Ner?

[moonwise]

Can I ask...

What is campfuckudie? Why is everyone batshit about getting into it? What's the allure - exclusivity, or large amounts of crack?

Respondents should take into account that I do not "get" community RPing. Thank you.

Comments

[ramothhe.livejournal.com]

Just another example of people who probably have no education, no jobs, and far too much time on their hands. I could name a million others just like it- not worth your time.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

I guess I'll tell you how I got into it, and you can probably see the appeal from there, or at least what appeals to me, rather than trying to pin it down essay style.

Someone approached me at about this time last year about doing a fandom RP. I never normally would have considered it, but I was flattered, and let it never be said I'm not an ego whore. So I signed up for a minor but significant character and played along.

I liked it. I hadn't done any sort of roleplay since high school, and it was fun to put myself in another character and see what came out. It felt very much like improv-- a little bit theater, a little bit writing exercise. The fandom RP didn't work out, but it had been a lot of fun.

So when someone talked about campfuckudie on my friendlist, I went to check it out. Zombie summer camp sounded like fun-- an utterly improbable situation for characters to find themselves in. I apped as Artemis Fowl and got in. It was great. I made friends and indulged in a large amount of crack. Somehow I got a girlfriend. Somehow I apped two more characters, both of whom seem to be in she says as the votes still out on character #3.

Why am I loving it so much? I like playing a role, being someone else, getting to explore a character in a way you couldn't in fic. I like the exclusivity you're referring to-- everyone is voted on anonymously, so you don't just get people's friends, you get people who can meet a certain standard of writing and humor. I don't have to try to translate other people's bad grammar or l33t-speak, and there's a remarkably low amount of wank about people 'playing the character right' because they've been voted in.

The crack is a big amount of the appeal as well. I'm not moved to take anything too seriously, and I don't have to keep track of a Big Involved Storyline, which would kill me dead. I can just take every wacky thing as it comes-- hey, genderswitch!-- and roll with it as my character would, rather than planning out some kind of epic arc.

Glad to explain anything you need clarified. RPing's not for everyone, and fandom RPing isn't either.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I think one of the reasons people are batshit are getting in is just that-- that there's the blind vote. Knowing friends will not help you, or at least not enough, and it's really anxiety-inducing wondering if strangers will think you're good enough.

[fadingembers.livejournal.com]

Well, despite my having both an education AND a job, I want to get in because it looks like fun. I'm not a big RPG fan, but this one is very much for the silly and I want to play. Also, since it's so big, it's not necessarily required that I play a major role or go online every single night to participate. mistressrenet and sarahtheboring are both in it.

Also, they only open up apps every now and then, and you have to be approved to join, so it's not like you can just apply whenever. This is why it seems like everyone's going batshit about it RIGHT NOW.

[arafel.livejournal.com]

I'm not planning on joining - RPing always feels silly and awkward to me. However, two of the other respondents to this post are either participating in this RP or want to, and they're both educated, literate, and employed. Please be circumspect.

[arafel.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That was quite a thesis on why the RP is fun! As I've said in a previous comment, RPing feels very silly and awkward to me when I've tried it, but a great many of my friends really enjoy it. I can see why getting into it has that feel of a Greek frat/sorority rush...

[arafel.livejournal.com]

I hope you get in! :)

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I kind of realized it was a five-paragraph essay. Heh. But I thought it was the best way to hit all the reasons without having to go, 'what exactly are you wondering about?' XD

I think a good deal of it is the thwarted actress in me. And that I love to collaborate and it's not really an easy thing to do with conventional fic.

[ramothhe.livejournal.com]

Ah, well, I stand corrected then- always open to being proven wrong, as we all should be really.

[ramothhe.livejournal.com]

Apologies- I stand corrected apparently. I've seen semi similar communities that did seem rather dumb but your comment clarifies alot for me.

[arafel.livejournal.com]

I think a good deal of it is the thwarted actress in me.

Maybe that explains why I end up scratching my head a lot - I'm not much of an actress. ^_^ And yes, collaboration is hard unless you have a lot in common with your collaborator.

[jaina.livejournal.com]

Generalizations are fun.

[pantswarrior]

...I don't really get why it's so insanely popular either, and I love community RPs, even ones that have huge amounts of crack. Heck, right now I'm waiting impatiently to be tagged in omg_gb.

That one, though, I just don't really see the appeal of... maybe it's my love of making things make sense, and there's no real way to make that make sense as far as I can tell. Even if the tag I'm waiting for in omg_gb involves my MakubeX being seduced by his clone... in context, it makes sense. I don't think I could do something like "Characters from fandoms with very different settings! At camp! With zombies!" I'd be going "...But how did this character get to an era where they would have camp? What's the technology level, if we have people from Suikoden and people from Gundam Wing next to each other? Where did the zombies come from?" and thus not actually RPing at all. :P

Lighten up, Francis.

[skurtchasor.livejournal.com]

A brief glance at your blog might lead be to believe that you're also one of those super-otaku with no education, no job, and far too much time on your hands. Ten points to ramothhe for blatant hypocrisy and presumption.

I was mostly amused by campfuckudie. This coming from somebody who 1) has a PhD, 2) has a job related to said PhD, and 3) tends to believe that the majority of fanfic writers are far too obsessive about their chosen fandom(s). I've done tabletop RPG for almost two decades and never really saw the appeal of play-by-email/post, and in particular I'm pretty staunchly against using somebody else's characters and/or setting in any game I'm involved with. Not to mention that the recent posts seem to revolve around the uebertrite swap gender and "accidentally" bang your best friend and then angst about it once you're back to normal, so this thing had more than a few strikes against it coming in. But, like I said, it still managed to amuse me, probably because I didn't take it so damn seriously.

[memlu.livejournal.com]

When biztheinsane first mentioned the idea of CFUD it sounded like gold, mainly because it is totally batshit. I don't RP (too much energy! can't keep up!) but the idea sounded like gold - it's not like other RPs, in that it's multifandom, has this bizarre premise that basically results in Whatever the Hell You Want to Do, and, you know. The fun of seeing characters from various series interact (sort of). The only multifandom RP I know of is milliways_bar and that's a kind of crack all on its own. *g*

Re: Lighten up, Francis.

[arafel.livejournal.com]

ramothhe admitted she made a mistake - please don't take shots at her. I don't want a flame war in my journal because someone spoke in haste. ^_^;

Tabletop RPG seems to me to be more structured than the LJ RPs, thanks to sourcebooks and set universes etc. Personally, I enjoy creativity within the rules of the fandom/game: here's your universe, here's the limitations of that universe, go thou and work with it in clever ways.
Perhaps in a related fashion, I'm not a fan of the "look how totallie RANDOM we are WHEEEEEEEE" element in general.

Maybe it's that science nerd thing: here's what we know, here's your data set, here are your theories, synthesize something new. You might get lucky with the "all the shit that will stick" method, and it can be a good way to start out, but it's not a good way to end.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Actually, the zombies were created by the Camp Director in an attempt to resurrect her dead lover. And the setting's modern America and we often explain things like computers to people (which, however, explains why I've been lazy and chosen mostly modern humans for my characters).

[skurtchasor.livejournal.com]

My mistake--I assume that I was busy posting the above whilst ramothhe was in the middle of apologizing. Hypocrisy just happens to be #1 on my list of things that suck, this is probably a science nerd thing as well.

There are certainly tabletop RPG's that relish in hyperrandom postmodern assclownery, and I tend to steer clear of these in the same was as you do with fandom. One thing I found somewhat refreshing and amusing about campfuckudie was the sense that posts were in-character, many people even changing icons to reflect their character's mood. Maybe this is common nowadays and my experience is outdated, but I've always seen play-by-post as more of collaborative storytelling rather than acting out a role. And I don't have much interest in the former.

[octopedingenue]

I'm applying for CFUD because I'm friends with half a dozen of the people already taking part of it (all of whom are intelligent witty brilliant writer college students with jobs, I note), and I think it will be fun to play with them in another sandbox.

I took part briefly in another multifandom RP, sages_of_chaos, which is superficially similar to CFUD (multifandom randomosity, audience participation). But it was such a massive undertaking I quickly lost the energy and time for it. I'm applying for CFUD because it looks random enough to be silly fun but structured enough to be reassuring--I'm especially happy to see the rules against extended serious storylines and against sex, because those are exactly what made Sages too much for me to handle (and the application process keeps seventeen sucky clones of a single character from popping up).

I expect that at some point CFUD will grow as massive as Sages and collapse under the weight of its drama (like sunnydale_socks, another audience-heckling-invited RP I used to love before it grew to pretentious proportions). Hopefully I'll get to play with CFUD a little before then.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

The no-sex rule was a big plus for me too-- I never wanted to feel pressured to put out, so to speak. Good luck!

[pantswarrior]

Ah, okay... the impression I got from the userinfo (back when I started seeing people talk about it all the time, anyway) was "Yeah, do whatever you want, we don't care if it makes sense" which honestly did not strike me as the kind of RP I enjoy. Could be I got a very wrong impression.

I'm with arafel I guess, when she talks above about structure. I like structure. And although I guess there's more of that than I thought... well, when there's that many characters from that many worlds, I can't imagine that it's as structured as I prefer, or that any characters would feel like they had much significance in the grand scheme of things. More an MMORPG than a traditional RPG, I guess you could say, and while some people like that, I don't particularly. So I'm still rather "meh" on the concept. (Not that it matters - I'm certainly not all like "RAR DIE YOU HORRIBLE RP". Just not interested in taking part myself. ;) Which is probably just as well for everyone who does want to be a part of it - one less person to be potential competition for playing a character.)

[arafel.livejournal.com]

Regarding structure and the Camp: Zombies at summer camp might be interesting in and of itself, but zombies at summer camp crossing over with every anime that people want to drag in sounds very hard to keep track of. It's like one giant crossover fic, and I got over my crossover interest in the good old days of Star Trek/Star Wars hack fics.

[arafel.livejournal.com]

I've heard of milliways_bar - a friend of mine was participating in it, and things were not going well. If it caused that much angst, it was definitely not something I wanted to be involved in - there's enough angst IRL without Intarweb Angst.

[arafel.livejournal.com]

Buffy RP'ing was fairly popular, wasn't it? I seem to remember jaina talking about it. Do participants have to leave CFUD for applications to be opened again? That would keep down the critical mass of RP'ers.

[donna-c-punk.livejournal.com]

I usually like PBEM (play by email) RPing, when we get a good group of people together, but I never did catch on or understand the "style" of LJ RPing.

As for the camp RP, I'm pretty sure it's just the cracky aspect of it. I've read through the Journal from time to time and chuckled quite a bit at what was going on with characters from universes which I'm familiar. (Sasuke from Naruto was turned into a My Little Pony or something, and that killed me.)

Either way, I see it as a bunch of cats having a good time, even if I don't wholly understand what's so great about a multi-fandom RP in a Shaun of the Dead meets Battle Royale environment.

[octopedingenue]

The sunnydale_socks RP was spawned from thefirstevil journal (which doyle_sb4 started as a joke in season 6 and was the first and still best journal). It was cute and funny for a while (holden_vamp! be still my heart!), but other non-"Buffy" fandoms started getting crossed in and the game became more concerned with game-canon than "Buffy"-canon and it became this massive out of control flaming mass of dull.

CFUD players do have to leave the game or get kicked out before their character can be opened for re-application. I haven't been following long enoug or paid enough attention to catch all the leaving players, but I know that the original Tenjou Utena was kicked out for wildly out-of-character behavior, and the Ed from "Fullmetal Alchemist" was recently removed for inactivity (and everyone's torturing Al about it.) However, I don't know if characters have to be kicked out to add new characters in, period: applications are accepted at random times apparently at the mod's benevolent whim, and new characters have been added each time. :D

[octopedingenue]

RPs of any sort where people write long elaborate serious storylines raise alarm bells in me. That's way more effort and stress than I'd want to expend. I suck at most RPing, tabletop etc., because I just can't take that kind of storyline seriously enough to stay interested in it.

If I get into CFUD, I promise to give a pie to every household and to never angst in public!

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

I've done plenty of RPGing and really enjoyed it, but I absolutely do *not* get this online stuff. Much of the fun of RPGing was the people you were playing with, them actually being there and having a laugh. And it was *fun* - fun was the point. This stuff about being voted on seems to turn it into more of an emotional trauma for a number of people, and just leaves me wondering 'why bother?'

[jaina.livejournal.com]

Heh. As one of the original Sunnydale Socks and one who was at least observing until the end and never technically quit...you're so right.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I remember that whole thing splooging my friends list. I liked some of ther journals, especially thefirstevil... I think it was originally inspired by the Very Secret Diaries sort of thing, wasn't it? Anyway, I rapidly lost interest because the characters felt... like bad fanfic.

I like the idea of CFUD because it provides enough structure for a basis setting, but lets you run amuck within that setting. On the downside I dislike that the whole murder mystery plot isn't getting more attention--- sometimes I feel like the structure it has is not being heeded enough. Also, the whole "who is gay with who" thing sometimes bores me. If I get in I won't have sexuality be part of my version of a character. Unless I got in on a character who was all about sex... but I haven't applied for that sort of person.

I find the massive amounts of cahracters and fandoms interesting but intimidating. I don't know a lot of the book characters, I don't know the Bleach characters, and I don't know a lot of the game characters. i find it hard to identify several of them.

What's this "no sex rule" someone mentioned? I thought CFUD had lots of nookie goin' on.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, it's certainly not for everyone. I find the chaos a bit of a nice break from having to stress out about canon accuracy in my stories-- it's more play, I guess I'd say.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

We haven't been given much information to go on on the mystery, and it is just supposed to be the thin MacGuffin that keeps us in camp.

A lot of the campers have their backgrounds in their userinfo, and when you're new it's easy to play clueless and do a lot of 'who are you again?' stuff. (I just got Omi in a hell of a lot of trouble that way, actually.)

You're not allowed to do more than kissing and a little groping (but actually, that's pushing the rules as written in the userinfo). There's a lot of boyfriending and suchlike but most of it's pretty innocent (the most popular couple has kissed I think once).

I always consider sexuality to be part of a character, though not all. Sanzo I can play completely attraction-free though. Heh.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Are you doing the Sanzo that just got voted in? I read that app. Pretty funny.

I was told that there was only the two votes for camp counselors, and I read those posts, but I've seen new posters today who I didn't see in the voting... the whole counselor thing is still confusing for me. I really wish they'd update the info page to reflect new characters so I can see who's taken and who is who.

I hope the post the new poll soon. I applied the other night so I should be put to vote. Cross your fingers for me! I'm trying a different character than what I tried last time. Actually, choosing characters has proven really really tricky for me.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

The counselor thing was a little confusing. But the info page is updated for all the non-counselor-character. And I'll keep my fingers crossed! It was really hard for me to find the right people too. I've kept a slot open for Sanzo since I started because I've always wanted to be him, and Omi was an outcropping of my frustrations of playing very young, very calculated Artemis.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

I like the vote because it gives a fair amount of democracy to the process (the last RP I was in I got asked quite near the end when all the 'good' characters were taken), because it assures a certain amount of quality to the writing (you know me), and because it assures most of the time people are going to be comfortable with the character as played (another problem with my last online RP). But I agree that if it's traumatic and stressful for you, you shouldn't do it.

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

Even in Rping, I was always big on plot. I need things to have reasons, to make sense, to know there's organisation behind at all. I hate randomness, because you can't play logically in a random environment.