RPG Soapbox

We are a fairly new site that is trying to get more players and looking for a few ST's as well. Please stop by and check us out. We mainly use PBP and some chat, but timing with some players limits that. Check us out at:

http://www.twilightvalley.net63.net/

For our rules and info on the background on the city.

our fourms are here:

http://twilightvalley.forumarena.com/

I found another URL for a "Twilight Valley"

http://www.twilightvalley.org/

Is this the same as above? It seems to be, but I can't tell for certain at first glance.

The link in Starshadow's post is the correct one.

Okay....I've played on this site for about 6 months now but had to give it up recently due to a combination of no time to spend on it and irritation with some of what I've observed taking place there in the past few months. Do you want the good news or bad news first?

The good news -- the STs for the most part are attentive and seem to be willing to work with the players. There does, however, seem to be a problem with some venues, Changeling really comes to mind here, of retaining Head STs. While RL does come first and that's been a good enough reason to bow down, there's been occaisions where a ST leaves and no public explanation given. With the Revolving ST Door effect, it gets frustrating to have a SL start or a need arises to meet with an NPC and nothing really gets accomplished because the creator has bailed out and there's no intention of continuing with the established flow.

Then, that sort of personnel shuffling seems to happen a lot on this site. That really doesn't keep things "fresh", it just confuses the hell out of everyone; particulary when something's in progress comes to a screeching halt during a change of power and you get the latest addition to the ST roster going "Oops folks! Please be patient as I sort things out blah blah blah..."

The bad:

Creative interpretation of XP costs for certain things such as merits. I found myself scratching my head a lot when I first joined the site and was going through the character creation process.

Rushed RP. This is a play-by-post formatted game. It needs to be taken into consideration that not everyone can be online more than once a day, or have absences of a day or two due to RL commitments. When a thread is otherwise going strong and flowing well, having a ST post to it that it "needs to wind down" because there's a system-wide "sticky thread" in place is disruptive and...yes...it does breed irritation amongst the players who are otherwise enjoying the game and what their characters are doing no matter how long it's taking.

Popularity driven Writer of the Month or Scene of the Month competitions. Do we really need those, especially when the same circle of people seem to win every month?

Cutesy XP journal reminder threads; in some cases having "lists of shame" for those players who fail to submit one. Uhm....most sites take the approach that if you want XP you'll submit a journal at the end or very beginning of each month, right? Threats of being publicly outed for failure to submit a journal just don't sit very well.

So the final opinion is this: Neither a good nor a bad site -- but it has potential. There is a need to work on ST consistency via retention and allowing players to actually work at their own pace. Cut down on fluff such as a heavy on the bells and whistles forums template, which makes for difficult reading or slow page loading at times.

It looks like somebody didn't pay the site's hosting fees

The site itself is all right. There's some really over the top character concepts running around in the Changeling game atm -- an animated suit of Hoplite armor...a female character who walks around in armor like she's playing a LARP version of WoW....two "furrie" type characters (an anthro ferret and a unicorn), and a Tolkien-esque elf. It makes me wonder if some of these players really understand the difference between C:tD and C:tL.

Beyond that small peeve it's an okay site for what it's intended for. There's never a lack of participants in open threads and some of the players there write some very engaging stories for their characters.

I last posted to this thread back in November of last year -- the site seems to have stabilized in terms of ST retention which can only be a bonus. Right now the Changeling game seems to be doing well and there's plenty for characters to get involved with. The Werewolf system as well as Vampire are showing healthy amounts of activity as well. The "clever" XP journal reminders seem to have become a thing of the past, so....improvement. Having gone back to playing there in the past month or so, the changes are noticeable.

However. There is a situation which needs to be considered before playing here. It may not be much of a bother to some people, but for me it's a personal irritant and makes me prone to questioning the maturity of the players who engage in such conduct and the STs who enable it.

If you want to enjoy forums based RP in relative peace, avoid the OOC chat. Seriously. It seems to be frequented by too many players who take the game seriously and in more than one instance have left me with the impression that IC =/= OOC distinctions really don't exist with them While we do enjoy our characters and want to see them succeed, and having them die or suffer negative consequences isn't fun....it's still only a game at the end of the day. When I see players going batshit because their characters were "disrespected" or otherwise didn't get their way in a posted scene -- and making insulting comments equating other players with their characters, cursing at others, or otherwise spamming the chat with arguments as to why they feel insulted on a personal level by what's happened it's time to back up and take a hard look at what constitutes a good healthy perspective. It's these sort of players who serve as a turnoff if their conduct is the first impression a prospective new player experiences the moment they log into the chat.

Beyond that -- the game is enjoyable for the most part. The STs are pretty astute as to what's going on in their systems, XP is handled quickly, and the stories are engaging

Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. People still play NWoD? How long has this been going on?

The players on Twilight Valley--the mods especially--are very cliquish. It's almost impossible to get a new character involved if you're new to the site. The one thread that I did attempt to get my character involved in, which was started by another new player, the staff members involved said it was "suffering" to post to it. Maybe if they didn't have a 1 post, 1 sticky rule, they wouldn't have had to suffer so much to help a new player get off the ground.

And, that's another complaint: the rules on that site are outrageous to the point of absurdity. They have a rule that says a vampire player has to buy a 5 dot retainer merit if another player wants to be that vampire's ghoul--not an NPC ghoul, mind you, but a PC ghoul. It seems to me that if they wanted to encourage roleplay, they wouldn't have a rule such as this. Then, the mage game has a rule where you start every scene with 0 mana if you don't have access to a Hallow. No matter that there are methods to regain mana outside of a hallow.

Finally, if you can't post every hour on that site, don't bother. Not only will you be hounded to post, but if you don't post, the site owner will get passive-aggressive with you. It's like you're penalized on that site for having a real life outside of their game.

My final assessment: Don't waste your time.

Exactly. I can vouch for some of the OOC room conduct when it comes to certain STs making shitty comments about other players or their toons....or joining in when other players start with their rants as to why no-one feels obligated to respect their characters in an IC context. Nothing says "welcome to our friendly atmosphere" like logging into the chat and the first thing I see is a player ripping apart other players for their own chars' IC choices to not make a show of support in a political situation and a couple of their ST buddies adding their own comments as to why they think the offending players are "disruptive idiots ruining everyone else's RP". It's called "playing your character within IC logic" the last time I looked.

Maturity seems to be in short supply on this site. In short -- if you play here be prepared to walk on eggshells around certain people. Stick around long enough and you'll get to see textbook examples of cronyism in how certain rules are selectively enforced -- and yes, the arbitrary and not so well thought out "house rules" are, well.....asinine. But then, a lot of the house rules seemed to have been whipped up on the spot to cover inconvenience issues for the STs.

The whole "hurry up and post" thing is irritating in light of the fact that they've just initiated a 'you have a 48 hour time limit for posting to an active thread' rule.

A ST considers posting to a thread or helping a new player get settled into the game, in short doing their job, as "suffering"? I can only guess as to the culprit's identity.....but then there's more than enough assclowns on TV wearing staff jackets to choose from

There's always been a degree of elitism in pbp games. The idea that chat engines force everyone to be around all the time and that real adults have pressing demands on their time that preclude them. See, pbp is the responsible gamer's choice.

Except that the stringent unspoken rules of how fast you need to reply typically means that you might as well be on a chat, with the added frustration of no face to face playing.

Most of the problems I'm reading about Twilight Valley are true of the pbp genre altogether.

Fly the flag of OOC butthurt me lads, 'tis time for Status threads again!

I may have to pass on that experience.

It seems that a certain fuckass named Hamoud has hacked the site and felt obligated to share his anti-American sentiments.

It seems that every time something in the coding is twiddled with in the name of "making improvements" TV winds up having in-house technical problems or server glitches after the changes are implemented. The latest round of improvements involved adding on the ability for certain lazy-ass players to direct link conversations/interactions involving their own toons in a thread so as to not "be bothered by following other activity". Uhm....well? Sometimes those 'distractions' are important to the actual flow of the scene. Those are the same players who bitch when they lose sight of an important bit of ST or IC information because they admittedly skim through the thread just to find things which directly pertain to their character. Please stop enabling the lazy or careless players!

Want to make some real improvements to the site?

1. Remove the 'transforming skulls' animation from the opening page. It wastes space and serves no real purpose other than to slow down progress getting to the forums.

2. The frames and general site layout are atrocious. Get rid of the superfluous header frame and integrate the links into the body of the main page.

3. Simple is best. A universal rule of site design is Too Much Eye Candy Is Bad When It Detracts From Basic Function. You don't need Wikis, mini-sheets, FaceBook-esque player profiles or an unreliable chat tossed into the mix. No one is there to look at the colorful system specific background .gifs (which slow down the page loading time), there is no real need outside of aesthetics for narration bars or concealed "spoiler" text ability for dice rolls and OOC information, and remember: The more add-on crap you code in equals an increase in possibility as to when the site will start falling apart on a technical level because it's overloaded.

I'm there to look at the colorful system specific background .gifs

I've only had one or two problems with the site, and that's because of the browser(s) I've used in the past.

The layout has been revamped with the upper frame removal and embedding the links on the main forums page; it does make things a bit easier to read and not appear jammed up.

The threading feature: if a player finds it unusable or distracting there's three options they can use -- linear, hybrid, or threaded view. I myself prefer the linear as it helps me to better follow what's actually going on in a thread and it's a format that I'm used to. So what if other players only follow their own and select toons' actions? Their problem, right? if they miss out on something else in the 'scene' which may be important to the plot and they wind up bypassed ICly and OOCly. Just sit back, point and laugh when they gripe about "not seeing that conversation etc...." or argue as to how their character can have legal IC knowledge of a situation based on "toon location" because believe me, certain people will find something to complain about even if Jesus Christ himself was running the boards.

I'm still going to avoid the OOC chat though

Well, I debated a while whether or not to respond to this thread, but ultimately felt like some of the players were getting unfairly vilified. I'm "West", the site owner, having taken it over after about seven months as a player.

Anywho, let me try to address some of the things that have been brought up.

Chat
OK, I'll admit, sometimes it gets out of hand. Here's the thing. I see the Chat as a corner of a bar, or someone's house that a group of friends hang out at. It's gonna get out of hand sometimes. Sure, that can be disconcerting to walk in on, but it's like walking into a bar. Secondly, I think what's overlooked is a lot of the people in chat have been playing together 6mos, a year, or more... together. Nobody's slamming newbies. If we get on each other's cases, it's because we're friends cracking on one another. The same group that gives one another props for well written Scenes or engaging characters.

Clique-y-ness
Yeah, OK, I just made that word up. Let's keep it real. Whenever a group of people do something for a long time, they become friends. That's anywhere you go; whether the staging area of a paintball field where the regulars sit, the 'regulars' court on a sporting field, or even your own relatives that all live close to one another. To say that it shouldn't exist is absurd; we don't live in a vacuum. If it didn't exist, I'd be disappointed, because it would mean that people weren't bonding. Now... all that being said, I don't think we're -unfriendly-. Today's 'clique' has people that were 'new' a couple of months ago. Six months from now, the same will be true. It's the Internet: content driven. If you're cool, you'll find a second home with us. If you're an egomaniac that wants to be pandered to... well, you'll end up on some other website bitching about us.

Staff & Site
Yep, we've had turnover. I wish we didn't, but the truth is that RL strikes everyone, and we try to maintain a high standard with new staff members. That's all that can be said about that.

As far as 'bells and whistles' go, I'm honestly surprised/shocked. Most of it is a result of my personal time, that I've tried to use to make the site feature-rich and more than an out-of-the-box setting. There are stripped down 'skins' and a text-only mode for those with bandwidth issues. Not much else to be said there... like I said, I thought I was enhancing the usability and experience.

Chief_Roberts, Jiraiya, I'm also surprised y'all never brought this stuff up. The door's always open, and more than a few players will attest to the fact that I'll always listen. Chief, I'd especially like to hear which house rules you have issue with, and how you interpret them to 'cover' for STs. I'm more than happy to discuss any of them openly. I'm also sorry that both of you feel like you couldn't discuss these things with us, rather than going elsewhere to anonymously vent.

Noctivagus
I see you've dropped the 'gay bashing' accusations you were making since I pulled the chat logs. Kind of hard to lie and play the victim in the face of the truth, isn't it? That lie alone should tell anyone what your 'opinion' is worth -- the remainder of which I won't dignify with a response.

In summary, as Michael surmised, we have our ups and downs, many of which are a factor of the medium. That being said, I honestly think we have some fantastic writers, and coming up on our two year mark makes the setting detailed and rich with actual IC play rather then narration.

Thanks for the time.