RP Guides: How Much is Enough?

When you're laying out a guide for new members of an RP forum, how do you like to do it? How much information is enough? When is it too much? Discuss. :P

 

I like all the information needed. I think never is too much information.

 

As long as it doesn't overload people, I agree.

 

I like trying to keep the 'must read' stuff down to a minimum. Not always an easy thing to do in original settings! But that generally means providing all the information necessary to get started in as easily accessible way as possible. Things like plot, rules, species, key locations etc.

After that everything else becomes 'further reading' for players or prospective players to work through at their leisure. I don't think it's possible to overdo this! The more information you have the more flesh you put on the bones of your world. I also like making it possible for players to submit their own lore into this area. Things like settings, historical events, locations etc. It means that the wider world becomes more of a community project, makes players feel directly involved in the game and gives them the creative freedom to let their imaginations run riot.

 

I'm a "More is Better" sort of Information person. So for Children of StarClan (my Warrior Cats AU with a world based entirely around extrapolations of the first 6 books and none of the dozens of books beyond that) I have had problems with people saying "I didn't read the game information, there was too much!". My solution ended up being a list of key differences between the total canon of the Warriors universe and CoSC's version. We also ended up doing a bullet points version for the rules.

We kept our longer versions, but find that having a bullet pointed list gets people feeling both comfortable enough to join, but also makes them overall more competent in the game that much faster since they don't have to read or digest the longer versions of many of the files to get started. They can just pop to the documentation they need when they're making a post that touches on a certain subject.

 

While rules/how to get started write ups are best short, sweet and well laid out, I feel like everything else can be endlessly elaborated! Personally, I really enjoy fleshed out lore and histories.

Considering RP as we talk about it here is a collaborative writing experience, I think it's safe to assume that most people who do it also enjoy reading? IS THAT TOO MUCH? HAVE I GONE TOO FAR IN ASSUMING THAT?!

 

I hope you haven't Poufkin. I think it's as much fun to read other people's threads and keep up with what's going on as it is to write my own...

 

I agree, people should enjoy reading others writing a much as they enjoy writing their own stuff... But some of the bad experiences in a star trek fleet included selfish people who never bothered to read other people's writing, and were always doing things that contradicted existing lore or events. Even when we provided them with a weekly summary of what's been happening, they still got it wrong.

 

Weekly summaries are great! Props to keeping up with those-- but sorry you had the experience of people not reading them. That has to be one of the MOST frustrating things for me-- When you put time and effort into crafting something that speaks of your character's appearance or demeanor and it is completely disregarded. :/

 

It's always a challenge to find good players, regardless of what platform you play on. However, I try not to let bad players discourage me. With things like weekly summaries I know how much of a help they can be for good players who might just be unexpectedly busy, and writing for my character makes me happy enough that I will do it regardless. And when I'm involved in running a game, I try my best to make sure all my players are involved and happy.

 

What's worse than those "bad players" not just reading other posts... is when they don't actually read what other people have written in joint posts, and contradict what has been written in the tags (even sometimes the tag right before!) above them. What is the point of writing in a sim if you're not going to read at least what the other people on your team write?

But back to the original topic, I do enjoy when the games /have/ all the information there for me to read when I want to. But I don't enjoy having to read a novel to get started on the game. If I can't understand the basics of the game after reading the Rules, FAQ, and one or two pages of background, I'm done. Which I KNOW is frustrating for GMs of original worlds who put a lot of thought into their world. But I get overloaded on information incredibly easily, and there's a point at which my brain just stops processing it.