Roleplaying - Planning and Shaping

[finncullen]

Thanks for the feedback to my request for ideas & priorities.   The general consensus is that I should start with issues relating to planning and shaping a play. 

When I first started roleplaying online I was unfamiliar with how it was done.   My roleplaying background was as a referee for face-to-face roleplaying groups.    If you haven't come across this form of roleplaying before the format is typically that one person acts as the referee (usually given some bloody stupid title in whichever rule set is being used) and prior to the game that person devises a setting and plotline.   The other players typically play a single character each and are responsible only for their character's actions.   The referee becomes their window on the setting - describing locations, events and playing every other character.    In this type of roleplaying the referee has to plan a lot in advance - not every little action (if the players don't have freedom to act in character and do what they choose to do it becomes a frustrating exercise in railroading), but certainly they need enough preparation for the non-player characters' motivations, descriptions etc that the play can proceed without too much need for improvising.

Most of the online RP I've seen however doesn't show this level of planning - and this is appropriate since there is no formal 'referee' position - each player contributes to the ongoing narrative as they see fit, and can introduce new events etc as the mood takes them.   When everyone is firing on all cylinders and is a competent player then this can be wonderful.   If one or more of the players is less able it can become frustrating and lead to chaos.   I'll be talking more about how to bring a referee-like influence to bear in a later posting.

What I want to address here is to what extent planning is useful or desirable in an online RP, and naturally what benefits and problems the opposite - a freeform RP - also has attendant upon it.

The first and key point about planning when online RP is concerned is that it's impossible to plan too closely.   This is the same in face-to-face RP of course.   If everything is planned out in advance then what's the fun for the players in playing?   It becomes frustrating for the players to realise that things have to go one particular way, and that nothing they do has a bearing on the events unfolding.    A lot of novice ftf referees fall into this trap:  they write a lovely story and want to tell it through the players... but the players don't know what it's supposed to be and just find their efforts to be creative being stifled.    Online this can lead to threads dying as people feel excluded or irrelevant to what's going on.

There can be exceptions in which this can work - but only if the participants agree in advance.   To give an example from Storyforge - the death of Robert Liek was a planned storyline.   At the time I had an ongoing plotline involving the lovable psychopath Nemo.   I was discussing some potential developments with Robert's player and we both decided it would make a nice dramatic play (and have interesting repercussions) if Robert was murdered by Nemo.    We exchanged ideas on what would make for an interesting scene (some verbal sparring and then a no holds barred magical duel atop the astronomy tower) and then began playing.

Because we had a specific story to tell and it would have been awkward for other characters to join in.. especially since both Nemo and Robert were sneaky devils who preferred to do  things behind the scenes.. we played this out by email.     The planning even went on during the play when we realised that it would be unsatisfying for Robert to simply be beaten.. we wanted him to go out with a measure of heroism.   So during the exchange of emails we discussed how to do this, and wrote in a group of young pupils who blundered into the scene.   In saving them from Nemo, Robert had to drop his guard and paid the price.

Once it was done we posted it all on Storyforge and it made a nice 'start to finish' story with lots of drama, and it advanced an ongoing plot.   That's about as heavily planned a thread as I can imagine - but because there was still lots of room within the posts for creativity, and because the goal was the telling of a particular story - the planning worked.

At the other end of the spectrum, the early days of Storyforge also contained threads that were just started without a particular aim.   These can still prove fun and interesting so long as the participants work to make them so.   I'll discuss in a later post why I am so averse to "pass me another muffin" threads, but it's also relevant here so I'll touch on it briefly - even in a freeform thread the participants should be looking for ways to make it interesting.   What makes a story interesting is the question of course!   Elements of conflict (not necessarily violent conflict) and change are generally required, and the players need to recognise the potential to introduce these or respond to them.   If this doesn't happen, then it's muffin time.

An example of how this could work well with good players is taken from a Storyforge thread of around the same time as the death of Robert Liek.   We'd recently introduced a general common room for Hogwarts pupils of all houses to mingle in (basically to allow RP potential).   Bored one afternoon at work, I just started a thread at random with Finn slouching into the empty room and throwing himself down into a chair for a rest.    The other players could respond to that however they liked, and I trusted them to make it interesting.

They did:

Xavier Malumus:  "You're in my chair Cullen"
 

 

And far from being a random bit of pointless aggression, this was the preamble to an unprecedented attempt by the sinister Malumus wretch to talk to Finn about a job he had been asked to do.   It was anything but boring.   Meanwhile other characters entered the room and carried on dialogues of their own with all the scheming, intrigue and confusing shippery that could occur.

Nothing in the thread was planned, but people were happy to just play their characters and seize the opportunities to make things interesting as they went along.   This I think is important in making a freeform thread fly - the players must each have an eye for what makes interesting reading and cooperate with each other in achieving it.   If someone comes up with something interesting or exciting, engage with it in character (even if that engagement is outrage or rejection!) and when writing your post actively think what opportunities you are creating for others to react to it in turn.  

I recently read a book by Malcolm Gladwell, called Blink, which discusses the nature of snap-judgements and intuition and the mechanisms by which it can work.   During one chapter he describes an improvised comedy workshop where the participants devised a rule that improved the quality of their improvisations dramatically.  It was simply this - accept whatever the other person says and go with it, knowing they will do the same for your contributions.    He gave two transcripts, one from before this 'rule' was developed and one after.   The one beforehand was stilted, rambling and unfunny with both participants scrabbling to find a resolution.   The second, again totally improvised, built wonderfully as each participant accepted what the other person said and built on it.

 This is more an art than a science, but there are some simple tips like - if you expect a response then include at least a bit of external action or dialogue (if your entire post consists of thoughts then from the point of view of the other characters you haven't done anything they can respond to) and don't end your post by going off somewhere alone *unless* you are removing your character from the scene.  Even in that case I'd be more likely to end with "Finn turned to storm out of the room" which gives people a chance to interact with that before he vanishes if they wish, but it's still clear that he left if they choose not to.

When it comes to planning threads I would keep the following points in mind

If other people need to do specific things to make it work, then for heaven's sake let them know in advance - don't blame them for spoiling your great idea if they didn't know what it was.    If you want to surprise them, that's fine, but at least give them the basics ("Hey, in this play, don't open the birthday card early, okay...") so they can still act in character but take into account the essentials.

Not everyone in a planned play needs to know the whole idea of course - it's nice to be able to surprise and wow the other readers :D   Just don't rely on those not in the know to magically play along.

If you need something specific to happen/not happen to make your idea work then give the other players clues.   In a freeform RP any response is correct, but if you have a specific plot point in mind then find some way of clarifying this, if necessary by an OOC point (for example if you want your character to be in a panic about developing a nasty green rash - but you know full well it's just a prank involving paint and poltergeist - then why not post something like OOC - this doesn't seem to be contagious, nobody else gets the spots, ok?  Which means that you can still have your surprise funny ending, but the plot isn't derailed by other players joining in the fun and getting spots of their own.

In summary then - if you are planning a particular storyline, then do it with the cooperation of those involved.   You don't need to reveal all your plans (it's nice to be able to wow the audience with a twist every now and again) but treat the other players with respect and don't railroad them into obedience or assume their omniscience.   Give them the opportunity to interact with the story you are telling, and trust them to respect that enough not to derail it.    In a freeform play look for opportunities to introduce change or conflict.   It can be as simple as a disagreement over dinner, as long as it shows something about the characters involved and goes somewhere.   If you see someone trying to introduce an element like this, then go with it in some way and actively try to participate to move things along.

Comments

[newsboyhat.livejournal.com]

While I do understand the appeal of freeform RPs, they feel too random and chaotic for me. In order for them to really work, all players have to be comfortable playing with each other and respect each other's styles. And let's face it, though we all get on at SF just fine and dandy, we've not gotten to this point. We all RP differently, and an attempt to be creative can (and has been) miscommunicated as 'scene-stealing.' I'm not pointing fingers at anyone in particular, I'm trying to offer this up as an explanation for why some players drop out of freeform threads--and then those threads just end up being about a few characters instead of all.

I don't mind freeform RPs, but I think we would benefit mightily from a 'team-building' workshop. Actually, I think that goes even for planned RPs. For the comedy workshop Finn mentioned, would that creative improv really worked if players couldn't trust the others to make the same for their contributions? Would they contribute as equally? If I don't know a player, I'm not going to trust to not derail or exclude me from a thread, so I'm automatically more cautious around them. (Vicious cycle, yeah.) And planned RPs tend to happen off-board anyway, because they are, by nature, exclusive--unless EVERYONE is somewhat involved in the planning. I tend to like planned RPs but I usually assume it only interests my character. Plus I am more comfortable letting someone else do the planning, because, while I have a lot of ideas, I'm not that great at making them happen. It's easier for me to tell someone what I roughly want to happen (stuff like--okay, I want Danny to end up at St. Mungo's, and Finn has the freedom to choose how or when that happens).

As an aside, I feel more threads SF have been character-focused RPs lately, which I find tough to play. If it's for my character, it puts a lot of pressure on them. If it isn't, it feels exclusive (and probably is).

[niniel28b.livejournal.com]

I agree with most of what you've said and as a general picture I agree entirely.

However. For every rule there will be an exception. You mention that having your character leave the room (or place) shouldn't be done unless you're leaving the scene. As a general rule of thumb I couldn't agree more, but sometimes you can do it when you're pretty sure people will follow you if you do. Only you have to be willing to accept that they might not and then you removed yourself.

Also I would like to add something to your statement that there are no game masters in Online RP.
I agree in some measure. However I would assign the person who starts a thread a role not unlike that of game master.
Most threads you can tell if they have a point already or are just open threads. If an opposition is introduced by the beginning then the thread has a point and in that case I assume the one who started the thread has an idea of where they want to go with that. And then I think it is important to let them be the 'window' as you say it, to that aspect. Barging in then with too many of your own conflicts could seriously derail the thread, so in threads like that I tend to either leave it up to the one that started it, or at least discuss it with them. It's their room in the doll house after all. How can I know how they decorated it before they tell me?