A New Take On SARP Roleplay

[Wes]

So was filling out a state technology survey for my school and one of the questions it asked me was "Does your school have videoconferencing capability?" I answered no...but then I started thinking about the internet. In theory, anywhere there's high-speed internet and webcams, video conferencing is available through the use of online flash-based pages. I remember one site I used to go to had a chatroom with 8 or 10 webcams showing at the top of the page--that's videoconferencing to me!

It got me wondering...what would a Star Army RP be like if I ran a plotship in which we did everything by speaking instead of writing (and then just wikified the plots events on its page afterward)? It'd be like a JP plot in the sense of having to have a common, shared time to RP. I see it being a lot of fun because you could joke around, make facial expressions, act, use items as props, and generally do a lot of things that work in tabletop RP but not online.

Thoughts?

 

[Nashoba]

It would basically take the SARP into the realm of normal roleplaying, except with a high-tech edge. Of course it comes with all the normal gaming issues, cross talk, being able to distinguish between in and out of character comments, distractions, etc.

And of course it will introduce a bunch of new issues, having the proper hardware, connectivity, scheduling etc.

But the idea sounds cool !!!
:geek:

 

[mizunoyoroko]

Well, I'm going to preface this by saying that it's just my opinion. Since I play a lot of female characters it'd be...awkward for for me to actually do this via webcam (as I am most definitely male). Honestly though, I think that there is more potential for detail with text simply because you can dictate mannerisms and other things like that, but then again you can use inflection and tone in video. All in all, if people don't mind it, that's a great method for roleplay. As for me, I prefer text 100% to video.

 

[Kim]

My feeling on the matter is that our system is kinda heavily reliant on text. If we could dice battle out combat then just talk out/act out the more normal social interaction then it wouldn't really matter is we typed or spoke.

For me, a lot of JP times take place later in the evening and I use my computer in my bedroom meaning... I'll keep my family up if I talk on chat all night so making that switch might be cool (it was when we did voice/cam chat a few times) but we'd have to rework or system.

Then there's the matter of doing a running dictation of the chats so we could keep a running log of it for other people to see.

 

[Nashoba]

Running dictation would be so "low tech" :lol:

What would be cool would be recording the session and then having it available for a limited time so those people who couldn't make it could view it.

I understand what you say about keeping family awake. Our computer room has 3 computers in it, ok 4 if you count the music server. The web cam wouldn't be a problem but to be able to listen and talk without annoying the rest of the household I would probably have to use a headset.

 

[zephyrite]

A very interesting idea, especially now since I have a computer that actually has a webcam. However, I must say that I completely prefer text to video. For starters, when I post things, it usually takes me a while to figure out exactly what to say and that kind of thinking time is just not available when you are videoconferencing. Additionally, I think this is more of a novelty idea than anything else, but something that should be tried at least once, if for nothing but for kicks.

 

[raz]

Last month, I was talkin' about using voice chat to run those one-off RPG sessions we do sometimes on the weekend. Seems like a cool idea, honestly, but may be hard to do for the freeform SARP. Freeform on the tabletop usually doesn't work out very well, and since video would essentially be tabletop, I'm not sure if it'd do much better for us. However, if you can pull it off that'd be cool.

 

[Yangfan]

Sounds like a fun idea in a plot with mostly male PCs.

I agree that it would be essentially tabletop roleplaying. In those situations, I don't mind of one or two of the guys plays female PCs, but if everyone is doing that, which would pretty much be the case in a Yamataian plotship, that's probably gets a little creepy for me.

 

[Tyler]

Keep it to text.

 

[Fian]

Ahh, Video is unnecessary I think, unless we are going to imitate our characters right down to gestures and facial expressions.
Some of you guys aren't the cutest bunch as well!
Also, you guys must consider us outside of the USA. We don't have have fancy high speed internet access so video (even so when there are many participants!), plus the time lag, is difficult.
Broadband here in Malaysia especially, sucks.
But! I remember my first JP with Tom and Driker almost 3 years ago. Ohhh, we still wrote out what our characters did, but the tutoring and OOC chat was done by voice.
TOM SAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

 

[Seth]

It's a nice idea, but there are too many problems. The biggest one I can think of is mishearing other players or flat out not hearing anything they say. There is also the creep factor behind a bunch of guys pretending to be girls over video conference. No offense Wes, but while you may be a stone cold stud as a man, you'd make a pretty ugly Hanako.

 

[Doshii Jun]

There's no way the roleplay could be as powerful and poignant over video than in text. I'm a writer, not an actor. Video would turn us into actors.

I'm not comfortable with that, quality issues aside.

 

[Nashoba]

I think it could be intersting given the right characters and players. But for most of my characters right now. Text serves me best because I spend a good amount of time wordsmithing to ensure that the character is true.

 

[Scot]

Video conferencing WITH JP isn't a bad idea on its own. However it would be a good tool for roleplay. If one had too much time on their hands they could construct a table top display of the action, and text out the rest. Could just take pictures to set up what the combat situation might be like. There's some good table top games with ships that could help visualize the action.

Though actual video and audio of other players... well I have a female character who COULD be in relations with another female, who is also a male player. I have a low level issue with that as it is.

 

[XII]

Hears my two cents.

I mostly agree with the impracticalities of it, and written text is the oldest and most beautiful form of creativity in my opinion, not that I’m snubbing art or cinema or anything like that, but I think ‘upgrading’ to a YouTube styled approach would ruin that.

Also, depending on peoples writing styles, I think many characters are expressed better from the point of view of the ‘invisible narrator’ or whatever personality the author creates for him/her. As someone already said, a female character associated with particularly feminine, maybe even ‘sexy’ themes could be lost on a male orator.

It would be an interesting experiment however; perhaps we could try it out in a special plot? One of the benefits could be the use of theme music to set the mood, or a hand drawn montage of some kind to accompany the story?

 

[Toshiro]

I don't think it should be mandatory in any plot. Not only due to technical impracticalities, but because the voice and audio simply break the illusion text RP gives.

 

[Revolver]

Well, I've done the voicechat while RPing in text and that's good, especially in a larger group where you having a longer time for dicking around (or thinking up your next post) inbetween posting. I've also done video-conferencing for a tabletop game when one player was out of state. It was pretty hilarious. And there was a couple of video conferences that I was a part of when we had meetings with corporate or with the team in Germany when I worked for Infospace.

Personally, I agree that the reason SARP works so well is that it's a text-based RP and that the goal is not only to have a record of the RP sessions, but also a well-written (depending on the players. >) story that others can read and enjoy. Having OOC chat where it's voice or video though is fun and not too distracting. Luckily both can be easily muted or hidden if a particular post or whatever warrants greater attention.

The problems with a voice-only service like Vent or Teamspeak is that it's sometimes hard (if you've got a tin-ear like me) to differentiate between different voices talking, but video conferencing obviously doesn't have this problem.

 

[Ametheliana]

I think having it in a plot is a little much, but I'd do a video chat room for SARP hands down. It'd be cool to put faces to the names and to notice people's mannerisms and talking patterns. A few groups I'm in on facebook do google hangouts for the presidential debates, Sunday night movies, and the like.

 

[Ametheliana]

WOAH I said that it would be cool to notice people's talking patterns three years ago and now look at us, a lot of us have talked in VC and know those things about one another!

I think about how Reynolds was going for a VC-based plot that would be like a podcast a lot, it would be cool but it would have to have some extra mechanics!

 

[Wes]

I don't know if this would make a good thing to do regularly as a main plot but it might be a really cool way to do, say a holiday event like the crew opening presents.