So I was on this Harry Potter site... And, although this sounds awful, once I saw the graphics and the set-up and the admins... I knew I was going to hate it. I just. Man. You know those people who just attract other types of people you cannot stand? Yeah, this is the kind of history I have with them. They just attract really annoying, pretentious members who don't know when to stop spamming/competing with each other on the c-box. BUT ANYWAY.

I was just going around for kicks, and I happened upon one of the admin's character's plot pages. You know, those colorful relationship databases with cute little song lyrics and stuff.

The first post had information about her character - written in a ridiculous, pretentious, poetic/artsy way of course. And some pictures of her looking sexy in a bikini, despite the fact that she was a slave or something. Yeah, who knows.

The second post was the actual plot page. Colorful lines abound. It was probably about 50 lines long, which, IMO, is ridiculous, but moving on.

The third post was the code and an example of what your post/addition to her plot page should look like. Also snazzy-looking.

The fourth post was the actual list of people she would add.

I don't even think I need to explain why four posts for a plot page is ridiculous, though I will say it proves that redundant things can only get more redundant if you give it time. So thus ends my rant.

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I HAVE SOMETHING TO ADD. :]

My brother just got this connection to let him play his Wii online, and I'm pissed because this apparently means he needs to unplug the internet connection from my computer to do it. And I know we're just going to fight when he wants to play online but I don't want to get off the computer. Umm, sorry, NO. Maybe you should've checked out how you'd do it before blowing $50, bro.

SJLF. >:|

Amen to the first part. I've noticed the same people creating and abandoning sites only to create a clone of them a few days later to get the "new" feel back. I avoid them like the plague so I can definitely identify with how you feel.

Motto. I advertise a lot so I come across boards run by same people all the time. Which wouldn't be so bad if the forum isn't carbon copy of the one they made a month ago, only to abandon it because they, whatever, lost interest. No matter how good the board might look, I would never join a place whose admins have terrible track record when it comes to sticking by their roleplays.

As for plot pages, I personally don't like them and don't see the use for them. But I cannot help but laugh at plot pages spanning over 4-5 posts. Why?? Especially when the person says 'quote my plot to get the colour codes' [for lyrics] Ummmm... no. If you're going to be that lazy then so will I and not post with the silly colours :p

It is a tad annoying when the Admin want you to use something hyper glam just for a relationships page.

On one side I just put the title as "A simple man" and then for the post I put a list of the people he'd met, and his first impressions.

Apparently it was a radical idea. lol.

Eugh. I hate it when plot pages turn into a glitzy popularity show. I mean, even though I really don't think I need them, it's fine if you actually need somewhere to keep track of things. But all of the unnecessary junk? No thank you!

Something else that really grinds my gears is how some players refuse to thread until you post in their relationship thread. I'm all for advanced planning, but do you really expect me to choose where my character stands in relation to yours and write a paragraph about how well they know each other when they've never interacted IC?

I don't have a problem with establishing existing relationships with characters on plot pages(as long as they aren't overly complicated), and I like when things look pretty, but sometimes people just go WAY overboard.

Seriously, if you're asking me to post a code with 27 different tags that make it tough for me to even figure out where I'm placing the text. . . just NO. If you want the thing to look pretty and match your colors, do the coding yourself. It's really not worth my time. If I set up a page like that (I think I have one or maybe two), it's rather simple and all I ask for is a very plain form with essential info. That's it.

Establishing a relationship shouldn't require that much effort. If someone wants to put that much into it, they should just play out the meeting so it's not a waste of their time. Period.

Bleck! Plot pages are a pretty gross way of plotting to begin with, and when you throw in people who are more concerned with graphics than actual plots... x.x

Haha! Yes. It's like high school all over again, the clique-yness of some forums. You can see the cheerleaders coming from a mile away. Easily recognizable by their glaring graphics, flaunting of status, and raping of punctuation.

^ The admins are just well-known in the HP roleplaying universe, at least of a certain "caliber" (IE, the flavor-of-the-week advanced sites). They've made a lot of friends through joining every. single. Harry Potter site that pops up on their radar, so as a result, it's the same people being annoying on every RPG. It is kind of like high school in that aspect, really!

Another hilarious thing? They were asking for 700 words to describe the character's general personality, 500 to describe their Dementor/worst memory, and 500 more to describe their Patronus/best memory. So, all in all, that's 1,700 words for personality alone. It was 700 more for history, and I believe 300 or 500 for appearance.

Total Minimum Requirement: About 2,800 words.
Surprise, surprise: Only one of three or four admins had actually completed the application.

I'm happy to say, the ridiculous word requirement seems to be the reason they've gotten about 10 members so far, when previously they've gotten around 30 within the first few days of opening. Nice to know that most people don't have time to waste on an application that redundant. :X

I have great love for plot pages, for organizational reasons.

However, 5 posts is just lame. I hate when the text is itty itty bitty and everything is so smooshed that it's unreadable. It needs to be coherent, not fancy pants.

1700 for personality, huh? loltown.

I don't mind the nice, fancy looking plot pages, but four pages for that is ridiculous. I'll stick to two, one for all the relationships and such and such and the next for the list, because I've got the idea that I need a separate post for the list because it'll get too long and I'll run out of space which I never do because no one actually posts in those things they just stare at the games threads and occasionally make a thread and then no one posts in that either and then they fly over to the c-box but hey I'm guilty of that myself because I'm lazy and I've even started with the 'i don't capitalize anything because i'm awesome like that lolz' but I don't actually roll like that thanks I'm the person who types out everything regardless of where he is when people are typing 'brb' I'm typing 'be right back' and I'm just weird and I'm REALLY getting off topic aren't I oh well if you don't want me to do this again just yell at me I can stop maybe if I do this enough I could become FAMOUS as the guy who accidentally starts ranting about nothing in other people's rant threads which would be alright but we'll take out the accidentally because HEY let's get back on topic shall we yes so...

I've seen some people on almost EVERY HP RP I've joined, whether it be pre-potter or post-DH/potter whatever. That doesn't really annoy me, because I've only joined HP RPs for a long while and so if that's what you're interested in RPing good for you, have at it. What bugs me is that they reuse the same application EVERY time, with a few minor adjustments. I mean really minor. Like changing the name minor. And every time, the admins say what a beautiful application it is, and I get frustrated because I've seen that application fifteen times already. GRRR. I do believe I'm getting way off topic, and I'm starting to rant a tad bit, which isn't good.

So yeah. That's... what I have to contribute.

^ You should definitely PM me the names of those people.
I think they may be the same ones. I know one of the admins of this site I'm talking about makes the same character on every site...

I like plot pages.... I have bad memory though so it helps a lot. I do 3-4 posts, but the only site I'm really super active on require the bio to be posted first, the the plto itslef is only 2-3 posts, depending on how I make the plot.

I have a feeling that these peopel you speak of have invaded my fave game :( I'm not sure if I'm happy about this. I've been there for a year and suddenly I feel like an outcast. I don't really knwo how to dealw ith it so I just started avoiding that particular part of the boarda nd have been plotting more wiht my old friends I've been playign with for the year.

Tell me which game, and I will snoop and see if they've invaded. If they have, they're probably being really annoying in the cbox; they do also have the tendency to be really clique-y. It'd be awful if there was more than one group of people who did that, though! =(

*points to the purple icon in siggy*

THIS.

That is exactly why I do not allow plot pages. This is not a popularity contest. I am not interested in seeing what little dumbass song that people like and posted and I probably want to shoot them for. I am not for seeing tiny fonts in all these colors that make my eyes burn.

And I'm not for the pretentious, "I'm a slave, but I'll give you a boner" crap.

there's one girl who got annoyed with the plot pages cause she has a short attention span like me and I'm pretty sure she hates coding.... so what did she do?

friends
enemies
family
lover
misc.

that's all she had listed and told whoever posted to elaborate on the titles she offered if they wanted. At the same time she she posts in others plots and rather than searching through the lists we offer... she just posts the relationships she likes... besties, like family, protective, etc.

I don't really think there should be a mandatory or ban on plot pages. Like i said, I have a really bad memory, along with seven characters over two boards and working as a co-admin on a new bored. I have the little notepad thing open all the time and make notes of ideas and such or I'll forget or get confused. Don't ban then because some peopel liek them. But don't enforce them cause obvously some people don't.

Plot pages are good things. Well, they would be if I could remember to use them. I don't even like people using two posts, though, let alone four. I have one for my fancy setup (because I like coding and thinking up new ways to do it) and then I have the bottom of it for my list (also fancily set up). My forms are always very basic (name:, age:, relationship:, reason/history:) and I then format the answers to fit my list. Other people do it for theirs, so it works.

I'm all for trying to find new and interesting ways to work out plot pages, because not everyones' creativity expresses itself through beautiful pictures or prose...but boring re-takes of the same thing is not fun. I don't really like badly coded/boring plot pages either...but I don't care about others'. Only mine.

On NMTB plot pages are wholly unpopular. They can go for months without getting a single post, despite people busily plotting away. Basically, they're just there for people to tinker with when they have nothing else to do.

I've seen one person in particular who makes sites I can't stand on PB. They are all pretty, all so rude and stuck-up and strict - and yet some people seem to like them. They open them for a week, close them, open another and keep going, whilst abusing their members. I've never joined any of their sites, but they truly amaze me.

Meh. I use plot pages because I actually post in them and get replies. It helps start ideas for threading. I can see how people would get easily annoyed with them, anyways.

But, yes. I'm sick of people abandoning boards and making old ones. There's a particular pair of people I'm thinking of, who ask me to join every board only to have it die like a week later. >< Pisses me off.

It could be worse.

On a site I used to be on, the norm was the following layout:

Plot (ridiculously long, full of images & colors, though they looked pretty :))
Code
List of Males
List of Females

That annoyed me, why two lists? One is bad enough. What happened to putting the list in the first post, or just putting strikeout and then the name on the position that was taken. I liked those days, simpler times.

We use colourful plot pages on one of the sites I'm on. I actually think its fine as long as people don't go over board and make it really complicated. Most people have a list and then make separate columns in a reply thread for women/men.

Personally I don't have the patience to do that for my characters, I just list what I need to list and modify the post to add people when they reply. I do separate it into male and female cos that just works for me, though it isn't for everyone. I make the effort to reply to plotting pages but I certainly wouldn't feel obliged to reply to every one, just the ones that are relevant to my characters. In reply to some of the previous posts, I don't know why someone would waste their precious time making five pages of plottage. Don't they rp with people besides that?? I get confused and slightly dazed reading down through one plot page, I'd give up after two! LOL

I've started doing character profiles or advertisements instead of plot pages, and allow people to post both IC and OOC notes to it. People can put whatever they want on it instead of following some formula, but a lot of people make theirs something like you would see an advertisement, but for their character. I like it 100000% better than plot pages. They can have a pic of the char, a quote, basic information, silly notes, current threads, and other such things.

So if it's someone's birthday, you post on 'their' thread, and you can also plot and ask them to RP. That way everyone has a personalized thread that is there own little space, with free creativity to do whatever they want with it. And some have done traditional plot plages, but they really haven't gotten as much attention as the profiles. Plot pages are also really boring comparatively in terms of responses, where profiles tend to be more fun.

^ My lot do this but we still call them plot-pages because that's still their function. I'm wont to completely ignore popular branding (as evident in my "it's pre-mades, not 'canon' " tirade) so I figure, 'let's just take the literal meaning, throw in some alternative styles, basic guidelines and suggestions and see what people come up with'. I find it a useful addition to the bookmark function so I can organise my story-arcs and the threads they are associated with so people can follow my plots thread-for-thread.

I've never really grokked plot pages as they seem to be meant here. I have a section on the application for 'intended rp role' (which can be as mundane as 'hang out and see what happens'). And there's a forum for posting and discussing plot ideas whether they involve your character or not. Putting them in rainbow-colored song lyrics justified all over the place strikes me as being more about showing off your grasp of BBC code than actually communicating.

I agree with Greymalkin. I had never seen these things before until a friend asked me to join a board she plays on. I personally don't see the need for them. If I want to work out a plot with another player, I talk to them directly via email, PM or IM.