The staying power of a roleplay

[Kai]

So I've been a roleplayer for almost 15 years now. For most of that time I never really thought too much about what makes a roleplay succeed or fail. Whether character driven or story driven, things just needed to click into place. If they didn't, dead the roleplay went and then it was on to the next one.

Over the past few years, though, it's become more and more obvious to me that there is another part of developing a storyline that doesn't get addressed frequently, if at all. The staying power of the plot. Let me explain what I mean by that.

Say you want to do a roleplay that involves two main characters. One is a male demon. The other a female human. Good so far? Fabulous. So our two characters are dating. What the human doesn't know is that she's dating a demon and being used as a cover. Until one day... Chaos! There is an attack. The human discovers the dark secret and the demon is forced to reveal the truth before taking the human away to keep them safe. But he has done the one thing he should not have. He has fallen in love with the human and now vows to save her life no matter what.

Now, I've done the above plot myself so if I'm tearing apart anyone's work it's my own so bear with me. At first glance, it may seem like an exciting plot to play out. You got your secrets, you got your danger, and you got your drama factor. You know what else you got? About twenty posts worth of material before you lose interest. Maybe twice that if you really try to stretch out the big reveal (which... let's face it... is going to happen right in the beginning of your story).

So once the attack happens and the human gets over being shocked at discovering the demon's existance.... Now what? She can't just wander away because then we got two characters running around on their own (likely resulting in a dead human). They have to somehow stick together. Oh! But we got the other bad guys now that we toss into the pot. So they have to run and/or fight to save themselves. Add about 2-4 more posts for them to get away from that one. Now what?

And that's when things start to fall apart. What seemed like an exciting adventure becomes a race to see how much random drama you can cram in there to keep things interesting. And this happens all the time.

I won't pretend that I'm completely innocent in this matter even to this day, but seeing this going on has made me a lot more critical of the roleplays that I join or try to start. For one thing, I now always look for an overarching plot. The same thing you would have in a book or a movie.

So maybe the demon's big reveal doesn't happen at the very beginning. Maybe our story becomes about a woman who is slowly discovering that she is different from everyone else. She has some odd inclination to magic or some power she can't explain. There is a destiny that awaits her at the end of our story and our demon character is now her guide. There to corrupt her to the dark side so she could never do the good that she's meant to. Various NPC's (or heck, open it up to other players here) come into the picture and the story develops a variety of side-storylines that will all tie back into one another at the end. The roleplay now also develops a clear beginning, middle, and end instead of stretching on blindly into infinity.

Treating the roleplay plot as a screen play allows you (or me at least) to be more critical of its interest level and staying power. You wouldn't have a girl discover that her boyfriend is a killer in the first five minutes of a film. It would make no sense. So why do it in roleplays?

I'd be interested to hear how other people here handle this particular issue.

[Dae Mec]

I completely agree with you. I actually haven't thought of roleplaying as a screenplay before, but that makes perfect sense.

Another type of roleplay would be the episodic kind. Instead of a movie screen play, I'd compare it to a TV show. Although they don't necessarily need to have a strict overarching plot, a larger story or a goal will definitely help. Each mini-plot should be interesting and be consistently interesting to keep a viewer/roleplayer's attention.

I think lasting power can be boiled down to plot, characters, and writing. Ideally, all three should be solid, but the plot is usually the most important part.

Oh, and roleplay size is important. The larger the roleplay, the more likely it will fail. Of course, there are exceptions, but I try not to join any roleplay with more than six people. Anymore, and the RP becomes unstable.

I really like your post. If I create a roleplay, I'll definitely keep what you said in mind.

[Sara Whitley]

I tend to find roleplays involving predetermined plots run by a GM and played-by-post on a forum usually ends up like this. The fact of the matter is, when you've got a few people writing multi-paragraph posts on a plot, the amount of detail going into covering that plot will happen very quickly. Give this a day or two of consistent posting and...taking into account the hours (sometimes) it can take for someone to formulate their detailed post, and the ins n outs of a plot can be explored by the players much more quickly and thoroughly than the GM usually anticipates.

For this I find that the most successful RPs I've been a part of have all been large-scale sandboxes. Any RP featuring a persistent world in which multiple people RP have been the only RPs (is this my fault? Maybe) I've done that always had something, somewhere, to offer the next day, month, or even year after. An emergence-based (people make the stuff, and it all "comes together" in a hodge-podge) sandbox will probably always have the most longevity in play-by-post roleplay. The Multiverse on this site is an example.

Long stories are possible and usually are the aim of most roleplays, I think. The issue is, when you're playing it on a system in which creative writing is the sole means of playing (without a system of dice, figurines, dungeon maps, what have you), it places enormous, often unrealistic demands on the DM in terms of motivation for effective management and the creation of story lines and plot devices.

I think, in short, trying to DM a long-term storyline that's your own little RP is usually biting off more than you can chew.

[lostamongtrees]

This thread is filled with great insight.

I too find sandbox-style RP's to be the most consistently successful, is my only real addition. That, along with OOC communication.

Zodia recently started a conversation on Keeping an RPG Going & I think it's entirely relevant!