Department of Role Play Mechanics
Here you can discuss ways to make your role play better and post related articles of your making. This includes both TEP specific RP and NS RP in general. Happy deliberations!
You know, I do wonder…
What are some things that could make a roleplay map more engaging?
A lot of the time, I’ve seen maps that really don’t do much of anything. You just make a land claim. The entire motion of roleplay comes directly from the community.
So when the community goes inactive, it kinda makes the entire map go dead. So, is it the responsibility of cartographers to come up with events and system updates to stir on activity? Or should the carto just hope and pray that the community picks up and gains activity eventually?
— Begin quote from ____
You know, I do wonder…
What are some things that could make a roleplay map more engaging?
A lot of the time, I’ve seen maps that really don’t do much of anything. You just make a land claim. The entire motion of roleplay comes directly from the community.
So when the community goes inactive, it kinda makes the entire map go dead. So, is it the responsibility of cartographers to come up with events and system updates to stir on activity? Or should the carto just hope and pray that the community picks up and gains activity eventually?
— End quote
As you may know, I’ve run multiple maps throughout my time in NS.
Conquering Kings died because I did not have the skill to recruit or do cartography, and because the few people I did have weren’t that engaged. With an uninterested base, a lack of recruitment, and an unskilled leader, it was doomed to fail. So fail it did. There was nothing I could have done for it then. I had to rely on the community to have a good cartographer and to have passion for the roleplay.
1551 was more successful. I kept it accessible, I kept the mapping easy for me, I had a fun premise, people were drawn in, and I roleplayed alongside them quite often. Looking back, it seems like that was doomed to fail, too. As a Roleplayer, not as a Cartographer, I was the driving force. My interactions with others was most of the RP, the rest was just others looking at my RPs and thinking it would be fun if they did something similar. When I lost interest in actually roleplaying, it wasn’t long before they did, too.
1939 was slower. More open to map claims, but less open to RP. The premise wasn’t that simple, war was hard because few people had neighbors and those neighbors were allied with or largely left alone due to skill in RP. It was slow and I lost interest as a result of others losing interest. There wasn’t much there.
Now, I am Minister of RolePlay in Warzone Africa. This is my fourth map. I am much more experienced in dealing with people, using mapchart.net, and roleplaying in general. But activity is still slow.
Recently, I’ve been rather disinterested in all roleplay. I quit Windsor, I did nothing in Courisla except for one post that I might have done anyway, I’ve been slow to post anything in Urth, and I’ve done literally nothing RP-wise in Warzone Africa.
When I first made the map, I decided to incite activity by having diplomatic meetings. I had one diplomatic meeting, and when the second one I tried didn’t receive any response, I had more important things to do than to keep trying. During the first diplomatic meeting I had the idea of using issues as inspiration for roleplay, but I’ve lost interest.
As a result, the map has suffered. We still get map requests, but only as a consequence of being the official regional map. No one is roleplaying at all, and it seems like my only job is to idly update the map.
I want to change that, though. In the last update, I made an announcement encouraging people to roleplay and not just sit there and not use the land. Before that, I made a recruitment dispatch for the Ministry so I can get fresh faces with fresh ideas for activity. No one has responded, but I hope it works. I might try removing people for inactivity, but I’ve never done that before and I’m afraid I will end up removing everybody from the map and causing it to fall faster.
But I’m getting off track. To answer your question, it’s a little bit of both. The Cartographer has to be active, not just to update the map, but to urge on the roleplays and to set an example for the newcomers. But, ultimately, it is up to the community whether or not to follow that example. You can have a cartographer that is extremely talented and dedicated, but with a small group of disinterested players, the map will fail. You as cartographer need to engage them before they realize they’re bored, and then you need to keep them engaged or face the consequences.
Of course, this is all in regards to new maps. Small maps. For large maps like Valsora and Urth, all the cartographer(s) need(s) to do is update the map, because by then the ball will be rolling so fast that momentum is easily gained and the ball can keep on rolling ad infinitum.
Hello TEP Citizens who happened to past by this Department Thread! I am Shawsbucks, or Technocratic Tagalog in NationStates, And Welcome to the Department of Roleplay Mechanics!
First thing, what is this Department about?
As the title says itself, This Department is about one of the heart of roleplays! The mechanics! its what basically helps a roleplay, not just in NS though, to stay alive! You can talk about certain mechanics that you are having trouble to pertaining to the roleplay you are on! On NationStates generally. We will try our best to help you understanding from Medieval Era to Intergalactical Era at least to our extent and to help you from not godmodding!
Now that you mentioned it, What is godmodding? Are there some terms we need to like know?
Yes indeed! There are some terms that you actually need to know when roleplaying! Here are some terms that might help you a lot. AS IN A LOT.
· God-Modding – Is taking control of another player’s character during roleplay. It is frowned upon and with good reason; you only control you character and no one else. You are going out of bounds on what you can actually do on a certain situation.
· In-Character - Refers to Everything that your character (not you, the player) knows, will be gained from what they have heard in IC news, to what they hear from their daily conversations and investigations while you roleplay on the game.
· Out of Character -This refers to what you, as the person controlling the character, knows. In many cases, will know things that your character does not. This will include what you know about the overall structure of plots being run, to what another player told you in an OOC conversation about a crime being planned. Just because you as a player knows something, doesn’t necessarily mean that character knows that. Of course, your character may know that if they’ve had some sort of IC encounter where they discover the information.
So if you any questions or discussions about roleplay mechanics well, this is the best department for you!