General Discussion

That depends, team Kazenkou is still actively posting as much as they can. ^^
Team Sendo is crawling along and most members post as they can.
Team Tonbo does post regularly as well.


But I think people are having trouble getting out of the vacation time mindset.

I think I can safely say that as long as George is willing to post, team Kazenkou is more than willing as well.

I hope Team potatoe Sora would hurry up a bit.

It's Torame's turn right? Waiting on him.

I can go first if you want though. I suppose it's possible since Nomaru and Houtarou are now alone and Nomaru just did her part.

Koui Nomaru wrote:

Soo, is the forum slowly dying or is that just me?

It has slowed down but still far from dying as long as people are consistently posting when it's their turn.

What do you mean by "consistently"?
Because obviously people aren't posting when it's their turn, otherwise it wouldn't be slow. In about every thread (I'd guess) there is someone right now not posting while it's their turn.

The thing is that different people have different speeds, most of the time, this is alright, but perhaps it is an idea to put up a minimum of 1 post a week, seeing there are threads here that are waiting for more than a week now.
If there is an unannounced break in posting for more than a week, the player that did not post could be NPCed for that week?

Personally I'd prefer to make a post a day.

Chikamatsu no Hina wrote:

What do you mean by "consistently"?
Because obviously people aren't posting when it's their turn, otherwise it wouldn't be slow. In about every thread (I'd guess) there is someone right now not posting while it's their turn.

My "consistently" is more about people fading out and just disappear and not post for a huge period of time(like weeks). As Meran said, everyone has different speed, some fast; some slow. An example of what I meant with my previous post is let's say someone has an average speed of 1 post per 4 days, to be consistent means that he is posting once per 4 days(maximum) for a long period of time, instead of disappearing for 10 days and then post once...then disappear for 20 days and then post once and so on.

From my experience, usually a game died when the posting rate is decreasing again and again until no one cares at the end. That or the GM disappears. As long as people are posting at a certain rate(as slow it may be for the more active players), then it's fine.

It's pretty much a con in a "linear" game IMO, that the speed of the game is going is as fast as the slowest player since we need to wait for his part to finished before moving on to the next segment of the story. I personally prefer a "non-linear" game with linear events but that's another topic.

A post a day is definitely a great pace but from my personal experience, most of my games that are 1 post/day eventually turns out slower. 1 post per 2-3 days seems to be the average posting time from my personal(and limited) experience and that is just for a standard group of say 4-6 players. A huge site like this, I would say perhaps 2-4 days.

Ah okay. So that's what you meant.
Ehm, would you be willing to explain "linear game" as well? Does that mean that every part plays at the same time? (So it's starting towards evening in the other stories as well, right now.)
What is the alternative?
Also, I hope that the pace can be picked up a little bit anyway.

So... Nomaru. Shall we wait for Torame or do you want me to go?

And you guys are right. I guess after a while the quantity of posts goes down a bit. On one hand we do have to continue, but on the other people have real life stuff to do and they shouldn't be chained to the site. I suppose Ryo is right with his expected post frequency.

Just go. Torame can walk around on his own.

Alright Nomaru. I'll do it ASAP tomorrow! Have/had some stuf to take care off today, sorry...

Chikamatsu no Hina wrote:

Ah okay. So that's what you meant.
Ehm, would you be willing to explain "linear game" as well? Does that mean that every part plays at the same time? (So it's starting towards evening in the other stories as well, right now.)
What is the alternative?
Also, I hope that the pace can be picked up a little bit anyway.

Warning: Long read and sorry, it's my bad as I seem to type more than necessary most of the time.

I consider NN(and the father site of NN) to be a linear game as we are in a grand story together. While of course, the time is not all synchronized between each teams(as in maybe team A of Konoha is on day 3 of the story while team B of Suna is on day 5) but ultimately, each team represents a portion of the chapter and all teams have to finish their part in the story before we can close that chapter of the story. There will be a precise closing point and conclusion moment at each chapter, summarizing everything that happened on each portion, and then we move on to the next chapter, or maybe some team skip first before next chapter. From what I see so far, NN definitely emphasize on the main events, using time skip and minor events between events for extra character development(or if you fancy, you can write SQs).

If we put NN's approach as the left side of the scale, the right side will be a (full) sandbox game, which can be extremely non-linear at time. A full sandbox game basically has much lesser emphasizes on main events(some even don't have them and just host standard events[which has near zero impact on the world and mostly are there to give it a more gamey feel and some reasons for players to do stuff together]). The main events also have much lesser impacts to the world and players are fine not attending them if they don't want to. The main course of the game is focused on RP-with-freedom, where you can react freely in the world and anyone. So you just create threads and interact with whoever comes in or whoever you invited. And for a sandbox Naruto RP, you can freely achieve Chuunin and Jounin, and train a lot if you want to. One aspect of non-linear is that your character can be in multiple threads at once(some sites have limit but usually => 2) and your character development is all in your hand without much of the GM interference. The world's your oyster, your create your own history. Players don't necessarily progress together because well, if you are more active then you are doing more than the others. One of its advantages is that with multiple threads, you are not waiting too much and you can make some progress per day for your character. GMs of these sites don't really need that much plotting or event running, they just maintain the world, create stuff, maybe approve/deny a shit ton of customs and settle player's dispute.

I personally consider some sites as hybrid, which they mix and match both sides of the scale. While they allow players to freely interact with each other in the down time(as in no main events are running), they do have main events that everyone attend and those events do have impact on the overall story. At the same time, they also provide the world for people to interact with when it's not time for the main event yet. GMs are probably very busy with this one since they have to keep up with every player and morph the world into what the players are morphing it into, then injects and adjust the next main events. Some sites also utilize multiple smaller events to shape the world instead of one huge world main event at a time.

There are also a fourth type actually, which I don't really think is appropriate to be on the scales, I call them "competitive writing". Those sites, to quote George's word in the welcome thread, " roleplay in the form of writing a lot of personal fan-fiction about a fictional character within the setting". Most of the time, these sites are competitive in a way, the best example I can think of is wrestling e-feds, in which you have players(playing as wrestlers) "feuding" against each other by writing stuff about their wrestler character(and maybe some other characters) and the better writing wins. I have also been to some DBZ sites that focus on solo writing to gain stats and so on and the (major) player interactions are battles. I personally consider these to be more writing than RPing; otherwise I would say J. K. Rowling "RPed" six books of Harry Porter instead of "wrote". Well, this paragraph is just personal rant and I do find those sites to be good at improving writing and it's definitely fun to do but I personally don't agree with them being RP.

Of course, every approach has pros and cons. One of the things that hook me up with NN v1 is the impact of my character to the story and the entire story just feels...so dramatic and epic as compared to sandbox game. Sandbox game, while provide the freedom for you to do things, is just not fun to me as I don't really see any impact at all. Yeah, my character just became Jounin, so? Not much feeling of achievement and sandbox is probably more enjoyable if you have friends over there or you are good at making new ones as otherwise you will mostly find yourself at the corner of the universe and not really "in the world"[no one wants to interact with you], especially on a huge site.

The main con of linear game is perhaps a lack of freedom at times in which the GM already set up the situation for this and that and you are following them to an extent although how you approach a situation is up to you but the freedom on the big picture is not as huge as a sandbox game. There's also limited player vs player interaction(at least to me). One thing sandbox did very well to me is that you are interacting with people on normal day situation. You can just be 2 people discussing life in the ramen shop and on another thread, you are heating up a rivalry with another PC at a sparring field...at the same time. It's kind of like Chapter 5 of the Konoha event but it's the players setting those threads up and any players can join in so the mix-and-matching can create good character web through time. Some threads can be extremely fun too when set up and run well enough.

I personally liked hybrid as it takes many of the things I like from both side of the scales. I can interact freely with people on the cooldown period between events then there will be time to make an impact to the world when it comes to main event time. Of course, the waiting time in main event is still there(much like now) but the RP threads on the cooldown period are smooth most of the time(especially if the site permits multiple threads at once) so you can really enjoy RP at that time. The player progression might be a problem as you will have some players better than the others but to me, that's fair. You do a lot of stuffs, you get rewarded, it's cool and realistically, characters do advance at different rates so the little bit of level difference isn't too bad to reflect that although I do agree that it will make the GM's job harder when it comes to making opponents up for the team with characters at different level.

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I do agree with Meran's suggestion of GMing the player until he is back after a period of inactivity. It's an effective and straightforward solution IMO.

This...is taking way too long...
Some people will get turned into NPC's at this rate.

Unfortunately, the person that keeps my team waiting, is Admin himself... >:C

I'm waiting for Mana, so I know how you feel Yorukasa...

Same, it's almost been a month since she has been online

Forgive me Nomaru!! I hate to break promises :/ ... But really had some unexpected work to come up... DEFINITELY TOMORROW AFTERNOON!

What does she get if you do not?

Well I'm working on it now so she is not getting anything in the first place, hehe.

Did Mana quit? Or is she on a temporary leave?

I just finished watching ''Another''. Anyone who happened to have seen that? =)

I considered watching it, but never actually went and did it. Could you give a general synopsis--and did you enjoy the series?

Well, it's a horror anime. So I was like ''horror anime? How does that work?'' Can anime, with the always nice art, scare me? So decided to check it out.

Short intro:
Alright so this guy transfers to a high school in another town and immediately notice things are a bit weird. Things aren't being told to him, and there is this mysterious girl he comes across now and then...
Slowly but surely he learns more, but I'm not going to say anything about that as that'd already be a spoiler.
It's 13 episodes (including 1 OVA in that number), so it isn't that long. Bit short even!

Oh it was pretty interesting! It's not so scary that you wouldn't even dare watching it at nighttime (although sometimes it's a little) but there is quite some gore so if you don't like seeing that, you probably shouldn't watch this! I think it was a really good watch! I really liked both of the main characters (the boy and 'the mysterious girl').
I'd say the genres are horror, mystery, bit psychology as the story progresses, and school life.

If that sounds interesting to you, I'd say check this ('this' was a link) out. It's a short summary with a picture on the site I watched it.

Edit: one more thing, I might add the 'detective genre'. It REALLY IS NOT about detective stuff at all but if you pay attention very well you'll find clues helping you understand the mystery. =)

Quick edit #2: the OVA is listed as a prequel. I'd not watch it first though. It was an awesome OVA to watch after finishing the series but it might take away and spoil some of the mystery aspect.

Sorry for being a slowpoke, boyfriend and school kept me occupied. Dx
But I made a thingy. And Torame posted! <3

Boyfriend? O.o Since when?


I've seen "Another". It was so brutal and awesome!!

Since eh- 3 weeks or something. ;'D