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Encouraging and supporting personal and interpersonal storyt

This out of character forum is for discussion of roleplaying, how to roleplay and roleplay coordination.
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jimhabegger
Dreamer
Posts: 81
Joined: Fri Jan 24, 2014 4:11 am
Character Name(s): Farlong

Encouraging and supporting personal and interpersonal storyt

Post by jimhabegger »

Some of this is copied and pasted, but it is not simply a re-post of what I said in the thread "Personal and interpersonal stories from the past." That was about making those stories, from the past, part of the lore of the new game. This is about how to encourage and support that kind of storytelling in the new game.

I won't be trying to convince anyone of the value of that kind of storytelling, or of discussing how to encourage and support it. This is for anyone who already sees value in it, and in discussing it. Anyone who doesn't see any value in discussing it, please ignore this thread. Please, just ignore it.

For convenience, to explain the kind of storytelling I mean, I'll copy and paste part of my other post.
- For some time, Heaven and Laviticas were conspiring on some mysterious plan for restoring the balance in the dream. Dar'canon was organizing some kind of fighting group for defending the dream, and once I saw the three of them in a heated argument.

- Perunda always had some kind of intensely intriguing and entertaining story going on. One of my favorites was Sleevey.

- I don't remember any details of Ash's stories, but I had some conversations with him where he talked about his view of the dream's agents (aka beasts) as the native inhabitants, and the dreamers as invaders and usurpers.

- There were others who, with or without enduring stories, displayed intriguing and entertaining personalities, or who added color and depth to the dreamscape for everyone, one way or another. Some examples that come to my mind are ZsaZsa, Gilly, Cuero, Vampyro and Ponyea.

- Another way I saw people enriching the dream was simply through personal interactions with others in the dream, whether friendly or hostile. Belom enriched my dreams a lot through his friendship with Farlong, and Cuero enriched my dreams through his hostility.

- I'm drifting off my original topic here, but really, every dreamer who made any effort to actually play some kind of role, or even just provide some colorful emotes, enriched the dream for me, even if Farlong never saw her doing any more than polishing her nails.
To clarify further, it might help if I contrast that with storylines and events involving numerous more or less interchangeable characters, possibly revolving around one or a few distinctive ones. If anyone wants to discuss how to encourage and support those, I would rather have that in a separate thread from this one, because it might lead in entirely different directions.

What I would like to discuss here is how any players who want to, might encourage and support the kind of RP that I've set apart here. My first thought is simply to try to play into that kind of RP, whenever and wherever we see it.
"What the world needs now is love, sweet love.
It's the only thing that there's just too little of.
What the world needs now is love, sweet love,
No not just for some but for everyone."

- Hal David, Jackie DeShannon, Burt Bacharach
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