Entry tags:
- 05,
- communication,
- dwrp,
- ljrp
05: Communicating With Your Players
Originally I was going to do a post to follow-up on the idea of active roleplaying versus passive roleplaying, but halfway through I started to talk about how communication factored into it and I realized that talking about communication would be a better post for this week. I'm sure it's not the same for every game, but many of the games on LJRP and DWRP I have been in have had a huuuuuge problem with communication outside of tags. In one game it was so much of a problem that it took two months for the mods to mediate between an ongoing problem. That is a long time to spend on one problem! So, this post will be about how vital it is to communicate with your fellow players and why you shouldn't shy away from it.
It should go without saying, but you really need out of character communication between the players. Being a written game, it's very hard to read nonverbal clues about where to go with a thread, and talking OOC can really help to keep everyone happy and on-track. This is why mods do infoposts about plots before those plots even happen. It wouldn't be very fun for the mods to just throw changes at you and expect you to go along with it without knowing what to do, and it would be a quick way to mess up key plot points within an event.
Now, talking out of character usually isn't the problem. I've been around online roleplaying enough to know that the players are usually in contact a lot. We chat on aim, we flail about threads on plurk, we talk about awesome things to do in the OOC community of the games we're in. The problem isn't that we don't talk to each other, it's that we only talk positively to each other. Game-wide HMDs have become the land of praise and keysmashing, rather than being used for any actual critique. We may make plans in OOC posts about plots, but when there's a problem with how things are going players rarely go back to that post to poke someone and say "hey, that messed up what I was trying to do!"
I think the reason for this is that a good portion of roleplayers want to avoid confrontation. I know how hard it can be to approach someone about something roleplaying-related if there is nothing positive to say. In my game I'm the mod who takes care of app-related emails, and I have had to send out many revision and rejection letters. It's not always the easiest thing to do, and I can definitely see why someone might want to avoid talking about difficult subjects, especially if you don't personally know the player you have a problem with.
The problem is that sometimes these things really need to be said. Oftentimes when someone is stepping on your toes it's entirely unintentional, usually because they never saw the OOC communication where you talked about doing that particular thread. In little, incidental threads, that might be something you can overlook if you want to. But in threads about important things, like game plots or threads important to your character's development, you really need to pull that person aside and talk to them.
Will people get offended? Yes, sometimes they will. It is always a possibility that by saying something OOC you will upset a player. But if the problem you're having is very important to you, then you really need to speak up. Otherwise you'll be the one who's upset, and that won't help you at all.
Ultimately you should strive to have open communication with everyone. You should stay in contact about everything, both positive and negative. And remember, just because you have a problem to bring up with someone doesn't mean you're a bad person for saying it. If it's something that's important to you, then you should definitely say it, rather than letting it sit with you and make you bitter. That's why we have out of character communication in the first place: to make the in character actions go as smoothly as possible.
That said, you need to pick and choose your battles. Keep the requests of "well I want the thread to go this way can you change your tag" to times when it is vitally important to you for a thread to go a certain way. Remember, roleplaying is a collaborative hobby, and often you will have to compromise. Trying to get everything to go the way you want will just make you the problematic roleplayer.
There's no real practice this time, because it's hard to go back and practice communication. Just keep this post in mind for future OOC communication. Be more assertive of yourself when making plans for a game or a thread.
It should go without saying, but you really need out of character communication between the players. Being a written game, it's very hard to read nonverbal clues about where to go with a thread, and talking OOC can really help to keep everyone happy and on-track. This is why mods do infoposts about plots before those plots even happen. It wouldn't be very fun for the mods to just throw changes at you and expect you to go along with it without knowing what to do, and it would be a quick way to mess up key plot points within an event.
Now, talking out of character usually isn't the problem. I've been around online roleplaying enough to know that the players are usually in contact a lot. We chat on aim, we flail about threads on plurk, we talk about awesome things to do in the OOC community of the games we're in. The problem isn't that we don't talk to each other, it's that we only talk positively to each other. Game-wide HMDs have become the land of praise and keysmashing, rather than being used for any actual critique. We may make plans in OOC posts about plots, but when there's a problem with how things are going players rarely go back to that post to poke someone and say "hey, that messed up what I was trying to do!"
I think the reason for this is that a good portion of roleplayers want to avoid confrontation. I know how hard it can be to approach someone about something roleplaying-related if there is nothing positive to say. In my game I'm the mod who takes care of app-related emails, and I have had to send out many revision and rejection letters. It's not always the easiest thing to do, and I can definitely see why someone might want to avoid talking about difficult subjects, especially if you don't personally know the player you have a problem with.
The problem is that sometimes these things really need to be said. Oftentimes when someone is stepping on your toes it's entirely unintentional, usually because they never saw the OOC communication where you talked about doing that particular thread. In little, incidental threads, that might be something you can overlook if you want to. But in threads about important things, like game plots or threads important to your character's development, you really need to pull that person aside and talk to them.
Will people get offended? Yes, sometimes they will. It is always a possibility that by saying something OOC you will upset a player. But if the problem you're having is very important to you, then you really need to speak up. Otherwise you'll be the one who's upset, and that won't help you at all.
Ultimately you should strive to have open communication with everyone. You should stay in contact about everything, both positive and negative. And remember, just because you have a problem to bring up with someone doesn't mean you're a bad person for saying it. If it's something that's important to you, then you should definitely say it, rather than letting it sit with you and make you bitter. That's why we have out of character communication in the first place: to make the in character actions go as smoothly as possible.
That said, you need to pick and choose your battles. Keep the requests of "well I want the thread to go this way can you change your tag" to times when it is vitally important to you for a thread to go a certain way. Remember, roleplaying is a collaborative hobby, and often you will have to compromise. Trying to get everything to go the way you want will just make you the problematic roleplayer.
There's no real practice this time, because it's hard to go back and practice communication. Just keep this post in mind for future OOC communication. Be more assertive of yourself when making plans for a game or a thread.