[quote=@Flagg] One possibility, I've experimented with and enjoyed, is just to embrace the dynamic being bemoaned here. Alot of RPers seem to be very interested in world building- and frankly, the world building ideas of most RPers are more interesting (at least to me) than reading their prose. So just give the people what they want, and a framework to do it in. Consciously spinning an NRP as a collaborative worldbuilding exercise and encouraging people to worldbuild to their heart's content has at least two upsides: 1) it's (apparently for many people) flat out fun, and can frankly be more fun than reading IC posts about what space-queens and space-diplomats or not-zergs are doing as written by amateur authors 2) worldbuilding can lend itself to fiction set in-universe, and can be a fruitful source of real collaboration as opposed to the ridiculous pseudo-RTS dynamics that so many NRPs fall in to (and which I think is part of what is being complained about here). In my experience it can actually help the IC side of things. I know that the most creative and successful I've been at writing science fiction or fantasy scenes or short stories has been in the context of collaborative worldbuilding. My most successful experiments with this dynamic have been in fantasy settings- NRPs which were extremely healthy for months and only failed because I could no longer GM for RL reasons, but the principle holds true for scifi/space opera as well. Just my thoughts. If the people like worldbuilding, give them worldbuilding, and try to structure the worldbuilding so as to enhance the IC rather than compete with it. [/quote] The caveat of this is that you end up with nothing to keep people tethered. Worldbuilding without a story is just a list of stuff. The little things on the bottom - the characters, the personalities, the underbelly of the world you have built - [i]is[/i] the story, and all the worldbuilding around it is just window dressing. Without some sort of depth, everyone can jump ship any time they want and move all their ideas elsewhere. It is true that prose is a helluva thing to figure out, but it is pretty rewarding in the end. I'm part of an NRP that has been going on for five years because we all took the time to work on the details. The result is that those of us who stuck it out all five years are practically married to the thing. I get why people look to make complete works because... it's beautiful when it works out. If RPing was a cake, worldbuilding would be the icing. It's fun, it's fluffy, you don't have to slog through it. But nobody wants to eat a cake that is entirely icing. Eventually they'll get sick.