The problem with the pre-game

So, I've been here for a pretty long while. Long enough ,I feel, to open up this thread and analyze the problem that seems to hurt every single roleplay that comes to us, no matter the merit of story or the enthusiasm the players had for it.

It seems that no matter what, the part of the thread where people do the pre-game stuff, meet the other characters, learn about the game, set up the game and the order, and eventually finally get in the game, drags on for so long that it usually just kills the game, or the game dies before it's done.

I sorta wanted to open this up and see what other people thought of this, what they thought it meant, how to improve it or whatever. Cause Honestly, I'm tired of games just sort of ending before anything of worth besides a few interesting character interactions comes from it.

Yeah, I have been thinking about that too, it seems to be a trend that has affected every single session RP on the site so far. I suppose that an RP could begin with most or all characters in game. Stuff like personal relationships, specifics of characters, what has been prototyped and etc can be sort of hinted at through actions in RP and interactions in RP. While in reality these things can be worked out in things like a planning/discussion thread, private messages or over one on one RP's. I think it would really boast interest in an RP if the interesting things like planet exploration and combat can begin much sooner than pre game RP affords it. Could you see where I am coming from?

I have actually considered creating a session with this as a format, with a longer planning period so that things can be settled by the time the session starts.

I agree.

From what I've heard, up until Act 3, most people don't generally like the pre-game stuff very much in the actual comic itself.

So it makes sense that most rp sessions that are beginning in those early stages where Acts 1-3 are located, they die.

Another thing plaguing this site however, is consistency. Everyone has ten million ideas to share and see played out... and this is great! However, the consequence of this is that about a dozen people each week try to start something new, and with the limited size of our site, it draws or tries to attract members that haven't even begun to come close to finishing last weeks 12 different ideas.

What if there was an RP thread, where before hand, we just agreed that it MUST be finished after x posts, and then move on to a different act?

So the meet and greet level 1 pre-game Act 1 shit? Maybe dedicate a quick twenty post thread. The part that's getting a little better and a little more intense level 2-10 Act 2 stuff? Dedicate something a little more substantial, like a forty post thread. Once shit gets real in Act 3? Pick it up a little more and get out an eighty post thread. You get my drift, just chunk it up, hasten up the pre-game stuff and dig deep into the gooey good stuff about a session.

It also may help, if that during sign ups, players pre-determine their relationships with other players before anything even begins. So, in addition to stating your name, species, and godtier, list out their affiliations with the other players. Is one of them a moirail crush? God forbid, is someone feeling red for someone who is feeling black? Do these characters simply not affiliate at all, and don't give a shit about the other? Etc. etc.

Maybe even include things like, who's going to kill who to discover god tiering?

I dunno, some food for thought :)

Honestly, the only session I know of that got past pre-game is a Sgrub session. There was literally no planning whatsoever. We got in the game fairly quick and 3/5 of us actually god-tiered.

Though there was downsides though. We all somehow had Prospit. We had no space or time player. Also, one of our people died. Though the comic's sessions are almost always flawed in some way to screw the players.

So, it seems like planning in moderation might be the right answer.

Turns also slow things down considerably especially in long sessions, because you will have people missing for a while, you will take forever to answer somebody. The order in which things happen also get jumbled a little by this.

For example...
---------------------------------
A slaps H
B talks in memo
C talks with G
D talks in memo
E talks in memo
F reacts to A slapping H and tells H to slap back
G responds to C
H slaps A back
---------------------------------

That order takes forever to happen. With turn-based order it could even take days for a response. In this time you could even forget what it was about.

In my opinion it should go something along these lines...
---------------------------------
A slaps H
F reacts to the slap and tells H to slap A
H slaps A

C talks to G
G responds to C

D talks in memo
E talks in memo
---------------------------------

I honestly feel like turn order screws a session more than anything else.

Turns would only EVER work for a cherub session, and we don't have many of those going on.

tl;dr taking turns are our bane

Turns keep things organized. Some people don't like organization, like you apparently, buuuuuut it's just something people like. I personally hate being left in the mud in an rp! Some people post really fast, while others take an hour on a paragraph. It's mainly to accommodate for writing speeds. The actual problem is basically just slothfulness on the part of people posting after them for not just saying "Fuck it!" and posting anyhow after it's been too long.

Pride may be the root of all evil, but with writers it's definitely sloth that matters more.


Edit: Also, to prove a point, your second example has no B. You forgot about it, right? People like B are the slow posters, who are forgotten about.

Dt, could you tell us about that posting system you mentioned back in the Lamda setting? It would give us a system that we could use to work on this, and edit to our liking.

And personally, I agree with the idea of preplanning most of the pre-game stuff, maybe all of it. The pre-game stuff is boring, and like Glag said, writers are slothful assholes. So if we can get into the nitty gritty of the action quicker, while also maintaining a system that keeps the slower posters invested, we'll likely be able to increase the number of completed roleplays on this site to 2

Sessions likely just need way more pre-planning, and a quicker entrance into the game. Also, all one on one pesterchum chats between character sshould be handled in pm or something, cause that shit takes like, forever in a turn based system and it doesn't really make sense to have in this format.