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[Silas Vitalia]

Let's keep it civil, first.


So, where's the line between letting everyone in on character developments via say, IGS posts, versus self-referential / gratifying threadnaughts that don't involve anyone else, ever?

Might be worth exploring between many of our desires to share personal character developments versus eventually annoying the hell out of everyone tired of reading about our own little plots.

Case in point, was having fun with my little 'going after Omir' thread, and then I realized I haven't involved any other RPers, the posts are mostly all devoid of other RPers ability to influence or effect the action, and most people probably don't care at that point.  So I've let it float down until I get others involved more.

I just saw DSTON's 8000th update and it is making me think about this issue.

What say you all?

[lallara zhuul]

Let me put it this way.

What is the point of a journey of self-discovery if your motivation for it is external?

[Katrina Oniseki]

I don't think you need to include others in your RP just to 'validate' it. It's perfectly reasonable to run both personal storylines and public storylines. As long as you don't go crazy and say your personal storyline makes you a Jovian God or something.

I would caveat that if your personal storylines are supposed to be recognized and respected by the public, you should be including others. That means if anybody is going to believe you actually took a few sniper shots at Omir, even if you missed, others need to be there.

[Silas Vitalia]

I don't think you need to include others in your RP just to 'validate' it. It's perfectly reasonable to run both personal storylines and public storylines. As long as you don't go crazy and say your personal storyline makes you a Jovian God or something.

I would caveat that if your personal storylines are supposed to be recognized and respected by the public, you should be including others. That means if anybody is going to believe you actually took a few sniper shots at Omir, even if you missed, others need to be there.

Right, right.  I'm thinking less about 'validity' and more about how far to indulge publicly before people are annoyed and uninterested. A fine line perhaps.

I think the occasional IGS announcement 'what has x been up to' might be alright for a few pages, but maybe might need to be let die after that..?


This goes back to an older discussion of how do we get other people aware of smaller-group RP happenings...

[Katrina Oniseki]

I don't think you need to include others in your RP just to 'validate' it. It's perfectly reasonable to run both personal storylines and public storylines. As long as you don't go crazy and say your personal storyline makes you a Jovian God or something.

I would caveat that if your personal storylines are supposed to be recognized and respected by the public, you should be including others. That means if anybody is going to believe you actually took a few sniper shots at Omir, even if you missed, others need to be there.

Right, right.  I'm thinking less about 'validity' and more about how far to indulge publicly before people are annoyed and uninterested. A fine line perhaps.

I think the occasional IGS announcement 'what has x been up to' might be alright for a few pages, but maybe might need to be let die after that..?


This goes back to an older discussion of how do we get other people aware of smaller-group RP happenings...

Well, my Oniseki Holdings thread was a single contained place for my private RP happenings to be made public. I figured I can put it all in there, and if people don't want to read it, they don't need to. It would be obvious what's in there anyways!

Maybe a single place for you to chronicle your travels would work? Just a single thread.

[Ghost Hunter]

Let me put it this way.

What is the point of a journey of self-discovery if your motivation for it is external?

A public play, ala Opera and other such types.


I see very little issue in threads on the IGS beyond brute force denial, ala Ston's thread spam during his war. That is a clarity of transmission issue, rather than a quality of content one.

Public forums exist to have thoughts, motivations, agendas and goals, put on them. Sometimes its as simple as an ego trip, other times there's a game at play. One thread having dozens of pages of circle jerking is no more important than a thread declaring intergalactic war. The consumer can always skip over it after having reached that decision.

Ergo, put your thread up and enjoy it as long as you enjoy it. Others who enjoy it will participate, those who do not will not. It is the simplest way of things.

[Silas Vitalia]

Finding an acceptable signal to noise ratio is what I'm perhaps after

[Ghost Hunter]

That depends entirely. I do wonder if RSS feeds can be manipulated in a way to receive information and block out garbage updates.

[Morwen Lagann]

Ston's stuff is pretty easy to interact with. Drop a can for him to pick up, then either let him have it or blow him out of the sky when he goes for it. Or you could steal the people when he's trying to grab them. Or you could even help. Post-Retribution it'll get even more interesting.

Specific example aside, I think one needs to differentiate the type of activity going on and how that affects how others can participate: if what you're doing is in space, even if nobody is actively doing anything it's still very possible for them to help or hinder as they desire - and so I wouldn't really consider that situation an echo chamber because the only reason it's echoing is that nobody's gone and done anything about it despite it being possible to do so. Even if the IGS thread is just him prattling on and on and on day in and day out about some random jerkwad of the day who dumped a can of people at a gate rather than be fined and penalized for carrying contraband.

If the activity is in a channel then it becomes more difficult. Most people will avoid RPing with people they don't feel they're going to get a productive experience with - regardless of the outcome of the session - and will prefer to spend time with people who they feel will produce that experience instead, even if the person is playing an antagonist-like part. I don't think that necessarily means that it's an echo chamber, however: just because the developing plotline is going on "behind closed doors" doesn't mean that it cannot be influenced (deliberately or not) by outside parties who aren't necessarily involved, nor that the intermediate or end results of the plotline won't have an affect on outside parties.

In your case, Silas, there are ways people can interact meaningfully with your thing - people who are more aligned with Omir could just wardec you or hunt you in space, and people who agree with Silas could hunt those people in response, etc. - lack of interaction so far just means there hasn't been anyone who wanted to stick their hand in the pool yet, not that the pool is blocked off with razorwire and landmines.

[Karmilla Strife]

I think it's a personal preference, how much of our character development we wish to make public. I think it's perfectly fine for someone to put out as much creative content as they wish as long as it isn't excessively disruptive.

I like the IGS threads where people publish what they've been up to. 1) it lets the rest of us know that things are happening and even if we're not involved it gives us something to talk about. 2) sometimes those people are publishing things that they are doing in space, and that gives our rather spread out RP community the chance to interact, where so often factional considerations mean we have to sit out for other people's stories. Caveat: I'm not a happy Karm when someone says they are doing something on IGS and I spend a week trying to track that activity down in space, only to find out they've been docked at X station and done nothing...

I think it becomes more noise than signal, when it's excessively and purposefully disruptive. I'm not going to cite an example to avoid the 'ur doing it wrong' rule but we've all known disruptive RP events when we've seen them. Regarding the signal/noise ratio, I don't think it's a product of volume. Some players may be much more creative than others and produce a lot of great stuff. I think it's only when your work drowns out the rest of the crowd that it becomes 'noisy'

While I think Morwen is correct in saying people will tend to RP with others who they think they will have a productive experience with, I have to admit I've been pleasantly surprised in the past by RPing with people I've been told to avoid. In life we don't always know who will influence us, so why should we limit the influence on our characters?

[Khloe]

It's all a pageant show. Some people are selling their personalities (individuals), some are selling their corporations, and others are selling ideas.  Your 'product' (ie. whatever you publish) probably isn't going to appeal to everyone, so if you're serious about getting a certain demographic's attention, you probably want to isolate what it is they want and reach out to that. Something you might want to ask yourself is why you are posting, and what is your intended aim, and what can you do to improve your message?

[Lithium Flower]

If you want more interaction, you need to provoke a conflict, IMHO. Poke their interests with a sword and see as they stir.

Regarding DSTON's topic, they lack conflict horribly. For example, my character(s) are very strongly aligned against any form of theft, but there are no any conflicts of interests, and attacking DSTON out of nothing (even if I strongly dislike or even hate thieving ideology) I consider foolish tone even for as wicked character as mine.

[Morwen Lagann]

If you want more interaction, you need to provoke a conflict, IMHO. Poke their interests with a sword and see as they stir.

Regarding DSTON's topic, they lack conflict horribly. For example, my character(s) are very strongly aligned against any form of theft, but there are no any conflicts of interests, and attacking DSTON out of nothing (even if I strongly dislike or even hate thieving ideology) I consider foolish tone even for as wicked character as mine.

Suspect flags for thievery with the new Crimewatch, yay/nay?

[Lithium Flower]

Im not really going to run after any thieves after Crimewatch (like I don't run after pirates now), I have plenty of other targets to shoot, so Im pretty fine.
However, there is a very big my NAY to Crimewatch because after it I won't be able to reship in carrier with agression. Oh, well, it's going too much offtopic.