<div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote"><a href="https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=63583.msg2925844#msg2925844">Quote from: rick957 on 10-04-2010, 22:57:07</a></div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">Thanks for the response, Ana, and the compliments too.  :)  I'm enjoying your posts and everyone else's also.  <br/><br/>Your point about J.D. and his nicknames kind of lost me, I'm afraid.  That wasn't an important part of the post, just a bit of character detail.  But, are you saying that the characters' internal observations and thoughts are best left out? meaning, posts should focus only on observable action and dialog?<br/><br/>If that's your gist, there are two things that confuse me about it:  1) it seems to me that many posts from you and everyone else includes information that presumably comes from their character's thoughts, knowledge, or personal observations; and 2) leaving out the characters' thoughts seems undesirable to me because it further restricts the content of our posts.  For me, the whole point of PbP roleplaying is to craft entertaining posts, fun things to read (and write); that goal becomes much more difficult (even impossible for some people, I think) because players are usually forbidden to determine the actions of anyone or anything outside of their own character.  On top of that restriction, leaving out characters' thoughts would just add further difficulty to an already-challenging undertaking.  <br/></blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/>That's what I was referring to as 'trying to achieve a balance'. I think it's important to use that insight into a characters thoughts to help convey the things that we can't do so easily in a purely text based format, such as a characters body language, as I said previously. Without that view of internal dialogue, every PC is a perfect actor, for example, which is why I tried to inlcude things in my posts to reflect that Rachel is not so skilled at such things. If I hadn't put those bits in, not only would Cogs have to assess Athena's actions based solely on raw description (the instruction manual flavoured kind of 'I do this...' description), but it would also colour the results because of it. I've seen it happen before in games: bare bones descriptions of actions seems cold, which leads to others assuming a cold, ruthless action and therefore result. It's the nature of this text beast; plain text can make expressing the emotion behind an action difficult.<br/><br/>Plus it's important in order to help others understand our motivations, which helps them in crafting a response. I think it's even more important in a classic RPG format, where we need for the GM to understand<em>why</em>our characters are taking a certain course of action as well as the action itself. Doubly so in a system like Marvel here, with it's Karma system in place of the traditional experience points, where our motivations can impact things fairly dramatically.<br/><br/>So, you see, I agree with you, Rick. I'm just saying pace yourself, leave some bits aside for now so you can have them to use later, and some things are often best revealed in actual RP. Think about a strung out series of exchanges between JD and Oscar, where it suddenly hits Oscar that JD is constantly making up cute little nicknames for the female members of the team...can lead to some more fun RP!<br/><br/><div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote"><a href="https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=63583.msg2925844#msg2925844">Quote from: rick957 on 10-04-2010, 22:57:07</a></div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">Not to quibble about the rules of the game -- I accept the restrictions of the format because I assume most others on the site like things done that way, or else they wouldn't go along with it.  At the same time, however, I suspect few PbP roleplayers have given much thought to the limitations of the format and how difficult it is to come up with posts that are fun for others to read.  I think a lot of games turn into a bunch of characters standing around doing a lot of nothing until the GM decides something interesting will happen ... heck, I worry that most games are that way, including the ones I've tried to run myself.  Even when the players are gifted writers and fully capable of creating interesting posts, they're sometimes so committed to being passive and responsive in their posts that they're uncomfortable introducing interesting developments.<br/></blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/>I've put some thought into this too, both from the player and GM perspective. It's a good part of the reason I don't run games, actually, I get really off the wall anal and controlly, turns out to be not much fun for everyone.<br/><br/>I agree with what you're saying there, which is why I think it's important to throw something specific at the players right off. I posted in another OOC thread for another game I'm involved in about this as well. It's much easier to RP downtime after some action, for a number of reasons, but most of all because it gives the characters common ground to refer to. All the background in the world won't help generate RP if there's nothing to break the ice with, from my experience.<br/><br/>I'm very happy Cogs came up with something to get us to move away from the crash site. I was wondering what she'd do, and we won't be able to stick around there now! ;)<br/><br/><div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote"><a href="https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=63583.msg2925844#msg2925844">Quote from: rick957 on 10-04-2010, 22:57:07</a></div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">Sorry if that's way more discussion than you might be interested in.  :)  It's a topic of great interest to me, because it's been relevant to every PbP game I've been in so far, and I don't believe many players have thought much about these issues when it comes to roleplaying.  I'd be interested in any thoughts you, Ana, or the others have on this stuff.  Thanks for reading!<br/></blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/>I, for one, like talking about the 'theory' of PbP and PbIM roleplay!  ;D