Hydaelyn Role-Players

Mason Wrote:Only at the very begging of RP on Sylph, when there was one RPLS, were player-based factions really a force to reckon with. This was because there were a lot of RP'ers under one LS, and the leader literally played the head of almost every faction himself xD, so even the success of that is somewhat artificial. Since then I've seen problems with membership decline which led to Factions having no real power, or absence of leadership in which case the faction likely fall apart.

Sylvestra was cool, but I think it was a mistake to have had each guild wear a separate linkpearl. It segmented the members too much and I think such a thing would only have worked if one could wear both their 'guild' pearl as well as the overall LS pearl at the same time (which would be a swell idea for FFXIV to implement, but that's probably just wishful thinking on my part).

After that, the big issue with guilds was lack of interest. Everyone usually wants to be near the top rung of the ladder, and joining a guild seldom allows for this, at least not right away. Scant memberships led to frustrated leaders led to the creation of NPC 'underlings' in a lot of instances. Squires in the knighthood and pirate crews and such.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this though, with a much larger pool of RPers.

I like the idea.

One way I'd like to see this implemented is if in FFXIV, there are establishments similar to places like The Lion Springs Tavern of FFXI, I think it would be nice to have an organization where players can get together and hang out in such places to do things like meeting and getting to know one another better.

For example, this picture explains what I mean:


I think these places would be great hubs for people to tell their stories to others and such. I plan for my character to be a bit of a drinker, so he'll be sitting in the taverns quite often, chatting it up.

It seems to me that there are going to be such places in FFXIV from some of the pictures I have seen, maybe not, we still have to wait and see but it makes me excited to think about.

Actually, taking that idea one step further, to have someone innovate a particular establishment, then create a linkshell (or whatever they end up using) simply as visitors to that particular establishment. You put the linkpearl on when you walk in the room and then interact on the shell as long as you are there. They could run their business just like any other, hosting karaoke, bards, minstrels, or simply allow people to chatter about, like we used to do in the old days, in the Red Dragon Inn on AOL Chat.

Mason Wrote:I'm planning to start one based on assassins/killers/mercs who are willing to do anything for the coin. The leader and the organization itself will be heavily tied to both my character's history and main plot line. By opening it up for the public (after all it will be rather public once some killings begin) I figure might as well make it accessible to whoever wants to RP as part of it, or against it, or somehow effected by it, etc. It'd definitely be a small band of 15 or so NPCs at first, so... no assassin on every corner hehe. I'll stop here before I get ahead of myself. Your thoughts are welcome and appreciated.

Lol. Bloodthirst killers, thieves and mercenaries are fun to play. My character Tsumi started out 100% badass mercenary babe. If I rolled another character like her though I'd want to find a different way to play it since I've pretty much done every angle I can with her.

Same with my COR character, lots of fun with a free-spirt, that's conned, theived, cheated and stolen all of her life and is pretty neutral about all kinds of villiany.

What might be fun recreating a similiar character to Nikkita, my serial killer BLM, it was fun being evil with absolutely no redeeming qualities. lol.

Quote:Sylvestra was cool, but I think it was a mistake to have had each guild wear a separate linkpearl. It segmented the members too much and I think such a thing would only have worked if one could wear both their 'guild' pearl as well as the overall LS pearl at the same time (which would be a swell idea for FFXIV to implement, but that's probably just wishful thinking on my part).

After that, the big issue with guilds was lack of interest. Everyone usually wants to be near the top rung of the ladder, and joining a guild seldom allows for this, at least not right away. Scant memberships led to frustrated leaders led to the creation of NPC 'underlings' in a lot of instances. Squires in the knighthood and pirate crews and such.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this though, with a much larger pool of RPers.

When I was on Starsider I was in a guild called House Blue Lotus that was sort of that idea. We hosted a social open to all on Friday nights which was very popular while HBL's leaders were around. When a lot of us stopped playing it stopped.

Maybe I should try some themed RP night like that like I do for Sfant Umbra in some kind of organization. lol

Quote:Actually, taking that idea one step further, to have someone innovate a particular establishment, then create a linkshell (or whatever they end up using) simply as visitors to that particular establishment. You put the linkpearl on when you walk in the room and then interact on the shell as long as you are there. They could run their business just like any other, hosting karaoke, bards, minstrels, or simply allow people to chatter about, like we used to do in the old days, in the Red Dragon Inn on AOL Chat.

Innovative establishments... interesting idea, except I don't see the need for LS use for this. Especially since everyone seems to be concerned over taking people away from their main LS for any kind of smaller RP sessions. What you described seems to be possible over /say ^_^

HBL RP nights and my LSes RP Night which is open to friends not in our LS are both done in say.

Like Mason says the location serves as the draw to come and RP.

I agree with KS too many linkpearls would cause problems.

I'm probably just fantasizing for even HOPING for something like this, but Age of Anarchy's roleplaying community had a brilliant solution. Chatbots were 100% allowed in that game so long as ALL they did was relay text, so the leader of the largest RP organization set up a number of chatbots on free accounts whose sole purpose was to monitor their organization (linkshell/guild equivalent) channel and relay it to all the other affiliated RP orgs. Each org had their own chatbot and would preface what they relayed with an ID tag saying which org it came from, if not their own. Via specific prefaces, you could talk to only your own org, or to every org on the network. It was fantastic and worked great since each organization in our faction was, ICly, a different bureau or department of a megacorporation. There were also chatrooms that were independant of party status or zone. Anyone from anywhere could hop in if they knew the room's name, if it wasn't password protected. So, there was an open access roleplayer's comm channel that nearly always had someone at least lurking.

It's way too much to hope for and would be difficult to explain in a "low tech" fantasy setting, but man... I miss having such easy, wide-ranging access to RPers at my fingertips.

Oh, was I supposed to say something practical? I am so not internet savvy, but how about this: Some form of organization-specific IM chatroom / IRC channel / etc that persists out-of-game and is open access to anyone who is a member ICly. We could have the Rogue's Guild IRC channel, the Knight Protectors AIM chatroom, the Merchant Symposium Skype chat, the College of Magical Studies Ventrilo server, etcetera. I recognize this isn't universally practical as not all of us will have access to a PC while we're playing, but it is something to consider. In addition to that, we could always have an IC Organizations section of this forum, where each organization can maintain its own sub-forum in a nice, non-LS specific centralized locale.

Quote:In addition to that, we could always have an IC Organizations section of this forum, where each organization can maintain its own sub-forum in a nice, non-LS specific centralized locale.

Yep, that's pretty much what I've proposed to resolve the issue of communication w/o adding an organization specific LS. Your other suggestions sound good too, I can see how a chatroom might be useful in planning certain things or even real-time strategy/coordination.

Quote:In addition to that, we could always have an IC Organizations section of this forum, where each organization can maintain its own sub-forum in a nice, non-LS specific centralized locale.

I agree as well, it would be better than having a LS for every organization that you are involved with in my opinion.