Despite all the communication tools at our dispoal–in game client, guild forums, raid forums, blogs, Wave and Twitter–sometimes the message doesn’t get through. Maybe someone didn’t check the forum, maybe someone lost their internet access at work,  or maybe it’s as simple as someone just forgot a name on email. Regardless of the mixup, the results are similar: Mixed up time lines, hurt feelings, the threat of RetConsand another Real Life complication to the RP.  How can we prevent this from occuring in our stories?

The more people invovled in a story, the less control one has. Unless your guild has a position of rotating GM/Storyteller, the responsibility is diffused by each person who is organizing the story. Notice the phrase “diffused by each person…” There is a psychological phenomeon called,wait for it, Diffusion of Responsibility that states that individuals in a group tend to assume that someone else is responsible for the organiziation and activity of a group.

There is a way to address diffusion of responsibility: assign tasks to individuals. If a specific piece of fic needs to be written before the rp event, assign someone to write said fic. If there are NPCs that are needed for a particular event, assign someone to coordinate with the NPCs.  It seems simple enough:  Communicate what you need so you can get it.  Far too often, however, individuals do not clearly indicate what roles they want, or need, for their stories.

There is, of course, another way to improve communication for a Story/RP event: Simplify. By this I mean edit the plot and the events so the rest of your circle can decide how they participate. For instance, in the Wildfire Riders Wrathgate Event, we kept it fairly simple:  Watch the cut scene, read the first italics post, tell the rest of the guild what happened. While the event was coordinated, it shifted the responsibility  the organizer to the characters.  The players were responsible for informing the guild what their characters did.   While it did not go perfectly, I think our Wrathgate model worked amazingly well. It has provided every participant with a solid foundation for Wrath RP, and it let us all participate to the level of our ability.

When we communicate with each other, we need to clarify the roles, and responsibilities, we that have in the RP. What we should communicate are simple, easy to process tasks. Even elaborate, ensemble based RP can
be pulled off if we communicate in simple, easy to grok terms.