Ambrosia Software Web Board: What's your biggest barrier to posting in the stories? - Ambrosia Software Web Board

My biggest barrier is that I have no interest in the stories and rarely come here.

I wanted to comment on Pippin's message, though: you're looking for more variety, more life in the story, no? That's what it sounds like to me - you're seeing that the group is so fixated on the plot that they've forgotten about having their characters be normal in some way? Not necessarily flawed (I don't know enough about any of the characters to comment on that), but just average sometimes. Real.

*shrug*

My two ¢.

Our TSs are so lacking in interest that if I had a Windows box, I'd be playing Hello Kitty Online right now.

but on a more serious note, (if not more honest ^_~), I think that part of the reason we don't have conversations in TS is that we never know if the other person will post, & it's awfully disheartening to have to go on with no sense that one's post was meaningful.

I mean, it's not as if I'd expect a reply to a post saying what I did in parallel to the rest of the party, but when I post part of an interaction with another party member, I like to recognized, even if it's just something like:

Shanadar ignored Silver's question, choosing rather to devote his attention to Rapierian's attempt to light The Wizard's beard on fire for the sixteen zillionth time.

Rather than: Shanadar seethed at Rapierian for the twenty gillianth time with no recognition that Silver just asked him a[n im]pertinent question.

Disclaimer: This is not meant to be pointed at ~Visitor~, it's just that the Shanadar/Rapierian dynamic is the easiest to play with.

Enough rant for now! *waves*

Yes Mackilroy that is a good way of putting it.

Thanks

Perhaps we could have a turn based sort of system,
like everyone writes their posts in an order
if it's someone's turn and they can't think of anything or don't feel like writing yet, they can just say ((pass)) or something and then the next person in line can go

maybe this would help things keep going?
or make them worse
who knows
it was just a thought
might be worth a try

Given in a probably disorganized fashion, my thoughts on the subject (by the way, I don't mean to be challenging or offensive to anyone; I'm just listing my observations):

I have found that, when time is left for character development, few, if any, people actually make use of it or post at all. What usually happens, from what I've seen recently at least, is that one or two people post, a succession of short wandering posts follows, and the TS stagnates until someone starts it moving again.

To keep the TS moving and to try and keep people interested, I have, in some cases in recent TSs, made a conscious effort to focus fairly steadily on the plot (my observations of previous TSs indicated that such a course might restore activity and keep a TS alive). That is, I have found that one way to keep participation up is to focus on the plot.

It is possible that the above method is only a temporary solution (and might not be a solution at all). The remedy for low activity might change over time and perhaps the above approach only worked in one or two cases. If anyone has any suggestions on this topic, please feel free to share them.

It might be that people don't enjoy the stories or the characters very much. I think in older TSs that people just had fun whatever they were writing. In recent TSs, people just don't seem to have the interest in the characters to post interactions among them. Of course, there is also the fact that many people are wary of using other's characters, not being certain how the owner of the character will react to the treatment of his creation.

The idea that Pippin proposed some time back might be a solution. If everyone has new characters, perhaps they will be more interested.


Mack: What would make you more interested in joining the stories? If you got to kill everyone else's character in every story ?


I don't think that a turn-based system would help, at least not for all TSs. It might work for a special kind of TS though.


There has been some discussion about the next TS after Terminated. I think that it could be extremely interesting and enjoyable for everyone, but there are still some details to work out about it.

Selax, on Nov 26 2008, 01:15 AM, said:

A turn-based TS probably wouldn't work. There would be certain people who wouldn't be able to post on time, but wouldn't want to pass their turn. The others in the TS could ending up waiting on one person for longer than expected. Purely hypothetical of course.

I like the current system of posting whenever you can or whenever you have something to say.