every once in awhile i come back here to reflect on my rp time here and how dorian was my crowning achievement
if i could go back to early 2018 rp with dorian that would be fantastic
without the burden of modding because fuck that
i'm in my google docs at the moment and one of the holiday gifts he had planned was "dragon soap holder" to merlin and it's just so novel
his gift to other people like byerly was just brandy
me reflecting on my life almost 2 years ago: dorian really did learn what a capri sun was and put the straw through the pouch
oh jesus this was 2017. who was i
holds my head in my hands. the time of his life was learning what a garbage disposal was
I was coming in here just to say garbage disposal
not as a personal comment but a happy memory
honestly thats the crowning achievement
if i could headcanon early nysa dorian with other ppl i would. what would have happened if that game were actually good
What happened with Nysa...
would dorian have called prior about the garbage disposal? probably
They were such cutes.
they were SO cute
prior: wow i have a crush on my roommate
dorian: wow yeah he's exactly like me and i fucked him over it
dorian: wow yeah he's exactly like me and i fucked him over it
sizlaria: hi siz if i started talking about nysa the memories would flood back and i'd never stop
He had a crush on all his roommates lets be real.
Prior, Richie and Dorian should have been a roommate gang.
i modded there from early on and quickly realized the game had no planned structure despite appearances and it was running on fumes the whoooooooole time
the whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooole time
which i think is every dwrp game? tbh????? has anyone ever truly been in a well run game that lasted over a year
Me
wow no one asked you
Multiple times idk what to tell u
In the olden days...but that was before the expectation became that every game would be like extremely plot heavy and curated for the individual
Which don’t get me wrong is great but so few can deliver on that...
i change my stance: has anyone been in a "plot driven" game that has lasted well over a year doing well
i think ideally a plot driven game would END in about a year tbh
Yeah
as someone no longer embedded in dwrp culture i feel like it's both players expectation and mods not doing anything to avoid those expectations
like with nysa they had a 3 part crash landing in the beginning of the game followed by a biological warfare sickness plot
ALSO, ME but if you're gonna go really plot heavy u have to cap it, any plot game growing beyond the ability of the mods will come apart
then when i become a mod i quickly learned there was no actual plan for all the lore-laid-out conflict
But I mean less plot aimed games like Prisma and Emp still are going too
so the whole time i was in nysa i was trying to 1: rp dorian and 2: make up a plot for this game that was rejected because it just wasn't the vision of the mods, and that's fine, but that was never outright stated
and it was abandoned months after the mods trying left
yeah and i mean respect to those games tbh!! it's not really my thing but they work through any issues that crop up
I wasn't ever in Nysa but based on how u talked about it it seems like mod changover and lack of cohesion on the backend about what the game would be pulled it apart
LIKE IF UR GONNA BE PLOT DRIVEN U GOTTA HAVE THE WHOLE MOD TEAM ON BOARD
it was about half and half
Which it seems like Nysa didn't
like i would see a lot of serious characters being rped about the very real plot aspects like haha your loved ones are frozen in ice until we can gget x fixed
and i tried to cater to those players
but then the rest would be like
if you eat this fruit you'll wanna fuck
Also if ur gonna do an overarching plot game u have to have the actual plot laid out in at least basics from the beginning... that's storywriting basics
i'm not gonna complain about anyone that likes to rp slice of life because it can be genuinely interesting to see different character dynamics in a domestic setting
nd those parts of nysa were still fun but not when it because 70% of the game when the game was advertised as
Crosscheck had a nice balance of plot and just open world but it exploded in wank 
but like the game was a p decent handle of a large size not totally losng the plot
but like the game was a p decent handle of a large size not totally losng the plot
YOU'RE IN SPACE BECAUSE YOUR PLANETS ARE GONE
If, u know, it didn't explode in wank
im sitting here like an old lady who doesnt get to rp anymore like these kids
BUT YEAH I mean Nysa isn't indicative of all DWRP plot-based games, plenty have come and gone that were both v story intense and also that were a lot more sandboxy just with a lore moving plot structure
i wonder if it's ever gonna evolve from [spooky premise and first events] then devolving into [festival festival festival festival]
bc then i would come back to play in a game
Tbh you'd prolly like Fellden but also we're gonna hit game cap this app round and they open soon so
what made playing dorian so fun was having an on and off period of relax time to do stupid shit like learning what a garbage disposal was but also being able to turn to a conflict in the next month
tbh i'd feel bad about apping to a close to cap game because i get like 4 hours of free time from my job
Prolly not enough time, but I think they're planning on rolling apps after this round so it'll be when there's spots they take in apps
someday..........
I MEAN OUR CAP IS 100 so it's not like, a tiny cap
but yeah
Aef iiiis really struggling on the plot aspect but I'm enjoying the setting so I'm waiting out a bit to see how the new modteam pulls the suggestions and such together
imo if a game doesnt seem like it has a set end i probably won't take a dive
my enjoyment of nysa was probably directly connected to my lack of investment in the overall plot
ya??? tell me more
i figured a lot of it was just from people making their own spaces bc the plot just went away
yeah lol I'm Bad at Plots, recognize this, and have dealt with this by accepting it
My friend is starting up a smaller invite-only game that's aimed at being 2 years, it's being kidnapped by fairies 
so it's mem loss and transformation based
so it's mem loss and transformation based
I just like to play trashy network interactions LEAVE ME BE
i mean those are fun!!!!!!!!!!!!
But most games prolly won't announce their planned end, like Fellden doesn't but it's not a definitive end everyone has to work towards so it definitely can't go on forever just by the plot
from a player aspect some of the most entertaining interactions was over networking but from a mod aspect it's like just make sure you're hitting our very reasonable cap
cap? no. req activity
so many people would just drop threads and then reply back to them to hit ac
tbh some of my best dorian threads started from like hey u up u wanna come over and get shitfaced
monochromic: that's so valid of them bc they dont have to announce it from the start if they dont wanna
i've thought extensively about what kind of game i'd like to be in or what game i'd like to run and all of them pretty consistently only last a year
with planned plot points that players can influence and diverging paths for different endings
YEAH I mean it's partly because it also gives leeway if it's shorter or longer, esp if ur running a game where u let players help drive the plot with their actions
that was my plan for nysa anyway but unfortunately too many aspects put a damper on it
yeah mmm i did play in for barrayar and it was like what you describe: planned ending, definite plot structure
one day it may come back…
weeps............. please
I think most will still go in the 2-3 year range, less than a year isn't as common outside murdergame just because it's, I think, a bit awkward of a timeframe in terms of people apping after it's already opened
i had a jumanji game structure mindscape in my head that i never put on paper but i think about it every day
fade rift is plot-driven and still goin' after 4 years but our mods are actual wizards + the pace is extremely chill
i heard that like... a year ago when i wanted to drwp again!!!
If u were doing a year or less you'd need the same character group sticking for most of game which is hard to do unless u have a dedicated group
i'm happy for yall over there its just hard to imagine apping there with its uh... well.. gestures
i'd wanna rp dorian but there's too much history
Which: if you wanted to run a game like that, smaller invite-only games have seen a surge of popularity recently for people running more plot dedicated things
yeah... yeah
for me i'd close apps about like
6-7 months in and let it go how it's gonna go
Yeah, it's a clumsy timeframe with open apps unless u go murdergame format where it's 3-4 months of intensity
so v short
i think murder games are so fun for that reason but its too difficult of a scene to get into
i work 9-6 i can't attend a 7 hr trial so on
nysa modding
dragon soap holder is wild
YEAH I mean I haven't joined a murdergame either for the same reason just. 3-4 months generally insures people don't burn out before it ends
yeah!
fr got a wiki now so the history is searchable and halfway accessible, but yeah still a lot, i deffo feel you.
whoa
that's a lot of work... props
SO YEAH if u want a little longer but still within a year, doing smaller and invite only would prolly be best
maybe i'll check it out after holiday season is over and i dont die
for now i'll continue thinking about that one time dorian found love and also a snake
yes good and good.
Honestly these days I pretty exclusively play at short term games
yeah?? tell me more
2-3 months is the perfect amount of time for me to be enthusiastic and want to go hard with tags and plot
And then it’s over and you get a break and then next game that comes around you can decide if you’re feeling it
My problem with all games Nysa included is when I start I’m like
Really into it! I wanna do all the plot and get cr with everybody! But the down times kill my interest
But you also can’t maintain full plot interest for too long
and also most of the plot relied on npcs no one had investment in when they really should have been a tool to get players to do something
as a mod nysa's plot was like. 50% on rotten tomatoes. we tried rly hard to change it around a lot and also made a ton of mistakes
and there was a lot of resistance to making it player interactive
I mean sure but for me that wasn’t necessarily the issue it was just that I still liked the game but just was kind of no longer inspired which always happens to me after a while because it’s not new shiny anymore
yeah that's also inevitable!
Which I think is something a lot of games struggle with - a lot of players are like me and lose interest and you have to be ready to change course from
Nysa month one the biggest thing in dwrp
To Nysa after a few months passed where the people who are still are less fixated on it and no longer boomeranging and just want it to be their enjoyable home game
That transition murders games a lot of the time
tbh I would not be against more plot-aimed games opening with a cap to prevent hype overwhelming things before they can find their groove
tbh there were a lot of ways to make it people's home games while still maintaining interest its just not something that was ever planned for
But because I know I have new shiny syndrome badly I now exclusively app at games where there’s no long term expectation
So I can enjoy it for a couple months and leave as I generally prefer to do
don't worry many of the mods also have shiny syndrome with their own game
Yeah I’m not disagreeing with you I would have liked it if Nysa had maintained the level of cool shit that it had when it first opened
^ I'M THE OPPOSITE I like sticking out for longer term besides not having time to dedicate to that kind of burst speed, but I do still want there to be some sort of plot engagement or else the setting alone usually isn't enough to hold me
I’m just saying that for me personally I probably would have left after a couple months either way
yeah everyone's different
i think the problem with nysa is that the ball never dropped for tensions
it was always resolved by the npcs
there was virtually nothing to do
mudergame format is still v popular for the reasons outlines above but long term games didn't like. fade. it's p split
i expect games to rly stay the same
it was murdergames and games like emp when i started and it'll be like that
Yeah a lot depended on getting threads with NPCs
one of the plans from half the mods was like
the nysan npcs were the reason why the whole event happened
nd it would've been a great twist
Murdergames weren't always around as a format I just mean, I've seen their rise
so many ideas.... so little time
Yeah murdergames have been a thing since 2011 / 2012
you know one somewhat unique experience I had was like a single-fandom game
tell me more
Before then it was pretty exclusively big games that lasted years
single fandom games used to be great
that was one where the game didn't have any overarching plot but the playerbase actually made one
Whispers don't give me dates it'll remind me how long I've been rping over here...
see that's spicy because like. mods usually shoot player plots down
I played rukia in a bleach game with about 20 players that lasted a year and it was one of my fav experiences. No one does them anymore though.
I know I was like oh it was fairly recent but lol
a bleach game!!!!
yeah, it was small enough playerbasewise that it was… highly collaborative
i love that
Realizing I've been on DW/LJRP over a decade...
and because it was singlefandom everyone had some idea of what the stakes would be
I’ve been dw/ljrp since 2006 
it was so good, it was AU and set in an apartment building and it was slice of like but with player created dramas.
also re: shooting down player plots I'll say that's v much per mod team, I've been in games both wehre it was hard to do anything and where literally anything would get approved
i want player created dramas
sizlaria: WE'RE HERE FOR LIFE I GUESS
Lol I’m barely still here though
i feel like ppl always tell me about games where mods lay out foundation and allow freedom being their best experiences
That’s the real thing is we’re still making games that follow a general format of big games people modded when they were students
Generally yeah, players like being able to play out their own ideas
which is true, because who made dorian get a capri sun? it was not the mods. it was taako. and dorian
But actually we’re old now and have jobs
yeah mood
here's what we do. i put down a napkin and pick up a crayon
So it doesn’t work nobody has time to take on a second unpaid job and mod games
I think players also like being able to see their impact on the game even if it's not plot-aimed
we make game. it has people. it has 1 npc. the npc's a robot. the setting is a dome
there were mod plots like "a festival!!" but eventually it got to be like… we invented a reason why all these time travelling characters were showing up at scenario x, fought a big bad, solved the issue, various quests
Like setting changes and the lot
wtf that sounds so cool
i feel like non-anon modding actually helped a lot because like, you felt as though the mods were ur friends you plotted with on plurk instead of
nebulous unreachable npc forces
that's such a slippery slope because if i were not anon while i was modding i'd get wanked on so hard these days
probably only possible with a tiny obscure fandom game
yeah
Yeah. I truly understand why we went to anon mods...as someone who was a mod for 5 years of a big game I truly understand but I think it hurt the way games worked in some ways
yeah lol… but for me it really helped engaging with the game
And helped in other ways! Like thinking mods are either your friends or not your friends is generally not great when it comes to like. Managing expectations and drama
most players i interacted with the most in nysa figured out it was me anyway and i felt better to be like yeah it's me but if it were during the period of the game running i'd be terrified of opening a wank gate thread with my name on it
But it’s definitely easier to remember that mods are just people trying to put together a plot when you know who they are
Haha, yeah 
anon and non-anon have their pros and cons
anon and non-anon have their pros and cons
I don't blame mods for wanting anonymity AT ALL given… gestures…
there's a lot of unacceptable mod behavior llike not getting back to people for like a week and so on or abandoning a game, but like,, if i got namedropped for fuckwad mcgee getting kicked out a game for being obsessive about rp
my head would explode
yeah and with plot heavy games accusations/feelings of favoritism are big
I still occasionally get namedropped for a game that closed like 5 years ago
i cant imagine like............. personally being invested in that for so long
Like remember the mayfield mods weren’t they mean bitches I wonder where they are
that's old lore i don't know
And I’m like well I kind of was a mean bitch but also it was slowly driving me crazy
LMAO some people don't let go. I generally leave the anoncomms as better off ignored
that's the way to be
By this point deets about actual predators and abusers find their way on my plurk timeline anyway
but as a mod it can be hard to disengage
yeah nysa wankgate was hard to ignore
we'd be like lets not let it influence our events and then be like uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
It's also hard to tell with the comms like. Who are actually players invested in our game and who are outside shitstirrers
I mean I imagine I've never modded because I love myself
love yourself... respect yourself
i was a mod to help with technical aspects then no one was writing an event so it was like ok i guess
I would be an excellent aesthetic mod and that's all
no interaction with players just making things look pretty
yeah lemme open up my artstation and pick an aesthetic
im gonna make a game that's just your characters in post-apocalypse dome city run by (1) npc that you can only leave voicemails for
and when he gets back to you its like uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh yeah sure do that
like leaving a long message for a professor that's just like "yeah" and their signature
LMAO
honestly a game with a completely unpresent NPC but an interactive environment would be fun
I always prefer my PC CR to trying to talk to the npcs anyway
my ideal npc is just a robot that plays out of date music over the setting that people grow to hate
like fallout or any space video game
i was talking to laura about my ideal game npc was going to be set enough in the future that the game's theme music would be early 2000s instead of like, 50s music
so over the intercoms of the game setting would just be toxic
or pitbull
his name was mr worldwide. rip npc concept
please
Someone would still try to flirt with them, probably
that's fine they can romance my robot through voicemails
but they are in fact just a mayor in a tv box
Like Oz but just as disappointed on the outside as the inside
when i come back to dwrp and inevitable make a game that's either jumanji, enclosed dome game running out of resources, or then 1100000000th space game, anyone in this plurk will know its me bc the same npc concept
oh also there was a road to el dorado game concept where you had to fake it until you make it
all of these game concepts had different roles to fill bc ppl love giving their characters a job
honestly thats another thing i think games either did great in or failed
i have fond memories of picking something that i thought my character would do well in
some of them never had an "other" box for useless characters but it was still exciting
I AM REMINDED that Thusia did a cool thing where the god-NPCs (that the characters needed to get stuff for to fix the post apoc world) were mostly player designed and run
that's cute!!!
So what was available for requests or powers or the like was all based on what players made up
IT WAS A LOT OF FUN because besides the Big Bads a lot of the feel for the world ended up collaborative
we had an open suggestion box in nysa for fun surprise gifts people could spend their activity points on
and i think someone just made like ridiculous shit
like a box in a box in a box in a box
Boxception
I suggested a range of butt statues iirc
with powers granted by rubbing the butt.
i think someone got that
That's good
I loved that thing, when I was bored I just poured dumb ideas into it
i found the chest
Upon opening the chest... there is another, smaller chest. Upon opening that chest, there is another, even smaller chest. Inside that chest is a chest with a lock, but there is no key to be found. He will be unable to open this box until he finds the key hidden in his home, and will open it to find nothing inside.
sadly i think a lot of these rewards are deleted bc of drops
you mean like my abba prize
and the middle finger wand for taako
me nodding sadly as i read all our game concepts itp