RP Safari - Pacing Styles
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@Yam There isn’t a universal terminology of course, but just for context… In Ares the terms used in the scene dropdown are:
Your Term Ares Term Instant Not Used Standard/Live Traditional Async Distracted Novella Asynchronous I mention this not to be pedantic, but just to highlight that the same term (e.g., “Async”) can mean wildly different pacing styles to different people. (In Storium, their “Fast” pacing is on par with our Distracted, lol.)
In my experience, the distinction between Distracted and Async is that a Distracted scene is likely to get done in the span of a single day and Async usually takes much longer.
While I see Async (Ares definition) scenes as a necessary evil when schedules don’t align or a scene can’t be wrapped up neatly, I don’t actually like them much. One of the defining characteristics of MUs for me is the fact that the in-game time passes at a set rate compared to the RL time. Async RP screws with the continuity and often leads to scenes petering out / left hanging.
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@Faraday Makes sense. I didn’t include distracted because to me that’s just like “hey I want to angle for live/standard but I’m at work, you okay with delays longer than maybe 15 mins” but it ultimately finishes within a day. USUALLY. I was trying to keep it platform agnostic, although I realize we’re all a bunch of mushers and ares facilitates a new pace within this niche environment, even if this pace has existed in forums since forever.
Curious how many people resolve their workslow/distracted scenes within a day.
I see more async scenes than distracted, spanning weeks.
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‘async’ to me reads as ‘we are going into this expecting it will be ongoing for days, weeks, or even months’ and i just cannot
fr fr
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@Yam said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
Curious how many people resolve their workslow/distracted scenes within a day.
I haven’t been able to play for awhile, but previously? Almost always. Multi-day async scenes were limited to cases where our schedules couldn’t line up and something important needed to happen.
I find it interesting that the norm is so different in other online RP styles. In Storium, the multi-week async scenes are the norm, and people use Google Docs for the more rapid back-and-forths that are closer to MU distracted or shorter async ones.
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@hellfrog said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
‘async’ to me reads as ‘we are going into this expecting it will be ongoing for days, weeks, or even months’ and i just cannot
personally speaking, days, probably. weeks? a few times but not often. I don’t know that any one async scene I have been in has ever gone on for more than a month, it messes with continuity too much.
a scene that takes about a week became my new norm and I KNOW AND LOVE THAT IT IS HERESY
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@Wizz Yeah, I would say a week is the new norm
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I think I’ve always been a slower-ish poser. Whether because I used to smoke and would take quick breaks or because I was just typing so much - I donno. So even now, my live rp tends to be 7-10 minutes to pose.
Recently I’ve abandoned clients for the Ares portal and with that shift, have also become more of an async rp’er. I work a LOT and having a scene that I know can run a few days to fit my schedule is just awesome. No stress, no rush - I’m digging it. It’s rare that I have more than one scene going on though.
I still do live scenes on the weekends here and there, but async is kinda my new jam.
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@Yam said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
Curious how many people resolve their workslow/distracted scenes within a day.
Me, generally. Sometimes two if there’s a need to pause but I pick that pacing specifically so they won’t go on forever.
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Definitely standard/live.
I’ve tried to do async (Ares, forums, etc.) but have not had great success with those. Most often, the scenes don’t finish or they drag past the point of their natural lifespan; inevitably, I just feel dread and guilt about them lasting too long and that kills my desire to RP.
I need the slight pressure of time - and the tight focus on a single scenario - to wrap a scene, rather than let it shamble on into inconclusive perpetuity.
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Where are ya’ll playing that you’re finishing scenes in a day or less lol
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@lucidmaus said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
I need the slight pressure of time - and the tight focus on a single scenario - to wrap a scene, rather than let it shamble on into inconclusive perpetuity.
what I’ve found is that without the former pressure of time so much, all you need to do is concentrate more on the latter. you think about the goal of the scene as you go and each pose becomes a little more focused and driven.
it does take away a bit of that like, split second-spirit of improv feeling, which is a big part of what plenty of people enjoy about this medium, but it’s still been fun and exciting and you have the opportunity to try a lil more on the writing side of things when it’s not like “oh god I gotta kick this out in the next couple of minutes.”
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@lucidmaus said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
I need the slight pressure of time - and the tight focus on a single scenario - to wrap a scene, rather than let it shamble on into inconclusive perpetuity.
Saaame. Absolutely need that pressure, else it just becomes me trying to fill paragraphs with fluff. I noticed the big novella style RPers on discord doing a lot of meta posing, crafting thoughts about other characters that those characters can’t respond to, and this is either very very popular or very not. I gather that style is more about the writing part than the collaborative part of collaborative writing.
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My preferred pacing is distracted. I like posing every 20-30 minutes, finishing a scene the same-day if possible, but okay if it carries over and we finish tomorrow.
My lived experience is async, where scenes take as long as they take.
I see a lot of comments about async scenes dragging on forever, and I wonder if that’s a content issue? I never RP social stuff (period at this point but specifically) async. When I set up a scene, it’s always specific.
We’re meeting to discuss the hobgoblin situation.
Let’s RP robbing the 7-11.
Please provide my PC necessary medical attention.
Etc.If I am going to play something social, it absolutely has to be live/real-time, finished in a couple hours max, or I will have gotten bored and started the “:nods and takes a drink” poses.
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@KarmaBum let’s go rob a 7-11!
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I gotta say, I’m so surprised that it’s async=action but live=social, I would’ve thought the opposite. Most of the async scenes I’ve seen appear to be like… ongoing social. I know that there are async events at times and THAT one puzzles me, because when I’m running events, I have to be “on” mentally, like, ready and prepared to work with what the players are dishing out or attempting, and if I have to be that level of attentive over the span of a week, I think my brain would melt.
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IMO:
Async rp is not my first choice
Players doing async rp, reading real-time logs, and then incorporating that log knowledge into their “past” async scene as apparently prescient knowledge is unacceptable
Async events are hell. Everyone needs to take a turn before the action can resume and waiting 3 days for someone to say “I pursue the pickpocket” is awful
Speedy rp is kind of slept on as a fun option. Not every pose needs to be a Pulitzer Prize winner or to be 4 hours of real-time writing long. “Text” scenes, for themes that support them, can be a fun way to get rp done in a short amount of time.
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@Yam said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
I have to be “on” mentally, like, ready and prepared to work with what the players are dishing out or attempting, and if I have to be that level of attentive over the span of a week, I think my brain would melt.
I get this, 100%.
I know I’m losing an emotional component when I’m playing async, in that there’s no way that I (and I assume my RP buddies) feel the same way at 2pm on Thursday that I did when we started this scene at 8:45am on Tuesday.
But I get more time to craft a thoughtful response, and it makes it possible to play with people that I otherwise wouldn’t connect with, so
I just really don’t like random social fluff. I don’t understand why someone would knowingly sign up for days and days of that, and I would also hate async scenes if that’s all I was doing in there all the time.
So I guess what I’m saying is that I care less about the pacing, much more about the content. I’ll take good RP however I can get it thx!!!
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@KarmaBum said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
I see a lot of comments about async scenes dragging on forever, and I wonder if that’s a content issue?
To me, it inevitably felt like even hard-focused, ‘we are here to do x’ scenes would suffer from pacing issues and stretch on in ways that were compounded with posing rounds taking 3-7 days each (i.e. player 1 posing, then player 2 taking 3 days, player 1 needing to take 2 days, whoops player 2 needs to grind out poses for another set of scenes so it’ll be 7 days before they get back to this one, etc.)
If it takes me 2 weeks to a month to finish what I can do in 2-3 hours, I’m just going to throw in the towel.
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@KarmaBum said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
I just really don’t like random social fluff.
I know this is off topic but this is not the first time I’ve seen someone mention that they only do a specific kind of RP, and I’m curious about what makes something random social fluff. What’s your definition? Every scene must have a plot related throughline? And has it been effective?
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For async (and some live scenes), I try to aim for RP that ends after 4 posts. Granted, these posts can be 1,000 words long, but my goal is 4 posts, following the Acknowledge-Respond-Prompt method.
- Intro
- Conflict
- Solution
- Resolution
That is:
- Intro - The pose in, the situation, the stakes, what are we doing here and how are we doing it. Why is the rum gone?
- Conflict - The action, the gossip, the disagreement, the demand, the spectacle. Give me the rum.
- Solution - The unwinding, the disaster, the success, the kowtow, the agreement, the explosion. I got stabbed trying to steal the rum.
- Resolution - The tip of the hat, the running away crying, the reveling of having $20 from robbing the 7-11, the licking of the wounds, the smouldering heap. I resolve to never try to steal rum from a 7-11 again, because it turns out they don’t have any.
It doesn’t work for all scenes, but it’s great for social scenes and 7-11 robbery scenes.
Game-runner of Silent Heaven, a small-town horror MU.
https://silentheaven.org
