HA: On Inactivity
I have a small, but important, announcement to make.
As it is, one week from the beginning of a round, Rhiko sends out reminders to people who haven't yet posted. Now, from this point forward in Louis' Arc, if you haven't posted within a week of the round starting, I will also attempt to contact you—not to remind you to post, but to work with you in a way that I may post for you. If you're sure you'll be able to post soon, you can say so, and I'll hold off. However, if you don't do so within 3 days, or I cannot get hold of you at all for 3 days, I will post as you regardless.
Generally, this will be limited to actions only—not words or thoughts, unless they are specifically required to move the RP along.
The reasons for this are fairly simple, though probably not as small. While Rhiko has been following our own
2 Week Rule (
Rule X) with his own consequence modification (I'm not sure how many of you actually remembered that was a rule, with how lenient we've been due to the general slowness), it's become pretty clear it's simply not efficient.
We started this arc on January 6. It is now April 10—we have been at this for over
three months,
and we haven't even made it to the door. Yes, there've been a number of heavy barriers blocking our path, a lot of stuff to deal with, but while I've discussed this time delay with Rhiko, he isn't solely at fault; since we landed, every round took nearly a full week, and since the battle started, we've have taken up nearly the full two weeks
each and every round.
We all understand that everyone here is, at this point, in the adult world with responsibilities galore. That's one of the main reasons we've been extremely lenient about the 2 Week Rule (it
used to be the 3 Day Rule, if that tells you anything). But if there's one thing we've learned from the past worlds of PR/A/A and H/AG, it's that if we go out of our way to wait for every single poster for weeks on end, plots could take
years. This Louis Arc is not supposed to be very long, but we're dangerously close to making it so. So if there's any way I can speed things up without stepping on too many toes, I'm going to try to do so.
However, this brings me to another sensitive topic: those left behind, or GMed due to inactivity.
In the past, we've sometimes had to move on without having every person in the interaction post. Sometimes it was necessary, othertimes it was just the RP moving too fast. One particular time I experienced—maybe it was in HA, maybe it was elsewhere—stands out. The person in question didn't post for more than a month, but upon returning, made a post as if they'd been acting and talking the entire time, and had been ignored by the active participants. This ended up having some long-lasting consequences, not just on the character, but on a lot of people connected to them.
This is tough ground, sympathetically, because on the one hand you feel for the person who got left behind, but on the other it kind of screws over those that have remained active. It's unfair either way, because in a sense, both actions are a type of God-Moding. The active participants are subtly GMing the inactive into doing nothing, or the inactive participant is more directly GMing that the others are being absolute assholes.
However, in this situation as a moderator, I would have to decide in favor of those who have been active. As I've previously mentioned, we completely understand—and
empathize—that life can get in the way of your hobbies. But it's not right for us, as moderators of a roleplay, to punish those that actively contribute to said roleplay in favor of those that can only be around every so often.
So if there comes a time when one of you—or even myself—must go inactive for an extended period, and others do a lot of posting without you, then you should
not post as if you have been trying to do something but getting ignored or shot down. Frustrating as it might be, you should find a reason for your characters inaction that
isn't a direct result of those around you. Maybe you felt overwhelmed by everything going on, and every time you tried to open your mouth you were just a second too slow—that's okay, because that doesn't imply you're being outright ignored. Maybe you're too busy thinking it out in your head—that's also okay. But
do not put in actions or comments, only to insist they got ignored or worse.
If all this seems disappointing, let me be clear: we want everyone to be able to participate. Slow or fast, every post is invaluable—but fairly speaking, by the very nature of how roleplaying works, it
is a matter of “first come, first served”.
However, it's for this very reason we have an
Absence Thread. You post there, and we'll know to GM you until you give notice of your return; your character won't just be posted once every week, we'll attempt to keep them an active participant.
On top of that, as previously mentioned, I—and probably the other mods as well—will be more than happy to work with you in order to post for you, if you're semi-active in the community but simply can't find time to put together a post. Just talk to one of us, and we'll try to work something out.
I hope everyone understands where I'm coming from with this. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to talk about it in the
QSD thread. Otherwise, I hope everyone has a great weekend. Let's try to keep the party moving!
Reply
