Looking over the Mentorship thread, I think a fundamental cause of its problems might have been that it was, simply put, too much.
I'm thinking just a listing of character names, their availability (days of the week/time of the day), and where they often be found in-game. That's all you really need to provide an out-of-character hook for new roleplayers such as Aris to get involved in-character.
I'll use Aya as an example, not because I'm volunteering her for anything, but because the barmaid concept she went with for a time had her character firmly rooted to a certain location.
"Hi, my character's name is Aya, I'm usually in the Quicksand (Ul'dah's Adventurer's Guild) on such-and-such days at such-and-such times. I play a barmaid."
That would be it; everything else that the Mentorship Program had seems, imo, extraneous. With this, though, you'd have a listing of social, available people who have volunteered themselves as potential starting-points for other characters. New members check the sticky, go "oooh, Aya seems like the kind of character mine could talk to, and so does ____" and from there it's a hop, skip, and a jump towards getting involved with this community.
...I know, I know, I went against my own advice and went into detail instead of making a separate thread. Whoopseedaisy.
I'll see if I can't draft up a sticky thread along these lines and give it a trial run.
I'm thinking just a listing of character names, their availability (days of the week/time of the day), and where they often be found in-game. That's all you really need to provide an out-of-character hook for new roleplayers such as Aris to get involved in-character.
I'll use Aya as an example, not because I'm volunteering her for anything, but because the barmaid concept she went with for a time had her character firmly rooted to a certain location.
"Hi, my character's name is Aya, I'm usually in the Quicksand (Ul'dah's Adventurer's Guild) on such-and-such days at such-and-such times. I play a barmaid."
That would be it; everything else that the Mentorship Program had seems, imo, extraneous. With this, though, you'd have a listing of social, available people who have volunteered themselves as potential starting-points for other characters. New members check the sticky, go "oooh, Aya seems like the kind of character mine could talk to, and so does ____" and from there it's a hop, skip, and a jump towards getting involved with this community.
...I know, I know, I went against my own advice and went into detail instead of making a separate thread. Whoopseedaisy.
I'll see if I can't draft up a sticky thread along these lines and give it a trial run.
![[Image: 1qVSsTp.png]](http://i.imgur.com/1qVSsTp.png)
