Hello potential and probable friends! I have been on-and-off of this project called JASFR and I decided that I want to share it with everyone even though it's terribly, terribly incomplete. The basic premise is observing, critiquing and analyzing both IC and OOC aspects of RolePlays in order to learn from the past to improve the present and future. I'd like to share with you two google documents that are relevant to this pursuit:



In here, so far (as of 1/7/16), I have two RolePlays that I've analyzed and reviewed:

Star Wars: An Army of Scum and Villainy by @HeySeuss and Orbitum by @Asuras

The manner in which I've done them is more or less an example of the level of quality; it can only go up from here!

Below the review/analysis of Orbitum is a quick, detailed look at quite a list of previous RP's that I've chosen from this document:



I've essentially went through both the Nation and Advanced Interest Check subforums and I have gathered a list of all RP's I might be interested in looking at; not all of them will be relevant, but it's a good place to start and there's nothing to say that we can't add to the list as well. Please comment below if there seems to be anything missing! (Especially with Steampunk!) If you have any questions like 'What about casual?' I try to answer it here, but just in case I will add a little FAQ down below that I will update accordingly:



+ + + Why just Advanced Science Fiction?

Personally, I'm a huge fan of Advanced Science Fiction RP's and while it's clearly selfish for me to limit the journal to just this category, I would honestly have no qualms working with Fantasy RP's if they're relevant and interesting enough. There is such a large amount of RP's, I feel like it'd be a great idea to get a start with ASF, and if there's anyone willing to do otherwise than I'd welcome it with open arms. That being said, the Journal will definitely count most modern RP's as well as Zombie/Apocolypse RP's. SteamPunk for me is just not my forte, but I can definitely see it having a part in the journal: I'm not an expert or an enthusiast, so I don't feel justified in analyzing these, however I did decide while I was collecting past RP's to include them in the list for anyone else. If anyone has any more specific questions in this area, please feel free to ask!

+ + + Who can participate in JASFR?

I'm going to take a risk here and say: pretty much anyone who decides they want to dedicate time to it! For what you can do, I will address in the next question. If I can say so humbly, I try my best to maintain a high standard of quality and I will likely help someone who is reaching but not quite achieving that level to develop both their article and their personal skills.

+ + + What will JASFR offer?

I'd really like to attain a level of quality similar to sites like Gawker or VICE and branch out from just doing reviews on each and every quality RP we get our hands on. To me, our activities look like this:

- Reviewing, analyzing and critiquing RolePlays
- Writing reviews and articles on RolePlays (IC and OOC) and online/offline RolePlaying culture
- Interviewing Game Masters, Players and RP Groups in a meaningful way
- Discussing academic and popular literature pertaining to RolePlay
- Promoting, stabilizing and supporting users who show initiative in advancing the limits of RolePlaying (I'm looking at you @Terminal!)
- Cross-Forum/Milieu Participation (such as starting JASFR on other forums or experimenting with RP between forums and videogames)
- Multi-Media Presentations, Skits and etc much like Accursed Farms and The Spoony Experiment
Anything else you thought of? Post it below! You don't need my permission to do anything I listed above, however I'd suggest throwing me a PM so I can be in-the-know.

+ + + Who is in charge?

I'm a huge proponent of group/collective leadership; while for now I'll say I'm the 'lead editor' or something, though titles really don't matter to me. It's not about ownership or about being in charge, it's about maintaining quality content, creating real conversation and doing it right (by treating everyone as equal as possible, and so on). I plan on pushing this forward even if no one pays attention, though actions are certainly more important than words (RolePlayers should know this pretty well by now!). If you are super interested and you'd like to be involved, just feel free to post your ideas, thoughts, questions, etc below or in a PM to me and I'd be glad to get you up to speed. Elitism and drama are sometimes inevitable, but I will make a promise to try to evaporate it for the sake of objectivity. I may be personally gaining from this, but the idea is that everyone should be able to personally gain from it too: equally!

Have a question in this vein of thought? I'd love to hear from you!

+ + + How can I contact you?

For today, I will set up a chatzy and I am willing to share my Skype username provided you send me yours over PM's. As I've stated numerous times before, feel free to post below or send me a PM over the forums. Any other means to communicate with me, like Vent or Team Speak, we can totally discuss!



I appreciate you taking the time to look over this topic. I'm sure there are more frequent questions that will arise and I will attempt to treat everyone who treats the project seriously likewise. I look forward to the conversations and interactions with my fellow peers and contemporaries!

By any chance have you noticed the cycle of intensive world building, progressive loss of thematic focus and eventually player drop out sprees that seems to affect sci-fi NRPs?

Interstellar Ascension is perhaps the most interest case study of such NRP cycle.

Ooooh, I was in one or two of the Rps on the list.

Anyways in my case I've only had experience in one sci-fi NRP. The second one civil space OCC I jumped in with alot of superfluous tech talk that I really wanted to blurt out for some reason. The GM/OP was a bit grumpy to say the least, rightfully so actually. I noticed however that he didn't set any iron ground rules and rather threw things to the wind and wanted everyone else to decide what sort of RP they wanted.

I didn't really track down what happened after though.

Faction : Martian Front was actually a really pleasant experience. Open ended yet thematic. But sadly the RP stopped due to inactivity me included. I had a blast though before that happened. Sometime this week the Sequel Faction 2: Jupiter Referendum will be up and running IC. I just hope I can make the time to go at it. As I intend to go all out.

Anyways the idea of JASFR is great! It allows an overview of several roleplaying settings, techniques, and directions to inspire better RPs. Which is good by the way! XD

By any chance have you noticed the cycle of intensive world building, progressive loss of thematic focus and eventually player drop out sprees that seems to affect sci-fi NRPs?

Interstellar Ascension is perhaps the most interest case study of such NRP cycle.

Old wounds cut deep.
Though I agree, this cycle results in the death of easily 90% of the NRPs here. Myself and @Terminal, by his suggestion, had been deliberating writing a guide on what causes this, how to avoid it and to just generally raise awareness of it. It is the number cause of death in the NRP section.

If that work would possibly be better transferred here, then I'm happy to speak frankly and honestly about that particular RP, as a case study, as the GM.

Great! Thanks for sharing the information. That is very helpful for increasing my knowledge in this field. Strike Force Heroes 3, Happy Wheels 3

Hi, I'm pretty sure you're spamming.

By any chance have you noticed the cycle of intensive world building, progressive loss of thematic focus and eventually player drop out sprees that seems to affect sci-fi NRPs?

Yes. Apparently @Darkmatter and @Terminal maybe involved in fixing this! Hopefully this journal can help them and this problem, thanks for bringing up this topic. I addressed it in the journal as the third question to HeySeuss' RP that I reviewed:

It would be to the benefit of this journal to explore how often players leave, how player leaving impacts a game and the community, why players leave and how the community and game masters respond to player leaving. An article can be created to present to the community after proper research has been conducted and examined. This topic has potential to introduce similar, but specifically different, questions such as;

‘how big of a problem is players leaving, on a micro (among the ASFR community on RolePlayerGuild) and a macro (among the RolePlayerGuild’s community, among forum RolePlayers, among RolePlayers in general, etc) scale.?
‘what strategies are used to deal with players leaving or to prevent players from leaving?

How can we organize these strategies? (For instance: dynamic and static, short term and long term, authoritarian or equalitarian, etc)
What works in theory as well as in practice?
Does a specific strategy fail because of the theory or the practice?
How often do these strategies succeed or fail?
How long do these strategies succeed until they fail?’

Interstellar Ascension is perhaps the most interest case study of such NRP cycle.

I definitely want to take a look at this RP and I even got to speak with Darkmatter about it. I'd be interested in interviewing not just him, but also the participants, but first I need to get a good idea for what the RP was about.

The first post in the OOC was on 14 Aug 2014 and the last was 30 Sep 2014, so the RP technically lasted about a month and a half.

The IC lasted for 9 days. Here's the list:



I'd like to take baby steps, review the RP and take time to really understand what occurred in this instance of time. Darkmatter is also going to be looking up the piratepads that never got uploaded to the forum, so that's another important thing to note. This is an on-going investigation as of now, thanks again for bringing it to my attention! Nothing official, but hopefully I can help create an article that can address the problems stated above; Interstellar Ascension is a good place to start.

Ooooh, I was in one or two of the Rps on the list.

Anyways in my case I've only had experience in one sci-fi NRP. The second one civil space OCC I jumped in with alot of superfluous tech talk that I really wanted to blurt out for some reason. The GM/OP was a bit grumpy to say the least, rightfully so actually. I noticed however that he didn't set any iron ground rules and rather threw things to the wind and wanted everyone else to decide what sort of RP they wanted.

I didn't really track down what happened after though.

I will keep that in mind when I get to it, thanks! If you'd like I'll keep you updated when I get around to it so I can tell you what happened afterwards.

Faction : Martian Front was actually a really pleasant experience. Open ended yet thematic. But sadly the RP stopped due to inactivity me included. I had a blast though before that happened. Sometime this week the Sequel Faction 2: Jupiter Referendum will be up and running IC. I just hope I can make the time to go at it. As I intend to go all out.

Keep me updated on that (or I'll look out for it depending on my free time) and I can see about doing a double review between the two to help new and old players refreshed on the old RP so to help out the new RP. With what I've said before in regards to stopping the trend of inactivity we may be able to see a future for Faction 2 unlike it's predecessor (death by inactivity, that is). That would be an interesting project in my mind, so thanks for mentioning it!

Anyways the idea of JASFR is great! It allows an overview of several roleplaying settings, techniques, and directions to inspire better RPs. Which is good by the way! XD

I really appreciate that, I think so too! I hope it becomes an accessible and interesting resource for the community!

Old wounds cut deep.
Though I agree, this cycle results in the death of easily 90% of the NRPs here. Myself and @Terminal, by his suggestion, had been deliberating writing a guide on what causes this, how to avoid it and to just generally raise awareness of it. It is the number cause of death in the NRP section.

I would love to eventually find out what the actual percentage is, but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be too far off in that assertion.

If that work would possibly be better transferred here, then I'm happy to speak frankly and honestly about that particular RP, as a case study, as the GM.

Yay!! I would love to have you and Terminal contribute an article to the journal, that would really boost it's relevancy. Though it's more important that it gets done. For now, the journal could be an ample resource and I think I will start working on that today before I head to work.



I've been having fleeting thoughts of the idea of reviewing choice RP's from the forum of old. If anyone has any suggestions, please provide the cached/internet database screenshots below!

By any chance have you noticed the cycle of intensive world building, progressive loss of thematic focus and eventually player drop out sprees that seems to affect sci-fi NRPs?

Interstellar Ascension is perhaps the most interest case study of such NRP cycle.

I can contribute data to this.

I've been running/participating in a series of NRPs for three years now, and this cycle is present in every single one. This is a single series mind you (Void of the Stars and all the other things we called it), all of these RPs were connected in some way.

<Snipped quote by Arawak>

I can contribute data to this.

I've been running/participating in a series of NRPs for three years now, and this cycle is present in every single one. This is a single series mind you (Void of the Stars and all the other things we called it), all of these RPs were connected in some way.

Yes!! Thank you so much, I look forward to further communication with you. On that note, here is a list of all the threads that talk explicitly about thread death from the RolePlaying Discussion category:



Hopefully this will expedite the process of getting to the bottom of this issue.

I think a lot the issue can be summed up with the following rhetoric I often spew;

Good Sci Fi has cool lasers and explains how they work.
Amazing Sci Fi illustrates why those lasers are being shot and by whom.
The issue with these Sci Fi Rps is the laser never getting fired, only discussed.

I can see that most of the reason why those said lasers aren't fired is, inactivity, lack of interest in collaboration, and even bad collaboration. But then again I wouldn't know all that much.

The laser is their to facilitate being a part of the RP(Whether on a ship, a ground battery, or whatnot), the background, the story. It doesn't have too fire in order for it to be important or vital to various scenarios presented to it.

But I understand what you are saying, the large world is built up from the ground. Detailed, indepth. But it never gets its chance to shine because of lack of Dedication, or time.

I think that to solve this problem of lack of dedication a few things like, creating an online group of some sort(Skype, Teamspeak, etc.); and getting to know each other more personally. And making feasible deadlines for posts will contribute to an greater lengthed RP(Most shoot for an post an week).

Time on the other hand, which is an precious commodity is an rogue element for most. Especially when you consider the fact that Advanced RPs are absolute time hogs. I think time is the largest killer rather than lack of dedication or interest. People begin to think that they should better use their limited time when opportunity's present themself, or life just takes over.

Rping has to be the most time consuming, mentally challenging hobby I've partaken in. Alot goes into creating good characters, nations, and organizations. Not to mention the research I've done on hard science and the mathematical equations I've only just touched the tip of the ice berg for understanding physics better. In truth every time I RP, I see it more as creating an collaborative novella with fellow compatriots.

It seems though that sometimes people see these wonderful scifi threads and hop in because they love the setting, but aren't prepared to go much past world building. Because lets face it phase 1 is easy, actually breathing life into the characters and setting is harder.

That's my two cents anyways.....

It is indeed harder. I can write out the rules and build up a universe in like 1-2 days. Hell for the kicks of it I wrote out like 4-5 settings in like a day or two because world building is easy. Of course said universes were written in sprints and without regard for revision and were pretty similar, but different universes regardless.

But than it turns out everything's a elaborate frame with a scribbled in doodle. Mind, when I think of characters I have in mind individuals that are relatable who are also products of the setting. Not simply a player's hand puppet into a setting. For whatever reason I find it harder to build characters in RP settings than I do settings where I don't need to always be worried that someone will add some large faction that totally alters the political landscape and history of a setting. In space opera RPs that fear is quite warranted.

I think a lot the issue can be summed up with the following rhetoric I often spew;

Good Sci Fi has cool lasers and explains how they work.
Amazing Sci Fi illustrates why those lasers are being shot and by whom.
The issue with these Sci Fi Rps is the laser never getting fired, only discussed.

Too many people are interested in creating these grand design ideas and concepts but never really follow through with them as they want that perfect moment to "release the power" so to speak. Something that I have noticed when comparing some Fantasy RPs to Sci-Fi RPs is that the Sci-Fi RPs tend to go over and above in the ideas, thus making them less useful during normal situations; where as fantasy seems to allow for for the more often use of magic.

For instance:
In a fantasy a mage could throw a fireball and that would be his main attack.
In a Sci-Fi a soldier would have a BFG9000 and use it only in special situations.

Now I know that it's not for every roleplay that this will happen, but I believe that people should possibly think about adding more trinkets to the world to help with the immersion. A droid that follows them around, a communication device, a contact lense with a HUD, even a cybornetic hand or a keycard reader. Little things like these help improve the immersion and thus leave the big BFG9000 not as the world building tool, but more the 'Oh Damn' moment (however it still doesn't change how the gun is a special situation item).

By any chance have you noticed the cycle of intensive world building, progressive loss of thematic focus and eventually player drop out sprees that seems to affect sci-fi NRPs?

Interstellar Ascension is perhaps the most interest case study of such NRP cycle.

Old wounds cut deep.
Though I agree, this cycle results in the death of easily 90% of the NRPs here. Myself and @Terminal, by his suggestion, had been deliberating writing a guide on what causes this, how to avoid it and to just generally raise awareness of it. It is the number cause of death in the NRP section.

If that work would possibly be better transferred here, then I'm happy to speak frankly and honestly about that particular RP, as a case study, as the GM.

One possibility, I've experimented with and enjoyed, is just to embrace the dynamic being bemoaned here. Alot of RPers seem to be very interested in world building- and frankly, the world building ideas of most RPers are more interesting (at least to me) than reading their prose. So just give the people what they want, and a framework to do it in.

Consciously spinning an NRP as a collaborative worldbuilding exercise and encouraging people to worldbuild to their heart's content has at least two upsides: 1) it's (apparently for many people) flat out fun, and can frankly be more fun than reading IC posts about what space-queens and space-diplomats or not-zergs are doing as written by amateur authors 2) worldbuilding can lend itself to fiction set in-universe, and can be a fruitful source of real collaboration as opposed to the ridiculous pseudo-RTS dynamics that so many NRPs fall in to (and which I think is part of what is being complained about here). In my experience it can actually help the IC side of things. I know that the most creative and successful I've been at writing science fiction or fantasy scenes or short stories has been in the context of collaborative worldbuilding. My most successful experiments with this dynamic have been in fantasy settings- NRPs which were extremely healthy for months and only failed because I could no longer GM for RL reasons, but the principle holds true for scifi/space opera as well.

Just my thoughts. If the people like worldbuilding, give them worldbuilding, and try to structure the worldbuilding so as to enhance the IC rather than compete with it.

I attempted something like that for a bit, where the RP was all world building. It was probably a poor execution on the whole, but overall I was surprised that in such world building loving community an RP where all you do is world build got little attention. Perhaps it was the poor execution.

However i'm not going to entertain any new sci-fi NRPs for the time being since there's enough of them currently. Anymore and I worry that the player base will get too stretched out which also leads to RP death.

Another issue with sci-fi NRPs is that there's no real conventions so to speak. Fantasy RPs for instance don't have problems with scale or technology in the way that say, a sci-fi RP might. A GM of a fantasy RP can state a time period they want tech to be inspired from and you pretty much are complete. Scaling in fantasy RPs also tends to be easier since anyone with knowledge of history will know what "scale" works for what level of technology. A bronze age RP can take place around a single region, a Iron Age RP across a sub-continent, a industrial RP across a planet.

But in sci-fi, technology and scaling get very problematic especially in the free form space operas. You will get people with tech beyond everyone else or people who decide to "be clever" and deliberately make tech that fucks everyone else over or people whose idea of advanced clash hard with others. Let's say in a space NRP I said "This is a NRP with 23rd century tech".

Player 1 decides that means some nice sturdy power suits and gauss.

Player 2 decides that means having swarms of AI controlled von neumann probes with uploaded consciousnesses making use of particle weapons to wipe everyone out.

Than Player 3 decides it means you get a spaceship with a million stats attached to it powered by technobabble.

And than player 4 asks "may I have Europa based aliens with quantum mindtech that makes people's heads melt? They'll be balanced I promise."

While this probably is somewhat of a problem for fantasy NRPs, it's simply not nearly to the extent i've seen it in sci-fi NRPs. Especially the advanced ones.

The casual ones due to lack of standards mean balance is achieved because most people will be inevitably powerplaying in some shape or form.

<Snipped quote by Darkmatter>

One possibility, I've experimented with and enjoyed, is just to embrace the dynamic being bemoaned here. Alot of RPers seem to be very interested in world building- and frankly, the world building ideas of most RPers are more interesting (at least to me) than reading their prose. So just give the people what they want, and a framework to do it in.

Consciously spinning an NRP as a collaborative worldbuilding exercise and encouraging people to worldbuild to their heart's content has at least two upsides: 1) it's (apparently for many people) flat out fun, and can frankly be more fun than reading IC posts about what space-queens and space-diplomats or not-zergs are doing as written by amateur authors 2) worldbuilding can lend itself to fiction set in-universe, and can be a fruitful source of real collaboration as opposed to the ridiculous pseudo-RTS dynamics that so many NRPs fall in to (and which I think is part of what is being complained about here). In my experience it can actually help the IC side of things. I know that the most creative and successful I've been at writing science fiction or fantasy scenes or short stories has been in the context of collaborative worldbuilding. My most successful experiments with this dynamic have been in fantasy settings- NRPs which were extremely healthy for months and only failed because I could no longer GM for RL reasons, but the principle holds true for scifi/space opera as well.

Just my thoughts. If the people like worldbuilding, give them worldbuilding, and try to structure the worldbuilding so as to enhance the IC rather than compete with it.

The caveat of this is that you end up with nothing to keep people tethered. Worldbuilding without a story is just a list of stuff. The little things on the bottom - the characters, the personalities, the underbelly of the world you have built - is the story, and all the worldbuilding around it is just window dressing. Without some sort of depth, everyone can jump ship any time they want and move all their ideas elsewhere.

It is true that prose is a helluva thing to figure out, but it is pretty rewarding in the end. I'm part of an NRP that has been going on for five years because we all took the time to work on the details. The result is that those of us who stuck it out all five years are practically married to the thing. I get why people look to make complete works because... it's beautiful when it works out.

If RPing was a cake, worldbuilding would be the icing. It's fun, it's fluffy, you don't have to slog through it. But nobody wants to eat a cake that is entirely icing. Eventually they'll get sick.

<Snipped quote by Darkmatter>

One possibility, I've experimented with and enjoyed, is just to embrace the dynamic being bemoaned here. Alot of RPers seem to be very interested in world building- and frankly, the world building ideas of most RPers are more interesting (at least to me) than reading their prose. So just give the people what they want, and a framework to do it in.

Consciously spinning an NRP as a collaborative worldbuilding exercise and encouraging people to worldbuild to their heart's content has at least two upsides: 1) it's (apparently for many people) flat out fun, and can frankly be more fun than reading IC posts about what space-queens and space-diplomats or not-zergs are doing as written by amateur authors 2) worldbuilding can lend itself to fiction set in-universe, and can be a fruitful source of real collaboration as opposed to the ridiculous pseudo-RTS dynamics that so many NRPs fall in to (and which I think is part of what is being complained about here). In my experience it can actually help the IC side of things. I know that the most creative and successful I've been at writing science fiction or fantasy scenes or short stories has been in the context of collaborative worldbuilding. My most successful experiments with this dynamic have been in fantasy settings- NRPs which were extremely healthy for months and only failed because I could no longer GM for RL reasons, but the principle holds true for scifi/space opera as well.

Just my thoughts. If the people like worldbuilding, give them worldbuilding, and try to structure the worldbuilding so as to enhance the IC rather than compete with it.

Flagg I normally agree with you on the whole but here I honestly don't. If it's just world building that's wanted, and I understand that, I love it myself, then why even make an RP thread? It gives it an IC whether you like it or not. That IC being stagnant will make people in the roleplay think it is dying/dead so even if they're making great content there and then, the lack of IC content deters people subconsciously. People are simple animals at the end of the day.

If you make an RP thread it has to be with view to actually RP. World building is a separate but connected aspect. I'll straight admit I enjoy it more than true IC RPing, but at the end of the day without a character'd story what does it mean? It's all fizzle with no bang. I don't want to read a wiki on the empire and the rebellion and then not watch star wars.

There's something from design that applies to world building and creative projects in general. That being planning while iterative working on the product iteratively is more productive than focusing heavily on pre-planning. And the end product tends to be of the same quality regardless.

That basically means instead of spending weeks building 5000-6000 word apps (but seriously that is not impressive since it's just a 6 hour writing binge), set up a basic frame work for the setting and than start IC in a timely manner. If a RP takes more than 2 weeks to start IC I tend to get worried since it usually means people lose interest and drop. It's actually relieving to me when a RP within 5 days from the interest check has multiple IC posts.

Okay.

Kindly omit any characters of mine or games I'm in from this.

Okay.

Kindly omit any characters of mine or games I'm in from this.

I think I speak for @Marrone and all involved in this and related projects in that they are being done with the express intent of bettering the guild and its community. This isn't an inquisition, it's a introspective on how to better Sci Fi RP for us all. While expressing a desire to not be put under the microscope is 100% fair and understandable, is it not a bit presumptuous to ask that they refrain from looking at any RP you happen to be in? What if the GM wants it to be looked at or examined. Again, I respect the personal wish to not be scrutinized but is in not a bit presumptuous to speak for everyone you're engaged in RP with? Unless I am parsing your post wrong.

<Snipped quote by Ruby>

I think I speak for @Marrone and all involved in this and related projects in that they are being done with the express intent of bettering the guild and its community. This isn't an inquisition, it's a introspective on how to better Sci Fi RP for us all. While expressing a desire to not be put under the microscope is 100% fair and understandable, is it not a bit presumptuous to ask that they refrain from looking at any RP you happen to be in? What if the GM wants it to be looked at or examined. Again, I respect the personal wish to not be scrutinized but is in not a bit presumptuous to speak for everyone you're engaged in RP with? Unless I am parsing your post wrong.

You think my motivation is a desire to avoid being scrutinized? Interesting.

Very right, I messed up the wording there. Should have been, "Omit characters of mine (from any RP) and any game of mine (of any genre)."