The Chat Thread

[+Ark1002]

1 minute ago, xinoehp512 said:

Also, Alleyshards are primarily Badadah's idea, so I wouldn't use that as the end-all most powerful items. You could create your own, if you feel like it.

Everything else makes sense, but creating your own Alleyshards defeats the purpose. They aren't end-all most powerful items, they each have a unique function that can not be replicated.

[xinoehp512]

I know that. You had a very good reason to create the Alleyshards, and someone else would have to have equal reason to create something like that. (Kudos to the idea by the way.) It is not outside the realm of possibility for another item that does the same thing to be created, however. We can do literally anything. The catch is that we all have to agree, or it never really happened.

[+Sorana]

Honestly, I'm not sure if we need this dimension...

[old man moomba]

We are doing something groudbreaking here: a multi-level rp, with a second level populated by beings that are direct manifestations of our Real World personalities. If you can find any other rp that did/does this, I'd like to hear it.

[xinoehp512]

Okay, here goes.

I have two key ideas that I'm trying to get across here with what I'm describing.

First, the Alleyverse is made of ideas. The reason that the Avatars are all-powerful is that they can add or remove ideas. The reason that they can do that is that they are representative of the Author. And yes, if everyone ignores the actions of the Avatar then they have not happened. That is true. However, the Alleyverse exists in each of our minds, (as well as anyone else who might be reading it), so there can never be one single idea of what the alleyverse is. This is hard to represent in-universe as we don't know about outside perception, so we are going to have to find a way around it. This RP has an "canon-until-proven-rejected" policy, from what I can tell, and that's sort of what I propose. In addition, just because the action is undone doesn't mean that the Avatar never made it. That leads into my next main point.

The Mountain is, in my opinion, the manifestation of the 17th shard in the alleyverse. That was always what I intended it for, and I think it makes sense, especially with the explanation of how Avatars/Authors work. The reason that the Avatar is different is that the account is a separate thing from the individual, and the reason they are the same is that the individual is using the account to express themselves. You made a comment about how this didn't work because the Mountain was only as real as the Alleyverse; I think that it does work, if you look at it in a certain way.

The way I've set it out, any Avatar could say that all of this just stops existing. By the canon-until-rejected policy, it would happen. The alleyverse would go back to being controlled just by the Authors. However, if we told that person that we weren't quite ready to throw it all out the window, it would undo that. The Mountain would never have left, in its own perspective.

The important thing is that the Avatars are is a personification of the 17th shard account. That includes posts, threads, and any titles you might have.

Have to leave now, more later.

All this might be confusing to people. Suffice it to say that I have two main premises I'm basing this off of.

1.The Avatars have to power to add and remove ideas from the alleyverse.

2.The Avatars are personifications of 17th shard accounts. 

Edited November 22, 2018 by xinoehp512

[+Ark1002]

7 hours ago, xinoehp512 said:

Okay, here goes.

I have two key ideas that I'm trying to get across here with what I'm describing.

First, the Alleyverse is made of ideas. The reason that the Avatars are all-powerful is that they can add or remove ideas. The reason that they can do that is that they are representative of the Author. And yes, if everyone ignores the actions of the Avatar then they have not happened. That is true. However, the Alleyverse exists in each of our minds, (as well as anyone else who might be reading it), so there can never be one single idea of what the alleyverse is. This is hard to represent in-universe as we don't know about outside perception, so we are going to have to find a way around it. This RP has an "canon-until-proven-rejected" policy, from what I can tell, and that's sort of what I propose. In addition, just because the action is undone doesn't mean that the Avatar never made it. That leads into my next main point.

The Mountain is, in my opinion, the manifestation of the 17th shard in the alleyverse. That was always what I intended it for, and I think it makes sense, especially with the explanation of how Avatars/Authors work. The reason that the Avatar is different is that the account is a separate thing from the individual, and the reason they are the same is that the individual is using the account to express themselves. You made a comment about how this didn't work because the Mountain was only as real as the Alleyverse; I think that it does work, if you look at it in a certain way.

The way I've set it out, any Avatar could say that all of this just stops existing. By the canon-until-rejected policy, it would happen. The alleyverse would go back to being controlled just by the Authors. However, if we told that person that we weren't quite ready to throw it all out the window, it would undo that. The Mountain would never have left, in its own perspective.

The important thing is that the Avatars are is a personification of the 17th shard account. That includes posts, threads, and any titles you might have.

Have to leave now, more later.

All this might be confusing to people. Suffice it to say that I have two main premises I'm basing this off of.

1.The Avatars have to power to add and remove ideas from the alleyverse.

2.The Avatars are personifications of 17th shard accounts. 

Agreed, with one exception. What do you mean the intended the mountain the be that? Me and Mac made it. But for the 17th shard mountain piece, the top is like that. But also, Dwig, you're right, this is in theory a totally unique concept for an RP. I'm excited, personally.

[Voidus]

Disagree with your first point, a writer has the power to introduce an idea, now you can flavour that as being created through the power of an avatar but the one doing the creating is you, not the character.

[xinoehp512]

54 minutes ago, Voidus said:

Disagree with your first point, a writer has the power to introduce an idea, now you can flavour that as being created through the power of an avatar but the one doing the creating is you, not the character.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

 

1 hour ago, Badadah said:

What do you mean the intended the mountain the be that? Me and Mac made it. But for the 17th shard mountain piece, the top is like that.

Sorry, I meant the top. Got stuff mixed up in my mind. The Mountain is a specifically Alleyverse thing.

[Gancho Libre]

I'm not sure why we have fourth wall breaking in general.

[Voidus]

Well someone has to keep the mimes employed.

[+Ark1002]

Also to confuse newcomers.

[Gancho Libre]

Or... confuse oldcomers?

[Life&Death]

Also, it’s fun.

[Archer]

Heads up, this is going to completely change the topic. But the MotG discussion has mostly moved over there, and I didn’t want to make a new thread, so I’m hijacking this one.

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’ve come to realize that there are others who feel similarly, so it’s high time we had this chat (and what better place to do it in than the Chat Thread?).

We all love the Alleyverse for different reasons, but if you’re reading this, I’m sure you agree it’s pretty cool. But at times it can be draining. I’ve been discussing how we can improve the RP with some people (thanks guys), but it has become clear that this discussion needs to be open to all the Homeless. So, I’ve gone through and summarized what we’ve discussed into some subtopics.  

Give these a read-through and let me know what you think in a post below. Or, if you don’t want to publicly comment, there are other ways to get in touch. The idea is to gauge how people are feeling about these, and to come up with tangible ways to do better going forward, if they’re needed.

Things the Alleyverse Could Improve On:

1.       Reduce burnout. Sometimes the Alleyverse can be draining. FOMO and all those social media pitfalls kick in, or you have trouble balancing Real Life and Sharding. To quote someone wise, ‘maybe you're in a lot of threads and feel like your hands are being bound by the commitment, if you want to make your characters do other things. Or you're not in any threads and want interaction, but feel that you'd be invading the tight knit group that's already there’. I’ve felt it, it can be stressful. Ideally, we don’t want people to feel they have to quit the RP altogether to decompress. So how can we allow people to balance RPing and their lives without having to choose one or the other? Here’s some suggestions our brainstorming came up with:

a)       Increased summarization. So that someone can come back after a period of inactivity and easily get up to date, we summarize threads. This would also eliminate the issue of people accidentally doing stuff that contradicts other people or accidentally godmods them. We recommend people ask for summaries if they need them anyway, so why not make them standard? This would only apply to plot threads.

But, who would do the summarizing? The two suggestions that got thrown around were i) the creator of the thread updates the OP regularly, or ii) whoever starts a new page in the thread edits their post to includes a quote box at the top of it with a two or three sentence summary of the last page. I prefer the second option if we’re going to start something like this, because it shares the workload.

b.)      Shorter threads/regular pitstops. The idea is to consciously bring threads to a conclusion more often to provide spots for people to drop in/out of the action more often and not feel like they’re losing out. Entering a thread requires a certain level of commitment, but if RPers worked in points in the plot where it was reasonable for characters to leave and the authors didn’t have to feel guilty about it/worry about what’s happening to their character while they’re gone, it might help reduce people’s stress about RPing. To implement, we’d decide one a general time (eg. A week) or length (eg. Five pages) after which every plot thread would (coordinating this in quote boxes or PM) make these kinds of opportunities. It requires coordination, but I believe it’s possible to do.

c)       Slow down. No one wants to miss out on what’s going on, but if we make an effort to avoid pushing things forward to quickly, then maybe people wouldn’t stress about it so much.

2.       Organization. We’re a pretty loosely structured RP, compared to ones with set campaigns or gamemasters plotting out arcs. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. However, we don’t want to have an unsustainable amount of threads going, lest most of them go inactive, or leave a small amount of people stuck trying to keep them going. We also have some other organizational idiosyncrasies that if you want you can comment about below. Suggestions:

a)       Avoid dud threads. Make a policy of before people make a thread, they should mention it in a PM or discussion thread. That way people can help develop the idea or express support so you know it won’t die off before it begins. That would also be a good time to tell people any quirks about the thread, for example if interrupting will cause issues.

b.)     Plan stuff out with other people. If people collaborate more in sketching out general plots for a thread, it could ensure threads run more smoothly, and help improve their longevity. A lot of our best threads have been the result of people making plans with others (which is different than making individual plans for character development). Everyone loves a planning thread (eg. The Other Side of the World one was fun), so don’t be afraid to make those.

3.       Plot. Similar to the organizational subtopic, we have a lot of threads with narrow plots, but little that connects everything together anymore. Depending how you look at it, we either have too few or too many main plots going on. A suggestion that was put forward:

a)       Increased guild involvement. The Alleyverse got started through inter-guild conflict. Guilds aggressively attempted to achieve their differing goals through RPing. Get guilds to increase their role in the creation of plots and encourage their membership more to see it through as a group.

Like I said off the top, I know this is a lot to cover, but I feel we need to address it. So, join the conversation by posting your thoughts below. Feel free to agree or disagree with anything I’ve written or add your own suggestions. If we need to vote on anything, I can make that happen by editing the OP of this thread, but I want to talk this through first.

 

Edited November 25, 2018 by Archer
Forgot b) becomes an emoji

[+Ark1002]

The guild involvement is something I'm interested in, and I've been working on. As for planning, yes, I agree.

I don't like the idea of slowing down, I'm already stuck with nothing to do far to often.

That's my two cents.

[xinoehp512]

13 minutes ago, Archer said:

whoever starts a new page in the thread edits their post to includes a quote box at the top of it with a two or three sentence summary of the last page.

I feel this could lead to issues if people don't want to or aren't good at this sort of thing. What if people don't post because they don't want to wind up having to give the summary? I will do this, if that is decided on, but I don't know how good my summaries will be. It might be better for somebody to volunteer for each summary job. I would definitely upvote anyone who posts a summary, so there's that. Whatever the decision is, I would recommend TL;DR posts for posts that are especially long. In addition, things important to give in the summary could perhaps be shown in another color (say, purple). However the summaries get written, we should have a pinned thread that lists all the current plots and gives their summaries. They could even have something that showed if newcomers were welcome, and/or when they will be welcome.

I think keeping a slow pace is a good idea, but I kind of feel like our pace is slow enough already in most threads.

[MetaTerminal]

1 hour ago, Archer said:

The idea is to gauge how people are feeling about these, and to come up with tangible ways to do better going forward, if they’re needed.

All the upvotes for this. Seriously. I though about this a while back, and your conclusions about this are basically mine, but better.

1 hour ago, Archer said:

Increased summarization.

I agree, this is a major problem, specifically because people don’t do it. If you ask in a thread for a summary, you will very rarely get the complete story - it’s even worse if you leave the RP for large chunks of time and need summaries for all new threads.

I would be happy to do this, but at the moment I’m very behind on Era 2 in general. Once I’ve caught up in about a week or so, maybe. I am very free over the holidays so I can do it then. 

1 hour ago, Archer said:

Shorter threads/regular pitstops.

There’s a level of inherent joy in watching a thread grow to monstrous levels. RP is also a conversation, and a new thread can potentially interrupt that conversation. I’d have to see it in action before forming an opinion, but some sort of consensus needs to be met about how many pages should be reached before splitting.

1 hour ago, Archer said:

Slow down.

If it’s post density you’re worried about, that can’t really be helped. If people want to RP, let them. Something like a post restriction or even just asking people not to participate would probably do much more harm than good. But if you’re simply worried about plot speed - again, the most we can really do is ask people to slow down, as we can’t really enforce it without causing issues.

This actually is underlined by a much more inherent problem, which is that activity isn’t constant. There will be phases of low and high activity - right now I think we’re in high activity. An opposite problem will begin to set at some point.

1 hour ago, Archer said:

Organization

All of this. I think people need to be more open about developments in general. Again, cycles: active threads fall out of use, everyone makes new threads until enough stuff sticks that new ones don’t need to be made, and then we have new active threads. Planning means we can streamline that process.

1 hour ago, Archer said:

Increased guild involvement.

Yeeeeesss. All of this. Again. I think right now the Ghostbloods are taking up the spotlight - the other guilds are either too inactive or don’t have enough members to gain traction. I could be wrong, though, and there’s secretly a Sentinel plot going right now - but the fact remains that guilds need to step up. In that vein, here are my ideas surrounding guilds:

1) Have it so every active guild has  a goal in mind (probably for Era 3). Something like the Liebrarians wanting to rescue Voidus. If everyone has a goal, then there isn’t a shortage of ideas, and there’s more framework for guilds to make alliances and for backstabbing. I’d probably put a soft limit on how many active-ish people need to be in a guild (3+) before making guild plans, otherwise you just get everyone making individual plans again.

2) Make it clear what guilds are active (ie have leaders that are willing to make plans and work towards them.) Maybe posted in a guide, or as a separate entity.  

3) Have it somewhat mandatory to join an active guild. Again, this wouldn’t be a hard rule, but I think that barring specific circumstances everyone would benefit from being in and having active and numerous guilds in the Alleyverse.

These three things should get guilds up and running if everyone adopts them. We could possibly trial it at the beginning of Era 3, which should start on Boxing Day if 2 lasts as long as 1. But they’ll probably need to be tweaked.

[xinoehp512]

I've been wondering when Era 3 will start. We need something big to mark the transition.

I haven't really been part of much guild stuff, and I'm interested to see how that plays out.

Organization & Planning: definitely. I agree with all the points made here.

[MacThorstenson]

 

11 minutes ago, MetaTerminal said:

1) Have it so every active guild has  a goal in mind (probably for Era 3). Something like the Liebrarians wanting to rescue Voidus. If everyone has a goal, then there isn’t a shortage of ideas, and there’s more framework for guilds to make alliances and for backstabbing. I’d probably put a soft limit on how many active-ish people need to be in a guild (3+) before making guild plans, otherwise you just get everyone making individual plans again.

I think that this is a great idea, but there are a few things that might stop this from either happening or being effective. 

1. Plans that don't involve other guilds. The guilds that I am a part of do have goals right now. They are currently working toward something. The issue is that those goals don't involve other guilds. Ideally the goals of a guild would involve other guilds in some way to create conflict, but for certain guilds it wouldn't make sense.

2. The second thing that I think might be standing in the way of making plans is the fact that so many people belong to multiple guilds. It makes it really difficult to plan stuff if you can't tell half your guild about it for one reason or another.

The rest of your points I completely agree with.

And I also 100% agree with archers post.

[I think I am here.]

2 hours ago, Archer said:

To quote someone wise, ‘maybe you're in a lot of threads and feel like your hands are being bound by the commitment, if you want to make your characters do other things. Or you're not in any threads and want interaction, but feel that you'd be invading the tight knit group that's already there’.

Perfectly put. Must have been a wise man indeed.

Edited November 25, 2018 by I think I am here.

[Voidus]

Thoughts:

Summation is definitely a good idea, probably the mods doing this is going to be easiest since we can edit posts. I don't think these need to be particularly lengthy, just covering any large impacts or changes in the story of the thread.

Planning is always good, I feel like the beginnings of the Alleyverse have caused some problems here. Everything started off very secretive and there were a lot of suspicions. This has made some fun reveal moments here and there but I feel like this mindset causes some serious issues with RP, if everyone isn't aware of what other people's plans are they can't work towards them. Now obviously not everyone is going to agree with your plans but giving a resistance time to plan as well isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes having a dramatic reveal is fun and exciting but if everyone wants to have one of these then they become commonplace and boring. Having a lot of people involved in planning your plot means that everyone is invested in the story and works together towards it paying off. It would also help avoid threads being derailed quite so frequently because a clear plan is set in place.

Power creep is probably another of the biggest issues I find. A lot of story tends to devolve into PvP combat so a lot of people want really strong or powerful characters. Unfortunately all this usually does is make everyone else try to ramp up their characters power level in response. It also means people tend to (Just my opinion) become more interested in their own character's power/growth/interestingness and not much else. RP should rarely be competitive like this, they should be collaborative. Character interaction has always been one of my favourite moments of any RP, characters talking, arguing, growing with each other. Combat (And especially curbstomp combat where one side overwhelmingly overpowers the other) makes up some of the least interesting moments. This also brings me to another point:

Less direct PvP conflict.
I know a lot of players here like fight scenes, I like them too although usually in moderation, but I think the amount of PvP fight scenes can really hurt the story. Given our rules on godmodding there's rarely going to be a satisfactory conclusion for either side, it usually ends with one side teleporting away. I can see a few solutions to this, the first is just less combat in general. Focusing on things that are more likely to promote character growth (Instead of power growth) would I feel make better stories, better characters, and also let people be a little more open in their planning.
The second option would be to start threads which have a GM of sorts, someone to compose a group of NPCs who act in opposition to the PCs, the rules of not godmodding these characters would then still apply to the PCs but they could speak with the GM to see if general tactics would work and then apply those to scale. This would mean a fair bit of time investment from a GM but might let a bit more rewarding combat take place where it's challenging but still has a satisfying ending.

[Kidpen]

1 hour ago, MacThorstenson said:

2. The second thing that I think might be standing in the way of making plans is the fact that so many people belong to multiple guilds. It makes it really difficult to plan stuff if you can't tell half your guild about it for one reason or another.

This is definitely an issue. I think one thing that should maybe happen is people's characters needing to be in the guilds they are in. Guilds are kinda in a weird place right now, and we definitely need some major discussion on how guild involvement will work.

[+Sorana]

1 hour ago, Kidpen said:

This is definitely an issue. I think one thing that should maybe happen is people's characters needing to be in the guilds they are in. Guilds are kinda in a weird place right now, and we definitely need some major discussion on how guild involvement will work.

That's a good point.

Personally I like the idea of a regular summary, and I try to provide one right now if someone asks. I think that posting a few sentences at the beginning of each new page should work - but I can offer to take over some threads I am actively rping in and keep them uptodate.

As to a pinned thread with all active threads: It won't work if we don't work together. We could use that one to plan/ announce new threads and then edit the op to fit, maybe with a short summary, but to actively keep the op uptodate is a lot of work, so while I like the idea of having a place to check what's going on, also for new members, I don't think that this thread could work as an uptodate summary of everything.

3 hours ago, Voidus said:

Less direct PvP conflict.

I 100% support this! More rp, less killing each other. And weaker characters that can't do everything on their own.

[xinoehp512]

I'm making a plot (hopefully) that's more about exploration than fighting, (although there are plenty of hostile natives to fight, if you so desire).

I wasn't intending it to be a perfectly up-to-date summary, but it would make a good archive for newer players.

[Voidus]

Just now, Sorana said:

I 100% support this! More rp, less killing each other. And weaker characters that can't do everything on their own.

This is definitely a good point, there's a reason that most RPGs involve classes that each have their own role. Splitting up the abilities between multiple characters mean characters need to rely on each other, which means they interact with each other in ways other than trying to murder each other.

1 hour ago, Kidpen said:

This is definitely an issue. I think one thing that should maybe happen is people's characters needing to be in the guilds they are in. Guilds are kinda in a weird place right now, and we definitely need some major discussion on how guild involvement will work.

Yeah in-world there's not a lot of RP around the guilds, other than people who don't like the DA or the GBs and the GBs fighting over who should be in charge. I think part of that comes from guilds wanting to keep plans a secret so things happen in PMs rather than threads.
I think we need to either start moving guild operation to threads and be more open with things, which would also let some people RP day-to-day guild operation a bit more, or we start removing the guilds from the RP elements of the Alleyverse. They don't really add much these days that couldn't be done with a looser alignment of interests.