So we decided to beg up here for a reason...

Jorick: Today I'll be interviewing Asuras, a longtime Roleplayer Guild member, roleplayer, and GM. First things first, some introductory information. So Asuras, tell us a little bit about yourself and your history with play-by-post roleplaying.

Asuras: I started back in 2006 when I was 12. A cousin of mine introduced me to Gaia Online, and from there I discovered the roleplaying forums, which interested me greatly. Eventually I moved on to a large forum on Fanfiction.net, which I'm still apparently a moderator of. After a year of two I went to the Guild instead, which I've been on for 4 years, if I remember correctly.

Jorick: That's a nice long history with forum roleplaying, I see. Just out of curiosity, what has kept you around Roleplayer Guild for so long?

Asuras: Ultimately, the size of it. There are so many people, and a vast majority of them are friendly, focused on roleplaying. I suppose I've also simply made better friends on the Guild than elsewhere, and that's influenced me to stay.

Jorick: That makes sense to me. I think a lot of people have hung around for the same reason. Speaking of all the people and the roleplaying, to make an utterly graceless segue, you've got a method of posting that you like to use for roleplays with many players. What is it and what's it all about?

Asuras: I'm glad you asked. Most people are familiar with it, but not as many actually use it all that much. Collaborative posting.

Collaborative posting, or "Collabing" as I tend to call it, is text-based roeplaying with another individual (or multiple people), but in real time rather than post-by-post. Unlike chat-based roleplaying, in which responses are written and sent (generally) quickly one after another through a chat room, collabing takes place in a shared document. Things like Google Docs or TitanPad can be used for this.

Jorick: I see. So what are the benefits of collaborative posting? Why would you use it over the usual post by post method of forum roleplaying?

Asuras: Many reasons. Without stepping on anyone's toes, I'd like to say that collaborative posting is superior to other forms of text-based roleplaying.

Firstly is dialogue and thoughts. When you're talking to someone in real life, there is barely a second more often than not between you finishing your sentence, and the other one beginning. That time gives little opportunity to "think" about things. I see a lot of large posts with one sentence of dialogue that become long inner monologues or thought processes that no one would ever have in real life. When you can collab, you can input dialogue where it's needed, rather than waiting for a response from another player and filling space with thoughts.

This extends to combat as well. Unless you're in a high-action lightning-fast anime-style roleplay with kickass badasses carrying katanas and other crazy gear, then your ability to perform an action is limited. In a place like advanced, you need certain post lengths, and while you're in combat, that means you might need to do a few things at once normally not possible.

During a collab, combat actions can be input one after another by participants to make the scene flow, instead of being a back and forth of fighters and unecessarily long descriptions of how you swung your blade.

Jorick: Alright, so it's great for dialogue and actions. One objection I can think of is that it may be restrictive for adding character thoughts into a post, which a lot of people use for character development. Another is that it may interfere with giving details to objects and scenery, that the pacing of back and forth dialogue or actions in a collab post just don't allow for that kind of thing. Do you think that's the case, or can collab posts contain those elements without any issues?

Asuras: There's no reason someone couldn't input those sorts of things. I encourage players in roleplays I GM to input whatever they like wherever they like during a collab. Otherwise, it's best to simply say, "done," when you've finished with whatever it is you're describing. Then the next person can respond.

Player A could begin writing a dialogue response and then afterwards input his/her character's thoughts. During that time, Player B might be inclined to put in a response of their own between Player A's dialogue and the thoughts; this might change Player A's thoughts before he even finishes. Once again, in the real world people don't have the luxury of getting time to think whenever they want.

Of course, if it's a really short thought process that barely even needs focus, it could be input at any time. The time it takes to think, "I like this guy," is negligible.

On the topic of scenery and objects, discerning what something looks like is instant. One could describe a scene between dialogue (if such were ever to be needed), without it detracting from the realism. While you and I walk into a grocery store, we can still maintain dialogue and realize we're in a gorcery store.

Asuras: Of course. It requires attentiveness. Because the collab is on a different site, players have to check in regularly if they want to progress the post. Normally in the Guild players merely have to see that something new has been posted in the IC, whereas in collabing they must go somewhere else to check. It's not tough to do, but it's an extra step that might make players who are tired or distracted less likely to input more text.

It's also sometimes difficult to guage when the post should stop. In normal posting structure you simply input what is needed; during a collab you're writing out an entire scene, possibly more. It would be strange to post it up on anything other than a cliffhanger of some sorts, and so you and the others have to decide when that is, or how to write one in that works well.

If they're very long posts (and they often are), players in the rp who are uninvolved with the collab might be less inclined to read it. This can lead to a division in the roleplay where players focus entirely on their own characters and the ones they're collabing with. It practically seems like several different rp's in the same thread at times.

Jorick: So how do you deal with those problems when you're running a roleplay making use of collaborative posts? What advice would you give to others struggling to use them in their own roleplay and finding them hard to manage?

Asuras: The rp I'm running, Aurora, makes use entirely of collaborative posts. Currently every single player is in their own collab and so I'm managing 7 collabs at once. I highly advise GM's /not/ to do this. It is very tiring.

With that said and to answer your question, it is a good idea to have multiple players in a single collab -that is, have their characters in the same place, interacting with one another. This minimizes the division in your roleplay. I tend to find that multiple players in a single collab find ways of making it more fun; jokes about characters, situations, and thinking up future events together make for a more tightly knit group.

At some point, it's good to have these "compartmentalized character sets" separate in some way to interact with other characters not originally in their collab. This also lends to a better weaving of the plot. If everyone's always separate, it might as well be a bunch of 1x1's.

Dealing with ending the collab ultimately boils down to intuition and chance. Sometimes you feel like it needs to end and a player thinks up a fancy quip to leave on a cliffhanger. Othertimes you have to declare it, and then you work towards a specific event or action that does the same. It might not always be easy or short, but it's the most surefire way of doing so.

Jorick: Alright, I think that covers pretty much everything about collaborative posts. Anything else you'd like to say before we wrap things up?

Asuras: Yes. I'd like to also mention that roleplays utilizing collaborative posts should have a select few number of participants. Too many and it becomes increasingly slow, not to mention the fact that GM's should take care in monitoring them all!

I encourage GM's looking to make a new roleplay try it out, though not all posts need necessarily be collaborative. I believe simply that they should be used /much more often/.

Also, if you don't mind Jorick, I'd like to throw in some shameless advertisement. Okay? Awesome.

Aurora has been going on for 2 months now, and it's possible we may have had two players drop. I keep the total number of players at 7, and so I may soon be recruiting again. Keep your eyes peeled, as it is a selective process with a due date!

Jorick: That's some sound advice, and yep, shameless advertisements are absolutely fine. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and experience with Roleplayer Guild News.

Asuras: Of course. Thanks for giving me this opportunity to promote the collaborative master race!

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