For sake of the plot...

[Sin]

Alright... *takes a deep breath*

Hi. I'm relatively new here and I haven't had the pleasure of meeting or talking to all the great members of the community yet. So I have a question for you all, because my friends and I were discussing it earlier today.

The three of us have appeared here to engage in some good ol' fashion Star Wars story telling. It's always fun writing with other people and seeing how they interpret things, however, each writer always has goals and objectives that they want to meet for their character. Some people want to become powerful leaders in their respective factions, some people want to obtain a lot of credits and become extremely wealthy, whilst there's some person out there that just wants to become the most notorious criminal in the galaxy.

None of that could happen without our friends and co-writers though right? Somewhere down the line, we might need other writers to help us out for the sake of character and story development. That's what I'd like to ask the community here at SWRP about.

How many of you are willing to submit your characters to RP and help other players with the progression of their plots and story lines? I'm sure just about everyone would raise their hand. There's a catch though...and I'll use the example that pertains to an RP that is currently in development.

You favorite character is a bounty hunter and there is a bounty out there on another playable character that belongs to a member of the site. Well, obviously, he wants a bounty hunter to participate in an RP with him in which the bounty hunter can not succeed for the sake of the plot. If the bounty hunter succeeds the character ends up chained to some Hutt or dead, that doesn't bode well for the progression of the character in relation to the vision of the creator. So how many of us would be willing to go into an RP and co-write a story knowing our favorite bounty hunter character isn't going to score this bounty? How many of us are interested in roleplaying successes just as well as failures? It's an interesting question and there's nothing wrong with saying: "HECK NO, not scoring a bounty doesn't help me with my vision for my bounty hunter!"

This just gives me a general look into how people think, how they write, and how they approach RP and writing for the sake of the plot rather than for the sake of their own character's well-being. There's nothing wrong with only jumping in RP that behooves your characters mind you. Like I said, just a OOC RP discussion. Drop your thoughts and opinions, I'd love to hear what you all have to say on the subject.

 

[Aleksandr]

Well, I suppose with most people it may depend on the character in question. Some kind of failure might actually help advance the character's plot in a way. For example, I was in a recent thread where my character succeeded in committing a crime at the expense of another because that character's creator wanted it to affect their personality in a certain way.

I personally don't mind being involved in some threads where my character fails in order to advance the plot of another person/group as long as they don't die (unless I want to get rid of that particular one). I still do want my characters to have a fair amount of successes as well, but I don't mind taking the place as a sort of enemy that ends up being defeated either.

 

[Bee]

Failure is fun. My characters mess up all the time.

 

[Khivas]

To be blunt, one must know failure to know success.

There will be times where you lose, it can't be helped.

But it does make the victories taste better.

 

[Gamov]

Mostly, I take the "wing it" approach to my RPs. I don't usually plan much in advance for events aside from the general motivation that could be used to feasibly put my character in the same place as another character. I can honestly say that I've never been asked to be part of a thread where I was asked to intentionally "lose", and I actually prefer to allow such things to play out organically between players rather than being part of a set-piece story. I feel that letting the circumstances of events as depicted by both sides throughout the course of a given RP is the most enjoyable way to go about forming relationships between characters - be they lasting friendships or bitter rivalries.

Variety is the spice of life, as the old axiom goes.

 

[Bee]

Its also worth noting that like, you can ask people OOCly if they'd be down to have their characters get hurt, captured, whatever, and a lot of times folks are happy to plan it out and make a good story out of it, even if it involves their character "failing" somehow. The element of surprise can be really fun too, but sometimes it feels as though people forget the site is about writing a collaborative story rather than OOC competition.

 

[Sin]

Mostly, I take the "wing it" approach to my RPs. I don't usually plan much in advance for events aside from the general motivation that could be used to feasibly put my character in the same place as another character. I can honestly say that I've never been asked to be part of a thread where I was asked to intentionally "lose", and I actually prefer to allow such things to play out organically between players rather than being part of a set-piece story. I feel that letting the circumstances of events as depicted by both sides throughout the course of a given RP is the most enjoyable way to go about forming relationships between characters - be they lasting friendships or bitter rivalries.

Variety is the spice of life, as the old axiom goes.

This is the most rewarding in a lot of ways, because nobody knows the outcome and you just go with the flow and if you're both mature adults you can enjoy and appreciate the outcome no matter what.

A lot of times these events have to be managed by an outsider though especially when we're talking about the successes and failures of our characters when those successes or failures are either a success or a failure based on the actions of another playable character. I don't particularly like moderation in my RP, I'm a big boy and I can talk things out with reasonable people to achieve common goals that will make everyone happy nine times out of ten, but then again there are a lot of unreasonable roleplayers in the galaxy. :P

What would hopefully happen in the scenario above is that whoever is organizing the RP would contact the bounty hunter without everyone else knowing and he would be a part of the RP and he himself would know he isn't going to succeed, but the other roleplayers participating in the RP wouldn't know this. That's just good organization and trying to keep things healthy and immersive for the main characters of the plot. That's just how I would approach it though. Different strokes for different folks.

 

[Sin]

Its also worth noting that like, you can ask people OOCly if they'd be down to have their characters get hurt, captured, whatever, and a lot of times folks are happy to plan it out and make a good story out of it, even if it involves their character "failing" somehow. The element of surprise can be really fun too, but sometimes it feels as though people forget the site is about writing a collaborative story rather than OOC competition.

This post brought a tear to my eye. Especially the last sentence. The element of surprise can still be there in collaborative storytelling, it just takes a lot of trust between the writers and a good group of quality writers to pull it off.

For example.

An RP story is created and there are a multitude of players involved in the story in various ways. Well, the general idea and direction of the story is probably predetermined. It may seem weird, but it's important for it to be predetermined so that there are no misunderstandings between the writers and so that nobody derails the story and starts moving the plot somewhere that it wasn't supposed to go because this is how writers tend to get upset because they signed up for an RP with a character to write with certain goals and objectives in mind.

That said, what isn't predetermined is how you reach that end goal. For example, the goal is for a Jedi, five soldiers, and a rebel sympathizer to make it from Manaan back to Ord Pardron. The predetermined outcome is that the everyone will make it back to Ord Pardron, but one of the soldiers will be injured along the way. That's it, nothing else is really known about the RP, you go in there and collaborate with other writers to get your party to Ord Pardron. Whoever is organizing the RP could now start contacting other writers and soliciting for players that would be willing to participate in the RP. One of the soldiers has to be injured somehow. Maybe a pirate crew interdicts the party on their way back to Ord Pardron and they open fire on the vessel. The ship is scored and one of the soldier sustains an injury from falling inside the ship or maybe he smashes his head and gets knocked unconscious. Who knows what will happen. Hopefully you have a good person keeping track of the progress of the RP story line behind the scenes and making sure it's all going according to plan whilst leaving a lot of these fine details to serve as surprises for the writers. Imagine your surprise when someone shows up in your thread saying they're attacking your ship! ACK!

Anyway. I went off on a rant. Sorry about that. @Bee just got me all hyped up with her comment. I love collaborative storytelling if you can't tell. :P

 

[Khivas]

Its also worth noting that like, you can ask people OOCly if they'd be down to have their characters get hurt, captured, whatever, and a lot of times folks are happy to plan it out and make a good story out of it, even if it involves their character "failing" somehow. The element of surprise can be really fun too, but sometimes it feels as though people forget the site is about writing a collaborative story rather than OOC competition.

For all the rules on a site, the only ones that matter are the ones you and your partner honor.

Plenty of times I've written with people and completely disregarded the rules of the site just to make a better thread, and many times other readers do not do it enough, either here or elsewhere.

 

[Bee]

@Khivas, yes and no. Rules are important. But if everyone's on the same page, there's really nothing wrong with bending them from time to time if it makes the story work.

@Sin, for a very literal example, @Fat Possum and I played a couple characters for a year and a half and had them get into all kinds of trouble. They went from bounty hunters to Sith to lovers, to almost-husband and wife. His character got possessed by the spirit of a Darth who they were unable to exorcise, and it culminated in a duel that neither of us knew the outcome of. The thread was nearly over when he decided he wanted his character to die, and honestly I almost couldn't write it because it was so damn sad. It sucks to lose a character, but man was it a great storyline. I feel like it worked because FP and I are really good friends and we got dat communication, so instead of it being a generic PvP thread, it was something much more satisfying.

 

[Khivas]

Ehhh, rules are important yes, but what I'm getting at is that you don't always have to strictly adhere to them if you and your partner don't want to. A lot of times in the 7 years of RPing I've seen far too many people get uppity and scared to do things because the site said it would be frowned upon.

Mind you these were little things like "Of mechanics make you uncomfortable, I can void them for this" or "You should apply for that even if it's a week early since all your threads are done." Or "Yes you can use that, I don't mind."

Silly shit like that. Things that completely destroy the setting I usually avoid like the plague.

The first Space Jam or Trek thing I see I tend to burn with fire in some places ifyaknowhatimean

 

[Loco]

@Sin, for a very literal example, @Fat Possum and I played a couple characters for a year and a half and had them get into all kinds of trouble. They went from bounty hunters to Sith to lovers, to almost-husband and wife. His character got possessed by the spirit of a Darth who they were unable to exorcise, and it culminated in a duel that neither of us knew the outcome of. The thread was nearly over when he decided he wanted his character to die, and honestly I almost couldn't write it because it was so damn sad. It sucks to lose a character, but man was it a great storyline. I feel like it worked because FP and I are really good friends and we got dat communication, so instead of it being a generic PvP thread, it was something much more satisfying.

 

[Marf]

@Sin Bro, I can tell you love writing just from your OOC posts. I would advise keeping your points more concise and direct, that way people aren't greeted by a wall of text ;)

Anyway, I have been writing since I was 8, but RP is still very new territory for me, so I am all about plotting and collaborative storytelling. I strongly dislike competition and find it very stressful to deal with. I also love making my characters fail or look stupid, all my Sith have either been total losers or just basket-cases. One of my favourite things about playing Sith in particular, is humanizing them and making them do normal people things, which is something you'll frequently find in my posts.