Long or Short? Application Process!
-
Honestly, these days, as far as backgrounds or mechanical explanatory notes or whatever other stuff a game might want… just give me a questionnaire.
-
This post is deleted! -
@Autumn said in Long or Short? Application Process!:
At the risk of sounding like I’m victim blaming, we also have to be willing to take “yes” for an answer. If staff explicitly say something like “If your background is more then N words, you’re probably going into more detail than we really need,” and I proceed to write a background that’s 5N words in length … that’s not something staff can fix.
idk who the victim being blamed in here is — players being blamed for writing more BG than they need? but anyways yeah this is very true and frustrating when it happens. when a game has a maximum word count for BGs, it means that they literally do not need that level of detail and aren’t interested in reading it. i’ve definitely been a part of sending back apps that went over the cap.
-
If I have to apply, I’m already gone.
-
i don’t play games to do homework and, while i have held my nose a few times, it’s not been an experience I’ve found pleasant. A short bit indicating understanding of a roster or theme is one thing, but my characters bloom into life as I play them. Writing a massive backstory that will be retconned into who my character actually ends up being is a waste of time for everyone involved.
-
@Juniper said in Long or Short? Application Process!:
If I have to apply, I’m already gone.
While I understand this and can sometimes agree with it, I’ve also had the experience of playing on games with no application process whatsoever and watched as the game filled up with random trolls and ended up shutting down pretty rapidly.
-
Applications serve exactly one purpose: to make sure you and the character are a good fit for the game. The app process should be as short as functionally possible to meet that purpose. More complex themes will necessarily require a more involved application.
That being said, I absolutely prefer a shorter application process and endorse doing the absolute bare minimum to get an app over the line. GET ON THE GRID and start playing.
If your theme requires all players to spend multiple hours in chargen, you may want to consider whether your theme/mechanics can be streamlined or at least offering premade rosters who don’t require much time to get started with. Applying is not playing, and a long application process usually means more staff work as well, and a nonzero population will apply and then never play. It’s worth making this as painless as you can for everyone involved.
-
@Trashcan said in Long or Short? Application Process!:
That being said, I absolutely prefer a shorter application process and endorse doing the absolute bare minimum to get an app over the line. GET ON THE GRID and start playing.
I agree with this, and in my opinion the bare minimum should be:
- Application Coherency: The application should be coherently readable and make logical sense. I’ve read enough offenses to the written word in my time in the hobby that bad apps will haunt my afterlife.
- Lore Knowledge: The application should indicate that you have a basic understanding of the MU’s setting. Most games these days have a loredump summary type document somewhere that contains all of the information that literally every character in the world would know, and the application should reflect that.
- Mechanical Knowledge: A large majority of MUs have some sort of mechanical system for conflict and task resolution. Some of these are based on TTRPGs with their own published book lines. Your application should reflect that you are familiar with the core mechanics of the game, and possibly note if you are new to the specific system being used. (Being new to a system shouldn’t be cause to deny an app, but should be brought to staff’s attention so that they can help you learn it until you get up to speed.)
There are some optional additions to this as well:
- Acknowledgement of Responsibility: If an application is for a position of IC power or responsibility (and yes I am aware that allowing PCs as IC leaders is often fraught with peril), then the application should include an acknowledgement that said position requires you play your character in a way that generates positive RP experiences for others and not just yourself.
- Roster History Acknowledgement: In games where the application is for a roster character that has already seen play, the player should acknowledge to the staff that they understand the IC storyline already written for their character. If a character has already developed rivals in game, then the character is dropped back to roster and picked up by someone else, their first scene in the game shouldn’t be one where they are suddenly best buddies with those rivals with no logical reason.
-
Like several posters above, I’ve come around to the idea that an app should be as short as it can be… while also demonstrating knowledge, understanding, and ability to work within the themes, setting, and mechanics.
I’m a big fan of bullet points, and of Staff providing a list of details that they want to know (“why is your character in this location,” “how did gaining magic affect your character,” “how are they connected to the game described in our mission statement” for example). I want to see that the character will be able to interact with other characters (don’t send me a loner app unless you’re also sending me info on how they’re going to get out of their shell), and how they’ll fit within what Staff wants the game to be.
And I want it all in bullet points, as short as possible to get that information across.
-
@catzilla said in Long or Short? Application Process!:
Do you prefer lengthy/intensive application process? Or a shorter one where you get into play quicker?
I don’t have a single answer to this; both long and short processes have worked for me in the sense of “I got a memorable character and some good RP out of this”, and both have been failures in the same sense.
I think that the length of an application process should be informed by the kind of game being run. A game where everyone is a World War 1 soldier in the Battle of the Somme and it’s expected that characters will die in droves will benefit from making it as fast and easy as possible to get back into play. Similarly with a no-holds-barred PvP-encouraged type of game.
At the other extreme, a game where you’re expected to hold onto the same character for years and build up an extensive in-game history and character relationships doesn’t have to have a lengthy application process, but it’s more tolerable to me since I know I’m not likely to have to do it again any time soon.
People have mentioned the desire that information provided in an app be used in play by staff, which is also vanishingly rare in my experience. I also appreciate getting some indication that my work was actually read during the application process. If I spent hours putting the writeup together, it’s nice if the feedback touches on some of the stuff I wrote about in terms of “we liked this, it fits well with the game” or “this isn’t a great fit, but what about this?” instead of just “your stat math is off, fix it.”
I strongly agree with @Pavel (and others) that if a game has requirements then they ought to be explicitly set out - ideally somewhere that’s as front and center to the players as possible so that it’s difficult to miss. And while I don’t usually write my backgrounds in bullet point format, I do find “here’s the bullet points we’d like your background to cover” super helpful in making sure I cover everything that staff wants to see, and not too much that they don’t.
-
I tend to write a lot as a general rule, since I (like @MisterBoring) am one of those “write till I’m done” types, so my most recent apps are enormous because I’ve been really interested in the character’s until-now development. That’s just me, though, and it could easily just be a short story I write for myself without forcing anyone to read.
Anyway, that said, I think the app process should be similar to a mullet: short in the front, long in the back. Shorter app to get in and involved, with the idea that the character’s background info is a kind of living document, to a point, that can be fleshed out by making connections and associations either with other players or with ongoing plots.
-
Said it in the other thread and I stand by it: there’s no wrong or right answer to this, it all depends on the kind of game and the kind of playerbase. @Autumn gave some specific examples that I agree with above.
I think that one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve had in this hobby was some 20 years ago when I tried rolling into Shadows of Isildur. The application process took at least a week all in all and was highly involved. Since I’d never played a RPI before and really didn’t understand how the game worked, I perma-died a couple days in, and obviously never gave the game another chance. I’d probably do just fine nowadays as someone who knows how RPIs work, but eh.
But in contrast, I’ve played games with lots of PvP mystery features, which heavily rely on players actually filling all those details in so that there’s something for other players to uncover if they want to go digging into your character. I’ve spent weeks in chargen on such games and had absolutely no regrets about it; it’s been an intensely rewarding experience. In fact sometimes I’ve enjoyed creating even more than I’ve enjoyed playing. I treat it as a creative writing exercise, which is why I’m in this hobby anyway.
I have also had lots of fun on games with literally 0 chargen process. A friend of mine once ran a custom tabletop campaign where we didn’t even get to pick our characters’ names or powers or backstories. All of our characters woke up together in a lab, with an assigned number-name and amnesia, and discovered who we were and what powers we had as the game progressed. I would just as happily do something like that again, but it obviously doesn’t work for every setting.
My big chargen gripes aren’t about how long it takes, but when it’s designed in a way that seems arbitrary and frustrating. For instance, I hate having to pick between ten slightly different, identical-sounding options for a skill. Like if I have to choose between whether to put points into Karate, Krav Maga, Kung Fu, Taekwondo and Jiu-Jitsu, and I have no idea how badly that choice is gonna fuck me down the line if I pick wrong, I already hate your game before I’ve started playing. Just let me pick “Martial Arts” as a stat if that’s my concept, and maybe customise it in character notes with the specifics. I’ve seen this justified as “well we don’t want everyone to have the same build”, but idc, it just smells like a newbie trap. The chargen process should be as intuitive as possible, limit any mechanical advantages that a veteran player could have for making more meta choices, and not encourage/require more work than will end up paying off.
On the writing side, this also means not having too many “optional” customisation fields that feel like a requirement if they aren’t, or that are asking for subtle variations of the same thing. For instance, you shouldn’t have textbox for backstory, another for history, another for summary, another for personality, another for quirks, another for hooks. Like … what? I just got finished writing all about how my character’s upbringing in a monastery instilled them with a lot of religious fervour, now you want me to write another paragraph about their personality, and then repeat that in a catchier way for hooks? This could’ve been 1 box. Or, if the description section is broken up into a bunch of different fields so I can describe my face, eyebrows, hair, fingers, toes, butt, all separately, and then also my hoodie, what the hoodie looks like on the floor, what my hoodie looks like with the hood up, and what other people see when I’m putting it on and taking it off … but THEN after I put all that work in, I discover it’s actually some kind of faux pas to have filled everything in, and I should’ve just picked 1 or 2 of these fields … f u, ur community, ur game, this is also a newbie trap. Don’t put these fields there if filling in every single one isn’t an expectation; and ideally, don’t have these fields at all if they add nothing that RP won’t. I mean I can just write, as needed: “Kestrel walks in, bundled up in a loose hoodie. Shivering, she lifts up her French-manicured fingers to pull the hood up over her long, dark hair.”
Other than that, I am happy to take as long as needed to ensure my app is up to the game’s standards/expectations. I don’t see vetting by staff as a hindrance; if they’re willing to make the time for it, I often find it beneficial to get communicating early on about how to ensure the best possible experience with my character for both of us. This is often better than rolling in and discovering only after that your concept doesn’t actually work.
