Lack of player independance, and why this is a massive issue for the forum

[Chevaleresse]

So, lately, I've been thinking about an issue that we run into very frequently in some roleplays on this forum: nobody ever tries to do anything by themselves. This presents a huge problem to hosts and players alike, though the burden primarily falls on the host. When your players have zero initiative, it forces you as a host to put a lot more effort into creating and guiding players into encounters that might not have necessarily existed in the first place, bending your plan for the plot. Players suffer because they're dependent on host interaction, constantly waiting on another update that has to be written especially for them rather than finding another character to interact with, which should be a focus of roleplays in the first place.

This also prevents some roleplays from working at all. For example, the main running RP from a forum I used to be a regular on was essentially just a setting. Here's what the world looks like, these are the existing political/environmental/whatever situations, go. The thing went on for pages and pages and pages of player-to-player interaction, with (mostly) well-developed characters and an intriguing, complex plot generated solely by the actions of the players. Players took the places of everyone from common soldiers and mechanics to government leaders and what were essentially superheroes, and there were very OOC conflicts because the players themselves set the rules.

That sort of thing would never function here, because no one ever DOES anything. I quite frankly find this issue bizarre in the extreme, because in every other place I've done anything remotely akin to roleplaying the opposite problem exists; everyone is too busy goofing around or advancing their own subplots to move the game forward. Whenever open situations come up here, the host is often simply informed that the character "has nothing to act on," or they have "no reason to post."

Basically, to get to a point, this is me asking why this continues to be a problem, and if it's possible for people to make an effort to rectify this.

[Arkhi]

I think there's a fear that stepping out of comfort zones and "bunnying" will result in either disapproval from fellow RPers or administrative action from you, Hukuna, or a moderator. Knowing that a misstep can result in either discomfort or warning, there's pressure not to go against the grain. Additionally, as you say, there's a dependency on hosts to drive action. I figure a suitable remedy is to encourage RPers to take action by taking the story in their own hands and crafting to it however possible.
There needn't be fear of adding to a story.

[Pyon Pyon Kyuu!~]

No I fucking refuse to make up my own story if I wanted to make my own story I'd be a host but I'm not I'm a player so I will only react to what other do and that's that.

.

Anyways, I guess it's not something I've thought of doing. I'm always playing with more experienced roleplayers that drive the story for me so I guess I'm lazy. I'll ganbarimasu to change it?

[Raindrop Valkyrie]

Yea, strangely enough I did this in the original Graterras, I encouraged players to move forth and do some things of their own volition or spark things where they could go on for a bit with a bit of interaction from my part to help it float. The Dream Sequences from Grat Original are the best example, mostly Akuma's.

I'll be honest though I do like a bit of a guided experience which is probably why I fall into it and crutch it a bit. I feel like I might be encroaching where I shouldn't etc sometimes... but yea I can definitely work on it myself. I can;t really make others work on it though lol.

[Sutoratosu]

So, lately, I've been thinking about an issue that we run into very frequently in some roleplays on this forum: nobody ever tries to do anything by themselves. This presents a huge problem to hosts and players alike, though the burden primarily falls on the host. When your players have zero initiative, it forces you as a host to put a lot more effort into creating and guiding players into encounters that might not have necessarily existed in the first place, bending your plan for the plot. Players suffer because they're dependent on host interaction, constantly waiting on another update that has to be written especially for them rather than finding another character to interact with, which should be a focus of roleplays in the first place.

This also prevents some roleplays from working at all. For example, the main running RP from a forum I used to be a regular on was essentially just a setting. Here's what the world looks like, these are the existing political/environmental/whatever situations, go. The thing went on for pages and pages and pages of player-to-player interaction, with (mostly) well-developed characters and an intriguing, complex plot generated solely by the actions of the players. Players took the places of everyone from common soldiers and mechanics to government leaders and what were essentially superheroes, and there were very OOC conflicts because the players themselves set the rules.

That sort of thing would never function here, because no one ever DOES anything. I quite frankly find this issue bizarre in the extreme, because in every other place I've done anything remotely akin to roleplaying the opposite problem exists; everyone is too busy goofing around or advancing their own subplots to move the game forward. Whenever open situations come up here, the host is often simply informed that the character "has nothing to act on," or they have "no reason to post."

Basically, to get to a point, this is me asking why this continues to be a problem, and if it's possible for people to make an effort to rectify this.

Dear God in heaven above, Murdoc has gone and actually voiced the very thing I've been thinking all this while...

I'm just gonna be brutally honest and say I completely agree with all this... it's something I've seen quite a bit across many of the RPs I've been with in my time on here, even some of those that I myself have run are not innocent of this issue. Infact, it's quite hoenstly the biggest contributing factor to why I decided to stop trying to host things alltogether- the sheer effort and strain of having to always go so far out of the way to try to tailor things to have a path that is more straightforward or obvious just so that people wouldn't be scared to try things... that shit honestly got to be too much for me. Facotr in that I used to run multiple RPs at the same time too, and that stress was only going to get greater.

And I knew it would. And I knew I couldn't deal with it anymore, let alone if it continued... but I was too afraid to speak up or say something because I figured I'd have fangs at my throat in no time with the amount of potential backlash I thought could've happened... and I wasn't really in the right state of mind to deal with that either. So I took the lower road.

I didn't speak out. I just went and retired.

As for the actual cause and solution: I feel it is most likely something akin to what Ark has suggested- people may come in with the misconception that thinking abit outside the box or trying things that are not considered normal- ie taking their own initiative, might result in consequences that they feel are so utterly severe, such as a public rebuke or mod action, that they feel it is not worth the perceived risk of initiative... Basically, a combination of a lack of confidence, and a fear of the consequences that misstepping carries.

However, I also think that in these situations, there is a bit of issue on the side of the hosts as well- for enabling this type of misconception to continue throughout the interaction (And yes, I myself will raise my hand up high and admit that in hindsight, I'm just as guilty of enabling this as anyone else). In a way, by bending to the statement "I literally have nothing I can do" and changing things to give that player something explicitly designed for them, instead of just leaving the situation open ended like it was, and instead of altering it, trying to help the player figure out that they can infact do something, they simply didn't consider it themselves, we as host, in a way, only help to reinforce this apparent stigma against taking the first initiative.

And then there is the issue of overall communication. In many RPs, the rules as to what one is explicitly allowed to do in the story- I mean the freaking case law by which you can even operate, not just standard, typical rules like "No Godmodding, No Sues, Etc.". In alot of cases, the rules are not clear in telling how creative one can get, and what is generally allowed in terms of a response.

My case in point for this- My own Swansong: Sins of Avalon.

Going into that RP, I thought I had made it clear what I expected on people being creative, however, I was wrong and the guidelines I had set forth for the types of tactics and degree of creative thinking that would be tolerated and encouraged were never explicitly expressed beforehand. Now, this is more the result of an honest mistake than an actual oversight- when I was scrambling to salvage whatever I could after Auroral Starfall was destroyed via Computer Glitch, I failed to remember to take the details about the creativity and tactics and impart them into the interest check and OOC of it's replacement, Sins of Avalon.

Now... what did this result in? Someone at some point told me they had nothing to do. Now, that whole situation with me having to explain all the various tactics I myself could come up with off the top of my own head that was entirely possible and acceptable with the current moveset and species of pokemon they were using, could've been avoided entirely if I had just remembered that I never told anyone just what was the limit of things. I simply went in partially assuming they already knew, and that is where my personal sin lies, and where the sin of other hosts often lies aswell- Complacency, and Assumption.

Of course, I immediately rectified this issue when it arose by making sure that people knew what the limit was, but still... the fact that this basic miscommunication between a host and his players was allowed to transpire in the first place is entirely unacceptable in my eyes, regardless of what the cause of it happened to be.

That's all I have to say on the matter for now. quite honestly, I've spoken my piece and then-some.

TLDR; There are no fingers that can be pointed here; Everyone, hosts and players alike, are to blame at the end of the day. Therefore, the only way this will be resolved is if EVERYONE, HOSTS AND PLAYERS ALIKE, makes the effort to change the status quote that has been allowed to take form here.

[Felicity]

A few reasons:

1: Never learned to do it.

Speaking from experience, my first RP was Stratos's own PSS. Thing is, that RP, as engaging as the world was, left little room for much interaction or independence in the beginning. So within my first RP, whilst I figured out a whole bunch of other stuff, independence was not one. Then the next notable RP I joined was Ymora, of which this was not the case. Independent action was encouraged, interaction between students. This, however, fell into two categories of "Go get your own pokemon" events or just plain PC interaction. Which at the time was easier to not instigate because, well, I didn't know how to do it lol. I like to think this issue was solved to some extent but still, erg.

So then you get people like me, not often taking the initiative whilst the players who would are the hosts or are otherwise engaged. So newer people don't learn much independence with their character either. Rinse and repeat until we have this situation.

2: Unknown boundaries.

Independent action is friggin hard when you don't know when you can or can't. Referring back to Ymora, half the reason I didn't drop Claude into more interactions is because it felt like it would break the other peoples convos if he just popped in and interrupted. It was hard to find that sweet spot of popping into a conversation smoothly because you don't have those cues that you would get in real life, explicit body language, no locking eyes and starting a battle.

Of course there are other boundaries. Namely where you can or can't go. Kuro did a good job of at least making it clear how you could explore in the Gaelech Basm exploration segment that was meant to happen in PMs. I at least knew where I could go. But it's easy to forget that there's a nearby forest for a player to waltz into at any time or that there's a certain character around. It's a case of leaving Chekovs tropes everywhere in the hopes a player notices and messes with it and broadcasting constant possibilities of what people can do.

[Shamitako]

So, Ima just not go on a rant about how frustrating I find this phenomenon. Instead lemme just say that this is a big issue between me and this RP community and is one of the reasons I struggle so much to output posts on a consistent basis

[Tomas Elliot]

While I do agree with the OP, I also need to point out something: when a forum is dedicated to a roleplay, like, when the entire forum IS the roleplay, then it's easier to take personal initiatives.

Allow me to elaborate: I used to be part of a YGO roleplay community (I have been part of many other such communities over the years, but I'm just gonna bring that particular one up as an example). The setting of the roleplay was a duel academy akin to the one in GX. Now, the ENTIRE FORUM was the campus: we had a sub-section for the red dorm, one of the yellow dorm, one for the blue dorm, one for the classes, one for the garden area and so on so forth. People was free to post new topics in each section as they pleased, meaning that, while we did have important topics started by staffers, with plot-advancing events in them, we also had posts dedicated to interaction, in which two or more people would meet simply to interact and develop their characters. Doing so was actually be encouraged, and as a result posts like these ended up being the majority. In such a context, taking personal initiative was very easy and in fact, even newbies and people with no previous roleplay experience did it all the time.

But here, we have a single sub-section for ALL the roleplays, and each roleplay has a single topic to it. Meaning that, if there are 20 people in a certain roleplay, all 20 of them have to do their stuff in the same topic, which causes major issues (respecting turns, waiting for this or that guy to post, finding the posts that are relevant to you in the sea of stuff that gets posted etc), limiting the room for personal initiatives in the process.

I am not blaming anyone for this, I am simply stating a fact: this one issue is the bane of roleplays held on forums whose main focus is not the roleplay itself.

[Chevaleresse]

That's actually an idea I've had before; maybe larger RPs could use their own subsections.

[Felicity]

@Tomas, at the same time we can't go starting sub-sections for every possible RP. Even the arguably biggest RP this forum has seen, Ymora, has only ever had 3 active topics at once. The current chapter, the OOC and recently, a battle thread where any planned battles go down to be rehashed in the normal IC.

Scratch that, mod says we can. Go nuts

[Rosesong]

Even so Thomas, while I understand where you're coming from, I'm going to site the RP that I'm currently hosting as an example as to how there is no player independence. There are approximately 8-10 players, not too large, and it's been like pulling teeth to get some of them to post. There are things going on that they can post reactions to, like glowing walls, shrieks of sound, gusts of wind, and yet they remain silent because these things don't happen explicitly to their characters. Even if I force encounters between two players, it still doesn't help any-- they still don't respond. In this RP, players are also encouraged to encounter other players at will. Player progression is an integral part whether it's a single thread RP or an entire forum RP-- they take control of their characters to make the story that the host is weaving more interesting and engaging.

[Tomas Elliot]

Well I do understand that it would be incredibly difficult to do here, and I wouldn't be surprised if the idea is ultimately shot down. I was simply pointing out the obvious: many subsections in which people can post freely encourage personal initiatives. An entire roleplay in a single topic... Not so much.

[Sutoratosu]

heh... interesting... using seperate sections to hold other shenanigans while keeping the main story events totally isolated to the main thread... sounds rather brilliant to be honest, though the only real issues I can is like you said, it would probably be ballls hard for Hukuna and Murdoc to set up in technical terms... that and the fact it would put far more work on the host because they have to monitor all those at a single time...

though, for the latter issue, that is what co-host are arguably for in the first place... and, theoretically speaking, it may infact actually be the same amount of monitoring work, just spread over multiple threads instead of cramming everything into one... hmm...

[Felicity]

Tomas is right that a sub-section has many advantages.

Hell, topics could be set up and specifically delegated by Co-hosts as opposed to the main host asking them to handle X event or control X npc. It would make interactions and duties of co-hosts far more manageable.

It would also help with clutter really. Ymora made the battle thread cos it was jarring to see one character interact and then a convoluted battle technique appear in the next post. Sub-sections that allow for specific areas of posting in different topics would help sort that out immensely.

Furthermore, the idea of separate topics could be toyed with immensely. Imagine, each character in an RP has a phone. They then get two topics that only they can see, an in-box and an out-box. Only the player gets to see everything in their phone and so interaction between characters takes on a new dynamic. Ideas like this would be awesome.

[Raindrop Valkyrie]

Yea, it's a limitation that we have here... since well... I can't just give a subsection to every RP in existence that comes out etc.... that's just way to much spreading out of things and well... it adds a boatload of extra sub-forums etc...

I can;t do it for every single RP that comes out... we'd have like 10 subsections in like a day XD. It's just too much.

I think allowing more threads than jsut a single IC is a possible idea but I don't know how I feel about Sub-sections. I'd have to talk to Ame about it and for a long amount of time so that we could figure it out. It's not something I could just plop down and let happen. Perhaps making it by a host basis... a sub-section for hosts etc... however this has the issue of well... making it hard for new hosts... guh this... there's a lot of stuff that needs to be weighed here.

Edit: Also we want to pin this temporarily? I think it might be a bit prudent to do so...

[Commander]

Yeah, I'm kind of glad this is getting addressed. I think I'll be able to cover most of them with the two points Dobby made a bit earlier.

1: Never learned to do it.

I disagree with this a bit. It's not knowing, but not wanting to. It's not the best example, but it'll demonstrate my point. That reroll interest check I just released had two different options in it. In a nutshell, both options were very similar except one where players were on the same side and the host controlled many of the situations and the other being players against players with a host who basically gives you the freedom to do just about anything (that doesn't mean said actions can't come without consequence).

I based the second idea off of the battlegrounds rp, but with a more balanced and faster system of fighting. What really surprised me is not a single one asked me about the second option saying they'd all prefer the first. Not even questioning something like that. I'm not saying one or another is better, but I prefer the option that gives me more freedom honestly as it means less questioning about what I'm doing is going to get me kicked out.

2: Unknown boundaries.

In Ymora, I played with these boundaries many, many times, but it wasn't until I'd get scolded or yelled at that I stopped trying so much. I kind of hate how sometimes you have to ask or question when entering most convos. Even though I'm probably considered a veteran now, I'm probably going to do it all over again. Yes there is something called Metaing which is against RP etiquette, but I feel an untold rule is not to barge into conversations unless asking permission. Yeah, I might get a little angry that someone barged into a very private and important conversation, but it's just a story and sometimes stuff like that happens in real life. Often, I just go with it then unless it's a common occurrence.

It kind of makes me wonder if we're silently promoting this even though it frustrates us. Trust me, I've had my experiences when I pretty much gave players freedom to do what they wanted while I prepared a big update and I got cricket chirps. I know the feeling all too well.

[Code: PIRULUK]

Well.

I completely agree with this being an issue, which I will unhesitatingly admit to having furthered.

If you want to look at a reason as to why the players on this forum are less likely to engage in self-directed interaction, it might be due to the earliest days of this subforum. If you'll recall, the earliest RPs to surface on this subforum were Aftermath, Graterras and Aervana. All three of these were largely plot-driven, non-freeform RPs with a focus on advancing the plot. It's possible that from these roots, this RP subforum grew into a community that does not feel a necessity for independant interaction.

Of course, this does not excuse anybody, and I do not intend to portray it as a non-issue. Just stating my 200¥ about possible causes for this problem.

[Noir]

I don't know. Collaborative RPs are things made my multiple people, so an independent source of action is most of the time no-go as a whole since things easily get out of hand when there's more often than not a lack of similarity between what each person wants to do with the RP. That said, facilitating a consistent form of independent writing in a collaboration forum isn't exactly very simple, more or less remotely possible, because it means having to inevitably clash and rift with other writers, unless everything is elaborately discussed beforehand.

That said, from a perspective that's done what's being pointed out in the OP before, I've always been paranoid about acting on my own because of the presumptuous consequence if it doesn't abide by what the RP in question wants and restricts. RPs aren't completely free writing, and I've been lectured by the mods about bunnying a bit frequently to the point where I've had to poke Murdoc and Hukuna about it before posting anything in the past. Most of the time the dilemma exposes itself in "why isn't anyone acting by him or herself, we need the activity the story isn't stuck yet", but there's another thing in mind where "what can I post to not break the rules/bunny/do I have a reason to at this point" etc.

I sorta disagree with Acquiscent that people don't feel it's important to write independently. Moreso, people find the need to add content important, but aren't sure if said content would be acceptable by everyone involved, especially the hosts, since there is little coordination within the idea. Speculatively, things are being stagnant because the RPers aren't clear on what everyone is willing to accept on the RP as a whole when they're individual minds. It's like trying to put a puzzle when the pieces don't even fit; as such, it's hard getting the coordination people want, since there's "be considerate about what people want" and "restrictions" binding our minds.

My two cents.

Edited October 4, 2015 by YagamiNoir4896

[Darvan Korematsu]

Y'know that is probably the greatest irony I'm still trying to understand on this forum. I'm one of the "newer" guys in these parts (if you'd wanna call me that), but I've seen this problem on Reddit before when I was RP'ing there, particularly when our groups had to move around in the Walking Dead one I was in. People would get pissed off because the host had intentions to keep the story moving on, without most a care for the RP'ers which was ultimately why I quit RP'ing on Reddit.

I took a stab at the player independence idea literally with my first ever brainchild - Project Eternal, which was a resoundingly putrid flop for I don't know whatever reason. I literally just slapped together bits and pieces of the world together, like safe havens and enemies, and even a "randomizer" of my own creation called Shit Happens, to add some cynical realism to the whole thing. I set out to make it SPECIFICALLY a sandbox RP.

Yet, I still can't figure out why there were no takers to the deal. Everyone's covered mostly what I might have touched upon, but there's some two cents for you.

[Felicity]

Might also serve to consider that the majority of people here are going to be introverts. That's definitely going to have an impact on how outgoing and inquisitive our actions are going to be.

[Skullkin]

Guys.

Guys.

Guys.

...

Stop having characters with the 'loner' or 'shy' trait. It doesn't work in a roleplay type setting.

[Shamitako]

Might also serve to consider that the majority of people here are going to be introverts. That's definitely going to have an impact on how outgoing and inquisitive our actions are going to be.

Not really. The places I'm used to are the same and yet tend to have the exact opposite problem

[Felicity]

Not really. The places I'm used to are the same and yet tend to have the exact opposite problem

So you're telling me that the majority of people having a trait that means you aren't outgoing can't have any effect on how much you take the initiative in an RP? At all? Anecdotal evidence never really holds up anywhere. >.>

[Tomas Elliot]

Dobby, the more introvert you are IRL, the more you tend to talk and get stuff off your chest on the internet. I think the Ace-exclusive section of this very forum is all the proof you need of this.

So, before this turns into the usual, Reborn-style quarrel about how people feel in regards to minor issues that have absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand, I take it upon myself to get back on track: there IS a lack of playerindependance in our roleplays. This has to do with 3 factors:

1) Personal issues (some people just aren't good at taking initiative)

2) Game-related issues (some people just aren't good roleplayers, I know one thing or two about that from my experience with the YGO roleplay)

3) Forum-related issues (the fact that each roleplay takes place in a single topic, which I expanded on in a previous post of mine)

We should try and find solutions for each of these points. Topics like this, possibly even a formal guide and a stricter set of rules, can help with oint 2. Point 1 cannot really be solved, and as far as point 3 goes... Again, that is pretty much a fatal flaw of roleplays held on forums whose main focus is not the roleplay itself. I don't really think Ame will be willing to branch the RP section into God knows how many sub-sections...

... Unless, you know, we play it cleverly. I mean, you know how each roleplay would need many sub.sections? I was thinking that ALL the roleplays would need more or less the same amount of sub-sections, and for more or less the same goals. We can even go as far as to narrow it down to 3 kinds of sub-sections: plot-advancing roleplays, personal interactions and combat. SO yeah, having such sub-sections for EACH roleplay is absolutely imposible, but what about having 3 sub-sections used by everyone? Like, we divide the roleplay section in 3 sub-sections: "plot-advancing", "personal interaction" and "combat". All roleplays that start the topics that are now known as "IC topics" post them in the "plot-advancing" sub-section. People willing to have separated roleplays for interaction and character development post them in the "personal interaction" sub-section, and everything related to combat (be it YGO duels, Pokemon battles or D&D-style combat) goes... You get the idea. With strict rules as to how each topic needs to have not only specific labels in the title, but also specific tags, we can make it work without it getting too chaotic IMO.

[Shamitako]

So you're telling me that the majority of people having a trait that means you aren't outgoing can't have any effect on how much you take the initiative in an RP? At all? Anecdotal evidence never really holds up anywhere. >.>

Usually large groups of introverted RPers have the exact opposite issue. Maybe it can effect it, maybe it can't. But based on my personal experiences and observations it doesn't

Also, what evidence do you have? If we're really going to start talking about reliability then you should really bring some reliable evidence of your own instead of just presenting a hypothesis and disregarding any evidence against it

You're right that my personal observations might be faulty, but when it comes to something as abstract as initiative, there's not much more than personal observation to go on. Unless you have some way to make initiative countable? In which case I'll be happy to go poll some RP communities on whether or not the members are introverted and then track how much initiative the introverts take as opposed to the extroverts