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Open Threads... are they dead?


Morrigan
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For the most part they're dead. I've had one or two people randomly join them on impulse (which is the idea behind them, anyone can just jump in). More often than not they ended up being tagged open, but those who actually participate are people I mention it to in the chat box, or plotting, etc.

 

I think people prefer to talk out a basic idea, or get the formal invite to a thread, nowadays.

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It's really up to the culture of the site!

 

But the biggest hindrance is time. The topic owner may not remember the thread, may not be interested, or may have left or dropped that character already.

 

New players...

A lot of new players look for open threads, so these old open threads - usually the only kind of open thread there is - can be a place where new players are accidentally/inadvertently discouraged. 

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I don't think they're dead. I've never put up an open thread and had no one respond. Similarly, most members on the sites I'm on put open threads up whenever they create new characters and these opens never go unanswered. It must depend on an individual site and its culture.

 

Maybe open threads that aren't being replied to just aren't easy to reply to either. If an open thread is boring and a character isn't doing anything other than sitting in a coffee shop or some other location, leaving no fun way for my character to join in, I'm probably just going to pass it up and leave it for someone else to reply to. So I think it could boil down to a site culture and, possibly in some cases the content of the first post in an open thread.

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I love when my players post open threads, I love to post open threads, and I love replying to open threads. I'm really big into everybody interacting with everybody. There are a million places to go and do one-on-one rp, but a forum is a group thing. I don't see the point in joining a forum if you only ever want to post with one other person on the site. I'm not anti-closed-threads or anything, but it's got to make sense. If you're posting in the greenhouses at midnight - yeah, it's unlikely you'll randomly bump into someone - keeping the thread closed to you and someone else is fine. But if you're posting in the dining hall at lunch on a wednesday - that place is gonna be bustling and pretty much every character is in that room, whether they choose to interact or not- it should be open. I don't care if you're worried about someone else overhearing your character talking about their deepest, darkest secret. Tough titty said the kitty. Maybe go talk about it at midnight in the greenhouses and not in the middle of the caf at lunch!

 

As for random encounter open threads, where there's no prior arrangement between the OP and anyone else... I do understand how people could dislike them... but I love those, too. If it's boring as hell, I jump in and try to make it interesting. We're writers, people! We are literally only limited by our imaginations. And obviously rules and canon and such, but you get what I mean. Open threads aren't dead to me.

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I love open threads, but like you said it seems like they are dying out. I can create an open thread and it will sit and sit. When my members make open threads, I always feel like I am the only one replying to them, and thus taking away from their opportunities to thread with other members of the site.

 

Due to this I have actually started advertising the open threads in a ticker underneath of our discord embed on the site. That way when you're replying to another character, the list of open threads is there slowing ticking by and hopefully encouraging someone to click on them.

 

I really do hope they are not dying out though, because a lot of my favorite plots have come from random encounters.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I started role playing in chat rooms where I just jumped into the middle of whatever was happening and that was that. Even on neopets, most of the role plays were essentially open threads. I think that is why I still make open threads almost religiously. I don't enjoy juggling a whole lot of threads at once, but I always have room for at least open thread. Maybe that is because it rarely gets picked up so it is easy to have a dead thread in my tracker, but love when they take off. I enjoy spontaneous plot weaving. I will lead the dance if you only want to follow. I just hate this rigid one on one style private thread culture that has pulled me away from randomly role playing with three people at once in a thread none of us have set in stone plans for plot. Even when I try to have group threads, people shy away if there is already someone else there. It is maddening. I will never stop making them though, even if 90% of them die and 5% turn into someone backing out two posts in. That 5% of awesome threads with crazy spur of the moment plots are life.

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4 hours ago, Bass said:

 I just hate this rigid one on one style private thread culture that has pulled me away from randomly role playing with three people at once in a thread none of us have set in stone plans for plot. Even when I try to have group threads, people shy away if there is already someone else there. It is maddening. I will never stop making them though, even if 90% of them die and 5% turn into someone backing out two posts in. That 5% of awesome threads with crazy spur of the moment plots are life.

 

I think the reason for that (in my experience, anyway) is that there is usually someone who hates the presence of the new comer and the new comer gets trampled on. Folks need to be a bit more welcoming, though it can be a bit awkward if someone joins in when it's not meant to be open for more than the people already in it.

 

I make open threads because people seem to be post shy in general - at least if you've posted something, it shows you are active and I don't see why you should be inactive just because the other people aren't posting. Also, you could end up losing your character if there are posting requirements and people don't ask to plot with you, or aren't there to respond to plotting requests. Maybe even if an open thread doesn't have any takers, perhaps the act of posting them will encourage others to post? I'd rather see a board full of threads than one that's empty because no one is posting. It's perhaps also more attractive than a discord server or chat box that's full of complaints that no one is rping with them.

 

Edited by Icewolf
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I tend to try to leave an open thread or two for new members to jump into. Sometimes it works and sometimes it just sits. Many people want a direct thread with someone when they join and I try to give that as well. I try to do my best to thread with new people and have opens for them. Though I've noticed that a lot of folks have been getting away from the open threads. I still enjoy them and like to make ones that have interesting ways to interact unless it's directly related to one of my characters. There are times though when they sit for ages. I tend to jump into open threads from others because I know how it feels to have them sit around. What am I losing anyway? So I guess I'm on the fence on that one.

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I really like open threads. We have some members of our site that don't plot nor do they join in on chatting, so if they want a cold open that's usually how I get them.

Also, it leaves room for new players. I also love jumping in on open threads with characters I think could be friends or enemies with the posted character. I don't make them often (I've had really bad things happen due to claiming the thread was open when I had an actually specific type of character I wanted visiting). When I do, I make my intent for the openness clear. Sometimes people bite and it is nice. Others it is the same as already said where they sit waiting, and nothing ever comes of it.

I do it mostly as a new player, and I encourage new players to do it, but as an established admin it is just better for me to try to intentionally thread than throw out open threads that are not plot specific.

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Most of the threads I post are open threads.

 

I'm one of those seemingly rare people who actually enjoys writing thread starters, and I don't really enjoy a lot of plotting--I like things to be spontaneous and a surprise. So, I end up writing a lot of thread starters and then tossing them up as open threads.

 

Most of mine get replies right away. And most of them are now threads that have hundreds, sometimes thousands, of posts under them.

 

None of mine are "I bumped into you! Hello!" open threads. I strive to make them entertaining or high stakes, and I've had a lot of success with them! I don't find it to be a difficult thing to do. Examples!

 

-One of mine involved the leader of a canon nation (played by me) sending out a summons for all interested parties to report to her for details about a particular quest she wanted them to undertake, to hunt a mythical creature for her and bring it to her alive.

 

-One involved my baker-mage accidentally exploding her shop and creating a sugary, flour-y, eggy disaster in the streets. >_>

 

-One involved my "I can see dead people" priestess accidentally unleashing a demon onto a small village, and that promptly turned into a murder mystery.

 

-One involved my character getting blackout drunk and waking up naked in the streets. 8D

 

-One involved my vigilante by night, noblewoman by day ending up waaay over her head when trying to stop a mugger.

 

-One involved a demon hunt gone wrong.

 

-One involved my character's mount (a dragon-thing that looks like a utahraptor) taking a dump on a poor passerby.

 

Etc!

 

I tend to close my open threads after someone joins, though, because I prefer 1 x 1 RPs and don't really like group threads. But 99% of my starters are open until joined!

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I agree with the individuals who said that whether or not open threads tend to sit depends heavily on the site culture, and on the content of the open thread.

 

On content: in my experience, it's happened that folk don't know how to write an open thread that gives someone else something to respond to. By this I am not referring to length or introspection, but rather an event or action that would prompt/force another person to intervene (such as all of @Viscount Rhi-Rhi's awesome examples). Even a small thing- like someone dropping their phone in public- presents a small problem that could lead to a fun interaction.

 

Personally, when writing open threads, I usually make it something that is relevant to where I want my character to go/what I want them to be doing. If no one responds to the thread, I carry on by myself and thus develop my character and move their plot forward anyway!

 

On site culture: open threads tend to sit on sites that make no point of featuring open threads in any way possible. It's best to have them listed somewhere on the index/globally. If not that, then at least a channel on a Discord server or a thread somewhere with all of the open threads linked in it- and then have links to those someplace on the index/global. Often times if a thread is open, it's put in the subtitle for the thread- which is often either absent from the thread list or in very small, easy-to-overlook text.

 

Over the years, I've gone towards all threads on my forums being considered open- so anyone can join in on any thread, at any given time, so long as they have a realistic reason for being there. Someone else lives in your house with you? They might walk in on you gettin' jiggy with your SO. You're having a very private conversation in a very public place? Someone could overhear. For me, making all threads open by default and then prominently featuring them (and recommending them to newbies) has worked wonders. The only open threads that sit and rot are the ones that have the content problem mentioned above and by others, which I will still usually join with a character of mine if there is one that can be there.

 

I love open threads, and they'll never be dead anywhere I am.

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On 2/3/2019 at 6:06 PM, Josie said:

Over the years, I've gone towards all threads on my forums being considered open- so anyone can join in on any thread, at any given time, so long as they have a realistic reason for being there. Someone else lives in your house with you? They might walk in on you gettin' jiggy with your SO. You're having a very private conversation in a very public place? Someone could overhear. For me, making all threads open by default and then prominently featuring them (and recommending them to newbies) has worked wonders. The only open threads that sit and rot are the ones that have the content problem mentioned above and by others, which I will still usually join with a character of mine if there is one that can be there.

 

I think this is a different subject altogether. I don't mind an RP culture like this and have seen sites that use it well. It's especially important, at least to me, in some settings where privacy is basically "non-existent". However it doesn't relate to the actual subject at hand on threads being open with no person intent to reply.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm 50/50 about Open Threads. There have been many times where I made one, clearly specified what the character was doing, and then somebody came along and destroyed it.

An example is one thread more than a year ago, I had a character leaning against the corner between the edges of two bookshelves. I had clearly worded that he was standing there so he wouldn't be in anybody's way, and then somebody comes along and has their character decide that he's in the way. I don't mean the character was doing it to be rude, I mean they had the character 'trying to move around him but he was in their way.' They were so goddamned sure my character was blocking all access to books even though I had stated the opposite.

 

Just an example, but it's happened to me a lot. Usually, when I make an open thread, I don't expect that I'll want to bother replying to whoever replies because I'm usually left disappointed. 😞

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They certainly seem to be less of a big deal than they used to, at least in my community. I remember some years ago, open threads were pretty popular, and we've had some great stories come out of open threads. But through the years, they've sorta faded out. They still pop up every now and then, but I think people have generally shifted toward trying to at least put some sort of general thread idea together with writing partners before getting started -- whether that's chatting things out via Discord or something or posting roleplay requests/ads.

 

I kinda miss it. There was something about the unexpectedness of never knowing who might hop in with open threads that can be hard to replicate.

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Lately I've struggled with making open threads, though do go out of my way to join open threads if it's by a new member. Generally maybe the beginning of the thread can be slow, but I get too bored and need to spice it up with something.

 

But there has definitely been considerably less ones lately, imo, and on the forum I'm rping on right now, I haven't really joined any open threads 😅 Though I've been doing plenty of "just shoving two characters at each other and seeing what sticks".

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