The Roleplaying Board

Akratus

Akratus

Bleep bloop.
The Dutch ghost recently started a roleplay thread based on a completely handcrafted fallout setting. I hoped that despite the lack of interest towards the roleplaying board would not hinder it's success. Seems I was wrong. Depending on how one defines success, of course. I'd be more interesting in continuing to post there (though I shall do so, in any case) if there were more than 2 people participating not counting it's creator.

Seems like the board in general is half comatose these days. Do you guys personally ignore the board? If so, why? Is there any barrier to rp participation for any of you personally? Have roleplaying threads been unsuccessful, or simply lacking in quality, in days past?
 
I think the Roleplaying Board is the only one I never visit. I even lurk around at the modding boards from time to time, but I've never had any interest in the roleplaying one. The main reason is simple: I don't get it. When I click a thread in there, all I see are people writing stories collectively. In the best case, that is. Other threads in there are complete jabberwocky to me.

I don't think the Roleplaying Board was ever truly successful. Not in the past decade anyway. I know welsh and Carib and Gonzalez used to be moderately active in that realm, but they're not around anymore (except Carib, he says hello from time to time). Maybe it's a dying passtime?
 
alec said:
I don't think the Roleplaying Board was ever truly successful. Not in the past decade anyway. I know welsh and Carib and Gonzalez used to be moderately active in that realm, but they're not around anymore (except Carib, he says hello from time to time). Maybe it's a dying passtime?
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Mainly this.
 
NMA and tO as a whole is in the dead of winter at the moment.

I resurfaced a few months ago and it warmed up alittle, but verevoof left so alot of sad people who have nothing better to do other than cyber-stalk left with her.

Also, Brother None is currently doing God's work at inXile writing material for the next Torment title.

Who knows? There's many ways we can get traffic, however it requires the website to go in a direction that is not specializing specifically in the Fallout franchise and I don't think that's going to happen.

Or am I wrong about everything?
 
The Dopamine Cleric said:
NMA and tO as a whole is in the dead of winter at the moment.

I resurfaced a few months ago and it warmed up alittle, but verevoof left so alot of sad people who have nothing better to do other than cyber-stalk left with her.

Also, Brother None is currently doing God's work at inXile writing material for the next Torment title.

Who knows? There's many ways we can get traffic, however it requires the website to go in a direction that is not specializing specifically in the Fallout franchise specifically and I don't think that's going to happen.
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Yeah, the community is pretty stagnate at the moment. Try roleplaying when Fallout 4 comes out (or on a more active forum). Once that happens I expect quite a few new folks to drop by. Until then I expect things to stay like this.
 
There are currently 227 users online. 11 members and 216 guests
Most users ever online was 2,501, 07-10-2014 at 09:07 AM.


Most are obviously lerkers.

Makes me kinda feel like I'm on the Truman Show.
 
Those numbers ought to be taken with a grain of salt. Cause correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a stint of spam account floods for a few days that made those numbers grievously misrepresented?

Either way, the issue with the Roleplaying Boards, for me, was always content and characters. When certain users just stopped participating, I lost interest. Some users were incredibly vicious and abusive and harassed other users and it went completely unnoticed because of the popular "oh that's just being funny" attitude towards such users prevalent across NMA. It didn't help any that they were Orderites and that allowed them to do damn near anything they pleased. But when I was most interested in the Roleplaying Boards, lots of the topics just didn't do anything for me. I see an abundance of really intelligent, interesting people, and not a whole lot of creative, clever, and attentive writers. For some reason, one guy can split an argument brilliantly, but can't notice when the poster above him said that their character wasn't anywhere near his. For some reason, somebody could make me laugh and smile with all of their regular witticisms on the boards, but once it came to RPing, they'd write in stagnant, broken sentences. It just felt like a jarring experience, and losing a couple particular members just added to the problem. So I stopped participating.
 
Once Fallout 4 is announced this board will shoot up again, and all of its subforums. That is, unless there is another site that takes the reigns, but I doubt it.
 
I'm going to risk looking like an ass, but if you actually want to do a Fallout RP and have it not be stagnant then the place to go would be the Bethesda Fallout RP forum. Yeah, I know, down with Bethpizda and all that there, but that's the only RP forum I know that is not inactive as shit.
 
There's saying that Bethesda's forums are active, and then there's saying Bethesda is a great company and makes excellent video games. They're NOT the same thing. Users here won't pounce on you like ravenous dogs to a steak just because you state a fact about Bethesda. They're a popular game developer/producer, of course their forums are active. That said, activity and quality aren't necessarily the same thing, and while their RP boards might be much more active, would their RPs be at all similar to the RPs that have been conducted here? I just imagine their stories will be all FO3-centric, following the contradictory lore of FO3 and oblivious to the founding lore that FO3 largely disregarded. Maybe there's plenty of oldschool fans who participate and know their shit? I wouldn't know.

But like I was saying, the inactivity was just a straw added to the camel's back. Far worse things caused me to part ways with the RP board, namely the trolling and harassment. If the boards were still bustling with daily activity and new posts every couple of minutes, but the trolling and harassment were still present, I still wouldn't come back.
 
The Bethesda Fallout forums are actually extremely similar to these forums, but since moderation is more of a focus there, there's less shitposting and flaming*. There's of course many more rabid Bethesda fans than they're on here, but they only pop up for a couple of posts and then disappear into the abyss. Couple of people from these forums are also active there, including Tagaziel.
However, though I don't read the RPs all that much, many of the RPs do seem to follow Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and I know that the lore of those games are considered tainted (myself I am of a different opinion but I won't bother going into details here and now).

*to clarify, what I mean is that the environment is not as hostile as in here - because let's be honest it is a bit hostile round this corner of the internet.
 
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Actually I find it to be FAR LESS hostile than most other corners of the internet which I've ever visited. People here can be pretty ornery about the subject of FO3 or Bethesda, sure, but it's not like those were unwarranted. It would be equivalent to pointing out that any Dota gamer (such as myself) having misgivings towards Steven "Guinsoo" Feak wouldn't be unwarranted, because the man did some very parasitic and unethical things in an attempt to damage Dota's publicity for his own gains. Reacting to certain groups doing some terrible things is just plain rational. It's just that some people get carried away with their reactions and simply overreact. That doesn't make "this corner" of the internet at all very hostile, really.

But my point about Beth's RP forums wasn't that they'd be less hostile, but that they'd focus on FO3 over FO2 or FO1. To me, if a group came together to RP and they wanted to base it off of FOT, that'd be great. If 5% of all RPs were inspired by FOT, I'd be disappointed at the number, but I'd understand, because it's one of the least popular games of the franchise. If 15% were inspired by FO1/2, I'd consider that alarmingly low, because those 2 games CREATED the series fandom, and I somehow doubt that the number of RPs inspired by the originals is anywhere near the appropriate 40-60% over at the Bethesda forums.
 
Well, back when I first came here there were some really heated debates *cough* flamewars *cough* about Fallout 3 and I remember the moderators always siding with the Fallout 1-2 crowd, even when those people were the ones that started the flaming the other just flamed right back - at times extremely mildly, compared to some of the epic hate speeches here.

Anyhow, setting-wise, a lot of RPs are not set in California*, but believe you me, the RPers know a great deal about Fallout lore and they even have tips on how to write not shittily in a sticky - yeah, I know, ironic since it's Bethesda. Also, most people actually like Fallout Tactics over there (unlike here), and most dislike Fallout 3 and even the ones that like it criticise the shit out of it. However, since they're required to do it in a construcive manner and they actually have to have civil debates about how and why Fallout 3 fails, the discussions only rarely go into "I hate F3" circle jerk mode.

*a lot of them seem to be in Alaska, there's one in Denver, there's a few in the East Coast, but not exclusively following F3 lore. There's also a lot of "fan lore" threads like Russia, for instance.
 
Nas92 said:
Well, back when I first came here there were some really heated debates *cough* flamewars *cough* about Fallout 3 and I remember the moderators always siding with the Fallout 1-2 crowd, even when those people were the ones that started the flaming the other just flamed right back - at times extremely mildly, compared to some of the epic hate speeches here.
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What you fail to mention is that a huge number of these FO3 fanbois who visited NMA were nothing more than trolls, and we don't take kindly to trolls around here. What you also fail to mention is that most, if not all of these FO3 fanbois came here with absolutely no knowledge of FO and FO2. Try having a polite discussion with someone with an uninformed opinion. Yeah, it sucks. We basically had to educate the whole lot of them. Which took time. And patience.


Also, most people actually like Fallout Tactics over there (unlike here)
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You'd be surprised. There are quite a lot of FOT lovers over here as well. And even those that don't like it as a Fallout game, do appreciate it for what it is: an enjoyable tactical game.
 
alec said:
What you fail to mention is that a huge number of these FO3 fanbois who visited NMA were nothing more than trolls, and we don't take kindly to trolls around here. What you also fail to mention is that most, if not all of these FO3 fanbois came here with absolutely no knowledge of FO and FO2. Try having a polite discussion with someone with an uninformed opinion. Yeah, it sucks. We basically had to educate the whole lot of them. Which took time. And patience.
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I guess I can understand what you're saying... but what you don't mention is that NMA already had a dodgy reputation as sort of a free-to-troll immature place. I seem to recall seeing a few screenshots of one admin raging over people liking Morrowind, calling others retards who need to die. (Yes, it's Roshambo, I hope I did not just open a giant can of worms, I hear he didn't leave on good terms with the rest of the site.) Not saying that you need to tolerate F3 fanboy Bethestards who disrespect this place at every turn, but you can't say it wasn't inevitable that there would be people who hear how much you humiliate "noobs" and then go "challenge accepted".

About uninformed opinions I guess you mean the good old mantras: "Fallout 3 is true post-apocalyptic, New Vegas sucks, herp da derp!!!!one" "Fallout is about survival, too civilized!!" "aliens were always in Fallout, so Mothershit Zeyta is perfectly fine!!" Or the true rage inducing shit "Fallut 3 was emotionally involving, I truly felt like Liam Neeson was my father, and I cried when Liberty Prime was destroyed nooooo" It can be hard to not tell people like this to remove themselves from the gene pool or not start thinking that maybe President Richardson's scheme wasn't that unreasonable, but you still have to react in an intelligent manner. Why? Because internet debates are not about convincing your opponent, it's about convincing the participants that you're the one that's right and the other one's unenlightened. When you sperg out over it, all it does that people will call Bethesda fanboys peaceful, nice, intelligent people whilst original Fallout fans get to be called rabid retards.

You'd be surprised. There are quite a lot of FOT lovers over here as well. And even those that don't like it as a Fallout game, do appreciate it for what it is: an enjoyable tactical game.
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Yeah, but people over there really like it (actually a lot more than Fallout 3), it's a popular sentiment that the Barnaky ending should be made canon - even though, by now, that's not really possible without some serious retconning.
 
alec said:
You'd be surprised. There are quite a lot of FOT lovers over here as well. And even those that don't like it as a Fallout game, do appreciate it for what it is: an enjoyable tactical game.
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Mmmmmm, that's good stuff.

I just wanted to read that again, so I'm quoting it so I can read it again! =D

Nas92 said:
About uninformed opinions I guess you mean the good old mantras: "Fallout 3 is true post-apocalyptic, New Vegas sucks, herp da derp!!!!one" "Fallout is about survival, too civilized!!" "aliens were always in Fallout, so Mothershit Zeyta is perfectly fine!!" Or the true rage inducing shit "Fallut 3 was emotionally involving, I truly felt like Liam Neeson was my father, and I cried when Liberty Prime was destroyed nooooo"
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Actually no, he very simply meant people who don't even know anything about FO1/2, as the statement immediately preceding that one illuminated. It's an uninformed opinion if you don't know anything at all about the origins of the thing you love when you come to a place that loves the origins of the thing you love to share your love. Very uninformed, and those without the decency to realize that their cherished thing HAD some history were simply worse than the rest. But the whole of them were still pretty oblivious.

But again, this place is remarkably civilized, given its propensity for explosions. I'd argue it's because those explosions are allowed to come to fruition, at which point most just sizzle out and disperse. But whatever the case, we've got admins/mods here who began as "FO3 Fanboys" and others who say FO2 ruined the series and plenty of different opinions on the state of the series. It's quite a diverse and cultured place.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to attend surgery to remove my nose from the ass of an intangible concept.
 
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SnapSlav said:
Actually no, he very simply meant people who don't even know anything about FO1/2, as the statement immediately preceding that one illuminated. It's an uninformed opinion if you don't know anything at all about the origins of the thing you love when you come to a place that loves the origins of the thing you love to share your love. Very uninformed, and those without the decency to realize that their cherished thing HAD some history were simply worse than the rest. But the whole of them were still pretty oblivious.
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I'd say all the opinions I provided as examples - that are, sadly, very popular - stem from a lack of knowledge of what the series is about or, as you said, even what the series is.
 
Who would be willing to participate in a game if I start and manage one? I need at the very least 2 players, ideally 3 to start plus I could play another char myself. It would be fast paced and uncomplicated, sacrificing depth but adding to the fun. So?
 
The Dopamine Cleric said:
There are currently 227 users online. 11 members and 216 guests
Most users ever online was 2,501, 07-10-2014 at 09:07 AM.


Most are obviously lerkers.

Makes me kinda feel like I'm on the Truman Show.
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Yeah, back between 2003-2007 I used to ghost these boards on another account, and post maybe once every two to three days.

SnapSlav said:
Those numbers ought to be taken with a grain of salt. Cause correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a stint of spam account floods for a few days that made those numbers grievously misrepresented?

Either way, the issue with the Roleplaying Boards, for me, was always content and characters. When certain users just stopped participating, I lost interest. Some users were incredibly vicious and abusive and harassed other users and it went completely unnoticed because of the popular "oh that's just being funny" attitude towards such users prevalent across NMA.
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Do you mean like that beans guy in the haiku thread (the one thread that's dead that I actually enjoy. I had a good creative moment there with my Vera Keyes one).

Gonzalez said:
Who would be willing to participate in a game if I start and manage one? I need at the very least 2 players, ideally 3 to start plus I could play another char myself. It would be fast paced and uncomplicated, sacrificing depth but adding to the fun. So?
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Also, I wouldn't mind joining one. Although, you'd have to help out the noobie here because I've never participated in an PnP in my entire life. I'm also sure Akratus wouldn't mind joining but, isn't GDutch's RP still going? Wouldn't we be taking possible members away from his RP?
 
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