Holistic vs "As of Now" Character Edits
Under the current system, when a player edits their character, that change is reflected by all posts made by that player, however sometimes a player wants to have their character evolve through the story and have their description/avatar reflect that. For example, one character in a story I'm a player in switched sides for a little while, switching to an alternate persona, and edited their profile to match, however, this change was reflected by the entirety of the story, all the way back to the first scene. When I first logged in after the change, I was confused and didn't understand the change until I read the post detailing it. This can also be a spoiler problem for those reading along in a story that is ongoing.
So my idea would be to give the player the option, when editing their character, to make their changes either Holistic (affecting all previous posts, such as correcting typos in the description or finding a better avatar) or "From Now On" (allowing for stated character evolution, preserving the previous version(s) of the character).
I think this would be great for longer stories whose characters change over the course of it, without forcing them to either be stuck with the initial (and more and more inaccurate) character profile or lose previous versions of their character by making those changes.
Grant
shared this idea
FYI we are looking at ways to do this. One that we particularly like is to link “as of now” edits to playing your Nature card, and thus making it a big event in your character’s evolution. For example, when Luke’s Nature card changes from “Farmboy” to “Rebel pilot”, and his photo and description get updated to match.
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Robert Mohr
commented
I was just looking to submit an idea like this myself--this is definitely an interesting idea.
I don't want it to *replace* the character edits entirely (sometimes you really are just cleaning things up), but having the ability to add a new *version* of the character description and image when certain points in the game come up, that would then show up for readers only once that point was reached, would be a major plus.
I agree with the submitter that images in particular can be spoilers or cause confusion. For instance, a major point with one of my characters was a mystery about just what he might be--when the reveal eventually came near the very end of the story, I changed his image to reveal his true form. However, anyone who reads the story after that point can just see his true form as his image from the beginning, lessening the impact.
Likewise, I've got a game going now where some of the characters ended up transformed by a vindictive genie's willful misinterpretation of their wishes. Players have edited their character images to reflect the change, but if people are reading from the beginning, they could get the wrong idea about who the characters originally were!
Even looking at it from the standpoint of the character description this could be a nice positive for Storium, allowing you to use your character page as a kind of running record / in-game history or keep track of reveals. Definitely quite in favor of this.
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D. Woods
commented
This makes sense. Characters should have character arcs, where they change from one state of being into another. Changing the profile should reflect this.