(01-02-2017, 05:21 PM)ExAtomos Wrote: Then that may be, in fact, all they want to do. Perhaps tap a reliable FC member to head up these type of social events that don't interest you personally. Let them have fun with it.

I've actually run into the wall of 'social' crime based rp myself recently with a new LS I've joined. My dude isn't just gonna go to a tavern and declare "teehee, I'm a bad guy" just to see who reaches out to me. That... makes zero sense. lol. In my opinion, this type of rp doesn't lend itself to large scale, social events. One on one or small group? Sure! But we both better have a good reason for speaking to each other about Nefarious Stuff tm.

I can't speak for you and your FC members specifically, but I like tossing out RP hooks either oocly (which sadly, usually don't get responses) or over an IC LS with something along the lines of... *Jo's voice sounds pained as she whispers frantically over the linkshell.* Is... is anyone there? I need help... please, gods... send help." /drama Often you'll get people springing from the woodwork for this.

If some folks in your FC just never interact with the rest and it's like a rock in your shoe, speak with them privately. See what they want from the FC and, if there is just a great wall of a mismatch, suggest they seek another group that may fit their rp style better.

Hope this helps! ^^

(01-02-2017, 05:21 PM)zaviire Wrote: I guess I should clarify that in my case it is actually an LS. I don't lead the FC I'm a member of (though I guess some of this advice would be helpful to me in that regard too because I'm an officer there). Actually, the LS I lead is probably the one you're referring to here... Trust me, as a leader, I'm really frustrated with the general atmosphere here because... Yeah. I intend to hand off social-planning responsibilities to people who actually like doing those things (not that I hate them; I just want something different for the group overall), but getting people to step up to the plate and do that is a whole 'nother can of worms. Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough...

But yes this helps! I'll probably start trying to toss some more IC hooks into the LS soon,and get my officers to do the same; the hooks that set up the combat test minievent were pretty good and seemed to stir up some interest in addition to introducing what could easily become an arc for the LS in general, so I'll see if I can get more of that in particular going...

• I think most players want you to be Netflix. They don't want to be an active participant in a plot, much less a proactive one. They want to WATCH the damn plot unfold. They just want everything handed to them. And when you finally give up the IC nudges and ask them OOCly what their character is doing; they respond with "Oh, I'm supposed to tell you?"
  
  
• Piggy backing off that... Annoyingly, my most successful plots have centered around my character(s) just due to the fact that I can keep the story moving instead of logging in and praying that others will contribute to a group RP plot so that it keeps going.
  
  
• Some folks just ain't gonna like the plot. ; ; And none of you may know this until things get rolling.
  
  
• There are a lot of RP styles between pure SoL and structured events. I vastly prefer nuanced dark themes and, while my RP appears to be more casual like SoL encounters, there's a heap of potential plots that I pull from to toss into the conversations with my RP partners. The story will unfold as we continue to interact. If they move on or show little interest, I pocket the idea right back and will adjust it or use it in another way some other time. Flexibility is key.
  

(01-05-2017, 12:16 PM)ExAtomos Wrote: ...do you have a space for members to give a brief run down of their character(s) so we can potentially find reasons to meet each other?

(01-03-2017, 03:57 AM)Arvid Greave Wrote: [snip]

-Share the burden, you don't always have to lead. Let other people make events, encourage them to make events. I mean since the last event was about their character, they get to lead the next one and OH MY GOD ARE YOU EVER EXCITED TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. YOU'RE SO STOKED. (Well you should be, I usually am.) Share notes later on what happened. Share notes IC, make the information sharing an event. People absolutely love it when events aren't always about one character. Also, YOU CANNOT PRAISE THE PERSON WHO MADE THE EVENT ENOUGH. YES CAPS. CAPS. PRAISE. LOVE. SHOWER. AFFECTION. It's so much work you didn't want to do, and they did it! If you had fun, let them know. Remind them how much fun you had the next day, the next week, next month.

[snip]

(01-03-2017, 05:51 AM)ArmachiA Wrote: On "Stories shouldn't revolve around one person". If you CAN, you should make a story that doesn't really have a main character at all. Nothing from anyone's backstory (Unless it's a shared backstory with more people involved). You can have people who can be integral at the START to get it off the ground (Then let the story be free to go toward whoever grabs for it) but none of them should be the single focus of the plotline. I know this can't be avoided all the time (Hell, we're guilty of this right now) but it's good to START with a more neutral plot line that anyone can jump into without having to know <insert character here>. Once trust is established, you can absolutely branch off into more personal storylines.

On "One-offs are better". I think that really depends on the RPer. There are a lot of people in my guild who really like long, overarching plots and there are some who don't really have time for that and can't participate, and some even still who don't like keeping track of the madness and just wanna punch some baddies sometimes. If you're looking to do the first thing, I suggest actually doing BOTH. It's actually really easy to put one-off plots within your overarcing storyline. Lets say your bad guy uh... We'll call him Bob, is threatening to do SOMETHING with some ancient artifact that may hurt Eorzea! But you don't know much on what that artifact is! What do you do? A one-off dungeon run into the great Library to look for info may be the best bet OR if you have more time - a one-off roll20 into some ancient ruins to find more information. Then you find more info on how to stop Bob, but alas you don't have the right pieces to make thing you need! And the pieces are illegal and hard to find in Eorzea! You can then do a one-off about smuggling the pieces in.
These are all things that would work separately ("Finding info on artifacts" "Smuggle in goods") without a plot, so people without a lot of time or inclination CAN participate, but they also circle back to your overarcing plotline for those more deeply involved. These aren't events you have to run either, if you have some active members they may just volunteer to run it and ask you what they would find when they do. A lot of one-offs my guild does are run by other people who want to help find answers... though you may not get to many people volunteering at the start.

(01-05-2017, 12:16 PM)ExAtomos Wrote: Yes... SOMEHOW I missed your sig completely. lol XD

Ok, so from the inside (albeit only very recently)... I'm struggling to find a way in. I can't yet tell what direction y'all are steering the boat, especially since lately there have been a couple "we're doing it this way now" posts. You also have... quite the mixed bag of members. I certainly appreciate your struggle to try and change the RP style of the LS from lore-breaking silliness to actually dark RP with substance while still keeping members that you've had the whole time.

[snip]

I'm actually feeling a bit of the <Hmm.> with the LS recently. You have put so much work into these upcoming plots and I was really impressed with the google doc you created. But frankly, this structured, planned style of RP isn't for me. As an aside, back on my old JP server, we had two hardcore rpers and a few interested in the concept in my FC. Unfortunately, me and the other rper had vastly different styles of going about it. He preferred the structured sort with a definite beginning and end, pulled in specific tasks that exist in game (and we had to do them), and created these beautiful websites to go along with it. There was little chance for character development. I wanted a more natural, 'met by chance', 'let the plot happen as we talk' style of rp interaction. Most importantly in this case, as soon as I see "we are using X roll/character sheet system", I stop reading and move on. I would expect folks who prefer structure to feel the same about my more fluid way of setting up scenes.

[snip]

This does make me wonder though... in amongst the dozen Discord channels y'all have, do you have a space for members to give a brief run down of their character(s) so we can potentially find reasons to meet each other?

eta now that I've quit being lazy and read all the comments (including the above which made me laugh since I have an 'evil artifact' plot in the wings. XD ):

Some things I've learned:

• I think most players want you to be Netflix. They don't want to be an active participant in a plot, much less a proactive one. They want to WATCH the damn plot unfold. They just want everything handed to them. And when you finally give up the IC nudges and ask them OOCly what their character is doing; they respond with "Oh, I'm supposed to tell you?"
  
  
• Piggy backing off that... Annoyingly, my most successful plots have centered around my character(s) just due to the fact that I can keep the story moving instead of logging in and praying that others will contribute to a group RP plot so that it keeps going.
  
  
• Some folks just ain't gonna like the plot. ; ; And none of you may know this until things get rolling.
  
  
• There are a lot of RP styles between pure SoL and structured events. I vastly prefer nuanced dark themes and, while my RP appears to be more casual like SoL encounters, there's a heap of potential plots that I pull from to toss into the conversations with my RP partners. The story will unfold as we continue to interact. If they move on or show little interest, I pocket the idea right back and will adjust it or use it in another way some other time. Flexibility is key.
  

(01-02-2017, 02:53 PM)zaviire Wrote:

1. How do you go about getting people engaged, in general?
   
2. How do you go about getting people more involved with the story-based side of RP that you intended for a group from the beginning? Be it with planning stuff of their own or getting them involved with stuff that the leadership organizes?
   
3. How do you #StopTheSocials 2k17?
   

• I engage people through a linkshell rather than an FC, so ensuring that all members are engaged is not 100% necessary.
  
• I use a lot of dice, so some of the advice I have would be "use an interesting dice system that lets people feel like their characters are contributing in unique ways and still allows for consequences." If your first reaction to the word "dice" was an urge to take my lunch money, you can disregard that.
  

(01-05-2017, 09:50 PM)zaviire Wrote: We didn't used to have a channel for that because it doesn't seem like something most people are totally interested in; most of the applications we get don't link to a tumblr or RPC page and they don't tend to talk about it a whole lot so I assume that's because people don't want any information about what their character does to be public for whatever reason even if it would help OOC with figuring out how characters fit into the grand scheme, just as a general thing. But I made one anyway just now because it seems like a good idea because being able to easily refer back to character information is important!

But yeah, I'm definitely feeling a little bit like Netflix given that even though the upcoming story is the only one I've gone out of my way to plan... The various socials we've held have borne no fruit with regards to stories or connections, even when one of the ones long before the Holiday season began was framed as a chance to basically sell your skills and get jobs out of the network because... IC, that's what it's for. the nature of the network isn't strictly insider info or anything. (Maybe 5 people showed up outside of myself, despite scheduling it about two to three weeks in advance. A tavern night held by one of our members later that same month rounded up about 20 of our members in the same room. Gee, I wonder where their priorities are...) 

(01-05-2017, 09:50 PM)zaviire Wrote: But yeah, I'm definitely feeling a little bit like Netflix given that even though the upcoming story is the only one I've gone out of my way to plan... The various socials we've held have borne no fruit with regards to stories or connections, even when one of the ones long before the Holiday season began was framed as a chance to basically sell your skills and get jobs out of the network because... IC, that's what it's for. the nature of the network isn't strictly insider info or anything. (Maybe 5 people showed up outside of myself, despite scheduling it about two to three weeks in advance. A tavern night held by one of our members later that same month rounded up about 20 of our members in the same room. Gee, I wonder where their priorities are...)

Aside: I'd debate that we've ever broken lore to a major degree as a group; the main issue in my opinion lies in social RP since in my experience social RP has hardly done anything to further a plot or make something happen. It probably goes better for other people in general but all it's really gotten for me is naptime, screwed up character arcs, and talking about the weather... Mostly the latter, especially when it comes to the social events I've tried my best to organize. Events which make me feel as if people have not read up on the lore of the LS at all, which is kind of saddening.