Of Muses and Moderators
Well as of lately I’ve been feeling rather nostalgic, I don’t know if it’s the increasing cold weather, or my recent promotion to moderator on Harvest Moon Farm Forums. When I first signed up I figured that I wouldn’t actually change all that much about the RP because heck, it hadn’t changed for so long. I’ve actually been considering creating another character to actively RP with, or using one of my old ones to RP with on their forum which is about, you guessed it Harvest Moon.
It’s been so long since I’ve made any decent RPing posts and it seems to be showing now. I suppose I have no one to blame but myself. I should find myself another community to RP at, but I don’t see myself doing that anytime soon. I’m going to continue to try new projects every once in a while, starting with Neverath here soon and maybe a try Aurora Chronicles once again during the summertime for a greater member turn out. Of course even the thought of that does not sound too grand, but it’s better than doing nothing at all. I hate that my RPs are dying because of inactivity, all the hard work I put into them are basically for nothing. It’s too frustrating, which is why I suppose I’m still here, RPing my little almost mary sue character trying my best to train the upcoming generation of RPers. Sometimes I’m beginning to think that the ways I was taught are becoming obsolete. Taking their place are the shunned methods of old, asterisks and one liners.
I can’t help but wonder what happened to the old days, back when RPing was about telling a story of a character in a foreign world doing things that you yourself cannot possibly accomplish. There is no quality in the work that I see a lot of the time nor is there any quantity to it. It’s dribble plain and simple, but I did have moments where I to was like that for a short while. I don’t now, I’ve always been a fan of descriptive posts, but finding people who can accomplish them these days are few and far between. I just wish that I could find one person on the forum who could actually surpass my abilities, but so far the only people who have come close still aren’t quite there. They have some length to their posts yes, but some of them just get lazy and don’t feel the urge to be descriptive. Maybe I should take a vacation back to the home board, though I doubt that would bring me comfort, that place has been dying for years, becoming infested with people who think that short one sentence posts are the only way to go. You know what I think at the bottom of the section I’ll show the three different types of RPing, though two of them are very similar.
It’s starting to become apparent that even now, with two new moderators the staff is still spinning it’s wheels. The last festival we had completely failed and now both dunkel and myself are probably feeling similar to how Brian did when his festivals started to have no one show up. We’re trying to pick ourselves back up, but what with everyone looking to us for answers instead of using some common sense, well it’s hard. Soon enough we’ll be giving even more power to a few of the members on the forum, now I’m not sure how well this is going to turn out, but I have a bad feeling about it.
RPing Methods- Character: Melayna Wainhart (Because I <3 her)
- Asterisk Method
*Melayna enters the library and sits down*
“I think I’ll read a book while I’m here.”
*Melayna reads a book*
“Oh I was suppose to go meet someone.”
*Melayna leaves*
2. Short description method
Melayna enters the library and takes a seat. “I think I’ll read something.” She takes a book from the shelf and reads it. “Oh I was suppose to go meet someone.” Melayna stands up and leaves.
3. Long description method
Melayna pushes open the large oak door leading in the gigantic library a whirlwind of dust greeting her as soon as the first cracks in the two doors appear. This place was like a home to her as she came here quite often to partake in the wealth of knowledge within the building, though no one else ever seemed to. “I think I’ll read something.” Melayna searches the bookshelf for something that she had not already read. Her chestnut eyes scanned spine after spine, each book varying in color until she found one that caught her eye. She took out a dust old gray tomb which had no title to it and began to flip through a few pages scanning the printed words within to see exactly what the book was about. Before she could get a grasp on it a realization entered her mind causing her to quickly shut the book and head towards the exit. “Oh, I was suppose to go meet someone.” Melayna hurried herself over to the exit until to have herself fall on her face just a few feet before the door. Taking a moment to pick herself up off the ground and dust herself off Melayna headed towards the exit, closing the large oak doors behind her. The library once again fell into the all too common darkness.
November 12th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Eh, can you believe I actually read through half of your wall (and skimmed the rest… >>)? Give me a sticker! >:|
Anywayz, 1. You make me feel guilty for not using the blog space Brian gave me as often as you do.
2. To be frank, your ‘old days’ != HMF’s ‘old days’. Back in teh day, asterisks was /the/ way to go. And, not trying to boast or anything, but methinks I was the one that brought around a paragraph style of RPing. I went to some other HM RPG board, and they had strictly paragraph-posts, so I decided to try it out in HMF as well. It was slower, but seemed pretty nice.
And then I had random urges to tell bits of Kyou’s background in a story format, which, I guess, made people either want to type in a paragraph format, or mistakened that as the only way to go.
I kind of regret causing the change now (if it was me in the first place..), because I find I enjoyed asterisks-RPing much more than paragraph-ing. Switching back to it now would only cause people like Jim to slit me throat.
But yeah. Just wanted to point out that HMF’s best rpers from back in the day, were /all/ asterisk-ers. We all were.
Methinks the difference between the oldies’ way of asterisk-ing and the newbies’ way is that we were more imaginative and random. We had random things popping up, we did random things that rarely made sense, and we actually had fun. Newbies nowadays use asterisks for *goes back to house* *sits around* *is bored* *leaves house*… But err, I’ve got to admit, I haven’t been around in the RPG for a long while, I’m only assuming that what the newbs are doing. :\
3. …Hi Jim! *hands over a slice of chocolate cake*
November 13th, 2007 at 12:02 am
dunkel: It’s the key difference between how people used asterisk then and how people use it NOW. I know I’m looking at the past with blinders on, but we had FUN. It didn’t make sense half the time, but we enjoyed what we were doing. I’m not so sure about the people RPing now. I don’t think they’re enjoying it. Getting them to pound out a few paragraphs won’t change that. I mean, back in the time that I would RP for fun (good luck with that happening now), I was rowing a flying boat while singing “Row Row Your Boat”. You don’t get anything like that now (mostly because magic got banned).
Jim: You’re going to find it harder and harder to get people up to your standards. Let’s face it: In this day and age, no normal person bothers reading books. Or writes. Getting them to write multiple pargraphs of setting and dialogue? Lolz. Getting them to write long paragraphs without waiting a few weeks? Yeah… I mean, I really hope you enjoy what I’ve written for Neverath, but that’s going to be 30+ days out.
November 13th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Basically what I said, Brian:
“But yeah. Just wanted to point out that HMF’s best rpers from back in the day, were /all/ asterisk-ers. We all were.
Methinks the difference between the oldies’ way of asterisk-ing and the newbies’ way is that we were more imaginative and random. We had random things popping up, we did random things that rarely made sense, and we actually had fun. Newbies nowadays use asterisks for *goes back to house* *sits around* *is bored* *leaves house*… But err, I’ve got to admit, I haven’t been around in the RPG for a long while, I’m only assuming that what the newbs are doing. :\”
You should stop skimming so obviously. D:
November 13th, 2007 at 8:09 am
I was just agreeing, dangit. :/
November 13th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Brian, let’s bring back the good way of asterisk-ing. Show ‘em how it’s done.
(…which is odd because they do it all the time in the random thoughts/chat thread..)
November 13th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
If you two do that than Jim will have to use minimal style. It’s so cryptic that almost no one can understand it. D: