(01-05-2018, 03:21 PM)Zen Ares Wrote: It's really going to depend on perspectives on the importance of this topic. I've been RPing over 20 years and my roots are purist, in that I find it most enjoyable to use roleplay to find roleplay. Around 5-6 years ago, more communities moved into using OOC communication via forums, while the new generation of RPers at that time desired to know someone OOC before they RPd with them. This nearly killed my enjoyment of RP. I enjoy winding up a few characters, tossing them on a stage (so to speak) and see what happens when they start interacting with others. That's my joy and too much OOC kills RP, IMO.
I tried the forum thing for about five years and grew to hate enjin since so many used it as a platform for passive-aggressively attacking each other. That's when I lost all interest in interacting with people on RP community forums for any depth. I also learned in this time that if I want to meet people that share my RP style, I need to engage in that playstyle.
Mateus is the first RP community I've come across in a while where I can organically seek out RP and interact without needing to "sell myself OOC" in order to get people to RP with me.Â
When I was brand new, I used these forums to figure out the pulse of the RP communities. When I learned Mateus had a Discord and healthy Tumblr community, I was happy. While I rarely post in the Discord, I do use it to find out about events. It was a weak point for the Mateus community for a while. Several people have come up with working solutions and are trying to find a way to keep events updated. We now have an event Discord. I haven't joined that yet either because at the end of the day I still have a strong preference for using RP to find RP... sort of thing. I use Tumblr for creative expression and have some 30+ blogs I've created over the years for various characters, guilds, and OOC interests. Discord and Tumblr are both on my phone.Â
Being old school, now that the opportunity is there to get away from "OOC selling myself", I jumped off of forums and enjin quicker than a bee is attracted to honey! That's what works for Mateus.
(01-08-2018, 01:39 AM)Erah Wrote: "That's my joy and too much OOC kills RP, IMO."
This.... 1000x this....
Yeah, I've been around probably a bit longer, and I agree, I don't like doing RP on forums and the like. I do think forums are great for coordination, OOC lore discussions, getting the word out about events and as as public IC message board. (even 30 years ago [hell, I feel old now] we had a BBS / mailing list for those purposes for the two LARPs I was dealing with).
I really can't do the pre-planned RP, I feel so lost and theirs this little voice in my head yelling at me for metagaming the characters. I could get on a soapbox about the death of the virtual world concept and our move towards the fixed vignette style of RP but that really begs another topic all together.
Us living world folks are still out there. Don't despair too much. My last rant on it elsewhere brightened a few others to the concept, maybe... just maybe... our open world RP will blossom again. (I'm a hopeless optimistic)
I'm squinting a bit cause I know I'm older than one o' yas. xD Online RP was pretty much relegated to chat sites and forums from before mmos were a thing. No one in xiv that I've met in the past four years uses forums as their main RP venue. What we use it for is things like knowing to go to Mateus in the first place. Lore dumps, static communication like event notices or FC ads , as well as a place to put info about your characters to see if you can find someone who plays similarly to you in game (if you choose to) are things that a site like this are good for. Back when tabletop was it, we'd post notecards saying we were running a game on thursdays (or whenever) on the bulletin board of the local gaming store.
This site and any like it are tools like the bulletin board, nothing more.
I've been mulling over the discord thing. At first, the ephemeral nature of it left me scratching my head over why it was replacing a site such as the RPC. I'm still head scratching to a point, but I think the ephemeral nature is technically how it self-maintains. No one has to do any cleaning since any group who came and went has their FC info too far in the past to find. Old events are just scrolled past. It's a bit more reactive, people can post "Hey, I play during these weird hours, anyone else?" and others can respond as they see fit, instead of a proactive "Lemme check and see if there's a FC/LS for late night players". I feel the second would be more guaranteed in one sense in that you'll find the group's info while the first could just garner a bunch of "uhhh... I think I may have heard about something, not sure." BUT, if the thread isn't updated (a problem here), then it's not useful either.
This is, of course, going off my own experience with different servers as I'm not on the Mateus one(s) specifically.
Regarding the calendar, yeah the RPC one is... unfortunate. ; u ; I do hope the new site will resolve this issue, as you mentioned.
And yes, I've heard noise since starting this thread about people avoiding the RPC either due to hating Balmung players or Balmung players having heard of/experienced drama here and just avoiding it completely. My thought about the separate sub forums was a way for players on other servers to... frankly... not have to see Balmung posts that make them irritable. ^^; As to the latter, I'm not entirely sure how you phoenix out of that. I've led an FC out of the ashes, but we didn't have to deal with any bad rep, so I'm unsure on that.
