I used to RP so much, and it felt like such a positive outlet for creativity. And it was fun! It was a great way to share your interests with others and have them share their interests with you.

And RP constantly evolves, so it keeps your mind entertained and active, you know? Every day could bring new events, new interaction, new characters, and it gave so much to think about and so many sources of inspiration. I love writing, I love characters, I love RP.

But short of staying awake until the ridiculously early hours of the morning there's just no way to be active when 80% of the DWRP base is also active, you know?

And while there's a lot to be said for writing one or two tags a day, there's something so frantic and engaging about threading back and forth in real time. Having a whole sequence of events play out over a few hours rather than a few days or weeks.

Almost all DWRP games these days are built around, like... almost like MMORPG raid mechanics? Where you have to be online at This Time to participate, it will last This Long, and you will gain These Rewards and This Character Development.

And by god do I see the appeal in that, this definitely isn't a criticism of the structure.

But if you join one of these games and you don't align with the timezones of these events you're basically out on your ass, you know? I've never actually encountered a hostile environment, everyone still WANTS to include you and will happily bring you into their game, but it just isn't viable.

You just end up skittering around the outskirts of everything.

Sometimes I imagine making an RP that is specifically designed for a core demographic of GMT-based players?

And of course anyone would be welcome to play (just like most DWRP!), but everything would be scheduled with GMT in mind.

But even if I could find a concept and built it all up, I don't think there'd be enough of an audience to keep it going.

I think most GMT people that actively RP or want to actively RP are... more able to just work around the barriers? i.e. stay up until 5am, lmao

SURE DO MISS THOSE BYGONE DAYS

(I don't really miss them, I love the place my life is at, but I do miss some of the convenience associated to those days, hahaha)

Anyway hi guys!!!

As someone in the Right Timezone but works odd hours and weekends, I feel this.

I know GMT people who set an alarm, wake up at stupid hours and then go back to sleep which seems commendable but gosh

do they not have jobs?? D:

They do. They just seem to live chronically sleep-deprived which utterly amazes me.

I spend enough time tired as it is

Oh my goodness, like, I'm certainly not criticising anyone who makes that life choice but there is absolutely no way I could maintain that myself.

I've gotten myself into a headspace of "what if we did make an RP like this..." now, but I really don't think it would end up viable. Maybe if it had a character cap or something, so we could pretend the lack of players is a feature rather than disinterest, hahaha!

I think it would require being a small and very focused game, and would probably put more on the mods to provide content to make up for the lack of players

Which I think can be done and could be rewarding but it would still be. Intense.

Yeah, definitely something to keep thinking about before jumping into any grand commitments, hahaha

Yeah. THINGS TO THINK ABOUT AT LEAST.

I’ve been thinking about My Own Potential Game and knowing it would require enough effort to run that I wouldn’t be able to play any characters in it myself is a...thing...

Yeah, that's when you end up like "how can I justify a dozen VERY IMPORTANT NPCs so that I can interact with everyone all the time and still actually be doing my job"....

Yeah. It COULD be wiggled around if the main NPC you have is a character you enjoy playing enough to make up for it, but NPCs by their nature will have a different form of relationship to PCs so you miss out on some of the PC-PC CR you could get.

I would think tho for a smaller game for a smaller audience you’d also want a smaller cast of NPCs and Aather handled the size and intensity of the game by basically outsourcing NPCs and events to players and there was a separate application process for it

Yeah, it would definitely end up being a different kind of playing experience, that's for sure...

Kind of ramming thoughts together cause at work and also Plurk but I think if you were to run a GMT time-zone game you’d definitely want to find a way to both keep it small to keep things manageable on you and also find a way to get players involved in event running themselves to avoid burnout on your end

So structuring your game sort of like Aather and other games like it by letting people have an NPC they all could take a drive at and/or letting themselves app their own NPCs if you feel your plot necessitates a bigger cast

ALL THINGS TO CONSIDER. I think I'd probably have the "app an NPC" concept as a backburner to begin with, at least until there's a sense of just how many players there actually are going in. Don't want to run before we're walking, you know. But if there did seem to be interest then, yeah, encouraging ways for players to continually generate content

And you might get a really good and engaging game out of it if you manage to spread the load of keeping things going and running across the playerbase, and the playerbase will also feel pretty engaged as they’d also be parttime runners themselves

could only be a good thing.

/nodnod yeah, START SMALL, PREPARE TO GO BIG LATER sounds good

I keep mentioning Aather a lot but also it’s the only game I lasted more than 8 months in and I spent like almost 4 years there so I think the whole system it had really, really worked for maintaining player engagement :B

(At least it really really worked for an RP commitment scrub like me)

AATHER WAS QUITE THE EPIC

And yeah, I think there are definitely lessons and tips to be garnered from such a long-running and story driven RP.

There are plenty of long-running RPs across the history of LJ (and to a lesser extent DW), but quite a large number of them were essentially sandboxes with extremely small-scale events to keep players entertained.

And I am definitely not insulting that, it worked for a lot of people! Frankly all the games I played in longest had that kind of format.

But Aather really was a lot more focused than that and nonetheless kept that pace and momentum running for a really long time, and I think there's lessons to be gathered in that"

!

/nodnod!

I keep saying I want to RP again but I think I do best in highly-focused RP environments where characters and players both can get engaged in the plot and that’s a hard thing to find in RP cause it’s...really hard to run and keep going.