Compliments & Criticisms: Your Thoughts On SW-Fans.Net

[Glen Fiddich]

RE: Ripple Effects

We do have events that cause ripples already... but I think the big problem we've got is that we explain the idea, and then start the build-up. Everyone gets really enthusiastic about the possible rammifications of the Rebels discovering that Dan is a Sith, but we then embark on a long road to get to that point.

Maybe we need to start coming up with more sudden ripple effects? If we were doing an RP based on the new Star Trek movie, the destruction of Vulcan could be the cause of our ripples: something that happened extremely quickly on screen, but that completely rewrote the entire universe.

Maybe we should try starting at the cause of the ripples, rather than starting with the causes of the cause of the ripples? Some sudden, shocking, Return of Palpatine / Vong Invasion style game-changer that comes completely out of left-field, so that we can strike with posts while the inspiration-iron is still hot?

RE: GM'd Forum Roleplaying

I like the idea of a GM, and the notion of players discovering stuff as we go... but I'm not sure how we'd implement it. Using Dark Banana as an example - we seem to have a lot more more Keanu Banana and Hitler of the Mountain characters than we do regular old Glens and Dasquians: quite a lot of the characters we play are (understandably) pretty important members of the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire. Those are the sorts of characters that a GM would normally control.

How would we make a GM situation work for our Generals and Jedi Masters? Or would it be something that we'd only be able to employ for the likes of Rogue Squadron, special forces, Jedi "away teams", etc?

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I totally agree - things take a long time to develop, and it's a chicken/egg situation because we want exciting storylines, but we need participation to drive the story along... but we need stories moving along to get more participation.

And of course, a lot of times it only takes one or two people stopping posting (Jenny or Liz for example) to halt nearly all roleplays. I don't think there is a solution to that, of course, other than kidnapping and forcing people to post.

I think advertising the board is a great idea, I used to do my best to get us out there when I was an admin, with limited success. But we need a product for new people to 'buy into'. We need people writing. I don't think there is a solution to writer's block, but if everyone just picked one RP they have dangling and unfinished and worked on getting it done, it might snowball onward from there.

[Vince]

Generals: my friends and I did an RP where we took command of the defense militias of a city, and directed the defense from the front lines. Instead of doing each individual soldier, we split the troops under our command into "squads" and companies, with each squad having the stats of a single character: hp, attack and defense, and so on.

The GM would assign us to do skill checks depending on what we wanted to do. If one guy was doing recon, he'd roll a stealth check and we'd all agree on (the GM would have the final say) the effects based on the roll. Bad rolls got him and/or his squads caught, so-so rolls didn't get much information, and excellent rolls gave him and his squad(s) the chance to snipe and destroy some enemies before they engaged us.

Perhaps we could implement something similar to the way Generals and Jedi Masters would play a GM run thread, depending on the event. I think this could be good for fleeting and land battles especially. Skill checks to decide whether a negotiation goes well or badly, or how long a mind trick lasts, could add a nice level of play to threads played with the more important characters.

And nothing says we have to stick with a GM styled system either. We can run the present system and the GM system side by side if anyone simply wanted use either.

[Dasquian Belargic]

RE: Ripple Effects

Maybe we should try starting at the cause of the ripples, rather than starting with the causes of the cause of the ripples? Some sudden, shocking, Return of Palpatine / Vong Invasion style game-changer that comes completely out of left-field, so that we can strike with posts while the inspiration-iron is still hot?

Some kind of invasion is typically what's brought up whenever we talk about this kind of big, game-changer. The only problem I could imagine with that is that a biiiig invasion would be a long-lasting story arc rather than something that has manageable start and end points. That's not necessarily a bad thing, if we want to dramatically alter the landscape of the scenario, but if we're just wanting to give it a jolt of activity... something smaller scale might be easier to manage.

RE: GM'd Forum Roleplaying

How would we make a GM situation work for our Generals and Jedi Masters? Or would it be something that we'd only be able to employ for the likes of Rogue Squadron, special forces, Jedi "away teams", etc?

It would probably be the latter, although there is nothing to stop characters of higher standings taking part too. With the Jedi for example, you could have a team with a couple of padawans, two knights and a master. Your GM characters would then be the other senior members of the Jedi and perhaps the Rebel Alliance.

Taking an example from recent times, a GM could have run the 'Rescue From Coruscant' event which saw the majority of Jedi Knights and Masters on Coruscant. The GM would just have played the Empire, Inquisitors and all of the opposition to the Jedi.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I'll admit I'm not too keen on a GM approach since I've always enjoyed the freeform way we've done things a lot more, but I'm certainly not unwilling to give it a go.

I guess for me personally, as of late the inactivity has been a chance to recharge and get re-inspired. I've always viewed this place as cyclical to a fault, but it's a fault that I like because we write until we get tired, then recharge and bandy about ideas in chat or PM, and get back to it. Even this discussion is a part of our cycle.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Yeah, I think it's important not to get too hung up on the GM idea. It's just one suggestion for something that might be interesting to try.

Even if we did try that though, ultimately we would need some kind of 'events' to actually RP.

[Tear]

I would agree on cyclical pattern Swfan's tends to go through (This being probably one of the longer droughts then average)

Keeping with the pattern is the lets do an 'event' conversation. Lilaena already pointed out how most of the eagerness is spent discussing the idea then activity slowly dies off as people actually have to do the hard part, writing.

Motivation to post and the inspiration to keep that going is huge and something that ultimately lays with us/you/the writer. It's obvious that activity sparks creativity. The last few posts in this thread show that for a fact but I think numbers also play a part.

Our board is roughly 5-6 active writers (not lately, Charley is nearly a 1 man show right now) on average. That isn't a huge pool to pull from. Especially if just two of those writers get pulled away into RL issues, or have their interest in posting wane, which lets be honest, it happens.

We need more writers at Sw-fans but to do this we need to be active writers ourselves with events that are:

Hard to derail by inactivity.
Easy jumping on points for new people.(Small in scope?)
Exciting enough to keep those interested and writing.

It's a tall order.

I do like Vince's mention of a more 'game' type of thread involving fleeting and land battles. I had been setting up a really simple 'battleship' type system for fleeting but never took it anywhere. Perhaps we could build on that idea? Including something like Si'l and her great character cards. Have it so our character's equipment is shown as RPG elements, character sheets, stat's with items.

Ultimately this shouldn't be something that holds much sway in story terms and would need to monitored so as to not get out of hand. It could help draw more people to the site while keeping others posting to continue to 'build' their characters.

Special events could be Gm'd with prizes in mind that you could have added onto your characters.

Si'l having her unique lightsaber for example could be shown on a character sheet with some stats as a legendary item. What if writers could be rewarded with stuff like that as a result of finishing threads?

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

A reward system is actually something I can really dig, and would certainly add to the incentive for thread-finishing.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I think bean counting was organically excised from our system over the years for good reason. I'm not in favor of reinstating it or requiring stats for characters, etc.

[Droo]

Number crunching does nothing for me either, to be honest. It has its time and place but once it starts affecting the success of our character's actions here I can't help but feel it would cheapen the experience.

And while I'm all for event roleplays that can push story along and make people feel a part of something, I think there's also a place for the old random free-for-all roleplays that used to pop up in the good old days; some were very silly, admittedly, but they were also fun and served in bringing characters together without any real planning or forethought.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I've seen something on other sites which could be cool, in that they have little "achievement" icon bars they can put in their signatures for taking part in a particular event and seeing the event through to the end. It's just a small reward but kind of cool and everyone likes "achievements"

[Droo]

Now that's a good idea. It's like when there were big events in the likes of WoW, and you get an achievement to share with others so you look back on it and say "I was there for..."

Plus to newcomers it would certainly pique curiosity about the big forum events and stories that have unraveled in the past and give them an incentive to be there for one in the future.

[Crusader]

You mean like medals? Do we get Gamerscore as well?

[Captain Untouchable]

Achievement: You Have a Bad Feeling About This...
Work a famous Star Wars quote seamlessly into a post.

I was initially just kidding about those sort of achievements... but actually, knowing us it could turn into something quite fun cooking up and naming achievements like that. We could do it like the whole suggesting custom titles thing mixed with leaving positive reputation on posts... if you read something awesome that warrants commemoration, we can make up a new medal or find an existing one to fit.

"I am your father!" could be awarded to people who "create an account for the father of an existing character" (I think that may just be Charley and myself ... ), and there could be a "Force Frying Pan!" achievement for "creative use of an unconventional object".

I know some versions of board software are able to have little icons for achievements and things under the avatar/post count. Rather than try to cram everything into the signature bar, maybe it's worth looking to see if something like this is possible as an add-on for our boards?

*

Thinking of possible options for a Ripple Event... what about some sort of supership, superweapon, or superfleet? We've discussed stuff on a similar theme before; it's definitely the sort of thing that could easily spring to life overnight without us needing to post an extensive lead-up. It is potentially the sort of thing that we could use the GM system on - the GM controls the superthing. Plus, if the superthing is controlled by a third party it can provide story fodder for both Imperials and Rebels, and possibly some Bakura-style cooperation too; and if the Imperials and/or Rebels throw a ton of ships at it Endor-style, there are possibly some long-standing ramifications if too many of them get blown up. And it's something that can end (with the super-thing's destruction) in a big, medal-worthy event.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Instead of jumping immediately to a new scenario, maybe we should integrate some of these ideas like the achievements and/or after-thread-rewards into the current Alliance/Wheel project we have going on? That one right there has a lot of branchouts for a lot of characters. Vega, Amos, Inyos, Sol, and Serena come to mind in that they all hit key points by the ends of their respective threads.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I know some versions of board software are able to have little icons for achievements and things under the avatar/post count. Rather than try to cram everything into the signature bar, maybe it's worth looking to see if something like this is possible as an add-on for our boards?

That's something Ogre would have to weigh in on... but I'm reluctant to add anything else above/below the avatar because for some people that area is already pretty crowded with CTs, stars, supporter icons, con related graphics etc.

Instead of jumping immediately to a new scenario, maybe we should integrate some of these ideas like the achievements and/or after-thread-rewards into the current Alliance/Wheel project we have going on? That one right there has a lot of branchouts for a lot of characters. Vega, Amos, Inyos, Sol, and Serena come to mind in that they all hit key points by the ends of their respective threads.

That sounds like a cool idea. Probably some for existing/ongoing threads and perhaps one new event would be good, to give people who aren't really involved in anything right now something to hop in on.

If people like this idea, I'd suggest we make new discussion thread for coming up with ideas for potential achievements. We can what kind of achievements people like the sound of - participating in particular battles, rescue missions, discovering secrets, whatever it might be - and then go from there

[Sanis Prent]

I like all of this

[Captain Untouchable]

That's something Ogre would have to weigh in on... but I'm reluctant to add anything else above/below the avatar because for some people that area is already pretty crowded with CTs, stars, supporter icons, con related graphics etc.

I thought your suggestion was to add stuff to the CT?

Did I understand that wrong?

[Dasquian Belargic]

I've seen something on other sites which could be cool, in that they have little "achievement" icon bars they can put in their signatures for taking part in a particular event...

Nope, we've got enough in our CTs already IMO

[Captain Untouchable]

I totally read that wrong. O_O

Signatures is a much better idea.