Recently, for the first time, I tried an offline roleplay. Up until that point, the sort of text based rping we engage in here was the only method by which I'd ever roleplayed so it was quite a strange experience although, at the same time extremely fun. I should point out that none of us had any previous experience so we just sort of made things up as we were going along and there was a near total lack of planning on anyone's behalf but despite this we managed to create some truly awesome little stories. There little to no rules involved and nobody had anything more than a starting stereotype before we began but they've changed the way in which I view roleplaying and I just thought it'd be interesting to try to share with you guys the ideas that I've taken away from it, and the ways in which I think it might improve many of the Rps hosted here on the site.

Over the course of the evening we managed two roleplays, both of which were almost entirely impromptu. I should point out that nobody controlled either story and anyone was free to introduce any plot points or reveals, both about themselves and other characters at their leisure. So long as the ideas were sensible, everyone else had to stick with them.

The first roleplay, we chose someone to be a traitor by randomly drawing out of hat so that nobody else knew who he was. We set it on a space station where a Captain has called in two men to repair his engine.

From this, we ended up with a mercenary vessel sabotaged by Earth agents so that they could assassinate the mercenary (who was an ex-general) whilst allowing their agent ? the ship's original engineer to avoid suspicion and get off the ship. In the end, my co-engineer revealed me to be a replicant-esque robot and used the captain's natural suspicion of me being a 'dangerous and illegal killing machine' to masque his own intentions as the assassin, at which point he sabotaged the ship's secondary generator which powered the life-support, destroying me using the same emp blast and escaped, leaving the captain to asphyxiate alone.

For our second, we drew up a long list of traits of which each of us received a random one which we had to live with and build our character around for a meeting in a fantasy inn.

We ended up in the middle of nowhere, in raider infested woods, in the crumbling empire of Brannonir. I was the errand boy for a necromancer, 'delivering' an artefact to a far off kingdom. It turned out that the necromancer had given me a cursed item as part of an experiment to lure out the Grey mage ? the being responsible for the equilibrium of life and death in the world. The artefact he gave me slowly worked its way into my mind and resulted my becoming the avatar of Nothing shortly after I stopped at the inn. Anyhow, epic climixes approached, the barman revealed himself to be the necromancer in disguise and I was slain before I could unmake most of reality.

Why am I telling you about this? The stories might not sound to amazing or original but these two roleplays were fantastic because they were so flexible and impulsive and yet still managed to come to a pretty nice conclusion because there almost no preconceived story or really very much to do with the characters established beforehand and we just rolled with it. Being told by one of the other characters that I'm a robot part way through a story is truly awesome and there were some awesome conversations and really good character development that came out of almost nothing.

This dynamism is something that I feel is usually lacking from online rps and I think it contributes greatly to the failure of many. Think about it for a second, why do rps fail?

1.The host leaves ? most rps come about because someone has a cool idea for a story that they'd like to act out with a group of others, these rps tend to have strict plots and, as such don't survive very well should the creator leave for any reason since nobody else is able to advance the plot in their stead. - No preconceived plot means that this problem evaporates, although, the quality of the story may suffer greatly if some of the people you roleplay with wish to have all events revolving around them.

2.Players leave ? well this is endemic in all roleplays but I will point out that a more flexible story makes it much easier for people to jump in late should somebody leave.

3.Rp becomes uninteresting ? this happens but I doubt that people will become bored as fast if they have a hand in creating the plot.

I think creating an rp in this style would be an interesting experiment, obviously you'd need two things for this to work well:
A group of central players who lead by example and can be relied upon to post well and to set the tone so that things don't dissolve into idiocy.
Some sort of backbone to the setting or situation so that people have a goal to aim for
Some way to keep everyone pretty up to date on events so far; so that it's easy to add to the plot without introducing too many holes.
Maybe a few other rules to guide people in the right sort of direction...

I don't know really, I've been adding to this post on and off for about 24hours now so I apologise if I didn't finish off where I started but hey, I think there's probably something interesting in here somewhere, enjoy

Personally I think some of these ideas are interesting, but I will argue about the random character revelation thing because I love my characters a very big bunch and the only reason I'm RPing and not fanficing is because I'm too lazy to keep up a continuous stream of chapters.

The problem with the idea is that from what I got you didn't spend too much time thinking about your characters pre-RP; on the other hand I don't think I'm the only one here who can spend more than an hour comming up with the right character for the RP. When I've put effort into it, I really would hate it if someone would randomly proclaim that my Breton nobleman was the bastard son of an ashlander. In fact I wouldn't even go with the robot thing if it was pulled on my character, if it wasn't a lie anyway. There's also the fact we're on the interwebz to factor in, because while in real life you can tell people to keep it normal and they probably will (since, at the more extreme cases, they know they can always be hit on the head if they bs around too much), even in a forum as mature as this it is inevitable someone will pull something very crap on someone else's character and then it can well devolve into chaos and needless drama as some fail to notice that someone vetoed it and some protesting the veto because 'I'd totally let that happen to my character!'.

However, I would agree that some experimentation is in order. The way RPs are currently handled here doesn't seem to be working too well, save for a couple exceptions. Considering the amount of RPs there were here over the past several years, I don't think it's to be considered acceptable that nearly all of them (the only success I can think of is SoS, and even that didn't actually finish) died sooner or later.

Hehe true, I can understand how you feel there and I agree; it's not a style that lends itself to detailed character plans pre-rp. It'd certainly be a very different way of doing things although on your point about your character's past being extrapolated upon by others, it can't really occur without some sort of relationship existing between the characters otherwise it wouldn't make any sense. I can definately see where you're coming from though and I think if and when I try something in this style it's going to need some way to make sure that people don't try to force you into their backstory (I was your king at the time whilst passing through a random village with that guy over there in whom I have decided was a witch hunter/pirate/plank of wood).

It is a pity that most rps do tend to fail fast, even if you do end up with a great cast of writers and an interesting plot, I think SoS worked because it was so different and open ended. I'll admit I got pretty confused as to what was going on when I joined in on Circlet Ignited whilst that was running so I'm not sure if all rps should follow that sort of mold...

I think any rp that wants to last a while needs to allow players a high level of autonomy, so that it doesn't just fall apart if someone leaves or people don't run out of things to do, simply because the host is concentrating on another group.

i know i don't rp much (if at all...) but i do have an idea as to what would really draw my interest:

a dungeon master.

typically, RPs around here are a pre-written story being enacted by the players. All the proposals start out with a story thats already laid out for the players, there is no mystery and no real incentive to find out what happens next. by contrast, real life DnD campaigns usually have a lame begging ("you are all sitting in a tavern when...") but quickly move into action and reveal plot twists that the players know nothing about. The "DM" in forum RPs is also playing along and guiding the players, as opposed to trying to get them killed. Dead players may not be very much fun, but neither is a story where I know I can just coast along. In my DnD experiences, on the other hand, I had to think creatively for both my character and for her survival.

An example of an RP i would love to partake in: the players are shipwrecked on an island and have to find their way off. Besides this overarching plot they could begin to uncover conspiracies within their group, mysterious ruins, hostile natives, etc. The DM would describe the scenery and the players would decide where they want to go and what they want to do first. Hell, some sort of dice roll system could be used by both the players and the DM to determine roughly how well an action (spell casting, fighting, gathering food) went. This makes us think creatively and gives some importance to chance and character skill, versus how well the writers like our characters (and i know most people like to roleplay pretty powerful folk, which is boring imo). Basically, the DM would have an idea of what was possible on the island, but the players would decide what they want to do, when, and how. they have a hand in creating the plot while being motivated by the antagonist (DM).

Lady, I really like your idea. I think Solidor's new RP is very similar to that type of idea, where the players get out of Black Marsh. The question is, can enough people join, and can those people stay dedicated?

indeed it is. the biggest difference is that the players know what they are up against (sload induced zombie apocalypse). the terror of the unknown is gone. although i admit is is closer to what i had in mind and quite interesting either way.

btw, my structure would work with non-survival RPs just as well. it depends on 3 factors:
1) Unknown circumstances (storyline is not outlined in the opening post, the players have only a vague idea of what they are getting themselves into)
2) DM antagonist (someone who works to forward the story and constantly challenge the players to thing creatively)
3) Player decisions that decide the story

a fourth element, chance, would add a lot in my opinion, but it might take the RP too far in the direction of D&D.

I think it might be time to rethink what "enough people" is. If I follow correctly, this forum is not as big as it used to be. It might be unrealistic to expect 10 people to join an RP, and RPs should be rewritten to work with 5 people. As for dedication, well, there is not much to do about that besides trying to come up with an interesting story.

I have trouble sticking with forum PRs because 1) I don't have much time and 2) they don't have trouble keeping my interest high enough to warrant the time I have to spend on them. The only RP I've participated in on these forums is Darkom's Echoes of the Tower, which I joined because Darkom is a friend and I had helped him to draft the story (besides the fact that the story seemed interesting). I knew that I would not have much time, and I didn't. What really turned me off from setting aside RP time is actually having to read the posts (:P). Someone would do or say something, and the next 5 people would just restate what the first person said. Unless you're revealing something pivotal about your character, I don't want to read the seating order a dozen times. There seems to be a "more is better" mentality, and I for one would prefer to have shorter, faster posts (dialog, in particular, would benefit).

Another thing to consider is story structure: again, face-to-face RPs typically dump you right in the action and let you see the character's personalities then. When I played DnD we didn't write character bios until the 2nd/3rd game, and those were only for the DM's benefit (as our quest ended up dealing with our character's pasts). However, we knew from the first 10 minutes that my character was a reckless, overconfident treasure seeker who liked to flirt with everyone; that our cleric was in love with animals, was a total coward, and had the mentality of a kid; and that our halfling rouge had a superiority complex and had a tendency to accidentally shoot her companions in the face. In other words, less focus on exposition of players (let it become apparent through their actions) and of scenery (unless its important to plot or the players ask) and less focus on covering *everything* in the character sheet (i hate reading those things).

phew. hopefully no body takes offense.

HK-47 supports this




That being said, I would really enjoy a DM-run roleplay. I myself come from years of experience in tabletop roleplaying, among other things, and I agree when the main reason things die is that people seem to lose interest. Where's the hook to keep people interested? Where's the intrigue? Where's the ever-arching story that is just beyond view that seems to be influencing the events the characters are unwittingly stuck in? Where is the main behind the curtain?

Most roleplays on these boards lack these things, and lay everything down straight-forward in terms of what players can expect. I've seen some people start a roleplay under the premise that the RP will 'run itself', and that once you set the players loose, the RP will last. Those are the people who come up with a potentially great roleplay idea, but don't want to but the effort of secretly railroading the thing along behind the scenes, and prefer to just take a back seat while the other players let their characters run amok, doing whatever they would like to do.

If somebody were to start up such a roleplay where in going in we as players know very little, save for a few interesting tidbits, and if that roleplay were to be given the illusion of freedom, when in actuality all the characters are being subtly manipulated and shunted towards the next point in the story, but without the DM being an ass about it and chaining the characters onto a train... yes, that is a roleplay that could really go somewhere, in the right hands, and I'd be proud to join up.

I'd love to try hosting something like this, I could certainly make time to do so however, I've never actually been in a roleplay that has lasted more than 2 threads so why put so much effort into something that, in all likelyhood is going to last no more than one week no matter how much effort I put in?

It's quite a negative attitude I admit but the effort required to create an true epic to too great compared to its chance of success.