I've got a simple question: What do you think about post length quotas when characters are supposed to be having a discussion? In natural conversations, people don't take turns monologuing paragraphs at each other. On the other hand, if you respond with a simple reply and then add a bunch of character introspection and setting details, it feels like the post is just longer without really gaining any value.
How do you handle it?
Uhm, once a partner and I had to deal with a whole lot of dialogue with little introspection. We simply did it over the ooc (I'd suggest pms so it won't clog the OOC like ours did) and then one of us posted the entire interaction on the actual IC in one post.
It's a good plan for groups - not so much for 1x1s cuz that would be ridiculous.
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^ This. It's called collaborative posting. Though truthfully I haven't gotten the chance to utilize these much, they are great in theory and, from what I've seen, in practice as well.Originally Posted by Yevin
When not collaborative posting, I usually cut down on the quota a bit for this sort of thing. But a lot of times what I see people do is put more detail into the character's thought process when they're in a conversation. Especially if it's a more intellectual discussion.
Like right now in one of my roleplays for example, two characters are having a conversation that, well... reminds me a ton of how L and Light would talk to each other in Death Note, especially their first couple face-to-face conversations. If you don't know the reference, basically what I'm saying is that both these characters are hiding things when they talk to each other. One of them wants to kill the other, one of them is accusing the other of being, well, a target of his (which he in fact is) and neither one is saying everything that comes to mind because they're both trying to save their own skins while harvesting the other's. Every sentence they say to each other is carefully constructed and has plenty of thought put into it, as they're trying to outsmart the other, all while masking the entire thing as a rather casual conversation. So basically, both these guys are pumping out three meaty paragraphs per post, when each post only really contains ~2-3 sentences of dialogue, because they write out the whole thought process that goes into their carefully constructed replies to each other. (And it's been a very entertaining thing to watch.)
But uh... yeah. Bit of a tangent there, but either collaborative posting or thought processes. Whichever works better given the situation.
I tend to throw it in chatrooms if I can. It's easiest when everyone is around to actually talk to, because otherwise conversations take bloody forever. I have the easiest time when I'm doing tabletop because conversations are literally right there. You get all the inflections, all the gestures, and all the expressions without them having to be described. It's difficult to do that in writing because you'll miss a lot of context sometimes when you don't see exactly what you're supposed to.
In play by post... even if it takes a while, yeah, Yevin's got it down. Otherwise you fill up a whole bunch of pages with dialog when you could all collaborate OOC and the DM could throw it together in one post where the characters are talking with each other.
Dialouge over IM or PM. Give the rest of the audience a tl;dr summary.
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As everyone else has said - if you want longer posts, but are interacting with another person in a way that doesn't really fit something longer (this would include longer, fluid conversations; no speeches or the like), you should do collaborative writing. Or, (1) either do a post up until a point where the other character might respond and then ask the player if their character would react (and if so, how), or (2) character control if it's alright with the player, and check with them to make sure they're okay with what you wrote. The first one is, I figure, just another form of collaborative writing, but usually when I use the word it is in reference to writing personal perspective posts back and forth until you have the post you want.
Just writing without the other player's thoughts or contributions tends to make interaction and pacing awkward. Doing so can cause one to gloss over, and ignore the possibility of, what the other character would do. When this happens, one is ignoring the possibility of something that might utterly change where the post goes (e.g. character A pushes character B, but the post has A continue to speak, doesn't mention character B, and ignores the fact that B would have started a fight as a result). And then the other player might retroactively RP in what has technically passed, which might change the context or events in a way that didn't exist and wouldn't happen if it was more fluid.
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Thanks for the feedback. I'll take this to RPs in the future.
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