Tips for being inclusive in rp and story creation
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So some trolls got me whining a lot in irc today… i will skip over the drama, infuriating, embarrassing, and boring bits for now, and simply say I came to the realization that -I- could be more inclusive of others in creating -my- story, and likewise for others including me or other people.
For myself, I think perhaps I was framing the situation as some players being excluded more than others when playing, but in reality i think my real life social anxiety (which is probably harder to notice online when I am more vocal) may cause me to avoid participating in some situations, whether its avoiding pvp or different conflicts because they make me anxious, or i think i will get left behind or annoy people, or what have you.
So I notice that some of my own habits create some isolation on the server and an inability to get involved as much.
I know sometimes pvp can be argued as detracting from story; I know sometimes I feel that way. But I don't want to have that debate here in this thread, and as a note to the pvp'ers, i notice part of the reason i avoid it is because of my own anxiety and lack of skill with it, and i acknowledge that taking the time to learn pvp better can make for a more fun experience, which even if you are a little pvp averse, you may find rewarding if you take the time to get more comfortable with pvp. I actually made a pc with learning pvp better in mind, although I haven't really delved into that much.
So let's stay off the pvp no pvp argument a bit here, ok?
So what I'm looking for are:
Recognizing things that make including others in our story, or being included in theirs, more difficult, or easier, and kind of trying to put together some unofficials tips of do's and don'ts that might be useful for some players and the server.
Here's a couple tips that i was given already which i'll throw out there to get this thread started
someone from CORE mentioned 'just do stuff' and 'involve people' - people will start to know you are where the action is at, dm's will know too and sometimes spice things up. one tip from this gamer as well was the having a regular time to do 'something', even if it seemed insignificant, like mining, exploring, questing, rp'ing cultural stuff, visiting special sites, having a drink or a card game and gossiping about the latest happenings, etc.I think some other things which can be helpful is... trying not to get -too complicated- at first... but sketch out some of your character, their background, some simply goals or desires... when you know -your- character better, it is easier to add something to a the stories around you.
Let your story grow and change with the things other players do... let things affect you, and show it to other players, so that they can begin to know and be involved in those stories, too.
I think keeping notes is important, but sometimes my memory is not great. So maybe you want to keep some things a mystery or a secret, but it is important to kind of spill the beans on some things some times to try to let other players in on something is going on here.
include your enemies as well as your ig friends. people's rivalries also help define them and their stories, so talk a little ooc with some of your main rivals about what it is they are looking for with their character or a given conflict, and help make the drama around it involving for others around them as well.
practice jazz: learn when to take a solo, or step back and be a supporting character.
that's all i've got for now.
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if there are other threads on this stuff, please feel free to share the links. i didn't search for this much on the forums, so there may be good stuff there… i'm sure the regulars have a better idea of that then i do.
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: you missed that discussion Cheshire
: And I don't really understand what Maikeru wants the subject to be about….
<gdardog|thedrunkening>: Respond in song</gdardog|thedrunkening>Here's a song
There's actually a point to my linking that song, see….. The entire premise of our approach at involving people in core was pretty similar to that song. We just decided that we would do something.....anything, didn't matter what it was, didn't matter how we did it. We would just pick something to do in the server and we would go out and do it whether people wanted to come with us or not, but eeeeevery time we went out to do it we would invite anyone around to come with us.
Any time someone gets invited to join random strangers on non quest things they generally tend to assume that the whole idea is going to flop before it starts, or that you're probably going to be disorganized and the whole thing will amount to running around like headless chickens boredly.What people are scared of when you ask them to join you isn't really that your shinanigan isn't going to be profitable. What people are generally afraid of is that there is no concrete goal/plan, or that said shinanigan will generate no progress to that goal/plan. If you're looking for an item you just invented and are hoping that after looking for it enough times a dm will take notice and throw you a bone.....sure a dm might do that, but the players will grow bored of having gone on a wild goose chase and achieved no progress what so ever towards achieving the goal.
With core we kept it all simple, we were dwarves, we were going to go dig holes, if enemies showed up we would take them down.....we'd build shit....the end. Everyone who came with us knew that there wasn't going to be any pay, that there wasn't going to be any treasure aside from what the monsters had on them, but they also knew that success was highly likely. If they didn't come we'd go anyways and we'd succeed most of the time, once we started running into rare bounty spawns or killing bigass monsters and coming back to brag about it, what we did sounded fun even though there was no profit in it....why did it sound fun? Because the entire time we did that, the person who didn't come was in the spire waiting for people to show up to buy their "insert item here"
After coming back and drinking in celebration to our success enough times joining us on our shinanigans feels more and more compelling, eventually our lil group gets bigger and bigger.When a dm pops on with some free time looking to spice things up for shits and giggles the first thing they do is go "so where all the players at? if they find out that there's a huge group of people not questing, but also not in the spire or shylocks sitting on their hands, that's usually where the spices are going to go.....if you happen to be in said group, you get "dur funs" people start associating your expeditions with "where the actions at" even though the credit really goes to the dm for dishing out "the action"......but in the end them thinking that is what keeps your group big and fat, so it's a self fulfilling prophecy and everyone's happy....
tl;dr. We were dwarves, we dug holes, everyone was invited....things got fun. Keep it simple, everyone starts as level 1 adventurers, the epic tale should be what your "simpleton" ends up accomplishing from starting small....the epic tale should not be in your past before entering arabel. Just because you want your story to be epic doesn't mean you have to start big from the get go.