turns out to be a small bad, and no pvp unless it's an admin. Three quarters of the pvp we have...isn't necessary and causes a lot of arguments. |
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| The Best | August 30, 2012, 10:10 am Post #24 |
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Scout
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Don't be such a sheep. You don't need someone holding your hand telling you what to do all the time. As for me, all I really want in an RP is some fucking DEDICATION. If you make the decision to join an RP, you should realize that you are making a commitment not only to the RP, but to the other players participating. By halting your posts, you're not only slowing down the RP, but you're letting your fellow RPers down. Seriously, I'm so tired of seeing RPs die because all you guys are here all day, and you sit around and talk about these RPs until they get stale, and then I come in and I'm all stoked to RP since I never have time, but you fools have already moved on to the next new, hot thing and I'm still standing back here with my fucking pen and paper, wondering where all my co-writers went. Dedication, plz and thx |
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| NTNP | August 30, 2012, 12:07 pm Post #25 |
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Admin
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I have to agree with Best. I wonder what would happen if we made anyone attempting to join an RP have to take a turn at being the admin of their own introduction and recruitment mission before they could just show up and get into things for a while. I imagine that a lot of people would become a lot more attached and dedicated to their creations that way if they had to really establish what was happening and what they wanted for their character instead of becoming bogged down by a mainplot that they might grow disinterested in. |
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