I put 7-12 months.

I’m technically running a private story right now, but I wouldn’t really count it as “RPing on a Mush” in the common parlance.

@Pyrephox flippant example, as that’s usually all I have, but I see your point. Replace “throw tomato” with “smuggle in a weapon, ask a salient question, etc.”

The idea that the whole scene is impervious to characters feels like lazy storytelling.

Which I’ve totally been a lazy storyteller and just put a scene on rails or slapped a post up because I didn’t want to deal with curve balls. It happens, but if it happens often, I should probably tell a more interactive story.

@Roadspike said in Scenes within Scenes:

If it’s a one-way scene that again, can’t be interrupted? Don’t make it a scene! I’m sure we’ve all been in plenty of scenes where we thought, “This didn’t need to be a scene, it could’ve been a post/vignette/scene-set.” So don’t make them scenes. Have the GM post up their too-important-to-be-interrupted scene as a Vignette, and then have the actual scene be everyone’s reaction to it afterwards. You know, when people can actually interact with each other without interrupting.

Shouldn’t the solution be to find a way to make it more interactive? Like, if the King is making a proclamation that affects all the PCs, wouldn’t you want that scene to be something people show up to?

Even if they know they can’t stop the speech, can’t they RP trying? Throw the ST a curveball and bring a rotten tomato and wind up getting arrested?

It seems like the assumption of “all the PCs show and watch like good boys & girls” may make it easier for the ST, but it’s not giving characters much room to maneuver.

Through the early 2000s, the big Pern games had strict building quotas, so areas couldn’t actually build rooms for everything. Your builder might get a 20-room quota, so admin had to prioritize. It wasn’t uncommon to have 30+ people in the Galleries room, all watching and reacting to the same Hatching room scene, which also has 10+ people posing in it, so having places helped minimize the spam. The galleries might have four sections in it, so you’d be seeing the big event spam and then mostly just the 5-10 people your PC was actually close enough to talk to.

And all the people apologizing for forgetting to use the places code.

I remember on at least one WoD game, the code interacted with code for things like heightened senses and obfuscation. People could drop into table-talk to avoid having an invisible character eavesdrop, and/or certain characters could eavesdrop if they had the right stats.

It was a nice bauble - not unlike mutter code that would replace random bits of dialogue with ellipses, or language code that only translated things if you had the right stats.

@Faraday Thank you for taking the time to add this. Genuinely appreciated.

@Faraday I’d rather see it as a page on the individual game than on Ares Central. My thoughts went to a /scene-stats/ route that just populated a quick dashboard of metrics (avg scenes shared per day, avg characters per scene, avg words per scene, breakout of scene types, etc).

While I like the activity log on AresCentral, I am wary of standing up fuzzy data in what winds up looking like an official or comparative capacity. If there was just a /scene-stats/ route that could be turned on/off, that’d give game runners the chance to opt out.

$0.02

Edit to add - @Trashcan I just ran this for funsies on ODW. TY for sharing!

• Trad - 224
• Async - 399
• Distracted - 73

Currently, 5/36 scenes are tagged “Traditional” but have been ongoing for more than 1 day, so 14% are currently mis-tagged. I imagine that varies wildly, but 10-20% mis-tagged sounds fair.

@Faraday Oh, most definitely, but I’m also operating on the assumption that most scenes played are shared. I didn’t get to the level of seeing if there were any scene gaps or comparing scene # to scene share date…

…cuz that’s my actual job and what I’m supposed to be doing now instead of posting here. But!

Given a small sample of publicly posted and ongoing scenes, more scenes carry-over at least one day than are posted same-day.

@MisterBoring I’ve always been into tracking metrics on games. At one point on GH, I coded a virus that you could pass from person-to-person as part of a plot (pre-COVID <.<), and it had background tracking so I could watch its transmission, see who infected the most people, etc.

One time, I went through and compiled all the old data about every hatching on every active Pern game in the early '00s, just to validate that it was statistically easier to get a Gold Dragon on PernWorld than any other open game - and I still remember that PW had over 1/10 PC Impressions as Gold vs 1/15 for NC.

Pre-Ares, there were tons of log and activity trackers on Wikidot. You can still see some in action on Harper’s Tale - http://harpers-tale.wikidot.com/sw-staff:activity-tracker I think they’ve revamped the page since I played there, but I helped build/maintain the log tracker for a while there.

A “totally useless data about scenes” page would be awesome: Avg words per scene, avg characters per scene, % of scenes shared (vs total), avg time between open-and-share date, % of scene types (Social/Event/Vignette/etc)…

And by awesome I obviously mean super nerdy.

@Superbia said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

Aegis Company runner here, just want to belatedly chime in to say our scenes, especially events, do skew live.

Please note that this isn’t a value judgment. I personally don’t care about the live/async split. But I’m a data analyst, and confirmation bias is one of my biggest peeves. So just to give you a very small sample set:

As of 3/18 -
Scenes already shared with the dates posted - 9 live

• 3/17 - 2 scenes
• 3/16 - 0 scenes
• 3/15 - 4 scenes
• 3/14 - 3 scenes

Scenes started yesterday+ with those dates - 12 async

• 3/17 - 7
• 3/16 - 0
• 3/15 - 2
• 3/14 - 3

Looking at those four days, 43%* of your scenes are live.

*Ares doesn’t have a publicly available ‘scene shared date’, so I’m assuming that scenes posted on those days were also played those days (credit for “live” scenes).

Just for the sake of conversation, the other two games mentioned as having a live component - Empty Night and Keys - have even less, with no scenes posted on 3/16 or 3/17 for either game. So your game’s still ahead of the curve.

@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

i wasn’t asking what types of RP she dislikes

Thank you for clarifying, as I also read it that way, and was like… damn, I tried to explain that it just doesn’t hit me as fun, and people were like NO I BELIEVE YOU DO LIKE IT!!!

Alas, all the games where I used to play are no longer open to grab my default RP prefs, but they generally went something like:

• YES - Action, adventure, travel, cool scenery (and then generally something theme-specific, like “dark magic” or “rebel alliances” or something)
• NO - Slice of life

Specific examples?

• Always enjoy playing weird NPCs for story purposes, so currently enjoying storytelling with some friends; historically enjoyed lots of scenes on GH where I got to play the weird creatures.
• The whole zombie arc on Crimson Compass.
• On Horror2 where we used the holy water in the stupidest possible way, which I think was just a 2-3 scene arc?
• The training montage on LA (even though I wasn’t actually in that scene).
• When my character exploded himself as a weyrling on HT.
• “Travel” scenes are always fun for me, especially travel to a surreal or impossible place. Preference for me is as a storyteller, but I’m down to be along for the ride.

Hopefully, this helps.

p.s. r u fr rn?

p.p.s. Double-edit to add… as I’m rereading the past few go-rounds…

I am not trying to sell this to anyone as a better or even good way to be. I wish I could still enjoy playing pick-up scenes the way I used to. I’ve spent at least a year trying to find that old oomph, and it just is not there.

If anything, I do not wish for others to fall off the same way that I have. So take my story as a warning, for I do not play right now, and that is not what I would wish for the rest of y’all.

@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

lol you didn’t even quote my entire point???

Sorry, that’s more an issue of replying on my phone.

My entire point is just that I know what social RP is, I have enjoyed it in the past, I do not enjoy it anymore. I do enjoy many other types of RP.

Whether or not you believe that is irrelevant.

@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

i think that what people generally mean is that they don’t like RP that turns out to not be fun. which is universal.

I think that’s what people generally mean, yes.

I also agree that I do not like RP that turns out to be not fun.

@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

i don’t actually believe anyone would eschew a social scene with a new character that turned out to have great chemistry and was an awesome time.

I’m fine if people don’t actually believe this.

Edit to fix quote issue.

@Yam Interesting.

I guess it is just a matter of differing tastes. I used to enjoy random social interactions, but I do not anymore. They just do not entertain me, the same way that I am not entertained by Bridgerton or MMA.

@Yam said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

I definitely agree with this, which is why I’m always baffled about why people declare no bar RP/no social fluff.

Hm. Are you equally baffled by people who declare no smut? Or no lords and ladies?

People like different things.

@Trashcan I’ll be damned.

Thank you!!!

@sao I used to do this, too. If it helps you any…

You can also do this by going to the /locations directory on the game, finding the room, and clicking “Start Scene” from there.

It still marks them as Temp Rooms, but it imports location name and room description into the scene for you. Which I like.

The only flaw I’ve found is that, if you then change the location using the portal, it keeps the original room desc in the scene info.

This is an extremely small sample, but between the three games mentioned as having a live RP cohort (Keys, Aegis Company and Empty Night)…

1 scene got posted yesterday (Aegis), and 1 scene got posted on 2/24 (Aegis).

There are 6 scenes shared from 2/23 (Empty Night & Aegis), but I’m not sure if those went up on 2/24 or 2/25. If we assume they were all played and posted on 2/23, then there are 8 live scenes shared across 3 days across 3 games.

Just some food for thought. If live RP is on these games, it is not getting shared publicly on a regular basis.

@Yam Genuinely surprised that this conversation happened 3 years ago.

https://brandmu.day/topic/346/social-bar-rp?_=1771967913235

So take that into consideration when viewing my tolerance for async. I am old; time flows differently now.

And pretty much I am looking for every scene to have some sort of contribution to the narrative, yes. This doesn’t have to be as action-oriented as robbing the 7-11. It can be staking out the 7-11 before the robbery, trying on ski masks, hotwiring a getaway car, etc. Ideally, these provide moments that give characters depth without breaking the momentum or repeating themselves.

As to how well it works for me… My tolerance for social RP used to be higher. I used to genuinely enjoy flirting and random goof-offery, so the amount I RP (in public) was a lot more frequent in general before I got crochety. I’ve had a few characters and a few games over the years that have been full-throttle, with every single scene leading into the next and each of those scenes bringing something clutch. But these are few and far between.

I just play (mostly async, to steer back to the topic) in private for now. Something will come along eventually. It always does.

@Yam said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

I have to be “on” mentally, like, ready and prepared to work with what the players are dishing out or attempting, and if I have to be that level of attentive over the span of a week, I think my brain would melt.

I get this, 100%.

I know I’m losing an emotional component when I’m playing async, in that there’s no way that I (and I assume my RP buddies) feel the same way at 2pm on Thursday that I did when we started this scene at 8:45am on Tuesday.

But I get more time to craft a thoughtful response, and it makes it possible to play with people that I otherwise wouldn’t connect with, so

I just really don’t like random social fluff. I don’t understand why someone would knowingly sign up for days and days of that, and I would also hate async scenes if that’s all I was doing in there all the time.

So I guess what I’m saying is that I care less about the pacing, much more about the content. I’ll take good RP however I can get it thx!!!

My preferred pacing is distracted. I like posing every 20-30 minutes, finishing a scene the same-day if possible, but okay if it carries over and we finish tomorrow.

My lived experience is async, where scenes take as long as they take.

I see a lot of comments about async scenes dragging on forever, and I wonder if that’s a content issue? I never RP social stuff (period at this point but specifically) async. When I set up a scene, it’s always specific.

We’re meeting to discuss the hobgoblin situation.
Let’s RP robbing the 7-11.
Please provide my PC necessary medical attention.
Etc.

If I am going to play something social, it absolutely has to be live/real-time, finished in a couple hours max, or I will have gotten bored and started the “:nods and takes a drink” poses.

@Jumpscare There are two big barriers for me. This is speaking to Silent Heaven specifically.

1 - Client dependency. I play a lot from my iPad with a keyboard attached. Between the sucky options for mobile clients and the inability to keep firmly connected via the web, I’m pretty well locked out.

2 - “Join our Discord!” This is a big turnoff for me. I don’t want to have to join a Discord for a game; it makes me uncomfortable. While I’m not sure that joining Discord is mandatory on this game, it IS one of three prominent buttons on the home page, so it comes across that way. Keep it on the MUSH, thanks.

The syntax and stuff isn’t a deal-breaker, as long as it’s documented. I am admittedly a very independent player and do not like asking for help with commands. I am much more likely to just logout than to page a staffer if I can’t figure out a command - which always left a bad taste in my mouth on the Big Evennia Game That Shut Down That Shall Not Be Named, so that’s probably created a general bias in my head against the platform.

I’m also not into coded crafting, playing with coded NPCs, etc. That feels like video game stuff, not RP stuff to me. So the fact that there’s commands for things like “Food,” “Gaming” and “Gardening” suggests this won’t be up my alley.

All that to say… it’s mostly a vibe thing. Evennia does a lot of things very well, from what I can gather, but it doesn’t support casual, web-based RP very effectively.