What should we do about Hogwarts

But the latest post widget only works for posts done while you're online.. and I often miss the good ones.. so.. I like the idea of open thread posts thingy, it gives me a place to go to LOOK for them.

Jess Potter wrote:Oh I like those. How would it be run though? Heads play GM and use their discretion for when it gets out? Certain number of posts = win?
That is a fantastic idea though.

No, no, no. It's not about winning; it's about participation. The challenge just gives the participants a prompt for their RP, which a lot of times is just what people need to encourage them to be involved in a mass thread or an open thread. So it's not "run" as such, you just put up the challenge and away everyone goes.

You can still give out awards at the end if you want to, I just think they're more fun if they're in character or at least about the characters instead of about who's the "best" RPer.

Hmmm. I like the idea in theory, but I'm not sure how well it'd work out in practice.

For starters, if there were awards of any sort, I'd do character ones - that's a valid point. But I don't think that awards are the important bit there.

Would you suggest just announcing what's happened and creating a few open topics ("Slytherin HoH Challenge" etc.) and prompting people to post in it?

Actually I suggest putting up a challenge idea in a thread, and letting people RP it however they like, then they link back to their RP in the original thread so it's officially part of the challenge & other people can read their awesome RPing.

That way, the challenges can be as large or small as you like. You can have one like the one I described, but you could also have one like "The house elves have run out of everything except spam which they have been serving for every meal! RP your character's reaction" Which is something that could be incorporated into an existing plot-line.

Writing prompts, in other words, yes? Clever.

Having a variety of these challenges would allow for professors to involve themselves too, and would prevent players from feeling obligated to respond to the same challenge with multiple characters.

It could certainly be interesting.

Have you guys ever noticed that PA doesn't have any rules against powerplaying? I'll just go over the basics:

Godmodding - controlling other characters, 'playing god'
Metagaming - using info gained ooc to influence in character
Powerplaying - "when a player manipulates their character's abilities, powers or skills so that their character always has an advantage in the situation"

And I have noticed a lot of powerplaying on PA. Even from some of our best RPers. Even from me.

I think it would be helpful to enforce a rule against it. It would bring the power level of the students down to something more reasonable, at the very least.

There are site rules against that. Very definitely. We do try to watch for it too. Honestly. And we're happy to try to help reduce that, but we dont' always catch it.

If someone finds godmodding, etc, a quick pm to one of the staff should do the trick. We'll be happy to talk to the player(s) involved to try to reduce it or to find out that the players involved had pre-arranged something. I do generally try to handle those by pms to the people involved so that guarding against various forms of powerplaying doesn't become the new "wild hair" that people get a bit hypervigilent about. So, if I catch it, I don't always deal with it in a way that is immediatley public for all members. Just sayin. Its my own style of dealing with it.

But you're right. As much as we all try to avoid it, we all do it from time to time. Sometimes a gentle reminder is all it takes to get back on our better skills and is sometimes really needed.

So, yeah. A quick pm to a staffer should help. Good catch. Thanks for the reminder. I do appreciate those things.

No, I mean in the rules, it states:

Do not god mode other members at all in roleplay. This means you cannot control what any player looks like, thinks, does, sees or says. If they are away for some reason/you have their permission it is allowed, but only to move on threads.

Do not meta-game. This means giving knowledge that you know as a person (maybe from reading other threads or talking to other members or plotting or whatever) to your character. Your character doesn't know everything you know.

there's no rule mentioning powerplaying, is what I was getting at.

ah. okay. and, yes. it does come up periodically. we should probably include that as well.

thank you.

The thing with powerplaying, as opposed to godmoding or metagaming, is that people have different ideas as to what is powerplaying. Hence why so many advanced roleplayers do it. There should be a rule against it, yes, but that won't solve the problem completely.

I thought the Tier system did a fair job of getting rid of powerplaying, at least in duels. I hid it temporarily for several reasons, but it should be back soon.