HMD | July 2013

[these_balls]

EVALUATE MY BATTLING!

Trainer Tip: play nice and keep it civil.


things to keep in mind:
→ This is encouraged, not mandatory. We will not penalize you for not using it.
→ Feel free to link your personal HMDs if you would like, just in case someone doesn't want to use the mass HMD post.
→ this is more for actual critique and discussion. Please don't just blindly praise a person or just call them horrible. If someone's doing a wonderful job, you can tell them, just tell them why, or even where they're showing off bonus perks. If someone's doing a not-so-wonderful job, tell them why, give them things to improve on if you can. Examples, links, things that can give them something to work on. Meaning, no bashing, flaming, or nasty behavior. Please keep it civil.
→ Anonymous is turned on! But note: anonymous is a privilege, not a right. If it's being abused to bash players, please be sure to let one of us know and we'll step in or freeze threads if necessary. If anonymous is abused too much, it will be turned off for the next HMD.
→ Don't take this all too personally! Remember that roleplay is a game, and crit is supposed to help, not make you feel horribly. No one is perfect, we've all got room to improve. Please keep that in mind.

→ MOD/GAME HMD

Comments

[dressofheaven]

This is going to be kind of a rambling comment, so apologies in advance if it's not all that helpful or if some of what I say here seems blindingly obvious.

One of the basics of writing that everyone learns is that conflict is the soul of drama. In other words, every time you write something there should be at least a small problem to be solved. This is actually kind of an issue a surprising amount of RPers struggle with, I've noticed, judging by how quickly they rush to resolve any problems that arise and how often I see posts where the closest thing to a conflict to be resolved is an existential question they want to discuss. Not that the latter can't be done interestingly, but it's usually one of those things that can only go so far.

So, the first thing to do if you're having trouble making interesting, unique posts is to ask yourself "what are the problems my character is facing". They can be short-term, the sort of thing you're just building that post around, or long-term, the sort of problems that shape the character over their stay in the setting or in canon. The important thing is that they're there, and that there's an opening for the people tagging in to help solve them. Though it's worth noting that long-term problems are the sort of thing current CR would tend to be both more interested in and better at helping with (or making worse) and short-term ones tend to be easier to react to immediately, bringing in a larger audience and being good for new CR. That's not a hard and fast rule though.

Lists help me, though I don't know if that would hold for you. A visual reminder of the sort of trouble your character can get into can give you quite a few ideas in and of itself for conflicts and resolutions. And don't forget to discuss with your canonmates! I know for a fact that Ilya would be more than happy to make new problems for Saber, and I'm sure several of Sakura's travelmates can serve the same purpose (looking at you, Naruto).

As for working with large travel groups, I've been dealing with the same issue with Twilight, and we came up with the idea of making a seperate community and chat room for coordination purposes. Maybe that could work for you too? I'm not as sure what you can do individually though aside from just making sure to chat people up.

(And on a personal note, I just wanted to say thank you. I think you know what for.)