I think he was talking about "collab posts" where several people enter a PiratePad room or download a Google Doc and then all work together on writing the same post. In theory we do it to give everyone a simultaneous chance to respond to the scene but more often it serves to muddle together several incompatible writing styles until the piece seems to have no clear "voice" at all outside the matter-of-factness of the events happening therein.

Ah yes, writing communism. Great in theory, haha. That was what I was referring to.

Can't say I disagree with your point about collabs, tbh.

I've found that collaborative writing through tools such as Google Docs works best when written again... through the eyes of one character. Usually whoever is next in line to post if a post order is being followed. Also only as a tool to help preserve the flow of the game during heavy dialogue.

Decide on who's eyes the piece will be portrayed through, play your role and then go from there.

I've found that collaborative writing through tools such as Google Docs works best when written again... through the eyes of one character. Usually whoever is next in line to post if a post order is being followed. Also only as a tool to help preserve the flow of the game during heavy dialogue.

Decide on who's eyes the piece will be portrayed through, play your role and then go from there.

Completely agree. Keeping POV consistent is very important.

I'm going to guess @HaleyTheRandom wanted your opinions on how you felt about the categories of the forums in terms of writing as apposed to personal feelings you have about people who frequent sub-forums. Because then it quickly turns into the Roleplayers bitchfest thread again and we all know what happened to that.

I'm going to guess @HaleyTheRandom wanted your opinions on how you felt about the categories of the forums in terms of writing as apposed to personal feelings you have about people who frequent sub-forums. Because then it quickly turns into the Roleplayers bitchfest thread again and we all know what happened to that.

You, Sir, get a cookie.

Edit: You get the whole damned pan.

I'm going to guess @HaleyTheRandom wanted your opinions on how you felt about the categories of the forums in terms of writing as apposed to personal feelings you have about people who frequent sub-forums. Because then it quickly turns into the Roleplayers bitchfest thread again and we all know what happened to that.

You can't talk about it in a vacuum, Dynamo. I stand by what I said. A community makes the subforum what it is, and the community of Arena is yikes.

Even if I glance at it in a vacuum, I see the game-ification of Arena in terms of the leaderboard and go 'This can't go any other way than terribly.'

To draw parallels with a tabletop game, in tabletops you have a shitload more systems. Aside from just punching a guy, you also have speech, investigation, smarts and any other manner of skills that could be useful and apply. At the same time, you're still playing in an actual world, so doing something stupid will get you punished, and this encourages, y'know, roleplaying.

Arena, however, has one goal: Winning. This does not lend itself to RP, it lends itself to powergaming and the aforementioned ego-contest going on in there. I'm avoiding calling out specific individuals, but I do mean it when I say it's *the* elitist subforum. The people there I would rather stay there, because the infrastructure of the subforum combined with the community creates an incredibly toxic environment, and when I say I want them out of my RPs, I want them out of my RPs. You can hang around in there all I want; my opinion of the subforum won't change, and this thread gave me an opportunity to share said opinion.

You both have a point. That's all I'm gonna say.

To draw parallels with a tabletop game, in tabletops you have a shitload more systems. Aside from just punching a guy, you also have speech, investigation, smarts and any other manner of skills that could be useful and apply. At the same time, you're still playing in an actual world, so doing something stupid will get you punished, and this encourages, y'know, roleplaying.

Arena, however, has one goal: Winning. This does not lend itself to RP, it lends itself to powergaming and the aforementioned ego-contest going on in there. I'm avoiding calling out specific individuals, but I do mean it when I say it's *the* elitist subforum. The people there I would rather stay there, because the infrastructure of the subforum combined with the community creates an incredibly toxic environment, and when I say I want them out of my RPs, I want them out of my RPs. You can hang around in there all I want; my opinion of the subforum won't change, and this thread gave me an opportunity to share said opinion.

You seem to forget that the Arena actually has rules, and these rules are discussed by both players before any match starts (Character Tiers, Win Conditions, Banned Actions etc). 'Powergaming and ego contest' can apply to any form of competition, and that ALSO extends to regular roleplay, marty stus and godmodding certainly isn't Arena specific, it just depends on who your playing with and what restrictions you've put in place.

Share your opinion all you want but it sounds like this does boil down to bad experiences youve had with individuals and you are using anecdotes to call plenty of people youve never interacted before 'a toxic community' and people you don't want in your RPs. Well guess what, you're wrong if you think that Arena RPers dont RP outside of it and there is a good chance you already have RPd or about to RP with people from that sub-forum, try not to be so prejudiced about people based on them posting in a sub-forum you dont like.

@Dynamo Frokane

Thanks. I'm not arguing this. If you want an argument, take it to PMs.

You can hang around in there all I want; my opinion of the subforum won't change, and this thread gave me an opportunity to share said opinion.

Thanks. I'm not arguing this. If you want an argument, take it to PMs.

That didn't take long.

I would give an extensive history on my very intimate relationship with the Arena back during old guild, but I was just as toxic as many players in there.

However, I do not think the entirety of arena is inhabited by people who just want to win and stroke their egos as a result. It was just most of us, at the time that it was most active.

At any rate, the subsection is pretty dead now. Still, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with combat-centric roleplays. However, the tier system, rule set, and every other rule therein is colorful nonsense that gets taken way too seriously.

HOWEVER.

It can be satisfying to participate in a fight that involves actually outsmarting a character IC. What isn’t fun, is arguing in the OOC - like many people in old guild’s arena often did - about inane garbage. It’s also not fun when you have people blatantly twist logic and power scaling in their favor just because they want to win. It’s that inherent desire to win that makes for a toxic environment sometimes.

I can attest to how butthurt losers get, too. Although I wasn’t especially bad in the glory days of arena, I would do as I’ve mentioned above on multiple occasions, and get frustrated immensely whenever I lost. Others would downright abandon threads when I used the ‘fair and balanced rules’ to ‘pubstomp’ them, even if I was quite literally abusing them to win.

Of course I rarely ever lost 25/5/1 get at me casual trash huehuehue /egostroke

Looking back on it now, some of the most entertaining fights I had ended in draws, with each character surviving.

I would give an extensive history on my very intimate relationship with the Arena back during old guild, but I was just as toxic as many players in there.

However, I do not think the entirety of arena is inhabited by people who just want to win and stroke their egos as a result. It was just most of us, at the time that it was most active.

At any rate, the subsection is pretty dead now. Still, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with combat-centric roleplays. However, the tier system, rule set, and every other rule therein is colorful nonsense that gets taken way too seriously.

HOWEVER.

It can be satisfying to participate in a fight that involves actually outsmarting a character IC. What isn’t fun, is arguing in the OOC - like many people in old guild’s arena often did - about inane garbage. It’s also not fun when you have people blatantly twist logic and power scaling in their favor just because they want to win. It’s that inherent desire to win that makes for a toxic environment sometimes.

I can attest to how butthurt losers get, too. Although I wasn’t especially bad in the glory days of arena, I would do as I’ve mentioned above on multiple occasions, and get frustrated immensely whenever I lost. Others would downright abandon threads when I used the ‘fair and balanced rules’ to ‘pubstomp’ them, even if I was quite literally abusing them to win.

Of course I rarely ever lost 25/5/1 get at me casual trash huehuehue /egostroke

Looking back on it now, some of the most entertaining fights I had ended in draws, with each character surviving.

I mostly agree with this, it should also be noted that toxicity is not arena specific. I've seen people twist logic and bend reality to get away with things in regular RPs all the time.

*hesitantly wiggles in to leave my two cents*

For me personally (and I can only speak from the PoV of the three 'main' categories, I've never ventured into Arena, Nation or the new Persistent/open world topics as I find the concepts behind them too confusing for me to grasp. But hey, if you enjoy them, more power to ya!) That's my only bugbear with Arena/Nation/Blah blah. So. Many. Confusing. Rules. Maybe if it was a little easier to understand (a simple guide for a simpleton like me RIP) all the rules I would've considered giving it a bash but as it is, those subforums and their unfamiliar rules and guidelines terrify me and I'm more likely to scream and run for the hills than ever be brave enough to give it a go at this stage

I know the post length parameters are meant to be a guide, but I myself find them rather...arbitrary, to say the least. I could care less how much my potential partners write per post, I'm more concerned with the content of said posts, and my own focus when I make my posts is to adhere to that same rule. Character development and world building is FAR more important to me than how many words are written.

For all intents and purposes I consider myself to be an Advanced roleplayer. I've been role-playing on Internet forums for 12 years now, I'm a wrinkly old fart who's honestly got a bit of an addiction to creating characters and worlds and then destroying their lives while I cackle evilly and drink tea (and then cry about how mean it was later!), I can't engage an RP where there isn't some sort of in depth world/Lore building, because how can characters exist without their accompanying Lore? (again, this is my opinion, if yours differs, good for you! I'd be interested to hear it in a civilised conversation)

Does that mean I ALWAYS crank out 2k+ word posts? Most certainly not! I've had to drop partners before, who despite me nicely asking them to further elaborate and give me something to work with, continued to give me posts which were 3-4 paragraphs of their character internally monologuing about themselves while glaring at a rock (because of course, all my characters are mind readers *slow clap*? FYI my character was not and it just ended up being a disaster that I had to quit lol)
I've also had several long-term RP partners who I have happily received 1-2 sentence posts from at times, and I've been gladly able to respond. Fluffing a post up on occasion is fine, but if someone else can give me more to work with in 2 sentences than the metaphorical you can in 4 paragraphs, I'm going to raise my eyebrows at you and wonder if you understand the difference between writing a novel/fanfic and role-playing ¬¬

Some of my favourite/best RPs come from simply enjoying the story we create together rather than specifically worrying about word count.

I was going to write something else but now I've lost my train of thought.

TL;DR : Basing your judgement of an RP/writer SOLELY on how many words they can write per post is dumb. I find word count restrictions even more ridiculous. Vive la character development. Can I have a cookie on my way out?

Play-by-Post Roleplaying within a Message Board medium invites toxicity in general. It is a consequence of being unless the website, in particular, is niche. Cliques create feuds and feuds create perceptions and perceptions create drama. It isn't even specific to roleplaying. In terms of RPG, it depends on the sub-community you are in and what the circumstances are. I've been involved in some toxic ass shit on this website and I own up to that.

Arena is not the sole guilty "whe whe drama toxicity" party on RPG. It just is everyone's favorite whipping boy after Free.

@Dynamo Frokane

I have this vague feeling that we’ve roleplayed on old guild’s arena toegether at one point, but I might be confusing you with one of the people from Innue’s Naruto circle

I was on the oldguild but you'd never see me near anything naruto related with a hazmat suit.

Arena is not the sole guilty "whe whe drama toxicity" party on RPG. It just is everyone's favorite whipping boy after Free.

And a lot of that is because people from Free are either a lot younger or treat RP very casually and are not likely to get into a nuanced conversation about the merits of the section they frequent in the RP discussion forum. So its very easy to talk crap about them when everyone knows they'll never be here to see it.

TL;DR : Basing your judgement of an RP/writer SOLELY on how many words they can write per post is dumb. I find word count restrictions even more ridiculous. Vive la character development. Can I have a cookie on my way out?

Indeed. A good writer (and even better role-player) knows when to be concise and when to be detailed. And that's not without accounting for style preference.