NationStates

Hello everyone.

As some of our long-time users might have noticed, things have changed a lot on the RP scene, and there's been quiet concerns for a while now that the old tools are not providing adequately for a modern roleplayer's needs. In particular, increasing insulation of player friend groups and an inability to easily navigate or understand the purpose of various RP tools have been a frequently cited concern.

This is why we're excited to announce that P2TM will soon be getting an overhaul! We have plans that will hopefully reinvigorate the community, foster communication, and make it easier to exchange ideas and advice about RP.

But before we put things into motion, we want to hear from you. Please feel free to share here any suggestions, questions, concerns, criticism, or other input that you would like to see addressed.

So far, we (the mentors) are strongly leaning towards the following:

- Retire the Restaurant, Cafe, and Advertisement threads in favor of consolidating them into a universal P2TM Community Discussion Thread. This would be done with the aim of fostering more interaction between community members instead of splintering them into different hubs and getting more eyes on future games.

- Better organization of resources in the OP of the new PCDT. This would include clear, bold, upfront links to the rules of both NS and the RP community at large, Help and Feedback requests, a list of RP guides, a regularly updated spotlight area for advertisements for upcoming games as well as Exceptional Posts made within existing games, and others!

This is interesting. I look forward to seeing what comes of it!

Why did I read "P2TM Rebrand" and immediately think that this subforum was getting a name change rather than a huge sticky consolidation?

Giovenith wrote:Hello everyone.

As some of our long-time users might have noticed, things have changed a lot on the RP scene, and there's been quiet concerns for a while now that the old tools are not providing adequately for a modern roleplayer's needs. In particular, increasing insulation of player friend groups and an inability to easily navigate or understand the purpose of various RP tools have been a frequently cited concern.

This is why we're excited to announce that P2TM will soon be getting an overhaul! We have plans that will hopefully reinvigorate the community, foster communication, and make it easier to exchange ideas and advice about RP.

But before we put things into motion, we want to hear from you. Please feel free to share here any suggestions, questions, concerns, criticism, or other input that you would like to see addressed.

So far, we (the mentors) are strongly leaning towards the following:

- Retire the Restaurant, Cafe, and Advertisement threads in favor of consolidating them into a universal P2TM Community Discussion Thread. This would be done with the aim of fostering more interaction between community members instead of splintering them into different hubs and getting more eyes on future games.

- Better organization of resources in the OP of the new PCDT. This would include clear, bold, upfront links to the rules of both NS and the RP community at large, Help and Feedback requests, a list of RP guides, a regularly updated spotlight area for advertisements for upcoming games as well as Exceptional Posts made within existing games, and others!

I think the consolidation is a good thing, though I know from previous experience with the Trans Discussion Thread that a large OP can be quite daunting not only to read, but to keep updated. I think a separate spotlight thread might be for the best. Updated every week or month, with whichever thread(s) that are being spotlit for that week/month being featured in the OP, and then copypasted to a new post in that thread. That way, it serves the dual purpose of spotlighting current projects, and an archive of past projects.

I'm also hoping that the PCDT will be used to nominate and vote on the RPs that will be featured in the Spotlight (though if that gets too distracting from the actual community discussion, a separate thread for nominations and voting might be necessary).

I've been on NS with various nations for some time, every so often I'll poke in here (while logged in or not) to see what's happening. Like with everything else on NS there's a learning curve and subforum-specific etiquette, and to be honest I've found it difficult to get started. At times I'll look at an older thread to see how a RP is going, or see if it was finished, only to see 'we gave up' or 'we moved to Discord'. (I'd rather RP on a forum and Discord's not my favorite service, yet I seem to have an account there anyway… )

Something that might be helpful is some kind of always-open "starter RP" for those who are new and would like to try participating here, with those who are willing to accept that some of the participants are new and just getting started and won't boil over if one of us commits an etiquette gaffe. There's probably a way to do it that makes it a RP but not a CLT which I'm sure nobody would want.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious and/or there's a different way to address the same thing, which has happened before. I'd rather take questions/responses about the idea here if allowed instead of TG, TY.

I'm alright with a rebrand. One thing I do appreciate is the Advertisement thread. I find it easier to look through posts that are all ads, then I do to have to hunt and dig through chatter to find an ad.

That said, I do think the ad formats themselves can be modified. Some of the questions don't make sense (e.g., the one dealing with whether or not it's running currently, if not, put in the IC - or something like that. Don't quote me, it's just always seemed kind of odd).

Talchyon wrote:I'm alright with a rebrand. One thing I do appreciate is the Advertisement thread. I find it easier to look through posts that are all ads, then I do to have to hunt and dig through chatter to find an ad.

That said, I do think the ad formats themselves can be modified. Some of the questions don't make sense (e.g., the one dealing with whether or not it's running currently, if not, put in the IC - or something like that. Don't quote me, it's just always seemed kind of odd).

A part of our plan for integrating the ad thread into the larger community thread was to maintain a curated listing of all advertisements for still active, still open roleplays in the thread's frontpage, so that it's easier to check on advertisements that are still relevant, something that's impossible to do on the ad thread without checking the roleplay's OOC thread directly. I believe this is what Gio meant when she mentioned a "regularly updated spotlight area", but in either case, hopefully this would save you the trouble of digging around better than the current ad thread does

Regarding the formatting itself, we'll keep that in mind. The original formats were made a long time ago, by mentors who are no longer a part of the program.

95X wrote:I've been on NS with various nations for some time, every so often I'll poke in here (while logged in or not) to see what's happening. Like with everything else on NS there's a learning curve and subforum-specific etiquette, and to be honest I've found it difficult to get started. At times I'll look at an older thread to see how a RP is going, or see if it was finished, only to see 'we gave up' or 'we moved to Discord'. (I'd rather RP on a forum and Discord's not my favorite service, yet I seem to have an account there anyway… )

Something that might be helpful is some kind of always-open "starter RP" for those who are new and would like to try participating here, with those who are willing to accept that some of the participants are new and just getting started and won't boil over if one of us commits an etiquette gaffe. There's probably a way to do it that makes it a RP but not a CLT which I'm sure nobody would want.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious and/or there's a different way to address the same thing, which has happened before. I'd rather take questions/responses about the idea here if allowed instead of TG, TY.

A skill refresher RP would be good, too.

Zarkenis Ultima wrote:

Talchyon wrote:That said, I do think the ad formats themselves can be modified. Some of the questions don't make sense (e.g., the one dealing with whether or not it's running currently, if not, put in the IC - or something like that. Don't quote me, it's just always seemed kind of odd).

Regarding the formatting itself, we'll keep that in mind. The original formats were made a long time ago, by mentors who are no longer a part of the program.

Hey. Just a follow up. The questions in the ad format that never make sense are these:
Is this RP currently running:
If not currently running, do you have an IC thread established: (skip if currently running)

Every time I fill that out, it never makes sense to me. If the RP is currently running, it has an IC thread. If it's not currently running, it doesn't have an IC thread.

Anyway, thanks for looking at this.

I think I would rather keep the advertisement thread running, but have a separate and linked (probably not stickied, it's linked, it doesn't need to be stickied) archive of thread links for currently running rps. I would much rather be able to easily find adverts for rps rather than wading through chatter, and in the very rare case in which I am an OP/co-op of an rp I'd like it displayed easily without getting buried.

CoraSpia wrote:I think I would rather keep the advertisement thread running, but have a separate and linked (probably not stickied, it's linked, it doesn't need to be stickied) archive of thread links for currently running rps. I would much rather be able to easily find adverts for rps rather than wading through chatter, and in the very rare case in which I am an OP/co-op of an rp I'd like it displayed easily without getting buried.

This is something we have considered, to keep the main advertisement thread as a sort of archive in addition to our new proposals, which were created with the intention of bringing more community attention onto the ads.

A consolidation of Restaurant, Cafe, and Advertisements into one single universal thread sounds good to me.

Giovenith wrote:

CoraSpia wrote:I think I would rather keep the advertisement thread running, but have a separate and linked (probably not stickied, it's linked, it doesn't need to be stickied) archive of thread links for currently running rps. I would much rather be able to easily find adverts for rps rather than wading through chatter, and in the very rare case in which I am an OP/co-op of an rp I'd like it displayed easily without getting buried.

This is something we have considered, to keep the main advertisement thread as a sort of archive in addition to our new proposals, which were created with the intention of bringing more community attention onto the ads.

Really it's about how much work the mentors/mods really want to do, so I assume what I propose wouldn't be possible, because it would require a mod to change the OP every time an advert is made, or have someone active enough to be guaranteed not to go awol to do so.

Back in the long ago, there was a very actively maintained list on GE&T of every storefront in existance. Someone would make their storefront, say a little about it, and the OP would create a link to it in that thread. It went through about 4 different OPs, GE&T became less active, all very sad; however I'm not sure why such a system couldn't work here. It could be sorted into categories and the link could be suffixed with a small summary provided by the OP about what the rp consists of. To take an rp for example (deliberately one that finished ages ago, doubt you want me plugging something):
'The school for half-humans is an rp set in a magical school where all characters are half human and half magical creature; characters have unique powersets and there is a maintained storyline.'
Something of that kind of ilk might be the best way to run advertisements in the future, more of a p2tm index.

CoraSpia wrote:

Giovenith wrote:
This is something we have considered, to keep the main advertisement thread as a sort of archive in addition to our new proposals, which were created with the intention of bringing more community attention onto the ads.

Really it's about how much work the mentors/mods really want to do, so I assume what I propose wouldn't be possible, because it would require a mod to change the OP every time an advert is made, or have someone active enough to be guaranteed not to go awol to do so.

Back in the long ago, there was a very actively maintained list on GE&T of every storefront in existance. Someone would make their storefront, say a little about it, and the OP would create a link to it in that thread. It went through about 4 different OPs, GE&T became less active, all very sad; however I'm not sure why such a system couldn't work here. It could be sorted into categories and the link could be suffixed with a small summary provided by the OP about what the rp consists of. To take an rp for example (deliberately one that finished ages ago, doubt you want me plugging something):
'The school for half-humans is an rp set in a magical school where all characters are half human and half magical creature; characters have unique powersets and there is a maintained storyline.'
Something of that kind of ilk might be the best way to run advertisements in the future, more of a p2tm index.

That requires people to be active and care.

CoraSpia wrote:

Giovenith wrote:
This is something we have considered, to keep the main advertisement thread as a sort of archive in addition to our new proposals, which were created with the intention of bringing more community attention onto the ads.

Really it's about how much work the mentors/mods really want to do, so I assume what I propose wouldn't be possible, because it would require a mod to change the OP every time an advert is made, or have someone active enough to be guaranteed not to go awol to do so.

Back in the long ago, there was a very actively maintained list on GE&T of every storefront in existance. Someone would make their storefront, say a little about it, and the OP would create a link to it in that thread. It went through about 4 different OPs, GE&T became less active, all very sad; however I'm not sure why such a system couldn't work here. It could be sorted into categories and the link could be suffixed with a small summary provided by the OP about what the rp consists of. To take an rp for example (deliberately one that finished ages ago, doubt you want me plugging something):
'The school for half-humans is an rp set in a magical school where all characters are half human and half magical creature; characters have unique powersets and there is a maintained storyline.'
Something of that kind of ilk might be the best way to run advertisements in the future, more of a p2tm index.

I think this is a great idea in theory, and in practice it would become very easily frustrating.

Talchyon wrote:

CoraSpia wrote:Really it's about how much work the mentors/mods really want to do, so I assume what I propose wouldn't be possible, because it would require a mod to change the OP every time an advert is made, or have someone active enough to be guaranteed not to go awol to do so.

Back in the long ago, there was a very actively maintained list on GE&T of every storefront in existance. Someone would make their storefront, say a little about it, and the OP would create a link to it in that thread. It went through about 4 different OPs, GE&T became less active, all very sad; however I'm not sure why such a system couldn't work here. It could be sorted into categories and the link could be suffixed with a small summary provided by the OP about what the rp consists of. To take an rp for example (deliberately one that finished ages ago, doubt you want me plugging something):
'The school for half-humans is an rp set in a magical school where all characters are half human and half magical creature; characters have unique powersets and there is a maintained storyline.'
Something of that kind of ilk might be the best way to run advertisements in the future, more of a p2tm index.

I think this is a great idea in theory, and in practice it would become very easily frustrating.

Yeah it would fast become a pain in the arse for whoever hated themselves enough to agree to be the OP of it.

I've actually thought quite a bit about some of the problems around P2TM right now. Some of it is part of why I haven't done much around here the last year.

Personally, I don't mind the idea of merging the cafe and discussion thread as well as the ads thread, there's not really much actual line between the first two IMO and just from observations I'd say the ads thread is underused as it is. I've seen a lot more people join something because it was getting bumped and they found it through browsing or because they were told about it directly compared to checking the ads thread.

I do, however, oppose the idea of centralizing the community too much. Having community resources in one place is fine. Same with merging the current discussion threads and concentrating the conversations in those. But I don't think the insulation of player groups mentioned in the OP is actually a bad thing, inherently. I mean, it's not ideal. Preferably someone wouldn't have to have ties to a specific clique of players to have good odds of getting something going, but things are really just that way because of the current circumstances.

I bring up activity a lot these days but it's for a good reason - RPs have a far higher chance of success if they're designed with the current activity climate in mind. And compared to, say, 2015, 2016, 2017, etc, many RPs just have a harder time drawing in large numbers of random players from the general community. The community today is more insular, yes, but a lot of the reason is as a response to the decline in active player count and how relying on the community in general has turned into a game of Russian roulette for starting a thread.

To use an example of a thread I was in a few years ago, it was going well activity wise and had an engaging plot, active community, everything you'd want really. A lot of it relied on an active core of people, and some of these people ended up getting dragged away by life circumstances and the like. Activity tapers off. Nothing too unusual, but when the next RP in the series starts, it's relying less on this core of friends. Doesn't take long for activity to plummet. It just ended up not getting the same interest and dedication from the random selection of players that joined it, compared to the previous one where much of the activity came from a specific friend group that had more commitment to the idea.

What am I saying with this? That, while it's not ideal in every way, the nature of P2TM as a bunch of individual spheres that don't always mix much isn't necessarily a bad thing. It used to be easier in the past to just put up an OP and have 10 people interested in signing up before the end of the night. Specific friend groups weren't as big of a deal because they weren't needed. These days? Friends supporting friends and connections carrying over across threads has just become a larger part of making something successful and longer lasting.

Long story short, centralize where it makes sense but I'd like to not see it happen too much. I'd be in favor of one community discussion thread but against the idea of an official or semi-official P2TM Discord (because it would become 'the default' one even if no one is officially required to use that one and not one made by them and their friends) or player made groups (both formal and informal groups) being superseded by the rebranding effort. They exist for a reason, and many of my best experiences around here have been in RPs based around established or semi established groups.

I agree with what Gren said, having a monthly spotlighted RP voted on by the community sounds fun. A lot of other new activity stuff would have to come, I think, from the community--a running newbie or refresher RP, a general agreement to avoid reliance on Discord, and a revival of some of the things that made 2014-2016 such good times for us here.

That said, I do support the changes proposed in the OP, I just think we here have got to figure out how to give the subforum a shot in the arm ourselves as well.

Here's an idea I've been tossing around. Don't know if NS would allow it or how it would go, but hear me out.

When I got into NS, I had no idea what P2TM was. I was on for about 9 months, not caring about the forums, and only marginally interested in the WA. I was in a pretty active region, though, and those guys interacted with each other a lot. One of the things they did was start planning a regional RP on P2TM and I signed up for it. Not familiar with RPs, I didn't know what all this meant, only that the other guys in my region were there. And I enjoyed it.

I started poking around other things on P2TM. Again, not knowing the way things went, I made a post on an IC without first making an app. The OP was pretty good natured though, and let me app and accepted me. And from that, I learned RP format, coding, running an RP, and the rest is history. It was about 8 months into my time being on NS.

So, my idea is, how can we reach out to guys like me when I first started? I propose a way to advertise to new players. Perhaps a handy link, here is what an RP is. You can have fun with it. Don't make it long or complex. But then, see if NS will advertise this when people sign up for new countries. That way, they will have links they can get into and have an idea about what RPs are. That will draw more people in. Some will stay and keep playing.

Merging the Cafe and Chat threads sounds like a good idea to me. The chat thread isn't crazy-active like it was back in the day, so you could still talk shop Cafe-style without it getting swamped in people sharing memes or chitchatting.

Talchyon wrote:Here's an idea I've been tossing around. Don't know if NS would allow it or how it would go, but hear me out.

When I got into NS, I had no idea what P2TM was. I was on for about 9 months, not caring about the forums, and only marginally interested in the WA. I was in a pretty active region, though, and those guys interacted with each other a lot. One of the things they did was start planning a regional RP on P2TM and I signed up for it. Not familiar with RPs, I didn't know what all this meant, only that the other guys in my region were there. And I enjoyed it.

I started poking around other things on P2TM. Again, not knowing the way things went, I made a post on an IC without first making an app. The OP was pretty good natured though, and let me app and accepted me. And from that, I learned RP format, coding, running an RP, and the rest is history. It was about 8 months into my time being on NS.

So, my idea is, how can we reach out to guys like me when I first started? I propose a way to advertise to new players. Perhaps a handy link, here is what an RP is. You can have fun with it. Don't make it long or complex. But then, see if NS will advertise this when people sign up for new countries. That way, they will have links they can get into and have an idea about what RPs are. That will draw more people in. Some will stay and keep playing.

We could try coming up with a recruitment telegram of some sort, though I don't know if that would run into problems of someone having to foot the bill for stamps, as I have no experience in NS recruitment campaigns. Having a long-running tutorial/refresher RP as others in the thread have said strikes me as a good idea too. I think a slice-of-life genre might be a good way to do it, so it can cater to as wide an audience as possible before posters find their favourite niches within the subforum.

If telegraph isn't a good recruitment strategy perhaps we could try establishing outreach offices of sorts in feeder/sinker regions to help direct new posters?

Finally, with concerns about ease of finding adverts in a newly-consolidated P2TM thread, why not put a random keyword at the end of each advert, like #pleasejoin, and then people hunting for new RP's to join can search that? I've seen that done with OP's hunting for apps in the beginning of their OOC threads before.

Lavan Tiri wrote:a general agreement to avoid reliance on Discord

This is and has been for some time a routine complaint of mine.

Nothing kills my interest deader than an RP that launches with all the pertinent world building already complete, a half a dozen registered reservations right from hour one, and an OOC thread that’s more boring than a church because everyone’s discussing stuff in a private server.

---

I think that we should really be performing some quantitative evaluations of P2TM. First of all, is it declining compared to, say, the 2014-2017 period that I remember fondly? How many active RPs are there compared to the same time of year in 2015? Are there fewer people in P2TM as a whole? As they joining fewer RPs each? What’s the average thread age and post count?

What precisely definable phenomena, in short, are creating this general feeling of decline and decay? I might try my hand at this myself, if I have the time.

Until we can pin down the problem we can only make guesses at possible solutions.

Northern Socialist Council Republics wrote:

Lavan Tiri wrote:a general agreement to avoid reliance on Discord

This is and has been for some time a routine complaint of mine.

Nothing kills my interest deader than an RP that launches with all the pertinent world building already complete, a half a dozen registered reservations right from hour one, and an OOC thread that’s more boring than a church because everyone’s discussing stuff in a private server.

---

I think that we should really be performing some quantitative evaluations of P2TM. First of all, is it declining compared to, say, the 2014-2017 period that I remember fondly? How many active RPs are there compared to the same time of year in 2015? Are there fewer people in P2TM as a whole? As they joining fewer RPs each? What’s the average thread age and post count?

What precisely definable phenomena, in short, are creating this general feeling of decline and decay? I might try my hand at this myself, if I have the time.

Until we can pin down the problem we can only make guesses at possible solutions.

If you end up trying to count the active RP's now compared to the past I could give you some data on that. I did a census back in May 2015 of active RP's for the P2TM Times. I also worked on another one in late March/early April last year which never saw the light of day...until now I suppose. No sense keeping it lurking on my laptop.

Constaniana wrote:If you end up trying to count the active RP's now compared to the past I could give you some data on that. I did a census back in May 2015 of active RP's. I also worked on another one in late March/early April last year which never saw the light of day.

As one who got started in RPs in 2016, I never got the chance to see this paper. I for one would like to see it (or something like it) to make a comeback.

Talchyon wrote:

Constaniana wrote:If you end up trying to count the active RP's now compared to the past I could give you some data on that. I did a census back in May 2015 of active RP's. I also worked on another one in late March/early April last year which never saw the light of day.

As one who got started in RPs in 2016, I never got the chance to see this paper. I for one would like to see it (or something like it) to make a comeback.

I would too. I remember someone started another paper a year or so ago, but it fizzled out.

Northern Socialist Council Republics wrote:

Lavan Tiri wrote:a general agreement to avoid reliance on Discord

This is and has been for some time a routine complaint of mine.

Nothing kills my interest deader than an RP that launches with all the pertinent world building already complete, a half a dozen registered reservations right from hour one, and an OOC thread that’s more boring than a church because everyone’s discussing stuff in a private server.

---

I think that we should really be performing some quantitative evaluations of P2TM. First of all, is it declining compared to, say, the 2014-2017 period that I remember fondly? How many active RPs are there compared to the same time of year in 2015? Are there fewer people in P2TM as a whole? As they joining fewer RPs each? What’s the average thread age and post count?

What precisely definable phenomena, in short, are creating this general feeling of decline and decay? I might try my hand at this myself, if I have the time.

Until we can pin down the problem we can only make guesses at possible solutions.

I would like to absolutely distance myself from the anti-discord brigade. I used to be against RPs relying on discord (some people from several years ago might remember me arguing against RP discords). But, honestly? Having been in multiple (fairly successful) RPs done in one group that heavily relies on discord for OOC chat and planning, I've been converted.

Simply put, times have fucking changed, and we as an RP community need to change with it, or else this "RP decline" fear will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We can't actually go back to some mythological "good ole days" when an RP's life and success depended on an active OOC thread, and some of yall need to come to terms with that. OOC threads are incredibly limited in a lot of respects that are relevant to us. With an active discord server, posters are more engaged (you know, that thing that is the most important factor in keeping an RP alive), cowrites are easier to organize, images and relevant videos are easier to share, etc. The difference between using discord vs a traditional OOC thread is like that between a modern smartphone and the very first cellphone. Are there some best practices that need to be highly encouraged WRT having a discord? Absolutely. But that's no different from the days of the OOC thread, either. The only real drawback is that the OOC thread no longer acts as a reliable advertisement platform for the RP, but this is arguably offset by the increased activity from the IC thread.