Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Discussion Mandatory Culture Change Demanded

Unfinished stories suck. The best thing about forum roleplay is that you can write a post and log off for a week to come back later to the story and engage with it again. That is if you want to. I love the people I write with but sometimes a private thread, or even a public one, doesn't work out. The story is crap in execution or something like that so we move on and find something else we want to write in. That is how I roll.

The only threads I think that you should be posting frequently, as like an obligation, are Invasions or Annihilations. It is literally against the rules to be a slow poster if you are writing in such threads so I like to post fast and frequently to them when I have things to reply to.

btw if you are feeling "guilt" because you haven't replied to something yet then touch grass. Respectfully.
Also follow up:

Guilt about not posting isn’t a bad thing. I am a frequent cliff/grass toucher and I feel bad about not posting. It means you value the other persons time and effort and want to make a timely response. Patronizing people because they care about other writers and the community they involve themselves in is something I don’t think you should be doing.

I owe some posts at the moment and I will get to them promptly, not out of obligation or some form of punishment or anything. But the fact that I want them to experience my story and experience theirs, and sometimes waiting sucks.
 
Keep the shade down homie, no one asked for it. Shaming people is ALSO a reason they may not pick up a thread again.
I think people are well equipped to deal with a discussion and rebuttals to their points if they participate in a public domain and a public discourse regarding a subject. It’s an observation not an insult, and I don’t mean to insult or offend by observing or analyzing someone’s public opinion, just participate in the same discussion.
 
I think people are well equipped to deal with a discussion and rebuttals to their points if they participate in a public domain and a public discourse regarding a subject. It’s an observation not an insult, and I don’t mean to insult or offend by observing or analyzing someone’s public opinion, just participate in the same discussion.

I won't repeat myself. It was rude - Don't do it again.
 

Vazela

OOC Writer Account
Alan Alan

I have seen people apologise after a day or two of not posting. It isn't that deep man. Yeah, you're taking the p*** if you're taking over a week to reply.
 
I think interest, time, and access are things that ebb and flow. I appreciate forum rp because its something that can be returned to. I know I've done my fair share of dropped threads because I've just gotten busy. We are all (most) adults that have IRL obligations and I think just having communication with your writing partners is key and very helpful.

Be direct and enjoy what you're doing and have fun!
 
PATRIMONIUM
Ok. My joking nature in the OP may not have been the way to set up this discussion. My primary point of discussion is unfulfilling faction threads, a lot of people seem to be taking Private threads into account as well. Dropped threads are a reality, it is RP. It happens. I have accepted this and have adapted my expectations. My desire in starting this thread was to ask everyone else to do the same.

My solution to this problem is to aim to complete a story within 5-6 posts, because that is the average that I perceive. The problem is that not everyone treats these inter-faction/dominions/populates threads in that manner. So you will get someone setting up for a 12-15 post run, but only getting 6 posts in and being unsatisfied with an unfinished story, and someone else geared for a 5-6 post run that is not getting the forward momentum they want.

Basically. Everyone think like me and we will be fine.

I do push back on the idea of Map Game threads serving no purpose beyond 30 posts. If that is the case, I feel incredibly disheartened for having put effort into creating story and such for them if that is the general consensus. I take solace in my perception that this is not the general consensus because I have never heard it stated that way before. Perhaps it is just a case of saying the quiet part out loud.
 
Ok. My joking nature in the OP may not have been the way to set up this discussion. My primary point of discussion is unfulfilling faction threads, a lot of people seem to be taking Private threads into account as well. Dropped threads are a reality, it is RP. It happens. I have accepted this and have adapted my expectations. My desire in starting this thread was to ask everyone else to do the same.

My solution to this problem is to aim to complete a story within 5-6 posts, because that is the average that I perceive. The problem is that not everyone treats these inter-faction/dominions/populates threads in that manner. So you will get someone setting up for a 12-15 post run, but only getting 6 posts in and being unsatisfied with an unfinished story, and someone else geared for a 5-6 post run that is not getting the forward momentum they want.

Basically. Everyone think like me and we will be fine.

I do push back on the idea of Map Game threads serving no purpose beyond 30 posts. If that is the case, I feel incredibly disheartened for having put effort into creating story and such for them if that is the general consensus. I take solace in my perception that this is not the general consensus because I have never heard it stated that way before. Perhaps it is just a case of saying the quiet part out loud.

I mean, you're in the best position to effect change in your main faction's community. As a faction admin, you can broadcast the "gear up for a 5-6 post run" vibe and have it take root pretty effectively. As far as the rest of the board goes, factions follow the meta. If your mindset proves to be what's effective and keeps people engaged/happy, the rest of the factions will copy your homework and say it's theirs.

As far as map threads go, I wouldn't be disheartened. Your faction has swapped over to a "passive gain" mandate, so traditional Dominions aren't in the cards for you anymore I reckon.

Frankly you're in the sweet spot for everything you're asking for in this thread. Go forth and conquer dude!
 
PATRIMONIUM
I hear from friends about an increasing exasperation with unfinished threads, especially big, group, faction threads. It comes up all the time. And I call them whiney little babies and they need to get over themselves. This isn't true. I have no friends. It is just random people that complain about this.

Anyways. I have been operating under an assumption for some time now. Junction, Dominion, Annihilation, Populate? Yeah, plan a story around 5-6 posts long. Best to start in media res, and push the plot forward every post. You have to make things happen, even if people give you the dreaded UhWhat reaction.

I mean, you're in the best position to effect change in your main faction's community. As a faction admin, you can broadcast the "gear up for a 5-6 post run" vibe and have it take root pretty effectively. As far as the rest of the board goes, factions follow the meta. If your mindset proves to be what's effective and keeps people engaged/happy, the rest of the factions will copy your homework and say it's theirs.

As far as map threads go, I wouldn't be disheartened. Your faction has swapped over to a "passive gain" mandate, so traditional Dominions aren't in the cards for you anymore I reckon.

Frankly you're in the sweet spot for everything you're asking for in this thread. Go forth and conquer dude!

Just confirming from what I said in my opening post (again, coming at it from the goofball angle was not my greatest idea ever) was that my intent with this thread is to create conversation around a possible change to the meta. This being spurred on by complaints I hear from other writers on the site. I have the 'be the change' aspect well in hand, and have had good success with story based faction threads. It is not everybody's cup of tea, because the lore can be a steep learning curve, but that is why we do social style threads well. Give everyone what they want.

I am not disheartened by internal faction threads. But the possibility of my efforts simply being farmed for hexes by people that don't care above the 30 post threshold is actually quite disheartening. You get 8 writers excited about a Junction, and you can have 30 posts in two days quite easily. But then we got them excited about a thread that we have no intention of bringing any satisfactory conclusion. Are we really saying that the thread is done at that point? Everyone gets 3.75 posts and we can expect people to start checking out. Perhaps the new meta should be 'try and tell a story in 3 posts'. Or just declare a junction and get hexes?

I should be clear, that this is not in relation to any specific thread that is going now, or recently finished. This is a conversation that comes up frequently (as noted often in this thread), and I decided to be the fool that spoke up and asked if we could change the way we think about them.
 
Everything you became, and chose not to be.
Well, at least this isn’t "Second" or "A day in the life of" style like that "other" site you and I met on? Remember that? If you were in Engneering (for example) and someone you were writing with was supposed to call you to the shuttle/launch bays and hadn't been around for a couple of days, you were waiting.

At least here you can have a character in multiple threads. I'm with you on most of what you brought up, but if it's not a "wall of text" or a word salad. I can adapt.

I think that is the thing. It's not Nanowrimo(generally speaking) and is often treated like it is.I've been playing with my writing lately to try and make it easier to follow, and have conversations with who I write with about what we want,then just get there
 
As for post size having been around forever I can tell you it ebbs and flows like most everything. It's also dependant on writer. For me personally my posts start out longer but get short over the progression of a thread. Because I want to get more description in, in the beginning so people know what's going on but as a thread goes on I have less of that to do. But also I have seen periods of time on boards where people post novels then over times it becomes sentences, then inevitably builds back up again.

As for threads not finishing or getting abadonned that is a tale as old as time. It's do to the fact we all have real lives (well most of us.). Also the fact we have to abandon somethings to actually keep the momentum going for further stories. Again there is the real life issue as well of time to commit to finishing a story.

I have learned to adapt to the changes in story or fill in the blanks if something doesn't get finished.
 
i had a whole thesis ready to go for this but reading the replies kind of took the wind out of my sails.

I think people are being a bit too combative and argumentative over what is essentially just a suggestion to adjust their frame of mind for how they approach their story mapping so that they don't find themselves dropping a dominion (or whatever faction thread) after X posts out of lack of interest. If you find yourself disinterested with a particular thread "type" (as in dominion, invasion, etc) then consider changing what you are doing in that thread, not in the sense of what your character is doing but rather how you, the writer sitting above a keyboard, is utilizing your character in your writing. This doesn't necessarily stop with individual writers, though, if each successive dominion a faction launches ends at the 30ish post mark and everyone is just kind of phoning it in and not really enjoying themselves then it's up to the people who run that faction to turn things around. Nobody is perfect, you won't appeal to everyone, and you don't necessarily need to try to do it all the time (the wheel must keep turning, even if it has to be a slog for a thread or two) but it's you (no, not you) who dictates how your faction threads work.

And, yes, there is nuance to posts being cut short - people have lives outside of chaos that can dictate their free time, they also have interests which can grow or shrink at a whim. People will stop posting to you, sometimes, even if they don't want to - and especially when they do - and we just have to accept that as a fact of life. Sometimes, however, we also need to realize that we are that other person in the situation and understand that, sometimes, our approach to a thread can change how much we want to continue posting in a positive way. Nobody is asking anyone to do something they don't want to do, just to consider other avenues for how you join and partake in threads on chaos so you can get the most of your experience in a way which might possibly maybe motivate you to keep posting a couple more times, which might just maybe possibly potentially keep the other people you write with posting too.

(I had 14 paragraphs but I deleted them all and wrote this instead.)
 

Kitter Bitters

Keeper of Bitter Tales from the Galaxy
The bounty hunting system is another place where I'm struggling to find any fun.

What's not fun is doing research on someone else's character, planning out a strategy, putting together a nice div, researching a setting, and then trying to communicate OOC about what they actually want story-wise… only to deal with writers who care more about ego-boosting than actual storytelling. They chase faux "reputation points" on a bounty they never intend for anyone to collect because it makes them look "cool."

It's not fun dealing with writers who refuse to communicate OOC at all, or who act rude, dismissive, or condescending the moment you try to get clarity.

What are reputation points? Is that something we get with bounties? Admittedly I have a license but haven't actually done any bounties yet.

I think part of the issue with the bounty system is it's designed NOT to have OOC chat. Some people just want you to drop in and surprise them so that it feels more authentic. But I can see where that could cause issues too. It's a fine line.

1. Not having a consistent writing partner. Having someone that you can bounce ideas off of makes a big difference, especially when you go into a faction thread which can feel intimidating for a lot of people, especially new writers.

I think this one is huge. I've got maybe one or two people I consistently write with but I'm trying to find more people who I can thread with. It's hard to break in sometimes.


For me?

I've got a full-time job and 60-hour work weeks, and I come here to relax. I reply to what I can, when I can, how I can, and as much as I can. I've always written long-ish posts, and I'm a fan of descriptions. I like reading about what a character is thinking, feeling, and about the setting that we've arrived in. I like their thoughts about things that have happened before because I may not be in the know. But, I know that style isn't for everyone.

Best thing to do?

Be honest with your writing partners up front.

I think this is a good point too. If you aren't having fun in a thread then forcing yourself to drag on with it isn't fun. We come here to relax and play. Some people take this way too seriously. Every time I see someone talking about the effort they put in or the amount of time they spend it makes me cringe. This is supposed to be fun. It's not like putting effort into your career or your family. You do this because its fun.
 

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