New Character Experience
Posted by Apostate on 09/14/20
Now that we're a good way through 2020 and have made it mostly through a very hard year, I'd like to talk a bit about one aspect of player behavior and how critical it is to building the community we want to have on the game. And that's how we welcome and foster new characters.
By and large, people are pretty good about this. We want any new character, even ones played by experienced players, to be helped and embraced. This can be reaching out oocly, particularly if they are part of your orgs you are in, inviting them to scenes, discussing hooks, or reaching out ICly by messenger to help get them involved.
Playing new characters on Arx can be daunting, particularly if it's a brand new player and one that just isn't that familiar with the RP format. It's critical they are supported and enabled so they can find their footing. Again, we are fortunate to have quite a few extremely helpful players that go out of their way to do this, but I'd like to remind a few things that really shouldn't be done.
RSes exist to incentivize interacting with new players. That should be meaningful interactions, that help find RP, build connections, and establish themselves on the game. Being in a huge scene and just spamming people with RS prompts without any personalized interaction is extremely offputting, and goes against the spirit of the command, do not do that. Honestly, I'd much prefer people to think of RS claims with new players by asking the question of, 'how did my scene with them help them find RP again in the future, or how did it make things more fun for the other person'. If the question really can't be answered, it probably wasn't a good RS.
Secondly, especially for well established and influential characters, we need to take a great deal of care in how we approach new characters secrets and special aspects of their background. I often write secrets and approve of special aspects of characters to help get them involved and be part of major ongoing plots. Ideally, people slowly let new characters develop that, and enable it so they have an organic joy of discovery and piecing together what everything means. Unfortunately, there's a number of cases where new characters feel basically run over, with someone seizing on part of their character that wishes to grab and run with it. Let a new character decide the pace they want to do things, and if they don't want to be involved in something, never force it, particularly never do so if they say oocly they don't want to be involved in something.
Overall, most people are great about this, but it doesn't really take much for one person to leave a bad taste in the mouth of a new player or new character. Just everyone needs to be mindful of making sure they don't run over new players.
By and large, people are pretty good about this. We want any new character, even ones played by experienced players, to be helped and embraced. This can be reaching out oocly, particularly if they are part of your orgs you are in, inviting them to scenes, discussing hooks, or reaching out ICly by messenger to help get them involved.
Playing new characters on Arx can be daunting, particularly if it's a brand new player and one that just isn't that familiar with the RP format. It's critical they are supported and enabled so they can find their footing. Again, we are fortunate to have quite a few extremely helpful players that go out of their way to do this, but I'd like to remind a few things that really shouldn't be done.
RSes exist to incentivize interacting with new players. That should be meaningful interactions, that help find RP, build connections, and establish themselves on the game. Being in a huge scene and just spamming people with RS prompts without any personalized interaction is extremely offputting, and goes against the spirit of the command, do not do that. Honestly, I'd much prefer people to think of RS claims with new players by asking the question of, 'how did my scene with them help them find RP again in the future, or how did it make things more fun for the other person'. If the question really can't be answered, it probably wasn't a good RS.
Secondly, especially for well established and influential characters, we need to take a great deal of care in how we approach new characters secrets and special aspects of their background. I often write secrets and approve of special aspects of characters to help get them involved and be part of major ongoing plots. Ideally, people slowly let new characters develop that, and enable it so they have an organic joy of discovery and piecing together what everything means. Unfortunately, there's a number of cases where new characters feel basically run over, with someone seizing on part of their character that wishes to grab and run with it. Let a new character decide the pace they want to do things, and if they don't want to be involved in something, never force it, particularly never do so if they say oocly they don't want to be involved in something.
Overall, most people are great about this, but it doesn't really take much for one person to leave a bad taste in the mouth of a new player or new character. Just everyone needs to be mindful of making sure they don't run over new players.