InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Name's Tweak, I like to streak"

livin every day like it's shark week (gonzocody) wrote,
@ 2009-03-06 08:51:00

Let me begin this by saying I've Rped for a long fucking time and have seen my share of smut monkeys, angst trains, god modders and endless buckets of OOC drama. I'm not upset at a game or a specific player, just a general disposition.

It's pretty fucking long, so I'll cut it.

RPG, or at least the kind we're all involved in right now that takes place primarily on journals, is a piece of shit. I remember being perplexed the first time an RPG buddy of mine tried to explain to me the virtues of the journaling system. I personally didn't believe him until the message board games started to die and I didn't really have a choice. It didn't take long to see the perks of journals. Icons, rapid conversation and quick character interaction. Just like technology, the journaling system made shit so much easier, but it took out a lot of the quality threads that RPG was and should still be based around.

Honestly, I kept threading because that's what I enjoy doing. I RP because I feel starved creatively if I'm not writing and frankly sometimes my short stories about dueling showroom guys just didn't cut it. I craved creative interaction, which I can tell you is a bunch of bullshit 90% of the time in any other outlet. Writing circles turn into circle jerks or power plays. In RPG you have to work with other people. You also post everything live, which usually results in instant feedback. It's fucking great.

But, the problem is that with the journals in place, barely anyone threads anymore. I know a lot of you are going to jump in and insist otherwise, but you have to understand that threading was all we had. There was no shooting off Macro comments like you're in fucking 4chan. With such a large decrease in threading, it leaves people starved creatively which translates into them wanting more journal interaction that ultimately speeds up relationships between characters, plots and almost anything else that happens in an RPG. This turns the game into complete and utter shit because a plot that should last a couple weeks barely makes it past a couple days.

So, people put their focus back onto cheap interactions through journals. A trend I've noticed is that characters will have a swiss army knife full of friends, family and lovers that the player can rely on for positive interaction. That is to say, there's very little turmoil between the characters and they generally agree on most things. If there is any conflict between characters, it tends to be of the sexual or angsty nature. Which is all fine and good in small quantities, but has very little substance.

This makes me question people's motives for RPG. Second Life in RPG landia is such a taboo subject, but a valid one. Don't have friends? Make a hot, popular character without any visible irony attached! Don't have a boyfriend? Make one. This is something that's plagued RPG since I can remember, but only recently has it become really fucking ridiculous. It's gotten to the point where people are really concerned what their character looks and dresses like. How many friends they have. What terms they are on with the more popular characters. It's sick people. It needs to stop. Who gives a shit? Really? The next time you find yourself wondering idly what kinds of shoes your char owns, do us all a favor and shut yourself the fuck up.

People also seem to be attracted to what I consider complete wankfests: Harry Potter & X-Men. Both genres I've played extensively and still do, but you have to understand that there's only so many times Lavender can hook up with Seamus for it to be of any interest. Or you know, Scott fucking everything he sees and then crying about it later. It's also a completely unimaginative road to take as far as RPG goes, because you have character guidelines and plot blueprints everywhere you look.

I think I'm so pissed off because I've turned into someone who wants to bullshit on journals just as much as the next rper. I can honestly say that my thread counts have gone down so significantly, I feel like I might be regressing in my own creative writing skill level. I'm not saying stop playing games that are fanbased. I'm not saying stop making characters that amuse you.

I am asking, nay, pleading you to stop for a second and wonder why you RP at all. I know it's supposed to be for fun, but fun can have some depth, too! Consider new premises for your game! Give your RPG some fucking complexity before I lose my mind.

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	druish_princess 2009-03-06 10:57 am UTC (link)
	I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I fucking love you. I think you should put up a donation site, so we can support your rants, bb. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	bankedshot 2009-03-06 10:58 am UTC (link)
	lmao "Keep Cody Ranting Dot Com" (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	druish_princess 2009-03-06 11:02 am UTC (link)
	..... You say that like I'm not debating it RIGHT THIS SECOND. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	bankedshot 2009-03-06 11:07 am UTC (link)
	can we use the money on candy corn margaritas (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	druish_princess 2009-03-06 11:09 am UTC (link)
	a;sdhf;owiehf Obviously we would. That, and running away to Rio~ I REMEMBER THOSE DAYS~~~~~ (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	gonzocody 2009-03-06 11:10 am UTC (link)
	now i think we should actually do it :\| (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	risen_phoenix 2009-03-06 11:11 am UTC (link)
	e-marry me? We could totally make it work~ (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	gonzocody 2009-03-06 11:12 am UTC (link)
	only if our children are actually just cat macros (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	risen_phoenix 2009-03-06 11:14 am UTC (link)
	Our children will push watermelons out of lakes. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	bankedshot 2009-03-06 11:16 am UTC (link)
	ok but i dont ever want to know why (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	risen_phoenix 2009-03-06 11:17 am UTC (link)
	that would make the kid invalid. :( (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	bankedshot 2009-03-06 11:17 am UTC (link)
	we'd have to store deer under his trampoline (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	risen_phoenix 2009-03-06 11:24 am UTC (link)
	Then a shark would crash into our roof. (Reply to this) (Parent)

chthonian
2009-03-06 11:30 am UTC (link)

I definitely see all of your points and think they're valid ones (they wouldn't be there to raise, otherwise!), and it's even something which has vaguely come up in my discussions before. "MACROS AND .GIFS. HOW DO THEY CONTRIBUTE TO CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT???"

But obviously people do it 'cause it's easy fun, and hey, I won't begrudge them that if that's what they're after. I don't think journal RP is a lost cause -- as long as people are still aware of and care about character development. I will chime in and say that I still find myself logging (mainly for MH and xover) and logging tons compared to my usual rate, but I guess I know how you feel re: regression?

I mean, I've been a little worried about the depth of my characters, too; my Neopolis characters are nowhere near as evolved as my FT ones (which feels like my lost hey-day the more I look back on it), but I think it's just a matter of time to flesh them out. I'm really happy with my current rate of ~logs and long slow chardev~ at both MH and xover, so tbh, it doesn't really feel like RP's entered some stagnant devolved state.

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	bankedshot 2009-03-06 11:50 am UTC (link)
	I can't speak for MH and Neopets is just too young to really judge, but like I said I'm speaking more about trends that I've been noticing. God bless you for having healthy, robust rpg times, though. (Reply to this) (Parent)

bollywood
2009-03-06 11:37 am UTC (link)

I definitely agree with you on this, and have been considering writing a rant of my own of late. I still do HP, and am just breaking into the world of X-men, but my enjoyment for HP has gone down the drain a lot of late, because what you say is true. People keep playing the same storylines and never varying what happens, and it gets old.

I like to RP to play out large plot arcs for my characters. If I can't try to bring them from here to there, I don't really want to do it. Because the RP world is so little thread-focused nowadays, I have begun doing a lot more narratives only because I agree -- just journaling feels so incredibly cheap. And besides, a really complex character doesn't say what they mean when they journal (usually?) and so it isn't until you actually log that you can give a good show and develop them.

I know RP is supposed to be fun, but -- exactly what you said. There should be some depth to it, too, or people could just be RPing in a chatroom. There are some incredible writers in the games that I am in and I feel so lucky when I can get legitimate interaction and really develop characters with them because it's fun and interesting.

I was going to rant a little about ships, and how people just never want to play that time from boy meeting girl (or boy meeting boy, etc., w/e) to when they get together. They just rush it and suddenly they are crazy about each other, get together -- etc. And I don't really care how they do it, but suddenly the ship is boring to me. And I think that's why I prefer to play people with crushes that'll never happen or people in dysfunctional relationships because otherwise ... makes me just yawn.

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bankedshot
2009-03-06 11:57 am UTC (link)

Yes, exactly. I find myself purposely fucking up relationships (not just ships, but friends, family) just because I find it boring and mundane otherwise. It's sick, but I don't see the point in a perfect, fake ship.

I also just want to see people put more thought into their characters. Not necessarily write more on the apps, but just explore the different sides to their personality and capabilities for growth. For example, I really liked that private entry you had for Ayita.

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bollywood
2009-03-06 12:10 pm UTC (link)

YYY. And one of the things I wanted to rant about are the people who seem to think that if they allow their character to have a bad friendship/relationship/marriage/ANYTHING that this reflects on them personally and dooms them to the same sort of thing.

I completely agree. There is so much awesome potential at a game like Neopolis because there IS no script or cue cards-- You have all the right in the world to take your character anywhere they want to go. Like if I really wanted to do it I could slowly bring Jenny from BHHer to ELEr. And it doesn't even have to be something so wide and crazy like that. What about characters growing out of a group of friends and slowly acclimating themselves with another whole group of people? I find that a lot of people don't want to do things like that because they want that safety net that you spoke of- - having friends and family totally surrounding them and never attempting to connect with other people.

I guess the more I am working on breaking into the world of publishing and having to really get down and dirty tearing other books apart and finally allowing myself to say "This book fucking sucks" I find myself doing the same with RP. One of my favorite things is to 'raise the stakes' for my characters but it can be really hard because if you aren't playing against people who are willing to do the same thing, your character just looks like the friendly foil and its just all 'lulz' for them to stretch their neck out that far (does that even make sense?). I started RPing to try and learn how to play males (lol, no guys on my roster :() and I've stuck with it for some of the OOC interaction but also to try and develop complex, believable characters. I don't think I've succeeded at all times but it makes me sad to put myself in a box and to see other people doing it as well.

Thanks. And as far as relationships and all that I always loved the Kilroy/May stuff that you and Ali had going on -- in FT and KU, because while they were crazy people, it was still organic.

Dear world, games sometimes die quickly -- but play like the game is going to last forever, otherwise it will die quickly because you'll have explored all you want to with your characters.
Love, Cate.

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hello_from_dis
2009-03-06 02:12 pm UTC (link)

CAN I COMMENT ON YOUR LAST PART AND SAY IAWTFC. I know when Julie and I were playing out Jess/Reynard (lol my PRIME EXAMPLE FOREVAR), we were constantly tearing our hair out over the RP habit of meeting-fucking-falling in love, all in the span of a week. It drove us crazy. That we made them wait a realistic and logical three months from meeting to pursuing to ~coupling~ made us SO DAMN PROUD.

But yeah -- I have to admit I'm a hideous shipper. I love it, I do it, I want more of it. But oh LAWD, how I cannot stand the way it tends to be written up in RP. If a relationship in a book or a comic developed like that, no one would fucking buy it.

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bollywood
2009-03-06 02:20 pm UTC (link)

Yes -- and they were awesome! And that is a ship that not only you remember, but other people also. I find that I love to play out the longing, that uncomfortable middle where you don't know where things are going to go -- and even better if you have the security in your RP where your character DOESNT HAVE TO HAVE A BOYFRIEND OR GIRLFRIEND FOR YOU TO KEEP PLAYING THEM -- because then you don't need to be terrified that if someone says the wrong thing or things go a bit unbalanced and it doesn't work out that it is NOT THE END OF THE WORLD, nor does it have to be the end of you enjoying playing your character.

I do enjoy shipping but, again, only when I can play it out realistically. Recently I was looking for a complex relationship with one of my female characters because in the game she basically had to get married or be an outcast. And there were two potential characters who were interested in this character and I let both the players know that she would be happy with either one and that I didn't want to commit OOCly to either one. What made me frustrated a little was that one of the players had their character suddenly crazy about mine when they had just begun interacting and they threw in a unhealthy dose of NPC pressure to get them to 'steal' my character away from the other guy because she wanted that ship to happen.

I mean, my character was happy because she liked the guy -- and I had to play her reaction ICly -- but inside I was like :I man, I feel gipped.

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chthonian
2009-03-06 06:04 pm UTC (link)

THIS. ♥ And also re: your comment below: I just disagree on a personal level, since I find more use and depth in journaling than logging
CONFESSION: In earlier days, I definitely would've gone "hrmmmm, logging results in more depth!" ----- but Jess/Reynard totally proved me wrong. I'm amazed to realise that we only logged them three times? Because so much of their development happened via journal interaction, and I feel like their journal conversations said so much about them; mostly because it wasn't always just empty fun conversations. They got into some really messy situations and we weren't afraid to make sure they didn't get comfortable, that the journals could still challenge them and be messy and unpleasant in addition to strangely fuzzy and comfortable in the happy moments. That, and the long slow development time, leaves me pretty much proud until the end of my days. PRIME EXAMPLE FOREVAR. ;_;

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jabberwock
2009-03-06 11:57 am UTC (link)

The next time you find yourself wondering idly what kinds of shoes your char owns, do us all a favor and shut yourself the fuck up.

This right here makes me LOL more than you know~ But iawtc.

I can honestly say that my thread counts have gone down so significantly, I feel like I might be regressing in my own creative writing skill level.

God. Me too. I feel like I used to write so much better earlier last year, but now -- not so much. It's a sad day when I think my RP samples I used in my applications are better than what I'm doing in-game, which used to be the complete opposite. My thread counts have actually gone up quite a lot: I do so much logging now it's almost ridiculous, which isn't a complaint, it's fun and I enjoy it and I'm excited to be logging more.

I thought I had more to say about all this but. :| I can't say I've ever done RP on message boards that I can remember; if I did there is probably a reason I'm blocking it out of my memory. STILL. I agree with many of your points even though I am also guilty of many of them, too.

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	bollywood 2009-03-06 01:00 pm UTC (link)
	Gotta say Poufaloof, that I disagree with you about yourself -- I think you're brilliant and I love seeing especially what you are doing with your female characters right now. I do not think you have regressed in any way, bb. :* (Reply to this) (Parent)

heyjude
2009-03-06 12:48 pm UTC (link)

i remember the first time i actually thought to use gifs in character. idk if it was the ~first time evar~ or anything, but it was the first time I'D seen it and at the time? i felt fucking BRILLIANT. if only because a) lolz and b) it really was the kind of thing that the character would've used to express themselves. because cc is retarded, but whatever. but since then, it's kind of become more and more of a crutch that i kind of throw on any character.

i remember being able to write fucking novels as responses in any given log, if only because there was a perceived sort of pressure to reciprocate on word count. that was a pretty short period in my rping career though, if only because invisionfree and the like went out of style not long after i started and the move to gj and lj occurred. so most of my experience (if not all of my super significant character interactions) are from the journal days, so i don't know how much i can personally relate there.

that said, i have to agree with you about fan-based games. for me personally, they were a great place to start from, but i've moved on past following the character map that jkr or whoever laid out for me and creating personalities of my own. which i also think was a reason why i stuck to marauders so much while i still played hp, or at least characters that were obscure one-mentions in the books that i could build myself.

and idk, i feel like one of the major problems is seeing character defects and so on as an equation -- this is what's wrong with X, by the end of the game i'm going to fix it. one of my major challenges is making the right decision between what my character would do and what i think they should do, with all my ooc contextual knowledge, different sense of judgment, etc. to some extent, judgment and sensibilities are going to overlap, since the character has to be SOME extension of yourself, but the separation has to happen somewhere.

also i don't remember if this actually had anything to do with your original post and i may just be rambling incoherently. i didn't really sleep well last night. :|

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aeventyr
2009-03-06 12:50 pm UTC (link)

Well said.

I don't think I've seen things to the exact extremes you have (re: shoes), but it's easy to imagine that those characters can and have happened. It seems like a struggle anymore to think of anything new and exciting that keeps attention more than five days. If you really need to insert yourself into a game just to make you feel like you've made some sort of improvement on your life (and I can say this because I've been guilty of it) go out and try rewriting the original RP -- LIFE.

That said, threads do seem like a dying art, but maybe that's because the only game I'm at right now, most if not all of them are done in GDocs. Not dissing on them, because they're great when you have a large group, but when it's just one-on-one what's the problem with starting a thread and making some one-shot comments? I love seeing the icons progress from happy to angry to facepalming before the end. You don't get that with docs, just words. Not to mention docing seems to have made the 'character and [open]' concept the thread form closest to extinction. Sometimes you need those in order to get a bit of fresh air/interaction with your character.

Sorry to ramble in your ramble.

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habituation
2009-03-06 01:41 pm UTC (link)

I've been doing nothing but threads for almost the past year, so honestly getting back into the whole journal-based 'cheap interactions' is kind of relaxing in that "this is less time-consuming" way. I remember being annoyed with it when I was last in community games, though, for the reasons you mentioned. And I did kind of design one of my characters now to be better geared toward journal interactions because I remembered how frustrating it was to play someone who wasn't good at expressing themselves on paper -- no chance to thread and show how they rolled in real life, so the concept would usually crash and burn.

you have to understand that there's only so many times Lavender can hook up with Seamus for it to be of any interest.
Yeah, I think this makes sense from a larger RP history perspective, though. You (and most of us reading this, probably) have been around for long enough to have explored certain plots... repeatedly... to our satisfaction. But there's always going to be new people who haven't so they're going to do exactly what we all did when we first entered a fandom, because they don't know something's been played out, or they haven't been the ones to play it out, and why should they not do it just because fandom says it's old? Which is why there are STILL a million MWPP games despite the fact that everyone fucking knows what happened, no one's retreading new ground there.

Baaaasically I 100% agree, dude, but you're going to drive yourself fucking insane if you start thinking about how rp should be for everyone everywhere because no one has the same standards/expectations/w/e. Take it from a pro bitch D:

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hello_from_dis
2009-03-06 02:08 pm UTC (link)

Well, I know I use Rp as something of a writing exercise. Not a srs one, but mostly just to explore dialogue (who I write it, how other people write it, how certain character types would be perceived to speak, what would be the kneejerk reaction to a given situation, etc.) and character development. I can honestly say journal RP has strengthened my dialogue writing to a ludicrous extent, where I can now fire off dialogue for any character I even briefly write outside of RP. Logging/threading has helped to an extent. That is, when I started doing it a lot, it helped me get off the proverbial hump of not-writing-anything-worthwhile-for years, and taught me certain little tricks (mostly by watching people who I felt were really accomplished as writers). But once I got past the point where logging could really expand my horizons, I just sort of fell off the wagon. My writing style doesn't really fit into the log-o-verse, and logging would never fly in any manuscript I tried to write. I tend to just stick to certain people who I know I can write with, as writing with new partners (and new styles) is unnecessarily difficult. Pushing a rock up a hill, difficult.

TL;DR, I see your point! I just disagree on a personal level, since I find more use and depth in journaling than logging. BUT AT THE SAME TIME, I can't discount the value of logs, since they bring action and immediacy where journaling/internet chatting/whatever can't. IDK IDK.

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herozero
2009-03-07 03:21 am UTC (link)

Hi, don't really know you well, but I play OMG's roommate Adam and Tony in Neopolis. I've gone back and forth on commenting on this post because on the one hand, I agree with you on some points, but on some others just really makes me wince.

I've spent the past few years playing in games that were primarily log and thread-based. Personally I prefer doing this, the sitting is more intimate and you have more control over how the interaction was going. The intimacy helps to lend a sense of importance (to me) to a scene that isn't really there in the journal interaction. The nice thing about journal interaction is that schedules being what they are, it is a whole lot quicker and easier to hit a bunch of people in a short period of time on journals. It gives you the most bang for your buck.

I think the real problem is balance. We need to see more scenes and threading to work with the journal commenting. They can all work together to save the RP-planet! Why not try bringing threading back? I'm sure people would oblige you.

If this doesn't make much sense or is disjointed... I blame the late hour for that.

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neruda
2009-03-07 11:49 pm UTC (link)

i agree with you on some parts, like how people often are too obsessed with the stupid bullshit parts of their characters, but disagree personally about the whole journals-being-shitty thing. i mean, i like threading too, but i often find threads to be tedious. i like rp because it allows me to be creative and have fun writing through dialogue and without the meticulous expository prose that is otherwise what rp can be. i mean, maybe it's just because i write so much every day, but when i get home after banging out a ten-page short story for a class or writing pages in my journal or papers.. i don't want to write a fucking novel response in a thread that i might not finish anyways. i don't care if it's lazy; rp is what i do to flex my creative muscle in a no-pressure environment. it's what i do for fun and i don't feel the need to blow everything out of the park. so idk.. but it's refreshing to me to be able to have this kind of writing as opposed to my other writing. just myyyy deal though~

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