<Snipped quote by lavulman>
When interruptions happen, I usually try to focus on the environment or even a bit of back-story. If you notice, I may sometimes force my characters off-track into rambling periods during narration. One thing that usually keeps the blood pumping is through combo-posts. As in, some moves are combinations or collaborations of other attacks/actions.
I think that's a pretty nice solution, but I also feel like that works better for certain characters than others. From the fragments of what I've read that I can remember, Miles seems like a pretty introspective character, so branching off during or after a fight to ruminate about details or reminisce about backstory fits pretty well for him. Rebecca is generally into and enthusiastic about what she's doing due to being the kind of adventurer she always wanted to be, so it's a bit harder for her to go off track unless some small detail directly prompts her to do so, even if she can ramble for a long time.
I know I'm beating this dead horse far more than I should, but I think this would be fixed all together if there was more personality put into these interruptions: Imagine if the eccentric Rival A says or does something during the mid-fight banter that hits a raw nerve in the normally jovial Character B. After the battle, Partner C asks Character B what made them act so strangely and Character B tells them that it reminded them of something in their sad past or something. This brings characters B and C closer together as partners, meaning they're likely to converse more later, while also establishing some animosity for Rival A, especially if he plays on this deliberately, meaning people are going to want to beat the crap out of him, meaning they're hyped up to see him next time he shows up, which all means that people are interested in what's going on.
This is arguably a pretty basic example, but it's one of the reasons why I love roleplaying so much as a medium; people can start with very basic characters and situations, but they can play off small details and things can eventually snowball into this incredibly tight narrative web of a story that everyone has an emotional investment in. It's just more difficult for this to come about when there's not much effort put into the conflict.
As for combo posts, I also find them more interesting than regular ones. But it's tough for me to convey the feeling that characters are working as a team instead of just haphazardly throwing things together. This would probably work better if we switched to more posting like you said, though, so there would be a better opportunity to set up team attacks with the other characters.
Ultimately, I reckon we're just old now. That stuff would've been fun years ago, but we (or at least I) actually want a degree of story and character in our posts. Would've been all over that stuff years ago, but now it's just... well, you're hittin' points.
Probably. As we get more and more into things, we start analyzing them and the ways they work more and more, and we start to strive to get better, which means noticing the flaws and growing tired of them so we can focus on the good stuff. It's probably why I'm here complaining about it right now.
That said, you are allowed to opt out of posts, which would've been useful considering the delays we've experienced lately. I just don't like it how others may stigmatise and perceive characters without posts to be 'still' or whatever, as if they're not even characters and just avatars in a fictional world.
That's actually something that's really been bothering me for a while, but I didn't think I'd ever get a good chance to bring it up. I would probably skip more posts and let people who were into it handle it if I didn't feel like I was being passive-aggressively told that I'm being that guy.
