A letter of suggestion.

So I randomly decided I would go and look for some SWRP the other day. I’m still active on a lot of Forums, I serve mostly as a mentor for new writers, and folks who grew up under me who are off running their own shows now.

I thought I would just hop in somewhere and get back to basics, maybe on a game I haven’t touched in years.
Why not JKA!

So here I am. I do a quick Google and find this place.

First off I want to say that you lot are amazing.

I’ve read further into this forum than some of you might believe, and there is some truly great writing going on. This is a group that is passionate about their craft, passionate about their characters, and passionate about improving.

---

But there is a “however”

I see your group is in a period of Reformation, and believe it or not I can trace the deterioration to this point back quite a ways. It makes me think back to my baby days as a community manager, and seeing the same mistakes I made encourages me to at least –try- and let you know what I know. These are issues that community after community faces, and I’m positive some of them will resonate very strongly to those of you that read this.

I will compress what I have to say into a “TL;DR” version right here, but I encourage you to –read on- and not just take what I say as an insult. Activity is all of this. I guarantee that for some of you I will speak your exact words as to why you may not feel excited and invigorating about playing here, as some of your discussions seem to emit.

Quote :

1. Regulation is getting in the way of Roleplay: There is more writing about writing than there is actual writing. I get the feeling people spend more time alone with a Word document than they do actually creatively writing a story. More concern over points, balance, rules, and propriety than getting on the damn game and playing!

2. Many people blend the barrier of IC/OOC: You are not your character, people should not refer to you OOC as your character. Conflict should stay IC, you should not be out to “beat” everyone. We are all human beings with lives and careers and experiences. Because your character is a Master and mine is a Padawan does/should not mean that you are better than me. Promotions and IC positions should not be announced OOC, celebrated OOC, or based on OOC methods. The fact that a character who is in essence no more than a collection of words achieved the next level in his training means nothing to me. I could go off now and write ten stories each with a character who goes from dirt poor to master of the universe.

3. There should not be an OOC hierarchical structure other than a team of admins to serve as mediators and mentors. For the same reasons as above, and even then, they should act as equals.

4. Begin with the end in mind.

5. Quality, not quantity (or volume).

---

Regulation
Years ago we decided we didn’t like something in the RP world. The general solution for it was to create rules to mitigate the problems. Rule out the problem, problem goes away. This is fine if you have a player base of 2000 people, and a steady influx of new peoples. This is not fine when you become so afraid of all sorts of possibilities and you end up writing pages and pages of litigation that are only for a player base of 20 or so people. This is less fine when you require and hold everyone to all of these “rules” yet most enforcing them only remember the ones that are convenient.

Chances are, if you can’t remember it, it needs to be deleted.

Metas and Godmoders have become sort of the “boogeyman” of RP communities. Every single time one of my mentees goes out to start his own board, the discussion invariably falls to;

Quote :

“Well what are we going to do if THIS happens?”

Quote :

“And what about THIS.”

And suddenly we have this snowball of strawman possibilities, sixteen threads regulating all sorts of things, and no players.

There is a basic premise in the world of (real world) Education;

Quote :

A rule is not a rule until someone breaks it and receives a consequence. If no one breaks a rule, then it is not a rule. If the consequence is not fair, immediate, and consistent, then there will be no obedience to the rule.

In communities you need the fewest possible rules, and these rules need to be as universal as possible. If something becomes a problem, then you add to the rules. The rules become a living document that are developed based on the needs of the community, not some arbitrary solutions to a myriad of issues that might not even happen.

My communities always start with one basic rule;

Quote :

1. Don’t be a jerk.

We actually get pretty far on this one rule, but eventually we do have to branch out a little bit, ask people by term-dropping to not Meta, GM, etc. for Roleplayers this is usually a reminder though.

Notice I don’t say anything about force points, or super specific faction descriptions. This is because I usually let the players work them out. On JKA it is a little different, obviously we must have some framework for the duel process since we are gaming that bit… but IN GENERAL there is no need to set so many rules from the beginning. Let the people who play the Jedi decide through their experiences what the most efficient Jedi methodology is for this community, etc.

“But what about Metas and Godmoders etc.? Obviously they are an issue!”

A majority of the time I find that people who Meta or GM have a misunderstanding of the basic rules of the way we RP, they are not bad people, they are not uninformed in Star Wars.

In a group of so few writers, and with such a breadth of experience and creativity, surely you are better served by having a legitimate discussion with these people, and understanding why they made the decisions they did, and helping them to make them fit with your community.

Suddenly you gain a member instead of an increase on the blacklist.

Roleplayers in this fashion are a dying breed, we can’t continue on acting like we’re the cream of the crop. In reality everyone else has just moved on.

And don’t forget that there IS a blacklist. If someone roleplays unfairly or unrealistically all of the time then they will be IGNORED, and ALONE. You don’t need a RULE for this to happen, in fact it probably happens to some despite all the rules you have on your books!

---

ROLEPLAY

This is why you’re here!
Roleplay is writing!
Writing is art!
ARE YOU MAKING ART?

Some of you are, but are you making art when you’re on the platform that this whole thing is based around? If the answer is no, is that why you’re not on it right now?

See I feel like most RPers know that our currency is emotion. We RP because we like the feeling it gives us. We RP because we like having a hand in a collective story writing process.

Why then do we spend so much time by ourselves writing, and so little time collectively writing a story? RP is a chance for people to get out of their shells, to try on emotions, feelings, risks and actions that they normally don’t get to try on.

Think about your favorite model for RP. For many of you it is books, comics, and written stories. What was great about those stories? Are you aiming for that when you RP? Invariably, I end up seeing people posting for the sake of posting. Either they’re trying to meet some quota in order to power up their character. Or they’re trying to put TEN MILLION WORDS on to an application because they so desperately want to be accepted.

Why do we do this to people?

Who are we to say “You can’t play the character you want to play, but I can.” Development is one thing. There is definite merit and pleasure in the journey of raising a character.

BUT

Not everyone wants to go on that journey, why should they be required to? There are different kinds of development other than the same old boring Padawan – Knight – Master progression. No one knows everything; there is –always- improvement space.

We say; Okay we’re going to be a roleplay community. It’s about creativity and freedom and you can explore your imagination and this new universe! As long as you are a shit padawan for months because there’s no one around to play with.

---

OOC
People tend to link their IC power with their OOC power and get confused. Or they do it the other way around. The leader of a community does not have to be the all-knowing Master-of-All Jedi. Every single one of you is capable of crafting a believable and realistic story that moves a community forward.

Two reasons I stopped playing leadership characters as a community manager.

Quote :

1. It gave me time to handle the administrative things. I put a lot of work into this kind of stuff and found it fun, commenting on posts, helping flesh out ideas. That was my main joy in contribution. It also left me able to deal with problems WITHOUT BIAS.

2. It let me work with people. I’m a teacher, I like helping people learn. Not having to worry about what’s going on in my Community AND some Faction meant I could spend time talking with people, discussing their character ideas, giving them (or LEARNING FROM THEM) tips to make us all better.

This does not mean I did not roleplay, it means I did not add the administration of a faction to my list of administering an entire community. Suddenly the diversity of my groups got better because I was USING the skills and time and abilities my constituents had.

Administration is often a thankless job and requires a lot of OOC work. The trend is to shoulder way too much responsibility and not to extend TRUST and CONTROL to the people who join us.


Requiring "time" as a factor in anything IC is selfish and unnecessary. It punishes people for taking risks and causes more to hide. OOC and IC things should be separate.


We are equal.

You are not better than me, I am not better than you. I present my ideas, you present yours, we discuss. Either we agree either way, on a compromise, or agree to disagree.



This is not the Military.

I naturally respect community leaders for the work they are attempting to do, but I am not obligated to blindly follow what they say.

In Character this is completely different! Sometimes completely the OPPOSITE! We have to delineate the two.

Roleplay is creatively, COLLABORATIVELY writing a story together. If someone feels less than you, or you are being oppressive or subversive in your demeanor, then you will not get the BEST writing product from that person.


We are not our characters.

For some reason people have this need to protect their characters to the bitter end. This often takes multiple forms. Either they don’t take any risks with the character, or they write every possible exploitation, weakness, or disability, out during the character process. There’s an explanation for everything. The jedi characters are impossibly flat and even, masters of the Force and blade. The NFS characters have all kinds of Jedi-proof armor and training on a ton of different weapons to a perfect level of operation.

This is cyclical. The requirement of such thought and intensive process in CREATING the character leads to the writing of boring, flat characters because people don’t want to see their work trashed when that character dies.

Suddenly we’re back to talking about rules.

The best way to accomplish the IC/OOC split is to go cold turkey. OOC importance should have nothing to do with anything that could possibly be thought of as IC. Your Admin Team should be called Admin Team, not Council. Don’t refer to each other as your characters. Learn each other’s names, even.

OOC, you talk about the metagame. You talk about the story, how it goes, how we’re going to get there. You talk about the power of your characters and where you want to lead it to. You talk about how realistic or unrealistic a certain thing is. When you put the hat of that character on all of that goes into your bank of omnipotence and you write all of those dreams you had before.

You should be friends. This is not an MMO. This is not really a Game, to be honest. You aren’t truly factions against each other, looking for ways to win. There should be no necessity for a rule preventing cross faction characters, because any information you learn OOC or on another character should stay in those places.

I know what the Sith Battle plans are, because I’m the Sith Lord! That doesn’t mean my Jedi Padawan is going to randomly start saying them in a meditative trance.

---

Begin….Quality
I start with a few basic tenets every time I open a community.

Quote :

1. People can play whatever they want: Sure you might get a thousand masters, but so what? Who does that hurt? If they are flat and facetless then they will get bored and look for other character opportunities or make a change. If something doesn’t fit the story, then they’re discussed and asked to change. If they can’t make that change then they will simply have a hard time finding people to play with them.

2. The barrier of entry is low: Character sheets are not applications, and not required. Usually we give people about a week to play into their character before nudging them to fill out the sheet. It’s a creative process to which there is no wrong answer, there is not a restriction on length or limit.

3. Rules are simple, easy to understand, and unmistakable: If there is some kind of numerical system in place, it is UNIVERSAL across Force Users, NFS, you name it. There’s no need for someone to be familiar with three or four different charts.

4. Always be open to new players: Play with them despite their mistakes. Set good examples. SEEK THEM OUT. Make it fun, not work.

5. Begin with the end in mind. The story must have a direction; there must be purpose in what we are writing. Otherwise you get bored, stop responding.

6. Quality over Quantity. The best authors say the most powerful things in few words. KISS. Explain your actions in brevity rather than floridity.

---

So if you made it to the bottom of this, thank you for your time.

You have a great deal of writing experience in this community, and a great deal of material written. There are MANY resources to pull from here. Take advantage of them.

In the course of your reformation, reflect on how you can bring down the stress and bring up the fun!

I'm sure you'll do great.

Because I know how incindiary the good ol' boys can get. I won't look for or reply to responses on this thread to avoid massive argument etc. These are parts of my philosophies and opinion, you don't have to accept them.

If anyone would like to discuss any of this further my inbox is open and email address is polyneux@gmail.com

Thanks,
Elm

P.S.: I speak for no one, I am not covertly a member, no one asked me to come on here and do this. I am simply speaking one roleplayer to another based on my initial surface observations. Remember that your public appearance is your most important one.
Edit: I changed the title because when I started I had a different idea and changed my mind, not the title. Woops.

... *places a single cookie on a plate down and slowly backs away*

*thinking to himself* ''Can we keep him?''

No. he doesn't get a cookie. Get this man a damn medal...I read through this entire thing, and let me tell you sir, I have not seen such thought out common sense displayed on the internet before. I will be the first to admit that I have more or less written out a complete story for others without those others being present. While I do plan on releasing it at some point, you have made me reconsider ruling out others. I hope you come back, Elm, I believe that this clan could use people with experiences like yours.

I guess I'm going to go cast a gold medal for this post. Later.

LukaNuva

And so , a hero is born.

My brain broke reading this however it was well-structured. I fully agree with it however our clan has been using the same model for almost a decade. As we're currently in reformations, I think perhaps we should start considering a newer model. We are not going to get any more members nor keep any members forcing everyone to waste their lives having to do classes for a rank up, as that does not even take into account one's effort for helping the clan or participating.

Let people RP what they WANT to RP?!

Preposterous! Why, then the peasents could be kings, the divine right that is only for the nobles, as it was ruled by the gods!

Thank you for sharing that bit of information.
And i agree on alot of points, they will work good for a ''community''.

A clan simply works with a different system so yeah.

And i agree on Avea, i get online on a community server and i will make myself known as Supreme Chancellor of the galaxy.

It wont be OP cause i can create a solid back ground story and w.e not.
It wont be OP beccause i simply take on a character i like to create?

Still it gives alot of room for letting ppl mess up.
And a rule is made so the admin group or councilors dont have to repeat themselves constantly.
Saves time in the future.

I said I wouldn't respond, but such an overwhelming inbox has asked me to so I suppose I will meet counter arguments.

Quote :

A clan simply works with a different system so yeah.

Quote :

1) Community can refer to a usually small, social unit of any size that shares common values. The term can also refer to the national community or international community, and 2) in biology, a community is a group of interacting living organisms sharing a populated environment.

Quote :

In computer and video gaming, a clan or guild is an organized group of players that regularly play together in particular (or various) multiplayer games. Some people might say that a "clan" or "guild" becomes like a family, and that all opinions and decisions represent each single member in the "clan" or "guild".

Your clan analogy might hold up if you were playing a legitimate game. In a legitimate game someone will have obvious direct power or experience over someone else. They know the Raids, they're twenty levels higher, they have a billion toons at level 50.

The thing about the game is that players don't have to wait around for you to advance.

The thing about roleplay is that you should be doing it to write stories.

The thing about roleplaying in a game is that you are purposefully casting off some aspects of the game such as level, power, etc. in order to write a story.

So we RP in JKA. We write, and we add the physical skill of dueling. That's fine if both players agree in that way. But should not get in the way of someone who wants to WRITE about being a blade master, but does not have the equipment or real life physical skill to act as one with the game system.

Your game system is poor, because it was constructed in somewhat haste with the objective of "stoping meta" rather than writing a game. It probably wasn't playtested, and people probably do a LOT of things to work around it.

Why on Earth are you trying to put a cap on people's creativity by determining when, where, and how much they can write?

If someone simply wants to be a padawan and earn XP and increase their force powers, then they are better served by playing an actual GAME that allows that.

If someone is concerned with the JOURNEY that Padawan is taking as he is learning those Force powers, unique manifestations of the force (because why limit ourselves to a petty list of cantrips?), and writing, then Roleplay suits them. It's clear on your forum which characters want the former, and which characters want the latter.

Legit games are designed over years, playtested, and balanced checked. They have automatic systems to get rid of all this extra work that players are asked to do with complex systems.

If you have a game system, people will game the system. If there's a post quota, people will farm to it. If theres a time -required- people will spend it doing boring or very limited roleplay. They will plop on your server, write two lines and say "I am on the server for HOURS each day."

There is no system except mutual collaboration and critique that is going to foster and increase the writing of your "Roleplay" folks.

Quote :

And i agree on Avea, i get online on a community server and i will make myself known as Supreme Chancellor of the galaxy.

I don't understand a lot of this. You seem to interpret my use of community as "free and open, and without rule." That is not the case, a community is a community, this is a community, see above.

So you make yourself Supreme Chancellor of the galaxy, so what? Either people will play with you with their ideas or not. If people are not having fun, they simply wont play with you. If you get annoyed and act silly about it, they will ignore you. It's not their fault, they just can't see how your characters can interact.

You will be alone, when you log on people will leave, it will be obvious to you by the reaction of the community that your character doesn't fit.

If it was one of my communities I would have came along to you and said; "Hey, I understand that you want to be Supreme Chancellor, why don't you tell me about your character decisions, what are you trying to explore?" I would give you more realistic suggestions to help reach your goal, maybe playing as a senator, or as the supreme chancellor but as a powerless human being who requires friends and protection.

By "my" communities, I mean a community that I participate in, not necessarily as an Administrator. Players should feel responsible for the people around them and helping them. We are a dying breed, and if you don't foster younger or inexperienced roleplayers then you will find yourself alone. You don't need admin powers to council someone on an OP character or action.

You can write -any- character "OP" and -any- character realistically.

Quote :

Still it gives alot of room for letting ppl mess up.

What are you so afraid of people messing up, that is so ireversable that it requires miles of litigation and hours of work and pandering to older characters before getting in game?

Not starting with a lightsaber.
Pandering to the egos of experienced players OOC.
Limits to one characters.

What "mistakes" are these designed to overcome?

Your memberlist is 95 and I'm assuming that less than half of that are active by who has portraits and post counts.

You will not be successful if you continue or switch to a paradigm with experienced/admin players on a platform and everyone else driveling below. It's fun at the top, but everyone else has to work up from the bottom... Oh, except my friend, I know he's a "good writer" so he can come to the top too on his first day, oh but not you John, you're still a Padawan.

So someone makes a mistake with a light saber because it's their first Jedi character. Does that warrant relegating the lightsaber to hours of shitposting to reach a certain point? Or would a simple discussion with that individual take place.

At the end of the day we can take it all back, It's RP. We can have a session that doesn't count. We can make something up to help illustrate and example. It's not a game because the things we do aren't permanent unless we make them.

People make mistakes, you can't litigate for every possible situation.

Quote :

And a rule is made so the admin group or councilors dont have to repeat themselves constantly.

Out of your active players, I would wager that maybe 70% have actually read all of the rules. The rules have a lot of unnecessary repetition spread across many threads.

How little respect do you have for your community, that you can't trust them to follow simple practices without being told?

You assume that it is something you would have to repeat constantly, but is that really the case? Again it goes to my whole description of "What about THIS, and what about THIS." Where we feverishly think of all these HORRIBLE examples of player, and then make this wall of rules, when what you actually have are normal, rational, human beings, with the capacity to learn and the desire to write stories.


No leader, in a classroom, in the real military, in an online group, can set something up say "go," and sit back and do no work. You don't simply post up a set of rules and then say "okay now I never need to mention this again!" It takes work, constant monitoring, redirection, rewarding, etc. etc. It's never an easy or thankful job.

Your best bet for enforcing rules is EACH OTHER, and that can only happen if the rules are short and easy to understand.

Use an honor system, don't play with people who don't follow convention, use admin power to solve unsolvable disputes. Don't let people come to you if they have not tried to discuss their conflict, and don't make a decision without discussing it with them.

This takes a lot of the work off of you. Things like monitoring Metagaming, the players are WAY better at detecting this than an Admin. So the player says "Hey I told you that OOC, your character shouldn't know that"

And the response is either "Screw you" or something like that, in which case I would walk a way. "I don't know what you mean." In which case I explain what OOC/IC/Meta is, in which case I would explain it to him. Or "I didn't notice that, sorry, I'll rewrite" in which case we move on.

Because the rules about the things you are truly afraid of having in your server don't do a very good job of explaining what that thing is.

---

I haven't even touched on the level of ultimatum that is used by the admin staff here. Do this or else. It must be this way. Seems sometimes like the whim of an angry child rather than a level-headed decision based on a recurring problem.

If this whole system we have running here we wouldnt have any members, and that means we would've had an empty server daily, this is something we dont have.

You have a great story, great explanation about how things should run and who knows, maybe the experience.
That still means i havent seen your system in action so i cant Judge any of it.

And we dont have 95 members, people make accounts randomly or have multiple accounts to get acces for multiple reasons.
Thats a number we dont look at or care about, what we care about is that ppl can RP on the server and do what they like, so we have activity and can do stuff.

So before judging by simply reading some stuff on here and go like ''What alot of rules!?'' just join the game and do it yourself.

You need to know stuff before you can actually ''do'' something in the RP.

Using colors codes and w.e, this is a rule so they dont do it differently to indicate an action or w.e.

You simply approach ppl and tell them how/when/what or possibly should or can do.
That means there are certain rules only you tell them untill someone hits a certain point.
That means you are in my eyes wasting alot of time on ppl to inform them how and what.

So instead of writing it down you keep it to yourself?
Thats how it looks for me but afterall this is the system we use, and thats the system you use.

Imo opinion you cant Judge ours just be reading here and we cant judge yours by reading your story.

Everything looks better on paper.

Thank you for your responses, it signals that you truly care about this communities image and performance and is commendable.

Quote :

If this whole system we have running here we wouldnt have any members, and that means we would've had an empty server daily, this is something we dont have.

If your server side experience is truly as wonderful as you say, then by all means take none of my advice to heart. Keep in mind that in the server we are limited to sentences, and on the forums is where the actual process is explained. If the two do not match then that is something you should work towards.

If I look through six or so pages of an individual forum and see inconsistency in rule enforcement, unnecessary arguments about character power, and just plain bickering, I can safely assume that this translates at least in some way to the Server experience.

Keep in mind also that in order to get to your server, I have to come here. These forums, not your Server, are the first impression. These forums is where you are asking people to spend hours writing before they even make it to the game by writing an application and whatnot.

If your server-side experience is great it is not because of all the rules and procedures here, it is because those that are frequently on have interacted together enough that they are creating positive experiences. When new people arrive they are brought into the fold.

Why should the forum barrier of entry be so high that it keeps people from reaching that?

Quote :

And we dont have 95 members, people make accounts randomly or have multiple accounts to get acces for multiple reasons.
Thats a number we dont look at or care about, what we care about is that ppl can RP on the server and do what they like, so we have activity and can do stuff.

My exact comment was

Quote :

Your memberlist is 95 and I'm assuming that less than half of that are active by who has portraits and post counts.

I am aware of how forums work and how people make random counts. This is not a factor in my statements, you could have 10 or 1000 actives and it wouldn't make a difference.

Quote :

So before judging by simply reading some stuff on here and go like ''What alot of rules!?'' just join the game and do it yourself.

See your specific rules for creating a public character. See your rules for generating a character as a member of the "clan" in general.

The barrier of entry prevents this. If I as an observer, follow your rules as written, I won't bother. Now if you're telling me that I -can- just hop on and play then your rules need to more clearly and openly state that, and that I don't need to read them all right now.



What your asking is for someone to come to your forums, read what they need to, and then go through the process of joining or public charactering.

As someone going through that process, I am commenting on specific pitfalls that I see with that particular situation.

Reflect on -why- I see them. And if that isn't the truth then how can you or do you need to make a change?


I'm not trying to boss you around by any means sorry if it seems like that.

I hate having to point this out but, my prior post was sarcasm, pointing out the similarity between our restrictions and the idiotic medieval class system, with it's equally ridiculous justification.