I've just read through the silent trader thread and noticed Jax's idea about writing a guide to spontaneous RP. That got me thinking, how does the community handle it?
Are there certain aspects or guidelines people stick to when coming up with on the spot RP?
What do you think counts as good spontaneous RP?
Let's brainstorm some ideas and remember to keep them as simple as possible, it needs to be understandable by everyone. Feel free to disagree as long as you can suggest something better.
Brainstorms
When you meet someone for the first time think of it like meeting a stranger on a street.
Act the way your character would. A young pilot wouldn't be fearless in times of danger, they'd be scared. Act like it.
You are not the most important person in the universe, you are not special, you are a regular person but that doesn't mean you aren't interesting.
No one starts as the best or the smartest, a character that grows is an interesting character.
On the topic's sense - good luck wasting forum space here. People who don't RP are not even trying reading forums (and we yet to know if they are even aware of existence of that place) so, basically, the people who would read that are actually those who know the trick already.
So, umm. The OP requested that all off-topic posts be removed. So they have been. Keep it on topic, as this was not concerning pirate/trader interaction, of which we have a FLOOD of threads on.
(01-02-2014, 04:51 PM)Curios Wrote: On the topic's sense - good luck wasting forum space here. People who don't RP are not even trying reading forums (and we yet to know if they are even aware of existence of that place) so, basically, the people who would read that are actually those who know the trick already.
Have fun though.
Those who don't want to RP aren't the target audience, it's those who do but don't know where to begin. It's important to keep in mind that RP can be a bit of a scary thing if you're not used to it and meeting someone ingame for the first time is the worst of it.
I can remember my first few days on the server, having no idea what was going on, who was who or what the House laws were. Ultimately I met someone and fumbled through my first bit of RP, it was terrible and put me off trying to RP again.
That's the kind of thing we want to avoid happening and generally speaking the only way we can stop it is to help out the new players as much as possible. Hence this brainstorm.
It's true that tutorials on forums dont help much, since a lot of people dont read them. On this forum, even the people who would read have a hard time tying to find them. So the approach shouldnt be restrained to one medium, but to ingame behavior, mod development, and forum.
Ideas to promote more spontaneous RP (and at the same time generally more RP, including the forums)
1. More information about lore accessible in the game so people know what the RP that they are suposed to do actually is.Before the usual people say "but people have to go on the forum anyway, and we dont want lazy people who arent even willing to go on the forum", lets remind ourselves that many people just dont want to do that because its a game which is suposed to be fun and relaxing to them (and not the center of their lives like for some other people here), and that some of the most respected RPers here didnt go on the forums until a year after they started playing. Yes, its true that some people are just to lazy to learn, but many are not, and if they have to ask other players for everything its also a drag for the players who are willing to help, and if they have to looks through a huge disorganized fourm to look for stuff they will get frustrated. If a vet has someplace to send someone to learn where he knows he will actually go and easily learn stuff, its a big help to help him help people who ask for it.
Some good ways to teach lore and RP ingame:
-After you do a restart, give an automated message that describes the faction, and suggest activites that can be RPed as this faction. Simple example: "You are a newly recruited Liberty Navy pilot who does his best to serve his nation with honor and excellence. Go to West Point Naval Accademy for basic training.". Also make fewer restarts, and give the restarts names which give a better idea of as what you are starting. The current system helps vets a lot, for noobs its huge and confusing.
-In the bar at the designated locations (in the example West Point), characters will tell the player more about the faction, and freelancer/discovery lore. If there isnt enough room in one bar for everything you want to tell them, make one character tell them another location where they can learn more.
2. More time and talk for RP comes from less time and talk for OORP subjects.
-To take some of the load of teaching basic game mechanocs off vets (so they have more time to RP and have to spend less on oorp chat), which also promotes lots of oorp talking on the server, also teach some of the most important basic game mechanics (for example how to change yoru rep and get the iff you want, which is also very important for correct undisturbed RP) through ingame infocards. Those can be bar rumors, or just messages that you get when you type /turorial *subject*. Same could be done to consult server rules. Or also make ID infocards readable by typing /readID *faction*.
3. Make forum RP more accessible, easier, and more fun, by putting it more into the center of this website.
-Make the discoveryGC portal page a sort or RP hub. Add some fancy beautiful imersion-augmenting pictures. Save one space for OORP server announcements (well visible but not central), a link to the rules, a link for OORP help requests, and a link for oorp discussions (which will include most of the stuff the forum revolves around now. If you like that old page you can bookmark this section). The rest will be like the "recent posts" list (except that there is enough space to show the entire title and subtitle). One recent posts section for communication channel, one for faction message dumps, one for planned events, one for character biographies and stories. Also a section with house laws. Even if you cant or dont want to do it exactly like that, move more into that direction.
4. Be stricter against OORP names
-People who dont know or dont want ot RP are very easy to recognize: their choice of names. If you see one, talk to him about it, as admin, angel, or server-RP police playing player.
5. Community behavior
-Its easy to say "just help noobs more and be nice", but even for the most helpful person in the world that stops being fun at some point. A lot of the guys you help never come back, or try to abuse your helpfulness, or are just rude and ungrateful. Instead of explaining the same stuff to different people over and over again, having these things ingame that you can send people to if they ask and you are buy will make things much easier. You could say "be nicer" to the "vets" who enjoy pushing noobs around and see them as flying blue-messages which can be easily blown up to bragg about one's skill or be used to feel all intellectual and clever about oneself because one knows more stuff about this particular computer game and possibly even knows english better than them. But telling them that would be useless. Better just tell them that realistially, these "vets" are the idiots.
-Don't parade around IRP enemies and then complain that you get shot and yell what horrible no-RP people they are. You're not promoting RP, you're promoting idiocy and hatred over perfectly valid ingame IRP behavior. You wanna RP and not shoot, you can do it out of sensor range, you can do it with a force that is large enough that it wont be attacked, you can do it on a char that isnt hostile, you can do it on a char that may be "undercover incognito" with inconspicious iff, id, and gear. Do NOT start to hate people or try to get other people to hate them and start mobbing them just because they follow their RP lore including RPing with guns.
-People will be much more willing to talk to you if you don't present yourself as their enemy (be that via ID, iff, gear, or arrogant and rude IRP/OORP behavior).
Epilogue
All of these ideas, which address the problem of making it easier for new people to learn RP so that playing on the server will become much more fun, have already been posted. Some of them years ago. But they were ignored because the people who decide things here didn't like the person who posted it. Many of them were even recognized as good ideas by the same people, but it was said that it wont be implemented because of who posted it. Inforcards, information messages, and bar rumors suitable to be put inhave were written and ready, but it wasnt adopted because of who posted it. One of the most commical things was that there wasnt even a direct link to the server rules on the discoverygc.com portal page (you had to click yourself through a total of 3 huge and confusing pages to get the them), and it took like one year until a mod finally put a direct link to them on the portal page, waiting long enough to forget who actually first said that putting that link there would be a really good idea. So, I'm very glad someone has (again) noticed that making it easier for noobs to learn things, above all RP, would greatly improve server game play (and also make it more fun for the vets because they will have more apt people to interact with, if you disregard those vets who love to blow up helpless noobs, mock them for their computer-game-"ignorance", and/or have them sanctioned because it makes them feel superior, of which there is a non negligible number here very active on the fourm). So, I hope some people here have matured enough after these years to jump over their own shadow and stop to not implement very reasonable things that they all know would help, just because they dont like the person who first suggested it. Maybe you'll finally notice that what you are harming most by doing that is not that person you hate, but the community. If you can call what you are breeding here a community.
User was banned for: Happy New Years to you too, Karlotta.
Time left: (Permanent)