As in all things there is a balance to it. For a lot of RP'ers Drama is the life blood and usually fuels the conflicts of their stories and this can lead to some amazing moments where a character becomes more then the player ever thought they'd be or they grow closer to the people they've been telling these stories with. In my experience a lot of these stories end on happier notes even if the story arcs themselves were very dark and sad.
I've had the great pleasure of being part of a few long arcs where the protagonists were dogged at every turn and the few victories to be had were narrow. For me these had a great deal of excitement and engagement during the events, and then between the events we had a lot of humorous moments and time to digest what all was happening in the events. And then the conclusions were sometimes happy, sometimes sad.
At the beginning of an arc I was part of not to long ago my character, the 'father' figure of the group, died at the outset and it lent an amazing sense of weight to the proceeding RP. The arc centered around a terrorist whom after a few more horrific events the group had found and killed, leaving a very powerful sort of bittersweet ending.
Of course to have those big impactful events there has to be a balance, because if all we had were those twists and turns it would become the norm, and to make it impactful again we would have to do something even more extreme.
Though the above is admittedly in a preformed group of people, we all knew the general direction things would go. The OOC communication to pull off this sort of thing is very important, because while you don't have to give a play by play version of the arc people knowing that it's going towards the dramatic I have always found to be polite and help things go more smoothly.
I've had the great pleasure of being part of a few long arcs where the protagonists were dogged at every turn and the few victories to be had were narrow. For me these had a great deal of excitement and engagement during the events, and then between the events we had a lot of humorous moments and time to digest what all was happening in the events. And then the conclusions were sometimes happy, sometimes sad.
At the beginning of an arc I was part of not to long ago my character, the 'father' figure of the group, died at the outset and it lent an amazing sense of weight to the proceeding RP. The arc centered around a terrorist whom after a few more horrific events the group had found and killed, leaving a very powerful sort of bittersweet ending.
Of course to have those big impactful events there has to be a balance, because if all we had were those twists and turns it would become the norm, and to make it impactful again we would have to do something even more extreme.
Though the above is admittedly in a preformed group of people, we all knew the general direction things would go. The OOC communication to pull off this sort of thing is very important, because while you don't have to give a play by play version of the arc people knowing that it's going towards the dramatic I have always found to be polite and help things go more smoothly.
