Spoiling the RP

[Kregor]

I wanted to mull about some of the things I've seen in rapidly increasing amounts of late, and what they do to spoil the fun for those who want to enjoy this as an RP mud, not a twink mud.

Names have been omitted because I'm doing this to encourage some players to think, not trying to rat players out.

1) Gang questing: This is where a bunch of people wanting to do the same quest form a party, go on said quest, and then take turns killing the boss, gettting the item, waiting for the boss to respawn and letting another player take his shot. I have had the misfortune of unwittingly going on two of these recently with two different alts, the first one I didn't know until it was already being done, the second I spoke up before we reached the boss, and the party dissolved.

Now, how well does this contribute to RP? The same foe popping back up over and over and a whole gang of people taking turns at their stab. I will accompany on quests that I have been on previously, and RP that I am unknowing of what happens, to enrich the questee's RP, doing round robin on the quest totally kills *any* RP you could possibly have. And another consequence which leads me to #2:

2) Passing on quest info OOC: I don't know how many times I have been bombarded lately with IMs from people asking "Have you been on the XXXX quest?" and wanting to know some particular of the quest, or even how to find or start the quest. Another way to do this is people passing on info like "Hey, I got such and such and so and so place, by killing this and that!" Or even worse, the info is shared by putting together a party of people who you want to share the quest with and doing #1 above.

There one huge problem caused by #1 and #2 above, you cheapen some builder's hard work on a quest by flooding the MUD with the quest items to where noone has anything that is notable or rare. Worst case you end up not even being able to give away a quest item that had hours of coding work go into it and suddenly is about as special as a +1 dagger in a Munchkin game. One quest in particular is located in a place where almost nobody used to go, until everyone got the word up about the quest, suddenly, everyone is making a pilgrimage solely for the sake of a quest bit.

3) The Mad Dash: How is it possible to RP when you drag a party through a quest area at top speed, hacking everything in your way, riding your mounts into buildings and caves, healing or performing skills that require hands with weapons in your hands, junking things, and dashing off or quitting in the same room as a group you are with when you are all done with what you want to do? It takes time to RP properly... if you are in a hurry and you just want to slash and grab the goods, maybe you should pass on FK that day unless you just plan to go and kill in a levelling area.

4) Sharing IC relationship info OOC: Get an IM that pops up saying "Hey, so and so is telling me in IM you're saying a whole bunch of crap about me!" or "I want to know if you really did do whatever to so and so." For those who ask: If you wanna know what I think? Interact IC, and decide whether you believe my char or not. For those who share OOC what I do and say IC with someone else: Thanks a whole lot... you have ruined any hint of intrigue or element of unknown I may have wanted in my interaction with the other person. And of course anyone who would be willing to share this info over IM, chances are will use the info in their IC relations later, whether they know it IC or not. And speaking of IMs....

5) Spending more time in IMs than IC: I don't know how many times I end up waiting for an IC response from someone in the same room because they are abviously, blatantly, spending more time in IM-land than they are in FK. Lag is one thing, getting lost is quite another. If you want to interact with people, do it IC, talk face to face, or send a tell (They made it cheaper to tell probably to try and encourage people to use it) Keep the majority of your talk IC and in the MUD, so that people trying to intereact with you in the same room can actually interact.

This is, after all, an RP mud. The term RPG as been muddled by D&D-like computer games like Baldur's Gate and others where it's just glorified hack and grab with a first person PC and a rush to grab levels and items and power. Think of FK more like a good old times tabletop game, which I believe is more the owners and IMMs' intent. If I am wrong on this, then the owners and/or IMMs can differ, and I will stand corrected.

[Tandria]

I have a small comment to make on number 5. Not a shot at you or anything, just a comment.

There are a few of us on the game who are on the Newbie Council, and being on said Council can mean that we need to go out of our way to help people OOCly, especially by otells. If some of us take a few seconds to respond during an RP, it is likely that we're sending an otell to a player that needs help. Personally, I find it frustrating when I'm trying to help a younger player and the person I'm RPing with gives me IC and/or OOC hints to hurry up (not by saying it flat-out, but with subtle things such as sighing before you get a moment to respond, etc.).

Aside from that, there are those of us who are slow-typers, or perhaps they're trying to type up an elaborate smote. How do you know for absolute certain that a person is spending more time in IMs than IC? Perhaps they're slow typers, or perhaps they're typing out a long smote to help with the rp. Roleplay doesn't always happen spontaneously . . . sometimes it requires a great deal of thought.

[Bugoron]

You make a few good points, indeed, Kregor. I also enjoy seeing RP played out to its fullest, but I have also come to an understanding of something.

As Forgotten Kingdoms is a MUD, it is certain that, whether we like it or not (most I reckon would not), there are going to be (and likely are) players that are here for the sole purpose of building a god-like character, neglecting most forms of RP just to go out and get all the quest items, max out their stats, and proceed to annoy those who attempt to RP by flaunting their mountain of special items, weapons, etc.

I believe we coin these people "Twinks"

Sad as it is to say, I don't believe we'll ever see the day that we don't have them, it would be nice if everyone could just settle down and RP, knowing that there is all the time in the world to get quest items and such, but some are just too greedy and impatient, I suppose. It is their choice, but I believe it is also their loss.

The best thing we can do is to simply keep our own RP at its best. It can be irritating to have people ignore RP, but all things pass, and it will come back full-circle to RP again, without a doubt. Enjoy the RP you *do* have, it's the real reason to be here, and don't let others spoil it.

Just a little thought from me.

[Elwin]

I agree with Tandria and that's really the only problem I had with your post Kregor. Many times, I am having multiple conversations with other people. Other times, people walk in and say something to me while I was away for a second. Finally, I am also not a superb typer, and if I have to type out a smote or a long explanation, it'll take me a while. So, Like Tandria said, don't automatically jump to conclusions that the person is on IM when they are taking a while to respond.

Also, they may be on IM while playing. However, they may be talking about RL things. It seems sort of selfish to expect 100% of a person's attention while playing. I can very rarely give all of my attention to the game, so does that mean I shouldn't play? I don't think so. If I didn't play everytime I couldn't devote myself 100% to the game, I'd be on maybe an hour a week.

Sorry this was so long. The rest of your ideas I agree with completely though. Nice post.

[Mele]

Not everything is one sided, and I would like to shed another light on this.


1. Gang questing.

How can one possibly complain about the lack of rp people have while questing, while in the same breath adding that it is irritating you cannot do said quest when a large group does a quest? RP and wait? I strongly disagree on this theory of gang questing. There are a lot of large quests in the game, that grouping is HEAVILY encouraged. While the mud is rp, this does not make people incapable of rping during a quest. For starts, we die all the time, and we come back. Everyone roleplays that as just being a part. So while you may go and kill big baddun once, his big baddun friends can come back and raise him.

While I do think it can be considered poor for five people to do a quest at the same time, I can see a second side to two or three in a five or six person party completing a quest. Though I personally have not done it, I can imagine for those of us whom do not live in the US time zone, who have much less rp opporunity and quest partner time, two people catching a quest at a time is a huge relief to them.


2. Passing quest info.

This one makes me sour personally as I've written quests. But this is something for the immortal staff to handle. If someone is constantly IMing you for quest info, or several someones, you should probably block them or make your buddylist more private. Personally if someone im's me asking me, I blatently tell them where to go.


3. The Mad Dash

Yep, kind of stinky. But again, I know when immortals see something like this they send extra mobs and extra plot to said party. This is not our place to ever tell people what is too fast or not.


4. Sharing IC info OOC

Again, this is pretty stinky. But it happens, a lot. One thing I remember about being a teenager is a love of gossip. If someone has truly crossed a line of sharing something for you, then you need to email complaints about sharing ooc info. Sharing ooc info is a pretty blatently well known offense here. If you send in an email, the imms will do their job.


5. Spending more time in IMs.

I find this one very offensive. Tandria words it great.

Many people on this mud have small children, who require lots of attention. Some people have grumpy parents, one thing they're infamous for is the good 'ol "If I call you I mean now!!" assuming someone is slow to reply because hey, they'd rather talk to someone else then rp is not fair. Obviously people are logged onto rp, so there could be something keeping them from doing so, others are just slow. Some of my favourite people to rp with are so slow at doing it I jokingly give them a hard time.



For my own finish, one of my hugest pet peeves is players judging other players rp (or what they think is lack thereof) or their intent on the mud. While it's very easy to assume someone is not in for the best while only seeing bits and pieces, it is very unfair to assume someone is out for the worst. Everyone is easy to judge, it is by far human nature. But it is not fair of anyone to unleash a judgement on someone's RP or time on fk and how they spend it. While a lot of this is valid, in my personal opinion I do not believe it is appropriate to flame your fellow players over things like this, if there are large problems with certain people(I would assume yes, as you have mentioned leaving names out) then this is something you should share with the staff, so they can help to make said actions stop.

Danica

[Ciele]

I think RP is what you make of it, and you get out of it what you put in. I love RPing but am new to MUDs and stats and skills and feats are all alien to me since I usually use forum or IM RPing, totally text based. I joined FK because I was looking for a new RP community, and also as a way to decide if I like this sort of RP enough to set up a tabletop RP group with some friends.

While I appreciate that everyone has other things going on around them, it's counter-intuitive for someone like me to have a char sitting in the market square with several others and no one speaking for five minutes straight. I suppose the thing I miss the most is the little 'so-and-so is writing a message' thing from my MSN RPing background. It must be completely impossible for a client to include this (if I'm wrong pleeease tell me) but does anyone know if there's a client that'll play a sound every time a new message pops up, as this would make time-sharing between IM and FK much easier.

On the whole, I think it would be polite to tell people ooc if you're a little distracted, especially if they're replying within seconds of everything you post. When you're eager to RP you can often pounce upon the first person you encounter to RP with, and are too involved to pull out before you realise that they're actually making a four course meal and cleaning the sink at the same time and can only post once every three minutes - majorly frustrating. On the other hand, of course, if you need to rush off and clean the sink, it's nice to have people who are understanding about this sort of thing. Neither viewpoint can be considered groundless, so it's got to be handled with cooperation.

[Elwin]

Well, Zmud turns it's icon green every time a new message pops up on the game. As far as anything else, I don't know. Zmud is what I use to connect to the game.

[Kregor]

I have no issues with anyone who has posted thus far, least of which anyone on the newbie council who makes retort on my points. This is not a wide sweeping statement lumping everyone I play into it.

To Mele, Tandria and others, regarding point #5, I realize there are issues like newbie help, IC personal issues and such that can delay people's responses in an RP... I have three kids, and realize that temporary crisis aversion can cause interruptions, (of course, I also use the courtesy of an osay to that effect so that the others in the RP understand, and the people I know on this thread with such situations often do likewise). This was not a wholesale sweep of "You must focus on the RP, and only the RP." My wife is a slow typer too, and I've messed up a huge long smote before only to have to retype it. As I said, there *is* a difference between lag and getting lost... a difference between an afk or a couple minutes wait, and 10 minutes of dead air.

And as far as making assumptions, I am merely using a logical process that says if point #2 and point #4 are true, then issue #5 must also be true. Especially if it warranted a couple of OOC echoes on the MUD last night.

This was not a flame, I singled out noone and said insult to noone. The point of the post is to hopefully stimulate people to comment and to think about their actions.

And as I said before... I'm not trying to get people in trouble... that's why this is on the FK Board, rather than in the form of logs going to the admins.

Unwitting "twinks" should have their thoughts stimulated... people who are truly just here to powergame will go about their business, and then, as Mele says, the IMMs can take over.... perhaps this thread will help some who are just not thinking about it, think about it a little more, before it gets to the point of an IMM having to intervene.

[Kregor]

How can one possibly complain about the lack of rp people have while questing, while in the same breath adding that it is irritating you cannot do said quest when a large group does a quest?

Eh? I didn't say that in my post. In the recent cases of this I was there merely as an escort, it was not my intention to complete the quest at all.

While I do think it can be considered poor for five people to do a quest at the same time, I can see a second side to two or three in a five or six person party completing a quest. Though I personally have not done it, I can imagine for those of us whom do not live in the US time zone, who have much less rp opporunity and quest partner time, two people catching a quest at a time is a huge relief to them.

Well... my point was the four or five people doing the rinse and repeat during prime time, not a couple of people on the other side of the world. If I am lending my ranger's blade to escort a party, and I ask whose quest it is, it's irritating to hear 4 or 5 people say "mine!"

I have absolutely nothing against grouping... this *is* D&D after all, and parties are what make D&D cool. There are other threads discussing how a group can handle partying thru a quest, dealing with things you already know about a quest you completed previously, or knowledge you gained while in another questee's party, etc, and how to handle those things in RP. There are plenty of ways to do so that enrich the RP. Yes, big baddie's friends raise him, or another chieftan takes one chieftan's place, etc. Ways that allow for revisitation, not multikill.

[Shabanna]

Not everything is one sided, and I would like to shed another light on this.


5. Spending more time in IMs.

I find this one very offensive. Tandria words it great.

Many people on this mud have small children, who require lots of attention. Some people have grumpy parents, one thing they're infamous for is the good 'ol "If I call you I mean now!!" assuming someone is slow to reply because hey, they'd rather talk to someone else then rp is not fair. Obviously people are logged onto rp, so there could be something keeping them from doing so, others are just slow. Some of my favourite people to rp with are so slow at doing it I jokingly give them a hard time.



For my own finish, one of my hugest pet peeves is players judging other players rp (or what they think is lack thereof) or their intent on the mud. While it's very easy to assume someone is not in for the best while only seeing bits and pieces, it is very unfair to assume someone is out for the worst. Everyone is easy to judge, it is by far human nature. But it is not fair of anyone to unleash a judgement on someone's RP or time on fk and how they spend it. While a lot of this is valid, in my personal opinion I do not believe it is appropriate to flame your fellow players over things like this, if there are large problems with certain people(I would assume yes, as you have mentioned leaving names out) then this is something you should share with the staff, so they can help to make said actions stop.

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I dont think this post was intended as a flame... at all...

I know I personally would rather post something or read a post in hopes of bringing it into the light rather than run straight to the Imms.( sometimes just realizing what others think is enough to deter) *shrug*

It is my feeling that the comments here are of use. However, it is difficult to offer constructive criticism here...as it seems someone will always take offense

I believe ( though I can only speak for myself) that when discussing the IM thing... Kregor did not mean the occasional brief pause for slow typing or for someone to aid a newbie etc... I have been in a situation where I tired to RP with someone who was clearly not attentive. I believe a simple Osay if you are distracted is the best policy as most will understand ( and Im certain all on the newbie council are careful to be attentive in all RP situations). It is when someone is "gone" for 5 minutes straight, with no osay word,on multiple occasions, that it becomes not very nice and not very fun...

My 2 copper...
"the Banna"

[Kirkus]

There is another problem you need to realize about big groups doing quests. If you have every played table top D&D then you know how I see it. It is a group effort. The problem with muds is that you can't, as far as I know, give credit to the whole group so the person credited with the kill gets the qbit. This is another of those fancy moments where we have to suspend reality a bit further than our scifi minds would like. How I see it, pause, rewind and player #2 takes the killing blow.

[Dalvyn]

Just posting that, as an area builder and player, I agree 100% with what Kregor said.

1 - Gang questing

That makes no IC sense. As written in help quest information, quests shouldn't (ICly) be doable more than once. There is a difference between gang questing and having a party go on a (new/unknown) quest: in the first case, the group is used primarily to slay mobs faster and get to the reward more quickly (think "twinks"). In the second case, the group is used to allow for roleplay, and slay more powerful mobs. When doing a quest with a group, there should always be one (and only one) leader who leads the group and officially/technically completes the quest.

Now, there is nothing wrong with being a so-called "twink". Different people find fun in different kind of gameplay. Yet, FK is a RP mud, do not take it for WoW or most mmorpg out there. In other words, twinks are not "evil persons" per se... yet, this is not the place for them; this is not a game for them.

2 - Passing on quest info OOC.

That is the number one nightmare for any builder.

Once again, that comes from the twink mentality that they want to get the reward, that the reward is the main reason for completing a quest. What about thinking differently, what about thinking that the fun part is actually to overcome obstacles, to create situations where you can have some fun group roleplay, to solve puzzles, to learn about the mobs'/area's history and about why things are as they are ?

I'll take the Old SOW as an example (because I know this area well; the same holds for many other areas). You can see it as a series of rooms inhabited by devils and, when you kill them in a given order and do some things, you get nifty magical items. Or, you can see it as a ruined school where lots of teachers and students in magic used to live and learn, that got invaded by devils at a given time, for a given reason, where some famous sorceress once lived, where some teachers were researching special topics, and so on. Twink view of 'reward first' against roleplay view of 'area/mob history, reasons why things are as they are now, ...'

And once you consider the journey, the grouping up, the obstacle overcoming, the puzzle solving, the history learning, ... as the most important part of the quest, there is no reason left to share information OOCly.

3 - Mad Dash

Similar to point 2 above...

4 - Sharing IC relationship info OOCly

Similar to point 2. Quest info or IC info are similar in this way. Distinguish between the character and the player.

5 - Spending more time in IMs than on the game

Another BIG pet peeve of mine, especially when it happens during a roleplay.

People with a good reason not to answer quickly shouldn't feel targetted by this. If you have kids or other occupations that prevent you from answering quickly (or are part of the NC), you can say this through an OOC; besides, in this case, it's not constant: you may be slow to answer from times to times, but not as a general rule. If you are a slow typer or have some other kind of disability, you are not targetted either; and it's generally visible, because the time before the answer is proportionnal to the length of the answer.

Yet, when people are constantly slow to answer, when they take hours before sprouting out a simple 'Yes' or a similarly short answer, it's clear that they are spending their time out there on an IM program, or surfing on the web, or whatever; and that shows that they pay no respect (and only minimal attention) to you or the roleplay that is going on.

All that is IC should be done on the mud. There's no way for the imms to enforce that rule, but, to me, it's the simplest, most basic, fairness rule. When you share IC info through IM, or when you spend most of your time on IM and only pay attention to the mud from time to time, you're showing how you utterly have no consideration/respect for the other players.

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And, to conclude, I'd like to answer to the remarks that you shouldn't judge your fellow players' behaviour, or that this is up to the imms to enforce all those rules (no gang questing, no sharing of IC info through OOC channels, ...).

I strongly disagree with that. This is no school with a teacher/student relation. This is no game with a policeman/criminal relation. The imms and the players aren't there to oppose each others, but to hopfully have fun together. If you, as a player, see something that you think shouldn't happen (if you are asked for IC information, if you see some gang questing, ...), it's up to you to react to this. Imms are not the police of the mud; and they aren't supposed to always be spying on people so they can react as soon as players break some kind of rules. Not only would that be totally un-fun, but that's practically impossible to do. Don't make the imms responsible for things that don't go right in the mud. It's also your responsibility, as a player, to create a good gaming environment.

[Natasha]

One thing that interested me in this... would it be possible, perhaps for more areas of the Underdark as they become explorable, or large dungeons, that a "Party Questbit" type system gets set up? For example, an area is set up for a party of a certain size and will give multiple rewards of varying degrees that the party will have to split up and give everyone glory. I think this would be really neat, and would make quests like Undermountain work as the party progresses as a whole. For example, doing Undermountain, requires, over a long amount of time (when the proper RP is used) for the people to each do all of the quests required to go further. If a party qbit were made, this would not be needed and would make for more RP/interested gameplay/less twinkage... That is, if this is all doable code-wise.

Natasha

[Dalvyn]

From a technical point of view, that would be possible, but that would require really heavy code modifications (changes of the base/hard code, and not only of the area code). That would open a whole can of worms (not sure about the idiom here). For example, what happens if the party gets separated ? What happens if someone in the party has to log off while the party is in the middle of a quest ? And what happens if character X, who has already completed the quest with a group, is asked to be part of another group ?