A FOG Role-Play - In need of opinions

When I activated the Dice feature for this message board, I also had to activate the Character Sheet tab in your Profiles in order for the Dice to work. Some of you may or may not have noticed this yet. As of right now, there is nothing in the Character Sheets for you to fill out.

Now, I was wondering just what I should do about the Character Sheets. It's only for the information on one character. Then I got to thinking about having a role-playing form dedicated to a FOG-specific role-play, basically a world set in the theme of FOG: Footsteps of Ghosts. It would, of course, incorporate both fog and ghosts into it somehow.

So, then I began working on ideas for the backdrop to an intriguing tale. I don't want to share it with you yet, as it is incomplete, and the ideas are still not finalized or all developed. However, I firstly wanted to know what everyone here thought of this idea for having this FOG RP forum. Do you like it? Why or what not?

Additionally, if you are for this, we would obviously be using the Character Sheet section in your profiles for the main character of yours for the FOG RP. Also, what genre theme do you like best for a setting? I'll let you know right now, that the idea for a story that I was developing incorporates ancient times and science fiction, but is set in modern day, basically taking aspects from the past, present, and future. What are your thoughts?

A forum wide role play? Yes please!

In my experience they typically boom at first and then slowly decrease in activity until a total stop. However I know of no role play forum which has become so successful in such a short time as FOG so I thoroughly believe if anyone can pull this off, we can, you can.

They are great for bringing entire communities together so that all the members can become friends in some way or the other, increasing inter-boards camaraderie and interaction. Typically some members on a board will never even say hello, simply because they don't have the same taste in role play and genre. However a forum wide role play will bring everyone together, making a tighter, stronger and more devoted community.

Also, because of this, I believe you should incorporate all different types of genre into this role play, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Modern and the sub-genres that some people enjoy as well. That way everyone here can cling on to something they enjoy.

As for structure, I believe the role play in general should have a storyline that it will work along and towards but it should more or less be free range at first and encompass multiple threads in different location boards. That way people have a chance to settle down and develop their characters before they are inevitably drawn into the flow of the storyline with everyone else.

Even as I type this loads of ideas are coming to mind that incorporate the images of this community over a spectrum of genres, so if you need me help with this please don't hesitate to PM me!

My 2 cents!

I think this is a really neat idea. I've never been a part of a roleplay like this, but I think it has some semblance of journal style role playing with which I am familiar.

I like this idea. I had wondered what that character sheet thing was.

Sounds like a great idea! May want to put some sort of minimum post limit a person must meet before having access to it though. Nothing really high, just something that encourages new people to browse around for a bit and understand the expectations of IC posts in this forum. It would suck horribly if all your efforts were reduced to a series of one sentence posts that are riddled with AIM speak. >_<

Actually... the writing requirements are in the rules. It would be unwise to even join this forum at all if that was the only sort of role playing a person could muster.

*Shrugs* Better to be safe than sorry. Plus it'll give the new member time to consider their place in the RP before actually being able to be involved rather than diving in head first without looking at the big picture. Again, the post count doesn't have to be too high, perhaps 20s or 30s, enough to keep the RP from being another place in which a newbie can spam.

I agree with Loki to be honest.

However I think that perhaps the post count requirement should be higher though. 20-30 posts can be reached here without even having participated in a role play.

Wow, thank you guys for all the great opinions! I really appreciate it, and I'm going to work some more on developing this. I still have a lot to think about. It needs to be interesting to the majority of people, and right now, with the plot that I have, I am having trouble figuring out how everyone's characters are going to all fit in, so I've still got work to do. I'm glad to know that, so far, there seems to be a positive outlook on this though.

I honestly like the post count idea. It gives members something to work toward, and in doing so, will help put this RP idea on more of a pedestal, so-to-say, so that more people may want to contribute to it. I'll talk some more with onenitedrive about this (he's already heard the plot I have so far) and get his opinions too.

I don't think it's something that a post count can really determine. Not in that sense of the word. Someone can achieve a large number of posts without ever participating in a role play. I think if you're going to do the post count thing, it shouldn't be a person's over all post count that determines whether or not they can participate in the big FoG role play. It should be determined by the number of posts they've made in character.

That's an idea, Kathryn. That way, it would better help to distinguish between those that can simply post a lot in OOC or games between those who do a lot of role-playing.

Yeah. Like me. I have a really high post count, but the vast majority of my posts are OoC. It would be a good incentive for me to try to role play a lot more. The only problem is determining how many IC posts a person should have before they are permitted to play in the big FoG rp.

A method for determining how to figure that out should also be determined. I know S*T really isn't that great any more, but they had good ideas even if they weren't always realized properly, and one of them was the way they had the students who wanted to graduate post the links of their role plays, so the Kindly Scholars could grade them. Of course, for this, no one would need to grade anything. I just think it would be easiest if the people who wanted to play in the big rp posted the links to their posts, so no one moderator would have to painstakingly search for them.

Well, since everyone here is supposed to be up to standards when it comes to role-playing, I'm not sure if it's worth it in the end to read through everyone's RP posts that would like to join in the FOG RP. If they could just link us to their role-plays themselves, then we can count how many times they've posted in them to figure out if they made enough role-play posts. Does that make sense?

I know. That's what I meant. They just need to link their own role plays just so moderators wouldn't have to try to find them all.

Oh okay, yeah that would be a good idea.

I like that method more than the post count one. In that case would we have it in a limited access topic that only people on the approved list will be able to post, but anybody can read through it? May want to work on a layout for an application that includes links to the RPs they've been involved and perhaps a general RP sample that they can make up. What better way to get an idea of their writing style than examining something that comes straight from their head rather than catering to another RP?

I probably will be creating an application for people wishing to participate in this. I like that idea.

Well, I have made a ton of progress with this tonight, in that I wrote out a lot of great and useful information, and I've also resolved the issue I was having earlier with figuring out the plot. I would like to add a uniqueness to this and to each character, so that everyone's characters can be individualized and special. That, I have determined, is the key to success. (You see it in MMOs, comic book heroes, and even in books like Harry Potter.) I have come up with something that will help further this idea, but there may be even more awesomeness to come. We shall see. For now, it's bed time. ;]

The only way to accurately judge everyone on their IC posts would be to manually revert every members post count to 0 an then edit the boards to ensure that only the role play forums count towards a user’s personal post count. That way the post count would indicate that member’s contribution to the role play forums solely, regardless of how many OOC posts they have made.

Anyway, I think a more appropriate and less time-consuming idea would indeed be an application with a trial to gauge the writing skills of the member in question.

I actually don't have that feature available from Forumotion - to choose which forums contribute to post count and which don't, or to even restart someone's post count. (While I do love a lot of the features Forumotion does offer, I do wish it was a bit more involved.) Even so, I don't think people would be all too happy about that.

I think we'll go with the application then. I'll talk some more with onenitedrive about what qualifications and such people should have in order to get in.

Speaking as one of those "new people," I have yet to be able to make a single IC post here at FOG, though my post count is in the 60's. Unfortunately, the two other RPs I signed up for here (not the Matrix RP) are either closed, or... well... I'm not sure about the one yet. ><

Anyway, all I mean is, I'd be more than glad to link, on other forums, pieces of my writing and RPs as well. Most of it online will be from WoW forums, but I can say that I certainly wouldn't mind some type of requisite like that, to participate in a FOG forum RP, if it were required.

I know how you feel, Igraine. (For some reason, my original role-plays seemed to have disappeared. o.o)

I really appreciate that input, because that is definitely something we will have to consider.


NEWS: Oh! Wow. I found I can make this work. There is something called the Point system that we can activate here, and I can choose which forum posts give you points. In other words, I can make it so you will only earn Points if you post in the RPing forums. In response to Igraine though, perhaps we can simply count ALL posts in the IC section, meaning even the posts that are not RP posts, but posts that are talking about RPs (organizing them, OOC, etc.).

O____o

Uhh, well. I guess forgot the RP Points idea. They are severely messed up. Ugh. It gave me and some others more RP Points than we have posts here, somehow. I even set it so that members get 1 Point per post they leave in the IC section. So, obviously, that doesn't make any sense. It must be messed up and confused. I guess we'll have to do away with them and think of something else entirely.

I personally think an application would be the best way to go. The post count thing is a great idea, but I don't think it will give you an accurate representation of the skill-level or writing ability of the members here. Some people are extremely pressed for time and don't have the time to put towards multiple RP's that other members do, and it wouldn't be fair to leave them out, especially because they might be just as or more qualified than a member with a ton of IC posts.

An application with some sort of written section would be best, I'd think. Give us some questions to answer and have everyone post a short piece of writing that they think best reflects their skills as a writer. Could be an excerpt from a previous RP they've been in, or maybe just part of a short story they wrote for school, or anything.

We tried this on AWR and it totally failed because nobody could agree on what should happen, how it should be done, etc. In the end, there were 4-5 people out of the 246 on our forum that actually came out content, with none of the admins seeming to care in the slightest.

I'd say be worried about getting it organized properly. Don't be so focused on weeding people out already by their interest in your forum.

She's mentioned in several posts that she has been working through the RP itself, seemingly quite a bit. If you ask me, a poorly written RP is no worse than the poor posts of players. An RP can have a great beginning, be very thorough, etc. but can easily take a nose dive if the players don't contribute anything into it aside from paragraphs of pointless rambling full of grammatical mistakes. It becomes hard to take an RP seriously when it gets to that point.

So we should focus on all aspects of the RP, including membership, especially if it is open to everybody who wants/is eligible to join. There is no deadline with this, so there is no reason not to take care of everything while the ideas are still fresh.

It's kind of pointless, if you ask me, to be dwelling so much on the quality of peoples' posts so much when the site already has thick guidelines for it. Since the RP is representative of the site, or...some way of that, shouldn't it just be going by the site's rules rather than its own?

You're just wasting time.

Not necessarily. Technically, anyone could register at this site, whether or not they meet the qualifications set down by the site rules. This way, you can rule those people out.

Twoface_ecafowT wrote:Not necessarily. Technically, anyone could register at this site, whether or not they meet the qualifications set down by the site rules. This way, you can rule those people out.

Before they get a chance to throw a wrench into the RP.

It is more of an insurance policy; after all, there may be rules, but it still won't stop them from making sub-par posts should they decide to turn a blind eye to them. This will help keep the RP on track and gives people incentive to get involved more in the IC sections rather than spend their time beefing up their post count in the OOC area.

Well, I'm seeing some really valid points here from everyone, and it's kind of leaving me torn.

On the one hand, if you are a member here, you are expected to already be up to standards, and we are not here to help train you to write better (despite whether or not you truly do end up developing your writing/RPing talents in your stay here). Therefore, you should already be up to standards for joining in this. It would, in theory, be pointless then for onenitedrive and I to judge role-plays by those wishing to be eligible for this, if they all are already up to par.

On the other hand, it is true that anyone who wishes to can join this message board, and there always will be people who are more exceptional in their writing than others, even if those others are considered good. The question then would be, would we want to raise the bar even higher for this FOG role-play and limit it to only 'the best of the best,' so-to-say?


My main thing is, I would like there to be something for members to do to work toward achieving eligibility to join this, but what exactly this is that they are working at is something that needs to be decided on.

Not necessarily. Technically, anyone could register at this site, whether or not they meet the qualifications set down by the site rules. This way, you can rule those people out.

This same reasoning could be applied to -any- roleplay, not just this one. They shouldn't be treated any differently than if they posted a sub-par post in, say...something on the Advanced RP forums.

Besides, just like a post count for the entire forum isn't a viable rating of skill, neither is a post count on the RP forums. If they can put up badly done writing in this RP, than they could do it in any other RP and you wouldn't know any more than you did before.

My main thing is, I would like there to be something for members to do to work toward achieving eligibility to join this, but what exactly this is that they are working at is something that needs to be decided on.

Why? Why is this necessary? You're taking it too seriously.
Same story as the rest of this board.

I'm looking at it from this perspective: If someone has joined FOG, then they should already know what the expectations are for role playing on this forum. Looking over the quality of their writing would [should] be unnecessary due to the already established standards. I understand the reasoning behind making sure people are skilled enough to participate. However, I really can't see excluding someone because of their skill level. Sub par posts and their writers should be handled the same way they are handled anywhere else.

As far as having a post requirement to participate, that's a little different. A post count displays a member's overall participation and dedication to FOG. I think that's important. This gives the member time to become familiar with FOG and the other members before they start posting in the forum role play.

Whether or not it should be overall post count or just IC post count, I'm not sure yet. I'm thinking just IC post count. Maybe once a member reaches a certain number of posts in the IC section they can notify the staff and we will allow them to join the forum role play. They would have to notify us because we don't have a way to track post count for a specific section.

(Side note: Please don't get the impression that I'm being biased because I'm not a writer/role player. I'm not discussing this on my behalf )