Yun
Our World Is Worth Fighting For
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2011
- Messages
- 5,801
- Reaction score
- 232
You know what I mean.
From hours upon hours of sifting through multiple RP threads and topics, I've thought over this entire process for as long as I possibly could have. No, I'm not going to address the age-old problem of roleplay topics dying, nor am I going to point to problems that lead to them dying. I want to tackle a much more specific topic.
Premise. Your roleplay is essentially a story of your creation. The number of people who join can depend on two separate parts of the creative spectrum: Popularity and Inventiveness.
Here are my views on the entire thing:
The term popularity is much less definable than its partner, inventiveness. Popularity, itself, comes from different viewpoints on a spectrum all its own. Many times, people will garner attention to their RP simply because they are popular in the roleplay section; while others may gain attention due to their choosing subjects or fandoms that are very popular in general.
These two go hand-in-hand; I've seen two Pokemon RPs go up at the same time. Nearly the same story, nearly the same premise. However, one person was a new member who posted their sign-up, while the other had been in the roleplay section for at least two years. There was no question as to which of the roleplays the people signed up for.
With inventiveness, there is a single definition that defines a wide view of opinionated arguments: "how different is your RP from another of a similar - or the same - topic?" This has always been a large driving force in roleplay premise. Using a Pokemon adventure roleplay, for example; core elements of a story can be similar to another one (such as the adventuring portion), but make sure that your entire idea could be immediately delineated as "that Pokemon RP" as opposed to "that Pokemon adventure RP" or "this Pokemon adventure RP".
Now, these are only my opinions. For me, I am more of a Large-Scale, super RPG type of person. I love the premise of magic in my roleplays, as well as governmental and religious unrest. I've been described as having a certain "flare" to my RP style.
Which brings me to my series of questions:
From hours upon hours of sifting through multiple RP threads and topics, I've thought over this entire process for as long as I possibly could have. No, I'm not going to address the age-old problem of roleplay topics dying, nor am I going to point to problems that lead to them dying. I want to tackle a much more specific topic.
Premise. Your roleplay is essentially a story of your creation. The number of people who join can depend on two separate parts of the creative spectrum: Popularity and Inventiveness.
Here are my views on the entire thing:
The term popularity is much less definable than its partner, inventiveness. Popularity, itself, comes from different viewpoints on a spectrum all its own. Many times, people will garner attention to their RP simply because they are popular in the roleplay section; while others may gain attention due to their choosing subjects or fandoms that are very popular in general.
These two go hand-in-hand; I've seen two Pokemon RPs go up at the same time. Nearly the same story, nearly the same premise. However, one person was a new member who posted their sign-up, while the other had been in the roleplay section for at least two years. There was no question as to which of the roleplays the people signed up for.
With inventiveness, there is a single definition that defines a wide view of opinionated arguments: "how different is your RP from another of a similar - or the same - topic?" This has always been a large driving force in roleplay premise. Using a Pokemon adventure roleplay, for example; core elements of a story can be similar to another one (such as the adventuring portion), but make sure that your entire idea could be immediately delineated as "that Pokemon RP" as opposed to "that Pokemon adventure RP" or "this Pokemon adventure RP".
Now, these are only my opinions. For me, I am more of a Large-Scale, super RPG type of person. I love the premise of magic in my roleplays, as well as governmental and religious unrest. I've been described as having a certain "flare" to my RP style.
Which brings me to my series of questions:
- What is most important to you in an RP?
- How many members do you normally gross in your RP sign-ups?
- What core elements do you enjoy in most of your roleplays?