rpanons | Yer wonderful

Yer wonderful

Rundown:

rpanons is an anonymous community for role-play related topics. This place serves as a forum for game discussions, canon discussions, RP solicitations (ATP, game ads, open memes), and advice. The occasional off topic comment is inevitable, but please keep heated social and political topics to their respective communities. Posting them here will only get them frozen. Subsequent threads made to bypass a freeze will then be deleted.

Rules:

Do not post pornographic or shocking images.
Do not share private entries, plurks, chat logs, etc.
Do not use this community as your social/political/hatespeech soapbox.
Do not be redundant. One page does not need three or more threads on one topic/theme.
Do not treat this comm like your personal Plurk or Twitter. Off-topic happens, but it should be open for discussion and not just a play-by-play of your life. No one cares.

CONCERNS | RESOURCES

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

so I think we've pretty much got:
- jamjar
- nexus
- memory loss
- AU
- OC only
- single fandom
or rarely, some combination thereof

subset of that:
- community styled games
- journal styled games
- with or without network/communication devices

what would you like to see more of and what would you like to see less of?

more journal-based games

i actually prefer them

Same here, and it also has the advantage of deterring a lot of the lazy players.

da

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 06:27 (UTC) - Expand

dda

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 06:35 (UTC) - Expand

clunky, inefficient, a pain in the ass as a moderator to manage with the add/drop lists and journal accounts, tittybaby players who throw hissyfits and delete their journals means all those threads get lost forever, encourages insular cliqueyness by making friend filters or just not adding other people

they're archaic and i'm glad they're not popular anymore.

-1 to your -1

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 06:39 (UTC) - Expand

ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 06:50 (UTC) - Expand

ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 06:57 (UTC) - Expand

Re: ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 07:18 (UTC) - Expand

Re: ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 07:25 (UTC) - Expand

da

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 18:01 (UTC) - Expand

Re: ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 07:04 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 07:39 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 07:43 (UTC) - Expand

I agree there should be more of them for people that like that sort of style, but I personally would never play in one.

I like to keep my character journal as tidy and neat as possible and restrict posts to information relevant to that character and my playing, not a crap load of threads that probably never get finished and a friends page that could potentially get flooded. I prefer having one/two comms to go to to check to see who's posted and if anything has any relevance to my character. The potential to just scroll and scroll if I had pages of journal posts would just bee to great for me.

Re: GAME STYLE DISCUSSION

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 07:41 (UTC) - Expand

Re: GAME STYLE DISCUSSION

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 09:02 (UTC) - Expand

da

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 19:48 (UTC) - Expand

if this thread tells me anything, it's that people who prefer journal-based games are pedantic, defensive fucks about it

no thx

i proposed it a while ago but still really have no idea how practical it would be or how it could work on DW, but some kind of forum-styled game would be neat, if it could work.

mostly i think it would be appealing in the sense that IC passage of time in forum-styled games was either really slow or didn't matter at all. the focus was on the story rather than worrying about stuff like, "okay am i tagging fast enough okay a week has passed since this log went up i need to figure out where my character is at and, oh no i've been backdating this thing but logically the outcome would affect this current thing i've been doing and i just fucked myself ok i guess i'll handwave everything and never actually finish anything i start and have my characters in some kind of constant unsure limbo state"

Chalk me up as someone else interested in a different handling of passage of time. In DWRP terms, though, unless you're talking about a game with less than fifteen characters, that's probably going to be a slow time ratio rather than tabletop-style time handling.

I personally think that 1:1 time ratio is a major contributor to plot collapse into slice of life. For practical reasons, things can't get too important or fast-paced more than twice an OOC month -- once from mods, once from players -- but if plot stuff only happens once or twice an IC month, that leaves players with a lot of time to explain away. Essentially, 1:1 time ratio causes IC logistics to suffer, especially for characters who are both competent and wouldn't twiddle their thumbs and go kick back at the bar between things to react to. Because the combination of 1:1 time ratio and monthly cycles clashes with characters driving the plot, I feel that 1:1 is also partially, indirectly responsible for the tendency in games towards the regular use of events that happen to the characters, things they're meant to simply react to and cope with. In short, it's hard to do 1:1 and not be deprotagonizing.

On the other hand, if you go too slow, many players will start to get lazy. If you're going to have a slower time ratio at all, it needs to still be fast enough to stave off "I'll do it tomorrow" -- especially in the face of the pressures of 1:1 being almost everywhere. If the style is intended to be at all DWRPish, as opposed to forum-style like you cite or tabletop-style, it also needs to still be fast enough for player plots to be possible at all, since that's much of the appeal of the style. Finally, some people just plain refuse to deal with games that aren't 1:1 because they're too lazy to keep track of what day it is (though I think having a sticky post at the top of the comms that says what day it is and the weather and such would help).

I'd like to see more AU games (for characters AU'ed to be native to the setting, along with native OCs). There really aren't any right now that aren't set in some kind of high school.

I don't think there are too many canons with a large enough and active enough cast to support a single fandom game, but maybe a limited canon, semi-AU game would work. Like, superhero canons only, or steampunk canons only, or fairy tale canons only, etc. Something where all of the characters have enough common background to make it feel like they're from a single canon. I'm not sure how feasible it would be, though...

LESS pandfandom, comm-based jamjars with network devices. Those are fun, but they make up well over 90% of DWRP.

Please God, more AU games. I'm not even aware of many functional school AUs at this point, excepting one or two that are old as balls. But DWRP could use more in general!

And a great deal fewer panfandom network jamjars set in myserious cities. I have trouble getting into jamjars at all, but that brand in particular makes me yawn myself to death just reading the game info.

I would kill puppies for AU games that aren't high school.

I would love to see more AU games. Even high school ones, so long as someone found a way to make the storyline interesting and give things for adult characters to do other than be teachers.

Still waiting for a Matrix AU panfandom game.

things i want:

- a few but strongly established and active DRS. right now bakerstreet effectively takes the place of a DR but without any of the continuity. new ones that crop up never seem to last long. there's

sixwordstories,

dear_mun,

the_love_hotel and that's like, it. I'd really love it if something like

8_dressing pre-reboot was on DW.

- more aus. there are tons of self-indulgent AUs i'd love to explore and i love the process of integrating a character into a setting in a new way but retains the qualities that still make the character them. i like both fandom-based AUs (like an Matrix AU game would be amazing) and original idea AUs (generic steampunk setting or something). specifically, i'd really love: steampunk au, western au, roaring 20's au, edo period au, matrix au, and a bajillion video game aus that would be too long to list. video games are neat to base things off of because all the world building is already complete, and there's probably a higher chance of your average DWRPer being more familiar with that than the stuff they probably snoozed through in history class (like me; i like it but like hell if i can actually remember anything important now without googling the shit out of everything).

- on that note PLEASE NO MORE MAGICAL COMMUNICATOR DEVICES. or at least please keep it setting-appropriate. a matrix game? hell yes they should have communicators. western game? no, forever no. it is so frustrating trying to justify my characters using those devices when really wouldn't, especially in a setting that forces it for the sake of homogenizing it and making it appeal to more people. if it doesn't fit in the game setting, don't be afraid to leave it out. i LIKE having to make my character struggle and come up with creative work-arounds to communication issues like that. it's a lot more interesting and makes the interactions they do have all the more meaningful, for me.

+100000 to the magical communicators! I'd actually rather that characters not have standard-issue "communicators" at all. If the game is set in a world where cell phones and computers exist, characters can obtain them and use them to contact each other through more realistic means (exchanging phone numbers, using forums, etc).

I kind of prefer AUs with an original setting, if only because I've seen so few canon-based games that actually do a good job of explaining the setting for the canonblind. You need a really solid understanding of the game info and just a sense of the feel of the worldbuilding to write an AU backstory. I'm fine with something based on a canon world, but with enough changes so that people who are familiar with that canon won't be the only ones who know what's going on.

ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 08:27 (UTC) - Expand

Re: ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 08:35 (UTC) - Expand

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmjPoGk4ARJEdE9xcFgwendvLXAzS1lva2hfMTctckE#gid=21

There are all these DRs but no one plays in 99% of them, and every time a new one gets made and everyone gets excited about it ... no one plays in them. I don't know what people want at this rate.

Re: GAME STYLE DISCUSSION

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 16:38 (UTC) - Expand

sa damn it

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 16:46 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 19:59 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 21:10 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 22:06 (UTC) - Expand

Western game?

T E L E G R A P H [STOP]

Re: GAME STYLE DISCUSSION

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-10 17:19 (UTC) - Expand

I would love to have continuity DRs like back on LJ. I miss the casual fun of it, not having to take everything deathly seriously, being able to just throw stuff out there and being surprised at the good CR that would just happen. Unfortunately, everyone I know would rather musebox.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-11 04:49 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-12 09:46 (UTC) - Expand

A million times yes to the Matrix AU. I've been waiting ever since it was first mentioned but it seems nothing came of it.

I'd like to see more games where the characters are active participants in their own fates, not the buttmonkeys of the whims of the jamjar gods, vaguely alluded to be influencing reality by just being there, or openly completely irrelevant to the world. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that they have to be there by choice; it only means that once in the game, they need to be able to make actual meaningful choices that accomplish things and aren't just implementing the will of the benevolent rebel jamjar god.

I only know of one game in all of DWRP that's like this. Where are the other games not characterized by helplessness and/or ennui?

unfortunately, in most games where the characters are active participants in their own fates, about 90% of the playerbase doesn't do anything. a lot of the standard railroaded jamjar tropes gained traction because at least a game shoved through on the rails has something happen, and people are more likely to bestir themselves to engage with plot if they don't have to really put much thought or effort in.

i'd like to see more of that too. and i say that as a mod. yet every time we've offered hooks for people to start taking charge of their own fates more through various means we basically got nothing in return. i don't like railroading a game, but damnit, if that is the only way people will do anything, then so be it.

ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2013-07-09 23:02 (UTC) - Expand

I'd personally like to see more of any sort of game where your character loses something (memories, possessions, powers, etc) and have to work to gain them gain throughout the course of the game. I just like that it gives me a long-term goal to work up to and gives my character incentive to do stuff.

I like nexuses and the whole idea of people just wandering in. You do have to deal with people just posting "Where am I?" all the time, but there are ways to cut back on that. dc_sixwordstories' word limit helped with that.

I'd personally love to see another game like DramaDramaDuck.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only