A question for my beloved guild colleagues

[Ashevelendar]

Hello ! Thanks for taking time in reading this.

I was having a, I don't know how to call it. A discussion? A disagreement? Something when two people have different opinions on a subject, with a friend.

So I come here to ask what's your opinion on the subject. Maybe I am wrong, maybe he is.

The subject :

I am a firm believer that what happens in IC but that doesn't concern your character, nor is a GM post or something that affects the story but it is simply a discussion between other characters of the RP and your character is not even near those said characters, is not necessarily needed to read for a successful interaction with other characters.
Let me explain this better by giving an example :
My character will be called A and the other will be called B,C and D.
A talks with B in a room and C and D talk in another room that is nowhere near the room when A and B talk.

I was stressing the point that is not a must for a RPer to read discussion between C and D because :

• it may influence decisions later when A interacts with C and D unwillingly (subconscious mind or whatever you wanna call it)
• The RPer may learn information that A cannot know/should not know yet. Maybe C and D plan a murder and A and B are cops.
• I think I could give a few more examples but I think you get the idea.

So. I would like your opinions on this subject. Is it 100% needed for a RPer to read posts that don't concern your character, nor is a GM post or something that affects the story ?

I for one say that it's not a must. I personally read all the IC posts after some time, that is, of course when I'm not GMing that RP.

[Lady Absinthia]

@Ashevelendar Personally, I believe that everything posted by everyone in an RP is a must to read _{(in fact I require it in my Rps)}

Yes, it can lead to meta gaming but that is a Gm problem and they should be policing that and requiring edits if a person pulls that metagame card. While it may not affect a character right then, it could later - or at least give an Rper a better understanding of a character.

Example - Character A is dressing in room 1 while talking with character B - but character C is in room 2 minding their own business. Character A leaves room 1 and goes into room 2 and is now wearing a chicken on their head. If the Rper controlling character C did not read the post between character A and B while in room 1 - how the hell are they going to know to react to the chicken on character A's head? - (Yes, that is a bit out there but you get the point.)

The biggest problem I find some Rpers is not metagaming - it is lack of paying attention to what is posted. Metagaming is far easier to correct with a post edit than people missing huge chunks of information that they didn't see because thy figured the post would never pertain to them. I have to request edits constantly or throw down the ~well you should have read this but didn't so I am going to smash you with a hammer~ card to get my point across.

RP may stand for roleplay but it also stands for the fundamentals of RP - Read/Post - First you read, then you post. It doesn't mean you read what you want to and get to the rest later.

So yes, if you wish to Rp - then you MUST read.

My two copper pieces as it were.

[Ammokkx]

Yeah, because if you don't read then you don't know when they would re-join the big group.

[Ashevelendar]

@Lady Amalthea What you say it's true but what I'm thinking is that if character C sees A with a chicken head it's realistic to say that he shouldn't really know why character A wears that.
My angle (if you wanna call it like that) is that when I RP a character, I know what he knows, I see what he sees etc.

Also. You've made me think about the issue a little. Thank you for a complete answer.

@Ammokkx That should be done via a GM post, I think

[Lady Absinthia]

@Ashevelendar The character shouldn't know why but the character should know that they are wearing the chicken. As far as where each character is in the RP, that is not the Gm's thing to post. That is the Rpers. That is what their post is there for. To tell where they are, what they are doing, and so forth.

It is up to the Rper to draw the line between what their character sees and actually knows. That is part of being a good Rper. There is a great difference between what you (the rper) knows and what your character knows. You need to draw that line. A very thick line, with stone and a concrete wall on top of it, with barbed wire on the top, and quick drying cement underneath it. No going over, around, or under it.

As a Gm I have know exactly what every character is doing at all times but I have to draw a line between what all I know personally and what my characters in the RP know. Even though I am the all powerful GM, it doesn't give me a free card to metagame as I see fit to make my characters know everything as well. That's just poor Gming.

[Ammokkx]

@Ammokkx That should be done via a GM post, I think

@Ashevelendar

It's not the GM's job to babysit the players completely and keep them informed. Players should inform themselves when a character moves through space and time, the GM should not have to make a separate post saying 'this character shows up here now'.

What the GM can do is react to the character moving, but if there is no need then there is no need. In my own roleplay, players are free to move about established locations. I've had multiple instances of people outright ignoring characters, sometimes even my characters, because they didn't read. That's bad.

A player should keep themselves informed on their partners' behavior in case there are details they should know, and not be retrospectively fixed.

[NuttsnBolts]

If you are not going to make the effort to read other's work, then seriously stop roleplaying and go elsewhere to write a book instead.

Your sole job as a roleplayer (including the possible role as a Game Master), is to read through every post, to engage your character with the various other characters that have been created, and to interact with your fellow players both in the IC and OOC. Roleplaying is a collaborative effort that requires people to work together. By ignoring someone's hard spent work you have honestly failed to grasp the concept of what roleplaying is about, and that is what kills roleplays.

[mickilennial]

As I have said before:

If you are in a role-play where you are not reading the posts in the IC… then you are frankly, a bad role-player. That’s the end of it, there’s no middle ground. If you are not aware of the events occurring from your co-writers and peers then you shouldn’t be in that role-play or perhaps in a role-play at all. Understanding concurrent events, actions, and dialogue/thoughts are central to writing with people – otherwise as someone said before: don’t bother and go write your own prose by yourself. Nothing frustrates me more than someone who skim-reads but to learn that a lot of people here have admitted to NOT READING THEIR WRITING PARTNERS MATERIAL is downright unacceptable and blatantly disgusting.

[Ellri]

While there are players that can successfully play while not reading posts unrelated to themselves for the sake of keeping their character(s) truly in ignorance of things not directly pertaining to them, these players are exceedingly rare.

The reasons for not reading posts can be many, but in general they are typically rather weak. Some examples we've come across:

• Player wants to keep his/her PC in ignorance of unobserved happenings.
• Player doesn't like "romance" (i.e. interactions that could in theory lead two characters in a group RP to head towards a black-out scene).
• Player dislikes one of the other players (why would they be in an RP with someone like that?).
• some posts are "Too long".

there are probably others too, but we can't remember them right now. The general tendency is that it leads to grievous mistakes in the IC. Either due to ignoring one post too many, or through not having read posts properly (the ones read). In any case, its something we dislike in players, but we can't exactly force players to actually read. Sure, demands can be made, but they can't truly be enforced.

If you do plan not to read everything, then you should make sure to have good communication with the others so that you can get the others to help you avoid errors in your writing due to not having read everything.

[Ashevelendar]

Just finished reading everything. You've made a lot of good arguments and I have to agree they are better than "this is what means to play-by-post RPing means" arguments that I received from my friend.

I want to state that I don't do that. I like reading whatever other people wrote 'cause it's fun, it makes me become a better writer/reader etc. The discussion is purely hypothetical, for me at least.

Anyway. Thank you for taking time answering :)

[Ellri]

interesting to see themes worth discussing here...

Too often the interesting discussions don't pop up or die quickly... So what if they're hypothetical... That doesn't make them less interesting.

[Lady Absinthia]

I want to state that I don't do that. I like reading whatever other people wrote 'cause it's fun, it makes me become a better writer/reader etc. The discussion is purely hypothetical, for me at least.

@Ashevelendar

That is interesting considering what you said earlier -

I for one say that it's not a must. I personally read all the IC posts after some time, that is, of course when I'm not GMing that RP.

@Ashevelendar

It wasn't presented as a hypothetical. It was presented that while you do read the posts but after a period of time and not necessarily before you post. Which is still part of the initial question, "is it a MUST to read all posts?"

So I am going to amend what I said - Yes, you MUST read ALL posts BEFORE you post - afterwards is just as bad as not reading at all. Nearly as bad as backpedaling instead of owning up.

[Ashevelendar]

@Lady Amalthea I know what I've said and I did it for a purpose. Most people will not take seriously a hypothetical question reason why I usually present it as not a hypothetical question but as something I do.
True, some people will think that I was speaking the truth while others will understand/accept why I've presented it as a real thing.

[Lady Absinthia]

@Ashevelendar And others will think you are just backpedaling. ~shrugs~ There is no reason to present a deception or lie to get people to answer. That's just presenting a falsehood and there is no need for it, no matter your "reasoning" - it creates a air of distrust and others will take it into account in the future if you should choose to try to join one of their RP's or they see you posting an interest check to be a GM. Stay up front and honest with people. It is far simpler that way.

I stand by what I said - If you are going to RP - you must read ALL posts BEFORE you post.

[Dion]

@Ashevelendar I'll play devils advocate. I'll start by clarifying my stance on the matter: in an RP where you are roleplaying as a tight knit group, then yes, read everything. The group is so tight knit (and likely .. small) that you can realistically read everything and realistically expect to need that information, indirectly, at some point.

It also helps you come up with interesting things to say, without metagaming, i.e. if two characters talk about how much they hate being ignored, it could give you as a writer, OOC, a clue to ignore the characters to create friction. For example.

But in larger groups, which I have historically been part of, that number over 15 people in various different 'teams' of sorts, yeah, fuck that. There's gonna be characters that my characters will never interact with, there's gonna be characters I simply don't give a fuck about, so I'm not gonna read all posts. But those roleplays are rare. And it typically requires there to be an OOC understanding that most members of different teams won't meet and certainly won't be close enough for a singular conversation to make an impact regardless.

But that's a rare situation. Most roleplays are tight knit groups, most roleplays focus on friends or at least people that are together often. Ignoring posts because you don't feel like reading them is a bad idea. You can do it. I don't care - if you are in my RP, don't read the posts, but still come up with coherent posts that make sense, who am I to tell you how to RP? But the problem there is that when you don't read, things often don't make sense, and perhaps a single conversation two characters have seems unimportant, but what if it's about something more than that? Maybe they're talking about your character? IDK, I'd like to read that, because it involves me even indirectly and that's part of the fun for me about roleplaying.

But yeah, long and short of it is that as long as you can post, and have it be interesting and cohesive, while making sense, I don't care what you do.

[Ashevelendar]

@Lady Amalthea True that. *bows* Never thought about that m'lady.

@Odin That's a different opinion than I've seen.

[Dion]

I'm different from these people then it seems.

[Ashevelendar]

@Odin Indeed you are

[Bishop]

It really makes it hard to read other people's posts when 90% is pure fluff and personal thoughts of their character.

In a perfect world you would put their thoughts into hiders and just write your 2 damn actual sentences(out of 5 paragraphs) which describe to others what their actions are.

And the dialogue... God that thing is slow when in casual and advanced and if not slow it outright forces others to become psychics.
Example:
A asks B something. A *nods their head* at B's response and changes subject to something else. A also gives B a hint on how to do something and A continues to show B how to do it in detail

I mean, the perfect dialogue model are one liners but those are only found in Free Rps and you can't pull that off in casual and advanced since you wouldn't have enough time to finish the conversation or it would be so long that it would slow the RP to a halt. So now players are forced to *use* premonition and say many things at once while *responding* to what the other might say with gestures that universally go with any thing the other might say.

Collab is the way to go for conversations but even that is too much work since you need to coordinate times when you're free and whatnot...

[Innue]

I'm glad @Odin posted, as I think his insight is crucial to this discussion.

While I think in principle what @Inkarnate,@Lady Amalthea, and @NuttsnBolts said is probably applicable to most instances, I think that there are threads where it is far from necessary. I think Odin's example was a good one, and I think further extrapolating from there, roleplays with significant amount of unscripted combat are definitely an 'exception' to the 'rules'. Other categories could include threads that are run partially as games - I would have zero expectation, or requirement, of any of my players to read every other player's capture posts for when they went to hunt wild creatures in my Pokemon-esque RP. Especially true on thread types with expansive player bases where some characters may never interact and we have interactions that are done specifically for singular characters to occupy themselves while they wait for other things to move along elsewhere. The context in which certain posts happens is important.

Definitely probably a more of 'you probably should be reading all the posts on most threads, and most of the posts on all threads' (I'm sort of proud-ish of this line) versus some rigid you must do something in all instances.

Also, definitely not in agreement with telling people to stop roleplaying. Just saying.

EDIT: One more thing, I also think some of the instances where there is something called useful ignorance where true lack of knowledge can create a thoroughly enjoyable, organic (and gluten free), non-contrived interaction. I've had this happen arising from people missing posts where another character was defeated or acquired some powerful artifact (in a game) where it spawned some of the most interesting character conversations I've ever had.

Yes, there is a line where the ignorance is burdensome, but I've had very few instances where that has been a problem in a thread. That type of ignorance is obvious though because the ones that are in that category are generally apparent at the beginning because they also don't tend to read the introduction...