The New OOC and Hangout

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Actually, that chart was created by Weli a really long time ago. I just stored it in my sta.sh because the image kept breaking (RPN update after update) and it seemed too important to lose/people kept asking for it >w<
 
So! It looks like everyone voted on Saturday for movie night over in the Discord server! Last time we all watched a movie together, it was Sky High. I think we should continue with the superhero theme. I'm open to movie suggestions!
 
welian said:
So! It looks like everyone voted on Saturday for movie night over in the Discord server! Last time we all watched a movie together, it was Sky High. I think we should continue with the superhero theme. I'm open to movie suggestions!
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My suggestions are all animate, but I'd throw in Megamind, Incredibles, or Big Hero 6 for movies.
 
Pick something I have already watched or want nothing to do with so that I don't feel as sad for possibly missing it ^^'
 
Let me know when you're home Nessy and we'll have another movie night just for you - you're worth it!
 
Suggested Change to Character Creation and Additional Characters (to replace CCP which no one seems to track anymore!):

Each player is limited to no more than six (6) main characters to play. These are characters that merit full profiles, including ability stats, history, strengths, and flaws. NPCs, who are defined as being utilized for a single scene, and who only appear for a single mission or portion of an episode, do not contribute to this number. If a character is taken out of play, either by arrest, prolonged incapacitation, death, or a similar reason that would prevent them from being played in the future, they are considered "inactive" and no longer count towards this total. Both villains and heroes are subject to this limitation.

Each player can have exactly one (1) S Rank character at any given time. This may not be a player's first character and the player should have been active in the RP at least one (1) month before submitting an S-Rank character.
 
6 seems like a little number...
It makes sense, but when you put it into perspective, this would mean Gus it's not allowed to do a main character anymore, and that Lioness' roster is full as well as soon as she gets her twins into the story. Seems like too sudden of a thing to determinate, just suddenly they can't do these things anymore, doesn't seem fair.
Why not eight, as a what if? Like, I doubt they'll use the spots but if they want at least they can.
 
Okay I looked through all the posts in Episode 5 so I could comprehensively reply to this with statistics to back up my argument.

I know Episode 5 had some people inactive, some people disappear partially through, arrive late, and some people that posted pretty actively but are no longer with us. That being said, I looked at how many main character posts there were. This excludes when Welian and Manic did scene posts and it also excludes posts that were just NPCs. Admittedly there were some NPCs that got a lot of air time but I wanted to focus on main characters for the purpose of seeing who currently 'controls' the story with their characters by virtue of posts. I know- you can have an important character that doesn't post a lot I suppose, but I needed some sort of metric. This is meant to give a rough idea!

Above 10% of the total posts
Gus- 61 posts (22.3%)
Nessy- 40 posts (14.5%)
Lioness- 36 posts (13.1%)
---> Collectively approximately 50% of total posts

Syrenrei- 24 posts
Manic Muse- 13 posts
Frixz- 12 posts
Bag- 12 posts
toomuchidea- 11 posts
Fuzzy Pixel- 8 posts
Natealie- 8 posts
Giyari- 6 posts
AllHailDago- 6 posts
Zahzi- 5 posts
Ixaix- 4 posts
Anarchist- 4 posts
Malikai- 4 posts
KingHink- 4 posts
Dama- 3 posts
Swoob- 3 posts
Dano- 3 posts
Welian- 3 posts
Suspicious Eye- 2 posts
Leo- 1 post
The J- 1 post
-----
274 posts total



Now, is it the fault of the active posters they are active? No. But I wanted to show that even with the best intentions the numbers are really skewed. Naturally if you have a lot of characters, you have a lot to post for, but right now half of Episode 5 is three people. If we want to diversify, to pull other people in, and make some people who didn't post as much (like Giyari, who doesn't love the guy?) we need to make sure the cast doesn't swell up so much they are barely a blip in the radar. The more characters we allow people to have, even new people, the harder it is going to be to balance the RP and keep everyone involved. And that's the thing. We have lots of new people! They shouldn't feel like they need 6+ characters to keep up with the story and be important. If they do, you're going to see all the people with less characters slowly drop off and out because they can't keep up!
 
I dunno, I don't see it as a matter of keeping up so much as having options? I posted a lot because I had to, to keep up all my interactions. I didn't want to leave anybody hanging. And I don't think I ever did for more than a week or two, not counting Mission threads. I get the concept of impact factor as a whole; those numbers do seem a little extreme on their own.

I think it would make more sense though, to disaggregate posts rather than lump them together by user. My characters interacted with lots of different people, and barely ever spoke to each other. Manami soaked Tony, and at the very end Tony went with Lars, but other than that, I was spread all around. So look at it this way: How many people would have had no interaction to play off of if I hadn't kept posting? I am not trying to dominate, just to open doors. I think that is important. Great power comes with great responsibility and all that.

The idea of domination also may become moot as the story seems to be gearing up to split into multiple plot lines, which should do a lot to relieve congestion. As it was there were already many parallel plots interwoven into the one over arching backdrop of the exam. Allowing for different backdrops is going to change things a lot.
 
Gus said:
How many people would have had no interaction to play off of if I hadn't kept posting?
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THIS
This is exactly why I started doing posts for Cecilia's Parents more regularly, because Ix needed an interaction. It might have backfired at some point but it was because since they were NPCs, she had started feeling left in the corner...
BUT!

It could have been Aiden instead, and then you would be counting his posts as main as well, then I would be even more 'dominating' then I already am.

No one has to take part in everything that's happening in every scene, that's crazy. The most important thing is making sure that everyone has someone to interact with, in a way that they feel part of something. And that's how I see what we're doing.
 
This doesn't change my feelings about the cap. Were you interacting with other people? Yes. But at the same time allowing you or anyone else to have more than six characters is, to me, absolute madness. Even when you're interacting with those other people you are, benign or not, absolutely dominating the story with your characters. And I worry that if we have several people with just as many characters consistently posting people who do not want to balance six characters or more will be drowned out.

You can see it as opening doors, but I don't want the same person opening all the doors. Why can't other people step up or step in? And how do they elbow themselves in if there are so many other characters involved, doing everything they want to do?

Personally I had Susan interact with just Fuzzy Pixel, Luther interacted with ManicMuse, you, and Dano, and Imogen interacted with King, you, Welian, and Giyari. I can't speak for everyone else but I don't feel I needed you or anyone else to pull me out for an interaction. The opportunities are there, we just need to stop having it be all the same person or people that are pulling everyone together and, by extension, exerting a great amount of control over the RP as a result.

Welian's rule is you can't have 20% of the cast because then you can create a small army in the RP- and she doesn't want anyone doing that, right? But the cast keeps changing. People are dropping and intermittently people are joining. The amount of active characters is consistently changing so it makes sense to stick with a stagnant number.

And to emphasize I am not counting NPCs.

This whole "six characters isn't enough" is making me reconsider this whole thing (meaning involvement in the RP), honestly. It really is. When I joined I thought there were mechanics to keep anyone from dominating but now it's not, "you're not allowed to dominate, we have CCP to be fair." This upsets me. It's "it's okay for people to dominate the RP and you should like it." I'm not happy with some people posting so little and I have to think there's a reason. If I was new here that reason would be, "Holy mother of God, there's so much going on I couldn't possibly matter in the story!"

We need to have SOMETHING if we're discarding CCP. Or we might as well all exit left and let the RP be overrun by those who can make the most characters.
 
It depends.
I'm not saying that this is a must and that it is the normal of the RP, however, when Ix joined she needed an interaction and people were away already.
Even Lioness, who is dominating I'm your list, wasn't around. The RP had a gap, I tried filling it myself because no one else would or could.

If we were to make you system work then we shouldn't be taking new players in while the RP is slow... This is the impression you're giving me when you're demonizing the fact that were we just trying to help...

Was it a desperate measure? Yes. Is it viable in normal circumstances? Probably not because of the concerns you already have, but taking it as a sole bad thing isn't helping either...

Ep 5 was an exception, last year was terrible on everyone.
Sometimes I feel like you're disregarding that fact and it saddens me.
 
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I don't really see why anyone would need more than six characters at once. That's a ton of characters to explore in terms of character development, story contribution, power usage and etc etc. Having a small army available to a player is a bit of a concern to me personally because that gives them greater influence to directly move the story in the direction that they want and to be honest I think that can be a thing that happens both unintentionally and intentionally.

I'm not saying having that many characters is a terrible thing, it certainly helped push things along in the already stagnant Ep.5 but to me it looks like it has the potential to be a bigger problem in the future if the RP picks back up, which it looks like it's going to sooner rather than later given all the plans being made and the people joining who used to be in the old RP.
 
Lemon Boy said:
I don't really see why anyone would need more than six characters at once. That's a ton of characters to explore in terms of character development, story contribution, power usage and etc etc. Having a small army available to a player is a bit of a concern to me personally because that gives them greater influence to directly move the story in the direction that they want and to be honest I think that can be a thing that happens both unintentionally and intentionally.

I'm not saying having that many characters is a terrible thing, it certainly helped push things along in the already stagnant Ep.5 but to me it looks like it has the potential to be a bigger problem in the future if the RP picks back up, which it looks like it's going to sooner rather than later given all the plans being made and the people joining who used to be in the old RP.
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Okay, that I can understand and I agree with you >w<
 
Just gonna add that in the last RP there was a hard limit of 6 characters. Only myself and Zahzi hit it, but there was a hard limit all the same. I think a hard limit on characters would be a good idea tbh. 6 is more than enough and if anything is pushing the limits already, not because it would inflate the cast and have a minority holding a majority of story direction but rather because I feel it stagnates the writing itself.

Interacting with lots of characters can be fun, but it's more fun when it's characters played by different people. I mean this in no bad way at all, but we all write in our own styles, and try as we may, we'll write that way no matter what character we're posting for. This can lead to different characters feeling, or rather reading, in a kind of similar way because they're written by the same person who writes in a certain style. We all do it, it's not anything to be worried about either... until you have lots of characters played by the same people.

Syren's writing is very descriptive of her characters observations and thoughts, the posts read as if they're monologues from the characters mind and viewed through the characters eyes. This makes them feel like you're in that characters shoes I think.

Myself, re-reading my posts I notice that my writing leans to being more descriptive of my characters surroundings and their physical actions, painting a clear scene of what that character is doing, as if I'm watching a movie.

Nessy's writing is very emotional, she focuses on her characters feelings and how they outwardly express those feelings to others and how her characters react to others.
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On their own, there is nothing wrong with this at all, people have distinctive styles and that's a brilliant thing! But when 1 or 2 people control a large portion of the cast, that makes every second-third post read the same way, and it can get a bit homogeneous.

Limiting the number of characters anyone can control would mitigate that slightly.
 
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As a recent newbie looking in on episode 5 just wanted to say a few things. I feel that the structure of episode 5 really just set it up for failure, and that's the root of most of the troubles being discussed here. I'll try to explain what I mean by that.
  • The exam required students to group up. Naturally this cuts off a lot of options for those characters as they're now forced more or less to stick to their team to do the exam, because the focus was on teamwork. As people started dropping off for whatever reason, this naturally traps the remaining characters in a shrinking circle of already limited interactions. IC-wise, there's no real explanation for why the teammate they were just talking to is now suddenly still and silent as a mannequin, and something has to be made up on the spot to remedy it. Groups were removed and combined, but this was an awkward and jarring process that was done far too late to really keep the pace moving.
  • This was all a test for the students, which means teachers and most adults in general couldn't really get directly involved without interfering with the exam itself. They were relegated to spectators for the episode, which wouldn't have been terrible if it didn't take so long to eventually finish. Did some teachers/adults do things? Yep, and more power to them. However, by its nature episode 5 was never meant to provide them with any real meaningful activities.
  • New people jumping in as a student. Going to refer back to my first point. Unless they're roped into one of the few remaining active groups they're at a loss here on how to jump into the story fluidly and organically. The groups are already pre-made, students are already on the obstacles doing the exam, they most likely have little or no relationship plots with other characters so jumping in can be awkward. It's just a nightmare. Of course they're going to feel sidelined. Considering the specific nature of Ixaix's sudden appearance, he probably should have been approached by teachers instead of npc's. Doing something like that would have brought him in naturally without having to involve npc's. However, if a new player makes an already enrolled student, they have the troubles I listed earlier to cope with.
  • New people jumping in as a teacher/adult. Going to refer back to my second and third point. They're hopping in with a character who's not expected to do much this episode, and with the exam being as long as it was that just meant sitting on your hands more. Ignoring the exam was probably your best bet for real interaction, as counter intuitive as that is initially for episode 5.
All these problems are only exacerbated by how long episode 5 is dragging on. Yes, it's important to give people options, I agree wholeheartedly on that because being left out is just terrible. It is rough as a newbie trying to hop into this roleplay during episode 5. They should be helped, and I believe that's something everyone agrees on. That being said, does anybody really need more than six characters if they're fully invested in those six? The story will be branching out so we won't be restricted by the structure that shackled episode 5 anymore. Characters and players will have a lot more room to naturally move around in. Npc's shouldn't be needed anymore at this point to provide people with lasting interactions, especially if we can get a solid list of active posters going into episode 6 that can be counted on more than one hand.

If a player loses muse for a character and latches onto a new idea, that's fine. Retire the former character to make room for the new one if you're at six. The retired should not be making regular npc posts either, if that's the case. "But why not keep both?" Well, to be frank, I'd rather people only play characters they're fully committed to and enjoy using so we avoid any further stagnation. I'd rather see one active character over two with half the activity combined. Let's not forget how many character sheets there were before the recent purge. It was pretty discouraging as a newbie thinking I had to be familiar with eight pages worth of characters, and knowing that the list would only grow. That's on top of having to flounder in the dark picking up the scattered bits of information on this roleplay that I needed to understand what was going on IC and OOC. That's not a concern the vets have to deal with because they're already familiar with mostly everything.

Given how inactive players here can be for whatever reason, I would think a limit would help maintain a steady flow. Less characters to suddenly go missing. Lost interactions yourself? Shelf the character. Doesn't mean they never existed or died. This process could possibly even keep people from disappearing, knowing that they could lose out on your interactions. This obsession with new ideas us roleplayers tend to get can make things worse with the more characters we have. If you're doing well with six characters, good on you. Keep them active, live long and prosper. If somebody needs interaction and you can't get to them? Let's direct those of us who can help, to help. It spreads out the interactions more that way and keeps the population down.

And again to emphasize one last time: we won't be restricted by the structure that shackled episode 5 anymore, so the roleplay should be naturally more accommodating to new players/characters the sooner we move on.
 
I am not lobbying for more characters to be clear. I am very happy with my six. I just mean to suggest that rules without any flex to them are asking for trouble just as much as no rules is. There should be room for discussion and negotiation. Problematic behavior is problematic regardless of whether there are rules against it. Active engagement in discussions will do more to prevent problems than any list of rules, in my experience.

So anyway, for the last couple of hours I put this together as an alternate breakdown of posts in episode 5. Food for thought.

Name, Posts involving (including collaborations)
Page, 8
Manami, 18
Nix, 8
Swan, 6
Piper, 11
Sam, 13
Lara, 6
Luther, 6
Juliana, 16
Melody, 6
Trent, 3
Mary, 1
GM/Co-GM narrative/rules, 9
Cecilia, 6
Gavin, 5
Kendrick, 18
Tabitha, 8
Chris, 6
Scarlet, 7
JJ, 4
Tomoko, 2
Hamasakis, 3
Aaron, 14
Anneliese, 7
Lars, 4
Isabelle, 4
Pellegrinis, 7
Hyou, 4
Richard, 7
Albert, 6
Kate, 8
Hadrian, 1
LARRY, 1
Tony, 13
Raymond, 5
Eden, 3
Bianca, 2
Naran, 1
Mitch, 8
Lucas, 9
Miia, 8
Aid, 3
Red, 3
Bruce, 4
Malcolm, 1
Jeremy, 1
Chernov, 1
Jordan, 2
Morgan, 3
Dr. Brahn, 3
Mr. Brahn, 1
Imogen, 10
Penny, 1
Avoyelles, 1
Ernest, 4
Susan, 9
Logan, 8

If I added right that is about 4 posts per character, on average. 4.15... That seems low. And there are lots of reasons for that, mostly real life ones and not a lot can be done. But it also suggests that 8 to 15 posts is a pretty good impact on the story, if looked at from a per character contribution. I get the concern about per player contribution, but I still don't think it makes sense to aggregate that data unless the characters are working as a team in some way. Which I don't think any honest reading of the story in context would support. Other than PCs with NPCs, there was barely any of that.
 
The Fuzzy Pixel said:
As a recent newbie looking in on episode 5 just wanted to say a few things. I feel that the structure of episode 5 really just set it up for failure, and that's the root of most of the troubles being discussed here. I'll try to explain what I mean by that.
  • The exam required students to group up. Naturally this cuts off a lot of options for those characters as they're now forced more or less to stick to their team to do the exam, because the focus was on teamwork. As people started dropping off for whatever reason, this naturally traps the remaining characters in a shrinking circle of already limited interactions. IC-wise, there's no real explanation for why the teammate they were just talking to is now suddenly still and silent as a mannequin, and something has to be made up on the spot to remedy it. Groups were removed and combined, but this was an awkward and jarring process that was done far too late to really keep the pace moving.
  • This was all a test for the students, which means teachers and most adults in general couldn't really get directly involved without interfering with the exam itself. They were relegated to spectators for the episode, which wouldn't have been terrible if it didn't take so long to eventually finish. Did some teachers/adults do things? Yep, and more power to them. However, by its nature episode 5 was never meant to provide them with any real meaningful activities.
  • New people jumping in as a student. Going to refer back to my first point. Unless they're roped into one of the few remaining active groups they're at a loss here on how to jump into the story fluidly and organically. The groups are already pre-made, students are already on the obstacles doing the exam, they most likely have little or no relationship plots with other characters so jumping in can be awkward. It's just a nightmare. Of course they're going to feel sidelined. Considering the specific nature of Ixaix's sudden appearance, he probably should have been approached by teachers instead of npc's. Doing something like that would have brought him in naturally without having to involve npc's. However, if a new player makes an already enrolled student, they have the troubles I listed earlier to cope with.
  • New people jumping in as a teacher/adult. Going to refer back to my second and third point. They're hopping in with a character who's not expected to do much this episode, and with the exam being as long as it was that just meant sitting on your hands more. Ignoring the exam was probably your best bet for real interaction, as counter intuitive as that is initially for episode 5.
All these problems are only exacerbated by how long episode 5 is dragging on. Yes, it's important to give people options, I agree wholeheartedly on that because being left out is just terrible. It is rough as a newbie trying to hop into this roleplay during episode 5. They should be helped, and I believe that's something everyone agrees on. That being said, does anybody really need more than six characters if they're fully invested in those six? The story will be branching out so we won't be restricted by the structure that shackled episode 5 anymore. Characters and players will have a lot more room to naturally move around in. Npc's shouldn't be needed anymore at this point to provide people with lasting interactions, especially if we can get a solid list of active posters going into episode 6 that can be counted on more than one hand.

If a player loses muse for a character and latches onto a new idea, that's fine. Retire the former character to make room for the new one if you're at six. The retired should not be making regular npc posts either, if that's the case. "But why not keep both?" Well, to be frank, I'd rather people only play characters they're fully committed to and enjoy using so we avoid any further stagnation. I'd rather see one active character over two with half the activity combined. Let's not forget how many character sheets there were before the recent purge. It was pretty discouraging as a newbie thinking I had to be familiar with eight pages worth of characters, and knowing that the list would only grow. That's on top of having to flounder in the dark picking up the scattered bits of information on this roleplay that I needed to understand what was going on IC and OOC. That's not a concern the vets have to deal with because they're already familiar with mostly everything.

Given how inactive players here can be for whatever reason, I would think a limit would help maintain a steady flow. Less characters to suddenly go missing. Lost interactions yourself? Shelf the character. Doesn't mean they never existed or died. This process could possibly even keep people from disappearing, knowing that they could lose out on your interactions. This obsession with new ideas us roleplayers tend to get can make things worse with the more characters we have. If you're doing well with six characters, good on you. Keep them active, live long and prosper. If somebody needs interaction and you can't get to them? Let's direct those of us who can help, to help. It spreads out the interactions more that way and keeps the population down.

And again to emphasize one last time: we won't be restricted by the structure that shackled episode 5 anymore, so the roleplay should be naturally more accommodating to new players/characters the sooner we move on.
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I agree with virtually everything you say, FP. My only caveat is this: While I agree that people should only play characters they are fully committed to, I think the concern that this is a problem for those of us near the limit is not currently in the data we have in hand. That IS a concern to take seriously. But if somebody can commit to more (Not sure I can) then it seems strange to say no for a purely theoretical concern.

In general though, I agree. I just think that moving to a less rigid story structure will fix that, and I am not convinced the proposed rule will have any effect one way or another.
 
You could argue though that the larger the cast, the less room there is for more posts per character (at least for ep5's structure). Therefore yea you're only getting 4-ish posts per character, but that's only because there's too many characters doing too many things for it to happen much faster.

You'd also still have to consider what character match up to what player (as it looks like the players with the most characters are also making the the most posts per character) and what characters had more chances for posts than others. As Fuzzy Pixel said, the adults have not been centre stage, and therefore shouldn't have been expected to make many posts compared to the students. Additionally there's posts from characters that are either new players, NPCs, or from very inactive players to consider. so yes, 4-ish per character is right, but it's not based on a very reliable dataset considering the variables in both player and character circumstances, and indeed even character purpose (Looking at Chernov and other NPCs as a good example of that).
 
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I disagree. I like firm, stagnant, consistently applied rules. I don't like hearing that character creation should follow a rule, for example, just to see it bent and broken. And while I will not call out individuals that think the same way I do (I will leave that to them to speak up) the thing that makes me most consistently unhappy with this RP is when suddenly rules are given exceptions.

In fact I have almost left the RP over it.

Right now the CCP are not being utilized or enforced so there were thoughts we need an alternative system. This is my alternative. I'm not okay with, "Let's just let everyone make how many characters they want." I'm not advocating limiting posts per character, or even saying players can't play NPCs, I am just trying to come up with a solution that can make the most amount of people happy. This discussion is admittedly making me feel like an outlier, like I'm wrong for wanting rules, and it's driving me crazy enough I have seriously contemplated an "AEGIS timeout."

Let's think about something Rekt was saying yesterday in Discord. She was in a scene and some people in her RP were RPing while she was busy. She was frustrated because her character got skipped over and made irrelevant because they didn't wait for her. I've been there before and I'm sure others have to! That's what it feels like, however. With a large amount of characters it is easy to post so much, and have so much going on, others feel 'skipped' because they can't squeeze in. This doesn't mean that people who are active are wrong, just that we need to hold to some limits so that their activity doesn't preclude others from feeling they can jump in and contribute.

If we're going to polls, I would love to see who supports a six character cap. Right now Gus, Nessy, and Lioness are very active, but by comparison the rest of us are struggling. The idea is not to offer more things to encourage you three specifically, but encourage others to feel empowered. I don't think we should have ANY episode dominated by three people even if one of them is me.

And we should stop looking at this like an exception.

People posted in the episode that left the RP, just like every other episode. New people joined, just like every other episode. Active people went AWOL, people who were inactive came back. This could be our new normal- there are no guarantees that we will return to Episode 4 because the people have changed, the characters have changed, and the story has changed. It was a bad year for some but that doesn't mean next year won't be bad for those same people. We don't know. But relying on what happened a year and a half ago for the norm is very flawed. A year and a half ago the roster was very different!
 
Theoretical concerns are why there are rules to begin with. So we never have to touch the subject even though that might not have happened yet, and everyone is on the same page as far as boundaries go. Just about every roleplay I've been in forbids metagaming. While in theory it never happened yet (at least not that I know of here in AEGIS), it is a reasonable rule to have. Is the suggested cap of six characters rigid? Yes, I'll say so. Is it draconian? No. The suggested number could have been less, even. Like the metagaming ban, to me, having a cap of six characters is entirely reasonable.

I have already suggested a degree of flexibility to the limit in being able to shelf characters for new ones. The retired can be brought back through the same process.
 
Six I believe, but I think having more than six characters would be an issue if the number was pushed up. I like Pixel's idea of having the ability to shelf one for another but making the limit seven or eight+ seems like a bit much to me. It's a reasonable limit in my opinion.
 
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