Outplay 2024 - Crowdsourcing Ideas

[Sara Scales]

So, I don't really have a horse in this race, having just arrived on site, and never being previously involved in this. But the idea seemed really interesting, so I did a cursory skim through the past. I'm sure I missed everything significant about past decisions. And I'm pretty sure you've made them for this year anyway, but futility has never stopped me from having opinions before.

I think a "best player" contest should speak to four goals, in no particular order:

• Can you play a role? This is a competition about roleplaying, on a roleplaying gaming forum. So, how good are you at the character development and personification aspects of the hobby. Within whatever word limit is provided, do you convey your character's emotions? Are your choices internally consistent? Does your character feel like a person, rather than a cartoon character, paper cutout, or soulless cliché?
• Can you play the game? The counterbalance to the previous point. I see that in the past, there were categories of competition for different systems and that lately you've opted to have minimal mechanics at all. But that ignores something important: the best gamers aren't just good at the theater of gaming, but the rules as well. My take on how to do this? Your system is another aspect of character creation (perhaps Outplay characters are "standard base characters from whatever system"). It doesn't matter what rules you use, after all. You're not directly opposing others. What matters is that you know your rules set, and can convey that system mastery in your posts.
• Can you make use of the PBP format? There's some overlap with the first point, because a truly poor writer won't convey much about their character. But do you have brilliant, memorable prose in general? Are your posts formatted in a way that's visually appealing, but not excessive? Do you adhere to technical limits, like word counts?
• And lastly, do your chosen actions and decisions make you the kind of player, and your character the type.of character, that others would want to play alongside? Random parties tossed together in a creative competition are not entirely unlike the random table of characters you find in organized play events at conventions. Did you bring something that's designed to hog the limelight? Did you bring something that fills such niche roles, you depend entirely on others? Or did you rise to the occasion, with a character who helps a group of happenstance companions face their fantasy world together as a team?

[Admin Bhelogan]

Hey, welcome to RPGX Sara Scales! I think you have done a fantastic job of summarizing a lot of what goes into Outplay in your listed objectives. To me, your last point is the most important, but they are all excellent points.

I've gone through phases where I loved the mechanical crunch of very in-depth systems, then to the other extreme freedom of rules-light systems. I'm kind of settling into a happy medium right now.

Hopefully, come May and June, you will be around to check out what we have cooked up! There will be plenty of site announcements to keep you up today (along with our Hall of Fame event that will be wrapping up around the time Outplay starts).

[Sara Scales]

Originally Posted by Bhelogan

I've gone through phases where I loved the mechanical crunch of very in-depth systems, then to the other extreme freedom of rules-light systems. I'm kind of settling into a happy medium right now.

I think there's a place for the whole spectrum of rules intensity, even if the really rules light games are mostly not my kettle of fish. But from a competitive scoring standpoint, that doesn't really matter. You can ask the same sorts of questions regardless of system. For example: Does this post indicate a high level of familiarity and competence with the system used? Does this post leverage the strengths of its system to support the actions being described?

Regardless, obviously, I agree that I wouldn't weight those four categories equally. The "would other people want to play with this?" test does need to be a big one. Because I've done some convention ging over the years, and sometimes that's a lot of fun, but sometimes... well, not everyone would score very highly there, let's just say.

[Squeak]

I swear with all of my being that I am not Sara.

But for a newcomer, she has some redonculously accurate comments.

Sara - you are a most welcome addition to our forum!

[Sara Scales]

Originally Posted by Squeak

I swear with all of my being that I am not Sara.

But for a newcomer, she has some redonculously accurate comments.

Sara - you are a most welcome addition to our forum!

You're quite kind! I did, to be fair, spend a lot of time looking over the content here before jumping in to participate. I figured it was like getting a new RPG book; everything works so much better if you've read through the rules before you try to play. I hadn't actually looking into the site competitions ahead of time, though. Might have to see how that goes for me when Outplay time comes around again, eh?

But something along these lines was actually a conversation I'd had with a friend a couple years back... he's a big believer in convention gaming, being a card-carrying member of the Pathfinder Society and the Starfinder Society and a veteran of Living Grayhawk and some LARP society or another, and who knows what else. Some of those events have had a "Best Roleplayer" award in one form or another, and since we're both sort of Excel junkies, we brainstormed whether there might be a way for the table GMs to actually score such things. Rather than having it be, say, a player vote, which somehow always ends up supporting someone who is personally charismatic (and/or whatever meme build people are amused by) even if they're not actually otherwise a great table-mate. I don't think we ever really concluded anything, but then it turns out you're actually trying to do that as its own thing, and I had to drag my thoughts out of wherever I'd apparently been keeping them.

[Kaigen]

Those ideas do make sense, though I wonder as a practical matter how well you can judge characters from disparate systems of varying complexity on the same "system mastery" scale. Say on the one end, you have players with characters from Lasers and Feelings and Wanderhome, and on the other end, you have lovingly crafted artisanal builds from D&D 3.X and Shadowrun. Can you meaningfully compare the mastery of rules on display by each of those players?

[Sara Scales]

Originally Posted by Kaigen

Those ideas do make sense, though I wonder as a practical matter how well you can judge characters from disparate systems of varying complexity on the same "system mastery" scale. Say on the one end, you have players with characters from Lasers and Feelings and Wanderhome, and on the other end, you have lovingly crafted artisanal builds from D&D 3.X and Shadowrun. Can you meaningfully compare the mastery of rules on display by each of those players?

Well, I'm not saying it's particularly easy. But I'd like to think you could sort of adjudicate how well the tournament roleplaying posts are supported by the system, and vice versa. Obviously there's more optimization possible in 3.5 than in a rules-light system, but this isn't an optimization contest (and blatant optimization doesn't reflect the right kind of system mastery).

A 3.5 character that demonstrates good system mastery might find creative uses for skills and might craft a scene that shows how the character views their class features outside of pure mechanical impact. Further down the Crunchy Scale, a player with good system mastery of, say, Fate, could demonstrate how their Aspects support their characterization, or demonstrate how they could use the environment to Create Advantage (for themselves or others, as appropriate). In contrast, players would score poorly if they don't know how to build a character in their chosen system, don't seem to understand how their characters work mechanically, or who fail to integrate mechanics and roleplaying (or can't do so believably).

I wasn't really familiar with either of the systems you named, so I looked them up! One thing that I suppose would have to be established is that some systems might simply not be compatible with the expectations of the contest. After all, if the contest requires that players create somewhat stereotypical late-teens/early-twenties nascent adventurers (in whatever setting), then making a character from Exalted wouldn't be appropriate. Nor would characters out of whichever version of Vampire, although mortal World/Chronicle of Darkness characters might very well be! And you could imagine a different year's contest where the challenge asked for characters with a mythical, cinematic tone where something from Exalted would be relevant, but where a Trail of Cthulhu character would be out of place. Likewise, if it was clearly defined that the characters would need to overcome challenges that include traditional combat (again, in some form), then the pacifist characters of Wanderhome would not fit that expectation. Maybe the solution would be a list of pre-approved systems, with others able to be submitted for consideration during some pre-event sign-up period?

[bananabadger]

Sara! I hope you consider throwing your hat into the ring for this year’s outplay! It sounds like you might enjoy giving it a try!

[Sara Scales]

Originally Posted by bananabadger

Sara! I hope you consider throwing your hat into the ring for this year’s outplay! It sounds like you might enjoy giving it a try!

Pretty sure I'll be giving it a shot. Probably will also give the DM version of the contest a try as well.

[Yoshimi]

I played only once, in 2021. I have no regrets about anything from that year. The system had some kinks for sure but my mission was accomplished of becoming more of a part of the community.

I haven't played again due to time commitment first and foremost. I'm not as excited by non-fantasy themes but I'd be willing to try new settings if I had the time. My team communicated via Discord right up to the ending post and it was really fun but took a lot of attention because of the real-time interaction. My family's summer vacation was moderately disrupted because of my need to put things together with my Outplay team by the deadlines. I don't know how you fix that.

The judging that year included both positive comments and constructive criticisms and I believe it made me a better writer. I don't know if it got harsher in subsequent years. The game is literally based on Survivor which is not a nice game. Outplay was not as mean as the real thing.

[ridin gaijin]

I'd like to bump this thread to make sure a couple of masterminds get heaps of credit for time and effort put into Outplay this year. It didn't pan out, but that doesn't change how hard they worked.

Bhelogan started planning back in January. They architected the whole endeavor and were deeply involved in every step of planning and creation, including brainstorming and guiding prospective judges and DMs. Bhelogan also spent their own funds on prizes for participants.

Savoylen let imagination run wild, investing energy and creativity into designing (and maybe physically creating?) some boss prizes for the winner. We saw many behind-the-scenes iterations of logos, prize design and more.

If you participated in Outplay in the past, or perhaps just watched from the stands, I hope you'll consider letting these folks know their work this year was appreciated.

[Ildrahil]

Amen Gaijin. Bhelogan and Savoy are two of our stalwarts here, always volunteering to help.