Dec 31, 2022 3:39 pm
Below is something I had liked before about making active posts rather than passive posts.
GAME POSTS THAT ADD VALUE
How many times have games become bland or stalled because posting stagnated? I think more often than not, games die because players and GMs either don’t post or lose interest in the posts people are doing (I am guilty of this as recently as this month).
Key note, these become more critical the further you get from "live text" play. So as you post less frequently, posts need to be more valuable.
For a game post to have value, it should accomplish, at a minimum, two things:
Ground the PC/environment in the world
Drive the action forward
These have nothing to do with having the flowery language of a best selling author but everything to do with pacing and story.
GROUNDING
At a minimum, these games are with other people (with some exceptions). This means that they will have the annoying habit of doing things.
-To start your post, you need to react to what is going on with the GM and other players.
This means you look back from where YOU last left off and at least acknowledge the other players actions. This can be as easy as "Bob smirks at Sarah’s antics as she try’s to steal the toast." Or, "his head bobs back and forth as Karen haggles with the manager" or it can be much more detailed.
The key here is that other players know you read their posts and their posts impact your character and the scene. It also makes sure you see things that might later drive more action.
Try to hit something from each other players posts if it makes sense to bridge the time between your last post to the present. There is some overlap in time and that’s ok, it makes the story cohesive.
2. DRIVE
There are a few ways to drive the action forward. The minimum is to do step one and say "she continues to watch". This is basically a "pass" that signals to the other players that you had a chance to respond and are ready for things to continue. Without this, it can hold up other people posting as they want to not hog the spotlight.
The above way of driving the action shouldn’t be the default as it adds little to the story other than letting people continue. The default should be to add something that others react to. "To distract the baker from Sarah’s carbohydrate caper, Bob asks about the best flour for breading fried wyvern."
This may not even be related to the scene but could interact or add to the environment. The big part here is to give something for the others to react to.
Another way to drive action forward is to ask all the questions you can in one post. This leads to less back and forth as the other player/GM can respond to each in turn. If you don’t need feedback from the first questions, go ahead and ask the second. "What’s your name? What are you doing here? Have you seen Keenan the destroyer? What is that fountain over there?"
This goes for actions too. Keep making actions until you reach a point where you need to know what happens from either players or the GM. If things are unrelated and not likely to be dangerous, keep going "I look over the room assessing the paintings on the wall before crouching next to the chest. I carefully look over the box and if it’s not trapped, attempt to open to check inside"
This ends with an attempt because I don’t know if it will be successful, it might be trapped or locked. But I kept going until there was something I needed to know that I didn’t know.
You can also see in that example that I did three things. Checked paintings, search for traps, open chest. Depending on your GM, you may want to roll each of these at this time to give GM information. They may ignore but at least it makes it so they don’t ask.
At the end of this you should have quite a few open questions that other players or GM need to react to to answer or gives them a prompt to act.
This would keep the game moving forward.
GAME POSTS THAT ADD VALUE
How many times have games become bland or stalled because posting stagnated? I think more often than not, games die because players and GMs either don’t post or lose interest in the posts people are doing (I am guilty of this as recently as this month).
Key note, these become more critical the further you get from "live text" play. So as you post less frequently, posts need to be more valuable.
For a game post to have value, it should accomplish, at a minimum, two things:
Ground the PC/environment in the world
Drive the action forward
These have nothing to do with having the flowery language of a best selling author but everything to do with pacing and story.
GROUNDING
At a minimum, these games are with other people (with some exceptions). This means that they will have the annoying habit of doing things.
-To start your post, you need to react to what is going on with the GM and other players.
This means you look back from where YOU last left off and at least acknowledge the other players actions. This can be as easy as "Bob smirks at Sarah’s antics as she try’s to steal the toast." Or, "his head bobs back and forth as Karen haggles with the manager" or it can be much more detailed.
The key here is that other players know you read their posts and their posts impact your character and the scene. It also makes sure you see things that might later drive more action.
Try to hit something from each other players posts if it makes sense to bridge the time between your last post to the present. There is some overlap in time and that’s ok, it makes the story cohesive.
2. DRIVE
There are a few ways to drive the action forward. The minimum is to do step one and say "she continues to watch". This is basically a "pass" that signals to the other players that you had a chance to respond and are ready for things to continue. Without this, it can hold up other people posting as they want to not hog the spotlight.
The above way of driving the action shouldn’t be the default as it adds little to the story other than letting people continue. The default should be to add something that others react to. "To distract the baker from Sarah’s carbohydrate caper, Bob asks about the best flour for breading fried wyvern."
This may not even be related to the scene but could interact or add to the environment. The big part here is to give something for the others to react to.
Another way to drive action forward is to ask all the questions you can in one post. This leads to less back and forth as the other player/GM can respond to each in turn. If you don’t need feedback from the first questions, go ahead and ask the second. "What’s your name? What are you doing here? Have you seen Keenan the destroyer? What is that fountain over there?"
This goes for actions too. Keep making actions until you reach a point where you need to know what happens from either players or the GM. If things are unrelated and not likely to be dangerous, keep going "I look over the room assessing the paintings on the wall before crouching next to the chest. I carefully look over the box and if it’s not trapped, attempt to open to check inside"
This ends with an attempt because I don’t know if it will be successful, it might be trapped or locked. But I kept going until there was something I needed to know that I didn’t know.
You can also see in that example that I did three things. Checked paintings, search for traps, open chest. Depending on your GM, you may want to roll each of these at this time to give GM information. They may ignore but at least it makes it so they don’t ask.
At the end of this you should have quite a few open questions that other players or GM need to react to to answer or gives them a prompt to act.
This would keep the game moving forward.
