Let's B!tch. I feel it's a healthy release for our roleplay annoyances 2.0

[Oddsbod]

Shorter posts do not equate to being quality posts, all the same.

@Inkarnate

For sure. And that ties in to what someone mentioned I think a few pages back, players writing very short posts that don't at all acknowledging what your character's done or what's going on in the setting, and skipping over your own hard work and writing like it wasn't even there, which definitely sucks.

I've just seen a lot of places where 'long and detailed' gets used in the same breath as 'high quality writing and characters,' when length is a separate thing from quality of storytelling, and when it's forced has a tendency to completely bog things down when used unnecessarily.

[mickilennial]

The problem is some people think not reading or skim reading on this website is okay. No, I am not making this up.

[ML]

Sometimes my posts will get long because I like to do worldbuilding in with my posts. So I'll end up mixing paragraphs of what the world is like with paragraphs of character development and interaction (mostly happens in the rp I'm GMing, or in an rp where the more isn't entirely defined/"property" of the gm)

In my defense I try to use the things I come up with later, but it does add some length to my posts to provide context I guess

Not really sure of the point I was trying to make

[Oddsbod]

Lol or you could just pull a Goblin Emperor and just have zero context whatsoever. Hey, if Katherine Addison can write a great novel that tells the audience all of jack shit and get a Locus Award for it, why can't we?

@Mercenary Lord Nah man I've skimmed Beyond the Storms, you can definitely write description well and not have it bog things down.

I think unnecessary and fluffy description comes from the fact that, since players put so much love and effort into their characters and the world they build, the first instinct can be to try and cram every last detail that was in their head into the writing, like they're narrating a movie scene that's playing in their brain. But like, writing isn't a visual medium, and it's a given that no matter what you do, you're going to have to leave a certain amount to be imagined in the reader's head, and it won't be the exact same as the way you'd imagined it. And description that focuses too much on the visual side of things especially is when it gets kinda fluff-feeling. Like that one character who has maybe three sentences describing physical appearance and posture and the general tone of the character on their sheet, but a paragraph-and-a-half describing their clothing and weapons, with zipper-color, shoulder pads, and multiple swords all given just as much attention as posture and face-shape.

[mickilennial]

That entirely depends on your influences as a writer and what creative ideals you prescribe to, Odd.

[Oddsbod]

I dunno, I think regardless of what kind of writer you are, it is really important to be aware of how much space you're devoting to description, and how long you're making a scene last, and to always be asking yourself why am I writing this? and what is it adding to the story?

I've just seen way too many writers all over the place who just have so much more baggage in their writing than there needs to be, and I think it's easy to conflate shortness with lack of effort when, just like long description, short and to the point writing is a tool just as useful as anything else.

[mickilennial]

I don’t know about you, but when I write a long descriptive moment I make sure every detail is important whether it is introspection, description, narration, or characterization. Not every writer who writes long form is “padding” their ideas with meaningless filler. It’s paper thin critique and argumentation if so, if you ask me.

[NuttsnBolts]

I've just seen way too many writers all over the place who just have so much more baggage in their writing than there needs to be

@Oddsbod

I've found that this is very true for those who don't know how to format a paragraph properly. The less likely they place speech in a separate paragraph, the more likely they are to bounce about the place with little direction.

[Oddsbod]

I don’t know about you, but when I write a long descriptive moment I make sure every detail is important whether it is introspection, description, narration, or characterization. Not every writer who writes long form is “padding” their ideas with meaningless filler. It’s paper thin critique and argumentation if so, if you ask me.

@Inkarnate

I'm not critiquing anyone or anything specifically. I'm just saying that, when approaching a piece, length for the sake of length is a bad practice, and avoiding shortness because you don't want to be seen as low-effort is similarly bad. For example, this was from the mods' RP Guide on an old forum I used to RP on, addressing the struggle to hit the required word-count for posts:

One thing that you must always remember is that adjectives are your friend.

"Nathaniel Long cut the mans head from his shoulders with one swing of his sword."

Whilst that is perfectly ok, its not great and as such can be drastically improved.

"Nathaniel Long parted the mans head from his neck, feeling slight resistance as he cut through the spinal cord, with one colossal swing of his motorized blade."

Remember no matter what you do you can always be more descriptive. Even then you can go into more detail. In that example above I could have written about how flecks of the mans blood were flying of the blade and how blood pored out of his neck like a water fountain.

Like, adjectives are adjectives, they're not your enemy or your friend. I don't think you can say either the first or the second thing here is inherently better than the other, but it's definitely not right to approach your writing with the mindset of, "the more I describe, the better it will be."

[mickilennial]

I'm just saying that, when approaching a piece, length for the sake of length is a bad practice,

@Oddsbod

Indeed, no disagreements there.

Though I must say surrounding yourself with descriptive writers/peers and not wanting to seem low effort does force you to get better. You end up like a sort of creative sponge. I do not think that is bad.

[Dion]

Keeping it short to be concise and 'straight to the point' isn't always the best solution either though.

[Dervish]

I don’t know about you, but when I write a long descriptive moment I make sure every detail is important whether it is introspection, description, narration, or characterization. Not every writer who writes long form is “padding” their ideas with meaningless filler. It’s paper thin critique and argumentation if so, if you ask me.

@Inkarnate

All of this is rather agreeable.

One size does not fit all for roleplaying; I approach it like collaborative writing and telling a story, which is why the games I'm in tend to be very collab-heavy. You can make a lot more natural dialog that way and scenes flow so much smoother. Two paragraph posts are pretty much reserved for situations when you need to post but have nothing to add, at least how I like writing.

[BrokenPromise]

I guess it's fair to say that the decision to post longer or shorter is up to each individual, and which choice is better needs to be evaluated on a post by post basis. I've read some really long, fluffy posts where I had to fight the urge to skim to the real point of it. I've read some short posts that would have been a lot better with more build up, descriptions, inner monologue, etc. There are also just times when a longer post disrupts flow, and a shorter post doesn't offer anything beyond an inner monologue parroting what all the other characters were thinking.

Also, a lot of roleplayers just don't know how to write interesting descriptions. Two people can write an "info dump" on the history of a kingdom. One could pull you into the story and the other would put you to sleep.

[Lady Absinthia]

Place holder posts - These are becoming all too common and they are frustrating to say the least. They are posts that really give nothing: nothing for another Rper to respond to, nothing for the Gm to build from. Part of being an Rper is to move forward, move your character forward. What makes it worse is when these people start complaining there is nothing to do.... Seriously? If your last three posts are just sitting there doing nothing while the world is turning around you that is on you.

[mickilennial]

The only time I ever use placeholder posts is when I want to do a in character GM reply to get something on track.

[Dervish]

Place holder posts - These are becoming all too common and they are frustrating to say the least. They are posts that really give nothing: nothing for another Rper to respond to, nothing for the Gm to build from. Part of being an Rper is to move forward, move your character forward. What makes it worse is when these people start complaining there is nothing to do.... Seriously? If your last three posts are just sitting there doing nothing while the world is turning around you that is on you.

@Lady Amalthea

Related somewhat, but it drives me nuts when people post WIP sheets, especially when they don't have any of the fields filled out. Just keep it in a Word file or Gdoc (or the character sheet subforum on this very site); it looks a lot better when you submit a finished sheet for review rather than forcing the GM to dig through pages of OOC to find the damn thing.

[Oddsbod]

Oh man is that a thing people do? Like, just post [WIP Post] with nothing else in it? Doesn't that basically grind the RPG to a halt while you're waiting on that one person to finish their post?

[Dervish]

Oh man is that a thing people do? Like, just post [WIP Post] with nothing else in it? Doesn't that basically grind the RPG to a halt while you're waiting on that one person to finish their post?

@Oddsbod

I've seen it a few times. Usually it's half done, but other times it's the skeleton and little else.

[Punished GN]

Also, it might just be me, but if I see five RPs of the same fandom in the span of a month, the first thing I do wouldn't be to make another.

[vancexentan]

Why does everything have to be a crossover? Or have zombies? Or be a parody? Can I get just a standard roleplay now of days in the context of the fandom/type of roleplay it belongs in? For example let's just take Star Trek...and cross it over with...Gears of War? Oh because that sounds fun when you could just do one of either roleplay. I have nothing against creative roleplays but almost all the roleplays in the genre's I'm interested in are either a poorly thought out version of a roleplay, or some sort of mix match of two separate fandoms or a joke. And then the few times I see one that holds promise...someone I don't like on RPG has already joined it.