Membership Posting Orders?

[Sage 289]

When you're in a thread with 3+ people, do you adhere to a posting order? Or do you just kind of post as needed/your schedule allows?

 

I'm interested in seeing different people's opinions and practices in multiple character threads. Is there an unspoken norm or expectation when there are several characters in a thread? Or is it more of a free for all? I've been involved with both, so I'm wondering what you consider normal or expected when you enter into one of these threads.

[KARA BELLA 18]

Any multiple character threads I have been in have had an order to who posts.  I have never been involved in one where there wasn't an order in which we posted.

[Death Kitten 200]

There's a fine line between making sure everyone gets a turn, and running the risk of letting a thread get bogged down or awkward if someone isn't able to post as often as everyone else or if the natural flow of the plot doesn't encourage everyone going in a set turn order.

 

Most of the time I try to play it by ear, and on occasion it's bitten me in the ass, but for the most part people I've RPed with tend to be pretty mindful of others they're writing with. We tend to get a mix of two people going back and forth a little bit between rotating tags, and people taking turns in a pretty orderly fashion without much discussion about it.

 

Regardless of which way it goes, communications is key. My game, we make use of the chat regularly to check in and see who's next if we're not sure, and as the admin/command team, I try to help guide it by calling attention to characters that haven't been participating as much as the others to make sure they don't get left out.

 

I will share a story about the one time it really caused problems not having a turn order in a thread though. This was on a game that there was some ooc crap going on that added weight to the backlash to the reply order on a thread, so without that it might have been easier to iron it out with discussion outside the thread. At any rate, IC we had a tense situation where we had a group of characters discussing doing something that was in a bit of a moral grey area, and my character had invited the group to her quarters for the discussion. One of the characters blamed another for something that had happened that had helped set the situation up as it stood. There was ooc plotting that basically amounted to this character being pinned with the blame for something someone else had planned out ooc, though the player was not innocent in the situation and I'm sure that contributed to the situation unfolding the way it did. TL;DR, one player had his character arrive and punch the other character as a way of expressing his displeasure with the situation. The player for the character being punched wasn't online at the time it happened, but I had been. Seeing as my character was hosting, I jumped in having my character shove between the two and telling the puncher to stop. When the player showed up later, he got upset that his character was not allowed the first reaction to the situation as he'd been the one being punched. All the ooc drama aside, he was right in this complaint and in the end he was given the chance to react and I ended up changing my reaction to work around his.

 

I guess the real take away is make sure everyone's communicating. If it's easier for everyone involved to set a turn order, especially if you have players who aren't as good at communicating out of character, then do that, but if everyone's pretty good at communicating, I personally find that things can flow better if you don't rigidly hold to a set turn order.

[Elena 546]

As long as there are 3+ characters, no order, otherwise it would never end. The basic rule is that you can't post until the one you are talking to replies, but the others can (upon the same rule).

[Marin 14]

Unless stated otherwise it's always been first come first serve with me. After everyone has posted once, the post order gets set in that order.

[Robmin 10]

I've always adhered to posting in the round - by which I mean Player A Posts, Player B Posts, Player C Posts, I post rinse repeat. The exception, however, is if Player B has been inactive or has put up an absence notice in which case Player B would get skipped, until such point as they returned. If they asked to jump back in then yep someone would message them a summary of events and they'd continue. If not oh well.

[Morrigan 1,826]

Oh this is a fun conversation because I loathe posting orders especially in larger threads. It's gets really upsetting if I have more than one character involved and I have to wait to respond to someone's reply.

 

So that being said I've both experienced it the round robin way (standard of RP) or the post as needed way.

 

I personally prefer post as needed. I understand not everyone can post as quickly as everyone else but nothing is a bigger thread death for a group thread that isn't being replied to. Plus. If I introduce my characters at different intervals (for example I introduce one immediately, wait a few posts and then another and then another) I'm forced to WAIT to respond to all of the character action? I can't post all of my characters at once when I have time? That's really aggravating and annoying to say the least. It also really bogs down the story because lets say I have only an hour today to post? Well I can post character 1 then I have to wait for character 2, 3 and 4 to post before I can post my second character or the 5th character in the thread. Well if those 3 posts aren't done before my hour is up and give me enough time to respond then EVERYONE has to wait until I have time again.

 

I have a preference for a similar way to @Elena's method. If your character has an interaction or would react then post. It makes it to where the flow stays even instead of forcing your character to wait and wade through a few extra replies that may likely have nothing to do with them. It also helps with conversation flow.

 

In other group threads I also don't mind doing round robin as long as I'm allowed to skip people that are irrelevant for the moment. Like direct person to person conversation. For these types of threads it's an upon request basis "Can I go next?" sort of thing.

 

Overall though I prefer flow over what some people call "Fairness" we're writing a story not playing in the sandbox with toys where sharing is caring.

[Icewolf 258]

Personally, I prefer a posting order, but this is largely due to what I've experienced on twitter. Say, there are four people in a thread - person A posts, followed by person B, etc, but one person starts posting out of turn and doesn't give person D a chance to respond before they post again. I've had it where if I've not been around for a while (say, I have to go into town, or god forbid, sleep!), I've missed my turn to post when I should have done and people have carried on without me. Some people even post their reply while you're typing your own and it doesn't make sense when you post yours, because what you're replying to is two or three posts above. (I find it a bit rude, to be honest.) Then, there was a whole thread which was started with some action in it and because I went to bed, two people continued it while I was asleep and may as well as just god-modded my character. (If one of the people in it hadn't been a friend, I would have been really angry with it.)

 

I also had another rp in which two people mentioned me (they knew I wasn't online) and continued to rp to each other, filling my mentions with more than 100+ tweets in one night. I had to tell them to cut me out of it in the morning. I had no idea what the hell was going on with it and really, there was nothing for my character to do but just stand there, as he wasn't really a part of it. (The other problem is that this pushes my role-plays down which I had with other people, and if I'd allowed it to continue, I would have lost track of those.)

 

Make a posting order and stick with it. If you need to wait for a response, you can always start another rp, and if waiting between responses becomes a problem, then it might be a good idea to limit the number of people/characters who can participate in the first place. That's just my opinion on it, because I find that if people don't wait, quieter people or people who can't be on get pushed out of the interaction, are written out of it, etc, without the choice being theirs at all. It's bad, because if people are a bit insecure or think people don't want to rp with them, it adds to their anxiety. I can see the point where people want to react more naturally to it and respond when there is something their character can react to, but if people 'talk over the heads' of other players, post away between each other and not wait for others in the rp to catch up, then those who aren't posting will easily get lost in the thread and if people don't wait until everyone has responded, then the non-responsive player(s) and their character(s) may as well not be there at all.

[Zahhy 130]

Wow - this is a great topic! Basically my answer is NO*, I don't follow a strict posting order, especially if someone doesn't post in a thread for more than a few days. It's just not fair to wait around. *Unless of course there is a small group and we all really want to get play there's an unspoken rule of who goes where.

 

In small groups of 2-4 I expect to follow an unspoken posting order. We all take turns, just because it is the polite thing to do! 

 

Open Threads, Site-Wide and other large group based threads are another beast though. I prefer the free-for all. It's nice to get everyone situated and if your characters form naturally small groups I also find it is polite to start a new thread where they "exit" the larger thread and start a spider-web open thread elsewhere. That way, players and members can float from "location" to "location" without trying to watch more than one bouncing ball.  Sort of like a social butterfly at a party, you know?

 

That being said - as an Admin I worry so, so, so much about this. I don't require a posting order because so many of my users post once or twice and then never again in a thread. I would hate for a thread to die, just because everyone is waiting for a person that doesn't intend to rejoin the post. I expect someone to jump in again (it's pretty obvious it will likely be me or another of my hyper active players) that finally breaks the silence and therefore the unspoken "order".

 

 

Edited June 5, 2017 by Zahhy

[Uaithne 543]

As an admin, if I know a thread I'm setting up is going to have 4+ people, I state that there is no posting order, but that people shouldn't outright abandon others.  Its worked out well, and threads have gone very smoothly.  If someone isn't active, they end up getting left behind, but I'd rather have that than have the RP thread die because they aren't posting.

 

If I'm approaching this from the perspective of a regular member, I'll stick to posting order until it isn't logical anymore.

[sid 5]

I personally prefer no posting order but as others have said it's gonna depend on the thread. 

Most group threads that I do are going to be like... a bunch of people joining in on whatever thing. People are usually pretty intuitive, things might start moving quickly and if it gets to a point where it's "okay this person needs to post because something is happening, but they're asleep, so let's all wait until tomorrow so they have a chance to react" they're really good about it. Sometimes things get moved ahead and you have to fill in the gaps a little and catch up and that's fine, you can make it work. 

 

The only time it gets iffy is if there's a really, really content heavy thread. I just had one the other day where it was 3 characters and there was some important stuff going on, so we chatted OOC to decide "okay we'll let you two have a couple posts back and forth, and then us two will have a couple back and forth" just because that's what made sense for the thread. Not exactly a posting order, but an OOC-arranged order nonetheless. 

[Crossroads Demon 11]

It depends on n the thread. If we are doing a site event thread that's open to all I specifically put a no posting order rule so no one has to wait around for anyone else. But I also make sure that members include a 'Tag: chracter name' or 'tag:open' at the bottom of the replies so no one gets confused about who the replies are addressing, or that they're open to being approached etc.  People may get 'left behind' because they aren't replying but it usually happens organically and the thread doesn't die. 

 

For a regular thread that includes 3+ characters, typically the rule we go by  is adhering to the order in which people first replied. That being said I had usually add a rule that if anyone is 'stalling' or slowing down the thread (I.e haven't replied in 3+ days) then you are allowed to skip them to make sure the thread can keep going. MOST people are pretty good about knowing when to skip etc or offering the other players to 'skip' if they know they can't reply in a timely fashion.  

[Kit the Human 758]

Loosey goosey posting order with a huge dose of post as needed!

 

Like other's have said, having a strict post order tends to just clog things up so that the thread becomes stale.

[Rune 1,099]

I need an order otherwise it would progress without me and I wouldn't bother trying to jump back in. I've been in situations where two people don't work and they just take over a thread and go on, leaving me in the dust because I'm at work one day and come back to so many posts and the threads gone on that my replying would be pointless.

 

No order risks leaving people out IMO. Unless, of course, you have people with common courtesy. That said, however, if someone is taking forever to reply I feel it's totally justified asking if they're okay with being skipped this time around or something.

 

If its one of the sort of threads like, for example, a Pern hatching, where the entire board is involved, then yeah, don't worry about order. But just a small group? 3-5? I need it. I also rarely get involved in personal threads that are more than 3 people, though.

Edited June 8, 2017 by Rune

[Indio 11]

It's a free for all for everyone's first post, but after that we have a set posting order so no one gets trampled on and everyone has a chance to react before we move on. I think the only time I've had an issue with a multi-person thread was when the thread starter mentioned OOCly that her character was going to slap my character, so the person she mentioned it to decided he was going to have his character react to the slap before it even happened since she was taking too long to post her actually slapping my dude.

 

No post order usually means faster posters get to take control of the thread while slower posters get left in the dust, then you run the risk of saltiness. For event threads we usually implement some kind of limit to how long other people have to wait, so say if someone doesn't post within 3 days, the next person can post to keep the thread moving. 

Edited June 9, 2017 by Indio