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.
posted by Sandra Richards @ 11:46 PM
14 comments
14 Comments:
And I don't think you're the only one. Trouble is, it's not something we all feel together. We feel isolated. I'm not sure -how- to change that, but I do know that there are some things that may be a factor. I'll comment more on that one tomorrow.
I can understand that. But when we throw out a roomwide storyline, why does no one care? Why doesn't anyone pay attention? And even if they do, It's a day or so then it's like the event never happened.
Example: Voldemort attacking the Ministry. That effected people that night. And then not after. That's something that should resonate for months, if not years after.
Maybe I'm off base, But I guess I don't understand not joining in a roomwide RP when it's for the explicit purpous of getting everyone involved. *shrugs*
The chatters are lucky I'm not writing this blog. I'd get nasty about it. *LOL* As it is, I gotta go with Johnny. It often pisses me off when we get the people who complain we don't do anything then when we do they either get mad or act like it never happened. I feel like Spike Dudley wrestling Bill Goldberg, for fuck's sake sell something! It hit you with a chair! Bump for me bitch!
My view is yeah I agree with Johnny here...roomwides just seem to be forgotten and everyone goes back to there own thing. I honestly don't know how we came to be this way. I remember it was everyone did there own then yeah, but when a room wide play came around we all played it out then we had fun. Now it just seems we do it and then we go back to what we were doing. I know I myself have complained about things....I am sure we all have at one point or another. And I agree it does seem like everyone just plays to what they know and what they like.
I try to get involved in the roomwide plays! I try to play with everyone save for certain people whom I have been advised not to associate with because they piss me off. Happy day!
Being pissed off aside, I think the problem is everyone has a future and we have some of those set in granite. The future room plays were to inform the earlier room plays and vice versa--making it a living RP experience, not a completely set thing. The world should be a MINOR thing in the people's lives, as long as their love interest, children, parents, etc, all stay alive.
I've never run a storyline where I demanded the death of a character run by another player. Although I'm going to admit here there are a LOT of characters I think should be killed off just because they're farging annoying and badly conceived. That aside, very few people seem to include the story that the room has going, or might be starting.
And as a host, I have a problem with this because of one main issue: I don't think it's fair to announce outloud that "such and such" a storyline is starting to run now and this is where it's going. How can that help your characters have fun? It CAN'T. It's all supposed to have an element of surprise but when I surprise you nothing happens. When I -really- surprise Players they threaten to leave, even when I'm doing as they said they wanted me to do! Makes me really want to just say "DUMBASS" and leave it at that.
Well, some people just meet the same people in-room every day and NEVER talk to anyone else.
I love roomwides. I participate as I can. My students and people still feel Dumbledore's loss.
I've gotten new Ideas for the Martel RP.
Sometimes I wanna scream "YOU STUBBORN DISRUPTIVE BRAT!" but that's my temper talking.
I'm so very sick of all the 'wah wah wah'. Leave issues OUTSIDE.
Go through some of the Avvy list and let tight little fists go of people who haven't been played in months or years. I've recently let several go.
Anyhow, whatthefuckever. I knw 4 people who are going to scream at me out on IMs and swear they'll never talk to me again.
You know what?
I DON'T CARE!!!!!!!!!
I have to say that when I was tugged to the room I was a little gunshy. Everyone had their own little groups. Sandra, Ashe, Merr, Johnny. They try to help with everyone. I haven't been here long, but I was told Sandra wanted everyones opinion. So here's my two cents. There are times I come into the room, say hi, and get completely ignored by certain people. But i don't let it bother me anymore. I can't. Because in the end. Rp is supposed to be fun. Its supposed to be something done with friends, a creative activity to be a distraction from r/t. Not everyone is going to like everyone else all the time. Thats just never how it works. The hosts try really damn hard to get everyone involved but as Johnny said, the Voldemort post. That night the only people who posted anything that had anything to do with it. Were myself, Merr, and Miranda. I'm sure Sandra and Ashe would have had they been in the room. There were plenty of people in the room, it was a brilliant time for him to post it. And it went blatantely ignored by everyone else. I couldn't believe it. I know how frustrated he became because it was a perfect jumping off point for people to jump out of their own circles and get into the action.. and they carried on as if he'd just been posting for posting sake. I for one, hope that things take off with Sandra's idea. Roomwide rp's are fun, and i'm looking forward to getting to rp with others. Not everything in rp's always goes as planned so in the case that people get pissed and say they want to leave.. well.. then maybe they weren't meant to be in that play after all. Nothing in life is ever planned and not everything always goes your way.. so why does rp have to? Thats just my view on it though. Yeap.
This is to Meg in specific:
I have no clue what you just said. I've read it three times. This is what I think you said:
You don't like the complaining and issues should be left out.
You DO like the roomwides and try to participate and have some ideas for my storyline (which, by the way, should be about how your Cs can participate or react, not how to run the mam hystlen storyline (pardon my Welsh))).
You want to scream at someone about being a stubborn disruptive brat but I never said anything about that here so I don't know why you're personal things are showing up on my blog post about people not playing with my stories.
You think that people should let their unused avatars go, something that I would think people should do but, again, I didn't address in this post, so I'm at a loss to know why in the hell this comment is relevant to room wide RPs and my being outta sync.
You think people are going to threaten to not talk to you again over IMs.
That it?
Clear it up for me, please?
I don't know what I was typing, mostly, I was just running off at the fingers. I wasn't saying I'd dictate. Nothing personal. ANd the people who I hint at know who they are.
I only have half a cent... and that's that I just wish it'll all sort itself out soon. RP's meant to be a place to escape from reality and relax... not something to become stressed out and depressed about.
Yeah, not exactly on the topic, but anyhoo. ^_^
Perhaps if everyone thought about what they were posting. There wouldn't be so many misunderstandings.
Perhaps if Johnny weren't a cockmonkey... errr... wait that's off topic ain't it? *ducks* Seriously though, what's really important here is for people to stop feeding the hosts mixed messages. I mean the constant issue we face is spelled out quite plainly, we do what's asked of us and people freak. We don't do it because they freaked the last time and people freak. And what's ultimately a side issue to this is that when we run an SL people freak at us and tell us we can't do that and can't do this. We're doing this wrong ect. Some people need to remember who's room this is as well as remembering that what we do isn't easy. We'd be more in sync if people communicated more. And did so more respectfully, cause we get alot of shit from people any time we do anything. And if they didn't change their mind, like Sandra pointed out. They say they don't want the school to be the focus of the room, then suddenly they do when we change the focus. I feel like I'm sitting with my son when he was 4 and we'd ask him if he wanted chicken nuggets or a cheeseburger. He'd ask for the burger, we'd get it, he'd take two bites then ask if we could go back and get him some nuggets. It's hard for us to stay in sync with people if they change their mind all the time.
Ashe is entirely correct. Communication is the key here.
All this is why we get frustrated and tempers flare at one another, is that there's not enough communication. And even if there is. Also like Ashe said, It's mixed messages.
The phrase `No, Tell me how you really feel.` comes to mind. If you don't like it, say so. But don't tell us that you'll be fine with it one second and then launch back and hate it the next. That gets really hard on the nerves.
I'm not saying that I'm not guilty of this from time to time. Telling someone that something is ok just to get them off your case and then getting pissed about it anyway. It's something that everyone has to work on.
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