Re: Madrigal OOC Chatter
Yeah. . . here's the deal. If we make NPCs for our own characters to interact with it's quickly going to turn into long posts that nobody else cares about as it doesn't interfere with their character. And if we make NPCs to interact with other characters - well, they're not exactly NPCs then.
Ha ha, if you're bothered by long posts then you might want to re-think joining the actual game. I do tend to post whoppers, as I like to have behind-the-spotlight NPC interaction and that works its way into my posts. I use this to generate ideas for later, so that if a character stumbles upon one of the non-spotlighted NPC's from earlier, there's background for me to build up on.
I think that players in freeform threads can create some good story fun in the same way, and you just helped me pin down something that I wanted to talk about, actually!
If you make an NPC that you wind up liking
better than the character that you submitted to the open thread, you still have time to switch to using that character. I think that one of the main problems with the Main Cavern thread as it is now is that cross_grave's character is just... making it very difficult to play with, considering her attitude causes her to reject all of Rule's character's friendly overtures. Either tweaking that (in cross_grave's case) or creating an NPC and running with that (in either's case) might help the game to pick up the pace.
I'm going to say that the character sheets that you sign up with aren't concrete. And that folks like Xiv, Phe, and Kattunge are allowed to make up
new character sheets to interact with the Main Cavern, though they lose the benefit here of gaining XP for their currently playing characters. (This game is still in Beta, so I'm willing to make changes when I see problems.)
The only solution I see is luring more active players into the main cave. Because frankly most people won't see the appeal in joining this RP if they don't get the full treatment.
Definitely. I'm not sure how to hype up Madrigal to the rest of the board, though I would love if more people signed up in the freeform section. Do you guys have any suggestions, short of me DMing? Would anybody be interested in stepping up and controlling more than one NPC to keep things moving? Since this game is still in Beta, I'm going to wind up using the next few weeks as a trial period for the free-form section. If it looks like it's hopping, I'll ask Nunu or Aika to create a sub-forum if things pan out. If not, I'll leave the freeform stuff to die or hibernate or whatever, and folks who want to play can lurk however they wish.
The way I see it is that wallpaper opened up the Main Cavern as a place for people to kill time while they're waiting to get into the roleplay proper, or maybe as a way to dynamically come up with characters and test them out before settling on them.
My original intentions were to have the game be a place to hang out and keep posting while you guys were waiting on me, in the event that I need to cut back how often I post per day. Using it as a section to test out potential characters is a good excuse, though.
Oh, as for the queue vs. randomized thing, as someone who isn't in the queue (which I'm not sure whether makes my opinion more valuable or less), randomization actually makes more sense to me.
Also the random pick thing; Then people will possibly feel that, they never win, over and over again. I'd suggest keeping the Queue thing honestly, since that's the most "Fair" thing to do. Early Bird Gets the Worm or whatever people say?
I'm taking into consideration the thought that by doing a randomization, we may be able to draw the attention and interest of potential players who want to stick around and see what Madrigal has to offer by playing in the freeform thread. If one looks at the thread, sees half a dozen 'Me next!' posts, and notes that it takes a while for a new DM-led game to crop up, they're going to shrug and back out and probably not come back again. As much as I know that Rule's going to have the most to lose if I go with this route (potentially -- the dice may like him!) I'm trying to think of a way that both generates interest and keeps potential players coming back. XD
I think I may just be getting too serious about it, considering that the game premise is basically "sex! And lots of it!" but I'm having fun putting the mod hat on and chewing over how to run a game. XD Please bear with me! Your input is very much appreciated!