Preference for RP?

So what do you all like to RP under, I've found a surprising number of people who don't do forums or hate live chat, etc... So, I'm curious.

 

I prefer forums. I don't feel guilty if I don't reply immediately and I just enjoy having a fully accessible "log" right there when I need/want it rather than having to scroll through a bunch of stuff.

 

These days I prefer forums. I like the ease with which you can keep track of threads (with subscriptions and tags), the use of plotters etc. But I do have a preference for forum games that allow solo and joint posts (the sort written on meetingwords or a similar platform). I guess that's a result of my PBeM background. I will always have a soft spot for email games! Ours was on yahoo groups but that feels a little out of date these days!

The few tabletop games I’ve been involved in were immense fun. But we moved a couple of months ago and I’ve yet to find any new groups. Now that you’ve got me thinking about it though I’m very tempted to take another look.

 

I really enjoy sitting around a table, rolling dice, and hanging out with friends. Since I've been without a car I've fallen out of the local groups I'd been playing with.

Online, I like Nova based games. They're a nice hybrid between forum and email, making collaboration easier than email, presenting the finished log in a nicer to read format than the typical forum post.

 

I like forums and journals. It gives me plenty of ways to keep track of things and the ability to shift between characters and RP partners easily.

 

@VarnishedTruths, Journal RPs is something that completely passed me by, but I do remember seeing a ton of them on Insane Journal back in the day. I was always curious as to how they work. Do you keep a journal as the character or do you actually write with other members of the group elsewhere and take turns posting in the journal?

 

I did a little journal rp on live journal a few years back. Our group did a mix. We had personal journals for our characters, then we made joint posts in a community, sometimes continuing the rp in the comment threads below. The only things I disliked about it is that there wasn't an easy way to keep the personal journals chronologically displayed with the community posts once they passed the two week limit that lj imposed upon their friends pages.

 

@Archaeon, the way journal RP works, at least in the communities I've played in, is that every character has their own journal, for posting things IC for that character (their thoughts, what they do at work, what happens if they bring a friend out for drinks, etc) and OOC notes (how their powers work, IC/OOC permissions, thread tracking, etc); you then join a game community (or lots!) and RP the character within that game. You can do "public" stuff in the game community, and "private" stuff in someone's personal journal. A new post to a journal is like the first post on a board; you set the scene, decide who's expected to be there when you start, and so on. Then you RP through comment threads on that post. When you post to a game community you might get lots of different comment threads going where your character has different interactions with different people that are all 'at the same time' so sometimes you have to futz about with the spacetime continuum afterward.

@Death Kitten, I keep track of threads by making a thread tracking post every month (or less for a less active character) and put in links chronologically. You can see some here if you're curious what I mean.

 

i love me some forums. it's where i am most comfortable. However, IRC/Live chat can be useful when you just need to bang out a quick interaction.

 

I actually found the strange polarization in my RPers too. If people love JPing (Joint Posting) or Live Chat then they tend to dislike how slow the forum/board is. Meanwhile, the reverse is true and my forum players feel pressured unduly with the speed of the other two O.o. I also find Live Chat players hate rules and constraints, they want to free form a lot.

 

I'm with Demica, people seem to prioritize one or the other: Speed of instant-message roleplay, or casualness of forums posting. Personally I used to rp exclusively in MMOs, which is a lot like IM roleplaying but with characters you can physically move and emote with. I loved getting in quick jokes and jabs and really getting a feeling of the scene playing out in real time... But it also requires a few free hours every time you want to rp. As I got older and busier it just got too much, and I much prefer forums-based rp these days. Plus, forums rp can be as fast as you and your partner want it to be! Provided you can both be online at the same time, haha

 

I got my start in live chat, which i still like sometimes. Since i've been introduced to forums, however, i do prefer it over live chat. As it was mentioned before... easier to keep track of things and also far easier not to miss a post.

 

I always preferred writing in groups such as on yahoo. That allowed for both rapid and more thoughtful posts, depending on the mood and available time of the players as well as easy access to previous posts for continuity. I've become more curious about forums as it does seem that group games such as used to be all the rage on yahoo have nearly died out. Many players could also access such groups through email, so it offered a good many benefits. But times change and I try to change, too.

 

Actually I use yahoo groups for all of mine so we're not all dead yet! I totally agree with you in that I love that the access is easy and allows for players to set their pace. I mean, its a place you can turn off the emails and treat as a forum if you like posting that way - or you can get it right to your inbox.^_^

 

I hate any type of chat boxes, I find it limits creativity, post count, word count, and just takes away a level of deepness from a site. Forum rp's are the best--- they allow for the wide and vast world in plots.

 

You may want to evaluate alternative options and you should make a plan immediately for how you would export your content if Yahoo! Groups was announced to close down. Yahoo is currently for sale and the pieces of Yahoo are being bidded on. What this means for Yahoo groups is uncertain but could be grim, especially considering Yahoo groups content might be difficult to monetize. We could be looking at the next Geocities, where a huge part of web history is lost forever.

 

I've tried forums but still find them confusing, especially from a moderator point of view. There is a new and upcoming site called groups.io which is very similar to the old-school version of yahoo that some of us remember so fondly.

 

I started with expage, and voy boards, then used webs and boards2go. For a little bit there I was working on one with atwebpages, before a friend of mine and I were able to get a jcink account going. personally I like the forums now. I am not a fan of proboards because you have to have a different email to sign up each character, but I do love jcink, you can use the same e-mail for everything and link accounts together so you can swap between them quickly and easily. Our members actually seem to like it as well, so it works out for the best.

 

Oh! I hadn't heard of groups.io before. I've just been and checked it out and it looks fabulous. Thank you for pointing it out!

 

You're welcome! Mind you, it's still in beta. However, it's coming along very nicely, is easy to navigate and the founder responds very quickly to any problems that arise.