Idea
The Pun Tyrant
Length requirements: Asking for a particular amount of words, lines, paragraphs or the like for each post as a rule in the roleplay. It's something that happens often and just as often is complained about, though not in the same place. Length requirements can be stiffling, sometimes you just don't know what to write or may lack the time in the day to write that much. They can also be an ill-fit for, say, a back and forth conversation where maybe telling someone you liked their dinner doesn't take two bulky paragraphs. Indeed many write larger posts without needing requirements and possibly find the idea of being "required" to be their specific grievance.
All of these are valid complaints, and if you follow me that far, then the question becomes: Why would anyone want to have them?
That is what I want to make a case for today. I want to defend why I and plenty of others not only have length requirements, but why indeed I personally seek them out in roleplays when choosing whether or not to join them. I am making this a thread because it is such a common thing that is brought up and because I feel it is a topic worth going in-depth about.
Part 1: Assumptions
Before we begin discussing this there are some assumptions I would like to state I will be working with, and for that reason I wish to justify. These are:
1. There isn't an inherent quality factor in length. This is to say that the mere fact you wrote something in more words or less words is not by itself an indicator that something is better or worse writing, though other factors which are statistically or tangentially associated by indicate a difference in skill (for instance if you write a bigger description because you're not able to actually describe the thing, cetris parius someone who can do the latter would be more skilled).
2.While I will be addressing the point of less skilled / unskilled writers of a particular play style, I will default to assuming the person "knows what they are doing" and is attempting to write in the style that suits them.
3.Nobody is entitled to having another roleplay with them. The one making the roleplay has no right to demand that others join, nor does one attempting to join have the right to join on that basis alone.
4.The primary purpose of roleplaying is personal satisfaction (this is usually taken to be "fun" but that isn't always necessarily the case for everyone). Different people enjoy different things, therefore there will be different ways to fulfill the primary purpose.
The first assumption is a matter of understanding that using less words does not automatically mean you have a higher density of content, "saying more with less" as some might put it. Yes you may have the capacity to say the major points in a more succint manner, but in the process you can lose detail or implications. At some point, "saying more with less" becomes just "saying less and expecting the other person to read your mind and get the stuff you didn't actually write". Where this point is is debatable, but it exists and if you can't agree with that then I'll have to ask you to at least temporarily concede me that point so we can have a discussion at all.
The second assumption is present because unskilled / newer writers are prone to a lot of mistakes and not use their 'tools of choice' properly. As a certain professor of mine once said "there is often one way to do something right and an infinite number of ways to do something stupid". The value of something needs to be explained using cases were it works, even if one must remain aware of the cases where it doesn't.
The third assumption is the answer to an admittedly uncommon complaint: That if you have length requirements then you're somehow enacting some injustice (my words not theirs) against others who may want to join but may not want to follow the rule in question. I would posit that, on the contrary, it would be unfair to prevent someone from being able to make or join a roleplay with certain rules or topics just because there might be an unrelated someone out in the ether who wouldn't be happy in the roleplay, or that the rules for deciding who can be in a roleplay should be determined by skill or willingness without a strong element of compatibility.
The fourth assumption is here because it has one key implication: There are a variety of mindsets and tastes. Something seeming better to you - or boring to you, exciting... - even something satisfying all you want, does not mean it will necessarily meet the criteria for another person. One should be careful when assuming that another values the same you do, because if they don't, then it's only natural they would adopt different methods from you. At least in roleplay you have no obligation (beyond that minimum of human decency, following the rules and contributing to the roleplay) to answer to an audience.
All of these assumptions will be taken as true moving forward in this thread. Still, I think for the most part those that complain about length requirements would still agree with those assumptions. They would still think people don't have an obligation to include others nor a right to be included in a particular roleplay, they would agree that roleplaying is first and foremost for fun, and they would at least understand why I am addressing this generally assuming at least somewhat skilled writers.
Part 2:Merits of Length
If you read the previous part properly then you know the answer: There are none. Length by itself does not improve quality, therefore the merits of length are effectively non-existent.
What, though, if there was something that length brought with it that, beyond length itself, is valuable? Something that perhaps you can have even if length isn't necessarily present, but which has a strong correlation to it, making length a good indicator of it?
Well, as it turns out from my experience, there are three:
A) Detail - Descriptiveness tends to come hand in hand with longer length. Often it's one of the keys requirements to even get to the length consistently. I think that's enough to explain it though I do find it ironic how simple it came to be compared to the other two haha.
B) Content (per post) - I don't think I'm alone in saying that when I played in chat RPs (skype, discord, and some sites) one thing that stood out to me was just how much time I was using per day, practically uninterrupted, just to get through small scenes (if that). This is because contrary to my expectations each post sent was actually filled with a lot of action that on the surface moved things forward but from a structural perspective barely did anything. Three long posts of characters discussing something will often end in characters moving on from the conversation, but a more back and forth one can take several times the length even accounting for the difference in size. A conversation in larger posts ends up being shorter because a lot of the in-betweens of a more natural conversation, and a lot of the banter, is often tossed aside because it doesn't fit the longer string of dialogue. A lot more things can happen in a small scene with smaller posts, but assuming a proportional timing the longer posts are likely to end up going through the key events faster while adding detail about other things as well, which the smaller posts may or may not depending on the immediate relevance of those details to the characters or plot.
C) Story Structure - Smaller posts are written more spontaneously, and this is one of the reasons why they can get burned out by length requirements more easily (something I will address later). It's also linked to something I believe the majority of RPs prefer or at least think they prefer (without having actually tried the alternative a lot of the time): By-the-seat-of-your-pants writing, AKA discovery writing. Writing which, as opposed to planned writing which formulates a plan for how things are before writing them, just metaphorically lets the characters or story take charge and follow through with the consequences of what they do or have happen as it they see it. Small posts are far more conductive to this than longer ones, but that reason too more planning-focused roleplayers tend to have longer posts as well, and by their nature, more structured posts as well. Planning-based writers are, by definition, the ones aware of the destination and the big picture of the story. In roleplay this may translate more into the big picture of the post than the roleplay itself, but even then they might have a strong idea of where they want to take their characters at the very least, without being utterly inflexible. This means this type of writer organize the way they write more, and make use of more writing techniques/tools than a discovery writer could, namely foreshadowing. It's a lot harder to foreshadow things in discovery writing because you don't know yet if anything will actually be relevant. Planning, however, will make it relevant barring a circumstance that would really get in the way. Smaller posts tend to be more disorganized and spontaneous, longer posts tend to be more structured and planned. Smaller posts focus on what's happening right now, but longer posts have a higher chance of considering how that post is framed in the big picture of the roleplay, of nothing else, by looking backward.
The three above you can most certainly have without length. I know at least a few people who even advocate for shorter posts being preferential and the "less is more" attitude, but whose posts are beautiful and well-detailed. No doubt, those posts are filled with content too. But I would suggest that players who want shorter posts also tend to care less about being detailed or putting a lot of content in a given post. Their focus is more on moving the action / plot along. But my point is not that length causes more content or more detail, rather it's that it's far more common for posts with more length to also have more detail and more content per post.
Now it's true I haven't exactly conducted a statistical investigation into this and I'm relying mostly on my personal experience, but I do believe this to be a statistical reality. It's quite relevant, when you consider that you don't really have an easy metric for either detail nor content. You can't say "I have detail 2" or "there's 3.467 content in this post". But you can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt "I wrote at least 500 words in this post".
Length, without being detail, content, or story structure is something I and no doubt many others have found to be a good proxy for those three things.
Part 3: Objections to Length Requirements
Sometimes a good way to look at the merits of something can be by looking at its flaws and where it's lacking.
The following are some of the more common objections to length requirements I've seen, barring any that would be dismissed by the assumptions alone:
Length requirements don't work well with some scenes, like combat or back and forth dialogue.
This is for the most part true. There are some solutions, like collaborative posts, but often a more flexible line is better for a more organic movement of the action, and some scenes are more realistic happening in small instances (again the dialogue example, it's more realistic for a conversation to be back and forth than long strings of dialogue).
That being said, I would say it's absolutely possible to keep things organic - realistic even - without discarding post length. These happens in two main ways: First, one could simply focus on other aspects than the particular action. Unlike dialogue or combat actions, the descriptions of the environment, character thoughts, etc... Aren't limited to the timeframe. I would argue as well that if we value realism then body language, constant trains of thought and taking in a lot of information at once is something we do every second of every day without even realizing it a lot of the time. How is the texture of whatever you're touching, what are you smelling, how does everything in front of you look like... all of this and more is stuff your brain processes every moment, though it does cut out from your attention things it finds less relevant.
Second there's the concept of "fluid time". It's a concept describing several things being written in parallel which may be happening in several different moments chronologically. Your post might include dialogue for a conversation while the second half has your character going to another room, and other posts may continue both lines, furthering the conversation while exploring the contents of the room. This is a little trick very frequently found and less frequently thought about in group RPs and longer-post RPs alike. For obvious reasons posts that contain several jumps in time and can frequently be very much retroactive isn't really a natural-sounding thing. However, I have rarely found a person who gave this much thought, let alone was actually annoyed by this to any great extent. What it suggests to me is that this has become entrenched in the way many of us RP and the benefits of potentially working in several chronologically close but still separate moments of action outweight the strangeness.
Lets say, though, that you don't buy what I said above. That you think it (at least in general) just can't be done to keep things organic with long posts, and fluid time is just not something you think should ever be a thing. Then I should ask: What makes being organic or realistic the end all be all of dialogue? Would we really find it more immersive if even the most well-spoken characters had constant breaks, sudden inputs, random noises and the like that real life dialogue has? Does sounding natural truly triumph above every other aspect - or it be simply a facet of dialogue's quality, one which perhaps other styles of writing value less? Perhaps the way the dialogue expresses the character, or helps aid in the plot, makes for worldbuilding or foreshadowing, etc... Or maybe they simply find such dialogue more expressive?
Length requirements are arbitrary
Not exactly. I would agree if you said that "a lot of people have length requirements with only vague reasons as to why they are that length". If you ask why a paragraph a common response is "because I think two paragraphs would be too much but I also don't want one liners". But if you were to try to pursue the questioning further you'd be unlikely to get a much better answer than "just because". I would argue though, that this is a matter of custom and imitation. New players look at how things are done on the site, and assume this how something is "supposed" to be done, and later it just becomes a habit to ask for one of those common standard lengths.
Then there's people like myself. People who have tried and experimented with several different lengths (and even other modes to try to get more content-rich posts but I'm getting ahead of myself) and found that below a certain threshold things just didn't work as well for them. I tried content requirements, I tried no requirements, I tried line type requirements and word type requirements. Nowadays my interest checks often sport both a line or a word requirement, depending on the preference of the partner/players. I've found that the latter has worked best for me, as they both have the necessary simplicity (content requirements could be hard to check or know if you met them) and allow them to fulfill their purpose, which I will talk about later. The point, however, is that this was not arbitrary, it was the result of my personal experiences and experimentations as well as me gaining more knowledge about my own preferences in roleplaying that led me to come up with the numbers I now use.
Be it by custom, imitation or experience length requirements are rarely if ever truly arbitrary. This can be seen as a technicality though: Sure they are technically not without any reason, but surely "I just do it because other people do it / by force of habit" is not much of a reason either? I would argue there's merit in it though, as even if you don't personally know it, it's not unreasonable to presume that if people in general or you yourself in the past did something, then there likely was a reason for it. Custom or imitation are really a matter of trust towards something you don't feel you can't (or maybe you just don't feel like trying to) do yourself. Perhaps this trust is ill-advised but that is a topic for another discussion.
One thing I want to stress though is this question: Why would anyone want to pick up that specific custom, or why would I go to such lengths experimenting with different types of requirements? What could we value about having those requirements that would make it worth adding them in the first place?
Length requirements lead to "purple prose"
The answer to this one partially threads on the earlier assumption about unskilled player or players out of their suitable writing style, as those are the players (for reasons I will get into a bit later) who will do this more frequently.
That being said I want to address another matter entirely, though still an answer to the objection: How do you define purple prose? To many, the criteria would involve description that isn't relevant to the character or the plot. However, this isn't the way everyone would look at it. A description purely for world building's sake is not something I would automatically label purple prose, to give an example.
Purple prose is an excessive or futile descriptiveness. Adding content or descriptions just for the sake of making the writing more elaborate without adding anything meaningful. To many purple prose is simply a boring thing and makes a post worst. However, we disagree on where the line is and I would argue in this case that disagreement largely has to do with the things we value in a post. Someone who values only plot and character will see scenic descriptions in many circumstances as superfluous, whereas another might find them extremely valuable and love them.
More length has a correlation with more content - but whether this content is something you find valuable will affect your view of this fact. Perhaps it is superfluous in your eyes, with your values, but what if I find the things this is adding to be valuable? Whether length requirements generate "purple prose" depends on how you define it, and more importantly, whether that is even a bad thing for those using those length requires in the first place also depends on that definition. When you change the meaning of a concept you change its implications as well.
Length requirements take too much to write and feel like work rather than fun
You could always spread it out. A lot of the time, length and quality are treated as almost a dilema, but in truth it's more of trilema, with speed/pace. You can make consistent quality long posts, but this will take you longer than small quality posts or long poor quality posts.
However, this only answer a very specific case of that objection, a lack of time. Other cases are mainly answered by what I concluded was the reason to use length requirements and I'm saving the answer for that part. I will say this though: Why should you force yourself to write in a style you don't want to? And, seeing the assumption about neither being entitled to the other being in a roleplay them, why ought I want to play with people who don't enjoy the kind of writing I want to make?
The Common Thread
In the end of the day, what do all of these objections and their responses have in common? Well, I would suggest it's this: People who use length requirements and those who are against them have different values. Perhaps the conclusion sounds obvious to you when I put it that way, but I urge you to think about the implications. It means we are judging the same thing on completely different standards. When someone complains about length requirements the argument almost always presumes their own tastes as a given for a metric, and this is where that fourth assumption comes in, because a writing style's merits have to do with its goals, and the goals can change depending on the writer's own values. The writing style of someone who puts a great deal of value on clothes will include richer vocabulary on clothing, more in-depth descriptions of character clothing and so on... to another, descriptions of clothing may seem superfluous, and they might not even think about the richness of the dialogue clothing-wise, or the realism of the character in that area, but why would we say that these elements are a bad thing when they are in line with the goal of the writer? We can apply this, in a broader sense, to length requirements as well: If the things they bring me are the things I value, and if it is more suited to achieve what I want to achieve, then why should it be considered useless or in poor taste to use? Why should the utility of glasses be measured in their ability to survive a highspeed encounter with a baseball bat?
Of course none of this would matter, in fact it might be pointless to make this thread, if every instance of someone judging length requirements by their own tastes was simply as it regards to themselves. It's obviously valid to say "I don't like X because it doesn't work for my tastes". But what is more often seen is claims that length requirements are bad and people shouldn't use them. "Quality over quantity" is phrase that has come to become annoying by how often it comes from people who say this about length while simultaneously demanding daily or even multi-daily posts, without the possibility being considered that the alternative of giving time can be the difference between a long AND quality post versus one or the other. The biggest and thankfully rare issue comes when the perception of length requirements comes to the point that people start drawing implications about the people using them, such as the idea they are elitists who think quality only comes from length (perhaps I'm exaggerating but not by much).
Even for those who use it, the misconception on length requirements can be a problem, because if you forget that length requirements have a purpose then they become just showmanship, and at point you make true what was false. If you're adding them just for the sake of it or to show off, then you're better off not doing it. I think if you do have them, then it should be for a reason befitting what it can achieve.
Of course, who am I to tell you what the reason should be? Well, I am nobody worth doing anything like that. But I believe I've at least managed to put into words what my, and likely the general reason for using length requirements is. But before that, there's one more thing I need to address.
Part 4: Unskilled Roleplayers
When I was listing common objections there were a couple I left out that were countered by the assumptions. One of those is an idea similar but somewhat different from the third objection regarding purple prose. This one, however, is that "length requirements force people to focus on fulfilling a quota and thus add stuffing instead of content".
This is something that I would say is not true if we assume the roleplayer is skilled and is hardly true if the player is somewhat skilled at least. With experience, practice, preparation and other such methods stuffing is wriggled out of posts like one wriggles water out of wet cloth. While circumstances such as a short deadline for posts can certainly force one's hand, I would argue that if one is given time and is willing to put thought into it, one can easily have long posts without stuffing consistently. This does not, however, happen by removing the content, but by making what is added meaningful.
This borrows some from what I said in the "purple prose" argument: A skilled player will add content they find valuable, focus on aspects they find important, but this does mean potential readers will consider it such as well. These things can include worldbuilding, things that show character, set up, or even just descriptions to set the tone/atmosphere of a scene.
I am no master of the writing craft, not even of what I would call the "detailed mindset style of writing". I certainly think I am competent, but I see many areas I wish to improve upon and don't think I am that a great as a writer or roleplayer. However, I do know even I am able to do the thing I proposed above: I can make what would otherwise be stuffing into character-showing elements, set ups for the future, worldbuilding, setting the atmosphere or at times just attempts to be humorous. This doesn't necessarily mean they will be high quality or even will be picked up on by my partners/fellow players but the moment someone has a real trick that automatizes good impactful writing writers will be out of a job.
It should also be noted that a lack of skill isn't the only thing that can cause the problems I associated with unskilled or newer roleplayers. In fact a player that approaches things from a mindset significantly different from the "detailed mindset style of writing" in key areas (the "detailed" part) is likely to not understand what they should do to make those longer posts work. Someone who's focus is primarily on plot and action may end up putting a lot of random unnecessary, maybe even disrupting actions on their post because they are simply not thinking that maybe description would have fit better instead, the idea of worldbuilding maybe doesn't even cross their mind in most circumstances. If the length requirement someone wants just doesn't match your style at all, then maybe you are not very compatible partners.
Part 5: Filters, the Purpose of Length Requirements
So, we arrive at the end, at the conclusion of this lengthy ...thing I have written. Not sure what to call it to be honest, but it's about time I give the answer and you probably have a good idea what I'm going to say given the title.
That's right, length requirements are filters. Why? Let's put together what we assembled before:
*Length can, from a statistical perspective, be seen as a proxy for detail, story structure, and content. Longer posts tend to have more of those three.
*People value different things, something may seem worthless because it's being judged by a criteria that doesn't appreciate it or whose function is predicated on a different set of values.
*The length of writing can be associated with an approach to writing, therefore players may want to work with people who share their interest in length for more fulfilling roleplays.
The last piece of the puzzle, which I only sort of touched on in the previous part, is that interest in something can make you think of it more. Valuing something makes you think of it more, and more naturally. Using the example of the clothes-loving-person from earlier, this person will more easily write about clothes and notice details on that topic than someone who lacks that kind of interest. If we broaden this we can say that people who are more interested in the things contained in detailed roleplaying (usually associated with higher length) will have an easier time thinking of those things, coming up with how to fill up the work. It's not that they are actively trying to write more, they just do it naturally. Someone with no interest in worldbuilding will have a hard time describing worldbuilding elements or considering them as an option to fill out a post, so naturally people who in general lack those types of interests will write smaller posts more naturally.
That is perfectly fine and they are not worse for it, just shifted to a different focus. But it does allow us to conclude what the length requirement can do for us: It can help us determine who does and does not have our taste and interests in writing. You do want to work with people who share your approach, and you know that length is an easy to measure proxy for the indicators. You also know that people who do have higher length may be doing so because it comes more naturally to someone with this "detailed mindset writing style". Those are the people least if at all bothered by length requirements: Why would you be bothered by a requirement that you meet anyway?
Length requirements are not an attempt to fix the RP to a rigid system of post length quotas (in fact I'd say after a while one could definitely loosen up the requirements), they are the means to the end of finding people who think in a way that gives them a propensity to making the types of posts you want to see - and perhaps the ones you want to be appreciated of your production instead of boring your partner and getting told your hard-worked details are just flowery language.
For some people their ability to have fun with RPs can be highly tied to this. Length itself isn't the issue, but many things that person thinks important may be associated with it.
Part 6: So You're Saying Longer Posts Are Better?
Not at all. I do think they tend to be better in some respects, and worse in others, but overall I'd say length is pretty neutral. The biggest difference lies in what you gain and what you sacrifice. The story structure, content, worldbuilding, details, etc... are gained at the expense of things flowing naturally or organically in the way shorter posts often can, it can sacrifice some realism and pacing in particular is likely to be lost too.
Part 7: Final Word
Well, it's nearly 4 AM now, which I really should've seen coming when I started writing this. I don't have the energy to proof-read, but hopefully nothing too dramatic there, though I do think maybe I could've worded things better... and that I didn't miss anything I intended to write.
In any case, I hope you all enjoyed the read. If nothing else I want to leave things with this old phrase:
One man's trash is another man's treasure.
All of these are valid complaints, and if you follow me that far, then the question becomes: Why would anyone want to have them?
That is what I want to make a case for today. I want to defend why I and plenty of others not only have length requirements, but why indeed I personally seek them out in roleplays when choosing whether or not to join them. I am making this a thread because it is such a common thing that is brought up and because I feel it is a topic worth going in-depth about.
Part 1: Assumptions
Before we begin discussing this there are some assumptions I would like to state I will be working with, and for that reason I wish to justify. These are:
1. There isn't an inherent quality factor in length. This is to say that the mere fact you wrote something in more words or less words is not by itself an indicator that something is better or worse writing, though other factors which are statistically or tangentially associated by indicate a difference in skill (for instance if you write a bigger description because you're not able to actually describe the thing, cetris parius someone who can do the latter would be more skilled).
2.While I will be addressing the point of less skilled / unskilled writers of a particular play style, I will default to assuming the person "knows what they are doing" and is attempting to write in the style that suits them.
3.Nobody is entitled to having another roleplay with them. The one making the roleplay has no right to demand that others join, nor does one attempting to join have the right to join on that basis alone.
4.The primary purpose of roleplaying is personal satisfaction (this is usually taken to be "fun" but that isn't always necessarily the case for everyone). Different people enjoy different things, therefore there will be different ways to fulfill the primary purpose.
The first assumption is a matter of understanding that using less words does not automatically mean you have a higher density of content, "saying more with less" as some might put it. Yes you may have the capacity to say the major points in a more succint manner, but in the process you can lose detail or implications. At some point, "saying more with less" becomes just "saying less and expecting the other person to read your mind and get the stuff you didn't actually write". Where this point is is debatable, but it exists and if you can't agree with that then I'll have to ask you to at least temporarily concede me that point so we can have a discussion at all.
The second assumption is present because unskilled / newer writers are prone to a lot of mistakes and not use their 'tools of choice' properly. As a certain professor of mine once said "there is often one way to do something right and an infinite number of ways to do something stupid". The value of something needs to be explained using cases were it works, even if one must remain aware of the cases where it doesn't.
The third assumption is the answer to an admittedly uncommon complaint: That if you have length requirements then you're somehow enacting some injustice (my words not theirs) against others who may want to join but may not want to follow the rule in question. I would posit that, on the contrary, it would be unfair to prevent someone from being able to make or join a roleplay with certain rules or topics just because there might be an unrelated someone out in the ether who wouldn't be happy in the roleplay, or that the rules for deciding who can be in a roleplay should be determined by skill or willingness without a strong element of compatibility.
The fourth assumption is here because it has one key implication: There are a variety of mindsets and tastes. Something seeming better to you - or boring to you, exciting... - even something satisfying all you want, does not mean it will necessarily meet the criteria for another person. One should be careful when assuming that another values the same you do, because if they don't, then it's only natural they would adopt different methods from you. At least in roleplay you have no obligation (beyond that minimum of human decency, following the rules and contributing to the roleplay) to answer to an audience.
All of these assumptions will be taken as true moving forward in this thread. Still, I think for the most part those that complain about length requirements would still agree with those assumptions. They would still think people don't have an obligation to include others nor a right to be included in a particular roleplay, they would agree that roleplaying is first and foremost for fun, and they would at least understand why I am addressing this generally assuming at least somewhat skilled writers.
Part 2:Merits of Length
If you read the previous part properly then you know the answer: There are none. Length by itself does not improve quality, therefore the merits of length are effectively non-existent.
What, though, if there was something that length brought with it that, beyond length itself, is valuable? Something that perhaps you can have even if length isn't necessarily present, but which has a strong correlation to it, making length a good indicator of it?
Well, as it turns out from my experience, there are three:
A) Detail - Descriptiveness tends to come hand in hand with longer length. Often it's one of the keys requirements to even get to the length consistently. I think that's enough to explain it though I do find it ironic how simple it came to be compared to the other two haha.
B) Content (per post) - I don't think I'm alone in saying that when I played in chat RPs (skype, discord, and some sites) one thing that stood out to me was just how much time I was using per day, practically uninterrupted, just to get through small scenes (if that). This is because contrary to my expectations each post sent was actually filled with a lot of action that on the surface moved things forward but from a structural perspective barely did anything. Three long posts of characters discussing something will often end in characters moving on from the conversation, but a more back and forth one can take several times the length even accounting for the difference in size. A conversation in larger posts ends up being shorter because a lot of the in-betweens of a more natural conversation, and a lot of the banter, is often tossed aside because it doesn't fit the longer string of dialogue. A lot more things can happen in a small scene with smaller posts, but assuming a proportional timing the longer posts are likely to end up going through the key events faster while adding detail about other things as well, which the smaller posts may or may not depending on the immediate relevance of those details to the characters or plot.
C) Story Structure - Smaller posts are written more spontaneously, and this is one of the reasons why they can get burned out by length requirements more easily (something I will address later). It's also linked to something I believe the majority of RPs prefer or at least think they prefer (without having actually tried the alternative a lot of the time): By-the-seat-of-your-pants writing, AKA discovery writing. Writing which, as opposed to planned writing which formulates a plan for how things are before writing them, just metaphorically lets the characters or story take charge and follow through with the consequences of what they do or have happen as it they see it. Small posts are far more conductive to this than longer ones, but that reason too more planning-focused roleplayers tend to have longer posts as well, and by their nature, more structured posts as well. Planning-based writers are, by definition, the ones aware of the destination and the big picture of the story. In roleplay this may translate more into the big picture of the post than the roleplay itself, but even then they might have a strong idea of where they want to take their characters at the very least, without being utterly inflexible. This means this type of writer organize the way they write more, and make use of more writing techniques/tools than a discovery writer could, namely foreshadowing. It's a lot harder to foreshadow things in discovery writing because you don't know yet if anything will actually be relevant. Planning, however, will make it relevant barring a circumstance that would really get in the way. Smaller posts tend to be more disorganized and spontaneous, longer posts tend to be more structured and planned. Smaller posts focus on what's happening right now, but longer posts have a higher chance of considering how that post is framed in the big picture of the roleplay, of nothing else, by looking backward.
The three above you can most certainly have without length. I know at least a few people who even advocate for shorter posts being preferential and the "less is more" attitude, but whose posts are beautiful and well-detailed. No doubt, those posts are filled with content too. But I would suggest that players who want shorter posts also tend to care less about being detailed or putting a lot of content in a given post. Their focus is more on moving the action / plot along. But my point is not that length causes more content or more detail, rather it's that it's far more common for posts with more length to also have more detail and more content per post.
Now it's true I haven't exactly conducted a statistical investigation into this and I'm relying mostly on my personal experience, but I do believe this to be a statistical reality. It's quite relevant, when you consider that you don't really have an easy metric for either detail nor content. You can't say "I have detail 2" or "there's 3.467 content in this post". But you can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt "I wrote at least 500 words in this post".
Length, without being detail, content, or story structure is something I and no doubt many others have found to be a good proxy for those three things.
Part 3: Objections to Length Requirements
Sometimes a good way to look at the merits of something can be by looking at its flaws and where it's lacking.
The following are some of the more common objections to length requirements I've seen, barring any that would be dismissed by the assumptions alone:
Length requirements don't work well with some scenes, like combat or back and forth dialogue.
This is for the most part true. There are some solutions, like collaborative posts, but often a more flexible line is better for a more organic movement of the action, and some scenes are more realistic happening in small instances (again the dialogue example, it's more realistic for a conversation to be back and forth than long strings of dialogue).
That being said, I would say it's absolutely possible to keep things organic - realistic even - without discarding post length. These happens in two main ways: First, one could simply focus on other aspects than the particular action. Unlike dialogue or combat actions, the descriptions of the environment, character thoughts, etc... Aren't limited to the timeframe. I would argue as well that if we value realism then body language, constant trains of thought and taking in a lot of information at once is something we do every second of every day without even realizing it a lot of the time. How is the texture of whatever you're touching, what are you smelling, how does everything in front of you look like... all of this and more is stuff your brain processes every moment, though it does cut out from your attention things it finds less relevant.
Second there's the concept of "fluid time". It's a concept describing several things being written in parallel which may be happening in several different moments chronologically. Your post might include dialogue for a conversation while the second half has your character going to another room, and other posts may continue both lines, furthering the conversation while exploring the contents of the room. This is a little trick very frequently found and less frequently thought about in group RPs and longer-post RPs alike. For obvious reasons posts that contain several jumps in time and can frequently be very much retroactive isn't really a natural-sounding thing. However, I have rarely found a person who gave this much thought, let alone was actually annoyed by this to any great extent. What it suggests to me is that this has become entrenched in the way many of us RP and the benefits of potentially working in several chronologically close but still separate moments of action outweight the strangeness.
Lets say, though, that you don't buy what I said above. That you think it (at least in general) just can't be done to keep things organic with long posts, and fluid time is just not something you think should ever be a thing. Then I should ask: What makes being organic or realistic the end all be all of dialogue? Would we really find it more immersive if even the most well-spoken characters had constant breaks, sudden inputs, random noises and the like that real life dialogue has? Does sounding natural truly triumph above every other aspect - or it be simply a facet of dialogue's quality, one which perhaps other styles of writing value less? Perhaps the way the dialogue expresses the character, or helps aid in the plot, makes for worldbuilding or foreshadowing, etc... Or maybe they simply find such dialogue more expressive?
Length requirements are arbitrary
Not exactly. I would agree if you said that "a lot of people have length requirements with only vague reasons as to why they are that length". If you ask why a paragraph a common response is "because I think two paragraphs would be too much but I also don't want one liners". But if you were to try to pursue the questioning further you'd be unlikely to get a much better answer than "just because". I would argue though, that this is a matter of custom and imitation. New players look at how things are done on the site, and assume this how something is "supposed" to be done, and later it just becomes a habit to ask for one of those common standard lengths.
Then there's people like myself. People who have tried and experimented with several different lengths (and even other modes to try to get more content-rich posts but I'm getting ahead of myself) and found that below a certain threshold things just didn't work as well for them. I tried content requirements, I tried no requirements, I tried line type requirements and word type requirements. Nowadays my interest checks often sport both a line or a word requirement, depending on the preference of the partner/players. I've found that the latter has worked best for me, as they both have the necessary simplicity (content requirements could be hard to check or know if you met them) and allow them to fulfill their purpose, which I will talk about later. The point, however, is that this was not arbitrary, it was the result of my personal experiences and experimentations as well as me gaining more knowledge about my own preferences in roleplaying that led me to come up with the numbers I now use.
Be it by custom, imitation or experience length requirements are rarely if ever truly arbitrary. This can be seen as a technicality though: Sure they are technically not without any reason, but surely "I just do it because other people do it / by force of habit" is not much of a reason either? I would argue there's merit in it though, as even if you don't personally know it, it's not unreasonable to presume that if people in general or you yourself in the past did something, then there likely was a reason for it. Custom or imitation are really a matter of trust towards something you don't feel you can't (or maybe you just don't feel like trying to) do yourself. Perhaps this trust is ill-advised but that is a topic for another discussion.
One thing I want to stress though is this question: Why would anyone want to pick up that specific custom, or why would I go to such lengths experimenting with different types of requirements? What could we value about having those requirements that would make it worth adding them in the first place?
Length requirements lead to "purple prose"
The answer to this one partially threads on the earlier assumption about unskilled player or players out of their suitable writing style, as those are the players (for reasons I will get into a bit later) who will do this more frequently.
That being said I want to address another matter entirely, though still an answer to the objection: How do you define purple prose? To many, the criteria would involve description that isn't relevant to the character or the plot. However, this isn't the way everyone would look at it. A description purely for world building's sake is not something I would automatically label purple prose, to give an example.
Purple prose is an excessive or futile descriptiveness. Adding content or descriptions just for the sake of making the writing more elaborate without adding anything meaningful. To many purple prose is simply a boring thing and makes a post worst. However, we disagree on where the line is and I would argue in this case that disagreement largely has to do with the things we value in a post. Someone who values only plot and character will see scenic descriptions in many circumstances as superfluous, whereas another might find them extremely valuable and love them.
More length has a correlation with more content - but whether this content is something you find valuable will affect your view of this fact. Perhaps it is superfluous in your eyes, with your values, but what if I find the things this is adding to be valuable? Whether length requirements generate "purple prose" depends on how you define it, and more importantly, whether that is even a bad thing for those using those length requires in the first place also depends on that definition. When you change the meaning of a concept you change its implications as well.
Length requirements take too much to write and feel like work rather than fun
You could always spread it out. A lot of the time, length and quality are treated as almost a dilema, but in truth it's more of trilema, with speed/pace. You can make consistent quality long posts, but this will take you longer than small quality posts or long poor quality posts.
However, this only answer a very specific case of that objection, a lack of time. Other cases are mainly answered by what I concluded was the reason to use length requirements and I'm saving the answer for that part. I will say this though: Why should you force yourself to write in a style you don't want to? And, seeing the assumption about neither being entitled to the other being in a roleplay them, why ought I want to play with people who don't enjoy the kind of writing I want to make?
The Common Thread
In the end of the day, what do all of these objections and their responses have in common? Well, I would suggest it's this: People who use length requirements and those who are against them have different values. Perhaps the conclusion sounds obvious to you when I put it that way, but I urge you to think about the implications. It means we are judging the same thing on completely different standards. When someone complains about length requirements the argument almost always presumes their own tastes as a given for a metric, and this is where that fourth assumption comes in, because a writing style's merits have to do with its goals, and the goals can change depending on the writer's own values. The writing style of someone who puts a great deal of value on clothes will include richer vocabulary on clothing, more in-depth descriptions of character clothing and so on... to another, descriptions of clothing may seem superfluous, and they might not even think about the richness of the dialogue clothing-wise, or the realism of the character in that area, but why would we say that these elements are a bad thing when they are in line with the goal of the writer? We can apply this, in a broader sense, to length requirements as well: If the things they bring me are the things I value, and if it is more suited to achieve what I want to achieve, then why should it be considered useless or in poor taste to use? Why should the utility of glasses be measured in their ability to survive a highspeed encounter with a baseball bat?
Of course none of this would matter, in fact it might be pointless to make this thread, if every instance of someone judging length requirements by their own tastes was simply as it regards to themselves. It's obviously valid to say "I don't like X because it doesn't work for my tastes". But what is more often seen is claims that length requirements are bad and people shouldn't use them. "Quality over quantity" is phrase that has come to become annoying by how often it comes from people who say this about length while simultaneously demanding daily or even multi-daily posts, without the possibility being considered that the alternative of giving time can be the difference between a long AND quality post versus one or the other. The biggest and thankfully rare issue comes when the perception of length requirements comes to the point that people start drawing implications about the people using them, such as the idea they are elitists who think quality only comes from length (perhaps I'm exaggerating but not by much).
Even for those who use it, the misconception on length requirements can be a problem, because if you forget that length requirements have a purpose then they become just showmanship, and at point you make true what was false. If you're adding them just for the sake of it or to show off, then you're better off not doing it. I think if you do have them, then it should be for a reason befitting what it can achieve.
Of course, who am I to tell you what the reason should be? Well, I am nobody worth doing anything like that. But I believe I've at least managed to put into words what my, and likely the general reason for using length requirements is. But before that, there's one more thing I need to address.
Part 4: Unskilled Roleplayers
When I was listing common objections there were a couple I left out that were countered by the assumptions. One of those is an idea similar but somewhat different from the third objection regarding purple prose. This one, however, is that "length requirements force people to focus on fulfilling a quota and thus add stuffing instead of content".
This is something that I would say is not true if we assume the roleplayer is skilled and is hardly true if the player is somewhat skilled at least. With experience, practice, preparation and other such methods stuffing is wriggled out of posts like one wriggles water out of wet cloth. While circumstances such as a short deadline for posts can certainly force one's hand, I would argue that if one is given time and is willing to put thought into it, one can easily have long posts without stuffing consistently. This does not, however, happen by removing the content, but by making what is added meaningful.
This borrows some from what I said in the "purple prose" argument: A skilled player will add content they find valuable, focus on aspects they find important, but this does mean potential readers will consider it such as well. These things can include worldbuilding, things that show character, set up, or even just descriptions to set the tone/atmosphere of a scene.
I am no master of the writing craft, not even of what I would call the "detailed mindset style of writing". I certainly think I am competent, but I see many areas I wish to improve upon and don't think I am that a great as a writer or roleplayer. However, I do know even I am able to do the thing I proposed above: I can make what would otherwise be stuffing into character-showing elements, set ups for the future, worldbuilding, setting the atmosphere or at times just attempts to be humorous. This doesn't necessarily mean they will be high quality or even will be picked up on by my partners/fellow players but the moment someone has a real trick that automatizes good impactful writing writers will be out of a job.
It should also be noted that a lack of skill isn't the only thing that can cause the problems I associated with unskilled or newer roleplayers. In fact a player that approaches things from a mindset significantly different from the "detailed mindset style of writing" in key areas (the "detailed" part) is likely to not understand what they should do to make those longer posts work. Someone who's focus is primarily on plot and action may end up putting a lot of random unnecessary, maybe even disrupting actions on their post because they are simply not thinking that maybe description would have fit better instead, the idea of worldbuilding maybe doesn't even cross their mind in most circumstances. If the length requirement someone wants just doesn't match your style at all, then maybe you are not very compatible partners.
Part 5: Filters, the Purpose of Length Requirements
So, we arrive at the end, at the conclusion of this lengthy ...thing I have written. Not sure what to call it to be honest, but it's about time I give the answer and you probably have a good idea what I'm going to say given the title.
That's right, length requirements are filters. Why? Let's put together what we assembled before:
*Length can, from a statistical perspective, be seen as a proxy for detail, story structure, and content. Longer posts tend to have more of those three.
*People value different things, something may seem worthless because it's being judged by a criteria that doesn't appreciate it or whose function is predicated on a different set of values.
*The length of writing can be associated with an approach to writing, therefore players may want to work with people who share their interest in length for more fulfilling roleplays.
The last piece of the puzzle, which I only sort of touched on in the previous part, is that interest in something can make you think of it more. Valuing something makes you think of it more, and more naturally. Using the example of the clothes-loving-person from earlier, this person will more easily write about clothes and notice details on that topic than someone who lacks that kind of interest. If we broaden this we can say that people who are more interested in the things contained in detailed roleplaying (usually associated with higher length) will have an easier time thinking of those things, coming up with how to fill up the work. It's not that they are actively trying to write more, they just do it naturally. Someone with no interest in worldbuilding will have a hard time describing worldbuilding elements or considering them as an option to fill out a post, so naturally people who in general lack those types of interests will write smaller posts more naturally.
That is perfectly fine and they are not worse for it, just shifted to a different focus. But it does allow us to conclude what the length requirement can do for us: It can help us determine who does and does not have our taste and interests in writing. You do want to work with people who share your approach, and you know that length is an easy to measure proxy for the indicators. You also know that people who do have higher length may be doing so because it comes more naturally to someone with this "detailed mindset writing style". Those are the people least if at all bothered by length requirements: Why would you be bothered by a requirement that you meet anyway?
Length requirements are not an attempt to fix the RP to a rigid system of post length quotas (in fact I'd say after a while one could definitely loosen up the requirements), they are the means to the end of finding people who think in a way that gives them a propensity to making the types of posts you want to see - and perhaps the ones you want to be appreciated of your production instead of boring your partner and getting told your hard-worked details are just flowery language.
For some people their ability to have fun with RPs can be highly tied to this. Length itself isn't the issue, but many things that person thinks important may be associated with it.
Part 6: So You're Saying Longer Posts Are Better?
Not at all. I do think they tend to be better in some respects, and worse in others, but overall I'd say length is pretty neutral. The biggest difference lies in what you gain and what you sacrifice. The story structure, content, worldbuilding, details, etc... are gained at the expense of things flowing naturally or organically in the way shorter posts often can, it can sacrifice some realism and pacing in particular is likely to be lost too.
Part 7: Final Word
Well, it's nearly 4 AM now, which I really should've seen coming when I started writing this. I don't have the energy to proof-read, but hopefully nothing too dramatic there, though I do think maybe I could've worded things better... and that I didn't miss anything I intended to write.
In any case, I hope you all enjoyed the read. If nothing else I want to leave things with this old phrase:
One man's trash is another man's treasure.