Hydaelyn Role-Players

Okay, so I have an important thing to ask all of you, because naturally, you all combined are more experienced than I ever will be. 

Okay, here's the thing. How do you deal with an RP scenario that was perfectly okay in your book, and was going fine but then had to be cut short. Now considering that this RP is not minimal or passerby RP, and is rather big, what would be the best way to go about it? 

Retcon it or come up with some sort of post RP explanation. Personally I'm looking to retcon it as if it never even happened in the first place and start over from the point before that. 

But, valuable advice from your side is very much appreciated.

Depends on the scenario in question. If it's something like a random meet-up, I just haze away the actual ending and will allude the incident in question without going into much detail. Sort of a "Yeah, I've hung out with Eleni! We spent a few hours talking things over in the Quicksand" without needing to hash out much of anything else.

If it's something more involved, well, it really comes down to the situation in specific.

I am not sure what "cut short" means...

But if it was a prearranged scene and people had to go to bed or RL stuff took over, then "To Be Continued" is also acceptable, if all parties are agreeable to that.

If continuing the scene in the very near future is not viable, then coming to some agreement OOC behind the scenes would be best in my opinion so everyone who was there has a similiar accounts of how it ended.

I try to reserve retcon as my last resort, but it is still a choice that can be made.

But like Warren said, it does come down to the specifics of the situation.

I think cut short like, something happened where the RP is no longer able to go forward or continue for some reason, something like that right Eleni?

A bit more elaboration on what exactly happened might help people come up with some more specific responses.

Though I guess the vaguer form of my personal operation protocol is to just ask them how they think things would have gone if they had continued, and then just say that that's what happened. If there's no way to reach them and no way to resolve the situation with other people, and it's just ending up as some awkward tangent without a bookend on your character, then just retcon. It's not a big deal.

It really depends on the situation...I don't like retconning in general cause the potential it has to mess up events in someone stories. 

I've been part of several big rp arcs  like that. One in particular we finally made it up to the climax people got offended ooc, and the dm just decided to quit. This really inconvenienced everyone involved. So what we were forced to do is come up with a super vague conclusion and say our characters blocked it out or refused to talk about specifics. 

Though I'd say really that's the besthing way to handle something that's been cut short is communicate some short of resolution if possible. 

If everyone is on the same page then the chances of characters having two different versions of events become far less likely.

Oh, oh!

Okay, so specifically what happened is that Eleni got married. And things were going just fine. But the other party involved might not ever come back to the game due to RL reasons. That is what I meant by cut short. 

The problem is, that I just cannot see a viable explanation for her husband just disappearing. Separation or divorce is very very unlikely because well, like I said, things were just fine, can't point out anything negative in it. 

And death is just as unlikely. Considering things were normal and there were no problems or issues, why would he just suddenly die?

Lastly, why I personally want to retcon it is because if either of those two things happen, Eleni will become very difficult for me to RP. Which is why I'd like to take it back to a point before that, so Eleni can continue being Eleni. 

Moar thoughts from you all please!

Just retcon if they're not coming back.

(11-28-2015, 01:47 AM)Zekikikikiki Wrote: [ -> ]Just retcon if they're not coming back.

Yeah, basically this when it comes to marriage, and you don't want to take a divorce option.

If you communicate to the player who is probably not coming back, and your RP circle is also not going to give you a hard time with the retcon, I don't see why not. Retcons are my last resort personally, but it's about what makes the experience fun for you!

Depending on the husband (or maybe wife, I don't know)'s occupation, you can just say they went missing or something. It conveniently gets them out of the picture without killing them in the off chance that they do come back. A lot of people seem to play the adventurer type and I'm sure more than a few of those guys go missing for various reasons.

Oh, that sure is a classic.

I have had to deal with that once or twice on another MMO, though it was not marriage proper. Of course having a few OOC words with the other player is the best (which was my case, but not to a point where everything was planned and laid down), but if you can't, it's eventually the same.

I find the most elegant way to deal with that without any retcon - because retconing what other people have RPed with you is bad form and can lead to a lot of dire IC and OOC related issues - is just to consider that as you say, why would have he left? Why did he do that? Maybe more, why did he betray your character like that?

Well, your character can not know actually. It can draw your character desperation to new heights and overall allow you to capitalize on that OOC/RL issue by turning it into an IC drama full of potential. It can lead your character to go on a desperate quest to find what happened to him, even if you OOCly perfectly know that you will never see him again, or maybe you don't know either, which is even nicer...

I think that can turn to be a very strong, central plotline defining kind of a new identity for your character, make her evolve, mature, grow up, or whatever you fancy. 

You know, kind of like the trope of the vagabond that went on a lifequest to get his revenge against someone, to a point where it becomes the only thing that matters for him (cf Auron, or most spaghetti westerns). Except here it's more about finding someone that killing someone.

Of course, that's the first idea that comes to mind, and it could be pretty much anything you decide it to be. And if the player eventually returns, who knows, then all the better to draw a conclusion to the story.

Eleni *hugs*

I have had to deal with similar three times in this game and ended up doing the following

1. I sort of did a reset of my character, using in game fudgery. This allowed both characters to continue (I hope) with minimal dependency.
   
2. They wandered off into the sunset, and at some point he (my char) may came back.
   
3. The partner lost their fight with the darkside and disappeared.
   

Now, if the other player's character is not going to be around you can do things involving them, which makes it easy enough. You can accept the marriage and find a suitable way forwards, or come up with some plot that means there was no marriage. If you want help with that ooc and ic let me know I can think of a few ways we could make this work.

If the other character is still being played, it becomes difficult. If you can both agree on the way forwards great, if you are no longer talking then I would suggest just dealing with your character and what you control, that should help minimise any god-modding over the other player. Also try to not care what the other does, that way lies madness. You will suffer issues with characters who knew both, just be true to your character and the memories.

Poke me in game and I'd be happy to help.

(11-28-2015, 06:34 AM)Valence Wrote: [ -> ]retconing what other people have RPed with you is bad form and can lead to a lot of dire IC and OOC related issues

I vehemently disagree with this.

If something is impacting your ability to enjoy yourself and you have the option to get rid of it, get rid of it.

If other people decide to get angry at you after you have explained the situation and how it is impacting your own personal enjoyment of the game, then chances are those aren't people that you want to be around in the first place.

To each his own views on that I guess.

To be clear, I am not against retconning and I can understand that in a lot of cases it can be a good tool to use, especially on very minor details or embarrassing stuff that you would like to get rid of.

I just happen to think that it's the easy way to get out of the problem, that it's highly inelegant, and most of all, it can show an unwillingness to deal with the consequences of one's own RP (and yes, again, not your fault here). But it can be a basic denial of what you did with other people. Now then, I understand here it's mostly between one player, and a player that left, and as I said, everyone is free to do what make the thing more enjoyable for them! I just tend to think of other people before myself most of the time, which might be why I have a differing viewpoint on that.

Now then, were there other people around? Did that wedding impact many players and characters? Are you going to go tell them "actually no, that wedding didn't happen, you weren't invited, and all the nice RP you got out of it is actually void because I say so" ? That's what makes me think it can be a slippery slope and lead to pretty bad form scenari.

Again, do as you wish though, I'm mainly voicing the unorthodox point of view I guess...