Greenlit: Roleplayers' Digest

About a week ago, I had originally written and proposed this idea to the moderators of the Roleplay Theatre in a sort of newsletter fashion. Of course, they notified me of the Daily almost immediately and suggested that I propose my idea here.

In general, I had originally planned for the Roleplayers' digest to cover a few topics. The most prominent part of the proposal was the main article/guide. I was interested in bringing a fresh look at some topic into the RPT (And now to the entirety of PC). The topics of the guide/article would range from anything to do with "World Building in Storytelling" to "Sex, Gender, and Culture in Roleplaying". After each article, the topic of the next issue could be suggested or selected by the community at large.

It'll provide a way to update or replace the older guides within the forum. In a way, I believe it will also open up the RPT to the rest of the PC. In many ways, the RPT has seemed like a separate community, so it will be nice to bring the two together.

Some other topics that would have been covered within the Digest would have been things related to the announcements of upcoming events, short descriptions of new and accepting roleplays, and maybe even an interview with a Game Master of a new or successful roleplay. I wasn't sure if I should make new threads for each of those ideas or if they would be able to fit within the main article as well. Just let me know what I need to do with that.

Thanks for letting me take all of your guys' time. I really appreciate it~

Since Daily is focused around pokémon, perhaps you could focus your articles around aspects that are specific to pokémon related roleplaying? I can visualize an analysis of the be or not to be of levels and move limitations for example - a sort of console rules vs freeform rpg creativity article!

Also maybe how to craft a believable pokémon character for RPing, vs creating a human (for example) char? Since the games and anime mostly picture pokémon as intelligent magical animals.

/ideas

Also some articles, if made somewhat like this, would probably fit very well posted as "guides" in the Theatre too (8

In the future, we could do a forum spotlight, like the UG has now.

Quest said:

About a week ago, I had originally written and proposed this idea to the moderators of the Roleplay Theatre in a sort of newsletter fashion. Of course, they notified me of the Daily almost immediately and suggested that I propose my idea here.

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Talk about timing, haha! Let's take a look.

In general, I had originally planned for the Roleplayers' digest to cover a few topics. The most prominent part of the proposal was the main article/guide. I was interested in bringing a fresh look at some topic into the RPT (And now to the entirety of PC). The topics of the guide/article would range from anything to do with "World Building in Storytelling" to "Sex, Gender, and Culture in Roleplaying". After each article, the topic of the next issue could be suggested or selected by the community at large.

It'll provide a way to update or replace the older guides within the forum. In a way, I believe it will also open up the RPT to the rest of the PC. In many ways, the RPT has seemed like a separate community, so it will be nice to bring the two together.

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Personally I'm in favour of guides to doing things like rom hacks and also writing in RPs and the like. It's also something that could involve both the RPT and FF&W sections - have thread discussions in there prior to article writing to get a bunch of suggestions first for each topic (and bonus - sections get activity as well!)

Imo such guides would be best suited to individual articles.

Some other topics that would have been covered within the Digest would have been things related to the announcements of upcoming events, short descriptions of new and accepting roleplays, and maybe even an interview with a Game Master of a new or successful roleplay. I wasn't sure if I should make new threads for each of those ideas or if they would be able to fit within the main article as well. Just let me know what I need to do with that.

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As Rika said below, maybe a forum feature article down the track is the best outlet. I'm somewhat less keen on frequent updates for what is going on for every section - not all readers will be from PC, and the focus of Daily is Pokemon content rather than PC advertising.

However! Some of these things could be adjusted so that they do fit it, e.g. interview with a GM about a new roleplay they made that's Pokemon themed, and how they've adopted the Pokemon world for their roleplay may work out as its own article. And below:

Fire said:

Since Daily is focused around pokémon, perhaps you could focus your articles around aspects that are specific to pokémon related roleplaying? I can visualize an analysis of the be or not to be of levels and move limitations for example - a sort of console rules vs freeform rpg creativity article!

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That's a neat direction to take it in as well. Some can also be again expanded into fics as well - how does one integrate game mechanics like levels or moveset restrictions into their stories? Couple with examples to roleplays that do this or that, and you can hence sneak in advertisements for neat stuff within the section while the article still talks about Pokemon aspects.
Also maybe how to craft a believable pokémon character for RPing, vs creating a human (for example) char? Since the games and anime mostly picture pokémon as intelligent magical animals.

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Also an interesting idea.

Also some articles, if made somewhat like this, would probably fit very well posted as "guides" in the Theatre too

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I'm fine with articles serving the purpose as a guide for a forum as well.


Also jsut a general reminder that individual articles ought to be pitched when you're ready to do so in a separate thread to ease management. Fine to discuss such ideas in here for now until then however!

Okay, the general idea is greenlit! Feel free to use those thread still to respond to the above or discuss RP articles in general. Loosely discussing individual article ideas is fine too here, but for ones you want to pitch please make a new thread (so separate threads for a RP guide, or featuring RPs, etc).

(Also we are also now open to the occasional RP-themed article that has naught to do with Pokemon, but Pokemon based ones are still the preference for Daily staff.)

Quest said:

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While that would be super fun, I feel like that's better done in the Roleplay Theatre itself! After all, it's mostly the existing regulars who will care enough to read.

Am I sounding negative? I don't mean to sound negative (: it would be fun to see reviews like "movie reviews" in the Theatre. As long as the GM is okay with it.

I feel like subjects that are specific to certain roleplays might not be as interesting. I doubt many people outside the section would be interested, and I also don't think people that aren't in the RP or familiar with people in that RP would be too interested. An article I would like to see, in a monthly or bi-weekly fashion, would be RPs to join, as in all active RPs currently accepting players, with little write-ups about them. I feel like analysis are fun, and can fit inside of the RPT itself, but I highly doubt the PCDaily audience would be interested in such stuff, because of how specific it is. Guides and stuff would be ideal, and write-ups about interesting topics about roleplaying that are discussed in the RPT threads seem good as well. I don't know how much formatting allows, but maybe fun stories from the RPT could be a column that is part of the articles, as an unrelated fun tidbit?

I don't like the idea of reviews, as roleplaying isn't an art-form, it's a game, at least in my opinion. Players might strife for well-constructed and well-written posts, but it's not a requirement. Reviewing a roleplay seems to me like going to people's table while they are playing dungeons and dragons, and giving them your thoughts about that. It's for fun, and not made to be some critically acclaimed art-form. Because only a limited amount of articles can be written and posted, I also think that reviewing the performance of certain roleplayers in situations is also a bad choice for topics. It's very susceptible to nepotism, and even if you randomize who the article will be about, a big percentage of the regulars will not get an article. Not too mention that such a review is only from the author's perspective, but seems more official because it's published.

I think the best way to go is to keep the topics broad the roleplaying subject, as much related to pokemon as possible, and don't go too much in depth on the section itself, except for an article about the current RPs people could join every once in a while, maybe. This reflects better on the same way Daily handles pokemon as a subject, instead of PC. I think interesting topics for articles could be how to incorporate pokemon in new settings, pokemon tabletop RPing, gender and race, how to keep an engaged player base, that kind of stuff.

JohnnyMustang said:

That way is just boring, haha. RPs are games, and unless this section suddenly becomes a world wide news site; I'm sure we can use it to create articles and have fun writing them, like a game. And to be honest, what you suggest doesn't sound like something you can do on a daily basis. It's a one time thing.

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Well I mean, none of the articles are literally going to be daily occurrences. Daily is just a nice name for the webzine.

Anyway, I personally would like to see more guides posted in the RPT itself. We've literally just implemented a prefix tag specifically for guides and I'd like to see it getting some use. I think ideally I'd like to see this article series spotlighting an open RP and talking about why it's awesome, maybe highlighting some mechanics present or something - a way of attracting people into open RPs. Of course guides, interviews or whatnot could also be done on occasion though, I just don't want to see this take away from Theatre activity.

gimmepie said:

Well I mean, none of the articles are literally going to be daily occurrences. Daily is just a nice name for the webzine.

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Yeah, we don't need articles of the same series every single day and that'd be a very ambitious aim. =p But we'd like to have content of some sort provided every day!

Anyway, I personally would like to see more guides posted in the RPT itself. We've literally just implemented a prefix tag specifically for guides and I'd like to see it getting some use. I think ideally I'd like to see this article series spotlighting an open RP and talking about why it's awesome, maybe highlighting some mechanics present or something - a way of attracting people into open RPs. Of course guides, interviews or whatnot could also be done on occasion though, I just don't want to see this take away from Theatre activity.

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On the guides and etc thing, Daily articles can be in addition to guides created - e.g. have a thread in RPT about making the guide asking for input from members (who can also discuss specific aspects of it as they go), and turn the produced guide into both a thread in RPT (or put in the OP) and a Daily article. Alternatively, a guide or interview or whatnot is written in the Daily sections and published to Daily, and the comment thread for the article goes into RPT so people can discuss it there. Article on Daily, discussion within the section, everyone wins. =p

Ice said:

I think the best way to go is to keep the topics broad the roleplaying subject, as much related to pokemon as possible, and don't go too much in depth on the section itself, except for an article about the current RPs people could join every once in a while, maybe. This reflects better on the same way Daily handles pokemon as a subject, instead of PC. I think interesting topics for articles could be how to incorporate pokemon in new settings, pokemon tabletop RPing, gender and race, how to keep an engaged player base, that kind of stuff.

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These ideas all sound good to me. And unlike Johnny "this way" doesn't sound boring to me. =p Heck, I'd like that for FF&W articles for instance which may have some overlap with writing RPs as well (How to write this sort of Pokemon fics? How do you treat Pokemon as characters? Pokemon capitalisation [something I intend to pitch later]? Using canon characters?)