Role Play General Chat

I was only kidding, mainly about Teele. Still, there seems to be a lot of RPs centered around weapon/gun-totting heroes fighting an oppressive evil.

Which is pretty much what 51 is about
Except I'm trying to make it all very mysterious and unpredictable (like, say, Lost)

While we're on the subject, any advice on how to attract players, and keep them coming back? How would you envision the perfect RP? (Not that I'm trying to be perfect -- I'm just interested)

 

Dude, n00bishness has nothing to do with it, as a matter of fact. I racked up a dozen players in a couple days with my first RPG (which failed, but lesson learned!), even though I was fairly fresh. It has everything to do with the potential of the story.

And yeah, in Rogue City (which we just played), we were involved in very little actual action. My character was able to use his fighting skills twice, I think, in the whole story. The rest was mystery and interaction. It's all good!

 

Yea one epic battle with me and Idk the other time.

It is all about the interaction which is the best part. Oh and character developement

 

The tips for keeping things going, as far as I've observed, are as follows:
- Be active
- Keep stuff coming; dry spells are evil.
- Always be a few steps ahead; have something planned. This is a double-edged sword in that you can't plan every minute detail, because spontaneity is part of the fun of an RPG. I think there's a balance involved between planning and letting the players have their space.
- Create interesting, consistent, creative bad guys; whether on the cannon fodder level or the boss level. Anybody who remembers Vornn from Cyberpunk can testify to the usefulness of this technique.
- You're allowed to be sadistic. (I have no idea where I got this idea (Foxee and Blossom) AHEM!)
- Do something unexpected. Mind-bending plot twists are good.

...and someone can add more if they like...

 

I actually wish there was a place like a place I use to RP at. We called it the Tavern. and like basically we would hold different types of story in one place which we all stayed and did out landish things. Sometimes a story would occur like someone ripping into our universe and stealing souls. But basically it was almost like god modding but extensions of ourselves jsut hanging out in a Tavern lol.

 

Right, that's good advice, but it's also rather vague.

I'm talking about what you personally find attractive in a story. What works? What doesn't work?

I love mysterious plots with plenty of twists and turns, but I sometimes find that it can be a bit constrictive for the players, like they just end up coasting from twist A to twist B without having much effect on their environment. So I encourage them to derail the plot if they feel it's getting away from them.

In one RP I did, it was based around a little girl who was insane and lived in her own dream world -- the players played as both dream characters, and the real characters that the dream characters were based on within the girl's psyche. I ran through this whole story arc where her evil father visits the mental hospital and terrorises her, and then I ran out of ideas. So this clever player decides to have his real character show up in the dream world, and imply that the dream world was a real physical place the whole time which the girl had been seeing through strange visions. Which I developed into a cool fantasy adventure.

 

Go back and study some of the past games that were successful (such as *ahem* Phoenix Colony which was one of the all-time most successful games on this site. It was also the first game I tried GMing on here.)

Have a look at some of the ones that died quickly.

It's kind of tough as GM to know exactly how much guidance to give and how much freedom to give. Check out FlakeandFins's games...he's one of the best GM's on this site.

 

Nice! Sounds pretty good.

Okay, for me, personally, I like almost any story where the interaction is rich, and there's potential for action and movement. I like to see deep relationships between player characters, and situations that strength those bonds. And I certainly don't mind when these situations involve large guns and/or sharp swords!

My genres of preference for the stories themselves are fantasy and science fiction. I love being part of a creative world where a character that I've created can make a difference.

lol. Little less vague?

 

Hmm, I'm skimming through it a bit. Notice a lot of detail in the initial post, and a lot of enthusiasm from the very beginning...

Anything you can think of that helped you sustain the RP over such a long period of time?


Edit: Wait... did that whole 284 pages really just accumulate over the course of one month? That's... fast.

 

Sadistic? Me??? Never! (Foxee on the other hand ...)

Emerald, to me it sounds like you already have a fairly good grasp of what it takes to GM a game. I said earlier on this thread to Leaka that the way I like to GM is to have a starting point, an ending I'm aiming for and a few twists/triggers planned that I can pick and choose from to suit where the players are.

For me RPGing is at its best when players are able to really get into the character interaction and development but there's enough action to keep them interested. The only way you're really going to find that balance, though, is through experience. You'll get a feel for whether or not the players are enjoying your RP or not and why as you go along and the more experience you have the better you'll get as a GM.

Good luck

 

Good advice everyone *swots up*

I'll take a look at Pheonix Colony too.
I have a question about NPC's though... what differentiates them from the GM's characters? Are they supposed to be more minor?

 

I think you can have two types of NPC's...ones that are played by a certain person or persons (the GM or whoever) and characters that anyone in the game can control when they need to.

 

Yeah. Generally it's the former. See, you're a Player; your character is a Player Character; whatever character is not played by a player is a Non-Player Character. Usually, on a forum, the only person in an RP that isn't a Player is a GM, so he controls the NPCs. NPCs controlled by Players would technically be a PC with shared control.

 

Yeah, pretty much.

Usually with GM NPCs anyone can move them around or make them say a couple of lines of dialogue, but they're almost always important to the storyline in one way or another and their significance is a secret to be revealed at the GM's disrection ... thus it's best not to mess with them, or risk aggravating your GM (which can be bad or funny, depending on the GM).

Other NPCs are usually either characters whose players have dropped out for various reasons or random characters invented for a particular scene or whatever and so have no long term importance whatsoever and therefore are fair game to mess with.

In my experience that's about it, anyway.

 

Depends on how you look at it. NPC could just be someone who isn't used often so wouldn't be catergorized as a PC.

 

Well, I was looking at it in an uptight, pedantic way

The main idea behind an NPC is that they aren't working towards an end. They exist for a purpose; they're not playing. Whereas the PCs are. As soon as an NPC starts 'playing', it becomes a PC, really.

It's a throwback to tabletop gaming.

 

PC:
Played Character (Original D&D)
Player's Character (AD&D)
Patron Character (Unknown Source)
Personal Computer (Ehrm waith... why did I include this?)
Personal Character (Some AD&D guidebooks)

So yah, there are many ways to define PC... I tend to stick to the rule; if the GM made them, they're NPC's.

 

What does NPC stand For?

 

Non Playable Character

 

Ah... I wondered.

 

Ehh, Non-Player Character

Edit: Bah, too slow.

Anyway, I'm surprised you've been GMing all this time without knowing that Raven

 

Hey Raven Could you adjust my signature?

 

Emerald, Some things have special circumstances so can't be nit picky about it.

Nikhil, I think you have to donate to get a siggy because most people I see with a sig are supporters. Also as you can see I set the image code for my sig in my sig but it's only a link

 

What do you want doing?

 

Yeah, you need to pay to use pictures in your signature. And to have your own title/message.