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An "Old Fart's" Lament.


StormWolfe
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@Deep Sea I love you! LOL

 

Yes, collaborative posts are very similar to joint posts. We use them in conjunction with regular play-by-post. We'll switch to a JP if there's a need for rapid-fire back-and-forth dialog between two or more characters. This cuts down on dozens of very short posts and encourages direct interaction.

 

I do remember when it was one and only one character image, no GIFs! We do allow character galleries to be attached to the character's profile, but to use a new avatar, people have to actually change it in the character's profile.

 

And - yes, we still limit our IC forums to *gasp* one! We encourage character subplots, however, we also encourage participation (off and on as it fits) in the site's main storylines.

 

:pirate: Ahhhhh, the good OLD days. 

Someone somewhere went to sleep and dreamed us all alive.
Dreams get pushed around a lot, and I doubt if we'll survive.
We won't get to wake up, dreams were born to disappear.
And I'm pretty sure that none of us are here.
~ None of Us Here by Jim Stafford ~

 

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RPG-Initiative

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I feel like a fogey too. (35 this year.) I am tired of hoops and so I remove them on my sites. But invariably when I want to join a new site, there are hoops. And I dutifully learn the lingo and jump through the hoops but at the end of the day, I don't enjoy myself at these sites meant for the younger generation. I'm not into the whole shipper thing, though I've tried. I'd rather just have one post per person going "HEY, OPEN PLOT IDEAS, COME POST IF YOU'RE INTERESTED!" 

 

I hate the new trend of 500 images all around every post. Some of my face claims have like... 3 good images, full stop. I don't want to have to crop a thousand images to fit all these weird sizes and shit. Plus, it's super distracting when I'm trying to post. Guh. I feel like the fogey shaking the cane at the world but luckily, my RP partners feel the same way so... yay?

 

But I feel like that's why our RP circles become so insular. We sort of find ourselves surrounded by the same people we've always been around because we're all so comfortable with the way we all do things. And then I don't know about other people, I start to burn out because I LIKE the excitement of not knowing what new RPers are going to do in their posts. I like people with different ideas than the ones I've already seen. I like that they don't take over different reiterations of characters and play them again in a different setting and plot. I just get a little tired of it sometimes. That's why when I enter new territory--new playbys, all new plots, etc, I am so much more excited than I am at the prospect of playing out things I've essentially done before. 

 

Sorry. I might have gone off topic a little there. 

 

I just feel so old and tired lately. lol 

 

I've not heard of joint posting beyond what they do on Nova, and I've never been a fan. I'd just rather post back and forth, tbh. So maybe I'm not as fogey as I thought. 

 

 

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Reality is an illusion. 


 
 

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  • 5 weeks later...

@StormWolfe I started in PBeMs so it was really great to see a reference to them again 😄 I am not quite as old but I definitely feel that way too sometimes since I'm usually the oldest person on the sites that I'm on.

 

I also feel like my RP experience has become a bit insular, though some of that is due to one of the genres that I RP in being such a small community. I try to join new RPs from time to time but either I feel the activity rules are too stifling for someone that has work and family to worry about so writing isn't the end-all-be-all or I feel like so many of them are geared towards things like phone threads or tinder threads or whatever and less actual writing and I get irritated and become a cranky old woman or something.

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1 hour ago, skyemoondancer said:

but either I feel the activity rules are too stifling for someone that has work and family to worry about so writing isn't the end-all-be-all or I feel like so many of them are geared towards things like phone threads or tinder threads or whatever and less actual writing and I get irritated and become a cranky old woman or something.

 

Chuckles @skyemoondancer

 

I am definitely a fish out of water when it comes to modern RPGs. Not dissing them though! I enjoy seeing what's out there.

 

I hear ya on the activity levels. My sites are very laid back for those very reasons. Most people have real lives and don't live online. We ask that people try to post once per week per tag or communicate a delay to us. We do not have a mandatory activity level. If people are not in active threads or don't wanna be, that's up to them. Just be courteous to the other writers when you are in threads with them.

 

Another sign of old age...a tendency to ramble.

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Someone somewhere went to sleep and dreamed us all alive.
Dreams get pushed around a lot, and I doubt if we'll survive.
We won't get to wake up, dreams were born to disappear.
And I'm pretty sure that none of us are here.
~ None of Us Here by Jim Stafford ~

 

sagas-button1.png.467e9214ee1a2d2a24c0030301948c27.png 

 

RPG-Initiative

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This is my thread! You are my people! Hellooooo.

 

Hit my 4th decade this year. I have tabletopped, played by notebook (collaborative writing by hand, thank you), played by hand-written letter, played by email, and finally forum RP'd. 

 

Last year, another over-30 friend and I revived a 10-yr PBP forum where we first met and wrote together on (my first PBP forum), and I'll admit it doesn't have "shippers" and we aren't very good at "wanted ads" (but folks have some) and while there is a "plot notes" section, they're not required. Believe it or not, my forum is a good mix of 18+ folks, mostly in their 20s-30s, but ... we all kinda get each other.

 

All that to say that there is literally hope for EVERYONE out here on the internets.

 

I truly believe that it is possible to find "your people." Does it have to be a large group? No. 

 

I feel like you say "insular" like it's a bad thing, so that's where I'm left scratching my head. Finding that tight group of people who track with you on not only a technological level but a collaborative story level feels good, feels right, feels inspiring. Folks who "get you" and who get the world you're building together, who click with your characters and who want to contribute to the storylines you've envisioned are the goal, right?

 

You don't have to include everyone (do we really? I don't even mean that selfishly, just logically) so long as you're taking care of the people who join you and not necessarily making new people feel unwelcome. I think we often are so concerned about not hurting feelings (or not getting our feelings hurt) these days that we forget it's perfectly OKAY not to vibe with an RP group—there are so many other choices! Just relax! Go see what's out there! If you don't like the flavor, choose another one. But, of course, don't be a jerk about it. That's a good rule.

 

Anyway, if you're feeling stale or if you're hoping to attract fresh writers, well, just keep writing. It's worked for this long, right? Hahaha. I can't keep up with some of the new-fangled stuff, either. I'm not interested in app-ifying my RP. I just wanna write. And I wanna write good stories. 

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Thorns: Uprising
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I don't know what technically qualifies as "old fogey," but at 41, I've been feeling like one in the RP sphere for about 5 years now. I had taken a couple of years off from anything formal, and when I came back it was like the entire culture had changed. While there were still plenty of people around who were 30+, the bent had begun to feel decidedly... younger, I guess. I don't want to say "immature," that's too derisive and not quite right, although there were definitely elements that were. I still haven't figured out if the culture really changed drastically or I'm just old now, because god knows I did some idiotic things in RP when I was a kid. Many things that felt important then don't really seem so now.

 

That was journal RP on Dreamwidth, and now I am making the shift to forums, which is yet another change in culture and etiquette and terminology. I've been on-and-off lurking around here for a couple of years, so the learning curve is not so bad, but there's still a lot to get used to -- Shippers I can understand the utility of but are all-new to me, and I think calling calling pre-made characters "canons" is going to seem weird to me for a long time. Nobody here seems to use the terms CR or PSL (Character Relationship and Private Story Line), which I had to learn when I came back to RP and now can apparently chuck again lol.

 

22 hours ago, skyemoondancer said:

I feel like so many of them are geared towards things like phone threads or tinder threads or whatever and less actual writing and I get irritated and become a cranky old woman or something.

 

This, at least, seems to be universal. I understand why this trend has happened now, with social media having become ubiquitous, but it never fails to feel to me like a slide back to old throw-away AIM RP. To each their own; if you're into the quick back and forth, you do you. But for me I need social media-type threads to be a supplement to prose, not the other way around, or I end up feeling like my RP lacks teeth.

 

That said, I do agree with the idea that "insular" isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as it's not overly exclusionary. I tend to enjoy playing with people who are over the age of 30, because yes, a person's worldview does often shift a bit when they get older. In my experience, they tend to have more perspective, and are more likely to not take RP super seriously. Which isn't to say that I've not had wonderful RP experiences with folks younger than that; I just tend to not have to worry so much about older folks from the jump. We're coming from a similar place in terms of experience, so I think it's natural to feel more comfortable with people closer to my own age.

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5 hours ago, Keaton said:

I don't know what technically qualifies as "old fogey," but at 41, I've been feeling like one in the RP sphere for about 5 years now. I had taken a couple of years off from anything formal, and when I came back it was like the entire culture had changed. While there were still plenty of people around who were 30+, the bent had begun to feel decidedly... younger, I guess. I don't want to say "immature," that's too derisive and not quite right, although there were definitely elements that were. I still haven't figured out if the culture really changed drastically or I'm just old now, because god knows I did some idiotic things in RP when I was a kid. Many things that felt important then don't really seem so now.

 

Yes. This. After a few years of a writing break, I totally felt this, too. So much.

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Thorns: Uprising
A Unique Victorian Fantasy Play-by-Post RPG

LORE | FORUM | CHARACTER CENSUS | WANTED ADS | DISCORD

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On 5/24/2019 at 9:32 AM, Muse said:

I feel like you say "insular" like it's a bad thing, so that's where I'm left scratching my head. Finding that tight group of people who track with you on not only a technological level but a collaborative story level feels good, feels right, feels inspiring. Folks who "get you" and who get the world you're building together, who click with your characters and who want to contribute to the storylines you've envisioned are the goal, right?

 

No, I really did not mean it as a bad thing. I love my core writing group. They tend to stay with me through thick and thin. What I meant by insular is feeling out of step with lots of modern RP trends from plots to layouts to terminology. I don't understand more than half the acronyms used in the RP world (or the real world for that matter although it's easier to look up the ones in the real world).

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Someone somewhere went to sleep and dreamed us all alive.
Dreams get pushed around a lot, and I doubt if we'll survive.
We won't get to wake up, dreams were born to disappear.
And I'm pretty sure that none of us are here.
~ None of Us Here by Jim Stafford ~

 

sagas-button1.png.467e9214ee1a2d2a24c0030301948c27.png 

 

RPG-Initiative

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  • 1 month later...

Well I am in the same are of time with you as far as trying to grasp some of the differences. I really always loved writing with a diverse crew no matter how crazy it got, however I have noticed too that my circle of partners I write with has become insular ( gosh I hated that word) but when I have risked it with others the end result is often disappointing in story. 

 

Oh I am sure its perception theirs and mine and perhaps I expect what I know when the ever evolving face of role play writing changes so much. I miss some things about the past however I am slowly finding quite a bit about the now I might just let grow on me.

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Old fogey here! I recently discovered I was one when I used TVTropes terminology with a younger writing partner and had to explain a) what it meant and b) what TVTropes is.  It made me feel a million years old.

 

I agree that there's definitely a shift - the emphasis on faces (I've groaned about this elsewhere so I will keep that short), on graphics (including posting templates which, sigh, I use but mostly do because I found one that doesn't require too much extra coding), on want ads, too.  

 

I come from the LJ roleplaying culture (shout-out to @Keaton) where much of the panfandom stuff we wrote was utter and complete crack, and was in fact not only fun but also very light-hearted.  It seems to me though that the overall tone has shifted towards seriousness more and more, and it worries me. 

 

I do think that LJ (and Dreamwidth) were kind of a transition period towards increased graphics - Proboards forums had only the one tiny icon, but then there were the LJ-DW platforms where you could swap, and now we have all this graphics madness.  It makes me question the actual interest in writing , which I think is also part of the cranky that I share with @skyemoondancer re: social media RP.  

 

I also  wonder how the want ad culture came about (this is still new to me). 

 

Out of curiousity, what is this confusing modern RP etiquette you speak of, @StormWolfe?  I may have missed the boat on this one. Are we beyond the regular godmoding/sue-age prohibitions? Is there something I need to know about? Oh! *lightbulb* is this about triggers?  

 

Edit:  Ah, joint posting: back in the days of LJ we'd do that with chat logs via IRC; it was a great way to move forward site plots or even individual plots.  I miss it, actually. 

 

But! I recently did a joint post using Google docs with one of my RP partners and they liked it. It was the first time in ages, and it was wonderful, and I want to do it again!  This could yet make a comeback! 

Edited by Let-make-nice
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23 hours ago, Let-make-nice said:

Out of curiousity, what is this confusing modern RP etiquette you speak of, @StormWolfe?  I may have missed the boat on this one. Are we beyond the regular godmoding/sue-age prohibitions? Is there something I need to know about? Oh! *lightbulb* is this about triggers?  

 

@Let-make-nice

 

Triggers and the overwhelming concerns about who you might offend over something you had no clue about. LOL  Maybe it's because the OOC vs. IC lines are even more blurred now? I am not sure. My RP life is a hobby and shouldn't be a place where I, or my members, have to walk on eggshells.

 

23 hours ago, Let-make-nice said:

Edit:  Ah, joint posting: back in the days of LJ we'd do that with chat logs via IRC; it was a great way to move forward site plots or even individual plots.  I miss it, actually. 

 

But! I recently did a joint post using Google docs with one of my RP partners and they liked it. It was the first time in ages, and it was wonderful, and I want to do it again!  This could yet make a comeback! 

 

My roleplays still JP...alot! For many years we had our sites on Nova which has a robust system for JP writing. At another site, we use Google Docs and then simply post it on the site afterward. I am slowly working on my swords and sorcery roleplay reboot. We're using Gaia forums for it as it also has a built in JP system. So, JP in my small corner of the RP universe lives on. ;)

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Someone somewhere went to sleep and dreamed us all alive.
Dreams get pushed around a lot, and I doubt if we'll survive.
We won't get to wake up, dreams were born to disappear.
And I'm pretty sure that none of us are here.
~ None of Us Here by Jim Stafford ~

 

sagas-button1.png.467e9214ee1a2d2a24c0030301948c27.png 

 

RPG-Initiative

*your one-stop RPG resource site!

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