Jig

Wolf Manor

<- in a band
<- can so utterly confirm

I guess you're both in the same boat of being expected to work for free, in order to get the privilege of more work for free, in order to maybe get the chance to work for maybe some money at some point.

Wolf Manor

I assure you, no sparrow injuring will be required. :)
:)))))))))))))))))
please no jiggadee. pls no

@MyCatGinger

I, uh, don't know how to tell you this...

Wolf Manor

It's okay, I'll go and tread on some sparrows and you can nurse them back to health.

Might not be what you wanted to hear, but it's the thought that counts. Right?

Wolf Manor

My bowels have been doing things which could only be described as unspeakable.

Approaching IC Threads As A Whole

Holy mother of Mahz, that's a long post. While nowhere near length (I don't think), Wolf is running a similar thing; it's very close-quarters with a limited cast of players and NPC's, so PC-PC or PC-NPC interaction is a constant, and I've really encouraged players to do it 'my way'; that is, to make sure that the completed posts are only from one POV - and they're lovely, so they do. :P

That said, I discourage them from putting 'credits' at the top as in your example, along with any other OoC content. None of it seems necessary; we know we won't Godmode each other, and including OoC information seems to be, by definition, interrupting the flow of the IC as one long narrative. Do you not feel* that including those credits undermine the effort that has gone into crafting a continuous work?

I'm reminded of an exception, which would be My Immortal, the infamous Harry Potter fanfic (which I urge everybody to read, for the comedy value). There is a kind of meta-narrative in the author's notes at the start of each chapter, which manifests in the story - though I wouldn't say this typically applies to OoC notes in an IC section in pbp.

* by which I mean 'I'm keen to hear your opinion' rather than 'I'm rhetorically asking about what I consider to be a flaw in order to make you feel bad'

Approaching IC Threads As A Whole

Increasingly in my game, which I always bloody refer to if you've seen me in discussions before, Wolf Manor, I'm concerning myself with how the thread as a whole appears to a hypothetical audience. I know that such an audience probably doesn't exist, but that's how I'm approaching games I'm in.

An audience that reads just a given IC thread is typically faced with minimum one narrator and minimum one protagonist and, generally speaking, a complete mess to try to read; given the communal nature of pbp, there's typically only a certain amount of planning, and even that is more general plot-stuff, and not how the IC would be read as a whole.

That's not even mentioning different approaches to the medium, which can encompass varying writing styles (tenses and paradigms), varying presentation styles (use of off-site links, multimedia, and colour), and varying levels of IC-ness (ie; using OoC notes in the IC).

I think broadly speaking, people are aware of most of these factors, but without thinking about them. I can well imagine (and have seen and have been myself) a GM that requests players write in conventional style (3rd person past tense), presumably to conserve the convention of presentation and so the whole IC doesn't feel too jolting.

Do other people think about this sort of stuff?
To what degree do - and should - GM's consider the IC thread's content as an entire (if incomplete) work of art and seek to influence the writing of the participants with that in mind?

Colours in the IC

And, obviously, the level of experimentation players should feel free to indulge in should be for the GM to decide.

[@Myself]

There are rules to the presentation, and they are useful, but part of being creative is knowing how to break the rules effectively.

@El Taco Taco

I think the above are the keys to successfully getting on with regard to colour and 'multimedia-pbp' in general.

How do I get people intrested in my rp? OR: What's the best way to throw an rp pitch to get people excited to play your game?

Problems, put bluntly:

1) You posted in the Advanced Section. Advanced gets the lowest traffic. You minimised your pool before you started.
2) Honestly, it doesn't look like an Advanced interest check (see #3), so you might well be passed over by people who might think the RP should be in a different section.
3) It really isn't the best interest check in the world. Standards for Advanced are typically higher (ie: potential players expect to see something more impressive), and the level of detail is quite thin. It's set in an original world with barely one paragraph of geographic detail but almost nothing on history, culture, etc. I don't do fantasy, but if I did, I wouldn't have the faintest idea where to begin. The Codex is a great tool, but it's hidden on the fourth post.
4) It also isn't the most attractive interest check in the world. The title is clear but a little uninspiring, and there's no formatting at all. Formatting interest checks means you can lay out information clearly and attractively so people can easily get the information they need.

Solutions, for next time:

1) Try Casual. If you like big games and want lots of interest, Casual really is your place.
2) If you stay in Advanced, watch your grammar and format your post. Think less 'fun thing to do' and more 'business proposal' until you're confident you know what you're doing.
3) Give a concise description of world-information, plot-information, and thematic information along with a tl;dr that doesn't include references to stuff some people might not get, and give a clear link to any external sources with a 'for more information' message all in the first post. You kind of have all the bits and pieces, but you need to polish them, which brings us to #4
4) Hit it with the Pretty-Stick. This is a great resource. Some people just won't read an Interest Check if it's badly-organised and some others (like myself) will find the information very hard to take in. Leave carriage returns between sections. Have headings. If your Interest Check is badly-organised, by the way, it gives the impression that you're a disorganised GM, also known as the worst thing imaginable to the role-playing population.

Wolf Manor

To be fair, more adult Pokemon fans (allow the paradox, just for me) would fucking love the shit out of Pokemon Adventures/Pokemon Special manga. It features the corpses of Pokemon being possessed by ghosts, multiple characters dying, pretty much every unique NPC that appears in the games, and a motherfucking Arbok getting bisected.

I also read Fullmetal Alchemist until the end and Death Note until

Legit Spoiler

L dies; no further because I hated N and thought the movie's plot was much neater

but I don't have a billion hours to waste any more.

Colours in the IC

Traditional novels have never felt the need to literally colour their dialogue and I kinda buy the argument that, if you have faith in the quality of your writing (certainly writing that is comparable to traditional novel conventions), you shouldn't need to visually differentiate between one section of dialogue and another; the words should do that for you, and colouring your words so that they don't have to seems like it's asking to get into bad habits if one ever turns their hand to a more 'serious' all-text project. If one considers plain text to be 'tedious' or 'monotone' to the point they're distracted then they're either not reading it or it's bad writing. Either way, using colours to fix the problem is only addressing the symptom of (in)comprehensibility and not the root problem of the writer or the reader not being fit for task.

Then again, one of the things I love about the internet is how it facilitates the challenging of and experimentation with the form. Who says, now that we have options, all writing should be in the plain text format? Including music and pictures and maps and even videos is completely viable on forum pbp, and, if it's thought-through, any and all of these can be useful tools. Does colour have a role in this? Probably. I see people using hiders and indentations and horizontal lines and colours to divide up whole sections of text with different tones; perhaps a brief glance into another POV or a flashback. Somebody used colours extremely well in the game I'm GMing to simulate a text message:

_{everything okay J?}
^{Yeah I'm fine. Thanks for breakfast. <3}

@AuntFlavia

I'm reminded of one of my favourite features of the BBC series Sherlock; having text messages and electronic content appearing on-screen for the viewer. Playing with the form can yield new ways of audience interaction, and, whether it's superficially slick or integral to the themes/content of the work, experimentation with art is, you know, generally a good thing in my book.

That said, being thought-through is key. Writing dialogue in colours, and, particularly, when each character has a consistent and unique colour in a game, if Mr Pink and Mrs Orange ever get in a long back-and-forth exchange, it's going to be utterly revolting to even look at on the page - which is not going to help distinguish dialogue for everybody, because it may simply become distracting for some. And, obviously, the level of experimentation players should feel free to indulge in should be for the GM to decide.