[Talk] is rp intimidating?

Ettenmoor said:

I know the thread's a bit old but I think it's still recent enough to post in...

Roleyplaying in general isn't very intimidating or hard to get into for me, but the way that it's done here does make me reluctant to commit to any RPs on this site. I think it's because roleplaying as it's done here feels a lot more like writing a proper story, and if I wanted to do that I could just do it on my own without the structure or limitations that roleplays tend to have. I already have, actually. The concept of Joint Posts in particular really reinforce these feelings for me. Instead of just interacting with other players as I please I need to coordinate with them way more than what should be necessary. I think it boils down to it being way higher commitment than the type of RPs I'm more comfortable with, and the community here is way too used to this kind of roleplay to try other, simpler, forms (I believe I've tried a couple of times to start short-form RPs on this site and failed), so I just never really have the motivation to try out RPing on this site.


Edit: To clarify, I'm more used to RP as a shortform, lighter activity without moderation by a GM or really long posts. Script format is also commonly done in the roleplays I've done before. Perhaps my initial experience was out of the norm, leading to a misconception of what RPing really is, but I still feel like if I wanted to write it would be easier to do so on my own, with roleplaying being a much lower commitment activity.

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I understand where you're coming from- PC's standard style of roleplaying is much different than anywhere else I've been. I don't quite know how we got here! But facts are facts. I would point out that it has a different draw than writing a story on your own- quite apart from essentially having a built-in audience, we also do play with each other. Posts, story direction, details, etc- they are all influenced by everyone else involved. JPs are quite honestly similar to the back and forth casual roleplaying- we just perform an extended scene in one whole posts, rather than making many little ones. It's more organizational than anything!

Ultimately it's a result of this RP community being populated primarily by people who do want to write more extensively and build cohesive stories rather than a casual back and forth, pick-up-and-play type of situation. Neither are inherently better or worse, they just appeal to different people. I would love for more styles of roleplay to pick up on PC! But it's a matter of finding people who are interested in those styles to participate. Our section rules for a long time essentially prohibited anything "casual", which I think has been a hell of a detriment to us tbh. So building back a community of people who enjoy other formats is a task! Letting people know they are allowed to do that here is hard somehow. It certainly is also difficult because none of the current mods are particularly fond of or interested in participating in short-form or script style RPs, so we're not in a good position to make them happen or lift them up. I'm not really sure what to do for you and people interested in similar things as you, Ettenmoor, and it frustrates me that I don't know how I can help besides give this perspective.

Saniccle said:

It really depends on the ✰fanciness✰ (especially if i don't know anyone)

I'm honestly gonna try and wait to find a simple one with a neat premise because I'm not used to long form stuff but I really want to get back into forum roleplaying. It just hits different compared to looking for some random discord server

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I promise things look much fancier from the outside, our Discord servers are nuts. ^^;

Building off what I've said about long-form stuff as well- the examples you tend to see here are... excessive, quite honestly. It very much is not necessary to write 3k words per post, we people that are used to it are just Extra, you know? It's worth checking with your GM but I've written a 330-word post in my own RP, just a couple of short paragraphs. It did what I needed it to do. Not everything needs to go into crazy detail or reach a certain length for it to fit in, be good, and be worth writing! I'm always kinda happy to do and see those short posts, it's satisfying somehow. :)

Ettenmoor said:

I know the thread's a bit old but I think it's still recent enough to post in...

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Some ideas and problems are timeless, don't worry :p. I feel like now (*any* now) is a very good time to bring ideas or even asking for assistance.

Roleyplaying in general isn't very intimidating or hard to get into for me, but the way that it's done here does make me reluctant to commit to any RPs on this site. […] I think it boils down to it being way higher commitment than the type of RPs I'm more comfortable with, and the community here is way too used to this kind of roleplay to try other, simpler, forms

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I can see a good potential for shortforms that are not *too* shortform, in particular because depending on how the RP's campaign is designed, it's a good format to run for RPs that run as part of larger events.

Edit: To clarify, I'm more used to RP as a shortform, lighter activity without moderation by a GM or really long posts. Script format is also commonly done in the roleplays I've done before. Perhaps my initial experience was out of the norm, leading to a misconception of what RPing really is, but I still feel like if I wanted to write it would be easier to do so on my own, with roleplaying being a much lower commitment activity.

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It's not (or it was not) just you. There was, back in the time, a notorious high divergence between the kinds of RPs that developed in various sites that's partly explained by their design choices. Lemme elaborate.

The forum styles and themings of these vBulletin and similar "Board style forums" were not, back then, well suited for fast, or highly collaborative, strands of short posts. Even in the default mobile view of ~2 years ago, there was a lot of noise that gets in the way between one short piece of content and the next: forum indicators, avatars, signatures, "poster meta", that ironically makes shorter content harder to interact with, and thus the sites following those styles have slowly transitioned to expecting longer "worth the table space" RPing styles. For the "write brief, reply fast/concisely" style that can be found in short style RPs, Q&A threads or some old forms of AMAs, chan-style forums (maligned as they are) and BBS ("forum style bulletins", the other way around) were and I think are still the better design choice.

That's part of my view as a systems analyst in computer-related work however, where I had to grow up my career working around (and working around) board style forums for programming and codingand subjects; and nothing to do with the actual narrative value of RPs be they short or long form.

Aaaanyway, that's been long enough a tangent, though I do hope that some of it could beb of use later.

Aquacorde said:

I understand where you're coming from- PC's standard style of roleplaying is much different than anywhere else I've been. I don't quite know how we got here!

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I hope I helped explain about 25% of that :p

JPs are quite honestly similar to the back and forth casual roleplaying- we just perform an extended scene in one whole posts, rather than making many little ones. It's more organizational than anything!

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May as well comment that even the JP culture is different across sites, so perhaps it might be worth the while to design a JPing tutorial, use case or demonstration, if there isn't one already.

Our section rules for a long time essentially prohibited anything "casual", which I think has been a hell of a detriment to us tbh. So building back a community of people who enjoy other formats is a task! Letting people know they are allowed to do that here is hard somehow. It certainly is also difficult because none of the current mods are particularly fond of or interested in participating in short-form or script style RPs, so we're not in a good position to make them happen or lift them up. I'm not really sure what to do for you and people interested in similar things as you, Ettenmoor, and it frustrates me that I don't know how I can help besides give this perspective.

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Wishing this section all the luck they need to be able to change and improve that perception from people. I don't know what kinds of production or marketing would be needed to help people note that It's Okay To Do That (heck, if I knew I'd be able to use those strategies to improve myself ;_; )but if I can see something around other places that could be of help, I'l try and dissect it to point it out.