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Song of Avaria
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@Third-Eye said in Song of Avaria:
@Kestrel
How MUD-like is the overall experience? The game definitely intrigues me but reading the site I can’t quite tell how much freedom to…write there is, if that makes sense? Like, are there character limits on emotes, which is the primary thing I remember from my MUD days?So as an update on this: this question was recently discussed on the SoA forums, and the answer from staff was explicitly that SoA is not meant to be a MUSH-like MUD. Moreover, staff expressed disdain for paragraph RP, and for “collaborative writing” as a concept. They consider it bad form to make a scene partner wait “minutes” for a response; they want the focus of scenes to be less on creative writing, and more on rapid, real-time scene action. They feel that overemphasising written skills as opposed to quick, naturalistic in-character communication creates unwanted obstacles to interaction.
I think the ingenuity of the code, the lore and various design choices deserves a lot of respect, but that the game is likely to be a hostile fit for anyone seeking an outlet for creative writing.
You can find this discussion on pages 2, 3 & 4 of this thread. Notably the story admin’s statement, which is the first post on page 3.
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@Kestrel That’s very interesting. I only skimmed the thread, so maybe I missed something, but I wouldn’t consider their attitude “disdain” so much as a different emphasis.
We want people to be able to emote with each other while focusing on one thing at a time, not doing that awkward thing that plagues MUSHes where you end up addressing five people in a single emote and having five conversations at the same time.
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What we’re trying to do here is provide an immersive atmosphere for a playstyle that resembles improv acting more than collaborative writing. It’s difficult and jarring to immersion when these two styles clash.Much as I enjoy MU RP, they’ve got a valid point, don’t they? I’ve literally had 1-on-1 MU scenes where there are three different conversation threads going simultaneously between the same two characters. Traditional MU paragraph style resembles neither organic character interaction nor normal creative writing.
TGG, for instance, had shorter poses during action scenes by the necessity of the code. Storytelling still occurred within those constraints.
Like they said, these are styles. Neither intrinsically better or worse than the other, but each having pros and cons. At least they’re up front about it and setting expectations about what they’re going for.
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Yeah, agree with Faraday here; the discussion on the forum doesn’t seem hostile at all, just a discussion of how to set game culture effectively. But I’m someone who tends to think of MUSH style RP as written improv too, moreso than collaborative writing.
Idk the discussion all seemed really reasonable to me.
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@Kestrel Thanks for the update. I found the thread a pretty interesting read. I think staff there is ultimately correct that a game needs to decide what it wants to be and state that plainly. I end up frustrated with environments that try to be an ‘all things to all people’ game, it does become really unclear and you end up with players enforcing ‘norms’ among themselves that aren’t actually stated rules anywhere, and a lot of bad feels from what are fundamentally culture clashes. They’ve clearly ended up with players from pretty differently backgrounds (the end of Arx has to be driving some of it), so doing expectation setting now rather than later seems smart.
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@Roz said in Song of Avaria:
the discussion on the forum doesn’t seem hostile at all
Not to put words in her mouth, but I think @Kestrel meant it in a more poetic sense, in that the style they’re going for and the style we’re used to are wholly incompatible.
Though it might meet with hostility because people are weird and gross.
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Man, this is a fascinating thread read. Thanks for linking. (I followed it over to their follow-up thread, even: https://songofavaria.com/forum/suggestions/topics/228/ )
I think the admin are doing the absolute right thing for them in developing the game that they want. It would be a huuuuge culture clash for me to step in there, but I am fascinated by what they are doing. It seems challenging, but honestly it might be really fun?
I remember doing RP with @sao where we explicitly set up our poses so that we could interrupt each other, but obviously it required more OOC cooperation with each other. It was a fun experiment!
I ALSO remember the bad ol’ days when I was a baby RPer on Harper’s Tale and I was so proud of myself keeping those five conversation threads ongoing in giant paragraph RP. WHY DID WE EVER THINK THAT WAS REASONABLE. I can 200% understand what the admin are trying to build to avoid.
It seems like the admin are coming from a really good place here. Some players feel hurt and are reacting on that, but the admin seem very respectful. Honestly, it just makes me wish I’d tried it. Even if it turns out that this place Isn’t For Me, and it’s too much of a culture mishmash, it seems like a wild change of pace. In a good way.
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@Faraday said in Song of Avaria:
TGG, for instance, had shorter poses during action scenes by the necessity of the code. Storytelling still occurred within those constraints.
TGG remains one of my favorite MU experiences and one I think back on a lot, because I don’t think I’ll ever have anything like it again. What was interesting about it is, you had pretty typical MUSH-style paragraph RP in the non-combat scenes, and more MUD-style one-liners in combat because of the speed the code needed to move at, player types who’d come from both environments, and it felt like both adapted to the other (or at least, those who couldn’t switch to some degree didn’t stick). I’m still not entirely sure why it worked, except that EUBanana was a genius (and sorely missed).
@Tez Man I try not to do the ‘respond to five different tangents in a pose’ thing but that thread isn’t wrong that it’s a hard MUSH habit to get away from. When I catch myself doing it, it’s unfortunately a lot of the time for OOC reasons rather than writing habits (I also don’t think it’s good writing, the split between writing and improv aside). I think too many of us have had the experience of someone flipping out OOC because their name didn’t ping in someone’s pose. So sometimes I kinda do it out of clunky etiquette even if it makes the writing flow weird.
Anyway, the way this game’s being created continues to look really thoughtful even if what it shapes up to be ultimately isn’t my thing or even if some stuff ultimately doesn’t work.
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@Faraday said in Song of Avaria:
Much as I enjoy MU RP, they’ve got a valid point, don’t they? I’ve literally had 1-on-1 MU scenes where there are three different conversation threads going simultaneously between the same two characters. Traditional MU paragraph style resembles neither organic character interaction nor normal creative writing.
thiiiiiiiiiiiis
It drove me crazy that people write their characters’ dialogue like the monologues preceding a pro wrestling grudge match rather than like two people talking to each other. Made me want to start writing my poses to include theme music, spotlights, and crowd cheers.
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TBF I also find Paragraphs Style to be unnatural, and it requires a bit of mental geometry in my brain to keep it immersive. Sometimes a paragraph is called for! A lot of the time…it isn’t. Having to edit yourself down to make impact with fewer words is also a creative writing skill.
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@GF said in Song of Avaria:
Made me want to start writing my poses to include theme music, spotlights, and crowd cheers.
I kind of want to see a game where this is required. Would be fun in the right setting.
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This thread is doing such wonders to my imposter syndrome re: my general terseness in my poses
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@hellfrog said in Song of Avaria:
TBF I also find Paragraphs Style to be unnatural, and it requires a bit of mental geometry in my brain to keep it immersive. Sometimes a paragraph is called for! A lot of the time…it isn’t. Having to edit yourself down to make impact with fewer words is also a creative writing skill.
“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”
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@Rinel If it helps at all, I remember feeling like long poses with paragraphs of monologue are actually pretty rude; a form of power-posing, as if my character would just stand still and mute until the two minutes of talking is done.
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my monologues (for which I am infamous) will be pried from my cold dead fingers
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@tsar Fort Bloodshed says paragraphs AREN’T ALLOWED
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Sometimes I pose long. Sometimes I pose short. I only actually feel bad when someone poses a novel and I respond with three words.
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I think it’s fine to call for limits on posing. It’s always going to be depend on the context what “style” is going to fit. I personally prefer poses that are shorn of extras. I don’t always love when RP partners flex their command of the English language; I don’t always hate it.
As a general rule, I’m way more partial to “nods and scratches head” than I am three paragraphs of superfluous gesticulations and meta for the dialogue equivalent of “Interesting!”
And if a not terribly character/plot developing scene’s conversation can get done in 20 minutes with shorter poses vs 2 hours with lengthy ones? (Looking at you, meetings!) Definitely for it.
I think any style we’re talking about can fit any scene depending on what the scene is. No hard and fast rule where RP is concerned.
(The TS is probably going to suck though -
I’ve tried to base my own posing with how the other person poses. Something I’ve personally taken away is that sometimes people tend to get self-conscious of their own pose size or complexity of that pose based on what the other RP partner is or isn’t doing. In an attempt to alleviate that for them(and honestly myself because I know I’ve felt that too), I try to fit into that same flow.
If they pose short and concise, I’ll likely try to do that. Same with pose styles that are longer. While I do think that staff might be expecting a little too much in saying that no one should have to wait ‘minutes’ for a pose and part of me wonders if that’s an unrealistic expectation(granted, the argument for what constitutes waiting too long and not is a different discussion). That said, I can’t fault the admin’s goal here.
I don’t know if it’ll be the game for me in light of reading all of this, but I can certainly respect what they’re going for. If anything, I’ll be curious to see where it goes.
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@imstillhere lmao god I still can’t believe we were there together
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So I’m trying not to inject too much bias into this, but here it is:
I fully agree with everyone saying, “sometimes a paragraph is called for, sometimes just one line”, etc. That’s true, but it’s also not what the staff of Avaria said, nor an issue I’ve perceived on the game.
I’ve not seen anyone doing multi-paragraph emotes in public scenes on that game. On average people toss two-liners at each other, and long by that game’s standards would be one paragraph (5-7 lines), which I’ve mostly seen in one-on-one. I personally switch happily between modes.
That staff felt the need to raise this issue tells me that a flexible approach is not what they want. Because the debate wasn’t about “paragraph vs one-liners”, it was “both are fine vs one-liners only”.
I personally can’t get over the fact that staff said this:
For me, too much emphasis on writing detracts from the immediacy of the acting, and from the sense of inhabiting my character.
And that it was part of a longer post expressing discomfort and anxiety around people who care about writing pretty, and that waiting “minutes” on a response was deemed too much. I’m not predominantly a MUSHer, I play MUDs just as happily, and I consider a 2-3 minute wait to be somewhere between fast and average.
The above tells me that this is not a game for people who enjoy creative writing. Even though I think it’s possible to play this game with that goal in mind, and that a lot of the code and design choices would support it, staff having said “there are other games for that” in response to “what’s wrong with both, what harm is this doing”, and expressing that people who care about writing make them unhappy/anxious, is why I used the words hostile fit. You would be showing up to an environment where your intentions are expressly unwelcome.
