Liquid time or no liquid time?

[Ratty Poe]

I am working on the rules of a new RP forum and I am wondering....

should I allow Liquid Time? (The ability to be in two or more roleplay threads/different places at once)

While my natural desire is to say no, you can only be in one place, would that be boring? Especially in a starting, new Rp, when there is not much going on. It's definitely more realistic, but then again, their character is stuck in a certain place for a time until they leave the thread, which could possibly take a few posts.

I really am not sure, please help me decide the pros and cons!

[bigballofyarn]

I am not a member of any RP forums, but I just wanted to throw an idea out there.

Some RP forums allow members to play multiple characters at once. If you are responsible for maintaining a dinosaur, Jesus, and then Bill Gates, three entities alive at completely different times, then I would say that you can physically maintain them at the same current time. However, I think that the forum would have to be broken up so that different time periods exist in different sections of the forum.

[Ratty Poe]

I'm not sure if that answers my question completely or I'm just confused.... you mentioned managing different characters in different timezones; I mean managing the same character, but (should I?) allow them to be in different places (locations, not times) at once.

[Lynx]

On an RP forum I run, we do allow liquid time. I suppose it really boils down to whether you're comfortable or not with permitting liquid time - as there really is no "right or wrong" answer here.

[Sagamohr]

What Lynx said- it really is more of a personal preference, and there really isn't a right or wrong answer, but some genres require liquid time to keep plots moving, and ultimately if you want to keep players from getting bored and feeling boxed in, liquid time is a great way to encourage movement and plot-freedom. On my forum, one 'character type' can only move to/progress to the next boards after they've completed a task, but another member type (once unlocked), will have full range of the board with liquid time.

[Kami]

Im an advocate of limited liquid time -- I generally give an overall time frame (eg: Summer of 2010 or whatever is applicable to the RP) and allow people to RP within that time frame.

It's more restrictive than true liquid time in that it forces people to a specific time period, but also allows for some freedom to have multiple threads going.

[Ratty Poe]

Thank you so much for your responses! Sorry for not replying sooner! It's all very helpful and I appreciate it very much.

Mar 3, 2020 10:00:29 GMT -8 Kami said:

Im an advocate of limited liquid time -- I generally give an overall time frame (eg: Summer of 2010 or whatever is applicable to the RP) and allow people to RP within that time frame.

It's more restrictive than true liquid time in that it forces people to a specific time period, but also allows for some freedom to have multiple threads going.

Can you explain this a little more? I like that idea and I'd love to know more how it worked. So basically everyone stays in a generic time frame? How does the time frame ever "progress" or is it stuck in one time forever?

Thank you so much for your helpful responses!!

[Kami]

Yeah sure i'd love to elaborate!

So basically you've got the gist of it. Let's say the setting is a real life slice of life somewhere in the northern hemisphere, and the time frame is Summer, 2020. Any player can create threads based on the ~3 months of summer in whatever order they'd like. Generally players will go linear and decide okay thread 1, thread 2, thread 3 are consecutive (even as they play them simultaneously) and make references to things that happened "a few days ago" or "a few weeks ago" etc. Sometimes players are bolder and they'll do future threads towards the end of the stated time frame because they have a solid idea of where they want their character(s) to be when the season ends before they do "beginning" ones. Personally, I'm a fly-by-seater. I'll start a thread and based on how the interaction goes, I'll decide where to put this in my character's timeline.

Of course, this does require a bit more coordination with people involved in big plotlines / or if you have a repeat partner so you don't accidentally reference the same event as two different times.

The time frame progression is up to you -- some admins keep to a tight schedule (X ingame time is equal to Y RL time), some let the flow of RP dictate and only move on when activity flags (warning, can be double-edged), and others kinda do a mix of both (they'll let players dictate the flow unless it exceeds a certain RL frame or until the players progress the plot to a point where the admins can introduce the next part of the story). The beauty imo is that it's really up to the admin and how they want to pace the chain of events.

[¡Lance!]

Alot of the forums that I've either been a part of or ran had a system which could be considered liquid time? Like you could have multiple threads with one character but you were usually advised to limit it to three, especially considering one of the main sites was much more survival horror which meant things could easily effect your character in permanent ways. 

But the way we handled our system was simple, You could have multiple threads with one character take place in the same day as long as each thread was a different time of day. Or you could space it out further to like a day or so before or after. Once again though this system could get rather confusing if you're not used to it. Lately though we've simplified it to where you have to stay to the current day that it is in RL, (The year is relative to the setting), and you can have multiple threads which may take place in the space of hours. This helps the staff keep a tab on all events going on in the forum and able to post over arching plot summary threads. 

It also helps the players not burn out on threads while also not letting them get to far ahead of all the other players story wise. (If you're asking how we maintain it with slower posters that's easy, players are allowed to finish the RP's and threads they're in, even if it's 3 days later IRL.)