rpanons | generously pack butt with peanuts & carrots

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. Your unfunny, forced memes also fall under this rule.
Do not treat this comm like your personal therapist. Threads about nonfictional suicide, self injury, rape, and abuse will be deleted. There are better resources out there for you.
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.
Shut up about Tumblr. If it's not a discussion about Tumblr RP it will be deleted.

CONCERNS | RESOURCES

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

One of the main problems the last time this was up was that the TDM prompts were thin and lacking in detail. They made the world seem like not that much thought had gone into it, and didn't really offer enough to do or have enough hooks.

What looks simple and succinct to you can look lazy to others. That doesn't mean that your game actually was thin, lazy, or bland, just that the TDM prompts didn't show it off to best advantage.

If you look at the games that are taking off, TDM prompts are usually a couple of paragraphs of clear, descriptive prose and give a much stronger sense of the setting and the game itself. Deeper, richer, more variety. Admittedly, it's hard to hit the sweet spot, because it's also possible for TDM prompts to be overwritten and to have extraneous details that players don't need. And while a game shouldn't live or die by fancy coding, formatting and concept art tend to be elements of successful TDMs.

Some other things you can do: if your game's entire basis is puzzles, then put some into the TDM. Also, find a way to make the TDM game canon. Tie it in with events. Make it attractive for current players to tag people there.

I have been giving this a lot of thought since I posted this interest check, as I've received several comments like this about the TDM I had posted in May. I have a tendency to want to hoard details I've come up with for the actual plot of the game, which caused me to withhold things from being given out as samples for the TDM, and this was definitely to my detriment when I posted it. It's hard to know how much to feed out as crumbs to whet players' appetites without it being like spoilers to future plots or puzzles, but I think I'm getting there now.

The TDM I now have planned for January contains more hooks, a puzzle, more in-game inspired elements, and I will definitely include language about the scenarios being used for future game canon. I believe that the inclusion of this will also help me view the TDM as a necessary game element.

Thanks for your comment and interest!

generously pack butt with peanuts & carrots

Re: Interest Check: Entartung v2.0

no subject