((OOC - Discussion tiems!))
Apr. 20th, 2010 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sharpestscalpel((OOC - So, this mirror game is an off-shoot of the very first online RP in which I've been involved. I've done a lot of table-top, some LARP, and some single-player computer-based RPG but using LJ this way kind of fascinates me. And I was thinking about that and thinking about the things that I love and the things that have been driving me crazy and I started to wonder:
What does your ideal online RP look like?
I'm posting this here because I'm interested in the thoughts of other players but also, if anyone wants to speak on it, the thoughts of readers. It's such an interesting performative way of playing and I'm pondering the back-end portion of it, the meta of it, the tendency of myself to forget that other people can read any of this, that sort of thing. Let's assume that all discussion is out of character - if, you know, there actually IS discussion and not just me rambling along in my little corner here.
To me, the best RP is a form of collaborative story telling. It becomes a tapestry of lots of different stories that all touch on and influence each other. I feel like there are some barriers to that in this format (LJ) - but that in other ways this format is ideal for games that result in a collaborative narrative.
And now we've started Twittering and I'm kind of in love with the idea of a game that works across social networking platforms. But the drawback is that then you have to put in the work to make it happen across social networking platforms and readers have a hard time following everything. I used to play a table-top game that involved a lot of websites and internets research, though, and it was phenomenally fascinating. I'm not sure where the trade-off is for that.
Anybody? Bueller?))
What does your ideal online RP look like?
I'm posting this here because I'm interested in the thoughts of other players but also, if anyone wants to speak on it, the thoughts of readers. It's such an interesting performative way of playing and I'm pondering the back-end portion of it, the meta of it, the tendency of myself to forget that other people can read any of this, that sort of thing. Let's assume that all discussion is out of character - if, you know, there actually IS discussion and not just me rambling along in my little corner here.
To me, the best RP is a form of collaborative story telling. It becomes a tapestry of lots of different stories that all touch on and influence each other. I feel like there are some barriers to that in this format (LJ) - but that in other ways this format is ideal for games that result in a collaborative narrative.
And now we've started Twittering and I'm kind of in love with the idea of a game that works across social networking platforms. But the drawback is that then you have to put in the work to make it happen across social networking platforms and readers have a hard time following everything. I used to play a table-top game that involved a lot of websites and internets research, though, and it was phenomenally fascinating. I'm not sure where the trade-off is for that.
Anybody? Bueller?))
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-04-24 09:00 pm (UTC)If you're following everyone who has a Twitter, you can see all the tweets to each other in one place. My IM client does Twitter too, so it looks just like the chatroom to me. It's only as difficult to know who's replying to what as it ever is in crackchat.
a huge chunk of the RP has gotten onto it
Thirteen characters, actually. Ten or eleven players (I'm not sure if T'Vau-mun has another character on there, because I'm not sure who T'Vau-mun is.)
affecting the game in character
I see the Twitter thing as similar to the Improbably-Timed LJ Entries here, or memes, or posting youtube videos--in character, but not canonical.
It makes me sad to see people who barely even post/tag on here leaping over to reply on twitter a bunch.
Why? I don't think being on twitter makes people less likely to tag on LJ. If someone has trouble tagging but can RP on Twitter, why is that a bad thing? In fact, I think it may be beneficial--getting to play with a character more informally can help a mun develop that character, and maybe even post more on LJ as a result because they're more comfortable with the character.
A lot of people have stopped coming to crackchat, and those who do rarely RP there anymore. Crackchat used to be a place where we could play with our characters and find their voices without having it necessarily impact gameplay. I think Twitter has begun to partially fill the void that was left when people abandoned the chat.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-25 12:56 pm (UTC)And I actually prefer Twitter or Buzz to chat - because if you aren't in the chat CONSTANTLY then you miss stuff and there is no way to get it back. I can pop in to twitter and reply to two people and then be done with it or I can natter back and forth with people entirely independently of the game. I like that it doesn't require the constant monitoring that chat did/does. That's one thing that made me stop going into chat.
It can be frustrating to see people I'd like to RP with be active in one forum but not on another but I think it IS important to note that doing one doesn't necessarily detract from the other. Again, to use chat as a reference, it was massively frustrating to be waiting on tags from people and know they were in chat for 4 hours and I still hadn't gotten anything from them. But even if they hadn't been in chat, they might not have replied. There's no way of knowing. And people get different things from the game anyway. I think some people really do value the community of players even more than the actual story being created and if they get what they need from interacting without being really active gamers, I can't really complain about that, you know?