A poll to my friends list: HP_Dungeon readers and not.

[icarus]

Are you reading hp_dungeons?

Here's what I'm finding in the RPG madness:

- It breaks inertia with fresh insights, input.
- It gives you the chance to work with many excellent writers, all at once.
- It is a like a movie set. Hurry up and wait, completely messes with your schedule.
- It is a tremendous time-sink.
- It develops some bad writing habits, dependency, and breaks down story structure as the story is pulled between several people.
- It is addictive.
- It concentrates your energy for a small readership; everyone else is left out in the cold.
- It's ephemeral. Once you write it, it's gone. People don't look back and read it later.
- It reduces your story to 'attention grabbers', there's a flattening that happens over time that I can't explain, except it seems to be related to the story structure being pulled in many directions.
- It has politics behind the scenes.
- It is well-nigh impossible to write your own fanfic while you're doing an RPG (at least that's what I find).

What do you think?

Are you waiting for stories that don't seem to be coming?

Are your RPG experiences similar? Different?

Comments

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I wonder if we can build the backstory in a public space, so people can have the enjoyment of watching the scenes build (without already knowing the ending)? Because that's something the authors have that the readers miss out on.

The most fascinating was the building of the Halloween conversation between Lucius, Snape, Draco, Percy (and Rita). We were all on at once, posting at once, so it was like we were really standing around, interrupting and reacting to each other. The result was a fairly simple scene - but we didn't really know where it was going to go.

Icarus

[sharp-tongue.livejournal.com]

From a technical standpoint, how does something like that work? I've played on MU*s before, where everyone in logged into a room on a server and posts in turn to create a scene. Is it something similiar?