ArmachiA

I shortened "the popular crowd" to "the populars" for easy typing. No need to read anymore into it. I just don't see a problem with established people making it easier to help pave the way once their established, making easier for the next generation of rpers to, as Aya put it, feel more confident about getting out there. If there is something we can do, I want to do it and I don't think "Just go do it" will help. They don't SEE your failures, they only see your successes, "Just go do it" can look very daunting and frustrating to people at times. I agree, there is help going out, in a sense, though that still doesn't solve the too timid to actually approach the people they want to approach thing. I'm not saying we should be able to find anything, but if their IS a way, I'd like to see it. If there's not, hey at least there was a discussion.

It's not about who's to blame. Gees I was just talking about maybe coming to a middle and finding failings on both sides that we could fix to make the connections a little easy and better for new rpers but you all are twisting it Nevermind.

Look, no one is saying that the populars didn't work hard. It was an attempt to realize there are failings on both sides, which people admit and then go right back to blaming the new rpers side. No one has even said "What can we do to seem more available?" At first I agreed then it went into how Nara'to failed and not... the other side of the community. No one in here has discussed the established part of the community without going "But, really, it's not us, it's them." I'm just asking for a bit of social awareness. If it really is a two way street, admit the failings of the OTHER side too, then maybe we can find some common ground and see if anything can be fixed. It's really not much to ask to try to see BOTH sides of the argument, here.

This is one of those things where your seeing it from a different light, though. You were very lucky to get into the popular group, some aren't so lucky. Hell, most aren't that lucky. You get to talk to a bunch of new people because you are in a position where people want to RP with YOU by your reputation. That isn't the case for these new people. Especially if their RP style isn't quite compatible with the "Inner Circle" - they either fall in line or get left behind. AGAIN, I'm not saying this is always the case or it's a bad thing - as people should rp with who makes them happy - but you know, let's be real here. If you want to actually help the problem you gotta be real about certain aspects of the problem Myself, I never have a problem finding RP, since my FC is self sustaining, but I understand how hard it can be if you come to Balmung by yourself without an established group of RP friends.

Aya, you're kinda... part of the popular crowd though, your experience would be VERY different. All I'm saying.

It can be hard to get into an established or popular group. I know I have even been blacklisted on this site for disagreeing with a popular member before (Because the site actually lets you know when you've been blacklisted by saying you've been thrown on some invisible buddylist). *Shrug* I understand how hard it can be if you're on the outside. I know a lot of it is people being shy and expecting people to come to them, but I also know that's not always the case.

This is me. Graeham we should be friends, why aren't we friends

OKAY, Erik I'm on your side here and I want you to remember that, but there's a reason this accusation was happening. Even from our corner of Balmung, I HEARD that instead of just using the Sultana for the dance (Which I thought was a great idea) you were using her in a bunch of your FCs storylines and basically controlling the Sultana as an NPC for your stuff and making her friends with people in your FC - which is a huge no-no in the RP world. Was it true? I've no idea. I know people told me they witnessed it themselves. BUT that's where it came from.

Most of my connections come from the NB Itself or people who roleplay with other people in the NB . It's not that I'm bad at connections, it's just the NB seriously takes up a lot of my time. Even a veteran roleplayer would love to meet new people. Who ever had the idea of basic events that the rpc could regularly attend kind of had the right of it. The Grindstone, for instance, has turned itself in to an RP community ran juncture instead of a specific FC's event and it's all the better for it. I'd like to see more things like the Grindstone. I remember many many moons ago an attempt to make Wineport an RP hub like environment like the Grindstone, BUT Coil was there and that messed everything up haha. No FC houses, places that are neutral and easily available will help get people RPing with each other. Maybe find some kind of activity that forces people to rp outside their group (Like the Grindstone does). If these events seem nuetral and easily accessible even new people can go and meet some old people. This is true. I've been in a few "Looking for RP" ls's and they... never looked for rp. Idle ooc chitchat with nothing ever getting done. It was discouraging and I ended up giving up on the idea of finding one

Me and Dennthotta run the "Main" (Not the first and foremost plotline, but the reoccurring) storyline in the Night Blades. People are usually surprised to know most of it isn't scripted in the slightest. I have a large vault of villains that I have pulled from the last year or two played by various people in the guild as alts. Fillion was our main bad guy for a long while, along with his sisters Isera and Ferah - who ran around terrorizing people in the name of the Empire. They were well fleshed out, didn't see themselves as villains, and had their own things going on aside from going after the Night Blades. Of course, as is the case with most villains, they were defeated recently - Isera was beheaded and Ferah was killed in a bigger battle, but Fillion now works with the NB - exchanging information he knows about the newest big bad (Fillion's ex-second in command, Cicero) for his life. These characters also had different character swing in and out to help, cause problems and leave. We also did a big Voidsent storyline for awhile when Fillion and co. went into hiding for awhile. If I broke down the exact timeline of what happened, a lot of it would sound scripted, but the truth is I don't script a LOT of things. Here are the only things I actually plan: The beginning of an arc is usually always scripted in a way. It's meticulously planned out with everyone who wants to be involved in order to try to bring in or interest as many people as possible. The very beginning pretty much goes a certain way, and is written in such a way to provoke interest of those in the guild. If certain people want something specific. A lot of the time, people will hear about a storyline and go "I actually want -this- to happen with my character, is there a way to do that?" and I'll work with them to work it into the plot and making sure it goes the way that they want to. If we want to do something VERY specific with a non-Storyteller character. Sometimes in the middle of an arc we'll come up with a grand idea ("Based on 's past, let so and see how it would effect the character!"). We'll then go ask the player and a certain amount of planning will happen. Events on Roll20 are obviously a little planned since you have to build your own maps and boss fights. Anndd.. that's about it. Everything else is reacting to the players reacting to what we set up in the beginning. Player decided to get their character more involved? We may throw one of our Villains at the character to stop them. Character tried to run away? We may have someone go kidnap them while they are away from the safety of the group. Things like that. We don't plan it out till things happen, and there are about 5 or 6 helpers who watch roeplay sessions and then report back to us what people were roleplaying about - which helps us plan our next move. I don't really have a fixed ending, except for knowing what the fate of the Villains is supposed to be. Each player gets to decide if their character lives or dies, if a person playing a Villain says they don't want that character to die yet, I just need to prepare for that character surviving. I've had people get REALLY mad at me for this - saying that its not fair the "heros" can't kill the villains, but it's not up to me. It's the same rules as the "Heros" have - the storyteller can't tell a player their character is dead without their permission, not in an MMO. I only had control of two Villains myself, most of them are rolled by other people. Generally, we tend to come up with things on the fly, we have a Storyteller LS, a Skype room, and a secret section on the forums so we can tell each other our ideas at anytime of the day. I've seriously gotten up at 4am to go "GUYS WE SHOULD DO THIS." after hearing about certain role-play sessions. So, my answer is a little of all three. I don't like working off a script in Roleplay, preferring to react to the players but obviously some things need to be planned in order to create a more cohesive storyline. It requires a lot of fast thinking on my part, but I really enjoy it.

It was completely accidental and I didn't mean to make her look (Or act) like anyone, but Armi is basically (Personality and looks) Eri Kamei: Same Facial expression too as the gifs will show: That looking up and tilted her head to think? ARMI. Same smile, same scrunch of the nose. Same shy, but weird aura. Just because I accepted her fate, I also gave Armi the same snaggletooth Eri has as an homage:

Oh, since it's on a Friday, I'll just drag Ellion Goto with me, since it's his name on our Guild Master banner.

Reply referencing a now, edited topic

I kind of have a soft spot for Comic Book Esque Villains. Like... in Injustice: Gods Among Us when Joker has Superman kill Lois Lane by using a mix of Kryponite and the Scarecrows fear gas making Superman believe she was Doomsday. Oh, by the way, she was pregnant. It's just... deliciously over-the-top and effectual that in a world where SUPERMAN exists, the Joker can still effect his overpowered ass just by being incredibly wiley. The Joker is a mystery himself in a lot of ways... but even then his motives have some kind of internal logic. His internal logic is everything is a game, and when the Joker does something, it never feels out of character. I mean he explains his entire motive as to why he did it: Because he kept losing to Batman and Superman was an easy target. (Though actually his real motive was to get Sups to kill him to prove that ANYONE is corruptable. And that worked!) That's it. Amazing. (Shout out to Injustice's Harley Quinn - who owns bones) I know that kind of villain can't work in a lot of settings. But that over the top kind of drama is definitely a guilty pleasure of mine.

Guns is a thing I've been waiting for since 1.0's release when they teased it in one of the beginning Limsa cutscenes (T_T). In every game I play, I always play a gun wielder if it's available, it's usually my prefered class. The only exception is Final Fantasy FFXI where I played a RDM (And would play one in FFXIV in A HEARTBEAT, but I have a feeling thats not coming for a long, long while). The original plan was to make Loki my gun user, as an ex-pirate with a peg leg, this seems pretty easy and at the beginning of 2.0 I even had her studying Magitek in order to be able to 1. build a better leg and 2. Be Prepared for Guns when they came out. Then, Armi became my main. Oops. Armi doesn't know anything about Magitek or building robots or gizmo's, so it took a little finagling. Armi may not know how to build anything, but her friend SIBEN does (In fact, that's been the characters life since 1.0, huzzah!) and Siben's player has agreed to help Armi become a Machinist (Gizmos and robots and all) following events happening in the FC right now. The NB got it's hand on some magitek technology that Siben has been reconstructing and deconstructing every time they get a new piece and Armi - well things are moving along the storyline so using a gun is going to be a more viable option then the bow she's currently using.

Everytime my FC does a heavy villian storyline, I always do a consent thread - where if they sign it they agree to be hurt, but with certain caviats (You can see our current consent thread for the Voidsent storyline we're doing here: http://nightblades.shivtr.com/forum_threads/2067992) This kind of makes players more comfortable since the guidelines are laid out for them and, while some people choose to stay away, a lot end up signing up. But it is an issue with Villains, the fact not a lot of people want to have their characters hurt. Or - my biggest problem - wanting to beat the villain within the first WEEK of the storyline. T_T How are they villains if they get destroyed by you immediately?

Honestly, if this was some big convention to throw out governing rules and by-laws that the rest of the RP community has to adhere to, the NB (Mine) would not attend. If you recall, I was one of the BIGGEST opponents of the Poison Water event, because when it was first posted it said "All the water in Ul'dah was poisoned." which was unfair to those who refused to participate or had no idea they could even participate. I stand by that and I was happy when they clarified it was only a small amount of the water, and was stopped fast enough to not have a glaring, lasting impact on Ul'dah and it's inhabitants. I'm not a fan of a bunch of people trying to police people outside of their jurisdiction. I run the Night Blades, they have agreed to be run by me, but the rest of the game world has not. Our stories are VERY carefully crafted - so they aren't in a bubble so other people can join if they want BUT in such a way where they have no impact on the Status Quo. Nothing big gets blown up, no major NPCs are used or harmed, No towns are touched. Nothing that could effect anyones roleplay outside of the NB is ever developed - making it so we don't have to RP in a bubble ("Oh our Ul'dah was destroyed!") and can continue to RP with the community if we so choose. I'm not looking to be a leader of the server - if you've noticed I mostly keep to myself and hardly any of you have actually met me - IC or otherwise. The Night Blades (Mine) would be against such an endeavor. That being said, it doesn't look like that is what is happening at all. It just looks like a place to mingle the FCs and see if something happens. Not all FCs are going to agree - not all of them have to, but I think it's good to see what the other FCs are doing. I want to know what their storylines are, and their rules, and their stance on different things. This is actually beneficial to me as an FC leader, since I can direct people to better suited FCs and even use other FCs as contacts should they believe in the same things we do. I am actually interested in the other FCs on the server, even if I hardly get to interact with them. (My dream would be a thread on here where FCs can update once a month what their story is doing or whatever so I can read it <,<) I remember, actually, when the RPC was first launched, people thought the same thing. They thought that this website was going to be the Shadow Government that rules RP on Besaid (All FC leaders were made moderators at the time and had their own forum to talk to each other in). It turned into a lot of fights, with people being against the idea of the RPC trying to govern the community at all and people actually WANTING the RPC to govern the community. People left the forums over both reasons. In reality, the only reason the "secret" FC leader forum was there was for this exact reason, to facilitate Inter-FC relations in a quieter space. Some FC leaders tried to use it to make decisions for the community as a whole (The infamous Sever Vote debacle) but mostly, it was just a forum where FC leaders went "Yo, anyone play police? I need an arrest." I think, though, it's good to let people voice their concerns in the thread, in order to have a public answer of what exactly the meeting is for. It will not only answer the person asking, but also the people who are too afraid to ask.

"ERPers" are a different thing then "RPers who happen to ERP"

There are many, many different types of voidsent http://www.ffxiv.gamerescape.net/wiki/Category:Class:Voidsent of various power levels and such. We actually don't know them all, voidsent could be pretty much anything. I wouldn't really be adverse to just inventing one like Koh if you are so inclined, BUT there's probably someone who knows way more about the void then me around here.

Tam Tara HM was just mentioned, but if you want to be able to see the true form of Voidsent creatures, there's really nothing that says your character can't. Imps can take the form of other things and High Ranking voidsent can possess people or corpses. Having a character that can see their "True forms" isn't too far fetched (And players can choose to believe her or not, still), though I would make it so your character had a terrible run in with the void that could explain why she can see it. Maybe, if you want to go down that route, she could also see mortals who are "Voidtouched" and see just how void-touched they actually are? Also, ERPers are gonna try regardless of what you do. Unless you play a Lalafell. Maybe.

I always assumed Highlanders were kind of Nordic anyway.

I was doubtful anyone had been caught doing it, the roleplayers on FFXIV seem to be a lot more discreet than that. (Though back in 2010, Ellion did catch three people ERPing in say launch day in 1.0) But yeah, not seeing how erp is relevant.

^ That is why I added this in Because it's a joke. Has anyone from the community actually been caught erping in public? Aside from ERP Hovel back in 2.0 days. I think it's mostly confined to private rooms now with sexual advances made in public.

Never go to the Quicksand.* (*It's a joke)

I think so too, but I'm just thrown off by her now because her first post was: Which is why I gave it a read. She seemed open to critique, and hearing what the general consensus on her character was. So I totally gave her advice on that... and then completely shut down. "No, I'm not changing it lol" And it was like "But you JUST SAID...?" Which was frustrating to say the least.