I don't think Baystation is distinguished by the quality of its roleplay. There are better roleplayers even on low roleplay servers.



To me, Baystation is distinguished by the level of its 'comfort'. Everything else including roleplay is pushed aside to enhance the comfort factor. The featured experience isn't 'engage in collaborative writing in which you will surely have to make many sacrifices of your character which may be uncomfortable,' it's 'Embark on a space station-themed social/chat experience where you can construct a fantasy character, emotionally attach to it, and end up feeling like you've been personally attacked when someone harms or kills that character.'



Put another way, I think Baystation is selfish roleplay. It's not about making compromises of your personal fun in order to create a greater collaborative fun for everyone, ie. accepting a death or showing a character flaw at a certain moment just because it would be narratively interesting. Baystation involves everyone always trying to be the main character of the book, attacking anyone who does anything more narratively interesting than them ('you're not the protagonist! if i can't be, no one can!), and generally doing everything possible to prevent their characters, which are not strategic story setpieces but player character extensions of an ego, from being victims of conflict in any way, even knowing that any good story is build on conflict.



I also don't think that any of this will change, partly on precedent because I've seen at least a dozen roleplay communities exactly like this which never change, and also because I know logically that it would take a giant stride outside the comfort zone by a community which is literally built around creating a comfortable social experience.

Click to expand...