How to Take Turns In Collaborative Settings
Written by James
May 24, 2008
When a scene involves more than two people, it’s very easy to become caught up in the drama of the scene. Fingers twitch, hearts race , and it’s all you can do to stop yourself from posting.
So you post. Another player posts, you post in return, and soon, the situation is one of a back-and-forth battle of speed. Actions and reactions fly faster than a jet plane, and the scene is one great big natural high.
Congratulations – you’ve just cut a character out of a scene.
No matter how intense the scene, always be aware that you are playing in a group. Taking turns is just good manners. By taking turns, you allow other players the chance to be involved in a scene and aid in its progression.
Hogging a scene isn’t nice. It shuts people out and makes them feel unwanted. Even worse, those players may not want to be involved with you in a subsequent scene. You get pegged an attention sucker, and soon end up alone.
One way of making sure everyone gets a turn is to play round robin. Players post in turn predictably – player A, player B, player C. When they have posted, their turn is over and game play moves to the next player. When all players have had their turn, game play returns to the first player for the cycle to start again.
Another way of dealing with round-robin posting is allowing each player two turns to post per round. Player A may post, player B may reply and player A may post again before his turn is over. Player B has one more chance to post, and Player C has two chances to step in.
This method works well when there are three characters in a scene, but when there are four or more characters in a scene, a single turn per player per round cuts down on confusion.
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Interesting. So how does one know when a round is over? If a player were to leave the boards for a bit, I would think that the other players would be allowed to start another round without that player after a certain amount of time, right? So would there be some sort of time limit or something like that? Otherwise the boards could freeze while they wait for a player to take their turn, especially if someone leaves for a long period of time and forgets to let everyone know.
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A round is usually over when everyone in the scene has had their turn. Usually, if a player knows they’re going to be away, we have a specific board for posting absences. If the player goes MIA, then the storytellers might make a move to keep things going.
If you want more quick start tips, check out our e-books. They’ve got a lot of advice for getting started with online gaming and setting up a character.
[...] How to Take Turns in Collaborative Settings is a must-read for anyone who is working on a collaborative writing project or in a play-by-post or forum-based roleplaying game. It talks about how not to hog the scene. Capturing Fantasy has a wealth of advice relevant to online roleplaying and creative writing. [...]
Your post makes one think! Great article. Thanks for allowing me to comment!