I think the following tl;dr fodder incorporates some suggestions already presented in this thread. Upon skimming, I see a relation to things posted by Kilroy, Xylon, CreepPipe, and Something Witty. If your name belongs on this list and I missed/forgot you—my bad, and good idea, whatever it was.

Onwards:

Make role-play expectations clearer, and base the whole experience around that. At present, the IC forums appear to serve as a place where you can post (almost) anything you want without much—if any—thought. People slide in and out of character, which bumumes they actually have a solid character (most people don’t). New users see this and simply do the same, though their copies are degradations of the originals (much like Number 4 in Multiplicity).

Remove the “RP” sections of Flamebate from Flamebate (don’t worry; they are going to be relocated, not deleted). Flamebate is just for OOC posting. Game discussion, contests, entertainment, et al. will stay. It also makes sense to keep Whiny ****es as a place to blow off steam about game issues by calling the CZ guys and mods fabulous persons or whatever.

The actual IC forums need an overhaul, since they are nonsensical as a realm. Sustained RP should not try to happen in a void. From my perspective, the most obvious choice of a setting would be a generic general discussion forum. Instead of having a sub for each clbum, have subs for media, sports, politics, child-rearing, hobbies—things like that. Then people post IC about those topics. So, for example, you could have some hackers ranting about portrayal of computer savants as nerds in movies or whatever, and then have some camwhore come in and make fun of them, and watch the whole thing break down (this is not a great example, I know, but I am just trying to demonstrate structure). This also moves people away from simply posting as if they were attacking a forum in-game (especially when starting a thread). Each clbum needs serious posts from other people as fodder.

This system would allow freer interaction between clbumes, I think. It would also encourage people to think more like their characters. Ideally, people will develop cohesive, consistent, vivid, three-dimensional personalities (who won’t fit neatly into just one clbum, but that is the nature of such things). Reacting to a setting provides a strong basis for the imaginative work needed to play a character consistently.

Going back to the new IC forums: They would need to be static, which is a bit of a shame, but a dynamic and progressive board-wide plot just doesn’t seem viable at all. The realm would still need its own identity and backstory. Coming up with the details would make an excellent community project, I think, sort of like ultimate Forumbuildr. Perhaps instead of anonymous upvoting and downvoting, though, a committee could take input and make executive decisions or something like that.

The RP forums would then be accessible through the Multiplayer tab as another branch of game-play (rather than a murky off-shoot of game discussion, as they are now). Perhaps you have to advance to a certain point in the storyline to gain access, as with INCIT and Kyoubai? The realm forum could even be presented as mission forums are, so it really is integrated into the game. This presents an opportunity for a really clear explanation of what the RP forums are and what is supposed to happen there. Obviously, this would make a bunch of work for CZ, so it’s not really an important aspect, but I figured it was worth throwing out there.

The IC forums could also provide competition by putting those win/fail bumons on posts to work. People would be expected to vote on posts fairly consistently. The scores from the posts would ultimately go to a leaderboard with an E-peen reward. Perhaps votes would—as in INCIT and buildr—contribute to chocolate scoops as well (I think the peen is a better incentive in this case though). Clearly, voting would require some kind of complex scoring system, but I’m not going to go into that.

Obviously, there are plenty of details to sort, and I don’t think this helps much towards achieving higher quality anything-goes. If people are interested in moving things in the direction of more serious RP, however, this has some potential.

Possibly a Cabbage Posted:

I think part of the problem is in tying down a precise set of guidelines for how each clbum is supposed to RP. Before episode 2, the only clbumes were the three simplest to RP: Jerks, Attention Whores, and Whiners. Those archetypes are simple, well understood by most everybody, and if you don’t really understand them by your other internet experiences, actual gameplay gives a reasonable guidelines as to how they’re supposed to behave.

But Hackers are problematic. Hackers don’t actually generally participate in the forums they’re attacking. If you go by gameplay as a guideline, hackers have only one attack that involves actually posting to the forum, and IRL it’s not something that’s really going to get anybody upset. There’s no well understood set guidelines in popular internet culture, as far as I know, as to how hackers behave. I personally chose the clbum because I’m not a jerk, attention whore, or a whiner and I didn’t want to go for a challenge clbum, so I basically picked it as “other”. In terms of actually RPing a character, I could base it of any number of antisocial computer science folks I know, but would that actually be apparent to anybody that I’m behaving like a hacker?

If you want people to seriously RP in clbum, some serious thought has to be put forward to explaining to people how certain clbumes are supposed to be RPed. But in the end, is anybody going to want to moderate this? Would anybody in their right mind want to ban someone for being insufficiently emo, or trolly, or hackery if they’re otherwise a fun person to be around?

I agree, and this is why I wasn’t proposing any new rules per se. Rather, I think the overall atmosphere needs an overhaul. CZ can’t force anyone to do anything, and in something so subjective as RP, there’s no way to say “oh, you’re not playing sufficiently like a hacker.” That’s where the community comes in—good posters will be popular, whereas bad posters will be ignored (and downvoted). It is up to the community to decide what good RP is on a case-by-case basis, and reward originality and a sense of humor.

Odalisque Posted:

You guys are way over thinking it. There have been many times in the past when this place was incredibly entertaining. The only thing different between then and now is the people.

Listen to this person.

You can block draginz from being embedded, this is not the only site that has had a dragon problem before.

Also martyrs. We should have worst/best poster of the day, which is brought about by the voting system already in place, and subject to mod review. These two players have their names and avatars put up on display, and have markings on their posts.