trespbumerswill Posted:
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.
