EDIT: This thread might just turn into a general Q&A thread. Look further down for more details.
This is a basic skill set that everyone should learn at some point as a role player. It will also likely help you with writing a story. I would also like to point out that this is a prolific issue that many role players struggle with and do not even know it.
The Action-Reaction wheel, and the value/type of actions.
First, however, lets define what a player's job is, at its most basic core.
First and foremost, as a player, your job--before all other things--is to contribute actions to the role play so that the story is pushed forward. If you have a post where your character(s) commit zero actions in the post, you have successfully created a completely useless waste of time for everyone around you. If that sounds harsh, think for a minute: How do you possible continue a story, if everyone who has posted before you has had their characters do quite literally nothing? It's much harder to push a collaborative story forward if everyone else refuses to cooperate with you.
So! How do you create an everlasting chain of actions? The action-reaction wheel.
The action-reaction wheel is the basic premise that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Apply this to your writing, and watch the magic happen. When player A announces their name through dialogue, that is an action (ex: "My name is John."). When Player B reacts to this action by addressing the previous action and then contributing an action that follows it (ex: "Hello John (reaction), my name is Sarah, how are you?. (action)"), they can create an indefinite chain of events, with very minimal effort, that grows organically. Just like how if you push a wheel, it takes less momentum to keep the wheel going, than it does to start the wheel moving.
Exposition, on the other hand, gives your fellow players... Nothing of any real value beyond context. Use exposition to explain the reasoning behind an action, and use actions to further the story. Never use exposition to do last second developments of your character. It always comes across as crass and ill thought out. An example of good exposition is using the thoughts of a character to explain the reasoning behind their action, and describing their emotional state in their reaction towards another person's actions. An example of poor exposition is describing a brush that will never come up again, has no purpose, and just ends up being completely pointless for everyone else.
Protip: Only describe things that you will use, or which are relevant, as a golden rule of thumb. If you describe a bush, use it later for something. Whether that's ducking into it to hide, or lighting it on fire, or gathering food from it--anything. Scenery and setting should only be used to further the narrative, not to give yourself a literary handjob.
Now, for the second half: The value/type of actions.
You can skewer actions into several overall varieties and give them scaling values based on the situation at hand, but there's a pretty simple way to do them as well that, while not quite as accurate, is definitely superior for someone trying to master them. Specifically, the value of an action is in how easy it is for others to react to it and springboard further actions off of it reasonable, while the type of action can generally be relegated to passive and active. This does a good job explaining the difference between passive and active, especially MDK's response, so go read it.
As for how "easy" it is to react to an action, the more self-contained an action is, the harder it is to respond to. Two characters in a collaborative post having a long winded conversation with each other, leaving no breaks for others to jump in or respond to, is hard to react towards, it is self-contained by nature. Now contrast that to someone directly addressing your character in conversation, at least leaving you a single line of dialogue to respond to. They've directly reached out to you with their action, that's far more open, it gives you options in how to respond, and actively draws you in, rather than forcing you to attempt to force your way in like some kind of burgler.
Note, though, that collaborative posts are good tools. Use them when you need to expedite a simple conversation, or piece of character development. This is good. Just don't use them nonstop, to the exclusion of pushing away anyone else who could otherwise at some point interject. Collaborative posts are most powerful in scenes with excessive amounts of dialogue, especially the kind of dialogue where it's mostly exposition, to explain who you are, what you're doing, where you're going, and why you're going/doing those things. Like a King addressing the party? Let a party member or two ask a few quick questions to get all the information they need in a collaborative post. Then post that. It expedited what would have otherwise taken two months into a week at the most.
tl;dr:
Action-Reaction wheel is a series of nonstop equal and opposite reactions towards actions and makes physics teachers ludicrously happy. Exposition is like alcohol: A little is fun and makes you buzzed, but too much and you'll end up vomiting all over your friend's carpet and become a useless 160+ pound sack of flesh in the living room that nobody can ignore. The more you specifically address your fellow players and NPC's and the environment with your actions, the easier it is for others to respond to you, so be a nice guy, add some fuel to the fire before you pass it along, lest the torch of creativity dwindle and burn out due to your incompetency.
That is all, really. The basics of how to make every post you make in an RP useful. This doesn't guarantee it will always be good, but it does at least guarantee that you will never be the guy that derails the momentum everyone else was building up.
I'm willing to provide any advice anyone is asking for here, but just in case you might have a common question...
Q&A
Q:
A: Quality over Quantity, my dear Watson.
This is a basic skill set that everyone should learn at some point as a role player. It will also likely help you with writing a story. I would also like to point out that this is a prolific issue that many role players struggle with and do not even know it.
The Action-Reaction wheel, and the value/type of actions.
First, however, lets define what a player's job is, at its most basic core.
First and foremost, as a player, your job--before all other things--is to contribute actions to the role play so that the story is pushed forward. If you have a post where your character(s) commit zero actions in the post, you have successfully created a completely useless waste of time for everyone around you. If that sounds harsh, think for a minute: How do you possible continue a story, if everyone who has posted before you has had their characters do quite literally nothing? It's much harder to push a collaborative story forward if everyone else refuses to cooperate with you.
So! How do you create an everlasting chain of actions? The action-reaction wheel.
The action-reaction wheel is the basic premise that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Apply this to your writing, and watch the magic happen. When player A announces their name through dialogue, that is an action (ex: "My name is John."). When Player B reacts to this action by addressing the previous action and then contributing an action that follows it (ex: "Hello John (reaction), my name is Sarah, how are you?. (action)"), they can create an indefinite chain of events, with very minimal effort, that grows organically. Just like how if you push a wheel, it takes less momentum to keep the wheel going, than it does to start the wheel moving.
Exposition, on the other hand, gives your fellow players... Nothing of any real value beyond context. Use exposition to explain the reasoning behind an action, and use actions to further the story. Never use exposition to do last second developments of your character. It always comes across as crass and ill thought out. An example of good exposition is using the thoughts of a character to explain the reasoning behind their action, and describing their emotional state in their reaction towards another person's actions. An example of poor exposition is describing a brush that will never come up again, has no purpose, and just ends up being completely pointless for everyone else.
Protip: Only describe things that you will use, or which are relevant, as a golden rule of thumb. If you describe a bush, use it later for something. Whether that's ducking into it to hide, or lighting it on fire, or gathering food from it--anything. Scenery and setting should only be used to further the narrative, not to give yourself a literary handjob.
Now, for the second half: The value/type of actions.
You can skewer actions into several overall varieties and give them scaling values based on the situation at hand, but there's a pretty simple way to do them as well that, while not quite as accurate, is definitely superior for someone trying to master them. Specifically, the value of an action is in how easy it is for others to react to it and springboard further actions off of it reasonable, while the type of action can generally be relegated to passive and active. This does a good job explaining the difference between passive and active, especially MDK's response, so go read it.
As for how "easy" it is to react to an action, the more self-contained an action is, the harder it is to respond to. Two characters in a collaborative post having a long winded conversation with each other, leaving no breaks for others to jump in or respond to, is hard to react towards, it is self-contained by nature. Now contrast that to someone directly addressing your character in conversation, at least leaving you a single line of dialogue to respond to. They've directly reached out to you with their action, that's far more open, it gives you options in how to respond, and actively draws you in, rather than forcing you to attempt to force your way in like some kind of burgler.
Note, though, that collaborative posts are good tools. Use them when you need to expedite a simple conversation, or piece of character development. This is good. Just don't use them nonstop, to the exclusion of pushing away anyone else who could otherwise at some point interject. Collaborative posts are most powerful in scenes with excessive amounts of dialogue, especially the kind of dialogue where it's mostly exposition, to explain who you are, what you're doing, where you're going, and why you're going/doing those things. Like a King addressing the party? Let a party member or two ask a few quick questions to get all the information they need in a collaborative post. Then post that. It expedited what would have otherwise taken two months into a week at the most.
tl;dr:
Action-Reaction wheel is a series of nonstop equal and opposite reactions towards actions and makes physics teachers ludicrously happy. Exposition is like alcohol: A little is fun and makes you buzzed, but too much and you'll end up vomiting all over your friend's carpet and become a useless 160+ pound sack of flesh in the living room that nobody can ignore. The more you specifically address your fellow players and NPC's and the environment with your actions, the easier it is for others to respond to you, so be a nice guy, add some fuel to the fire before you pass it along, lest the torch of creativity dwindle and burn out due to your incompetency.
That is all, really. The basics of how to make every post you make in an RP useful. This doesn't guarantee it will always be good, but it does at least guarantee that you will never be the guy that derails the momentum everyone else was building up.
I'm willing to provide any advice anyone is asking for here, but just in case you might have a common question...
Q&A
Q:
Jig said Could you expand on this with regard to post length? It's a great article, but it highlights one of the biggest challenges of RPìng: contributing a noteworthy post long enough to feel worth reading without resorting to godmoding, unnecessary fluff, or the unreasonable demand of having every post run by every player as one big collaboration. Any further words of wisdom?
A: Quality over Quantity, my dear Watson.
1x Like
