Are Group RPs a flawed concept?

[Feathers]

I've been debating a while with a friend about how group roleplays NEVER work out. We are going back and forth and I keep saying they could, but my friend thinks differently; since too many people apparently cause a lot of time problems and have trouble getting it all to make sense in the mix of characters.

Seeing as we really only have one RP going (dem Cambions lol) here, I did wonder- are group RPs a bad idea in general? Seems like 1on1 RPs really are the only way to go, because every multi RP seems to die too quickly. Saiake and hothead are going on for 20000+ posts with their duo RP though...

Just curious what our RPers thought.

[Oersted]

I wouldn't say group RPs are a bad idea, just that they take more effort to start and maintain active.

Which, really, isn't anything new. The more people involved the more difficult it is to organize anything.

[Flare]

I'd say it depends on the context of the medium used. I've seen some forum RPs with 4-8 people go on for over a year in the past.

[DogKama]

From past experience, the key is to find a group of people that share a drive and attention span to stick with a story/setting. With my RLF, I wanted to rp more with them but several of them would lose interest and would roll up new characters for different mini rps almost everyday. To this day we never finished an rp we started because after two or so sessions they'll have another idea to try and thus we'll start all over.

[Animajunki123]

It depends really. However, in my opinion, I htink it's much easier to RP when you can talk or type in real time

It holds you accountable with the other RP'ers and you cant' make up excuses to not want to do it. I also think that the faster on goes and the more communication is allowed, the RP can be much smoother and quicker.

[TehDanimal1]

There are several factors that contribute to success or failure of an RP group. All groups are subject to this, from Forum groups, chatrooms and even IRL.

Biggest factor is interest. If anyone in your group is not interested in the setting, their character, the system itself or interactions are crucial. Personally I've done two Pathfinder (takes up some of what was in D&D 3.5) RPs. The DM/GM had all the factors that I mentioned previously and it was going quite well, but when we got to a point of high lvl and later in the story we would get to a point of there was not a real big reason to continue on with the quest or even so much so that we even solved the quest problems.

Player knowledge about the setting and system used is also factored here, but it is almost so easy to gloss over. Do remember noobs to a system may and do often gloss over rules on abilities (I've been the culprit of this several times myself). Problems here can make or break a group based on personalities, be patient. This is directed at both the players and DM/GM, time, study and research helps solve this.

Which brings me to the next factor, levels and encounters. Leveling feels awesome, but having happen too often can screw the campaign but too little can irritate your players. But sometimes low level encounters are the hardest both for the player and GM/DM to balance.

Encounters are another factor, if you leave all of your encounters and storytelling to just combat you could have just a boring campaign as if you kept it to nothing but dialogue. Intrigue also can get exhausting on your players. This is where most of previous factors mix in, if you can keep your players interest the longer you can keep the campaign going to the conclusion that as a DM/GM you have planned or if its scripted.

These factors are some of the easiest to control. The last one is hardest to control.

Timing, getting the group together can also make or break. This is where RL can throw in several monkey wrenches, what sucks is when these become self inflicted. This becomes a problem specially when they are self inflicted, this causes disinterest in the campaign. I've seen it several times in some of my brothers campaigns, first couple of sessions goes fine then people either don't show or show up late. This would cause problems in the campaign and then finally it would end. Forum RP is not so affected by this because of the nature of the format, even adding people mid campaign is not so much a problem. This, however, is not true for RL and Chatroom RP. Specially if the new players are inconsistent. Happened in one of my own, we had a stable group of four and we were still early in the campaign that am addition or two wouldn't been too hard. THIS. IS. A. BIG. MISTAKE! for Chatroom and RL, 3-4 players is decent, you should have somewhat a diverse group with diverse abilities. If you have 3-4 players SAY NO TO MORE PLAYERS! Like I said earlier scheduling and timing is hard with a normal sized group, but if you have 5-6 players becomes a hassle specially if those guys are added mid campaign randomly.

[Feathers]

Lots of good points. Sounds like instant chat is the way to go. A person limit also sounds like a good idea. My friend said a big killer is waiting for people to reply and the other is that people never make diverse enough characters so they all seem the same.

I sorta thought about trying RP again, but I knew I'd be one of the "slow posters" that people would get frustrated with. I'm amazed how people can instant chat one though. I'm going to relay over these points keep going at it in the debate , so thanks!

[[BRindustries]]

Well, i myself don't really RP, but i'm well aware tha the RoboCraft community has a very big RP group to it that has a big RP universe going. There's many "seasons" and anyone who wants to participate can join, though there are certain procedures for that. From what i can tell there are a few folks who usually do the setup for a certain session, and they have a chatango group in which they discuss certain things regarding RP (and also lost of other random stuff) They even have an RP wiki with info on all the different races, places technologies and such. (pretty expansive :s)

One of the folks in ther invited me to the group once and even though i'm not part of the whole RP business, i'm still having a lot of fun there. (and i did do a few erotic RP's with some of the users there, which is pretty fun too. Timezones are a bitch tho :/) (that's also the reason i haven't been on as often lately...)

So, one thing i'd like to suggest is setting up a chatango group for TMM. :3 I'm not entirely sure how it goes, but it should be pretty neat nonetheless :3 Also allows for shorter, quick chat RP's, which are pretty fun. :J

(also digging the new avatar Feathers^^ I'm doing OW too now, the new support character Ana is pretty neat :3)