rpanons | 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

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.

well, for one thing, drs are up against the great hulking juggernaut of bakerstreet, and they just can't compete against bakerstreet's size, activity, simplicity, and steady

stream of new prompts. a dr that doesn't offer something substantially different from bakerstreet probably isn't going to go anywhere.

another problem is advertising... it's easy to advertise a new meme on bakerstreet, but where do you advertise a dr? advertising it as a game on atp kind of goes against the spontaneity of drs.

but like a game, a dr that doesn't have a core group of starting players who will maintain activity is going to be dismissed as "dead on arrival." even when there's no app to fill out, dwrpers are too self conscious to play in a place that seems empty.

i think one way to go might be to have more "open museboxes" - small games with little or no application process that can experiment more with creative styles and themes.

Since

wayswithwords has been the point of discussion a couple of times recently...

People expect DRs to be of game-level quality in regards to players as well as characters. Which, naturally, defies the point of an open dressing room.

This in turn leads to people bitching and moaning about everything that happens in DRs, if it isn't entirely up to par with what would happen in a high-quality game. The whole point of DRs is having fun, though, which doesn't always tie in with being flawlessly IC. Sometimes, stupid AUs and random scenarios are a lot more entertaining.

... the thing is, most people dislike being relentlessly shit on for simply having fun in a DR. So they take their verses to private museboxes, which leaves the DRs dying yet again.

The only necessary difference between games and DRs is that DRs don't have activity checks or apps (or, like Mallow Hallow, they have simple apps). There's no reason why you can't have high-quality gameplay and characterization and plotting and continuity in a DR. If DRs are just for random scenarios and stupid AUs and playing with canonmates, then there's no point - you can get all of that on memes now. There just isn't much need for the old single-fandom crack DRs.

But there are obviously still people who want the quality and plot continuity of games without the bloated app requirements. Even the most stringent apps don't guarantee "quality" gameplay, and no AC requirement seems to stop people from character squatting and dropping threads. There's just no magical combination of rules that's going to solve those problems.

So why not try going the opposite direction? Simple apps, no activity requirements. There are other ways to monitor quality (like through some kind of feedback system where too many legitimate complaints can result in removal of the characters) and there are other ways to encourage activity (like through mandatory CR memes). That's how we used to run small games back when LJRP started and all you usually needed to submit was a character profile (and info on weapons/powers if applicable to the game).

I never said you can't have quality in DRs. I personally have no issues playing in them; my point was that several people cry about the possibility of someone who is not what they consider a ~great~ RPer daring to tag them. The point isn't that you can't have quality at all, it's that you'll always get a few players joining whose idea of good may vary.

As for apps... Are you literally me. I just had that same discussion over at WG! But seriously, the idea sounds pretty great. I suspect it would get a whole lot of anon hate and trigger a few shitstorms nowadays, but at the very least in theory, it sounds absolutely fantastic.

For a game, that is.

I think the point of DRs is that everyone can play anything at any given time, without having to app, no matter whether somebody else plays the same character. The AUs and stupid scenarios were more of an example into the direction of what people love to shit on. Back in LJ!SWS, I had a lot of great, cross-canon, serious (well, as serious as RP gets) verses with multiple people, some which lasted over several months. I think that is the kind of thing I am missing most about DR-culture at the moment. Alright, now, I have museboxes and PSLs, but it used to be far more carefree, if you know what I mean? It is kind of hard to explain.

Yer wonderful

Re: GAME STYLE DISCUSSION

Re: GAME STYLE DISCUSSION

sa damn it

no subject

no subject

no subject