OK, I'm really new to the whole RP thing, so this may seem a bit of a dumb question.

So I wanted to know; what is it that makes an RPG 'intermediate' rather than 'beginner' or 'advanced' instead of 'intermediate'? Where does one level stop and the next level start? Is it purely on the length of posts, or how involved players get with their characters, or how many players a game has, or something else? Or a combination?

It's all subjective so I wouldn't worry too much about it. One person could believe that their site is one thing and another might look at it and think the exact opposite. I find it a meaningless distinction personally.

I've honestly stopped categorizing them. In the past, I've joined "beginning/intermediate" RPGs just so that I could have an easy time and slack off on posts, but in most of the cases I discovered that the players there have been some of the best that I've ever had the good fortune to come across. It's not grammar, or length of posts, but the ability to express yourself and pull others into your writing -- make them love your characters -- while giving others a lot of material to reply to. Of course, some of the best also happen to be irredeemable snobs. xD

Oh goody, I sense another anti-advanced thread in the making, lmao.

RomanHK is right; it is very subjective and up to the admins' opinion of what they want their members to be capable of. Some people think that advanced means writing with proper grammar, whereas others may think it means you should be creative with your character, or have the ability to abuse the thesaurus like no other.

I used to be really anal-retentive about people I accepted. Now I put "intermediate-advanced" in advertisements (sometimes) so people will kind of have an idea of the "skill level" expected.

My suggestion is look through the "declined applications" section of sites you're interested in, if they have one available to you. You'll be able to tell what the admins think a sub-par application is. If they don't have one visible, just read through threads or accepted applications and gage the skill level of the site that way.

Don't worry about that at all. About 75% of "Advanced" RPGs are nothing more than intermediate with arrogance thrown behind it. There are very few RPs that you can truly call advanced.

Advanced is so many things. I take into account the following.

-Age of the board.
-Member Count.
-The number of hiatuses an RP has gone on relative to the amount of time it's existed
-The quality of player posts. QUALITY, AND NOT QUANTITY.
-The quality of character applications.
-How likely a thread is to be finished on such a board.
-How well storylines have panned out.
-The plot itself - I do not find most sites to be advanced that talk about "Rich people and their exploits." Sites that are advanced take serious thought in their plot.
-The site design. There are a great deal of popular boards that fail that test. When I say design, what I generally mean is if I can read your text and that your site won't screw over my computer's RAM. I like sites that are well organized without being pretentious.
- Staff Behavior. What I can tell makes a good site 'Advanced' v. 'Arrogantly Advanced' are how the staffers are towards their members.

And that's just a few.

So, taking your list for my RPG:

-Age of the board. 1 1/2 months
-Member Count. 9 or 10 (That's actual players; it's something like 26 actual characters)
-The number of hiatuses an RP has gone on relative to the amount of time it's existed 0
-The quality of player posts. QUALITY, AND NOT QUANTITY. Pretty good; posts move the story along and/or show something about the character. They also use good vocabulary, spelling and punctuation.
-The quality of character applications. Good
-How likely a thread is to be finished on such a board. High; we have several finished threads
-How well storylines have panned out. Extremely well
-The plot itself - I do not find most sites to be advanced that talk about "Rich people and their exploits." Sites that are advanced take serious thought in their plot. Hmm; tricky one. 'At war with the French, who are rumoured to be rebuildiing their Navy in preparation for invasion'
-The site design. There are a great deal of popular boards that fail that test. When I say design, what I generally mean is if I can read your text and that your site won't screw over my computer's RAM. I like sites that are well organized without being pretentious. Well, we've got a default skin (it's a phpBB forum) but things are in a logical order and threads are easy to find, with text that is a decent size.

Looking at that, I'd hazard a guess that we're intermediate. It's not easy to classify something, is it?

I'd be interested to see how you'd classify some of your boards, using antisocialist's list, maybe adding things if you think anything's been forgotten.
- Staff Behavior. What I can tell makes a good site 'Advanced' v. 'Arrogantly Advanced' are how the staffers are towards their members.

Well, this is how it works for me:

I try to stay away from "advanced" boards because generally they are no more advanced than boards labeled "intermediate"; they just think higher of themselves. Beginning generally accepts everyone and intermediate has a bit of higher standards, but there's no real line.

Really long posts.

That's about what I thought. But going by that, I'll never be an 'advanced' player; if I'm going to write something of the sort of length that would be a 'really long post' on a message-board forum, I might as well go away and write a piece of fanfic.

I don't have a problem with people writing posts of 700 words, but I couldn't do that myself and not end up writing someone else's reaction, to boost the wordcount. Writing fanfic generates less grief. :)

He was being facetious. :lol: He doesn't really mean it.

Fair enough.

Though that does seem to be the clincher: We want really, really long posts every time you write something, because we're an 'advanced' RPG.

So by those standards, people like myself who are very concise are not, and maybe will never be 'advanced' RPers. Which is all wrong, surely.

Of course. I've made this argument before but here goes. When most people tag their RP as advanced, they're basically saying that they're looking for people that write like them and will only accept such people. There really isn't much else to it. Sure the majority equates length with quality but there are others who see length and automatically discount it from being advanced. They will deny entry to their games based on that.

Writers make a roleplay advanced.

:p

Seriously though, my definition of advanced means experienced. Advanced RPers (not roleplays at large, my definition is looking at individuals) are the ones who have the most years and roleplays under their belts. Since it isn't a writing competition, I would consider an RPer advanced if they've developed their own style, know how a roleplay works through-and-through, and are proficient at what they do, whatever that is and however they do it. I may not like your style, but that doesn't make you a bad roleplayer.

And that goes for people who write really long posts as well. I know of several people who write 1000 + word posts and they most certainly aren't writing flowery drivel. It drives me crazy to hear people talk about long roleplays as if they're the spawn of Satan. Profiling, I tell you, it's all profiling! :angry:

Advanced really does mean "long posts", to me. And discussions about how that is not truly "advanced". Advanced mostly means long posts and applications, demands and word-count limits.

I dearly wish AshBeanNun's definition was the norm, but it is not. I wish advanced meant roleplayers with styles of their own, and intriguing writing. Labeling our roleplays really is not a bad idea, the problem is that there is no one definition for the labels we use.

[I think I'll have to edit another part into this later, for sheer legibility. I just got back from work, and am on a scarily high caffein-high.]

Sharpiefan - My sites are certainly not advanced. I wouldn't really group them under intermediate. I say that they're for everyone.

You're advanced when the game doesn't contain any kind of learning material. There are no lectures on Mary Sues, there are no word minimums, there are no players hanging around waiting for plots because the players are the ones in control. The admins ask applicants intelligent questions.

All the characters are interesting and can bounce easily off one another. Premise/plot is rich and staff are interested in the game rather than desperately trying to get loads of members.

The majority of games are intermediate, even if they state, 'advanced'. A game that bases its level off post length and quality are in serious need of a re-evaluation. Advanced is a board-wide thing and every single player has to be on the same wavelength.

And then all of a sudden reality hits with a terrific crash that sends everyone sprawling to the floor. The voice of reason booms down: "ROLE PLAYING IS A GAME. YOUR SELF WORTH IS NOT JUDGED BASED UPON ROLE PLAYING."

I'm a little tired of people flaunting around "advanced" labels. Heck, they label their own freaking board advanced. In my opinion, if you're truly an advanced board, other people will be the ones determining the advancedness.

[/opinion]

I'm tired of all the people who think long + big words = advanced. Long posts don't mean that someone is a good writer, though it certainly doesn't have to mean the opposite. The problem isn't that people write 2000 words per post -- it's that lots of roleplayers automatically assume that a long post is better than a short post, even if the shorter post is more expressive. Despite what we might define as "advanced," others are going to believe otherwise.

I agree, Jae.

Sites that equate advance with word count and long words usually strikes me as nothing more than purple prose-ridden. And that's what should be cracked down on.

I think people equate long word count with being advanced because it's easily measurable, whereas quality of the writing cannot be measured and can only be described subjectively.

How else should quality be measured/defined/decided upon (I don't mean this as an argument, but as a genuine question)? The only thing I can think of is having a sample post as part of the application, but an admin would still have to decide how high/low of a quality they wanted to include, and people don't always rp at as high quality of a level as their sample posts are at. Plus, the first few players would have a hard time judging if they were of an appropriate quality to make applying worthwhile.

This is a really hard question to answer, but I find myself agreeing with Antisocialist87’s first post, and with the list of things to look for in a game. Length of post does not always equal quality in my book. Sometimes you need a lot of words to work through the thing you are exploring in your post, and sometimes you only need a handful – each can be just as effective.

I do know that one thing I look for in RP’s that call themselves intermediate or advanced is not only the quality of the individual players’ writing, but how much do they give their scene partners to work off of. We’ve all been in games where players post reams of stuff, but give you next to nothing to work from. I also look for how well players react to what’s been given to them. Mutual generosity from writers in RP's is a key thing, i think. I also tend to think writers are more “advanced,” “mature,” or whatever adjective you want to use when they do more than just play the character and react. When players set goals and explore their characters faults as well as strengths, thoughts, motivations, and what have you - creating depth - that indicates a level of thinking about the character that to me is more “advanced.”

I'm currently on two sites that I would classify as "advanced" roleplaying sites. This is simply based upon the fact that they have set systems of how they do things so that most things never go wrong, and they have quality roleplayers who understand how to delve into a character, at least as far as the general roleplaying base goes. The admins, for example, are four (two per site) of the most skilled roleplayers I know. They've made their characters, and they know exactly how they would react to the situations. It's always a pleasure to read their work, and I think that that, along with so many other skills that they have and I hope to have one day, is the definition of an advanced roleplay, when the majority of your members are at or almost at that skill level.

The length of posts there generally goes from seven hundred to two thousand words per post, so it's not 'really big posts' all the time.

1. Storylines that go for more than one thread.

2. A flexible main plot that can be adapted to involve a large part of the site.

3. CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT - static characters are boring. A two thousand word post isn't worth the time it took to think it up if it's exactly the same scenario your character went through last time they were in a similar situation.