What if in-character AMAs

Oh yeah, I like that idea quite a bit, actually.

I'd been talking to Cerby a couple days ago about what kind of 'forum featurettes' we could do. He suggested that we do a sort of character spotlight every now and then, which I think ties in quite nicely with this idea. For example, we could have a little "interview" with the character, do a little writeup/analysis like Starr used to do for the various Cultists... that sort of thing.

 

We'd run the additional risk of these character's being actual entities, escaping from the RP dimensions we have them trapped in and watch them bring their reign of terror to this plane of existence. So yes, let's do it.

 

I think this is a wonderful idea tbh

 

Yes, yes- I agree like 8000% with this idea.

 

Yes. To whatever capacity that we end up doing this, I'm all for it. I reckon that AMA with Austere Clements is one of the most major things missing from my life, currently.

 

Sounds like we're all on various degrees of the affirmative! So how's about we start talking shop -- how should we put this into practice? I don't think setting up an additional subforum for in-character AMAs is the best solution, but it might be the most elegant one. Unless someone has a better idea? Should it be confined to a single thread? Should we do a single character "feature week" for content-building purposes?

 

I kind of like the idea of it being in a single thread, with one character featuring per week. Otherwise I don't know where we draw the line over when a character gets an AMA or not, since characters are potentially limitless as opposed to ZEJ members (and if there are arguments that it would be based on demand, that could be how the single feature-based thread is handled). Having the spotlight on only one character for any amount of time could help keep interest up in the idea as well, and result in more traffic.

 

Strong idea, Cerby. What we don't want is a one-sided entity like what happened in Forum Games before, so containing it to one topic and keeping it limited to one character at a time sounds solid to me.

 

That method could work as well-- I think the main issue with this whole idea would be keeping the number of threads at a manageable level, and allowing each ZEJ member their own IC AMA thread would seem to fall within manageable. I think this would altogether work better than a single thread so the activity isn't constrained to a mere one character at a time, but I favored the single thread first since I guess I worry about the idea of some people's AMA threads not seeing as much use as others and the possibility of badfeelsman resulting. No issues like this have surfaced regarding the current AMA's however, so I'm probably worrying for nothing.

 

I checked in on this shortly before your response and was mainly worried about another subforum leading to a dirge of forum activity outside of those boards (thinking that each character would receive their own AMA). I think that a good workaround to this, since people are leaning towards the subforum (which may be a strong long-run idea, thinking about it, since it would be less convoluted than a single topic), would be to make it happen, but with, as you've alluded to, one IC AMA per user. People can format questions by 'tagging' characters; like in Kuda's thread, if you had a question for Jason, you could say, "@Jason - Do you like pickled pigs feet?", which would cue Kuda to respond with Jason to the user, "@Eebit - No."

My overall hesitance as a whole centers around the question of if it's actually going to be a thing for as long as people think it's going to be, or if it's eventually going to become a hull of itself because of waned-off activity and leave us with yet another inactive subforum that people will only revisit only every so often. I agree that a single topic that everyone consistently posts in has the chance of becoming convoluted with the initially proposed setup for it. That said, not really sure what I would pose in the meanwhile. In regards to even an initial front, that's also true that some threads won't see the activity of others; if only three to four people are really going to find worth out of it for their topics/characters, I still think that there is room to propose a workaround so as to not waste so much space.

Maybe we can expand on this?

 

* Copper Monoxide pokes head in randomly to express agreement

 

Idea: How about we create individual topics for each user's characters within the AMA subforum in Real Talk? What I'm saying is, we already have our own individual selves answering questions in the AMA subforum, so how big of a stretch would it be to merely make another topic for each individual and their roleplaying character database to pair up alongside it? 

What I'm saying, basically, is that I have "WHAT DOES THE JONNO SAY?" as an AMA topic for whoever wants to ask me a question to have answered. Let's say, hypothetically speaking, that I open up a "WHAT DO JONNO'S CHARACTERS SAY?" where users can ask any of my characters at any given time questions.

For instance, say @CerberusLycan dropped in and asked Austere what his favorite type of smoothie was, and then @Eebit chimed in with a question for Rock. I would imagine it would look something like.

Austere: "2eiefwheojqsoco"

Rock: "abalabbaljabojaonl"

People can have a list of their applicable characters to ask questions to in their initial post. For extra details, users can link in to their Character Database topics, perhaps, or just offer brief descriptions of each alongside a few of the roleplays that they've been a part of.