Where to start?

[Sweetcherrie]

Bug hunt is only the first of a series of RPs we're planning to start to 'train' specific parts of RPing. Basicly we have in mind to deal with a couple of things, plotting, scheming, feelings, and those are only a few examples.

 

What I would like to ask you here is basicly to tell us what you would like us to put the focus on in the next RP training

 

It can be anything, from character creation to grammar, to dialogue (although the SWG has some pretty good stuff on this already) but yeah, please help us help you

[Patrick]

I've already told you over MSN or IRC (can't remember which) a few days ago, but I'll also post it here.

 

What I'd be interested in seeing is a roleplay where the focus isn't really on the action happening but on the flavour around the action. Descriptions of scenes, objects and feelings.

[Katzaniel]

My biggest problem in any RP is always the balance between moving the plot forward in your post (or at least not leaving it in a place where no one else knows how to move forward from there) and not using other people's characters. Assuming for the moment that we can't communicate outside these forums, this is a difficult issue. (I often don't know what I'm going to write until I sit down to write it, and won't have time to write again until who-knows-when, so it's very hard to find and talk to everyone that the post needs to include... nor can I just let their character sit there and do nothing during whatever events are happening. I mean, having too much happen automatically assumes that no one did anything to prevent it. Even having a character talk for very long assumes that no one interrupts them - and this is no small assumption.

 

So basically I would like some way to practice this balance... perhaps via a format where we're supposed to push it, and see what happens? I don't know. I just know I want to get better at it.

 

Thanks,

Katz

[Gwaihir]

I strongly second what Katz says, by the way.

[Gyrfalcon]

Now for some hopefuly coherent rambling...

 

Katzaniel has a very good point - at least early in an RP, you generally don't know your fellow players or their characters well enough to be able to make a decently informed decision about how their character would react to different situations. There are a few things that can help this, of course. The first is sheer experience. Towards the end of Gaze of Eternity, I had a decent handle on how most of the characters would handle something coming up... but that was experience grown out of a solid year writing together, which is exceptionally long. The other thing that might help is a reaction guide... but it'd be impossible to include every situation that might possibly come up. Probably my worst point when trying to write in other character's reactions is dialogue. I'm trying to get into the character's head and write dialogue the way the creator would, without the benefit of knowing the character's internal motivations. It gets amusing at that point.

[Gryphon]

With regards to what Katz has said above regarding the balance of moving a stoy ahead and not writing other characters actions etc.

 

From my point of view, writing the actions of another character is not role playing, it's story writing. If we were doing this real time in IRC or some other equivalent I'd not write actions / words for your character(s), nor would I expect you to write for me.

 

RP is without a doubt easier to handle in live action / person to person environments such as face to face or IRC, there's no doubt in my mind about that.

 

A large portion of the challenge in what we're doing here is derived from that very fact. I think the way to combat it is to limit how far you move things forward, make your character move a few paces instead of having him/her walk a mile. You can still have the action taking place on the micro level as well as on the macro.

 

The big 'advantage' that RP has over shared story writing is the presence of a moderator or Game Master, Dungeon Master or whatever they're called. It's their responsibility to either throw your characters into action (if they've not done it themselves) or to bring the current action to an end to provide a clear path ahead for your game to move on.

 

For example: Your characters are moving through a swamp. This could be pretty dull, so someone (whoever gets in first) throws a challenge at the group... Doesn't matter what, could be everyone finds themselves sinking in quicksand, toothed tentacled things grab someone, or several someones... and that's it. You might write the instant action or frozen panic or whatever of your own character, but then it's someone elses job to contribute their own actions, which hopefully will be your characters saving.

 

This'll usually work unless everyone is playing cowards or your chararter has really annoyed everyone else... in which case you're dead - time to move on to the next character. That's all part of the game too.

 

If for some reason your moderator realises that s/he's made it too hard for your characters to come up with an escape (or you've written yourselves into a corner) then it's their job to come in and write you out of it again.

 

Basically what I'm getting at (and hopefully not failing miserably) is that there should be no need to balance story movement and how much of someone elses actions to write. If the story doesn't move ahead naturally, and often it will, because its RP rather than story writing and there is a moderator it really can be someone elses job to move the story on. As characters in the story, your job then becomes to write actions and reactions to the environment provided by the moderator, and as a secondary job you write actions and reactions in response to what has been written by the other players in the game. Nowhere do you need to write stuff on someone elses behalf.

 

Sorry if that seemed like an un-called for rant or anything. I just really feel that's a fairly important distinction to make.

 

~~~

 

Edit: For the record, I do realise that as mod of bughunt, this means it's my job to move it on whenever it stalls, which it's doing a lot because everyone's waiting for the action before they step in with their opening posts or whatever. Sorry for any delays, I was just kind of hoping someone would jump in with some minor "I'm here" type character actions to prove that I'm not the only one playing the game. Thanks for those who're doing that.