[Help Request] How Different is TOO Different?

Uhm, right, well I'm new to this flavor of RPing and I have some perhaps silly questions about its inner workings to see if I could pitch a style of RP for feedback.

Now, it might just be that you're all actually just extremely friendly people, but sometimes I get the impression that pretty much everyone here already knows one another. Whether of not that's true it still serves to daunt me as I cannot in good conscience impose myself into such a built community without any sort of qualifications. I've had RP experience in a variety of other mediums, but I've never had a whole lot running with the forum style of it, so I apologize if this is a question that amounts to a nonfactor. It's just that anyone looking can see that I'm a new member here and a green poster besides, and I feel that that can affect my reception. Well, it will affect it, to be sure, but should I be worried about it affecting it too much?

Also, from what I've taken in here, a lot of the RPs appear to be of the sort where the GM sets the story in a certain direction or provides settings and missions and then the participants each write a goodly-sized piece that has their character working through these points, with occasional interactions with other participants, but largely nothing huge between players besides conversations. Now, I recognize that there are outliers to this generalization, such as one I saw with particularly shortened post-lengths in which the GM was actively answering the participants back in a manner akin to a conversation, and I am to understand that there is also an RP type that I'm afraid I haven't observed examples of in which the participants are combative toward one another. The thing I'm getting at here is that a lot of the time the participants seem largely content with taking the GM's prompts and occasionally having short interactions with the other participants. I apologize if that's just how it works here and I'm being a dullard, but would it be particularly poorly-received if a GM were to actively promote collaboration of that manner?

For an example of such, let us say that the story was being presented in a dispatch manner by the GM, who addressed the participants with some missions that required more than one of them to fulfill via working together. Would it be overstepping for the GM to require some of the players to collaborate? I realize of course that most people do have lives off of this forum and may not be able to fulfill these requirements, but do you suppose it would be so heavy an enforcement as to ruin the session's chances?

That's ultimately a question relating to the earlier one about the community, as if you all already know each other, it might be a possibility, but I certainly wouldn't expect you to do it at the command of an outsider like myself. If you're a bunch of strangers, then--assuming you decide to listen to me at all, given my lack of credibility--I can't very well expect any of you to collaborate effectively, even if I only want two people to do it per dispatch and don't care if it's always the same two people. It's just that I can see an activity like that leading to a lot of new friendships between the participants, and it would tickle me so to see people getting along like that. On the other hand, it would be a tad disheartening if no one was up to it. So, what do you suppose the situation would be there? What if they only had to do that kind of thing every now and again?

On a different note, what of GM-introduced participant-controlled persons? Most of the threads here that have a participant write multiple characters are the sort where it's a Trainer over his or her Pokemon, and most others don't implement it at all because it usually constitutes bunnying or ... what was that other term? I don't think I'm looking for godmodding ... well, you get the idea, anyway. Back to the point, if, say, the participants were squad leaders newly-recruited, they might be assigned squad out of a pool of strangers. Let's say for an extra dash of random nontraditional tomfoolery the GM, after accepting an application, gives the participants two loosely-defined squad members that they have full control of in their posts and develop as they see fit. I think it would promote an interesting development in their writing expertise, as they have to play with two characters that they didn't plan ahead for. Like if I gave them silly putty to play with alongside the play-dough of their own character and told them I expected both to be used to make a sculpture. I guess it can happen occasionally in these other threads, but this would be like a from-the-start assignment of people that would be with you until you kill them off of your own choice. Would that be too outlandish, do you think? I think it would let people play with a wider array of character types, to get them out of potential RP comfort zones and promote development as a writer.

Finally, and this one may be especially odd ... Now, I understand the GM sets the start point like setting and to some extent hometown but after that they present limitations and then the participants craft a character under those, right? Outside of the general in relation to the world, GMs don't tinker with the participants' histories, right? What if, say, to foster the collaboration of the previous example, the GM also established that all the participant characters were at the very least acquainted because they had, oh I don't know, graduated from protagonist school together or something? Would that be way out of line? Do you suppose anyone would want to even consider being a part of something that implies that they have to be chummy with their other participants? I mean, if you really all do know each other already it's not a problem--except that, again, I couldn't expect you to answer to me in such a situation--but if you're all shy of one another there's not a whole lot I can do as a text wall-building recluse to change that.

Thank you all for your time in this regard: time is, after all, a horrible thing to waste and it is perhaps a bit presumptuous for me to demand so much of it. I apologize again if these questions all have obvious answers that I am overlooking, and I sincerely hope I'll be able to get the hang of things here before too long.

Okay, well this is...surprisingly well written. And seeing as how I am putting of work anyway...

First question, does everyone know each other?

Not really. There are some people that do know each other very well and have been roleplaying here together for years, but in my experience, I don't really know most people here. I've only been actively roleplaying here for a little less than a year, but even with that there are a lot of people that I feel I have not really gotten to know. Some people are more outspoken and are easier to get to know than others, some are quieter like myself who tend to listen rather than talk, and some enjoy not having a lot of social interaction outside of the roleplay. Plus, we have new members joining all the time, so being able to say that you know a good portion of the community is difficult. That being said, I do believe that there are cliques within the community, mostly just groups of people that congregate around the same types of roleplays. I tend to dislike Pokemon Journey roleplays, and others really enjoy those. So there is a group of people that I never really get to know because we are rarely within the same game.

With your second question regarding interaction between the GM and players, as well as the player to player interaction, I think it highly depends on the GM. Some GMs when they come up with a story have a very set path that they want the players to follow. There is some room there for variation, but those tend to be very controlled by the GM. In those you can get a decent amount of interaction between characters, but it tends to be more the type of thing where the GM gives a post, then all the other players post in response to that, sort of like a Simon Says type thing. Any time two players decide to interact more than is usual, they will often do a joint post to keep clutter down, or try to do it in between the GMs posts. Character interaction is much more common during sandbox roleplays, where the GM just gives the players a situation and lets them go. Whereas the previous example drives the RP forward mostly by plot, sandbox roleplays are practically driven by player to player interaction. So whether or not and how players and GMs interact depends highly on the kind of roleplay, the style the GM prefers, and the activity of other players within the RP. I don't think its unreasonable at all for a GM to demand two players to work together at all, but it can be kind of hard to demand something like that when both have different schedules IRL and have a hard time planning their interaction.

Third question, having the GM implement what would essentially be a community character that anybody could use? I think its an interesting idea, but a lot of what defines a character is what the player has in mind when they write them, as well as the writing style itself. A piece of the author is placed within their character, and having multiple people control a single character sounds like it would create a disjointed person with multiple personality disorder. I don't think it cant be done, I just think that it would be kind of awkward to do.

Final question, forcing character to know each other beforehand. I don't think it's unreasonable, and could be useful in some stories. I think it's not done most of the time simply because it requires more planning on the part of players. After all, if a group of complete strangers meets, anything you write about happens from the beginning of the roleplay to the end. You don't have to worry about messing up other character's histories by having your character tell a tale of past exploits, because the other characters are not involved in it. When you have multiple people with intertwining pasts, alluding to a past event becomes much harder, you have to take into consideration all of your collective histories. To sum up, I think its fine a doable, you just have to make sure your collective characters don't have some convoluted history that's going to make things harder in the long run.

I think you'll do fine here. The most important thing is to have fun, and if you don't like the way that other GMs do things, write up a roleplay for yourself! It never hurts to ask questions about how things are done, and how they might be improved. You brought up some points that honestly I hadn't thought of before tonight, and things that I'll have to take into consideration in the future. Hope my post wasn't too long and rambly (probably was).

Thank you for the response, STARDU5T (I almost called you SPACEPOWD3R), and I believe that if I were to call your post rambling it would be quite the textbook case of a pot-and-kettle! Gwahahaha!

Ahem, but yes it is good to have all of this affirmed, and I suppose it would be the thing about collaboration, to have to dance around IRL schedules. Perhaps if one were to lengthen the time between GM posts to allow them to finish up? Do you suppose a month's time between GM posts would be reasonable? Of course, at that point there is risk of early-posting participants growing tired of the wait, and the only way to properly reduce that risk is to encourage longer posts, and as I understand it having a minimum post length is considered quite distasteful ... Alas. It would be an exercise in futility in the end, I suppose, unless the GM were able to adequately cover for that sort of thing or was actively engaged on the OOC thread to keep interest ...

And regarding the matter of a shared character: that was not quite what I meant, but I must admit that the idea you answered to is quite the curious one. It would certainly be a creative exercise to have the community share a character ... I believe such a session would be best served as a team-building experience to promote cooperation between the participants. Like a workshop, to form a close little group of internet friends. As a standalone story, it cannot be but quite contrived; it would be more about the writing than the written at that point. Still a fun idea, but I would be hard-pressed to find enough volunteers willing to bond with strangers in such a manner.

What I meant by a "GM-introduced participant-controlled person" is a character devised by the GM and given to a single participant to control. Other participants wouldn't be able to control this Add-On (as we shall call it for sake of readability) and the GM would yield control to the participant who now "owns" the Add-On. Say, for example, that my participants are RPing as demon-hunter squad leaders. They're new to the job but have been trained to lead, and one such participant is, oh I don't know, Mary Sue (Heheheh). Mary Sue gets to decide her looks and history and all that stuff, but after that I, the GM, make up a mock-SU of my own and give it to Mary Sue, and it is a barebones description of, say, Gary Stu, who is in Mary Sue's squad. I describe Gary Stu as being x years old and from y with several years of experience, a can-do attitude, and a glass left eye. Mary Sue gets to write for and control Gary Stu's actions whether or not they agree with that: he is now her character. He can interact with others but is an NPC controlled not by the GM or the other participants but by Mary Sue. She might even have Gary Stu killed off at some point to serve her personal story, or choose to build up some history for him through dialogue or something.

An Add-On would be like someone's Pokemon if they were a Trainer, except that rather than the Trainer finding some way to meet them, the GM presses them upon the Trainer. I do believe it would be an interesting way to make people leave their comfort zones. If someone preferred to RP as loud in-your-face characters, it would be a beneficial exercise to make them also be in charge of managing a quiet, inward character. And if they decide to mishandle the character, it's their business, as the GM gave the Add-On to the participant to do as they saw fit with. It may also serve to promote learning how to write for multiple protagonists together if you want to treat the Add-Ons on equal footing to your own character, or else also allow interactions with other participants to have more intense repercussions. No one would want their character to lose a leg or something but if you treat the Add-Ons as under your character in importance, they might be usable as death fodder or the like when interacting with other participants.

With that context, would a GM-introduced Add-On be something that could work, do you think? It is, again, quite similar to the standard sort of Add-On picked up in some Pokemon Trainer RPs, the only difference being that they are developed by the GM and not the participants. Of course, you wouldn't have to treat the Add-Ons with the same level of attention you treat your character, but it opens a lot of interesting doors. I am only concerned that I may be in the distinct minority for thinking this: it is not too far out of sorts, is it?

And I must thank you again for entertaining me thus far, I know that a lot of the time the verbosity and thickness of my posts can make people want to just ignore me, it means a lot when someone actually pays my nonsense heed.

Orx of Twinleaf said:

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So I had written out a really long post explaining some of the things you asked about, and even giving examples of where certain things had happened and such, and then going so in depth as to explain the examples. As much as I want to help with any questions that are unanswered, I dont want to write all that out again. If you still have any unanswered questions, feel free to drop me a message, and I'll do my best to help out

*curses under his breath as he walks away panting*

;___; I think this thread is cursed, because I was at like my fourth paragraph when my page refreshed and I lost everything.

Long story short: RPing is a niche, time-consuming, collaborative venture of a hobby, and naturally through working on things together people will get to know one another. Mostly you get to be friends with the people you interact with heavily during an RP, since at some point you'll probably send or receive a VM or PM to talk about stuff or plan things out, especially if you're nice and respectful. These days, player to player interaction has moved from OOC threads to mediums like Skype for easier and more casual conversations, and there's even an official RPT chat, plus chat groups GMs might create for specific RPs.

As for plot-driven vs sandbox RPs in terms of character interaction, I kinda disagree with STARDU5T. It depends heavily on what story/environment that the RPs are set in. Some of my favourite RPs are plot-driven ones where a small group of characters are forced together to fight enemy X or travel to Y or even to attend school Z. An outside influence keeping the characters together and putting them through events or situations together can make for interesting dynamics, and plentiful interaction with a variety of different personalities. On the other hand, I find some sandboxes are a bit too open for my liking, and it's a task to even get your character to be in the same area as anyone else's, let alone get them to work together for an extended period of time; characters with clashing personalities will probably just walk away unless the players themselves find some contrived way of keeping them together. For more than two characters at a time, it can be just a chore to do anything at all other than dialogue. I think this, and the recent popularity of heavily sandbox RPs is why JPs are so common these days.

As STARDU5T said earlier, it is easier to manage an RP where the characters are strangers, since everything about their interactions and relationships are then set during the story. I have been in an RP where all the characters sort of graduated from the same "school" and so were acquaintances, and people ended up kind of having to make up reasons as to why they were striking out alone or had no friends lol. It requires a lot more planning out pre-RP, which just isn't the funnest thing to do.

And finally, in regards to Add-On characters; I think it could definitely be interesting... if it was implemented well. This mechanic would put a lot of strain on the GM, having to create so many varied characters, and possibly on the player, since they would then need to keep track of multiple characters and, if they wanted, give them focus in each post or second post. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if many of these Add-Ons were used as cannon-fodder early on if the player wasn't interested in the character or just didn't have the time for it.

Mechanics-wise, it kind of sounds like a combination of two things we've had here recently. The first is Dust, where a team is composed of four characters but two players, who create the other characters as NPCs with shared control, IIRC. The second is the Secret Santa we had a few months ago, where people wrote anonymously wrote SUs for each other. The second was intended for a fun and relaxed thing though, with pretty much no restrictions other than the ones people set for themselves. I just think it would be a really big undertaking and require players that are willing to put in the effort.

The closest thing I've experienced, personally, is a scenario where another player had their character encounter a Pokemon and given them a rough personality, but hadn't wanted it on their team and so the player offered it to anyone else to claim. I stepped in and took over the Pokemon character and had it join my character's team. Even then it was mostly okay because the personality the Pokemon had had been quite vague and generic, giving me room to tweak it as I liked and create my own SU for it.

Sweet Dreams said:

And finally, in regards to Add-On characters; I think it could definitely be interesting... if it was implemented well. This mechanic would put a lot of strain on the GM, having to create so many varied characters, and possibly on the player, since they would then need to keep track of multiple characters and, if they wanted, give them focus in each post or second post. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if many of these Add-Ons were used as cannon-fodder early on if the player wasn't interested in the character or just didn't have the time for it.

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Sincee most of what I was gonna say is summed up here, I'll just add one more thing.

With regards to add on characters, I've experienced this. In Dust, Foxrally the GM, asked me to include a character in my mission and gave me a breif description of how to characterise her. Now he did give me complete control over her fate, whether she would live or die etc, but I still think this applies this still applies to what was mentioned in the OP.

The character could appear in the future, but she was given to me to use as I please, and I could very well kill her off, meaning she would be an exclusive character given to me by the GM.
So in short, it does happen. It's just not an official thing, nor does it need to be. Forcing NPCs onto people seems a bad idea.

Sweet Dreams said:

As for plot-driven vs sandbox RPs in terms of character interaction, I kinda disagree with STARDU5T. It depends heavily on what story/environment that the RPs are set in. Some of my favourite RPs are plot-driven ones where a small group of characters are forced together to fight enemy X or travel to Y or even to attend school Z. An outside influence keeping the characters together and putting them through events or situations together can make for interesting dynamics, and plentiful interaction with a variety of different personalities. On the other hand, I find some sandboxes are a bit too open for my liking, and it's a task to even get your character to be in the same area as anyone else's, let alone get them to work together for an extended period of time; characters with clashing personalities will probably just walk away unless the players themselves find some contrived way of keeping them together. For more than two characters at a time, it can be just a chore to do anything at all other than dialogue. I think this, and the recent popularity of heavily sandbox RPs is why JPs are so common these days.

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I do think that you are right in this regard, but in my defense, I was making generalizations. I think that the difference is that one type forces you to interact with each other, and the other type essentially allows you to pick and chose who you interact with. And yes, with sandbox RPs you do run into the issue of having complications when three or more characters are in the same place. However in general I would like to say that in linear roleplays its primarily about the characters reacting to situations and building their character and relationships with other characters through those situations. Sandbox RPs tend to be, and still generalizing here based on my own experience, characters interacting and their interacting pushing the plot forward.

Both of those can be switched around too, and not every roleplay can be defined clearly as a linear or sandbox roleplay. Most are somewhere in between on that spectrum.

I thank you all for your input on the matter, it serves quite nicely to clear up the sphere. It would appear that many of my assumptions have been proven in this context, but it has also made evident several other factors I had neglected to take note of.

Hum. Very well, it seems I've many more personal affairs to conduct before I can make such a gesture, I suppose. However, I do hope that some of the things discussed have perhaps given you some new ideas, it would be rather neat to see these things implemented throughout by persons actually qualified to do so.

That's that, then, thank you for responding. I will continue my combing of the threads here and try to soak in some more of the culture. You have all given me quite a bit to consider, and I am sure to have quite an enjoyable time of pondering these matters. I look forward to meeting you elsewhere on the forums, take it easy and remember to have a grand old time, ah?