After being a part of NS for almost twelve years, I can state with some certainty that roleplay threads rely on news posts a lot more now than they did in 2006. In my opinion, this phenomenon is mostly the product of three major factors: general laziness, older players finding their NS time constrained by RL commitments so that they wind up performing low-effort RP writing, and newer players copying the RP styles that are easiest to imitate. At the risk of alluding to specific persons, I have noticed that the present news thread craze took off after the hard MT community started emerging three or four years ago.
Now that this discussion has cooled off a bit, I can see why Yohannes and Lamoni took umbrage to my initial take on this matter. After critically reflecting on my own remark, I realize that I was projecting some of my own experiences onto others (a classic mistake if there is one) since I was unintentionally alluding to the fact that almost all of the RP posts I have made in the last year and a half have been pretty short and I have posted only one full-length IC piece in that time. Again, this was a mistake on my part and I hope it has not caused any lasting ill feelings among this discussion group.
This leaves me with the other two reasons I cited. The practice of newbies copying vets is a real thing, and I think it is a good thing because it is an effective way to cultivate new RPers. After all, it is probably the single biggest way I learned RPing. Laziness is a different matter. As impolitic as it was for me to cite it without offering any substantive justification, I have legitimate reasons for citing it as one of the reasons why news posting has high popularity among some specific RPers. I am talking specifically about folks who fit a specific profile:
- Their idea of RPing is to post a provocative 100 to 300-word news post announcing some new law, human rights abuse, etc. that promptly draw a bunch of international condemnations and commendations (which they then frequently forget to respond to) before rinsing and repeating the cycle over again. For example, consider this thread and this thread, both of which belong to ex-nations.
- They have a high time preference, want immediate IC reactions, and quickly lose interest in whatever they do after receiving a handful of responses.
- They try to RP without performing any worldbuilding because they have zero interest in developing a canon. They just want their nation to throw its weight around, make waves, and gain attention in the IC arena.
Both of the ex-nations whose threads I linked were newbies at the time they made their posts, but a look at their posting history shows they were still posting stuff of this quality months or years later. Consequently, I hope nobody construes my remark about lazy RPing practice as an elitist attack against newbies or RPers trying to learn the ropes. On the contrary, it is a well-deserved critique of people who choose to avoid learning and growing as RPers over time.
Yohannes wrote:So basically what I am getting so far is: someone who writes creatively about their nation on the website NationStates, but only doing so by writing "news posts", writing their fictional nation's legal system, writing their fictional nation's economic system (and by writing, I don't mean copy pasting the general boring stuff from Wikipedia to create Wikipedia style factbook or the typical boring II Wiki article detailing how your nation is a great power amongst great powers in your closed-world region posts, but ACTUALLY writing creatively from scratch), writing about their fictional nation's political intrigues, and writing about the things happening in their nation, many things based from the knowledge they have in real life, is not roleplaying? They can also interact with others through all these channels yet they are still not roleplaying?
Let me restate Allanea’s point in a single sentence: worldbuilding and canon development qualify as roleplaying if they are written from an IC perspective with which other roleplayers can directly or indirectly interact.
But writing senseless (non-informative or which doesn't require much real life knowledge) ten thousand words about a king who marries his queen is the best form of roleplaying, right? So to be the best (and by the way, to be a real) roleplayer I should now start writing ten thousand words? If that is the best way to roleplay then okay. I will now try to be the best roleplayer by writing out ten thousand words about how my king marries her queen and then somewhere along the way he got backstabbed by his bodyguard and then Idk something just to make it 10,000 words. Oh, I will also add html coding to make it pretty and blocktext
Edit: Oh! Along the way I will also subtly diss people who don't write like me! Those news posters. Grrr. What a bunch of fake writers and roleplayers! Those economic, political, etc. worldbuilders who don't write long ass 10,000 words with other people! They are incompetent! They have no skill because they can't write 10,000 words post about their king and queen's marriage! Because they do rather storytell about their nation's legal or political or economic system instead of writing about their king marrying another nation's queen!
Nobody has said or implied any of these things here.
Allanea wrote:EDIT: This is a response to Monavia's post.
Yes and no.
I attempt, within reason, to be OOC honest with other players.
If someone wishes to receive information about what is happening, and what my plans or my characters' plans are, I think it is best practice to answer them truthfully (although plans may change).
On the other hand, I think it's common sense that an in-character report, whether this is a statement by a character, or a news post, or a press release by an organization, represents events from that entity's in-universe perspective. People are free to interpret these reports in any way they like.
I believe that - because to some extent RP on NS is freeform - it's entirely reasonable to keep one's cards to the chest on some things, within the confines of good faith. This is especially true when you serve as the 'host' of an RP where the other players are meant to uncover some manner of mystery, or where someone is being interrogated, or indeed in the sort of freeform war RP that occurs so often.
For example, when I roleplay interrogations, I understand of course that the characters I am interrogating may lie. But it would be unwieldy to the nature of a freeform RP if I knew the truth of the matter OOC!
[It's worth noting that metagaming can be brought up here. Naturally we all as people can do our best to avoid deliberate metagaming, but not all metagaming is even deliberate.]
Once again I am guilty of misinterpreting something you posted and writing something that did not accurately explain my point in responding to your previous post. I stand corrected.
Kyrusia wrote:Yohannes wrote:Feel free to tell the forum moderators to delete my posts too if you like. I have made my points loud and clear!
Point of Modly order... Threads such as this, don't have the same privilege as roleplay IC/OOC threads or clearly roleplay-related topics (regional hubs, regional news threads, even surveys, etc.). While not a sticky, the purpose of discussion threads on the RP boards such as this, is discussion. If thread ownership powers were extended to them in the same way as the aforementioned, that'd defeat their purpose - much how it'd defeat the purpose of such being extended to community resource stickies like the "RP Help Thread."
In short: thread ownership does not apply to discussion threads of this form; that'd defeat their purpose. Posts that break rules, however, certainly can be removed by Moderator discretion.
Please forgive me for assuming that thread ownership is a universal thing in the N&I forum. I expressed an opinion without double-checking it against the information I remember reading in one of your information threads and wound up posting something that was factually incorrect.
Ghant wrote:[blocktext][align=justify]I realize that there's been some rather intense discussion in regards to the latest topic, and I'd like to wade in and provide some additional thoughts on what's been said.
For starters, I've never claimed, at any point in this thread, to be an expert, a guru, or any other sort of wizened individual when it comes to MT RP, let alone any other tech level on NS. All I am is one guy who's been RPing (by various means) for over 20 years, a decent amount of that time being on NS. As Kyrusia said, I don't "own" this thread in the same sense that I'd own an RP thread. I just started it, and I keep it going, for one reason. So that RPers can come together and discuss matters relevant to MT RP.
News posting is a matter relevant to MT RP. It's something that has been mentioned as being of concern in the past, by various individuals in various MT communities, especially when that's all that goes on, at the expense of traditional roleplays. Obviously, there's some great news posts out there, and news posting can be a better form of writing for certain subjects than traditional roleplaying. Things like policy analyses (compliments to Mac), economics and sports fit that mold.
In the interests of avoiding further confusion and hurt feelings, I hope you will be willing to disclose the specific concerns that these anonymous RPers have expressed. In the absence of this information I have done more than a little hypothesizing, often relying on my own limited experiences.
Lamoni wrote:News articles are an RPing tool, the individual player just has to ensure that they are not turning the tool into a crutch. If you are unwilling to put the time in to create a good RP, then you are also likely unwilling to put the time in to put up a good news article.
I think the general beef Ghant—and I—have with the news post craze is with overreliance on news posts in lieu of traditional RP posts to the detriment of traditional RP writing. I just wish I had used your eloquent phraseology when I posted my reply on Friday night. I could have saved myself some trouble.
Some of this just comes down to maturity, which can be a problem on a site where you have people as young as thirteen writing about their fictional nations, and how they interact with others. I know that at least three (maybe four) of the people discussing this problem are past high school age, have jobs, and are at a different stage of their life than those who might be new to NS are. Do you remember what you were like when you were thirteen years old? Not that i'm defending thirteen year olds [sic], but it helps to bear their still forming viewpoints in mind. Their viewpoints are like a jigsaw puzzle that is getting completed, but are still missing quite a few major pieces.
Thanks for bringing me back to reality. Sometimes mentors need mentors as much as anyone else. I had no real writing skills at thirteen, but then again, once I started RPing at fifteen I made a point of learning how to RP properly and improving my skills over time. For all my faults in those days (and I sometimes have many by the standards I have now), I did not engage in the specific behavior I described in my bullet list.