The "I'm Bored" Conversation Thread

[LigH]

A graceful surrender is "advanced roleplaying".

[MishkaL1138]

Advanced roleplaying for me would be reenacting Monty Python and the Holy Grail but in PS...

"You'll have to cut the tallest tree in the forest with an... EEL!"
"What's the airspeed velocity of an unladden Megaras? / What kind, the ones at the Winch or the ones at Bronze Doors? / I-I don't know... *falls down the chasm at BDouter*"

[Illysia]

It's also not just a matter of surrendering but surrendering to advance the storyline. I gave up and let a guy kill Illy but to be honest there was nothing to with advancing a storyline, I was just getting sick of playing so I left Illy in the DR.

However, I have no idea what it takes to surrender to advance a storyline since I only had one "baddie" character and Shangshi killed her. :p

[Rigwyn]

Well, that's the crappy thing about death in rp. It ends the story for that character. If its a two character rp, then it ends the rp - at least for the moment. If you enjoy the storyline, you can certainly continue either in the death real or in the dome a week later... or whatever your norm is.

For me, I prefer to avoid death in favor of other options for three reasons:

A. The end of story problem
B. To avoid the silly ooc things that people do to avoid death.
C. Torture, imprisonment and escape can be much more interesting.

One example of continuing after death would be the time that rigwyn killed vayl. It was a stupid act on my part. I was still a noob looking to accomplish something wicked at any cost. After her death, there were consequences. She was not very happy about it and confided in her friend Sinaho - who tricked Rigwyn into following her into a courtyard where he was drugged,  tied to a tree and given a choice - leave vayl alone or become hydlaa's first gelded diaboli. Vayl never did seem to let go of that grudge and was always looking for a way to stick it to rigwyn thereafter.  ( and she did screw him over many times afterwards.)

[Rigwyn]

Now as I think about it, I think I got that story wrong. Rig was killed by vayl during the struggle, and she died as a result afterwards ( and was still hellbent on revenge)... long story. The  point is that she didn't just let this death end the story....

[Roled]

re: Rigwyn and Vayl:

This kind of developed, ongoing, transmigrating rp is what can advance storylines, insert twists, and draw new folks into the story.  Roled for example has hated Thidin (as Thidin's player well knows, and RR has enjoyed rping with Thidin alts) since 3 maybe 4 years ago when Thidin hexed his brother Dragonis and took his soul.  For years everytime RR sees Thidin, he draws his sword to kill her- in the Stonehead, at the ball, walking by nonchalantly.  RR has never killed her, kudo's to Thidin's player who kept the threat going while rping- we just never got the the /attack world. And whoever was there got drawn in if they wished to be... and stories were told, and 'new' characters entered the rp story.  Revenge anticipated has its rp rewards.... 

[Illysia]

I've never had reason to kill another character but many of my characters have a mean throwing arm. You can do quite a bit just with hurling things at people.

[Rigwyn]

We could give you good reason. You'll just need something lethal to throw.

Here's a question for discussion. You have a roleplay event that you want to run continuously - both while you are playing and while you are not. To do this, you need some consistency. You need a way for people to know where it left off, and what has transpired to some extent. Maybe you do need this, or maybe you can do without keeping state. I used to use forum posts to keep track of what was happening, but not everyone likes that as its a source of ooc information.  What other options might there be?

I'm not talking about a little one on one RP that simply resumes the next time the two folks are on, rather I'm talking about larger events - with lots of folks who are on at different times.

This isn't a "How do I do this" kind of a question, but more of an open discussion of how it could be done better.

[Roled]

Its a good question, Rig... 

What RR tries to do is bring up backstory the next time he sees someone, then update them. Last night RR's convo with Teshia was an example.  I knew ooc she knew about one event, and was pretty sure she didn't know about another, involving Teeleh, Herihi, Barike, and Dragonis.  She did the same for me, cluing me into plot advancements with Teeleh that RR didn't know. 

Its a little clunky but serves its purpose sometimes.  Those who may have overheard us- especially the yelling parts  - might wish to join in...

Also little clues in character descriptions ig help forward some of the action....

My 2 sentiences
R  R

[Illysia]

I would say ask and see if you can get some sort of rudimentary in game bulletin system added in on the Google summer of code project. I think that would help roleplay more so and some of the projects planned.

Or maybe requesting that in the future players be given temporary locking ability. Say, you can lock something for a 24 to 48 hour period, then after that it automatically unlocks and is fair game. That way you could place RP relevant items or books and it would be untouched long enough for the regular participants to see.

I don't know though about anything that would help right now.

[Venalan]

*Venalan points to Illysia's Ojaveda News Bulletin *

Something like this could surely be used to give IC bulletins discussing/mentioning things which have happened in game. Considering the number of small RPs which go on anything more than just a one on one would likely be heard by NPC or other people living in the cities and could/would/should be the source of many rumors. It would allow people who follow a certain event to see if anything fitting for that story line has gone on and would let people out side that story line have some IC info on it if they want to talk about it. I know at times when I still frequently played you could have a week or two off and come back to 'DID YOU HEAR ABOUT x and Y everyone is talking about it' and you just have to come up with some 'oh I was out of town and missed it' and then you have to run about gathering all the IC info you've heard OOC or read on the forums. The posts needn't be elaborate but I think they could be a fun way you could keep up and report about your RPs. Knowing whats going on in game is difficult unless you spend enough time to find stuff out, this would be a nice off line catch-you-up.

[Rigwyn]

You nailed one of the pain points that I would like to fix - that scenario where you need to get your character caught up on a lot of material and you might not feel like sitting there and dragging it out of someone else. While gaining such info in a purely ic way makes sense, what doesn't make sense is that your character lives in yliakum 24/7, so they should have more ic knowledge than the player does. There should be a quick way to catch up if desired to make up for our real life absence. I worded that in a confusing way.....

Maybe having a forum post for ic info would work.... like you said. Not an ic post per se, but more of an update on what any character in yliakum is likely to know. This could go bad too. If people stop sharing such info icly in favor of a ooc source. Maybe posting such updates a week late might work? I'm not sure about this to be honest.

[Illysia]

For what it is worth, I made the Bulletin thread so that people could post their IC news there. I had hoped that I would not be the only one posting there but only LigH has made an attempt at adding a news piece. A forum thread for OOCly covering what is going on in the world might help as in might generate interest outside the game and prompt people to get in to see what is going on. We have fewer metagamers and godmodders these days so it shouldn't be as bad.

But given the attention span of people these days. I would say set it up so that updates are as brief as possible. People see more than one paragraph and typically don't want to read anymore. However, what would bother me about this way is that many players don't even read the forum so the info would still be missed. That is why an in game option would be nice.

[Rigwyn]

Maybe just little sentence long blurbs that are enough to give the character something to go on? I'll think about this a little more.

I was also thinking, that it might be good to have a way to make it easier for new players to get involved. As a new player, I might look at a guild tag and say, "Hey, that sounds cool, I wonder what that group is about." We know that we are supposed to ignore guild tags, but come on, they can be good for guiding a player to an interesting group.  If I'm a new player, I might be wondering who do you go to if you want to RP and what do you say. It would be nice to be able to soften this barrier a little for new/shy/cautious players.

[Rigwyn]

Also, regarding the new bulletin. Has it worked yet?
Being a bit of an idiot, I read it, then wondered what to do with it? Like say I'm a player and something there appeals to me. I would just bring it up in conversation?