Naked Conversations: Why I Created This Blog

This blog, like so many things that have to do with your personal computer, is Microsoft's fault.

I don't normally read non-fiction. I like escapism. But, since I have put my foot in the door of writing as a business, I have been reading things that will help in many aspects of my career. At my library was a book titled Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. These names probably don't mean much to you, but here's what Scoble has done: turned around the bad PR Microsoft had to the point that even the most rabid anti-Microsoft website called "Evil Empire" shut down because the company is no longer hated. The people running the "Evil Empire" site said it was an issue of time being scarce now. But their post counts and hit counters were not recording high hits any more, and had steadily gone down in count from the day Microsoft's blog called Channel 9 began broadcasting about how things are done inside the company and who was doing them. The more developers who blogged, the less people felt angry at Microsoft.

Lately, we've been having trouble with our own little community. Chatters haven't been happy with the product we offer, or the people who offer it. It was all right when we had a chat system and a public room rising against us, or chatters flaming us, making competitive rooms to "take ours down" so to speak. But all that's gone and now the little things we overlooked in our solidarity against a common enemy have begun to be major irritants to our nerves.

And our host-ship has been seen increasingly as evil.

We have a rule that we can't unload on someone in chat. That's all of us. No bashing players, other rooms or chat systems. No bashing story lines or characters. This doesn't help the IM/PM fury that seems to be making things go around lately. There's so much "he said/she said" happening, there's so many misconceptions going around, that even some of my fellow staff began to feel I was going to pop them for something they did, when, in fact, I was behind their actions 100%.

So this blog was created to allow the chatters and staff of Tales From The Daily Prophet to communicate in a completely different way--without having to censor ourselves.

Why? Won't that break up a community such as this? Not according to Lucky Altman!

Lucky Altman is a dear woman I met about 13 years ago. Her job is to design techniques of dialogue and sensitivity training to help end discrimination. Talk about a woman of vision! She honestly thinks it's possible to end discrimination in our time.

I've known her casually in many situations, but one week I was privileged to hear her talk to an organization I was in, a pagan church for those who have to know. She was talking about meetings within organizations and communication. In a nutshell, lots of communication is good, no communication is bad. While no communication is not healthy, there is something worse: Parking lot meetings.

Yes, I know. There are no parking lots on the internet. I mean something more like this: There's a meeting, it's productive, or so one thinks. Then one or two people are standing around, unable to leave the meeting behind. They have these opinions of what happened in the meeting, and felt like saying something to contradict the message the people in charge said, but they couldn't say it in the meeting! So, they have a meeting after the main meeting about how things -really- are going and how things aren't ever going to improve, how they won't ...

You get the picture. According to Lucky Altman, this sort of communication, these parking lot meetings, is the death knell of any and all organizations. "If you aren't able to say what needs to be said in the main meeting, if you're people are having parking lot meetings, then your organization is doomed."

I can't IM everyone and have everyone in on the conversation, our hours alone won't have us all online at the same time. And we could have a PR just for stuff like this, but, again, the hours conflict. The forums -could- have a thread there, but I'll be honest, that's such an extension of the room, I have a feeling we'd all feel a bit more like we can't be honest; In other words, we'd censor ourselves.

I don't want us to censor ourselves anymore, and I don't want it to disrupt our role play environment. And all this back-biting and gossiping in IMs and PMs is actually disruptive to the RP environment. Emmy said it best--it's like a couple going through a nasty divorce. So let's stop it.

Now.

While we can.

Open up, say what you feel. Trounce on me, on my staff, on yourself, on each other! Do it! I dare you! Clear the air, get it off your chest, and don't mince your words. If we are to remain friends we have to be able to say anything and everything to each other, or we, as a role play group, will not survive. I want to hear from the people who are in the room every day. I want to hear from the people who haven't been able to come in for a while. I want the guy who happens in once a week, once a month, or just now and then. I want to hear from everyone, absolutely. If I don't agree with what you say, SO WHAT? That's what this is about.

Do you know how I think or feel? NO! I've been keeping stuff bottled up so long I'm on a program to combat my rising stress levels. It's a medical issue. I am incapable of bullshit.

I think this is a medical issue for the community known as Tales From The Daily Prophet. Let's all become, at least amongst ourselves, incapable of bullshit, here, now, on this blog.

I double-dog dare you!

Today, This Is About Me

This is the hardest thing I've ever had to write. So I'm linking to it instead of cutting and pasting. Sorry about diverting you to someplace else, but this is all I have room for today.

http://www.readsandrarichards.com/blog.html

OMFG WTF IS That Thing?

People bitch that RP is too hard to find. Then why do you create characters with so many unusual traits and/or are on the fringe of society that they **gasp** can't actually be easily played to any but a handful of anyone else's Cs?

Come ON people. Don't bitch about not having play when you make a half-breed from two societies who is shunned by both sides. Don't make a C who is so unable to deal with people they can't be around them at all. Even if a Character isn't social, don't be a dumb ass and let them be holed up in a room or stay in a house away from everyone. If your C lives in a closet, don't expect a lot of other Cs to play to them. And don't claim your C is so all-powerful they can't be beaten when their dice stats are pretty much normal. No one will take you seriously, and you won't get play, either.

And get rid of the heavy-drama worthy of a Russian opera. RUN when you see this in RP, even if you're the one who is playing that character. Don't create a character that always has trouble no matter the situation. Hijacking people's story lines is not only rude, it doesn't get you play.

You know what does? A heroic C. A hero is C who comes through the worst stuff imaginable and is able to cope with it. They don't fall apart and shatter to a million pieces because they haven't seen a boyfriend or girlfriend for a week or a month. They don't take a potion and then have a five week recuperative period. They don't get frightened and back down from a challenge, and they don't have panic attacks, at least not that debilitate them when they have to face the music. They muddle through and try to make it, in spite of their fears and flaws. They rise above. They meet things head on. That's the kind of Character written in books and in movies. That's what we're trying to emulate here. And guess what? That kind of C can be plopped into any RP and be played opposite most any other Character made.

Ashe's acting coach said, "Dare to be dull." He didn't mean to play the more boring ass character out there! He meant that to make the character's adventures extraordinary, make the character ordinary. Daring to be dull means this: make them a person. You've got to have known real people who were just people but were interesting. That's how a C in the room should be. Give them some quirks. Not major traits that require back story for 20 years with so much detail Chaucer and Anne Rice barf--quirks. Little oddities that make them who they are and make them unique. This will give you the ability to play them in just about any environment. This, in turn, will help them become a more interesting character as they grow through game play. And if you can get them into several different kinds of RPs, so much the better.

Lastly, don't import ideas from other media. I know, I know, we all get ideas in other RP rooms, while watching Adult Swim, or from other forms of entertainment. But OMFG tweak them--working with Ashe or myself or someone in the room--to make them just for our room and to fit into the Rowling-verse.

Outta Sync

When I first started role playing on line 3 1/2 years ago, it always amazed me how others were creating characters or storylines that dovetailed or went with my characters or storylines. But the last couple of years have become rather different. I had fights with friends, there was a cessation of outside hostilities to my RP room and the upshot of it is, there's now a large amount of people I have RP with, but am not in sync with.

I'll give people an example:

I have a character I've just started playing. She isn't all pervasive yet, but I know that her storyline has the potential to bring in every facet of the Rowling-verse if I play her right. The list of involvement will include: magical governments of all nations, MLE, aurors, muggles, muggle law enforcement, several schools, deatheaters, dark wizards, and Voldemort. It has the potential, if people jump on it and decide to play into it as something major happening in the world they live in, to really enliven the RP and make people's Cs that simply have nothing except relationship play get out into the sun of adventure RP and maybe have an interesting and fun time of it.

However, the room is seeing a great influx of shadow daemon characters and the events of this C of mine have gone mostly unnoticed, with a few notable exceptions.

Last summer I decided I wanted the room to grow, to go beyond the "Hogwarts is in trouble, the magical world is in trouble" sort of storyline. Most of us are not teens, we are adults. We have people who want to play people who work for the ministry and for magical law enforcement, and the hospitals and the terrorists. There are people who are rebels, and those that are pirates. There are cultists and magical mafioso. All of these lie unused and mouldering in C boxes. When I did a poll asking my players if they want more or less of the school in storyline, they came back with a "less school" majority vote.

So, I'd thought the idea of killing off Dumbledore would be the last straw and close the school.

I was informed by my players that I was callous and in fact was ruining their storylines and they would leave if the school closed.

So much for taking polls.

So now, I'm starting a storyline that I think will move the Alternate Universe we loving refer to as Tales From The Daily Prophet forward and into an interesting war.

I'd love it if others played along.