It often comes up that I sit in huge defense of the one liners in the role-play world. This might seem weird me being a role-player who does only multi-paragraph role-play and find one lining as revolting on site as all the other elitist, but let me explain myself. I don't know if it's in my blood but the things I tend to find the most fault in is anything condescending. I feel I've lost loyalty for the people who are my peers (I hate loyalty so that's fine with me), which inspired me in this post to at the very least show some open criticisms of all groups. However, this isn't a post specific to knocking down all the different groups of role-players, it only came to mind that maybe I should include it in this post. No this post for talking about multi-player role-playing!
I've noticed myself that I personally find my role-plays to 99% of the time (made up statistic) be one on one role-play. There could be many possible reasons for this, but to be fair I'll approach this from a way that really slinks through the muck and seconds as a analysis and cut up of the different role-play groups. To get right to it, the three groups I'll analyze are called.
One liners
Semi paragraphers and
Para to multiparagraphers
This all is really straight forward if you don't understand. The one liners post things that generally go from one to two lines, the semi paragraphers make it slightly above this but not to what we'd call a paragraph and the para to multiparagraphers reach a paragraph and beyond. However simple this may seem however we must explain exactly what we mean by "paragraph." Although one liner is pretty easy to understand, what designates a paragraph? It's funny because wikipedia says it's "one line or more" but goes on to say that it has to do whether or not you've started a "new line." This however doesn't seem to hold up as quite right, at least for role-playing terms (and I suspect english class). So, lets define it for role-playing clearly. A paragraph tends to be well, somewhere around six (I don't know if this feels right, please give any thought on this subject) and above lines. This can be dictated however by whether or not you have a word limit to each individual "post," a post being in a private message or chatroom how many words or units you're allowed to type before it either won't allow you more or will just not show it to the rest of the chatters. So, it can vary, but that tends to be a paragraph. So a semi paragrapher tends to be someone who makes it halfway through a post. It's easy to see than a multi-paragrapher would be someone who posts more than two post lengths (this can be further complicated by things like, yahoo chatrooms and yahoo private messages have different post lengths). However, the divisions tend to be clear. Before I move on, one more thing to make clear is that paragraph role-players and multi-paragraph role-players tend to be separate groups but for the sake of understanding this particular post it's easier to lump them together. Besides, most tend to be okay with one or the other. I've even seen a lot settle for semi-paragraph but this is not nearly as common as para and multi-para. So, lets analyze the groups real quick.
It's easy to see the appeal of one lining. It's FAST. You can go through scenes lightning quick, letting you jump through characters actions. From what I've noticed it tends to be action based. "I do this, you do that. He did this, she does that." that sort of thing. This leaves most description out of the question. Although I've shown this to be a state of "infancy" for role-players in previous blogs, where they grow up and go through the other stages to become 'elitists,' let me say this isn't always true. Some people never leave this state and stay happily in it.
So, semi paragraph role-players. This is actually very similar to one liners in my view (It's why I tend to not role-play with them.) I see it as modified one lining. You're still blowing out posts real fast with action based role-play, but you give yourself just enough room to leave some description for the actions. You'll never see beautiful described scenes like you will in the longer lengths of role-play, but that's okay if you think about it anyways because if you're PLAYING a ROLE why in the world are you talking about the setting and scenery right? However flawed this logic is, it's a good reminder that as someone who resides in the "upper class" of the role-playing world I might actually be the weird one (which is probably where all my sympathy comes from).
Para to multi-paragraph role-play. This isn't as clear cut as to what it is. We could separate these groups into SEVERAL different groups if we wanted. I tend to think of these people as having a higher percentage of description per action but that doesn't always tend to be the case. Some people, in an attempt to actively avoid being a smaller set of posts, may have their character do nine or ten things in one post (and when I say things I don't mean, the slightest move of their arm, I mean complicated to simple things). So it can range from action heavy to description heavy. Lets be clear that I include dialogue under "actions" even though it's really not action heavy.
Okay, so what the fuck does that have to do with multi-people role-play? Well I'm gonna analyze among these groups which would be better for this and in what settings. So lets get started
ONE LINERS: I think that one liners are gonna have an easy time doing multi-player role-playing. You put very little time or thought into your post (maybe you put a lot of thought, I don't know I don't do one lining) either way it's probably not a lot of work. What this means is that you will end up short waiting time, so even if you have say ten people, you can react fast. However I feel like because of the very fact that it's one lining you'll have... very little room to react. I suppose that if they reacted to "all ten people" then they'd be getting into semi-paragraph lengths and it'd stop being considered one lining. However, in a chatroom this tends to work really well. I see it as ADD, you have people giving an individual post to EACH persons post. There is no order to it, you just post back and forth and it's probably gotta be very freeing. However, if you were to try to organize this I think it'd be an awful setting for multi-player role-playing. If we were to try and organize this into an email setting, it just doesn't even make sense... so it has no place there.
SEMI-PARAGRAPH: This actually I feel like is a good medium for ORGANIZED multi-player role-play. You have a conference set up, you each wait your turn for a post and do moderately long posts that can respond to each other post without having to wait to long. It's almost perfect. In a chatroom it takes on the same sort of feel to one lining, you can kinda ignore each person and do your own thing, but it's not as strongly oriented into the speed so it tends to be a little harder. I feel like this is best left in a conference. It could be organized into emails, but because of the nature of the speed and length it tends to be a pretty silly thought throwing it into the empty wait of an email.
PARA TO MULTI-PARAGRAPH: This doesn't belong in a chat-room in my personal opinion. It's fine to role-play either of these, but I've noticed that most of the time people latch on to one person or another and ignore everyone else entirely. This isn't the ADD of one lining where you jump back and forth, this is completely sticking to one other person. At this point it's not even multi-player, you just all happen to be in the same spot. It's not completely undoable in a conference and organized, it can work, but it tends to be this ridiculously long wait time. Now, wait time isn't a problem I can entertain myself doing other things, but if you had it in a conference people would want you to start posting the second a new post came in and if I successful distracted myself I probably would draw away from the role-play just as successful. What I tend to think is this belongs in EMAILS. Emails are a perfect environment because it's not like you're all having to be present during the role-play, it can be days before someone responds (but if I know my role-players, and I think I do, it won't be days). This tends to get into a territory that's almost not role-playing... except we don't control each others characters, which is each taking turns writing chapters in a book. It's a fun exercise which I've basically had no experience in because before I was so elitist I hated other peoples posts to the point where I chased of role-players in about two posts. To be clear, I'd like to try more now that I've gotten better about not caring how other people posts, but I haven't gotten to it. I'm busy busy busy. I will say though if you leave it to THREE players, a conference role-play can be achieved. Lets just hold someone's not the third wheel on a two wheeler bike.
So, here's the problem with what I wrote, these groups don't REALLY exist. Yes we all use them and yes we all try to stick to them, but people are fluid. Some people stick to the categories and some people move in and out of all of them. Some people are action based and some aren't, it's just not as simple as I laid it out. However, this can give you a good idea to not waste your time trying multi-player role-playing when it really just doesn't make any sense. I feel like this is a good time to look at WHY we have problems with having a general community as role-players (at least on yahoo). Since we have all these problems with being able to do multi-player role-plays, the role-plays tend to be one on one and very intimate. Beyond that, the intimacy tends to stick into private pms. In privacy being a total asshole, an emotional idiot, a controlling jerk, or an elitist snob tends to not leak out to the rest of the community well enough. I'll get into more in my next post as to WHY I think this really hurts the community, but before I talk about communities as a whole I want to further educate and explore online forums and bring that into the discussion.
Either way, happy role-play hunting
SuperCompoundRper
-kiss kiss-
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