C'kayah Polaali

I think part of this may be perceptual bias - a fairly large percentage of male characters I've seen are simply unapproachable. They brood in the corner, or growl at anyone who comes near, or are simply too shy to say anything. Some are uninterested in other people's RP and simply want to play out their own with other people. Some want to dominate the RP. Outside of erp, most of these characters don't see a lot of actual play with other people. I've played almost exclusively male characters in FFXIV, ranging from the gregarious crime lord C'kayah to the philosophical Baliir, the evil-as-hell Setoh, the blueblooded Naukha. On none of them I had too much trouble finding RP. Get all the RP you can eat with this one simple trick! Sounds clickbaity, but I read this in an improv essay once and started applying it to my RP. In my experience it's made a huge difference in my ability to get RP: "Play your character as if they were an extra in a movie about your RP partner." It's a different way of casting the old "Be a generous RP partner", with a little Dale Carnegie thrown in. Most roleplayers have some sort of story - usually a bunch of stories - going on about their character. Even if it's only in their heads, they have this. And in these stories, they're the hero. The protagonist. We're all protagonists in our own stories, after all. If you can help them with these stories - if you can RP in a way that supports their story and helps move it forward, then most people will see you as a jewel.

I mostly RP Miqo'te (with a brief foray into Auri), and I've honestly never done anything to make my Miqo catlike (or my Auri lizardlike). C'kayah is a retired crime lord. He was a criminal throughout the entire time I played him, and my longest played character to date. Despite being born in a tribe he is very urbanized (in a superficial way - the appearance of sophistication is more important to him than the actual hard work of becoming sophisticated). He's a mixed Seeker/Keeper (one of his grandmothers is a Keeper), and has internalized certain cultural traits from Keeper culture. Setoh was a nasty criminal for hire for the couple of years I played him. He was a Moonkeeper, and Keeper culture was very clearly the dominant foundation of his personality. Savin is a Sharlayan Miqo'te. He's my most "mixed" Miqo'te, in the sense that he's a Sharlayan first and a Miqo'te second. He's very definitely a city Miqo'te - despite being a Seeker, he doesn't come from a tribe, doesn't have a Seeker-style name, and doesn't really follow Seeker tribal traditions. Khaishan was a Xaela from the Ugund tribe. A poet who nearly died in an unfortunate boating accident, most of his RP story involved the psychological road that he travelled after he was rescued by a Raen. The Ugund, you see, are the tribe who bury the heads of their dead in barrels of fermented goat's milk, because the journey to the afterlife is so harrowing that it's better for the deceased to be drunk. Khaishan believed that he had drowned, and that everything that was happening after his rescue was actually part of the journey of his soul to the afterlife. Being a poet, he felt at a visceral level that "The ants are a metaphor. I understand. But tell me, after the council decides my fate, will you bring me the fermented goat's milk? Or is that just a metaphor, too?" I never RPed with anyone who tried to insist that my characters had catlike (or lizardlike, in Khaishan's case) characteristics. I suspect it's because I never played them as if they did, despite them being very distinctly nonhuman characters.

I'm a fan of Fate-14. It's fairly widely adopted, so you've automatically got a good size player base with Fate-14 characters. I use a variant of it called F-5 for my events. It's simplified, and doesn't require people to pre-generate their characters, so it's well suited to the sort of pick-up events that I run. It's otherwise compatible with Fate-14.

For short arcs? It really depends. They've got a definitive start and end, and they just run their course. For longer arcs? I've been playing around with doing RP arcs structured like TV series'. Das Loot has gone through three seasons so far: The first was a fairly straightforward "find the loot before the others do" arc. The second involved some outlaw mages and their enemies. This third arc is the aftermath of their destruction. The TV series' structure lets me tie them together if I want, but it also provides a structure that makes it pretty easy for people to drop in and out. Drop ins? They're involved in an episode, and their character (usually an NPC that I give them) doesn't have a scope beyond that. Are they interested in playing more regularly? Then their character can work into the season. Do they want to be central? Then they're central to the season. And at the end of the season, they can move on or come back as they wish.

I've RPed villains in FF since 2.0, and I typically do it publicly. I think it adds to the fun, both for me as the villain having to pay attention to things like who's around, and for the other people around me. It adds flavor. I do expect anything I do or say publicly to be used against me, but this is where it gets into odd territory. If I want my character to swing a sword at someone, I get to post that they're swinging the sword. I don't get to post what the result is, however. That's up to the other person. That's very well accepted. But does that only apply to physical fights? Or should it apply to other things? Cops 'n' robbers, off the script, is basically the same as that RP sword fight. It needs to play out - in my opinion - similarly. The spy can use the information they gathered against my character, but it has to happen in that same manner. And this, in my opinion, is why the answer to the question "is communication key?" is yes. Absolutely yes. At the end of the day, the ideal for RP is that everyone involved in a RP is doing it to make the collective story better. That's why I RP my characters' villainy in public. Likewise, if my character is spying, I'll make some sort of post that at least can indicate that my character is actively there (as opposed to standing still as if I were afk). It makes for a better story. At the same time, we've all probably run into someone who tries to RP to "win". It's one of the reasons why lots of people RP fights resolved with /random - it avoids that possibility in a combat RP. Silent omniscience in a character - whether it's a spy who literally can't be distinguished from an afk person or a villain who decides "no one can spy on me ever" - raises red flags in the same way as a character who always dodges a blow in a fight RP does. OOC communication can mitigate those red flags.

Huh, didn't know that. I guess that's fair then. My line of thinking was that since their scales match their horns so well they must be made of the same stuff. Horns are usually keratin just like our fingernails. I would also assume that despite all the lizard jokes Au Ra would still be mammals. The only scaled mammal that comes to mind, the pangolin, has keratin scales. I guess that's why this thread exists though. One person's reptile is another person's pangolin. We won't know how it really is until the lore writers give us more information. It's not so much the material that reptile scales are made of that makes them sensitive, though. It's the amount of sensory nerves in them. In alligators, there are these little sensory nodules on the surface of their scales that are served by nerves passing through the scales. I could see keratin-based Au Ra scales having similar things. Human skin, after all, contains a bunch of keratins in the outer layers.

Reptiles are surprisingly sensitive to touch. Scales can have nerves, just like skin, and those nerves can be very sensitive. Alligators, for instance, have these little nerve clusters on the surface of their scales that are sensitive to all sorts of things: touch, vibration, pressure, friction, even sound. Fingernails aren't particularly sensitive because they don't have these things, but I imagine Au Ra might.

Season 3 episode 2 - Objection! The Brass Blade inspector begins to interrogate Kakase when her lawyer shows up, surprising everyone. A stalemate grinds away to the inevitable compromise.

Season 3 episode 1 - Red Right Hand. Kakase arrives at the Mages compound to find them all dead. When a Brass Blade inspector arrives, suspicion naturally falls upon Kakase.

It all started with D&D for me, back in Jr. High. My characters were fairly standard tropes for a nerd in Jr. High - I had a lot of "powerful" wizards, etc. Around that time I started getting into writing, as well. Short stories, mostly. That ended up feeding back into my RP, in the sense that I started getting into making characters who were not just power projection fantasies for my 12 year old self. That started an on and off love affair with pen and paper RPGs that's continued to this day. In the mid 90s I discovered MUDs (yes, I'm old). My favorite was AmberMush, which had a decent number of really good RPers and writers on it, and was also interesting because everything in it was player created - everyone could create persistent objects in the game. Then came MMOs. Eve Online, at first. Despite the reputation, Eve has (had? I haven't played in years) a good RP community. It didn't hurt that I was absolutely in love with the game's PVP model, to the extent that I haven't been able to get into PVP in most other MMOs at all. I RPed in LOTRO (I'm a Tolkien nut), Star Trek Online, STTOR, EQ2, etc. Which led, almost accidentally, to FFXIV. Some non-RPing friends got me into it, and I made an alt on Balmung to check out the RP community. Years later I'm still here, still RPing, and enjoying the RP community (in general) more than most.

[align=center]Players Wanted![/align] It's that time of year again, Das Loot season 3 is kicking off! The focus for this season will be the aftermath of the destruction of the cabal of mages from season 2. I have a couple of hooks available to bring people in: - Criminals: The destruction of the mages left a power vacuum in the Thanalan underworld. Players that fill this will grow in power and wealth. - Any: The mages had a particularly valuable item in their vaults. Players that acquire this will grow in power and wealth. - Adventurers: I have a patron available who is interested in the loot. Players could work for this patron, going about the business of seeking and acquiring this loot. This is ideal for players who are unsure how they might proceed on their own. The next event is going to be Friday November 10th at 8:00 PM, Pacific time, and will be picking up where season 2 left off: With the Brass Blades catching Kakase at the mage's compound after the mages have all been killed. Ideally this event will also introduce new players. If you're interested, please PM me here, contact me in-game (C'kayah Polaali or Savin Kekaalah), or in discord (Satsuma#9627)

I've done a decent number of largish GMed events, so I'll chime in with the "use a post order" thing. I tend to let everything happen free-form if there's no conflict happening: If it's a party, or a meeting, or anything like that, I'll just let it all go free-form unless someone is obviously being left out because they can't type fast enough. With conflict - combat, for instance - I'll establish a post order, which naturally slows things down. I've started using /p and/or linkshells to help with this, though. I'll ask people, when it's their turn, to post OOCly in /p or the linkshell. Just a quick one-liner saying what they'll do. Then any rolls that are necessary are handled, and we move on to the next person. 60 seconds per person, tops. Then, while they're waiting for their next turn, they can craft up an IC post that has their action and its resolution (because we know if it's succeeded or not by that point) to be posted in /say or /em. This has been really helpful in keeping the action moving, so you might want to give it a try, as well.

Oh, I'm with you here. I wouldn't say "no OOC discussion" is a red flag that might keep me from role playing with someone but it is a sign that it may not go further than a simple conversation and the characters never interacting again. I play a character that needs some pushes here and there to make her interact with people. Unless the character she's interacting with is particularly outgoing and eager to make friends then it's unlikely to develop naturally. Preplanning a reason for interaction, even a simple one, always works best for me. It doesn't have to be a railroad and things can still happen naturally in between. I also like to know what's on the other person's mind and what they might want when/if more does happen. I'm okay with all kinds of stuff (like injuries and romance) but I like being asked first so I can discuss any concerns I might have. We role play for enjoyment and I think we owe it to each other to at least try to make sure the other side is happy and comfortable with how a scene is going. That's something you need OOC for. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I get that some people want everything to happen based on IC interactions, and they feel that any sort of OOC discussion harms that possibility, but honestly most people who feel that way are very passionate about it and they'll *say* so, OOCly, if I ask them via a /tell. I have no problem with that, and often those players can be very good. What I'm more talking about are players who, in response to "What sort of RP do you like", simply say "Anything". I've learned that this usually translates into either "I'm not fun to RP with", or "I expect you to come up with everything and provide me with RP on a platter. But I'll tell you if I don't like it." Plus the aforementioned "I am open to anything to happen to my character, and I shall not object to anything" people. Which, in my experience, means that they'll try to suck me into every two bit drama that glances in their direction.

These are all fantastic examples, and many of them raise red flags with me when I see them. However, I think, at the end of the day the big ones for me - and by that I mean the sort of red flags that will make me want to not RP with someone in a significant way - are RPers who say "no" instead of "yes, and...", and RPers who are completely unwilling to have any OOC discussion about how a scene/event/approach might work. The "no" vs "yes, and..." thing is straight out of improv. When we RP, we're doing improv. We're putting on an unscripted show for our own (and hopefully other people's) entertainment. There's a cardinal rule in improv that you should try to respond to the other actors in a way that builds upon what they do. Your actions should say "yes, and...", instead of shutting them down with "no". In my experience, RPers who shut down RP with "no" tend to be the ones who are unduly focused on "winning" the RP. The "no OOC discussion of approach" thing is probably a little more controversial, but let me explain. When I'm bored, I tend to hang out in places like the Quicksand looking for RPers. I examine people's search text, I look for characters who are walking or are dressed in appropriate outfits, and I'll send them /tells saying things like "Hi, what sort of RP are you looking for?" Some people get very insistent that they don't want to discuss anything like that at all, that they want to let RP develop naturally from the approach. I can understand that, but in my experience many (if not most) of those approaches devolve into simple "Hot, isn't it?" conversations that are soon over. If someone doesn't provide anything for you to get traction with, then the RP won't develop anywhere. There's another slice of "no OOC discussion" players who fall on the extreme opposite of this. They want the stories to happen to their characters without any control on their part. It sounds good in principle, but it tends to become hard to RP with those people because their characters are constantly getting into terrible binds. I think there's something about players like that where they're attracted to players who want to force actions on others, and those players are attracted to them as the ideal victims. I have no problem with people wanting that, but I really don't want to be caught in the middle of that.

Season 3 is upon us! Season 2 ended with the mysterious destruction of the mages and Kakase's capture by Ul'dahn police. Season 3 opens with the aftermath of that. The Black Shroud-based Moonkeeper gang the Bewleh Brothers arrange a meeting with an Au ra criminal organization to gain a piece of equipment. Mini-event 3.1 - Saccharin and Trust - Two gangs meet to strike a deal only to have the sun and attitude torpedo everything. Gang leader Miho has baby lust, but not like you would expect...