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Song of Avaria
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TBF I also find Paragraphs Style to be unnatural, and it requires a bit of mental geometry in my brain to keep it immersive. Sometimes a paragraph is called for! A lot of the time…it isn’t. Having to edit yourself down to make impact with fewer words is also a creative writing skill.
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@GF said in Song of Avaria:
Made me want to start writing my poses to include theme music, spotlights, and crowd cheers.
I kind of want to see a game where this is required. Would be fun in the right setting.
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This thread is doing such wonders to my imposter syndrome re: my general terseness in my poses
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@hellfrog said in Song of Avaria:
TBF I also find Paragraphs Style to be unnatural, and it requires a bit of mental geometry in my brain to keep it immersive. Sometimes a paragraph is called for! A lot of the time…it isn’t. Having to edit yourself down to make impact with fewer words is also a creative writing skill.
“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”
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@Rinel If it helps at all, I remember feeling like long poses with paragraphs of monologue are actually pretty rude; a form of power-posing, as if my character would just stand still and mute until the two minutes of talking is done.
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my monologues (for which I am infamous) will be pried from my cold dead fingers
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@tsar Fort Bloodshed says paragraphs AREN’T ALLOWED
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Sometimes I pose long. Sometimes I pose short. I only actually feel bad when someone poses a novel and I respond with three words.
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I think it’s fine to call for limits on posing. It’s always going to be depend on the context what “style” is going to fit. I personally prefer poses that are shorn of extras. I don’t always love when RP partners flex their command of the English language; I don’t always hate it.
As a general rule, I’m way more partial to “nods and scratches head” than I am three paragraphs of superfluous gesticulations and meta for the dialogue equivalent of “Interesting!”
And if a not terribly character/plot developing scene’s conversation can get done in 20 minutes with shorter poses vs 2 hours with lengthy ones? (Looking at you, meetings!) Definitely for it.
I think any style we’re talking about can fit any scene depending on what the scene is. No hard and fast rule where RP is concerned.
(The TS is probably going to suck though -
I’ve tried to base my own posing with how the other person poses. Something I’ve personally taken away is that sometimes people tend to get self-conscious of their own pose size or complexity of that pose based on what the other RP partner is or isn’t doing. In an attempt to alleviate that for them(and honestly myself because I know I’ve felt that too), I try to fit into that same flow.
If they pose short and concise, I’ll likely try to do that. Same with pose styles that are longer. While I do think that staff might be expecting a little too much in saying that no one should have to wait ‘minutes’ for a pose and part of me wonders if that’s an unrealistic expectation(granted, the argument for what constitutes waiting too long and not is a different discussion). That said, I can’t fault the admin’s goal here.
I don’t know if it’ll be the game for me in light of reading all of this, but I can certainly respect what they’re going for. If anything, I’ll be curious to see where it goes.
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@imstillhere lmao god I still can’t believe we were there together
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So I’m trying not to inject too much bias into this, but here it is:
I fully agree with everyone saying, “sometimes a paragraph is called for, sometimes just one line”, etc. That’s true, but it’s also not what the staff of Avaria said, nor an issue I’ve perceived on the game.
I’ve not seen anyone doing multi-paragraph emotes in public scenes on that game. On average people toss two-liners at each other, and long by that game’s standards would be one paragraph (5-7 lines), which I’ve mostly seen in one-on-one. I personally switch happily between modes.
That staff felt the need to raise this issue tells me that a flexible approach is not what they want. Because the debate wasn’t about “paragraph vs one-liners”, it was “both are fine vs one-liners only”.
I personally can’t get over the fact that staff said this:
For me, too much emphasis on writing detracts from the immediacy of the acting, and from the sense of inhabiting my character.
And that it was part of a longer post expressing discomfort and anxiety around people who care about writing pretty, and that waiting “minutes” on a response was deemed too much. I’m not predominantly a MUSHer, I play MUDs just as happily, and I consider a 2-3 minute wait to be somewhere between fast and average.
The above tells me that this is not a game for people who enjoy creative writing. Even though I think it’s possible to play this game with that goal in mind, and that a lot of the code and design choices would support it, staff having said “there are other games for that” in response to “what’s wrong with both, what harm is this doing”, and expressing that people who care about writing make them unhappy/anxious, is why I used the words hostile fit. You would be showing up to an environment where your intentions are expressly unwelcome.
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@Kestrel said in Song of Avaria:
And that it was part of a longer post expressing discomfort and anxiety around people who care about writing pretty, and that waiting “minutes” on a response was deemed too much.
To me, someone saying “waiting minutes on a response is too much and makes me anxious” is no less valid than ME saying “expecting me to pose within a minute or two is too much and makes me anxious”. To each their own.
Yes, they’re imposing their specific tastes on the game at large (through code and fostering culture), but that’s their right. I’m just glad they’re being open and up-front about it so people can know in advance if the game is/isn’t for them.
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@Kestrel Yeah, I dunno. I get putting things out there right away, but I guess I can’t really wrap my head around the idea that an emphasis on writing detracts from the immediacy of the acting. If this was just a MUD, I likely wouldn’t blink, but the game doesn’t wholly feel like a MUD at glance. I just suppose that in a medium where everything is based upon text, the writing involved is what delivers a sense of immersion and delivers that emotional impact.
While yes, I’m not saying that the same can’t be done with a shorter form of writing, but I guess, something feels lost by what feels(to me, in my opinion)when that kind of rule or restriction is put into place. Maybe the word restriction is too harsh of a descriptor. Limiting, I guess.
And if were to really think about it, I think what bothers more is that there feels like there’s a press on having a quick turnaround in poses. I feel something like that would be more anxiety-inducing than whether or not your pose was too wordy
