The Evil Professor Is In. (Anna's Scrapbook)

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The player scrapbooks forum is literally a place for writers to warm-up, brainstorm, keep little scraps of notes, or just post things to encourage themselves and each other. Each player can feel free to create their own thread - one per account - and use them accordingly.

The Evil Professor Is In. (Anna's Scrapbook)

Postby Nightmare on June 30th, 2014, 10:59 pm



For you M'dear.
If you have an concerns, questions or problems please PM me right away. I am here to assist and can usually get a reply within a day or two if not sooner.
If you haven't gotten a response from me within five days, please PM me again!
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The Evil Professor Is In. (Anna's Scrapbook)

Postby S'Essy on July 3rd, 2014, 7:48 pm

I just found this, this is for you dear!

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Unless I promised one, I can not accept any more threads at the moment! I'm sorry.
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The Evil Professor Is In. (Anna's Scrapbook)

Postby Annalisa Marin on August 9th, 2014, 5:43 pm

Forum RPing and me


I debated whether or not to put this up, but I figured it was an interesting experience so I saw no issue with putting it up. Maybe someone else was interested in a similar subject. Now, as some of you might be aware, I'm not exactly new to the Forum RP scene though my origins are in Tabletop. I've done a couple of more low maintenance RPs, nothing that kept my interest for more than a month. Then I found Miz and the rest, as they say is history.

Recently however, in the past couple of months I've been curious about other RP sites on the net. I was curious as to what made an RP site work, what magical planets aligned to bring people in to this idea. So, in what little free time I had lately I opted to try an experiment and get a feel for what other sites were like. I won't be naming any site names nor am I telling you to abandon Miz and try these other sites. This was just my experience that I felt was worth sharing.

So the first site I tried was rather similar in style to Miz, as in it was an RP built around a certain world with a certain theme. With Miz it is sort of dark/low fantasy and post apocalyptic themes and with this one there was a more lighter/high fantasy sort of vibe to it. It was a pretty old RP and had a decent membership amount. It reminded me a LOT of D&D, especially the magic and race system's for the most part. I suppose once you go Miz magic you find it difficult to go back to D&D magic. Since it was similar in general form to Miz and had a theme to it, that made it muuuch easier for me to get into. Read the lore, introduction, character sheet, register in city, pester people for threads, boom, there you go.

However, I did have some difficulty seeing myself staying with it and here is why. First off the staff was somewhat smaller in size than Miz and the main admin appeared less active. That doesn't sound too bad in theory, but keep in mind that it possesses a membership size very close to Miz and a number of active domains. Secondly, the fact that it did remind me of D&D was great for nostalgia's sake, but Forum RPing D&D just doesn't give me the same feeling I would get if I was RPing on tabletop with a few pals. Thirdly, since I was so used to Miz, RPing on a similar Forum just made me want to play Miz lol. With my experience there completed I moved on.

The next one I tried as a toss off the deep end really, something I hadn't really tried before. It was a freeform RP and one with a ludicrously massive concurrent membership amount. It was beyond active, actually managing to be somewhat intimidating going in. Still I opted to give it a shot, so after reviewing the rules and looking around a bit I jumped in. The interesting thing about this place was exactly how freeform it was. They pretty much say right at that gate that anything (short of lewd scenes as they are very much PG-13) goes. Its hard to believe how intimidating that can be when its just thrown out there like that.

Now what I did first, after introducing myself, was create a character that I would likely be able to use in most fantasy RP's (what can I say, Miz kinda enforced that tendency in me). This done I posted in the matchmaker forum, including a few basic ideas and plots of what I was looking for. Within about say thirty minutes I was pinged by someone who was interested. I set up the thread and we were off! Then I looked around and opted to PM some folks and show interest in their plots and ideas and get more RP's. Here are just a few observations I made about their request threads that were a bit different from Miz.

Firstly a lot of the requests included 'pairings', some things like VampirexHuman or WerewolfxVampire. Little romance things to get people started off around a basic idea. Next, since it was freeform, there was a large amount of one to two liners around. Now, I'm a person that likes a good amount of meat to their post. If I don't post at least 500-600 words I feel a little dirty, but I understand sometimes smaller posts are all you can manage. But one liners are never something I'm okay with, as they give me NOTHING to work with. This results in me losing quality on my posts, which in turn makes me very likely to lose interest in the RP.

Another thing that put me off was that some people RP'd through PM. I had never done that before, didn't think it was a thing people did really. Here on Miz I use PM's for plotting and OOC discussions with some friends. Not only that but it seems to me like RPing through PM's would get cluttered, being much easier to lose track off. The last thing that really put me off was the pestering.

Let me tell you a story. I was posting with this one person, we'll call her Mary for the sake of this story. Now, Mary was my first RP partner on this site and she was pretty good at managing an average of three to four paragraphs. So I powered posted on the thread a bit and slowed down to about maybe one or two posts per day. Now then, as some of you know, recently RL has become pretty hectic for me and my free time suffered as a result. So I am gone for a day. I get back and check my inbox and Mary PM'd me to ask if I was still interested in the thread. Okay. So on Miz, conversely, I have kept people waiting on threads for weeks before and not one PM was sent to my inbox asking for a reply. If I wasn't interested in continuing a thread I would let this person know. On another thread it slipped my mind to reply for two days because, again, I got shit to do. They told me to at least be courteous enough to let them know if I was abandoning the thread rather than raising some kind of cone of silence! What!? How about doing me the courtesy of giving me the benefit of the doubt? How about you display a bit of patience for this HOBBY, you spoiled brat? Not everyone is some kid out of school for the summer with nothing but free time between semesters, some of us have to work and make money. Some of us have to help out their parents and grandparents. Some of us might want to work on their OWN personal writing projects in the hopes of getting published one day by some petching miracle. Some of us might want to just hang out with RL friends once in a while. In other words, some of us have lives! Arrrgh! :mad:

...Sorry about that, got a little venty there... >.>

Now then... that is not to say it was all bad. Its just easy to focus on the negatives that add up to a conclusion. Freeform is a joy to RP in if you can get a good partner, it gives you a certain degree of wiggle room on what you want to do. Miz is much more themed, which is something I prefer honestly. With Miz you are one (sometimes five) character at one place at one time. Its their story in that world that you tell here, whether you are a Konti Healer or a Chaon of Rhysol its all there as a story to be told within the world of Miz. This site didn't have that feeling, that feeling like a character belonged in the world. That is what is so genius about Miz, the story isn't just about any one character, its the story of a world that is ever changing. With this it seemed more like it was the characters that made world, it was very much focused on the characters rather than the world. In a way that's good, since you can literally do anything you want short of breaking ToU. Is it better, worse? I dunno.

The last place I went to was an 18+ freeform site (yes these exist). I won't go into graphic detail as that is just tasteless. However the experience was very similar to the previous one I listed. Though, as a bonus, it lacked people endlessly PMing you to see if you are still interested in the thread you just posted for yesterday like some overly clingy girlfriend. However this site had some downsides as well.

First off, I noticed that a number of RPs were more smut based than story based. Now, I won't lie, I've written some steamy stuff on Miz before but I tended to keep it to metaphor and alliteration. What I discovered here is that while they can be fun as once in a while things, they get really really dull when that's all they are. Without plot I don't enjoy writing something, there has to be some driving force that makes me want to write. Smut doesn't do it for me anymore and I'm a 19 year old guy for crying out loud, give me some plot to go with the smut. For instance, lets say I opted to have Anna here visit a brothel either in solo or with another character. Just going to the brothel isn't much of a plot, sure its amusing to write a character visiting one but it needs a bit more substance, so to spice that up maybe she's trying to get information. Maybe she wants to find a mark to push Rhysol's way. There is always an ulterior motive in what she does, its never just because she did it on a whim. Its usually one of three reasons, she wants more power, she wants to show her devotion to Rhysol, or its a combination of the above. With the threads on that site it was just sex, sex, sex. Sex isn't that interesting to write about constantly. Yes Guy A puts his +1 Wand of Fortitude into Girl B's Bag of Holding, very clever, next scene please.

That might sound a bit harsh or judgmental, and it some ways it is. They tout being 18+ as their big thing, but the ironic thing is that I've writing far more mature things on Miz. I've writing about a slow descent into paranoia and madness, faith in a dark and cruel god, the degradation of another human being, and even coming to terms with the fact one has family they never knew of. Mature doesn't mean smut, mature means the ability to handle certain plots with skill and tact. Making a person 'feel' something when reading about a character and not just what they are doing. Now that being said, the 18+ label means one can get away with having certain themes in their thread without worrying over much about how tastefully its done. Its just not something that interests me personally. Maybe others would find it more fun.

So those were my little experiences. In conclusion, I actually rather enjoyed the chance to look around and poke my head in at different forum styles. I still vastly prefer Miz honestly since I have made a number of friends here, I like the world, and have spent over a year writing out Anna's story. If my mindless ramblings entertained you then I'd say it was mission well enough accomplished. If you have any thoughts to share, feel free to do so.
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