Consolidated Discussion of RPG Mechanics

[Alexander Trafford]

Way to completely sidestep the logic of my statement and go for ad hominem. Can you go through a single discussion without attacking people? Nope. Difference is what I say might actually help the RPG, while you'll just go on being a dick for sake of being a dick.

Now, I reassert, who are these changes for if not those who are not roleplaying? If 'just write' was viable everyone'd be cranking out 5,000 word rps regularly. Unfortunately there are innumerable factors that go into the equation that decides whether a person feels like writing. I'm sure you are aware, if one does not feel like writing then they aren't going to enjoy writing, and if they don't enjoy it then what's the point? What this thread is attempting to do is create an environment that is most conductive to enjoyable writing as possible.

To this end I think activity begets activity, and I think that new members with youthful vigor will bring out the life in our more venerable roleplayers over the long term, but I completely agree that short term adjustments are needed to get things rolling right now.

Now following this, I think that either canon members are needed to draw in those new members, or else we need to reach out to a different branch and become a different RPG entirely. I haven't heard a better solution to the new member problem.

Whatever you say pal. And there's no way, just no way, that I was using you as an example for the majority of members on this site. I had to be attacking you personally. That's right, you got it. What you're saying is that by creating a draw to pull in new blood while simultaneously altering the environment will create activity from new members while also reinvigorating activity from older members by injecting a new energy into this site. These conversations themselves are proof of that for they have drawn people like you from the wood work.

What I'm saying is that this is going to have the same result as the turnover, but not even to that extent. The turnover got every excited to roleplay for a few months, then it died, then a great and well-known saga (DA '09) took place that reinvigorated the site temporarily again, and then it died. These were two things that were supposed to inject energy into the site and create activity, they did, but that was not enough. What are we supposed to do? Inject a change like that every few months?

As for changing the RPG entirely, are you serious? I hope you don't mean moving away from DBZ, because the number of older members that you alienate will be greater than the new members you replace them with.

How many new members do you think are out there? Do you think that is a just a pool of young teenagers waiting to play PbP RPGs on the internet like there were when we were that age? Because I don't.

[Jonathan Meer]

I follow and agree with REM's logic.

I follow and agree with Alex's pessimism.

Our main tool for bringing in new members is Google (for now? What else?).

Those new members will be finding us insofar as we are DBZ.

Wouldn't hurt to do a survey of the newbs to find out how they found us.

It certainly wouldn't hurt to brainstorm methods of advertisement. There are a large number of people out there, I suspect, who would absolutely love what it is we do here.

[Rem-13]

a) Your intentions could have been to cure aids with the perfect alignment of words but what you did was completely ignore my point and narrow what you had said in your previous post to focus on me personally. I'll accept you weren't being a dick if you claim that wasn't your aim, even though you continue to be very dickish in you mannerisms.

b) From the woodwork? I post on this site quite often, I just don't roleplay. Which means this thread is tailor made for me.

c) All that is exacly what I have been saying. Changing the system is temporary.

and lastly d) So there is no one left? Well allow me to set it up like this,

If you are right no matter what we do we die as an RPG as each member loses time/energy, if I am right and we do nothing we die as an RPG, if I am right and we do something we go on for a while longer. So lets bank on that, how 'bout it?

[Dehan]

What may help in this situation is for everyone here to think back to when they were a newbie. What about the site at the time did you find the most attractive? For me it was all the alliances and the bad blood and rivalries between certain characters. We need these aspects of the rpg to be brought back.

Great question Celena and I think if/when each member who has posted here answers, we will find more things that will help us bring the community back it's former flare.

1. My love for writing and rping in the DBZ universe.

2. The ability to take on the role of a character I either knew a lot about and hated enough to like writing as them or loving them enough to like writing as them.

3. The atmosphere of Chubbs at the time. I wasn't that confident in my abilities as a writer or rper because it had been some time before I stepped back into the DB/DBZ rping universe; around the time I joined I had taken a long break from it.

4. Once joined I noticed I could make myself stronger and quite 'attractive' to enemies, alliance recruitment(there was an alliance made up of some of the strongest active members that I was trying to catch the eye of but ultimately didn't).

5. Admittedly I didn't read the rules all the way through when I first joined so I didn't really know the Chubbs universe didn't play along closely with the canon universe but after I found out I was happy to have the chance to bring my own twist on Turles even though I screwed up in the beginning by thinking my character and the character Goku would 'have' to know one another as bros etc.

As for reasons I don't rp currently...too many to name. I'll stick to the few that stand out, so far I haven't been able to bring a character to my minds eye that makes me go 'Hell yeah I want to write as him/her/it!' because the atmosphere of the site isn't what it used to be and it's hard for me to put what I mean into words.

My passion to rp is there but it's hard to bring it out on this site at the moment but I hope that will change.

[Juno]

Did you guys miss me? I hope so. =]

So, to begin, I'm going to state that I agree with REM's principles of Acquisition and Retention, and I'm going to talk about the first one first, hopefully briefly.

Acquisition: I'll admit that when I first joined CDBZ, I was hesitant about I would fit in, writing-wise. I was an experienced role-player, but not in the style of writing that we do here. The style of writing that we have here is more novel-style - third person limited, but with control of other characters' actions. I was a veteran of the Harry Potter role-playing games where if you even thought for a second about controlling anything another character said or did, you'd be crucified.

Admittedly, this is what kept me here. When I realized that this was the type of writing I enjoyed (I never stayed on the same Harry Potter role-playing game for more than two weeks), then I was here. And I think that there's a whole market of people like that waiting to be tapped into. There's countless role-playing "resource sites" that offer an advertising space that we could use. I know that we think we're elite to all of them, but as a person who was formerly one of them, I know that there has to be people on those sites that would come on here and find that they're having a blast.

And this is why I think we should continue using custom characters; we're looking to market ourselves, and by keeping custom characters but making the the universe more identifiably DBZ, then we win both battles - we get the die-hard DBZ fans, but we also get the Harry Potter role-players who might write amazingly, but are stifled by the world they live in. CDBZ is different that the role-playing experience offered in that world, and I think that's our most marketable aspect, and I think we should exploit it.

And now I'm going to move on to talking about the system.

Retention: I'm going to say that I'm a huge fanboy of the Unified Currency idea, and if you combine it with the Relative Returns idea, I think it's damn near perfect, and could easily get that way with some slight alterations. I think, in my opinion, that positive reinforcement is most definitely the way to go, and that we can utilize these two systems to make sure that things go smoothly, simply, and players feel as if they're doing something.

Now, the thing we have to think about is the way that we implement the Relative Returns idea. The idea behind Unified Currency is pretty obvious, and it is easily implemented (aside from the rewarding of Prestige, which will be a topic I cover later). I think that we can utilize a level-up system in order to make sure that things stay on an even keel, and that levels should be how we judge power levels. What I would do is create certain requirements for levels; say, you need to have this many experience points and this many techniques before you can go to level two. Perhaps I should use an example.

I'm Juno, a level one half-Saiyan. I roleplay my first quest, "Search for the Golden Monkey Relic," and submit it for grading. It's decided that I gain 500 Prestige for this quest, because I did a super mega foxy awesome hot job on it, right? Right. I go to my training page, and it reads something like this:

Juno - Level 1
Experience: 0 (needed for level 2 - 250)
Techniques: none (needed for level 2 - one)

The idea is kind of similar to how you gain promotions in your job in the Sims 3. You need to be doing good work, but you also need certain skills, and you need so many contacts and connections in the world to move up the ladder. Except here, it's based on Experience and Techniques. I take my 500 Prestige and spend 250 of it on experience, and I'm maxed out there. I can't buy any more experience until after I've grown to level two. I need one more Technique before I level up to level two, so I go to the custom tech thread and price myself one, or I go look at stock techniques to see if there's anything I want. Luckily, I find one, Kamehameha, that's worth 250 points. I spend my 250 points on it, grab the Kamehameha, and add it to my page. Oh, look, I have all the requirements for level two, so I become Juno, level two half-Saiyan.

There could, also, to make sure the DBZ element remains be abilities/techniques that you're required to have before you can advance to a certain level. For example, you're required to buy either Flight or Super Leaping before you can advance to level three.

This also solves Orion's problem of people spending more on one than the other. Now, the problem I see with this system is, "what if people don't want anymore techniques?" To that, it'd require slightly more work, but a player would sacrifice a technique, but have to spend more points in experience before they could level up. Example. I didn't want to buy a technique yet; so instead of buying Kamehameha, I sacrifice my level one technique slot(s) and have to pay extra in the way of experience; I have to pay 500 instead of 250, which, thankfully, I have. Now, this would be on a case-by-case basis and would require a bit extra effort from staffers.

However! In order to off-set this, we implement a community grading system, to lessen the work load on staff members. Now, here, we face the problem of making sure the community looks in and reads things, grading them. I generally don't read as much as I should, but if I were getting rewarded for reading, I most definitely would make an attempt to offer at least a small amount of critique. I'm sure someone can think of a rewarding system that would help to push this concept, because I really, really like the idea of implementing it.

If you got nothing else from this tl;dr post, I hope that you got the part about Acquisition, because I really think that the elitist attitude that sometimes comes up is keeping us from getting new members. We have to reach out, and though they might stumble at first, give these people a little time, and they will acquaint themselves with the system, and either leave, or, what I think will be the majority, stay, like myself.

[Belle Hibiki]

Googling 'Dragonball Z roleplay forum', I don't see us on the first four pages.

So that's a problem.

Lots of the DB sites that are populated are much more 'game' than 'RP.' So we can fill a niche - we just don't have exposure. At all.

(Also, I'm slightly bemused by people insisting that they want this place to be more like X-Men turning around and saying that moving away from DBZ is a bad thing.)

[Kaden]

Antagonism is not helpful, guys. Disagreement, debate, and even confrontation are, to various degrees, helpful and necessary to a serious discussion, but this needs to be done in a civil manner, without people resorting to either attacks or victimization.

Trafford: I've been trying to read more into your posts than what's there, but I honestly haven't been able to. A reasonable voice of pessimism can be beneficial, but you're basically just doomsaying, at this point. I welcome your feedback, when that's actually what you're providing, but your posts thus far have been little more than "no matter what, this place is dead."

As I have said, multiple times, we're aware of all the problems we're facing and we're more than aware of the fact that there are some things we simply can not change, nor will we ever be able to, but... I don't know, man. It seems like you don't believe that we get it. Chubbs will die eventually. That's how things go. We know that.

At a point when we have people invested in discussions that they have previously not been invested in before and we have more activity because of these discussions than we've had in a while, what's the purpose in trying to rain on this parade?

I really do want to give you the benefit of the doubt here and think that you're not just making these post to be "that guy," but I'm having trouble seeing it.

[Juno]

...what's the purpose in trying to rain on this parade?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsNJJIMwAB0

Sorry. Had to.

Anyhow. I agree with Belle. Exposure is needed. That's the main problem with Acquisition of new members; nobody knows who the hell we are.

[Dehan]

Well it's like I recommended in a thread during the turnover...facebook anime sites are likely a good way to grab some new blood.

[Vad]

Of what advertising sites we are on it's our old domain that's populating them. I've been mulling over the idea of just outright buying dracondev.com and getting rid of that loophole...

[Juno]

http://rpg-directory.com/
http://z10.invisionfree.com/CAUTIONTOTHEWIND
http://forums.redcarpetrebellion.org/ind...?&&CODE=00

These three websites are huge in role-playing advertisements. We would get serious exposure here. The first one has 20,000 members. It might not be the type of people we're familiar with, but it's people.

[Vad]

I'll register with all three, but I'm terrible at writing descriptions. Anyone want to come up with a mission statement for us?

[Juno]

I think the advertising should be saved until we get a decided direction that we want to go in. Right now, we don't have that.

[Vad]

Personally I wouldn't find it surprising if that, by examining traffic data, we saw our decrease begin when we switched domains.

[Juno]

Personally I wouldn't find it surprising if that, by examining traffic data, we saw our decrease begin when we switched domains.

I'm quite sure that occurred. I had trouble finding us when we switched domains, myself.

[Piper Juunanagou]

Fucking Dutch.

[Rem-13]

I'm not gonna lie, I really liked the little point program we had.

Remembering it existed and pounding thirty into speed was satisfying. I know we moved past that, but still.

[Orion]

I still believe, to a large extent, that people will need to suck it up and roleplay.

[Juno]

Question: assuming we implement this "new system," would we be facing a complete reboot of everyone's "stats" to the basic minimum again? Essentially, a turnover part two?

Also, would we be encouraged/even allowed to start new stories as new characters or would we be expected to keep our old ones (a lot of this hinges on whether or not canons are allowed, I'm guessing).

[Kaden]

I still believe, to a large extent, that people will need to suck it up and roleplay.

That will absolutely have to happen, but we can still try to help minimize how much has to be sucked.

...

No homo.