Thunderbolt300

This caught my eye here, but it doesn't seem to be referenced on the Carrd itself. Is this still an active storyline? Cana'to is a mortician and city coroner. His office is essentially where storylines like this take off, with there being an unsolved murder and him having old records from an autopsy. He keeps records going back 5+ years as required by the city. Let me know if this sounds interesting or worth exploring! Cana'to's carrd is located here: https://canato.carrd.co/

I'delia is alright, I guess. I've only RP'ed with her for the last 10 months, though. Eh.

Hey y'all! I'm looking to build out connections for my Raen girl. The tl;dr: she's a fairly mundane inventor, military grease monkey and medic. She’s just a sergeant and serves under an NPC unit whose primary mission is monitoring Garlean refugees and countering Garlean agitators on the home front. She is fairly heavy on the storylines. Easy connection ideas: Garlean characters (friendly and hostile) Fellow soldiers, mechanics, medics, and whiskey lovers Squadmates or affiliate squads Merchants selling various parts (scrap, aether, black powder, medical, etc.) More connection ideas, character details, availability and storylines available at: https://shachi-kenko.carrd.co/ I can be reached most easily via Discord @ Thunderbolt300#0807. Thanks!!

The situation you describe is unfortunate, to say the least. I know the personality types you're talking about. You are, most likely, already sitting on a powder keg that will eventually blow up into drama sooner or later, simply because of the personalities involved being inherently incompatible with the direction you want to go. Obviously, you're serious about wanting to DM and write storylines, but when your player base isn't taking it as seriously, it'll leave you feeling naturally dissatisfied. There is a clear disconnect in the expectations on both sides, and that's a recipe for a fuse to light the powder keg. You have to be careful about "spoon feeding," otherwise known as handing everything to your players and never expecting them to be self-driven or motivated. It sets a dangerous pitfall for them, as they get used to it and they will get comfortable in that routine over time, and it'll only get worse from there. Of course, you can't really help purely reactive players at all to begin with, sadly. Eventually, they'll just fall behind and eventually fall out entirely, unless you're putting in a lot of effort to get them caught up. That's not really a viable time investment, though, either- it's dead weight you have to haul and it'll burn you out faster. I've found it also helps to designate a "team leader" character who takes on the semi-OOC responsibility to keep the party in motion, so you don't need to constantly shove them along during an event. It's less work for you, and it can be used as a reward for players looking to get more out of it too. On the subject of turn order, I have everyone do one emote per combat round, and that's all, which gives me time to resolve the current round before starting the next. By having everyone take their turns at once, you save an enormous amount of time, and can keep the action moving fairly rapidly. This is helpful too for anyone who takes a while to type an emote, as the players get a chance to read each other's emotes while waiting for the last person to emote. My advice would be to simply focus on the players who are interested and invested into participating and show some drive to be involved. If others feel they're being left out, it's ultimately on them. For one thing, you reap more returns from your writing, but it also sets an example to other players. You can try to add players from outside the guild as well if they show significant enough interest and are proactive enough. At some point, you kinda have to pick the players you're going to focus on. Or, in short: "You can lead a horse to water, but can't make them drink."

I've had this same problem many times over the years, particularly when DM'ing for guilds, as the issue of "scope creep" tends to crop up as groups with sustained activity from an actively contributing DM tend to continue growing. Content generators in any RP community are a rare commodity, but overtaxing them results in burnout. I'll start with the hard truth up front: you as a DM need to decide what's the most fun for you, because if you turn it into a job, you'll suck the fun out of it and burn yourself out. You have the option of doing one-size-fits-all campaigns that are tailored for large guild groups, or you have the alternative of aiming for small groups (either by taking sign ups in advance, first-come-first-served, or running with static parties). Both approaches have their tradeoffs. One-size-fits-all campaigns tend to be very generic, bypass a lot of detail, and end up fairly shallow, but can accommodate a large number of players at once. On the other hand, small-group campaigns can be very detail-driven, have a great deal of depth, and focus more on character development, but space is very limited. Realistically, you can only pack an event with so much character development for so many characters, so it's prohibitively difficult to pack that into a larger event without making people feel left out. You can stretch yourself further though by throwing out mechanics (like dice systems) and allowing everyone to post at once in a small group setting (it works better than you'd think), which gives you more time to pack more story into the event you're running. On the other hand, if you want to have a combat focus with your events, dice systems may not be something you can cut out. Like as I mentioned before, there are tradeoffs. More mechanical overhead on the overall event means less time to focus on other things that you may consider to be more important. Don't be afraid to trim the fat to get to the meat of what you're really after. If you try to do everything, you'll do nothing well. Also, be careful of events becoming too complicated. A general rule of the thumb is that if the event needs voice chat or takes longer than 3 hours, it needs to be simplified or partitioned into multiple events. A great deal of this is also dependent on the audience you have, too. Some players are going to enjoy dice systems more than others, and some players just want something to do on a Saturday night, and others will want a deeply engaging story to get immersed in. All that is to say, you can't please everyone, so focus on what's most fun for you. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the player, not the DM, to find an event that caters to their own preferences. Personally, these days, I operate entirely outside the guild framework as it represents an obligation as a DM to try and cater to an entire guild all at once. Instead, I have two groups of five players from a mishmash of guilds that I run campaign events for once a week at different times, and both groups operate within the same campaign setting. This means the groups still have a reason to interact and RP with each other outside of events, as they might learn something by comparing notes as they attack a central villain from different directions. I can also recycle some of the content for both groups as well, which cuts down on the amount of time and energy I spend weekly to generate the next encounter or more story. Two groups is the most I can handle alone, though- three would edge me towards burnout before long. Know your limits!

Welcome aboard! o/

Hey there and welcome aboard to the RPC! o/ Hope you enjoy your time over here in 14- the tone is significantly better than WoW RP circles, I think. Gardevoir for the win.

Hey there and welcome aboard to the RPC! o/

Hey there Tai, and welcome aboard to the RPC! Manmi sounds like she'd be fun to interact with.

Hey there and welcome aboard to the RPC! o/

Walk-up RP is very much open in FFXIV as well as it was in WoW. You can right-click and Examine any RP player and you'll see a small speech bubble you can hover over in the upper left corner of the equipment screen for the other character. That usually has a brief list or even a Carrd URL on it for RP preferences and protocol. Generally, if they're RP'ing out in the open, it's open game for anyone else to dive into, so don't sweat the details too much!

Hey there and welcome aboard to the RPC! o/

Hey there and welcome aboard to the RPC! o/ The best place to "lamp" (eavesdrop on RP- like a street lamp) is in Ul'dah on Balmung. There's typically tons of roleplayers in and around the city, and you can easily get within listening distance just to get familiar with the whole deal.

Welcome aboard to the RPC! o/

Hey man- welcome aboard to the RPC! o/ Based on what you've described for your specific circumstance, it sounds like you encountered a bunch of green roleplayers who didn't have any idea on how to proceed. At worst, they were trolling for some laughs potentially, at least up until the two that remained who actually made some effort, who might be toying with the idea of actually trying roleplay out for the first time. Sometimes that's how people get started! But on the larger topic... if it were a legit situation with genuine RP'ers? Sometimes you're going to run into a situation where a character has friends nearby that will side with them in a showdown. That's just the nature of the dynamic situation of RP: it's not always going to be fair any more than the real world. The only real "fix" to even the odds is to bring some of your character's own friends (or forge some new connections so you have that option in the future), but obviously as more people are introduced to a conflict situation, it becomes more challenging to resolve beyond leaving it as a stalemate or talking the situation down. Regardless, OOC communication is vital when trying to resolve an IC conflict: everyone involved needs to decide if they want to simply RP it out, roll dice to determine the outcome, or opt for some other means to resolve it. If the situation rubs you the wrong way or it doesn't feel right or there's something else going on, the best option is simply to walk away. All that said, most RP'ers don't travel with a posse and, if conflict does happen, are generally happy to try and work it out amicably OOC for the sake of the IC portion proceeding smoothly.