rpanons | Your privilege at any time is only as strong as the wifi signal

Not suggestions for game settings themselves (though that would be good too), but if you wanted to restructure how games are handled from the ground up, what would you change? What pre-established customs would you get rid of? What would you bring in to change how roleplay is handled in a group setting on this site?

Inspired by that above thread, I'm curious if we have any really forward thinking anons who could make something completely original for this hobby. I'd certainly like to try creating something brand new.

i think apps need to be changed a bit. vomiting out a wiki in a different order doesn't show how anyone has a grasp on their personality or history. emphasis should be put on personality and actual thread samples. i think test drives should be mandatory for samples as to how someone actually plays their character in that game's setting as opposed to some d_m thread or a network/third person sample that doesn't really give anyone a good glimpse at a player's ability to play the character.

i'd make test drives mandatory and have either a handful of mod helpers or volunteers who'd make sure that everyone who signed into the test drive got tagged, or i'd have specific npcs handled by the mods or the mod helpers or the volunteers so that there was something to actually judge in terms of playing.

because let's face it, apps are the biggest problem a lot of games have in terms of not really regulating quality. you have people that can write the fuck out of an app but who suck at playing and are cliquey, and you have people who just have really bad app writing skills but who are great at actively playing and branching out.

maybe make it so that every second month during w/e ac you have, there has to be a link to a thread that isn't with a castmate or is with a crossmedium character to try to break up the cliquey squatter syndrome.

I would LOVE more games with test drive posts, or game-specific dressing rooms, where you could try out your character in the setting before apping. It'd also let the players know if they'd be a good fit and like the playstyle, and it's so much easier to tell how good someone is at RPing when you're not asking for, like... 500 words of fanfic, or rp threads that might be from several years ago, or whatever.

agreeing with the above anon on apps. they should be links to actual threads or posts instead of wiki vomiting.

imo we should also get rid of networks. they work to some extent but usually i hate them. they feel forced to me. why not just have more face-to-face interaction?

that said i really like hh's ic inbox system. it's nice that characters can just walk to their friend's house without setting up a log post.

networks can work, though, in the right setting. that said, game-builders do need to be more honest with themselves about whether their setting needs one. when the world is large, and you would never get CR with some characters due to not being in the same city/planet/other physical location, then you absolutely need a network to prevent it from descending into a collection of tiny cliques. given how much people complain about branching out and making new CR, limiting that seems counterproductive.

however, when the world is small (one city, give or take), then by all means, get rid of the network and use the main comm for face-to-face threads. honestly, of all the things that could be tweaked or changed about game formats, getting rid of the 3 comms systems (separate main and log comms anyway) would be easy to get used to. caveat; for certain games. others want an entire world to explore, so those can keep their networks as far as I'm concerned.

I agree with the two anons above about apps. Making them more game-specific instead of something you can just copy and paste from another app might make people think a little harder about actually joining a game, and it would probably help with quality-control in terms of people who will be proactive and creative with a setting. I really liked Siren's Pull's section that asked about your plans for a character once you got them in game, so I'd like it if something like that became more commonplace. I also like the first anon's idea about putting something in the AC system that makes it so players have to tag around.

We could stand to cut down on the amount of games that heavily rely on networks, or use them differently. For a horror game or a game where the characters are being pulled into a world that's underdeveloped or in a state of conflict, the network could be spotty due to the conflict/spooky plot/whatever. For games that are really well-suited to networks (ones with really good technology or whatever), even just having the network go down from time to time as part of a plot might be nice. Real cellphone service goes out from time to time, so why not have the same thing happen to whatever powers the magical network? I think I'd even enjoy a game with no general network at all, if characters were still given a device that was able to contact individual people, that way I could still reach out to castmates/CR through their inboxes. To keep the appeal of using the devices for one-on-one contact, I'd make it so you can use the threads for AC (maybe once every other month, to avoid people doing nothing but threading in inboxes?), which is something I'm seeing more and more games open themselves up to.

I saw a game idea a few posts back about a premise where the characters being pulled in weren't welcomed with open arms by the natives, and I really like that idea. We've got a few different premises floating around, but most of them (as far as I can remember) deal with NPCs being accepting or at least tolerant of our characters. Switching things like that up would make the games we already have less generic, too. I'd also like to see more games have smaller character caps, smaller settings in general (tiny villages instead of sprawling cities, for example), more AU games, and games that are set ahead of time to have a short run (that game that cropped up a few months ago, Hunter's Game, is a good example of this).

Looking at all of this, though, I really just think that people need to be a little more proactive and open to new things. Our games can be kind of stale because people are afraid of trying new things, so the people who make games tend to stick with the same few ideas. Networks make people a little lazy and less proactive, because they make it so easy to get CR. Doing something that would have an impact on those two things would probably make for a really interesting game, and if changes like that could be applied DWRP-wide, things might get less stagnant as a whole. I also think we could do without wankgate at this point, since it makes people afraid to try new things (which is something we need!). I don't think anything that happens there couldn't happen here, aside from leaking plurks, which really doesn't need to happen in the first place. I'm not sure I see this ever happening in the near future, though, since people are really fixated on keeping it around.

YESSS plans section. I've seen a few games do it but it really should be the norm, especially if it encouraged talking to players already in the game.

I totally agree with the above anons re: apps. I'd have it so that samples are done from a test drive comm or meme for the game's setting and style and so that they were the bulk of the app - maybe request three sample threads of at least 15 comments from the applicant - and personality/history would be a lot shorter because way too many RPers think that a long personality section means they're better at the character (exceptions being OCs where more detail is necessary to judge them).

Also, I think having more single-fandom games, or even single-media or character capped games, would be very helpful. I think a lot of the games with a "you're here to fight these evil things for us!" games (think asgard or soul campaign) would work really well with a low character limit that would allow for more focused plot than games with hundreds of characters. I'd also consider temporarily capping certain types of characters - say heroes or villains or superpowered people - if they began to overwhelm the game.

Furthermore, I'd have more games where characters can't be re-apped after being dropped, and/ where they face permadeath instead of dying and being revived because I know a lot of long-term players who have had to deal with the same close cr dropping and re-apping and it's frustrating as hell for castmates, and I've had enough of terrible rpers who are constantly killing their characters for drama.

I'd also like more games where there's no mass network. There may be one-on-one comm systems like phones but where face-to-face interaction is the norm.

Lastly, if it was a jamjar, I'd actually have a way out. But it would be difficult to access (and probably require teamwork/a long while to get to) and a one-way trip back to provide a slight variation on the normal jamjar that would allow characters to develop some cr without making it completely impossible for characters to leave of their own free will.

I LOVE YOUR IDEAS and yesss permadeath i forgot that in my post, but i want that, too.

No to single medium games. Medium is irrelevant. Genre is much more important. I don't want my atypical grown-ass animu stuck only with shone heroes and magical girls.

Considering how much bitching there is about people being medium snobs? I see no problem with there being a few single-medium games. It's not like it excludes the existence of panfandom rps with specific character genres.

going to add another voice into the echo chamber re: apps. i've had a few different ideas of how to approach this, but nothing concrete. i agree that they should definitely be more game-oriented and writing-based (and by that i mean prose/characterization and not how well someone can write an essay). i don't think that history and personality sections should go away, because it's important to see how the player views their character as well as their character's role in the canon, but they should be more streamlined and not huge tl;dr essays anymore. wiki links to histories should also be done away with. partially because a lot of fandom wikis are terrible, and partially because it's important to know that a player actually understands the freakin canon and can write about it in a clean, simple, and succinct way.

one new idea i had was to make test drives and change them from memes to actual serious posts -- have them mirror whatever real actual plot is going on in the game at the time, and have people tag them as though the characters have been in the game for a while and make it more of a community post where actual events happen and shit gets done, instead of just individual character threads like a meme. then the potential player provides a link to what they did as part of their app, to not only show how they play the character in terms of characterization, but to really honestly earnestly show how the character would behave in and adapt to the game environment. would they really bring anything to the community at all?

networks need to be repurposed. get rid of the fucking all-encompassing communicator idea already. it's ridiculous. you mean to tell me that this post-apocalyptic world, or this fantasy-based world, or this world based in history has a fucking... magic-based digital message board that every single person in the environment posts shit to -- sometimes really personal shit -- for everyone to see, just so that they can keep everyone up to speed on what's going on? facebook doesn't exist in all environments ok it just doesn't, and if you have to really reach for ideas to make a "network" like that fit in your setting, it probably shouldn't be there. i'm not saying that everything should be face-to-face or in logs, but... i mean, what ever happened to phones? you know, like telephones? person to person chat? conference calls? things like that?

i want character caps to come back and the game setting to be small and intimate enough that the game doesn't even need a game-wide network. i'm not saying to stick everyone in a giant resident evil-style mansion so that they're always on top of each other, but a small, close, tight-knit community would be awesome. similarly, don't design your game to be all-encompassing to cater to the lowest common denominator so that people will be able to app whatever character they want. some characters really shouldn't be played in some settings, but mods seem to always bend over backwards to try to make those characters work and feel comfy. make your setting the way you want it, OP. don't water it down for the masses.

give people a tangible goal to work towards in the setting. "you're whisked away to a strange town and this is your life now and sometimes random events happen ok bye" is not a tangible goal, and i'm so done with every single goddamn jamjar being just that. pull a dark cloud and make it so that characters actually have to rebuild the town or something. have a main villain that actually brings characters together via the havoc they wreak and the suffering that they cause. make the setting huge with very few landmarks and no IC map so that it forces them to explore and actually draw up a damn map. idk. i'm just throwing these out off the top of my head. just do something. throwing out event after event after event after event like dwrp does not isn't necessarily indicative of a plot, even though most people think that it is. give the characters a long-term goal, and make sure that it's one that people won't forget and drop almost immediately because, when everyone's honest with themselves, it doesn't really actually matter.

play with your environment. add things. destroy things. change things. move things. it doesn't even have to be big changes, but a lot of games devolve into slice of life because the characters have nothing to work towards and they establish a comfy residence that they can depend on always being there and remaining constant.

on the other side of that, don't just play with the environment. play with the characters in your game. i know a_trialbyfire was a huge clusterfuck of badness and shitty rp, but one of the things that drew a lot of people to that game (including myself) was the fact that events in that game often times messed with characters on a personal, intimate level, specific to their CR and character arcs. dungeon master that shit, OP. fuck with people's lives. it'll be great.

that's just a few suggestions. feel free to ignore me entirely. but these are the things i wish for sometimes.

YO DID YOU JUST PITCH THE IDEA OF A DARK CLOUD-INSPIRED GAME

omg and all of the characters would have to work together and rely on everyone's individual strengths and knowledge to both adventure and rebuild the towns so every single character would be important and there could be monsters and a main antagonist and maybe you could even do a thing where characters are stripped of their powers at first and have to work to get them back with help of those around them and and and and

OP fuck everything else and just make this game.

yes omg and now that you say it like this that does actually sound really fun. if op doesn't do this i might.

just pointing out that i've gotten in a few discussions over test drives and having it be game-play related, but the problem with that is that unless the character gets in, the existing in-game characters have to retcon anything they played out in those threads, which isn't fair to them.

well it's not like anyone's forcing them to tag in. in fact, my ideal would be for the post to consist mainly of prospective players rather than ones already in the game, since it would be a mandatory part of the app anyway.

of course, the flaw with that is what if not a lot of people want to commit to apping and therefore don't tag on the post...

sigh idk. it was just an idea. something has to change about apps, though. i just don't know what.

Re: ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-02 16:47 (UTC) - Expand

well it might work in a game if it's incorporated as an element. for example a jamjar where, during test drives, it's icly explained as the area fluctuating which results in people being temporarily brought in? that way if say, a prospective character and a game character solve something together and the prospective player doesn't end up going through with it there's no need to retcon? but if they do, they can pick up cr with the game character.

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(Anonymous) - 2014-01-02 17:07 (UTC) - Expand

what anon fail?

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(Anonymous) - 2014-01-02 17:43 (UTC) - Expand

I agree with what others said on apps and would like to see the following stuff.

Get rid of history, instead just do something where you link to general info on the canon. Mostly this is to know it is a legit canon and a rough idea about the canon if the mods need it.

Personality and abilities definitely should remain. Samples should be changed up to allow options for ways of doing it. Requiring threads in the test drive is one good idea, but honestly may have some issues. I'd rather see something like people can choose to link a thread, do a thread with a mod or current player, or do an IC Q&A like Luceti and some other games have. I love Luceti's Q&As because they are tailored to the character and usually give at least one question that will make the character squirm a bit in answering.

Add in a section for suitability and things you can see your character doing in the game. Most players don't think about what their character will do beyond their intro post, and that's why so many end up dropping within a month or two. Require players to give a few paragraphs on how they think their character will adapt to the setting and what will the player/character do to ensure that the character is active enough to make AC after the first month. Nothing in this will be set in stone since the CR the character gains can be a large factor to determine how well they will adapt, but having an idea of things your character would get involved in and how they'd adapt to the setting not only makes sure that the player thought about more than just apping in to a cast or with their friends, but also that they actually read the info about the setting.

instead of "a network" that consists of a livejournal community just for jamjar residents, have the communication section be more like the actual internet with different websites and forums and shit

why are you all so bent out of shape about exclusively apps? apps are fine. this is the most off point discussion ever.

there is no theoretical app that will allow mods to keep shitty people out with a hundred percent success rate. the only thing that could help with that is culturally being more tolerant of booting people out of games just for being sub par.

Word. Yeah, apps aren't perfect, but they're probably never going to be. People are always going to slip through the cracks who you wish you hadn't accepted, whatever you do about it, and the solution definitely isn't to make apps this weird intensive game wide test drive experience that's a bigger pain in the ass for everybody involved, including existing players who I'd prefer to see tagging more stuff in game than test driving. Like, apps are fine. Two samples is usually enough to get an idea of how good someone is; on the occasion I'm not sure after reading them I just ask a player for another one.

Honestly, most of the players I've ever let into games I've run that I've regretted have been ones where I knew from the app that something was up but decided to cut them some slack, and the more I mod the more I learn not to do that. I can think of maybe one player whose app impressed me but who turned out to be garbage, and the thing is that person didn't show her ass until months after we let her in. She had loads of great threads and then abruptly took a one way turn into garbage town and started making everybody uncomfortable. So... we booted her. It was a pain, but if we'd had some kind of test drive vetting system like people are talking about here she would still have passed with flying colors.

+1

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-02 20:50 (UTC) - Expand

honestly it's the principle of the thing. i get so exhausted when i think about having to write an app, because it's more a measure of how well you can write an essay and not how well you can write prose or how well you can characterize or how well you play with others. i would like to see apps focus more on tags and samples personally.

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ayrt

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da

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(Anonymous) - 2014-01-04 01:02 (UTC) - Expand

because writing in a writing hobby is hard

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sa

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ayrt again

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ayrt

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Re: ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-03 08:55 (UTC) - Expand

if you're going to have a game be truly panfandom, get over yourselves when it comes to multiple characters, fan characters, OCs, and AUs. Just allow everything and judge things based on quality. DWRP needs to stop being so damn allergic to OCs, AUs, and fan characters; it's not the fucking 90s anymore.

I'm not saying EVERY game should be like that, it's just something I'd like to see. Have a game where there's 500 of the main character of the newest fad canon. Whatever.

Agreeing on the whole "allow change" thing, regardless of what that change is. Let characters go home and actually alter their homeworlds (Distant Skies allowed this, and it was excellent. Shame about the mods). Let them alter the world in huge, tangible ways. Allow real, permanent alteration. Allow the villains to actually succeed every once in a while with their horrible takeover schemes; Sauron isn't interesting after all UNLESS he returns and builds his army. If he's stopped before he starts it's stupid.

The biggest problem with trying to run a game where players can significantly affect things: players always complain they want their characters to be able to change the world but never want to accept any permanent negative consequences for their character's actions. Only the good, never the bad, and players also expect you to completely handhold them and lay out literally every single possible bad outcome, even if those outcomes are only maybes that MIGHT come ingame months down the road; if you're running a plot-heavy game with multiple subplot threads that can also be affected by the characters you sometimes CAN'T know ahead of time how it's all going to ultimately play out.

More than once players played twenty questions with me to blatantly try to metagame and infomod their way past their character suffering any negative repercussions for whatever they were plotting. I've also seen them get massively butthurt and ragequit plots because there was no way for them to magically go right back to playing house with the other half of their kawaii otp as if nothing had ever happened after it was over.

If players want characters to have the power to change the game they need to put on their big girl panties and actually accept the damn consequences to those changes. Your character might get injured, they might die, they might become wanted by local law enforcement, they might lose their house or their money or their powers or their weapons. Shit can happen if you decide to fuck with the powers that be and no you DON'T always know how things will shape up ahead of time.

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below anon

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anon below you

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ayrt

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ayrt

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ayrt

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