Continuity, Timelining, and Activity

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K
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Continuity, Timelining, and Activity

Post by K » Thu Jul 21, 2016 9:52 pm

I know that you're all waiting for the restyling that is gonna' occur in the next update, which I've had to push back because my schedule is bogus, but while you wait on that, mull this over and give your thoughts on it. I'm sorry that it's lengthier than it probably needs to be, but it's a bunch of concepts that many people are unfamiliar with, and language barriers are a thing. You can skip the spoilered part if you already understand the importance and struggles of timelining. This is most of an earlier discussion:

See, so far, we have been working on a very loose timeline. The idea is that every character starts gameplay some time in 4005 A.D. Exact details aren't too important; people just tend to start their stories (as told by gameplay) in that year. Then, as people play the game, their events are going on sorta' simultaneously. That way, when they run into each other and have interactions, it still, you know, makes sense according to their own stories. Therefore, timelining has just been a matter of saying that Y thread occurs after X thread, Z thread occurs after Y, and so on. We don't get into specific days to avoid getting needlessly specific just to run into contradictions to solve. That's been working fine so far . . . but I received a suggestion that I am strongly considering.

We could get specific. We could get completely specific. We could have every thread marked day-by-day. Every thread would start and end by listing the in-game date, and day changes would be denoted in the thread, too. Optionally, we could have a little profile field for each character that allows them to put in the date of their most recent thread for reference's sake. The argument against this: Seinvocc already asks for more effort than many people wish to apply, and this seems like an unnecessary increase in that for precision that has been proven to not really matter. The argument for it: A little more effort wouldn't hurt, and it encourages people to be thoughtful and learn to write properly, with a proper sense of time.

The way that I had previously figured it, I was going to wait until people got involved in the Grigori elections for the first time, and then the teleporters would be repaired. If I had a solid timeline, that would help people to tie their stories in according to what they want. For instance, if someone says, "I won't have much to say or do as part of the Grigori elections, but I will need the teleporters to work for an early story arc," well, okay! You can have your story start after that. With a solid timeline, you could do that, and your thread would be clearly labeled, so people wouldn't hop in, do things out of order, and get confused when they came back to a thread that, to you, is in the past. Without one, people may not recognize your thread as a "future" story, and, well, you get it. You'd have to clearly label yours as occurring in the future compared to other current events of Houcm . . . but what would you have to compare to? Would you start a whole year later? What parts of "current events" are "current" enough for them to be in the past to you? It's not like this is an anime with one group of protagonists, so flashbacks are clearly in the past (and it doesn't much matter how far), and future episodes are clearly in the future (and it doesn't much matter how far). Here, there are so many characters with so many completely separate stories.

Whether there is what I'm calling a "solid" timeline (one in which the dates are labeled clearly) or a "fluid" one (in which the dates are not written, but events have orders that makes them sensible enough to coincide with each other), for the sake of immersion and quality standards, we do not want people to disregard timelining entirely.
For instance, say that Crevasseus is playing in a thread and it takes him a year to complete it because he's an inactive fuckstick. In that time, you play in, oh, say, one hundred threads. The amount of time that has passed for your character is naturally going to be of a much higher value. Then, let's say that he starts his second thread, and you jump in. The first time that this happens, it's easy to hand-wave it. "Your character's story just started that much sooner than his," I say. But then . . . he goes over and joins another thread that you finished. "Whoa, hey," I say. "These events already happened three in-game months ago. Your story was not even going on at the time." He responds, "Oh, right. Well, then, I will RP as myself 3 months ago." I then point out, "Three months ago, your character was in another dimension, you didn't have the enhancements that you just wrote yourself to be using, and, according to your backstory, you were busy with something else." Well, fuck. He sees his error and now has to edit . . . but he's at a loss for what to do, so he gives up and deletes his post. Worse yet, let's say that he doesn't and manages to fit himself in. Now, you two have interactions in the past that then contradict your interactions in the present. Even something as simple as a "nice to meet you" is now compromised because you've already met. If you're all friendly and buddy-buddy in the present, but you get into a quarrel in the past, what changed? In the worst case scenario, what if his actions in the past led to a death, thus totally compromising the present? We have these and a bajillion other time travel concerns simply because he didn't leave your past thread in the past.
It goes deeper! He doesn't make an obvious mistake like that, and neither do you. Well, during your one thread together, he's again taking forever to post, but you want to keep playing. What do you do? Make a thread that occurs in the future from this one. We run into the same problems, but we have to allow this one because we don't want to hinder your writings by his lack of activity. We're happy to see you make a thread that you timeline after the one with Crevasseus . . . and we just have to keep an eye out for contradictions and use admin magic to right any wrongs for the sake of a cohesive, sensible storyline. So there you are, playing in the "present" with Crevasseus and in the "future" with Noah, and two others join in: Crevasseus and another player entirely. Crevasseus is having enough trouble keeping up with the "present" thread. Then, he jumps into this one, and you have to create an "extra future" thread to play without him and not have to deal with his inactivity. The other char was in your "past" thread. When he enters the future thread, he acts as though no time has passed since his previous entry . . . but it must have because this is the future, that was the past, and that leaves all the events of the present thread in between. I point this out, and he reiterates his char's phrasings. For his character's activity in the present, he decides that, because he parted ways with you at the end of the past thread, he shouldn't jump into the thread with Crevasseus . . . so he creates an entirely different present thread for himself. He doesn't want to spend much time on that, though, so he just posts some personal training that takes a lot of time, but doesn't have many interactions, let's say. That's fine. He's free to do that. Now, another char enters the present thread. This char decides to travel with Louise at the end of it, which means that he should be in the future thread . . . but he's not, and the future thread has already been going on without him. He jumps into the extra future thread, thinking that it's the future thread, and carries on a conversation as such. You inform him that this is the extra future thread, and now, he's lost, confused, and has no idea what or when to post.
This is a challenge that is unique to forum RPing. We get around a lot of other gaming flaws, but this is one that is hard as fuck. What would a solid timeline do to solve this? Honestly, it wouldn't totally solve it. Clear labeling would keep things organized so that people don't have to keep double-checking everything or else editing/deleting their posts. People do, however, still have to pay attention.

I think that I just came up with another element to making the transitions sensible. Say that Thread A starts on 02/14/4005. This thread wasn't active enough for you, so you also started thread B. When you started thread B, you picked a date some distance in the future, 02/20/4005. Well, the events of Thread A occur, and then you arrive at the next region, where the events at the beginning of Thread B are supposed to occur . . . but it's only 02/15/4005. "Shit," you say, "I'll change the dates on Thread B." The problem is that another player was in Thread B and already made a Thread C in the future from that, and you wrote that you arrived in Thread Q just in time after the events of Thread B. The other player has to change his dates for Thread C and all that follow, and you have to arrive way too early for Thread Q? No, surely, there must be a way to make this work! Well, maybe there is. Let's say that when you put down a date, you commit to it. No changing it. Changing one date can have such a horrible domino effect on so many others that it should never be changed. Okay, but what do you do for the time between 5:00 PM on 02/15/4005 to 3:45 AM on 02/20/4005? You don't want to create another thread in which you make up some filler shit to take up the time. It's impertinent writing, it's tedious, and it honestly isn't very fun. Enter the concept of interim benefits! When you make a post, you know those little icons that you can pick to label what your idea for the events of the thread should be? Like, you know, if your character is looking for a specific pokémon, you use the pokéball icon? Thus far, that function has been a cutesy function, for the most part. Generally speaking, people either do or don't want to read what others are doing; they're not too picky about the specific content type. Plus, they know damned well that events can occur other than what the icon indicates. What if we repurposed those icons? Let's say that you selected the pokéball for Thread B. You're playing in Threads A, B, and C. In B, you have the pokéball. In C, you have the pikmin leaf. By the way, for this hypothetical, we are assuming that you already have pokémon and pikmin under your command. Thread B is completed. There are 40 hours between its end and Thread C's beginning. I see that Thread C comes after it, I see the difference in time, and I see the icon. What do I therefore see? For 40 hours, aside from eating, drinking, sleeping, and otherwise taking care of yourself, you were farming pikmin. You were wandering around, finding shit to collect, and having your dudebros take the shit back to their onions to convert to seeds, which you plucked after they sprouted and probably after they flowered, or else you found a nectar cache. Thread A is still going. That's okay. Either right now in Thread C or at the end of it, I post the following:
"Interim benefits for (link to Thread B): +74 pikmin, all flowered. Divvy them up between red, yellow, and blue, with a minimum of 2 for any nonzero color and a minimum of 16/14/18 for red, yellow, and blue food pellets if you use color bonuses optimally. +0 white, purple, rock, and winged pikmin. Exchange up to 5 pikmin for purples because you found a violet candypop bud."
That's a somewhat detailed example. Some will be very brief, while others could even be multiple paragraphs. It really depends on the interim time and the random events that I generate.
Threads C and A both end. You haven't started another thread yet, but I see that you are online and writing one, so I wait for it to start, then I give the interim benefits from Thread A, which are pokémon-related (because that's what you picked for Thread B), and Thread C (which are whatever you picked as the icon for Thread D) in Thread D. Of course, if you're writing Thread D and Thread C is already over, you don't really need to have an interim at all. You can post it with no icon and the same time as Thread C ended on, and I don't need to make up interim benefits for that one at all.
Another time, Threads A and C end, but you aren't writing Thread D at the moment. You're reading elsewhere and will make Thread D tomorrow. Hey, no problem! At the end of Thread C, I post your interim benefits from Thread A, the pokemon stuff, so you know it going in to Thread D.
Pretty simple process thus far, though it looks a bit wordy in order to explain it correctly, right? But I hear you saying, "Hold up. I thought that we had to write out everything that we say and do, here, and I thought that we have total agency, so those benefits might not be just those, and we might have other thoughts and actions at the same time. What gives? Plus, what I don't get is how I'm getting these benefits out of the order of time. Isn't that, you know, what we're trying to avoid?"
To the first, yes, absolutely . . . except this. This would be a specific exception to a general rule. The idea is that you give up a little individuality and agency for an impertinent amount of time in your story in order to 1) keep a sensible timeline that doesn't need edits and 2) maintain immersion by having your character maintain progress and take care of himself during periods that would otherwise go without explanation. Heh, fellow game devs, this is why we even study shitty games . . . The concept can be compared to one in mobile app games. If you are playing a game with an energy system in which your maximum energy fills up while you are asleep, the time that you sleep after it fills up is "wasted" in the game's terms, since it is no longer counting a timer to replenish energy. Thus, you have your dad play the game for you while you sleep . . . but you don't want to miss any of the story, so you just have him do some daily dungeon crap that gives you rewards without advancing the game. To the second, we are pulling a bit of a writing cop-out: Time is on a non-linear progression that causes such hiccups in the causality flow of your progress. Simply said, time pinches parts of itself out and replaces itself later down the road, and those un-RP-ed interim periods are those pinched times.
I know that it's a lot to swallow, but I think that I may be on to something.
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