Well isn't this an interesting little corner of the Guild :3

I will say preemptively, I have a tendency to ramble, so...bear with me.

Hmm, I'm sort of not in any one "camp" in regards to this subject, but I must say that I definitely agree on some of the points made and definitely disagree very strongly with others.

I agree first and foremost with Odin and Innue I'd say. I, most of all, feel that in RPs with more than 5 people (in particular if they have more than one character each) wherein are not in a single tightly knit (or multiple closely related) group(s) that people should not be forced to read every post. For much the same reasons as were stated before, because yeah those characters may never even come across eachother, their stories might remain separate and if they do come across one another it is more likely than not an intentional act or plan by the players (or the GM) in which case their physical state (appearance etc) and other details ought to be described in their posts anyways. I'm not saying that, in a situation where characters A and B are in a room and characters C and D are in another room far away, and character D leaves and walks passed the open door of the room A and B are in that character D's player should have to describe what they're wearing [i]in every post[/i] to make sure people don't miss details like that. However, I am saying that if you transition from one interaction into a new interaction involving more characters (in particular if it was not planned beforehand) that people should be describing in their posts what the other characters are going to be seeing.

If it's a situation where character A enters into a scenario with characters C and D, then the player of character A [i]should[/i] be reading the posts AT LEAST just prior to their entrance, OR should be COMMUNICATING with their fellow RPers so that everyone is on the same page.

Also, please don't come to me and say "well that's in an ideal world Yoshua," because all this requires is that people communicate, and if you can't take a few minutes to throw people a message--or don't have the patience to wait for someone to get online to respond to you--then guess what, you need to change because you're missing the point.

If you're [i]that[/i] impatient or unwilling to cooperate/communicate, then guess what the whole "you should read all the posts," applies to you in particular.

Also, I'd like to bring up something [@Lady Amalthea] and co. You said it's necessary for people to read ALL the posts in the RP before posting. I've seen your RPs before (which always seem to be very successful by the way, it's impressive I must say) and some of them are huge, but they're not usually as big as, say something like...oh, I don't know [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/46105-phoenix-wing-a-fairy-tail-rp-always-open-open/ooc]Phoenix Wing[/url]. Would you say in the case of a RP like the aforementioned Phoenix Wing, that it is in any way reasonable to ask someone to read all the posts in the IC thread (at the very least)?

For a bit of context for anyone who doesn't look at that link. Phoenix Wing's character tab alone (which is usually the smallest tab in RPs in my experience) has 160 posts. The OOC thread? 53,240 posts. The IC thread is an insane 7,286 posts.

For further context, there are 20 posts on any given page of the Guild, which means the Character Tab is 8 pages; the OOC is 2662 pages; the IC is 364.3 pages all at current time of posting. Additionally I can tell you--having briefly been in that RP--that the characters are distributed amongst several different guilds and do not always interact nor do they necessarily know of eachother in the least. I can tell you that many of the characters may not have even been posted in the CS tab, and I can tell you that many players have joined and left since the RP began roughly 3 years ago meaning that there are any number of players/characters that are almost certainly NEVER going to be relevant to your experience or your character's knowledge base in any way.

So yeah, I'd definitely say that a RP needs one of two things, preferably both. These being either very good and consistent communication and/or people to read all the posts. If you can't do either...I don't know what to tell you.

Oh yeah, and I totally disagree with the whole "put internal monologue/character thought process and "fluff" in hiders or just don't have it exist at all," thing that Bishop put forth. Frankly if you feel that way maybe you would enjoy Free more, or maybe you should run RPs where that is the case, because honestly only giving the bare bones actions/dialogue of your characters is just...well, boring unless the writer really knows how to make less more (which most people do not know how to do it seems, not that that is really a problem at all in my opinion).

So yeah, small tightly knit groups? Read the posts or cooperate a bunch, but DEFINITELY read the posts. Large group RPs, sorry, no, communicate and coordinate with your players and the GMs, because reading all those posts...not terribly viable for people who have lives of any sort--even if it's just high school or the like. I also feel like reading all the posts in a RP prior to the time that you joined is ridiculous, if only because it ought to be the GM's responsibility to integrate new players, rather than the player's. Mind you, I am not at all saying that a player should not be doing their utmost to figure out what they want to do/where they want to be.