We need to talk about roleplay events and about the World Forum.
Why do we need to talk about this in my opinion? Because I need feedback. I am unsure what the community expects, whether I am stressing myself too much or too little. I am unsure, whether some of the established concepts simply do not work anymore or need an update. I really hope, that y’all have some input for me and that this discussion will bring a change to how we approach roleplay events in the future.
I’ll start this topic by providing you my personal assessment of the current situation around this topic and then I will ask some very general questions to get the discussion started. I hope to be able to propose some changes based on your reactions and whatever ideas come to my mind in the next few days.
1) Some assessments
1.1) The Football World Championships
Sports in roleplay are always existing. You can go to any NationStates roleplay community and you will find some sort of world cup currently in its planning stages or execution. Just now we’ve had Izaak’s Keanu & Hurley hosting a rugby world cup again, but we’ve also had Olympics by Besern or Ryccia already, a basketball world cup by Bzerneleg, a rally race by Izaak and probably even more tournaments like this by other roleplayers. Kringle is working on a tool we could use for those tournaments in the future as an alternative to dice or Xkorinate.
The most important roleplay sports event we have, if I may say so, was introduced by Qwert in 2017 however: The Football World Championship (FWC). Just like in real life, football does connect people and as such it doesn’t come as a surprise, that whenever registration opens, the tournament slots fill up quickly.
After a successful debut, I took over the world cup for two or three years before handing over the roleplay to others due to them winning the previous tournaments. In the “off-season”, Qwert and I worked on a history of the Football World Cup, which was supposed to receive a huge update as of last year, when I had the idea (and I felt the community agreeing with me), that we can or should account for more realism in the FWC history and the fluctuation in the playerbase.
Now we have had almost two years without any world cup due to time constraints by other roleplayers. I also didn’t push for them to do anything, because firstly no one should be exactly forced to host an event like this, secondly I had very little time especially last year myself and lastly working on this revised FWC history has been (and would still be) a lot more work and a lot less fun than I originally anticipated.
Still, it didn’t seem to me, anyone is missing anything at the moment or that there is a huge drive from within the community to keep the FWC alive (apart from one or two roleplayers asking, if I’ve finally finished the new stats, so they can claim one of the placeholders for themselves).
1.2) Cultural festivals
In 2021 I thought, introducing something fresh to the roleplay community would be a good idea, especially as one noticed with the world cups/sports events, that people did not really tend to write a lot about them – which goes kind of against the point of having a roleplay tournament in my opinion, because preferably it should not all be just stats or all just posts by the hosting roleplayer.
As such the idea of a cultural festival was born, in which players would need to invent a series, a movie or a staging for a musical performance. I dubbed it the “Southern Gate Festival” and “Pacivision”. While interest wasn’t too low, truth be told, it was still quite below my expectations. And while the first edition of the SGF as well as the 2nd edition of Pacivision really ignited some fire in the community, I couldn’t sense an excitement that was matching mine when I introduced the ideas to the community. A definite low-light for me was last year’s Pacivision Song Contest. It had its reasons, why it went down the way it did, but it saddens me nonetheless.
1.3) The World Forum
The World Forum was originally supposed to be a little model UN. Well, actually, something between the UN and just a discussion forum for policies. The roleplayers, who focused on developing the WF, will have eventually made it less and less of a forum and more like the UN, which was criticized IRP.
IC-ly and OOC-ly the WF was also criticized for being as slow as a huge tanker, as ineffective as its IRL counterpart, potentially not even as fun. The election process and the drafting of resolutions take a long time, have gotten quite complicated and in the end don’t really turn into results affecting the roleplay much/at all.
The WF seems like a nice thing to have, a good/better alternative to drafting World Assembly resolutions over on gameside, an arena to have IC debates on policies or semantics, but overall it seems to me, that having the WF as an active roleplaying instrument, is seen as a liability, something to purposefully overlook, forget and, if necessary, target some hate against to profile one own’s nation.
2.) Summary
From my point of view, we seem to have turned the wrong way at some point, but I don’t know where, why and how.
I only know the following:
It cannot be, that we have roleplay events that we try to hold annually, that don’t interest the community sufficiently enough to actively participate in them.
It cannot be, that those roleplay events – especially the FWC or anything around the WF – stop working and being played out, if us roleplay moderators don’t find the time, mood or creativity for them.
It cannot be, that we have the very same events now over on the NationStates Roleplay Forum hosted by other members of TSP. Not because they are not allowed to host such an event or rather make use of the NS infrastructure instead of our regional one, but because we literally compete against those off-site events. We are the roleplay community of TSP. We want new people to join this wonderful space and not stay over on off-site. This cannot work, if we have official TSP-RP events outsourced there.
It cannot be, that there are roleplayers actively trying to improve or use the concept of the WF only for it to likely be a waste of time and nerves.
3.) Questions
Do you agree with what I said above? I know, my wording might have been a bit harsh here and there, but I did not intend to attack anyone and honestly, I just wanted to give you an honest insight to my emotions and overall thoughts on this topic too. I cannot sugarcoat everything everytime.
Do you have any constructive criticism to share?
Where do you see the roleplay moderators (not) filling their role adequately (regarding this topic)?
What thoughts and emotions were invoked by this topic in you?
Please comment below. I hope for a constructive, civil, but also honest dialogue.