[Bêthberry]

To clarify what I meant . . .

Originally Posted by Formendacil

Reading through that, I agree with you, and if this is the point Durelin was making, then I withdraw my responses as entirely too pedantic. However... I am reading you as saying that it's the system we go through to get at the games that is discouraging and patronising--not the games themselves.

Although I stepped in between your discussion with Durelin, I wasn't responding specifically to her points or that question of "bunnying" other people's characters. (And if you look back over my posts you will find I was adamantly against game owners controlling other gamer's characters and style. I even spoke of an experience I had where the game owner wanted my character to react in a particular way that I felt was contrary to her psychology.)

Instead, I was responding to the general tenor of the posts about new guidelines/rules and your to me rather frightening statement that implied things ain't gonna change when you said the new forums will resemble the old. If the new forums simply cut and paste and edit the old rules, I don't think they will accomplish the rejuvenation that we all hope to see. I like the word "etiquette" to describe the gaming milieu here and I like Fea's points, all generously describing things without becoming too prescriptive. Nicelythought out and nicely said and lightly too! And I thank you, Formy for clarifying that you meant to uphold the ethos of the games.

And to be honest, sometimes it was the games themselves that were discouraging to me (can't speak for others). I came to feel that the planning and even discussion threads were taking the place of the interactive nature of RPGing, so that writing the actual post became perfunctory and even redundant. It had already all been said! We seem to be very good at coming up with clever characters but somehow the stories just don't get written.

Originally Posted by Formy

However, even in a looser, open-ended game, my impression was still that individual players would have individual characters, which implies a sense of investment and ownership. Given that, it seems only common courtesy to me that the player with that ownership would still be deferred to where that character is considered.

Of course!

If we're talking about collaborative story-writing, where there is no identification of player with character, but merely mass ownership of the entire story without authorial division by character, then we're talking about something that hardly qualifies as role-playing, and might be more akin to co-written fanfiction. And while I'm not saying there's no room for that on the Downs, I guess I didn't think we were discussing that far outside the box.

That's not what I mean by any means.

Anyhow, thanks Formy for replying at length and so generously to my concerns.