RPs Feedback

I agree with the person above. The style of RPing here does seem a bit planning-heavy, something I find a little confusing because I've never seen the concept of a "joint post" until I came in here. My style is just to post in reaction to random events and treat myself and the other players as separate entities, entities that I cannot predict. It's more realistic and fun to be surprised in that way. Also, I don't really consider it a "joint post" if I just allow some minor control of my character for the sake of convienience. I find that perfectly acceptable and used to do it all the time.

But I can tell you the specific reasons I'm not too interested in most roleplays. First, I find the opening posts to be really lengthy and intimidating. Not like I can't read a few paragraphs and dedicate myself to a world. And I find it perfectly understandable if it's for something original - of course you're going to need to provide people with a lot. For things based on Pokemon though, I don't find it necessary. A lot of them also have minor gamelike elements, which is kind of a turn-off to me. I'm just here to write a story with others, not to play D&D. Further, whilst I do love RPing Pokemon, I have a very specific interest. I'd rather BE a Pokemon than RP as a trainer. Understandably, roleplays with humans are much more abundant. But that just doesn't really appeal to me so much. I play the games to be a Pokemon trainer and do not like the idea of controlling multiple other characters (my trianer's Pokemon) and trying to give them individual and unique personalities rather than write them as tools/objects like the anime and other sources frequently do.

So I suppose I'd like to see more RPs where you can be a Pokemon, or just... not be human at all. But that's my specific preference, so I don't see it as a flaw of this section. I'm just weird. Also, less gamelike, less planning heavy ones with shorter opening posts if they're based on Pokemon.

In response to the OP, I doubt romance is lacking in RPs, and if it is people will happily sail their ships and make it happen. If you mean that we're deficient in roleplays dedicated to romance, I don't think anyone here even considers it, because it's so self-limiting as a main topic, and even more so for a group of players. It makes the world building process matter much less when everything involved is just going to be a method toward or gatekeeper of two characters getting in each other's pants.

I'll agree with Disclosed on the rather heavy focus on joint posts—not that I'm complaining about them, either, because I love being able to convey a lot of short term events without taking multiple (much smaller) posts, and leaving clutter and filler around trying to make it look like you put unnecessary work into it. However, if something can be done solo and still show a decent amount of relevant information without the need for immediate multiplayer interaction, I'll take it.

Disclosed said:

I've seen a joint post, recently, that involved every member of a roleplay, and the resulting post wasn't a consistent passage, rather a list of individual paragraphs written by each member that were practically disconnected! Doesn't that defeat the purpose of it all?

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Even to me, that honestly seems really unneeded. If it already looks like a bunch of separate posts taped together, it's not going to save on filler, so don't tape them together. As you say, it defeats the purpose of it. Joint posts are best when the actions and reactions within appear to be one consistent unit.

Disclosed said:

I wonder what has happened here that members now associate post-after-post with "clutter"...

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It has nothing to do with a back-and-forth being clutter in itself. There's nothing wrong with it as a format. The problem lies in the contents of the back-and-forth. If it's extended dialogue or a battle scene, it can be achieved better in a joint post or series of them where the entire interaction is a single, cohesive passage. Putting these into a much higher amount of individual posts requires that they either be very short, or that the players throw in filler that just doesn't matter to anyone to make it look like they put more work into it, and both choices have an unfortunate fate in breaking the flow of reading the core interaction.

RPT needs more murder mystery. I don't really care for pokemon rps, and some of the other rps that have came up just havent really piqued my interest either - being about things i really have no extensive knowledge in. I enjoy Joint posts moreso than I do writing short segments back and forth. There's something exciting about being on a pad with someone or multiple someone elses and seeing each others writing process and how things change from ideas to words to the finished products that we see. And it makes it easier to collaborate your ideas. A lot of times one person has one idea about something where another has a completely different idea, and writing in short paragraphs without being there in the moment together can cause a lot of it to be lost in translation. having two people writing together at once as one helps neuter that and lets your imagination flow wider than before. Causing you to give each other ideas you wouldn't have had if you'd done it in simple back and forth paragraphs.

JohnnyMustang said:

I still don't know if any of you like the direction the RPT is going on. While it might seem that you don't, it's not quite clear.

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I haven't been here long enough to really say that accurately. But I do remember looking at this place often before I started posting in here, and nothing has really changed about it. Good or bad. My problem really just stems from the fact that I've been roleplaying a long time, and being here is like being in a different country. The way people do things is weird, and sometimes I don't necessarily like or understand it. But one good thing I can say is that this place has more variety than others in RPs. There's more than just Pokemon and you're totally free to make your own world. So I like that direction, if it continues.

I'd like to weigh in on the joint post discussion (since it seems to be the main point of contention), as I was unfamiliar with the concept until recently. I've noticed a few threads incorporating joint posts (or JP's, as they're called) as a way for dialogue or fight scenes to play out in one cohesive post, rather than spread out over several posts. This has the advantage of seeing the entire conversation in one post without other characters having their own fights/conversations in the middle.

On the other hand, we have JP's involving all the characters at once. (For an example, see this thread, specifically this post.) Up until that post, all the players had been posting separately, like in your average thread. With that post, and the two subsequent posts, it was a massive collaboration showing everyone's actions. Could these have been separate posts? Yes. But on their own, each player had a fairly short response, that for some would not reach the 100-word minimum. The massive JP allowed for the characters to still get "screen time", even if it was just a reaction shot. In this particular instance, the JP allowed the less active players to join in, instead of just having their characters stand around doing nothing, or worse, get dragged along without any input from the players.

In the end, I can neither condemn or commend JP's. They have their pro's and their con's, and they either work for you or they don't.

I've been on PC and in the RPT for... a little while now, and while I haven't always been active I've been privy to seeing how some things have changed over time.

Joint posts are a relatively new thing, even on PC. I think the first time that I made a JP it was because we had two characters off to the side away from the main action, so we thought it was more prudent to just lump it together in a big post as opposed to like ten separate ones until we rejoined the others. I think that's fine, and it's probably fine for some dialogue or a battle scene where there is little chance of others getting involved.

I do think that having a JP limits some interactivity. Essentially while you're in the JP you close your characters off for contact by anyone other than themselves. There isn't the possibility of someone else who's character may perhaps just be wandering around to just jump in and affect the flow. I always liked that spontaneity and used it to my advantage. Even if you're just talking, having another character or even set of characters interacting across the room or whatever lets your own characters react in
"real time", something which I always thought was cool.

I think another point is that the growing prevalence of JPs has made it so that people actually have to seek out JPs now just to make sure that their character has someone to interact with for the interim. With everyone tied up in JPs in, yes, such sandbox-y RPs, anyone who doesn't secure themselves a JP has a high chance of literally wandering around by themselves. It used to be that someone would simply offer to make an excuse for their character to wander into your path, but now people are offering thousand word novellas about their characters meeting all before it actually gets posted to PC.

Anyway, it's weird. While I agree that JPs can be freeing for the creativity of the individual writers, I feel like they're limiting for the RP as a whole. I suppose it depends on personal preference, in the end. ^^

I think we're having too many superhero/power RPs lately. Dust, City of Heroes, Vale, I Am (to some extent) are some RPs on top of my mind. Personally, I'd like to see something set more like reality with some story. Military seems like a good area to inspect whether we can create amazing RPs in there.

Hello!

I am new to the roleplaying here, but I have roleplayed for many years in many formats. I have some very positive things to say off the bat:

The design is fantastic. From the aesthetics to the rules to how they can work- it really is very high quality compared to almost every other forum I've seen, including ones dedicated full to roleplay.

The modship seems really good so far. Oversight is key.

Now to the topic of joint posts: They have amazing utility in a few situations. If players want their characters to have a back and forth but aren't sure they can all time it right, doing it in bits and pieces over a doc and then posting it at once so you don't interrupt the flow can be useful. Anything that requires precise timing it can be used well.

But that is a double edged sword. A JP once in a while is great, but rolling together as a group to the extent that you become a one post foursome can cut you off from others. And if you aren't in that group, it could get lonely. I've seen it in other places.

RP diversity can be a problem, but I always view that as a member-solvable problem. I think the Journey RPs sound super cool, but sandbox games can be tough. As can their gamification. But in the end I think it comes down to what players make of it. I think the idea of being a Pokemon in an RP sounds super cool when paired up with maybe a setup in a normal type of Journey RP.

JohnnyMustang said:

What kind of RPs do you think we're lacking here in the RPT? Maybe, romance? Maybe a roleplay that's directly related comedy. Is there any parcticular reason why you don't join most of the recent RPs? You can share any thought, the thread is not limited to genres. I would like to know everyone's opinion on the current direction the RPs are taking.

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I think that having an RP directly centered around comedy or romance would be kind of difficult. RPs are stories, and while having a romance or comedy RP is entirely possible, I think that there would have to be more going on. On top of that, I'm not sure how popular it would be. Personally, I have the comedic brain of a toaster, and as a guy who is happily single, romance is probably the last genre I would join. Maybe for others, but not my cup of tea.

Songbird said:

I'll agree with Disclosed on the rather heavy focus on joint posts—not that I'm complaining about them, either, because I love being able to convey a lot of short term events without taking multiple (much smaller) posts, and leaving clutter and filler around trying to make it look like you put unnecessary work into it. However, if something can be done solo and still show a decent amount of relevant information without the need for immediate multiplayer interaction, I'll take it.

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I agree with this to some degree, JPs can be useful, but it requires activity. I think that there can be a lot of good interaction between characters without the use of JPs. On top of that, I feel like using JPs slows down the RP. If you have two very active players putting together a JP, it might take a day or two, but less active players means a single post takes a week easy, maybe more.

Varys said:

I think we're having too many superhero/power RPs lately. Dust, City of Heroes, Vale, I Am (to some extent) are some RPs on top of my mind. Personally, I'd like to see something set more like reality with some story. Military seems like a good area to inspect whether we can create amazing RPs in there.

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Nope nope nope. You can never have enough super hero RPs. Also Varys, go post.

In all seriousness though, I guess I wouldn't mind something along the lines of a modern military RP. That area can be kind of dark, but... It would have to be well done, but I'll keep my mind on that.