Should there be a roleplaying board?

[RockstarComplex]

All it really takes is someone to state where they are (region, location), and what they are up to, and you've got your first starting post. I don't know how battles would work in a RPing sense. I guess we could just exchange Pal Pad codes and when we RP that we are about to battle, we actually do battle. That or you can pretend to battle a random trainer that you think up out of the blue.

You could be sitting in a house, watching the news. You see a news segment about how young people are starting to leave home and travel the world with Pokemon. You could imagine yourself being one of them so you race off to your nearest Professor and claim a Pokemon.

It's really up to whoever wants to start it. If it's me, then I will. Hopefully, Francis will make a board for it soon so we can "beta test" it. If we are successful after a period of time, then we open up more boards. Say we "beta test" with the Kanto Region board. Everyone RPs in there. If we all stay within moderation then boards for the other regions can be made.

With multiple boards, it will keep RPs within regions. If you are in Kanto and all the sudden you take a boat from Kanto to Hoenn, then just stop RPing in the Kanto board, and move over to the Hoenn board. Each region could potentially have multiple threads. One thread for each town/city.

Just ideas.

[quantumzed]

The multiple boards thing is generally a good idea for larger RPing communities with a decent-sized cadre of admins and mods. It creates its own problems, namely time (obviously, events are happening concurrently and the current "in-game time" needs to be established), setting (fabricating new world details for players gets a lot more difficult when they're spread out over multiple continents), and plot incoherence (books and movies revolve around one or two plot threads, multi-board RPs revolve around dozens of plot threads that multiply as time goes on). Obviously the inherent issues can be fixed with a small amount of creativity, but with a smaller community (like ours), you get a problem that can't be worked around: everyone naturally gravitates toward the same "zone". No one likes RPing alone, and having too many threads tends to isolate people, so they just move to a thread where there are already people.

So my thought is this: 1) create a new Category (General, Pokemon Games, and Francis GTS are the current categories) for all roleplaying-related content. 2) Create two boards under that Roleplaying category. One is for the RP threads themselves which are stand-alone stories, and the other is for OoC discussion and RP information (Why can't I have a team full of legendaries? What is God Moding? What is a Mary Sue? etc.) 3) if the boards becomes oversaturated with active threads, divide them further by location, by genre, or by level of involvement (casual, semi-literate, literate).

This system has its drawbacks, but it has worked since the early days of pen and pencil roleplaying, and it transfers extraordinarily well to the web. People can be involved in as many stories as they'd like without conflict, and everyone gets to create a setting of their own. With a multi-board system, only one person gets to create the game world. If you disagree with his vision, tough tits. You either choke down his piss-poor writing and egotistical bullshit, or you quit the board and make new friends elsewhere. Sometimes the GM will listen, but people hate criticism on the internet, no matter how constructive or justified it is.

[flash]

The whole multiboard idea is a good idea but the only problem I see with it is, what if this gets too big and we have alot of boards up at once? That would be hard to handle with only a few mods to work with. Sure adding more mods will solve this problem but I don't know this sits member pop or if Francis has anyone who could moderate all the posts outside the amount of mods he has already.

[RockstarComplex]

I haven't really ever done any Role Playing outside of the old MSN Chat Rooms, or Twitter. Back then in the "old" days (I was 14-15 and I am 22 now, so you know how old I am talking about), us Teens would watch DBZ then hop on the computer. We would have our usernames like, "Dark Majin Vegeta Extreme." It was loony but we would RP fight each other.

Usually the fastest typer was the one who won. It wasn't fair to the two finger typers but that was how it was. Then they closed down MSN Chats (I have heard that they may have a new chat room system set up but I use Firefox so I don't know). Then for me personally it was the days of "Coke Music" and "Habbo Hotel."

You would get in there and the people with money would control the world. You would role play in their world and that was how life was. Habbo always sucked because back then it was:

Go into room.
Sit.
Talk to person.
Role Play with person even though your avatars are just sitting.
Win idiotic battle although your avatar hasn't moved an inch.
Leave room.

At least Coke Music gave you the ability to make some music so you would have music battles. Both songs (or multiple songs) were played and whoever got the most votes was the winner. They would win like a piece of furniture.

Then those days ended and for a while I wasn't in any type of RPing scene (probably because I was 18 and too busy with College/Friends in real life). Then I got hooked on a Twitter Pokemon RPing group. You would pick a Username like "XTeddiursaX" and would RP as a Teddiursa. They would constantly go off topic, and you would have a Growlithe shooting lasers at other Pokemon but it was fun.

So long story short, I have no experience with message board RPing. So I just came up with a suggestion off the top of my head and ran with it.

[quantumzed]

I'm actually surprised to learn that there is roleplaying on Twitter. Sounds crazy.

Outside of a brief roleplaying experience on IRC - which I quickly dropped because the community was full of dicks - all my RPing has been done either on messageboards or in roleplaying games. I'm not going to profess to know precisely what system will work in each instance, but I have been around long enough to know that too much structure kills creativity. This is why games like D&D actively encourage you to create "house rules" instead of following the player's handbook like an instruction manual. For the same reason, it is generally (but not always) a bad idea to divide roleplaying into a half-dozen boards in the name of "organization".

You're not the only one who remembers the old days when a bunch of pre-teenagers would get online and roleplay DBZ or Star Wars characters. It plays out like a bunch of kids playing Cops and Robbers or House, but with less rules lawyering and more laser beams flying everywhere. It was a lot of fun, but now that I'm older I recognize that you need rules to keep it fun for everyone.

Myself? I just want a thread where the players use Pokemon to fight crime and solve mysteries. Something more like Pokemon Special than the actual games, where people and Pokemon can actually die. A little bit darker, but not GRIMDARK.

[RockstarComplex]

Well when we would RP on Twitter, you would have a "trainer", but it was never manned by any real person. Basically you were a Pokemon and you would say that your trainer would tell you go to fight a Murkrow. Then you would RP that you would dodge and attack, etc. Then there were the people who wanted to be trainers and not Pokemon and they would RP as if they were trying to become the greatest trainer in the world. One day they would be in this forest, and the next this town. They would battle their Pokemon. It was really neat.

[RockstarComplex]

Can we go ahead and get a RPing Board so that we don't go anymore days without any posts?

[quantumzed]

Oct 19, 2010 20:27:27 GMT -5 RockstarComplex said:

Can we go ahead and get a RPing Board so that we don't go anymore days without any posts?

[quantumzed]

New (password-protected) board that isn't for roleplaying. Francis, I am disappoint.

Also, I'm gonna be posting in topics trying to get some activity going. Lord knows this place is dead.

[fenikkusu]

I actually have a pb in which I rp with a few friends of mine. It's more of a story thing than just one-line posts and the like, though.

But I wouldn't mind trying to rp here. ;o

[RockstarComplex]

Oct 21, 2010 8:48:52 GMT -5 quantumzed said:

Also, I'm gonna be posting in topics trying to get some activity going. Lord knows this place is dead.

I've tried that a few times. I would go back and post in threads where I was the last person to post anything in them. Just to see if they would get restarted. Turns out even if I wanted to restart threads, others didn't.

Oct 21, 2010 14:07:54 GMT -5 fenikkusu said:

I actually have a pb in which I rp with a few friends of mine. It's more of a story thing than just one-line posts and the like, though.

But I wouldn't mind trying to rp here. ;o

RPing here is only one of the things we need the members to do. We need them to come in here and post in the topics that we already have. We need them to come up with new threads. In the end the few people who are actually posting, can't keep this place together by themselves.

[quantumzed]

Oct 21, 2010 14:10:53 GMT -5 RockstarComplex said:

I've tried that a few times. I would go back and post in threads where I was the last person to post anything in them. Just to see if they would get restarted. Turns out even if I wanted to restart threads, others didn't.

We've just got to keep at it is all. Even if it is just you, me and feni, this is more posts than we've had in a while. :V