Halicron's Rules For Good RP (which be more like guidelines)

[Apos]

@Thenomain I think you're missing one really core point in your argument.

The way a number of MU players approach their characters is fundamentally different from one another, and there's a distinct culture clash that shows online when these groups of players are put together, and what IC/OOC means to these players is nothing alike to one another.

One group sees their characters as essentially avatars for themselves, and they care about what they accomplish and what they represent, and that group is pretty much never ever okay with sacrificing the character for a story. This group tends to have the players that go idle rather than risk losing something their characters have accomplished, even if it makes it effectively meaningless if they aren't playing. IC motivations don't really come into it nearly as much, it's decidedly secondary. They tend to be less invested in roleplay except in so much it shows the continual development of their characters. I don't think this is a bad thing or anything like that, but it's important to understand their investment there compared to the RP as a whole.

Then at the opposite of the extreme, are players very focused on the stories, and the only care about the characters they play in so much that they are critical for the stories they want to be involved in or find fun. A lot of these players are the ones that simply don't care if their characters die, provided they are getting good stories and having strong narratives around it, and will do whatever. A lot of these players will do IC actions they know are extremely self-destructive, since why would they avoid it if it makes sense for the story and contributes to an interesting story? A lot of these players are just as happy with one shot throw away characters since they don't care at all, it's just the stories attached to them. So obviously if you start thinking about IC/OOC rules about judging the attachment of players to their characters you are going to swing way wide when it comes to them.

Realizing if a player is way more invested in the stories and the roleplay surrounding them, or whether they enjoy building a character and what it represents, is a huge part of keeping a player happy. And obviously most players enjoy a good blend between the two and fall somewhere on a scale there, but IC/OOC can mean markedly different things to both. I just feel like your posts were missing this as you talked about making characters more important than the game itself, which obviously would be wildly inaccurate for large group of players... that can still cause grade A drama if they think people are pissing all over their stories even if they don't care whatsoever about their characters.

[Thenomain]

@Apos

Except that I don't believe keeping a player happy as a matter of our goal is working for us, and it's been a while since I heard that "keep the player happy" should be the goal.

The phrase I hear more commonly these past years is "facilitate player enjoyment", and pardon if that sounds like I'm being pedantic or picking nits. I have a hard time trying to think of any game that puts enjoyment before the rules. Games are usually written with rules first.

RPGs do break the mold of more traditional games, as they leave a lot of room for hand-waving, a lot of room, but they happen within the space provided with the rules. Even if those rules aren't spelled out, like "this is a London where magic is real, but demonic". If you don't like the word "rule" for what I'm describing, there are other words, but the goal of statements like that is to enforce limits on the game space. While I adore the limitless potential in Calvinball, it is play but not a game.

My thesis is that we have tried many was to explain and prescribe what is "IC" and what is not. Nowadays the term is exclusionary, things are either IC or OOC, but this isn't the way it could be and it sure isn't the way it should be.

Changing the undrstanding of what IC is or means doesn't stop anyone from having fun any more than changing the understanding of what the word "game" means, and I have tried to chase down this term for a while now. The forced separation of IC and OOC doesn't work, so I think it's worth finding something that does.

---

Now that I'm not on a tablet, I can quote one thing:

One group sees their characters as essentially avatars for themselves [...] Then at the opposite of the extreme, are players very focused on the stories.

I don't see either of these groups inconvenienced by the idea that IC is a subset of overall play and play choices. You're edging toward the Bartle Test, which is not a good nor a bad thing but is well-trod territory when looking for player goals.

But maybe you're answering the part of my thesis where I call characters "puppets" or "toys", but I think it's more important that we at least view IC as a framework, and characters (and other things) as tools to interact with that framework.

Like the original poster here, it isn't a final version, but a series of thoughts that hits close to the heart and soul of trying to let more than just the "I", just the ego have fun.

[Groth]

I think my only rule/advice for Good RP is

1. Pay attention to the poses of others and try to pick out details from it to reference in your own pose. That way the scene will feel more interactive and fun.

[Ganymede]

@Thenomain said:

You tell people to pre-pose. I see people pre-posing an entire pose which either ignores everything they weren't posing for, or shoe-horns following elements so that they end up posing independent reactions to everyone. When I warned before that bit that I was going to be wrong or pedantic to make a point, this is kind of what I meant.

I just found this; sorry, man.

I actually tell people to "pose-queue," but that's a pedantic difference. And, yes, I agree that a framework is best, which you alter as others pose. But, to be honest, I did not think I'd ever have to thoroughly describe what I was getting at, as I learned to "pose-queue" early in my career and it is instinctual now.

I also agree that shoe-horning individual reactions is sort of stupid. Pose-queuing does cut down on the time needed to create a good pose for a situation as it unfolds, though, so I encourage the practice in scenes with more than 3 people.

[Arkandel]

@Ganymede said:

I also agree that shoe-horning individual reactions is sort of stupid.

It looks stupid, too. If I let myself respond to everyone in a big scene my character looks like he's having a seizure, jerking his head around addressing five people in a row.

Plus who does that iRL? If you're at a party you're not talking to everyone at once, conversations break down into smaller circles.

[skew]

@Ganymede said:

I actually tell people to "pose-queue," but that's a pedantic difference. And, yes, I agree that a framework is best, which you alter as others pose. But, to be honest, I did not think I'd ever have to thoroughly describe what I was getting at, as I learned to "pose-queue" early in my career and it is instinctual now.

I've seen queuing up a pose go wrong when the person obviously write something up, then doesn't update/edit/etc to adapt to the scene. Maybe I decide my character's going to rush into the bar and yell "BIG NEWS! NEWS!". Well, if the person in front of me stops right in the doorway and looks around angrily, I better alter my pose!

That said, I'm a big fan of writing things up before it's your turn to go because I'm a big fan of MUs going fast enough to hold my ADD attention span.

Also, I think overall this is a nice list for beginners. It highlights a lot of things people do unknowingly or unintentionally, and gives you a few things to think about. I'd say most of us who post here are well beyond it, but it's not bad advice for the new player. Thanks @Halicron .

[Lisse24]

I'd like to add to the discussion in two areas.

@Halicron said:

3. Try to describe your character's mood but do it without having us read your mind.

Most people are reading this as describing only the characters actions and not giving any sort of clue as to the underlying emotions. I used to do that as well, until I was burnt (lost a character) because another player misread my pose. What I thought was clearly trying to hold back emotion while begging for another chance, they read as stony-faced lack of remorse.

Nowadays, I try to blend the two. I'll describe the physical cues, but I'll also make sure that the person I'm playing with has some idea of the emotion associated with them. Ex: Lisse is nervous about something. She picks up her glass, twirls it a second and then sets it down again. Next is the napkin, which she begins to fold over and over. What I don't do is give the other player the reason why the character might be feeling that way or the exact thoughts going on in their head.

Like someone said earlier, people tend to take physical cues and assimilate them as a whole without fully understanding the processes that they use to do so. I think it's unreasonable to expect in a text environment that someone do something they have no experience doing in a real-life environment. Also, like I said, totes got burnt on this one.

9. Be proactive. Give your RP partner something to play off of. These are usually called "hooks," or RP hooks.

I would rather this rule be called, "Look for and respond to hooks," because right now, the phrase "be proactive" is my pet peeve. It seems like I've recently seen a spade of people criticizing players who are reactive. Players are told to "make their own fun" and then criticized when a game seems to be overwhelmed with bar rp.

I think this idea of having proactive players who start a bunch of interesting plots for their fellow players is also unrealistic. It's also not something that we see mirrored in literature, which means that players don't have a good model for it. Think about it. Jack Bauer* doesn't wake up, leave his house, and start killing terrorists. Jack Bauer wakes up, hears that terrorists have hijacked a plane, and then he leaves his house and starts killing terrorists.

My personal belief that it is the responsibility of staff to provide players with something that they can react to and then to help them find a proactive way to deal with that circumstance or complication, and that by doing this you can creative a healthy and active game. In my philosophy this doesn't need to be a full-blown plot, but can rather be little things to make the player's life difficult.

*I have never watched 24

[Arkandel]

@Lisse24 said:

I used to do that as well, until I was burnt (lost a character) because another player misread my pose. What I thought was clearly trying to hold back emotion while begging for another chance, they read as stony-faced lack of remorse.

To be fair, people misread each other in real life all the time, right? On top of that, they could have asked for an empathy roll if the system allowed it, or asked for a clarification over pages, etc.

But I see where you're coming from - I don't consider some metadata offered in the pose to be anathema as long as it doesn't come with the expectation that characters should be aware of it. After all in literature some exposition is often offered this way and I see no reason to deprive scenes of the same convenient too to offer a few tidbits of background if they'd be awkward to squeeze into it otherwise, even if they're only for flavor and don't actually serve a purpose.

the phrase "be proactive" is my pet peeve. It seems like I've recently seen a spade of people criticizing players who are reactive. Players are told to "make their own fun" and then criticized when a game seems to be overwhelmed with bar rp.

There's a line. Yes, it's often pretty annoying to have to pull your partner(s) kicking and screaming into the scene because they give little to react to and don't take the hooks they're being offered to facilitate a meaningful conversation. On the other hand some players just desire the spotlight so much they disrupt rather than enrich scenes they're invited into - there's such a thing as 'too' proactive.

For example - and I posted this on the bitching thread - a couple of days ago I was in a quiet but nice scene at a bookstore. We thought to bring others into the fold so I advertised it as bookstore roleplay, possibly about magic or something close to it and one of the players who came in posed a riot outside, people chasing his character, fighting in the streets... I mean that's not joining a scene, that's trying to take it over without caring what was happening beforehand or if other players liked how it was going.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@Lisse24 said:

I think this idea of having proactive players who start a bunch of interesting plots for their fellow players is also unrealistic. It's also not something that we see mirrored in literature, which means that players don't have a good model for it. Think about it. Jack Bauer* doesn't wake up, leave his house, and start killing terrorists. Jack Bauer wakes up, hears that terrorists have hijacked a plane, and then he leaves his house and starts killing terrorists.

That isn't how I use the term "proactive" and I suspect for a lot of other players it's also not. I don't think proactive is just 'running PrPs' or 'making a scene about what you want it to be about at that moment, usually You.' But it's doing Something. It's some form of active engagement with me, even if it's jumping off what other people are doing. It's reacting to plots that staff or other players are running and trying to RP about them, rather than just passively showing up at events. Sometimes it's as small as picking a place to RP and vague situation instead of just blankly staring at me when I respond to your request to RP with, 'Sure, what do you want to do?' Mostly, to me, it's just not being utterly passive about your own fun.

[Roz]

For me, being proactive on a MU* means seeking out RP, either through general means (asking on a RP channel if it exists, joining folks on the grid, etc.) or specific ones (having a particular idea and seeking out a specific person for it). It means picking up hooks and following up on them. For example: you RP with someone and they mention something about another character in a scene. It's interesting or as some potential for more stuff, so you seek out the other person and go, "Hey, you came up in this scene and I think it'd be fun to play."

Like 95% of the time, when players have complained to me about not getting RP, they're not even doing the basic steps of seeking it out through the means available to them on the game. So yeah, I tell those people to be more proactive.

[faraday]

@Lisse24 said:

I would rather this rule be called, "Look for and respond to hooks," because right now, the phrase "be proactive" is my pet peeve. It seems like I've recently seen a spade of people criticizing players who are reactive. Players are told to "make their own fun" and then criticized when a game seems to be overwhelmed with bar rp.

Yeah, I think there's some mis-matched terminology going on here. When I see "RP Hooks" and "proactive" I usually see it in the context of plot hooks.

What I think @Halicron is talking about is more like conversational/action cues in a given RP scene, like:

(A) Jane walks through the park, her nose buried in a book.
(B) Jane walks through the park, her nose buried in a book. She appears to be on a collision course with (a tree / a street busker / your character / whatever ).

With (B) there's a cue/hook that the other player can react to easily. Of course you don't have to grab the bait on every hook. Maybe you just sit back and get some popcorn to watch Jane crash into the tree and then tease her about it. But in general RP works better when it's more of a give and take.

As far as plot hooks - I agree, "proactive" is vague. It can mean anything from "follow the hooks if you want to be involved" to literally "if you want a plot, run it yourself." It's important to provide further clarification to set expectations.

I haven't criticized players if a game devolves into just bar RP. But I have criticized them for complaining that there's nothing but bar RP when they're not showing up to events, responding to plot breadcrumbs, or making any attempt to run their own plots. That's just obnoxious.

[Ide]

@Lisse24 said:

I think this idea of having proactive players who start a bunch of interesting plots for their fellow players is also unrealistic. It's also not something that we see mirrored in literature, which means that players don't have a good model for it. Think about it. Jack Bauer* doesn't wake up, leave his house, and start killing terrorists. Jack Bauer wakes up, hears that terrorists have hijacked a plane, and then he leaves his house and starts killing terrorists.

My personal belief that it is the responsibility of staff to provide players with something that they can react to and then to help them find a proactive way to deal with that circumstance or complication, and that by doing this you can creative a healthy and active game. In my philosophy this doesn't need to be a full-blown plot, but can rather be little things to make the player's life difficult.

I don't think you're alone in believing that, certainly many (most?) mu*ers think of mu* as online TT, and most RPGs people are familiar with use GMs.

However IMO literature actually is a very bad model for mu*. Literature has already happened when you experience it, i.e. the author writes it and you read it. It's a fallacy to think of yourself as the reader and the other player as the author -- you are both authors, and if you want a model for mu* at all theater or improv is much better I think.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Halicron
No offense but if that six line nod pose is an example of good rp to you, I sincerely hope we never rp.
honestly I read all the way through it here but in actual rp. I doubt I would have, you would have lost me no later then remembering the cigarette in your fingers.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@Ide
Yep. If I'm playing with someone who thinks they're the audience and I'm the author (or who expects me to be the awed receiver of their awesome literary constructions, for that matter), I'm going to cease to play with that person very quickly. I enjoy MU*ing most when I'm approaching it as text-based improv, where there's an ongoing give-and-take. Including between players and STs. In my experience, at least, there is nothing more frustrating as a GM than feeling like people just came to watch my emits for two hours because there was a +event, rather than participate and do shit. By the same token, if an ST just expects me to be the audience to their awesomeness, that's a really bad ST'd scene for me.

[Arkandel]

@ThatGuyThere said:

@Halicron
No offense but if that six line nod pose is an example of good rp to you, I sincerely hope we never rp.
honestly I read all the way through it here but in actual rp. I doubt I would have, you would have lost me no later then remembering the cigarette in your fingers.

No offense but I get the same reaction from poorly spell checked writing.

[Coin]

@Arkandel said:

@ThatGuyThere said:

@Halicron
No offense but if that six line nod pose is an example of good rp to you, I sincerely hope we never rp.
honestly I read all the way through it here but in actual rp. I doubt I would have, you would have lost me no later then remembering the cigarette in your fingers.

No offense but I get the same reaction from poorly spell checked writing.

[ThatGuyThere]

I am not seeing the spelling error, lack of punctuation sure possibly horrible grammar but all the spelling made it through the spell checker.

Add if I was going to be offends by Ark it would be because he is a dirty hippy.

[Arkandel]

@ThatGuyThere said:

I am not seeing the spelling error, lack of punctuation sure possibly horrible grammar but all the spelling made it through the spell checker.

I don't usually get snippy about stuff like this but you got snarky about an otherwise well-written pose because of its length so I took a cheap shot at you. I kinda felt bad about it though if that helps.

Having said that,

honestly I read all the way through it here but in actual rp. I doubt I would have, you would have lost me no later then remembering the cigarette in your fingers.

You started a sentence with a small case letter and typed 'then' instead of 'than'. Not all errors are caught by the spell checker.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Arkandel
True I never said there were no errors just not a spelling error. I freely admitted punctuation errors which the failure to capitalize is.
And yeah I still do not consider the six lines to nod to be well written, different strokes for different folks, but if the point of a pose is He nods, I would rather read it as he nods. If for no other reason then it takes less time.
Now I would hope I as someone in the scene could produce content that would encourage a long meaningful pose but if the choices are long and without meaning and short without meaning I will take short every time.

[Coin]

@Arkandel said:

I don't usually get snippy about stuff like this but you got snarky about an otherwise well-written pose because of its length so I took a cheap shot at you. I kinda felt bad about it though if that helps.

I didn't, but I'm a horrible person so that's not a surprise.

P.S. I think that commas are important; that the Oxford Comma gets a bad rap; and that you should always, always use a semi-colon to separate items in a list if that list is in the form of a sentence and one of those items contains a comma in it, even if those commas are helping something superfluous, such as word repetition for emphatization or the explanation of something pointless in an overly long sentence that didn't need to exist in the first place and that no one really wants to read anyway.