The Disease of Long Posts

I took quite a break from roleplaying this year, one that I had meant for good but eventually realized was futile at this current time. Six months later, here I am again, writing mostly for myself in the hopes that I could understand the nuts and bolts of roleplay better. Tonight I want to talk about “Long Posts” though I suspect there will be some irony in the length of my own explanation and discussion of the topic. In my mind, “Long Posts” are damaging to a roleplay and should be avoided whenever possible. And yet… they really do seem like a disease. Every time I visit a place that would call itself among the upper-tier of roleplayers, a bold claim to say the least, I always see the same thing: Long Posts. 

People seem to cling to them like hope incarnate, and they begin to live and breathe the Long Post until they know no other way but it. Abandoned to this senselessness, they are consumed. But what is a Long Post? Why is it bad?

Like almost every aspect of roleplay, there are In-Character (IC) and Out-of-Character (OOC) elements to consider when thinking about Long Posts. To define them from an IC perspective: a Long Post is a post or message that causes too much time to pass from the perspective of a single character. As defined from an OOC perspective: a Long Post is a post or message that is wasteful, inefficient, or otherwise not concise. If you violate either one of these tenants, you have made a Long Post.

With my brief explanation out of the way, let me explain further what I mean, starting with the In-Character side. ICly speaking, Long Posts are very dangerous because they in essence block the other roleplayer’s character from being able to move. Let me give you a concrete example.

If you walk into a pub, order a drink, flirt with the barmaid, piss off another man nearby to start a bar fight, and finally end your post with your character panting for breath after he won the fight, then I’m stuck! Say, perhaps, I roleplay a character who seeks peace and mediation between all souls. It is in my character’s nature to intervene in such situations, but by going through the entire scene in a single post, my character is stuck in his chair, able only to watch. By glossing over the entire scene in one breath, you render my character impotent. This is god-moding, just the same as it would be if you wrote about drawing your weapon and cutting my head off, all in the same post.

Obviously, the IC portion is the most critical here. It is the most frustrating and damaging element of the Long Post. The OOC half, though, shouldn’t be forgotten. Just like it’s important to tell a good story, to have engaging characters and encounters, it’s also important that you be clear, precise, and, above all, concise.

Don’t waste my time.

“Woah, man, first you blatantly trash on how I write my posts, and then you’re all high and mighty about how valuable your time is? What’s your problem?” you might say. To the contrary, though, the reason I say “Don’t waste my time” is because I actually care about what you have to write. If I’m in a roleplay with you, then I desperately want to hear what you have to say. My literary senses crave for your character’s feedback and interaction, to know what comes next as told by your words. These things are important to me, and I would really love it if you didn’t waste my time by watering that down with a lot of unnecessary details.

Brevity is powerful. Being concise is one of those things that most self-taught writers, especially of fiction, lose out on. It’s like how, by teaching myself how to type, I’ve lost the ability to use two or three of my fingers on the keyboard effectively, because I learned a bad habit and it stuck. Making your posts concise while still conveying everything you need to convey is a tremendous boon to your roleplay. I’m not saying cut out every detail, forsake all style, and abandon your sense of creativity, but don’t just add stuff for the sake of adding it.

This is creative writing 101, but if your character finds a watch on the ground, and you bother to write about it, then it had better be important to the story. Don’t tell me about the nicks and groves in the back, how the small hand is crooked as if a poor watchmaker tried to fix it crudely, or how the glass is all fogged up from a crack, unless it’s actually important! Tell me those things because I need to know them, because they’re important, and because they’ll relate to the story in a meaningful way. Not just to fill up space!

I checked out a roleplaying site this summer that demanded roleplayers write posts that were—at a minimum—300-500 words in length. It was also stated that writing the bare minimum would ensure you never advanced in ‘rank’ on the site, it was just enough to not get you banned. They even went so far to say things like, “To some extent, we believe that quality does equal quantity, but only at the minimum writing requirements. A five line post is greatly improved by becoming a five paragraph post, but a five paragraph post is not necessarily improved by becoming a five page post.” To give you a decent benchmark, I’m at about 900 words right now, and it already feels long to me.

Demanding your roleplayers—whether they are your subjects or your peers—to write any specified length is simply absurd. Furthermore, forcing every post to be 500-1000 words is borderline impossible without making it a Long Post in either the IC or OOC sense, though probably both at that point. That’s not good, and it’s certainly not quality! I understand Long Posts are not always avoidable, and I get that every roleplay is different, but really that is the crux of this issue: every roleplay is different. Notice how when I gave my criteria for a Long Posts, I didn’t say “Usually more than six paragraphs” or anything like that—it’s because it depends entirely on the effects the post itself has.

Why would anyone think it’s a good idea to insist that these monstrosities of posts are by definition quality? Or worse, that other posts are of lesser quality? Good question, actually.

This bothered me for a long time, and I’m still learning all the while so this might develop as time goes on, but these are the main reasons I think people feel the need to write Long Posts.

WHY

A False Sense of Progression

When a lot of people come into roleplay, they start small. Their character sheets are short and raw, their ideas look like they were written by the author of Halo: Reach, and their grammar is suspect at best. As they begin to write more, they get the idea that writing a two-liner for a post usually doesn’t provide the most immersive or enjoyable experience for either them or their roleplaying partner. Before long they’re pushing a couple of paragraphs in each post, and you (hopefully) understand what’s going on in each of their posts. Ironically, I might even say Long Posts are part of a roleplaying progression, just not the end of it. Something better waits for you.

Unfortunately, it seems, people seem to think that this implies bigger is better. Quantity is not the same as quality, and it never will be. I understand that there are times when you need to slap the roleplayer and go “Try harder. Apply yourself!” when they’re clearly being lazy, but that’s about where it ends. Sometimes a 1-liner is a totally appropriate response to a post. Sometimes your character will do no more than nod—or even say or do nothing!—and that is perfectly fine. If your character is doing nothing but listen intently, you might write a brief bit about their thoughts on what’s being said. Don’t go into elaborate side-paths where you invite a new NPC over so your character gets a chance to talk, or spend an hour and a half describing how the smells of the cow poop reminds you of your mother-in-law.

Unfortunately, posting short or brief can be very scary because, even if the scene calls for it, people tend to look down their noses at you, as if to say, “Is this the best you can do?” which leads me to my next reason.

Expectation and Pressure

While I think my first point might be the reason Long Posts are prompted, expectation and pressure may be the greatest reason they continue to happen. It’s why they’re such an infectious disease. Roleplayers, especially new ones, will suspect the false sense of progression, and they will see every other person walking down that path like a zombie. What’s worse is that they’ll see sites like the one I quoted above, and they’ll think that writing Long Posts is simply what good roleplayers do. It’s very disappointing.

So they enter roleplaying threads, and they see these veterans pumping out useless, behemoths of posts, and they feel there is an expectation to respond in kind. It’s often not said, but it’s usually there despite if it’s true that the other roleplayer expects such a thing. In like kind, there is also a pressure of sorts to deliver something that is “worth the other person’s time” so to speak. If you’ve been caught in the madness of life and you haven’t been able to post in a week, then people feel the pressure to perform. People write these big stupid posts as if to say “I know I took a while, but THIS is the reason why.” I mean, to an extent it’s annoying to have a person say they had “writer’s block” and then finally post a one-liner a month later, but I would prefer that over a Long Post any day.

There’s another kind of expectation too, that shouldn’t be forgotten. Maybe it deserves its own post sometime, but this expectation, briefly described, is the expectation to respond. If I’m writing a post where my character is describing something in detail and then I have them pause to take a sip of water, I have a choice. I can have him continue on, effectively blocking your character from doing anything, or I can end my post right there with that sip of water and let you make your move. Unfortunately there’s an expectation that you will move. But maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe your character is still listening closely, wanting to hear what you have to say next.

The problem, though, is that we’ve developed these silent cues for “okay, now your turn to do something” and it alters how we roleplay. You should give people the chance to do something, and that person may very well take that chance to continue doing nothing. You’ll probably get a short post, but that’s just fine, at least you opened the possibility. The problem arises, though, when people intentionally skip these cues because they’re worried someone will interject. They’re worried their speech, plan, story, or whatever is going to be ruined by your character stepping in. This is simply bad roleplaying.

It’s More Like Writing a Book

Writing a roleplay is not the same thing as writing a book, or a short story, or a fanfiction. A roleplay is not simply some twisted writing club that writes little 1,000 word stories and then stacks them on top of each other to see what happens, with most of them ignoring the previous one. Writing a Long Post feels more like writing the more recognizable works of fiction, and so people get this sense that they’re on the right track by doing it. The reality, though, is that roleplaying is a social activity. You’re here to write with other people in a common universe. There is no other reason. This leads me to my final point.

They Want to be Impressive

No one is ever going to admit this one, in all likelihood, but it’s probably relevant. If you’re the person who chuckles and goes, “Haha, that’s an interesting point, but it’s probably not me” then, in fact, I’m probably talking to you. For all the reasons I’ve listed above, if people think that by going big they’re going to be putting out better writing, then that’s inspiration to keep doing it. Because roleplaying is a social activity virtually by definition, it’s basically a crude way of forcing someone into reading something you’ve written. READ IT AND PRAISE ME FOR IT. YOU HAVE NO OPTION. Of course, because this is often a mutual feeling, both people get ignored.

Let me take a moment, though, and wind this conversation down with how people actually make these Long Posts, now that I’ve tentatively established the why.

HOW

Useless Information

Anyone can write a Long Post. It’s not as hard as people make it out to be. I can sit down and describe, in great detail, why these boxes I’m leaning against are probably made of elm, which originates almost solely from the north, because the logging company has a monopoly on the market up there. Unfortunately, the king has been trapped in politics with the aristocrats, binding his hands from ending this terrible monopoly. In reality, it’s quite similar to the salmon famine that happened about two generations back, when Czar Ruthless the Useless was in control over the eastern empire.

You get the idea. Anyone with a bit of creativity can go on like that for hours if they have to while adding quite literally nothing to the roleplaying experience, especially in consideration to the roleplaying partner.

Other Characters

If there’s anything that really irritates me that roleplayers do, it’s increasing the length of their posts by adding new characters to the equation. What’s that? I don’t have anything obvious to do? Instead of trying to incorporate my roleplaying partner, allow me to summon my six drinking companions to the bar with me; I have a long and interesting history with them and we’ve saved each other’s lives countless times. Enjoy while I subject you to this horrible torment of trying to figure out when I get to talk, and then have my responding post include dialogue from five more people besides my character.

Seriously, if you want a quick way to make the other roleplayer feel as lonely and forgotten as the last man alive on a planet, trapped underneath a crossbeam that once supported his hopes and dreams, then introduce new characters into the roleplay! It is completely dreadful, but the worst part is how they will deal with it: in kind.

They summon their six drinking buddies, and now you have the Red and Blue teams, sitting in their separate corners and each having their own little discussions. You’ll be lucky if you even mention the other people in your post. It basically becomes “take turns writing the story” and people just explore their own tangents and effectively ‘roleplay’ on their own. Only now we’re writing fanfiction or something much worse, and we’ve lost the point entirely.

Of course, I understand NPCs are necessary because more than 2 people in the world exist. Having interaction with them is fine, but that’s about the extent of it. NPCs should be a plot device, not a crutch you hobble through every so-called-roleplay you run into, bringing your character and their horde of support in their wake. Even, to an extent, having a person who roleplays 2 characters instead of one can be incredibly frustrating. While they’re busy having quips and inside jokes with each other, once again the other person’s character is sidelined, blocked, or otherwise forgotten.

So anyway, true to form I’ve talked much longer than I should have, but I hope that doesn’t discredit my point too much. In closing, allow me to try and highlight again why I think you should care about what I’ve written—not because what I wrote, but because what you will write.

Roleplay is about interaction between two writers. It supplies a spontaneous and dynamic universe where you literally do not know what will happen next. Things like being able to interrupt people, walk out on them in the middle of an argument, or stop a fight before it happens, are all vital elements of keeping this dynamic alive and fluid in roleplay. It’s not going to be perfect, but creating Long Posts simply makes things harder. For every ounce of pleasure you get from making a Long Post, you take that much pleasure away from the other writer. The harder you try to make your posts draw attention to your character and their interactions alone, the harder you’re going to make it for the other characters present to do anything of value.

Write wisely.