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Roleplay Forum
AntiChrist (2014-03-28 22:43:31)+1 support.
Anyone saying "no we already have chatrooms for that"
Need to pull their heads out of their asses and use their deduction skills for a change. What pain is going to happen because of a roleplay forum? None. End of story. There's no legitimate reason not to want a roleplay forum.
AgurettiLeaf (2014-03-29 11:55:28)I think this is a decent idea. Someone told me to lock this because "we hav da gaem 4um!!" and anyone else who says that, it's only for forum GAMES, not roleplays. I think this is a pretty decent idea.
RatchetRambow (2014-03-29 11:58:08)I do think it is a good idea, but what about the chatroom? We would have no use for it.
HanShotFirst (2014-03-29 14:53:14)@Josiah: We still have use for the chatroom. See, not everyone who RPs on this site enjoys the idea of having to type out at least a paragraph or two each time they post. Some are more used to script format Roleplaying, rather than the story format. The Roleplaying Forum, while it can accommodate script format roleplaying, would be more for those who are into Story format.
@LeafLindsay: Using the 'Forum Games. forum for 'Roleplay'?
Someone apparently doesn't know what either one means if they think the two fit in the same category. Even Tabletop Roleplaying Games don't fit under the same category as Forum games.
'Dungeons and Dragons', 'Paranoia', 'Vampire: The Masquerade', and 'Call of Cthulhu' are miles apart from 'Last Poster Wins', 'Answer the above poster's question with another question' and 'You're banned'.
Taka! Kujata! Condor! Tajadol~!
Lani (2014-03-31 13:58:09)There's a roleplay forum on nearly every community I've ever been on. Plaza needs one.
+1
RobertABC (2014-03-31 16:51:24)[img]javascript:%20alert('Too Long; Did not Read!%20:%20Post%20was%20too%20long,%20did%20not%20bother%20reading%20it.'
;[/img]Hello
HanShotFirst (2014-03-31 18:31:59)^ I put a Too Long; Did not Read! at the bottom for slackers like you.
Seriously, this isn't even that long.
Taka! Kujata! Condor! Tajadol~!
HanShotFirst (2014-04-02 01:09:46)Here's another point I should discuss.
Roleplaying being limited to only the RP Chat and PMs is degrading the quality of roleplayers on the site.
There are several things that can help you become a better roleplayer, but for time, I'll list the three I believe are the more common types. These three are experience, critique, and guidance through example. Due to the way the site currently locks roleplaying into two less-than-effective methods of roleplaying, which I discussed in the first post, neither of these three come into effect, or do so in a negative fashion.
The first, Experience, is pretty obvious. As you do something, you get better at it over time. As you get better you start to push the boundary, until you go as far you possibly can.
However, as I've mentioned, due to the way the site has formatted the RPing outlets, It becomes very, very easy to hit the 'Skill Ceiling'. What is this 'Skill Ceiling'? Well the concept is simple. Some tasks, such as riding a bike or cooking a meal, require you have a certain amount of skill before it can be done. This minimum is known as the 'skill floor'. As your skills develop, you push closer and closer to the top. For certain tasks, there is actually a maximum in the amount that said skill can develop. This maximum is the 'Skill Ceiling'
Roleplaying is a one such task in which no such ceiling exists.
However, due to the limited methods of roleplaying on this site, and the fact that the one with the most prevalence is the RP Chatroom, it makes it very easy to hit a Skill ceiling due to the limitations of the chat, which puts a rather restrictive boundary between the required skill floor and it's aforementioned limitations, giving little to no room for Roleplaying skills to develop. Since they effectively hit a 'skill ceiling' that shouldn't even exist, you'll get those who Roleplay in the chat at said 'skill ceiling', who become the next example.
The second, Guidance through example is also very straightforward. The one of best ways to teach someone how to do something, is to do it yourself and have them watch, rather than explaining it. This is probably one of the more common ways of learning how to Roleplay or on improving your skills as a roleplayer, See what other people do, and try it yourself.
This example is actually what is leading to degradation in the quality of roleplaying on this site. Remember how the only two methods of Roleplaying are the PMs and the RP Chat? Well, no one can just stalk another's PMs unless they get into the other person's account, so the only example people have to follow is, obviously, the chat. Remember how I mentioned that the there exist the ones that hit the effective ceiling in the RP chat? They're the best example newer roleplayers have available to them, assuming they can even navigate that chaos. The best examples being poor examples, it either turns them off completely because the entire prospect of roleplaying seems unappealing, or they follow in the example and they too, eventually hit the artificial limit caused by the chat's limitations. So prospective roleplayers are either lost, or follow poorer examples. Consider some of the OCs some post on their profiles. They are usually done in the same format, and are so bare bones that in many roleplaying communities, would be considered too poor to pass as acceptable.
The last one is one that can be done through the forum easily. Critique is probably one of the most effective ways of causing improvement in a person. While sometimes criticism can be a bit too harsh, it doesn't change the fact that it all eventually boils down to the same thing. "You can do better than this". Granted, not all criticism is equally valid. Someone who is less experienced or less skilled has no real business giving critique on how one should go about doing something. For example, someone who's only worked a job for a single day telling someone who's done it for years that they can do it better.
"But what about Movie critics or Food critics?"
You don't need to be a 5-star chef to say something tastes like garbage. You also don't need to be an award-winning director or actor to say that a movie is terrible or that an actor was rather weak in said movie. You do however, need a Ph.D in Geophysics before you tell a Geophysicist he needs to do his job better. You do need to have experience in Roleplaying before you tell another roleplayer they need to improve.
If you tried critiquing someone in the RP chat, you'll either get drowned out in the chaos or since the person has the hit 'ceiling' for RP skills, they will believe they have no room at all for improvement as a result.
In adding an RP Forum, you effectively solve all these problems in one go.
Too Long; Did not Read!: 3DSPlaza's format for roleplaying is effectively killing itself.
Taka! Kujata! Condor! Tajadol~!
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Before I begin, Yes. I am fully aware that there is a roleplay chat and the PM system can be used for roleplaying. However, both are incredibly restricting in one form or another. Both do the job, but there are some (like myself) who cannot use either for one reason or the other.
Let's look at the chat first.
The roleplaying chatroom is chaotic. Admit it. You have several Roleplays being done, with several different character interactions happening each second. It becomes difficult to keep track of who said what during the times where the room fills up.
In addition, the chat itself limits each person to a single line of dialogue or action. While this is fine when you're only doing dialogue, It limits how much a character can say. For example, say Character A needs to explain to Character B the implications behind stealing their Kitsune Balll or other magical McGuffin. They're not going to get the whole point across in a single line, and if Character A is on a 3DS, rather than a PC, the problem is magnified due to the aforementioned chaos behind having several different RP characters discussing several things at once, and the fact that it takes forever to type out longer paragraphs (Like this whole post, for example). So you're limited heavily in what can be actually said, and the same in reference to describing more complicated actions.
It does it's job of keeping all the roleplaying in a single area, but that's it.
Now let's look at PMs.
PMs are the opposite of the chat, in that it is more simple to keep track of the actions and dialogue of your RP, and there is more space to go into further detail of an action, and extending the dialogue further so you don't have to spam several lines to get the entire speech across. But it has it's own problems.
The first is that it's only ever good for 1-on-1 interaction between two characters. Since PMs are between two people, that's the only sort of interactions you'll get. However, 1-on-1 interaction fails to deliver on several things. This is where the RP chat shines, despite it's other flaws. You can have several different people all involved in the same experience, which leads to a greater diversity, which leads to more opportunity to have more fleshed out interactions between two characters because they have more development. Take Star Wars, as my example here. While every one-on-one segment, be it Kenobi and Skywalker fighting over a pit of lava, Han Solo and Leia arguing over something or other, Meetra Surik's final stand-off with Darth Treia, Hanharr and Mira's battle to the death on Malachor V, or the grand reveal of Darth Vader being Luke's father, gave each pair a time to shine, the Crew of the Millennium Falcon, the Jedi Council, The Jedi Exile and her companions, Revan, Bastille, and the rag-tag band they pick up, hell, Boba Fett and the Mandalorians. Each group, and their struggles that face together, are what gives these characters the opportunity to grow. 1-on-1 interaction is important, but it shouldn't be overdone. (See, Twilight basically being Edward and Bella being emotionless piles of sticks together like 90% of the time, and 10% of the saga being confronting 'threats' that prove to be just thrown in for more drama in their 1-on-1 time.)
The second problem with PMs are actually keeping track of the PMs themselves. While I rarely have any inbox activity, some users have quite a few conversations going on at once, meaning that, while it's to a lesser degree than the chat, Responses can still be drowned out. Another thing to note is when a user is temporarily banned, you could find that you're response could take a while to get to, assuming it isn't drowned out by the several other PMs the person may have received during that time.
If there's worry concerning the RP forums being out of control, you can always make forum specific rules, like you did for every forum and sub-forum already.
Too Long; Did not Read!: PMs and RP Chat have their own problems that keep them from being decent methods of Roleplaying. Just make forum specific rules like you do everywhere else if you think it might get out of hand.