Opposition Towards Living?

Nah, it's Other Than Life.

Man, I'm reading through RtD Blue and holy crap. I made rolls a hell of a lot larger back then, and people talked a hell of a lot more. What happened to all that? I miss the idle banter and chatter.

Something about don't post in games you're not part of, edit happy forum moderators and generally tighter restrictions.

I think Hyper means in-character chat - it kinda bothers me how little people talk in RtDs, it's just unnatural. It's mostly the newer players, it seems, who talk very little.

It's not that we hate people who aren't in the RtDs, I for one am perfectly fine with them if they've got something to contribute. Hell, more than once I've gotten PMs from people saying they want to join the waiting list. That kind of thing is perfectly ok to post in the thread, especially when you post a character sheet as well, since other players can give feedback on the character.
It's when people start being insulting and backseat DMing that there's a problem.
tl;dr: TALK MORE, IT'S PERFECTLY COOL. JUST DON'T BE A ♥♥♥♥.

You know I like to comment, Torrent. That thread with the rules about posting in games HAS scared me off a bit, however.

I like the idle banter within the games. Hell, I encourage it. It's great when people actually have something to say besides their action, even if it is an attempt to convince me to allow them to transform into a pistol shrimp with atomic-gun-claws.

You could always make OOC threads for game-specific banter and handling post-start signups.

Rule updated to lessen fear.
Also a discussion thread wouldn't be a bad idea. Except if we did that it'd pretty quickly double the amount of threads around. There'd need to be some kind of system for that.

I'm pretty sure OTL is a Japanese or Korean thing. It's basically someone on the floor because of frustration or something. If you look it up, you would get a better description... Also, I was wondering if it's good to put some kind of unnecessary amount of planning into a game before posting it, like creating details on absolutely everything, drawings for absolutely everything, and basically every single little bit of information that might be used in the game... Before I even post it up... Is that a good idea? Or should I post up the game then finalize everything afterwards? Meh. I guess I'll just go crazy and create the most basic information first. Then I can add stuff as I go... That was a completely unnecessary and space-wasting monologue.

I personally recommend getting functional information down first; whatever the player NEEDS to play the game. Then you can work on the fun fluff and background info.

Eh, I don't think it'd be that big of a problem. I guess if you really wanted to you could have an OOC subsubforum, but that might be overkill.

----



You're probably thinking of 'orz'.

----



Depends on how deeply you expect them to interact with the events and locations too. I prefer to wing it to a certain degree, because you can never expect players to do what you'd like them to do; there's no point writing tons about a far-off city they'll probably never visit, or going too in-depth on one they may turn away from.

Then there's the times when they do something completely unexpected, or your plan goes SNAFU because you botched a roll so thoroughly that it changes a situation entirely.

I thought OTL was Japanese and orz was Korean or something.

Hmmm... So maybe just make a basic scenario and the first stuff that are absolutely necessary... Also, can't I just bend everything to my will? Hahahahaha.

Edit: So... Yeah... That was a joke there. I'm not THAT horrible. Although... I seriously need to get working if I want this game out soon.

Not if you want to keep your players interested and playing. Forcing the plot along is called railroading. If you're going to do that you might as well call it a book and write everything yourself.

I'm avoiding that in my current thread by giving the players clear goals and objectives, which they, being members of a military force, have a very good reason to carry out. I mean sure nothing is really stopping them all piling in that APC and driving off into the forest and then across the sea to the nearest island, but they have an incentive not to, even though they're relatively fresh personnel and thus not as experienced or disciplined as other members of their force (in theory).

The trick is making them play along without having to resort to more and more blatantly forced and out-of-character or purely interruptive things, like the sort of restrictions videogames have to resort to. I'm looking at you, waist-high fences.

--------------------

Belatedly;



I think some of it boils down to differing atmospheres. I'll just get this out the way now - I've done quite a bit of RPing online before, and like I mentioned, we usually have seperate in character/out of character channels/threads, since it's seen as kind of rude to interrupt an ongoing game with "irrelevant" natter. It's quite a different atmosphere to the more casual one here. For example, in the first run of the DH game I'm in, things were very disorganized, and the 'flow' of conversation and action was frequently broken by needless commentary in the in-character channel, especially when rolling to test skills. With a little wrangling, now we keep almost everything seperate, and things go a lot more smoothly.

Depends on the game, though. The RtD games have a more "players around a table doing quick descriptions of their character's immediate actions" feel, whereas other forum or IRC based stuff can be a lot more in-depth.

One thing for people to consider - if you want to do conversations without spamming back and forth, maybe exchange PMs with the conversation participants and adjust posts accordingly. You could also do it via IMs, or however else you feel would work best. Using different fonts, font sizes, or text colours - all of these can help differentiate between speakers.