There's a difference between being "sufficiently detailed" and "Pouring so much beef and lard into a post that it's a massive text wall cut into paragraphs; a chapter worth of literature just to describe one thing"

So, the answer to the OP's question, "Why so much hate?":

Because of differing styles of play.

I think of the games that I run as an exercise in creative writing, and as such I enjoy insights into the characters. I run very character focused games, and it can be good to know what a character's motivations or thoughts are to help shape the sotry.

It looks like others treat this as a replacement for tabletop, which is an equally valid style of play.

This is even more important for GMs to understand.  A game isn't a book or even a TV show.  Your "cool twist" probably sucks.  Your big reveal is either transparent or stupid.  Your linear plot annoys your players.  Go write a book if you want to write a book (or cast a game as a collaborative writing experience, which is very different from a game).

In reply to swordchucks (msg # 19):

Yes, very much yes. Different mediums as they say.

In reply to Lancebreaker (msg # 18):

I agree 100%. Everyone has their playstyle and as l9ng as everone is having fun, that's all that matters.

This thread is as much an honest question as much as it was for me to vent that the prospect of joining a game was shot down bc the DM wants only short and sweet posts.

Dude. Not cool.
This message was last edited by the user at 23:58, Mon 15 Aug 2016.

In reply to GammaBear (msg # 21):

As a GM the "short and sweet" posts always seem lazy and disrespectful to the game and the other players. I have a pretty strict policy on no one-liners, ever.

Just like different writers have different writing styles, so do different games have different styles. Find a game that meshes with your style. Problem solved. Now, instead of making rants, why not contribute to the discussion?

GammaBear I understand your pain. I am on the flip side. A couple of paragraphs is usually a stretch for me, depending on the situation on course. One time I tried to get into a game that sounded very interesting. Well, by the time I got done writing the characters background, was was over twice what the gm wanted. More importantly, I told his story in a way the gm did not want it. So I left after several revisions.

I would love to say that was off topic, but not really. I should have listened to the GM's guidelines. If I had, there would not be a problem, just like internal monologues. So, if I do not like internal monologues, I avoid games that warrant them. Just like I avoid games with 300 word per post requirements.

Lancebreaker, there is a time and place for everything.

In reply to Lancebreaker (msg # 23):

I can kind of agree. Some times, a one ot two liner is all you can do for the current scene. In my games, I encourage players to post thier character's feelings, internal monologues and whatnot. I also have a very strict no metagaming policy, too.

I've never encountered the problem of characters constantly posting nasty/mean thoughts. Honestly, that's a problem with the player, not the writing style.

Regardless, it very much is a to each their own situation. Just disheartens me to find it so difficult for me to find a game to join.

In well over twenty years of gaming, I've seen maybe three big plot twists that worked well.  I've seen ten times that number that were just dumb.  Of the ones that worked, they all involved players willingly playing along with weaknesses they could have predicted would go that way or involved the post-game epilogue feeding into other events in a larger campaign world.

Most of the time, when I see a literary device used in an RPG it serves to tell the story the DM just has to tell, no matter how much agency he (or she) takes from the players to do it.  Much like the DMPC, which can work when used under very narrow constraints but will ruin a game quickly when used incorrectly.

If you want to write collaborative fiction, then write collaborative fiction.  Be direct that it's your goal.  Some people dig that and will join in.  Don't try to write collaborative fiction as an RPG.  That's not going to work very well.

In reply to Merevel (msg # 24):

I totally relate. Games that require short stories for posts are equally annoying, though I've run in to that requirement far less than the "just dialogue and actions" requirement.

Having been on both the GM and player side with plot twists and otherwise, is it possible you're just playing with GMs who don't have the skill to pull it off? OR maybe just don't put in the effort? I've always found that when a GM knows their players and how they think, it's actually quite easy to pull off major twists that the players don't see coming (not just the characters, but the actual players), or that they get hints at but never actually figure out. I've done three or four in one of my current campaigns alone which the players were both excited and surprised by, and all of them are well-versed in literature and writing.

But it's a dangerous road, no doubt. It takes a GM willing to learn about how their players think and react to things beyond simply what they do in-character, and it can easily go bottoms up if they've missed something. It's also harder to do with random groups, but major plot twists shouldn't come in until the group has an established play record anyways. Or, at the very least, that's how I've done things ad it seems to work out for me.

Beyond all that though, I must also disagree with your last point

For some people the purpose of the game IS to tell a story. A story about things that aren't real as told by several people in tandem: collaborative fiction. In a community like this one, where there's freedom to make longer posts and there's no physical component (beyond the necessary tools), some people are going to want their games to look like novels. Not everyone looks at an RPG the same way, as just a game, or as a text-based TV show, or as a novel, but that doesn't mean other outlooks are invalid or won't work well. It just means that if you play with someone whose ideals about the game don't match yours then you're gonna have a bad time (unless you can convince them to change their ideals, of course, but good luck with that one).

In short, and to reply to the original point of this thread, it's not that there's love or hate in particular on this site, it's just the specific games and people. I love longer posts with a spattering of inner monologue, and I tend to play with people who work the same way. It's not a chore for me to read a few paragraphs, but it is a chore for me to respond to a two-liner because I feel there's not enough substance there. We almost played together in a game once, Gamma (it was started but died after a few posts), and I'd love to play with you again sometime... Maybe change your mind about how people feel about such things. ;)

When I say "twist" (and maybe that's just bad word choice on my part), I don't mean a revelation that was always true but the PCs were unaware of.  For instance, in a recent game I ran, the players were sent to detail a nobleman found to be an agent of a foreign army.  They arrived at his estate and concocted an elaborate plan to gain entry while posing as tax collectors sent out to assess the property.  What they didn't know was that one of his spys had arrived to warm him that they were coming for him and he'd already fled the estate for another place.

Is that a twist?  Yeah.  It was also perfectly fine, and had the PCs thought to question the ferry pilot or certain guards for anyone leaving the city in a hurry, they might have been tipped off earlier.

What I'm talking about are very large twists that turn the entire game around.  Anything of the "it was all a dream" or "it was all a simulation" sort.  Even something relatively benign like destroying the wizard's spellbook by DM fiat can count, too, depending on how it's done.  Twists that violate the fundamental agreement of what the game is about are what I'm talking about.

Those kinds of twists are fine in fiction, but in a RPG, they can deny the PCs control over the story.  They're usually the hallmark of a DM that believes that the point of the game is to tell HIS/HER story, rather than to tell the collaborative story of the group.

In reply to StarMaster (msg # 13):

The books I tend to enjoy don't tend to reveal internal monologue the way I've seen some people do it. There's often a narrator describing the feelings of one or a few characters (preferably just one), but rarely are the actual words written out. Dune is one exception that I still enjoy.

Part of why I don't like internal description in games is that it is often substituted for action. When it's clearly someone who wants to have their say, but doesn't want to do anything they can be called on or have counteracted that's when it really bugs me. But if the physical result of a post is that the character is just sitting there thinking and doing nothing, I'd rather they hadn't bothered.

I will occasionally indulge in some inner monologue-ing, or in some other way elaborating my character's frame of mind, because I'm putting in my post that he seems distracted, or focused on something other than the conversation at hand, or he looks pensive...

But my own personal observations are that 'distracted' and 'pensive' are vague.  By describing what is going on in his head, and then throwing out some cues that some of that is apparent in his facial expression or body language, other players have enough information to fill in the gaps.  Yes, I could detail the angle of his head, the distant gaze, how one eyebrow dipped down, etc...but what I see as indicative of a character considering his own mortality may not translate well for someone else.  If I write a post where I briefly mention my character reflecting on his military career, the fact that he just had a major lapse in judgment, and concern about the degree of responsibility in his hands, and then say that he sits through the duration of the shuttle ride, looking out the window in silence, other players can use their own understanding of non-verbal communication and imagine the details of how his reverie appears.

Yeah, I've occasionally written something about a character's skepticism of someone else's idea...but I pretty much always follow that up with action on my character's part that reflects that skepticism (either he says something, or he gives a derisive laugh, or he rolls his eyes and throws his hands in the air...)  I never use monologues as a shield so I can snipe another player/character and then say, "Hey, you can't do anything about that, none of it was out loud so you didn't know!"

I'm fine with a little stream-of-consciousness creeping into posts, most people tend to reflect externally what is going on internally, in some measure, so it makes sense to me...as long as it is written to enhance some physically observable action/pose/statement by the character.  I get really annoyed when players broadcast character feelings but then eliminate any logical response by making it ALL internal.

I think what is coming out is that there are many different gaming styles and we each need to make sure that we’re joining a game we will enjoy. Part of that is down to the GM, and part of it is down to the Player. It takes two to converse...

If the game is collaborative storytelling, it should be described as such.
If the game is all dice rolls and one-liners, it should be described as such.
If the game is a free-for-all sandbox, it should be described as such.
If the game has a strong GM-devised plot, it should be described as such.

But equally, if you have a pet hate for a particular type of play, tell your GM up front. If the game s/he is planning is a type you hate, s/he will be just as pleased to escape the heartache as you will.

That way, you don’t get the wrong people joining the wrong games - and that seems to be the crux of the issue here. Every gaming style is valid, provided the players are happy with it, and different players are happy with different games. They become unhappy when the game isn’t what they thought it was.

For my own part, I think ‘visible thoughts’ are OK up to a point. If they enhance the dialogue it’s good, if they create problems, meta-gaming, etc, then it’s bad. There should be a lot more dialogue than thinking in any game. Whether there should be more action than dialogue depends on the game, but at least they both further interaction between the players, which private thoughts generally do not.

I think it's just part of "Show, don't tell."

If you say "Jack looked visibly angry."...that's bad writing. Say "Jack turned red and his left eyebrow started twitching." and hope the other players infer that you're angry. If you're bad at implying or they're bad at inferring...guess what, that's just realistic.

Unfortunately, a lot of "descriptive" posts just hammer you over the head with details that really should not be obvious to the other players. If everyone can separate OOC and IC 100% and everyone wants to read a story, fine. But that's rarely the case.

That's what is at the heart of my complaint about twists.  I've seen a number of GMs (and heard reports of many more) try to out-clever the players with some huge reveal or plot twist that just wasn't worth the overall damage it did to the game.  Those same GMs also tend to attract charges of railroading the players, so the two things go hand in hand - but it fundamentally comes down to the view of what the game is.

Does the GM feel that he/she is telling a story or that he/she is enabling the story that the PCs are telling?  It's a small question, but the answer has huge implications.


I... don't have a problem with that.  A game post shouldn't typically be a reading and writing comprehension test.  If Jack looks visibly angry, there are probably a dozen non-verbal cues associated with that which my PC could pick up on but wouldn't be mentioned in a post.  Just because Jack's player may not be the best writer and I might not be the best reader doesn't mean that our characters aren't better at things.

Unless your group is just really into that, of course.  Maybe frequent social misunderstandings are interesting to you?  Personally, I get enough of those outside of games to not find them interesting in games.

In reply to swordchucks (msg # 34):

I agree with what you're saying about twists and writing style.

Most of this comes down to what think of as "buy-in." Few things in this hobby are inherently; almost any approach has its adherents and if enough of them are sitting around a table that game is going to sing. But that same approach with a different group, or a group that was expecting something else, is going to fall flat.

One problem with getting acceptance of player style is just that one can't necessarily know that about players upfront, even if you know them well. That's just life and sometimes one has to step away or request that someone else step away, just due to matters of taste. Hopefully that's done in a civil manner, with as few hard feelings as possible.

One problem with getting acceptance of GM style is that GMs are, by tradition, granted permission to keep secrets and not involve the players. Many players accept this and really want it from their GMs, but it's risky for all involved because the game might not really be what the players want, and they might not know that until they've invested a lot of time into it. So, that risk gets mitigated in a variety of complicated ways that lead to many of the common complaints one hears from GMs about players and vice versa.

"They become unhappy when the game isn’t what they thought it was."

That thought is exactly the problem. We are all different. Some of us are old coots, some younger wiper snappers, some blond, some dark haired, some can write and some express themselves in barely coherent ramblings.

DMs provide a medium, an opportunity for us to play. They have a vision and then they allow us to enter their world. I would be willing to be less than half the players that join a game are EXACTLY what a GM is looking for, but he/she settles with what he gets deciding "these guys will do".

A GM invents a world or hijacks someone else's world, populates it, and sets a story in motion. Then we stumble along and some do justice to his/her vision and some not so much. We all have a varied writing style. Hopefully the GM can vet some of that and he/she gets a cohesive style that all works together .... then once in a while ... not so much.

Then there is the player perspective. It's like the difference between driving your own car to work or taking the bus. If you drive alone you can pick the radio station and which route you take. If you take the bus you are subjected to the varying styles of all the other passengers.

Ladies and gentlemen ... this is a bus, pure and simple. Granted it might be a smaller bus, but you are subjected to other players. In this sandbox you have to play nice and respect other players writing styles. If someone's writing style annoys the GM ENOUGH, he/she will make a change ... or maybe just decide to endure it. As for you the player ? You have little choice but to endure it ... or get off the damned bus. That is your choice.

For me the reward is the route to the destination. Players in the past whose "bus habits" irked me ... often were the players that had the most to say and the most to add ... once I got over being irked by them.

Unless the GM states "We are not going to allow players to post in "XYZ style" then all these things that annoy you are just that ... something to be tolerated ... like the rain in Seattle.

If only they would cut it into paragraphs. The three inch long 'wall of words' is the one that really gets my goat.

In the end, we come here for many reasons and we join the games we join and we play the way we play. And so does everyone else.

I come from a theatre background and my preferred way to play is through dialogue with a little bit of description. But sometimes I delve into my character's thoughts and inner emotions, hopefully in a judicious way.

As a GM I try to provide enough description of the scenic elements and the NPCs that they can be easily visualized and played off of. It's a more book-ish style.

In either role, I am tolerant of other peoples' predilections. I don't join free form games any more, mostly because they seem to attract writers who do want to write a (mostly) collaborative book. I tend to stay away from the more crunchy systems, mostly because they seem to attract players who (mostly) want to roll the dice (a broad generalization, I know). When I find myself in a game that develops in those directions, I excuse myself, with apologies to the GM.

And in the end, we can all do that when we end up somewhere we don't want to be. There's a lot of breast-beating and tooth-gnashing over the fact that players disappear from games. I imagine a lot of those are people who can't get in sync with the dominant style. Maybe some GMs disappear because they expected players to write one way and don't get it.

I just wish in both cases that they would say so.
This message was last edited by the user at 18:35, Wed 17 Aug 2016.

Here here Gaff old friend ! Well said ... and with that Grimmond thought that Maybe, just maybe, Gaff has a secret loathing for ...

I think this is probably the best answer to the question.

As a player, I used to write more inner monologue because it was fun for me as a writer. However, I read a post from someone on RPOL who mentioned that he didn't like them because it ends up taking focus off of the other characters. When I thought about it that way, it made sense for me to step back from writing inner monologue unless the GM gave writing format rules or encouraged it in the game.

I also agree with the posters who say that it sometimes hurts the game because it's something other players usually can't respond to. I like giving the people I play with a chance to interact with me, so I just switched it from inner monologue to dialogue. I still write it, I just speak it instead of think it.

Admittedly, I'm one of those people who writes a lot of dialogue because I like writing it. I think I'm better at it than descriptive writing, and it tells the other players exactly what I'm thinking. Plus, it gives other players a chance to tell me to shut up, or why I shouldn't do something IC. :-p

And there are other styles too. I like the how play-by-post affords more opportunity for me to write and describe, but there are simply some things I don't enjoy describing or reading others describe, either in the books I read or the games I play.

I don't really blame people I am an odd mix of roll-and role-player.  to me they are people who are stuck in some universes with very odd physical and meta physical laws.

And I can probably drive people bat with extended character conversation if things are confusing.