RP Standards
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So SOMEONE who will REMAIN NAMELESS told me about a Discord RP ad that entertained her. It was deeply 2000s MUs. So I’ve done this deep dive on Discord RP servers, etc., to try to understand what the world is like out there.
The cultures are so different that it’s wild.
Literate RP. Semi-literate RP. I don’t think we really have those distinguishing marks because I think all RP in MU*s is assumed to be literate.
Except just now I tried to google literate vs semi-literate for definitions and apparently it has to do with length, not grammar and readability at all.
We don’t really talk about that kind of RP standards in the MU* community, do we? We talk about length, pacing, etc., but not in the same way others do. So what would you consider the RP standards to be on your game? Do you think it’s helpful to post? I don’t think anyone really ever does.
she/they
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@Tez you’ll have to join my game to find out
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@Tez said in RP Standards:
Except just now I tried to google literate vs semi-literate for definitions and apparently it has to do with length, not grammar and readability at all.
This isn’t even exclusive to Discord. I saw those labels in my forum RP days (10-15 years ago), as well as ‘beginner friendly’ vs ‘advanced’. I even remember similar labels waaaay back on AOL for various guilds, groups, games, etc.
I’m glad most games/communities I see these days don’t have those labels since like Tez said, it wasn’t/isn’t about how well you write. It’s about how much purple prose you can fit into your pose so that you meet the minimum 1500 word count.
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Full T1 para no autos!!1!
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Some Storium games have word count min or max limits, and it only ever gets in the way.
Some of my friends prefer rapid-fire poses with a higher degree of response/interaction. Others write multiple paragraphs. I’m somewhat in the middle. Regardless, it’s not something I would ever want to regulate.
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It’s my opinion that outside of the loosest standards, standards only hurt the game.
The loose standard I would set for RP would be “If your pose reads like a drunk person with large hands texting on a tiny phone, you need to work on your prose.”
Additionally, everybody’s posing habits change on a whim. If a player has lots of energy and inspiration, then lots of amazingly detailed prose comes out. If they’re burnt out from work and haven’t done anything creative in a few days, it’s probably gonna be a lot of short and to the point single line stuff.
My personal baseline is maybe 8-10 sentences. 2 paragraphs of descriptive stuff, 2-4 lines of dialogue. It fluctuates up and down from there.
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The closest I’ve come to seeing RP ‘standards’ posted was on a Pern MUSH I didn’t stick with for long (Second Pass, I kinda got there at the end of its life, unfortunately), and it was more of an explanation of MUSH RP conventions than hard-and-fast rules. Their site is gone now, alas, but I found their old RP Etiquette Guide after some nosing around in The Way Back Machine.
Posing in general.
- Please make an effort to correct typos and use something resembling proper English grammar. If you have a writing-related disability, a spellchecker will catch the most egregious ones and people will be willing to cut you some slack on the rest if you warn them up front.
- There’s a place and time for the one-line pose and the twenty-line pose. Second Pass poses usually run between 3 and 6 lines, with a few outliers in either direction. In general, try to create a happy equilibrium. Keep in mind the time needs of other players when you tend towards longer poses, and their need to have something to respond to when you tend towards shorter poses.
- /Read things/. Read descs, read bbposts, read news files, read other people’s poses. Then try to retain at least a general sense of having read it.
I tend to think the middle part is pretty standard for MUSH RP, at least in its day (this copy-paste is from a 2016 capture), but even that varies pretty wildly depending on individual game culture. Mostly, I think, people figure out what the ‘vibe’ is in RP by the most active players and staffers and emulate it.
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I think that rp standards is a personal thing. It might hurt me if you are constantly spelling all the words wrong, but I try to be understanding.
I think rp standard is less game directed and more scene directed. I have problems keeping up with rapid fire but I can do it. I’m a multi paragraph person. That’s not everyone’s happiness. I try to fit my standard to the story flow of my co-writer.
