[konya]

Mar 21, 2013 8:06:34 GMT -8 darth vader said:

Mar 19, 2013 23:58:03 GMT -8 @konya said:

I refuse to join any site that tries to limit me oocly with ic concequences. If I want to have 10+ characters I'm going to have 10+ characters and no one except me is going to tell me my own limits.

question tho--what happens when your ooc actions have ic consequences? say you've got 10+ chars and you're dominating every plot on the site, just by virtue of having a finger in every pot? or you've got 10+ chars and can't keep up with them but don't want to let go and they're just stagnating and keeping people waiting on threads and slow things down or trip things up, and some of them are canons and so people who want to play, say, just one particular canon are locked out of the site and everything just gets so clunky and unwieldy--

(this is a general you, obviously, your post just engaged it rather than me thinking you personally would do this)

idk i've seen people push past their limits far too many times to be like "yeah everyone should have an equal chance to have 10+ chars"

my post is about knowing what *I* can handle. I know there are people who can't - and it's up to the staff to deal with that. But I don't think everyone should be limited because there's the possibility that a few people will be shitty.

Imean it's not hard to say "Hey, what's going on with X and Y characters, are you sure you can handle more?" or to throw in a reminder like "Hey, I noticed you haven't been playing Canon lately, is there anything up?". Case-by-case, not a blanket rule for all.

[Pool Boy]

Honestly, that rule isn't one I snub a site about when I'm judging reading the rules list. I snub word count reqs. I snub grumpy, tyranical tones. But whether the culture of the site promotes having a lot of characters or just one doesn't affect my enjoyment of it. They are just two different ways to RP.

Having a clusterfuck of characters can be really awesome. The most I've ever had was six, and I didn't write them for development or plan it like that. They were nice because I could try all the creative perspectives the site could offer - they were all different races/ types of beings. I know that I only had 1-2 threads for each of them, and that perhaps I was hoarding face claims, but in the end it was the vibe or writing a short story as opposed to a novel which made it so much fun. I'm a huge fan of short stories - which hardly focus on character development.

When having a lot of characters gets political, as tsun mentioned, that's when things go downhill. When they begin to dominate a large percentage of the site - post-wise OR character-number-wise (bc five characters on a thirty character site is a bigger bullet than five characters on a hundred character site) the same problems can happen. I've seen people with a shitton of characters try to move boulders in plot, and when they leave, everything falls apart. I've also seen people with a shitton of characters made for minor, private-ish plots who never attempted to make an impact as any great plot-pusher, and it was chill when they left instead of a calamity.

As for having one character - just one - even on a high school site, it can be fun too. The focus feels good. I've liked some types of sites for one character in fact just because their structure makes it easy for that one character to interact with everyone. It's not a stretch to stick them in a thread with literally any other character. (A good example, for me, are Minnie's sites. The way she designs them, I've always been pretty sated with just one main character with eight threads.) On the other hand, when I feel like a site has an enormous range of possibilities - like city, town sites specifically (or the few of Katya's sites I've been on to give an example) - that's when I make a bunch of characters and run each with a couple a threads.

I also think that Konya hit the nail -- everyone pulls it off differently. Hell, I can name people -- [red] who I think pulled off having at least twenty characters really well, and Kha who pulled off having just one character superbly. So yeah, it shouldn't exactly be a rule like you guys all said, but something an observant staff should look out for and reign in on a more unofficial level.

[phosphorus]

i think letting people go hog wild without any sort of guidelines is a bad idea, bar none. like cairo and tsu said, you personally may be fine with having 10+ characters, but for each person i know who can handle that there's plenty more who can't. even one person who comes in and sweeps up a lot of fcs/plots then leaves without warning can spell doom for a site. (i know this firsthand.)

however, putting a flat upper limit on how many characters a person can have imo is bad too. i feel the best way to manage this is to require x number of posts out of each preexisting character before being allowed to make a new one. because honestly, if you want to just make a character because you don't have any muse for your old one, you're probably not gonna pick your first back up again. just brainstorm and get creative - try drabbles, character studies, anything. throwing a persona aside just because you "can't think" ain't right.

[cairo]

tsu posted in this thread?

[redox-kun]

tsu=tsun most likely

[phosphorus]

Mar 21, 2013 20:01:30 GMT -8 redox-kun said:

tsu=tsun most likely

can't keep all you peeps straight. gimme a break =__=

[Egao, Egao Everywhere]

There's a person call tsu doll lol

[phosphorus]

Mar 22, 2013 5:55:57 GMT -8 Egao, Egao Everywhere said:

There's a person call tsu doll lol

hence my confusion. grrrrrh ;=;

[darth vader]

im changing my name

[Egao, Egao Everywhere]

The need to hover over names to know who the person is has become an increasing necessity here in this site.

[Zozma]

I will never join a site with a character limit. As I've said in other threads, I have 100+ character accounts on one site and 20+ on the other two. I don't get what the big deal is. I'm not slowing anybody down or making IC consequences. Life's tough for me right now and I've gone on IC posting hiatus on two of the sites for a month (long story) but nobody's jumping down my throat for not being able to post. I don't have 100+ threads going on all at once even on a good day and I don't see why I should have to. When somebody needs a character for something, they poke me and I toss him in the thread or start the thread. I'm always open to plotting even when I can't post as much.

I need lots of characters and I always have. I like being able to play my character Gil-Su one week and then the next transitioning to my character Jinji. Maybe I'm in the mood for a jerk one day but I want to play a sweetie the next. Honestly, it's my choice, just the same as it's a choice for other people to play only one. I don't think it's fair to say those characters can't be fleshed out or fully formed characters just because the owner happens to play so many or that they're considered a flake because they make ten characters at once and slowly play them one by one. To each his own. And I personally consider my characters three dimensional; you just don't get to see it all folded out for you at once. You have to get to know them because I loathe writing full bios with every secret out there for everybody to see. How about actually RPing with the character and finding out for yourself who they are?

The biggest downside people name are face claims, which I consider an immature argument. I've always been into roleplaying because of the story and the writing. Faces are a fun and great addition. I like faces! But I think it's a little childish to tell somebody they can only have five characters because they'll be "sitting" on a face. So what? If somebody isn't going to join because they're possessive over a face or can't join because X is taken, then... I probably didn't want them as a member anyway. It's already an outlook I don't agree with.

I personally work best with a smaller group of people who all play 30+ characters each. I would rather have my regular team of 5 players with many characters than 30 people playing 5 each. I don't cater to the "maybes" who MIGHT join. I cater to the people I already have and if they want to "sit" on 50 or 100 faces, so be it. I'm not going to tell them they can't use X face because he's popular and somebody MIGHT want him SOMEDAY.

[Deleted]

Mar 21, 2013 19:05:32 GMT -8 phosphorus said:

even one person who comes in and sweeps up a lot of fcs/plots then leaves without warning can spell doom for a site. (i know this firsthand.)

how my last site died. rip, bby.. rip.




(but, uh, on a more serious note, no. a character limit wouldn't stop me from joining a cool site.)

[SIFR]

Holy post necro, Batman.

But w/e, I'll hop in.

I don't have enough room in my life for more than one character. It doesn't matter to me.

[Zozma]

I think I revise my earlier statement about NEVER joining a site with a character limit. I would probably join one. I'll never run my sites that way but since I have the freedom to play 100 characters on my sites, if I did decide to "vacation" on somebody's site, I would probably only play one character anyway.

[milachan ★]

I don't really like character limits because I have a whole hoard of babies buzzing around in my head, but I don't think it would stop me joining. As long as it didn't feel crazy tyrannical control-wise and that big brother was watching my every move, I think I'd be fine.