Art immitates life...
Last night, I ended up signing my character on for a fairly major plot line on FF:DA. I was almost immediately reminded of everything I dislike about roleplaying in large groups on a MU*. In all fairness, just about every TP I get into makes me thinks of such things.
The timing is annoying, sure. Between technological lag, typing speed and RL, there are always great delays in the action and every extra person means more difficulty in getting "enough" people together to play. That, however, isn't what gets me the most. Rather it's my own behavior...
As more people are in the same place on a MU*, I find my screen filling up more rapidly with idle chatter and OOC comments. In turn, I find myself less inclined to participate in such things, hoping instead that we get to what's important to the plot line. I end up posing less and getting lost in the crowd.
In real life, it's only a little different. The quantity of people is less a factor than is how well I know them. I'm far more at ease with folks I can relate to and share interests with. The reason is slightly different, but it amounts to about the same thing: put me in a crowd and I'll probably get by with a minimal amount of conversation.
Many of my favorite scenes from the last several years of MUCKing have been one-on-one. I see my "ideal" as three - one GM and two players. That doesn't happen much for me, but I notice things start to get hectic in the 4-5 person range. Small groups don't do enough for the atmosphere of a MU*, though, so I guess I'm stuck taking what I can get until/unless I make the effort to run TPs myself.
And what're the odds of that?
The timing is annoying, sure. Between technological lag, typing speed and RL, there are always great delays in the action and every extra person means more difficulty in getting "enough" people together to play. That, however, isn't what gets me the most. Rather it's my own behavior...
As more people are in the same place on a MU*, I find my screen filling up more rapidly with idle chatter and OOC comments. In turn, I find myself less inclined to participate in such things, hoping instead that we get to what's important to the plot line. I end up posing less and getting lost in the crowd.
In real life, it's only a little different. The quantity of people is less a factor than is how well I know them. I'm far more at ease with folks I can relate to and share interests with. The reason is slightly different, but it amounts to about the same thing: put me in a crowd and I'll probably get by with a minimal amount of conversation.
Many of my favorite scenes from the last several years of MUCKing have been one-on-one. I see my "ideal" as three - one GM and two players. That doesn't happen much for me, but I notice things start to get hectic in the 4-5 person range. Small groups don't do enough for the atmosphere of a MU*, though, so I guess I'm stuck taking what I can get until/unless I make the effort to run TPs myself.
And what're the odds of that?
Not my fault! I would have been happy with a smaller group, but hopefully, we'll just be playing when people connect, not when EVERYBODY connects. We'll see how this goes, hopefully.
ReplyDeleteOh, I'm sure there will be sessions that don't involve everyone. I'm more interested to see how many people go RP elsewhere in the next few days when the TP isn't in progress.
ReplyDelete