C'kayah Polaali

I think part of this may be perceptual bias - a fairly large percentage of male characters I've seen are simply unapproachable. They brood in the corner, or growl at anyone who comes near, or are simply too shy to say anything. Some are uninterested in other people's RP and simply want to play out their own with other people. Some want to dominate the RP. Outside of erp, most of these characters don't see a lot of actual play with other people. I've played almost exclusively male characters in FFXIV, ranging from the gregarious crime lord C'kayah to the philosophical Baliir, the evil-as-hell Setoh, the blueblooded Naukha. On none of them I had too much trouble finding RP. Get all the RP you can eat with this one simple trick! Sounds clickbaity, but I read this in an improv essay once and started applying it to my RP. In my experience it's made a huge difference in my ability to get RP: "Play your character as if they were an extra in a movie about your RP partner." It's a different way of casting the old "Be a generous RP partner", with a little Dale Carnegie thrown in. Most roleplayers have some sort of story - usually a bunch of stories - going on about their character. Even if it's only in their heads, they have this. And in these stories, they're the hero. The protagonist. We're all protagonists in our own stories, after all. If you can help them with these stories - if you can RP in a way that supports their story and helps move it forward, then most people will see you as a jewel.

I mostly RP Miqo'te (with a brief foray into Auri), and I've honestly never done anything to make my Miqo catlike (or my Auri lizardlike). C'kayah is a retired crime lord. He was a criminal throughout the entire time I played him, and my longest played character to date. Despite being born in a tribe he is very urbanized (in a superficial way - the appearance of sophistication is more important to him than the actual hard work of becoming sophisticated). He's a mixed Seeker/Keeper (one of his grandmothers is a Keeper), and has internalized certain cultural traits from Keeper culture. Setoh was a nasty criminal for hire for the couple of years I played him. He was a Moonkeeper, and Keeper culture was very clearly the dominant foundation of his personality. Savin is a Sharlayan Miqo'te. He's my most "mixed" Miqo'te, in the sense that he's a Sharlayan first and a Miqo'te second. He's very definitely a city Miqo'te - despite being a Seeker, he doesn't come from a tribe, doesn't have a Seeker-style name, and doesn't really follow Seeker tribal traditions. Khaishan was a Xaela from the Ugund tribe. A poet who nearly died in an unfortunate boating accident, most of his RP story involved the psychological road that he travelled after he was rescued by a Raen. The Ugund, you see, are the tribe who bury the heads of their dead in barrels of fermented goat's milk, because the journey to the afterlife is so harrowing that it's better for the deceased to be drunk. Khaishan believed that he had drowned, and that everything that was happening after his rescue was actually part of the journey of his soul to the afterlife. Being a poet, he felt at a visceral level that "The ants are a metaphor. I understand. But tell me, after the council decides my fate, will you bring me the fermented goat's milk? Or is that just a metaphor, too?" I never RPed with anyone who tried to insist that my characters had catlike (or lizardlike, in Khaishan's case) characteristics. I suspect it's because I never played them as if they did, despite them being very distinctly nonhuman characters.

I'm a fan of Fate-14. It's fairly widely adopted, so you've automatically got a good size player base with Fate-14 characters. I use a variant of it called F-5 for my events. It's simplified, and doesn't require people to pre-generate their characters, so it's well suited to the sort of pick-up events that I run. It's otherwise compatible with Fate-14.

For short arcs? It really depends. They've got a definitive start and end, and they just run their course. For longer arcs? I've been playing around with doing RP arcs structured like TV series'. Das Loot has gone through three seasons so far: The first was a fairly straightforward "find the loot before the others do" arc. The second involved some outlaw mages and their enemies. This third arc is the aftermath of their destruction. The TV series' structure lets me tie them together if I want, but it also provides a structure that makes it pretty easy for people to drop in and out. Drop ins? They're involved in an episode, and their character (usually an NPC that I give them) doesn't have a scope beyond that. Are they interested in playing more regularly? Then their character can work into the season. Do they want to be central? Then they're central to the season. And at the end of the season, they can move on or come back as they wish.

I've RPed villains in FF since 2.0, and I typically do it publicly. I think it adds to the fun, both for me as the villain having to pay attention to things like who's around, and for the other people around me. It adds flavor. I do expect anything I do or say publicly to be used against me, but this is where it gets into odd territory. If I want my character to swing a sword at someone, I get to post that they're swinging the sword. I don't get to post what the result is, however. That's up to the other person. That's very well accepted. But does that only apply to physical fights? Or should it apply to other things? Cops 'n' robbers, off the script, is basically the same as that RP sword fight. It needs to play out - in my opinion - similarly. The spy can use the information they gathered against my character, but it has to happen in that same manner. And this, in my opinion, is why the answer to the question "is communication key?" is yes. Absolutely yes. At the end of the day, the ideal for RP is that everyone involved in a RP is doing it to make the collective story better. That's why I RP my characters' villainy in public. Likewise, if my character is spying, I'll make some sort of post that at least can indicate that my character is actively there (as opposed to standing still as if I were afk). It makes for a better story. At the same time, we've all probably run into someone who tries to RP to "win". It's one of the reasons why lots of people RP fights resolved with /random - it avoids that possibility in a combat RP. Silent omniscience in a character - whether it's a spy who literally can't be distinguished from an afk person or a villain who decides "no one can spy on me ever" - raises red flags in the same way as a character who always dodges a blow in a fight RP does. OOC communication can mitigate those red flags.

Huh, didn't know that. I guess that's fair then. My line of thinking was that since their scales match their horns so well they must be made of the same stuff. Horns are usually keratin just like our fingernails. I would also assume that despite all the lizard jokes Au Ra would still be mammals. The only scaled mammal that comes to mind, the pangolin, has keratin scales. I guess that's why this thread exists though. One person's reptile is another person's pangolin. We won't know how it really is until the lore writers give us more information. It's not so much the material that reptile scales are made of that makes them sensitive, though. It's the amount of sensory nerves in them. In alligators, there are these little sensory nodules on the surface of their scales that are served by nerves passing through the scales. I could see keratin-based Au Ra scales having similar things. Human skin, after all, contains a bunch of keratins in the outer layers.

Reptiles are surprisingly sensitive to touch. Scales can have nerves, just like skin, and those nerves can be very sensitive. Alligators, for instance, have these little nerve clusters on the surface of their scales that are sensitive to all sorts of things: touch, vibration, pressure, friction, even sound. Fingernails aren't particularly sensitive because they don't have these things, but I imagine Au Ra might.

Season 3 episode 2 - Objection! The Brass Blade inspector begins to interrogate Kakase when her lawyer shows up, surprising everyone. A stalemate grinds away to the inevitable compromise.

Season 3 episode 1 - Red Right Hand. Kakase arrives at the Mages compound to find them all dead. When a Brass Blade inspector arrives, suspicion naturally falls upon Kakase.

It all started with D&D for me, back in Jr. High. My characters were fairly standard tropes for a nerd in Jr. High - I had a lot of "powerful" wizards, etc. Around that time I started getting into writing, as well. Short stories, mostly. That ended up feeding back into my RP, in the sense that I started getting into making characters who were not just power projection fantasies for my 12 year old self. That started an on and off love affair with pen and paper RPGs that's continued to this day. In the mid 90s I discovered MUDs (yes, I'm old). My favorite was AmberMush, which had a decent number of really good RPers and writers on it, and was also interesting because everything in it was player created - everyone could create persistent objects in the game. Then came MMOs. Eve Online, at first. Despite the reputation, Eve has (had? I haven't played in years) a good RP community. It didn't hurt that I was absolutely in love with the game's PVP model, to the extent that I haven't been able to get into PVP in most other MMOs at all. I RPed in LOTRO (I'm a Tolkien nut), Star Trek Online, STTOR, EQ2, etc. Which led, almost accidentally, to FFXIV. Some non-RPing friends got me into it, and I made an alt on Balmung to check out the RP community. Years later I'm still here, still RPing, and enjoying the RP community (in general) more than most.

[align=center]Players Wanted![/align] It's that time of year again, Das Loot season 3 is kicking off! The focus for this season will be the aftermath of the destruction of the cabal of mages from season 2. I have a couple of hooks available to bring people in: - Criminals: The destruction of the mages left a power vacuum in the Thanalan underworld. Players that fill this will grow in power and wealth. - Any: The mages had a particularly valuable item in their vaults. Players that acquire this will grow in power and wealth. - Adventurers: I have a patron available who is interested in the loot. Players could work for this patron, going about the business of seeking and acquiring this loot. This is ideal for players who are unsure how they might proceed on their own. The next event is going to be Friday November 10th at 8:00 PM, Pacific time, and will be picking up where season 2 left off: With the Brass Blades catching Kakase at the mage's compound after the mages have all been killed. Ideally this event will also introduce new players. If you're interested, please PM me here, contact me in-game (C'kayah Polaali or Savin Kekaalah), or in discord (Satsuma#9627)

I've done a decent number of largish GMed events, so I'll chime in with the "use a post order" thing. I tend to let everything happen free-form if there's no conflict happening: If it's a party, or a meeting, or anything like that, I'll just let it all go free-form unless someone is obviously being left out because they can't type fast enough. With conflict - combat, for instance - I'll establish a post order, which naturally slows things down. I've started using /p and/or linkshells to help with this, though. I'll ask people, when it's their turn, to post OOCly in /p or the linkshell. Just a quick one-liner saying what they'll do. Then any rolls that are necessary are handled, and we move on to the next person. 60 seconds per person, tops. Then, while they're waiting for their next turn, they can craft up an IC post that has their action and its resolution (because we know if it's succeeded or not by that point) to be posted in /say or /em. This has been really helpful in keeping the action moving, so you might want to give it a try, as well.

Oh, I'm with you here. I wouldn't say "no OOC discussion" is a red flag that might keep me from role playing with someone but it is a sign that it may not go further than a simple conversation and the characters never interacting again. I play a character that needs some pushes here and there to make her interact with people. Unless the character she's interacting with is particularly outgoing and eager to make friends then it's unlikely to develop naturally. Preplanning a reason for interaction, even a simple one, always works best for me. It doesn't have to be a railroad and things can still happen naturally in between. I also like to know what's on the other person's mind and what they might want when/if more does happen. I'm okay with all kinds of stuff (like injuries and romance) but I like being asked first so I can discuss any concerns I might have. We role play for enjoyment and I think we owe it to each other to at least try to make sure the other side is happy and comfortable with how a scene is going. That's something you need OOC for. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I get that some people want everything to happen based on IC interactions, and they feel that any sort of OOC discussion harms that possibility, but honestly most people who feel that way are very passionate about it and they'll *say* so, OOCly, if I ask them via a /tell. I have no problem with that, and often those players can be very good. What I'm more talking about are players who, in response to "What sort of RP do you like", simply say "Anything". I've learned that this usually translates into either "I'm not fun to RP with", or "I expect you to come up with everything and provide me with RP on a platter. But I'll tell you if I don't like it." Plus the aforementioned "I am open to anything to happen to my character, and I shall not object to anything" people. Which, in my experience, means that they'll try to suck me into every two bit drama that glances in their direction.

These are all fantastic examples, and many of them raise red flags with me when I see them. However, I think, at the end of the day the big ones for me - and by that I mean the sort of red flags that will make me want to not RP with someone in a significant way - are RPers who say "no" instead of "yes, and...", and RPers who are completely unwilling to have any OOC discussion about how a scene/event/approach might work. The "no" vs "yes, and..." thing is straight out of improv. When we RP, we're doing improv. We're putting on an unscripted show for our own (and hopefully other people's) entertainment. There's a cardinal rule in improv that you should try to respond to the other actors in a way that builds upon what they do. Your actions should say "yes, and...", instead of shutting them down with "no". In my experience, RPers who shut down RP with "no" tend to be the ones who are unduly focused on "winning" the RP. The "no OOC discussion of approach" thing is probably a little more controversial, but let me explain. When I'm bored, I tend to hang out in places like the Quicksand looking for RPers. I examine people's search text, I look for characters who are walking or are dressed in appropriate outfits, and I'll send them /tells saying things like "Hi, what sort of RP are you looking for?" Some people get very insistent that they don't want to discuss anything like that at all, that they want to let RP develop naturally from the approach. I can understand that, but in my experience many (if not most) of those approaches devolve into simple "Hot, isn't it?" conversations that are soon over. If someone doesn't provide anything for you to get traction with, then the RP won't develop anywhere. There's another slice of "no OOC discussion" players who fall on the extreme opposite of this. They want the stories to happen to their characters without any control on their part. It sounds good in principle, but it tends to become hard to RP with those people because their characters are constantly getting into terrible binds. I think there's something about players like that where they're attracted to players who want to force actions on others, and those players are attracted to them as the ideal victims. I have no problem with people wanting that, but I really don't want to be caught in the middle of that.

Season 3 is upon us! Season 2 ended with the mysterious destruction of the mages and Kakase's capture by Ul'dahn police. Season 3 opens with the aftermath of that. The Black Shroud-based Moonkeeper gang the Bewleh Brothers arrange a meeting with an Au ra criminal organization to gain a piece of equipment. Mini-event 3.1 - Saccharin and Trust - Two gangs meet to strike a deal only to have the sun and attitude torpedo everything. Gang leader Miho has baby lust, but not like you would expect...

Not to mention the fact having your criminal organization sitting in a building that simply says something like "Eorzean Fellowship of Assassins and Kitten Thieves" is probably a bad idea for any criminal operating in a law-abiding nation. Not to mention, owning a legitimate business gives you a solid way to launder money. In real life, criminal organizations with legitimate fronts are extremely common, and have been for years. Al Capone owned an antique shop. John Gotti owned a couple of clubs. The Cali Cartel (in an amusing piece of irony) owned a major chain of successful drug stores. With Stormblood, we're seeing a lot more eastern-inspired RP groups, including a few Yakuza-inspired groups, but you have to understand that the Yakuza are an exception to the rule in that they don't hide themselves. So you're seeing lots of crime organizations with front businesses among FCs? It's honestly as it should be. Working as designed.

Yeah, it's freaking nuts. I've gotten 5 levels from one low level DR (20 to 25) with all the XP gear, though it's slowed down after that and I'm only getting a few levels per DR now. "Only". I can't imagine how fast it will be once I've finished getting WHM to 60 there.

Setoh has retired with his mate to a little house in La Noscea. They're living off their ill-gotten gains, and raising a newborn daughter. Setoh has been practicing what he'll say to any boys who want to date her when she's older. C'kayah tried retirement and found it ill-suited him. He got bored and jumped back into the game. Lorin (my newest main) is a Sharlayan maker and refugee from their outpost in Dravania. He's currently living in Limsa, making oddball things that he sells out of a little shop, and probably will never retire.

My FC uses Discord as our primary communications tool, too, replacing website forums, announcements, etc. I think a website is still useful as a "trailhead" - "Contact X, Y, or Z if you're interested, here are the rules, etc", but that really doesn't require more than a simple static website. What I've done in the past for an online game I made, when it came time to sunset it, was to make a static mirror of the website (there are tools which can do this for you. I used wget, which is a command line tool, but there are others with more friendly interfaces) and then hosted that on S3. I do have to pay for it, but the cost is somewhere around 11 cents a month. I think if I were looking at doing a new FC today, I'd do something like this for the website, and simply have it act as a jumping off point to get people to contact the FC officers.

Mini-event #9 - Caught! The Mages request another delivery, but when Kakase arrives at their compound, she finds the house filled with dead bodies. When a Brass Blade inspector arrives, the tension mounts!

On the topic of an official RP server, Lord of the Rings Online provided an interesting test. LOTRO is, of course, based on Lord of the Rings. Which has a fan base exhibiting passion for the lore that's astounding to see. When the game came out, it was published by two different companies at the same time. Turbine (who developed the game) ran servers in north america, and they sold the EU business to Codemasters. Turbine decided that they wouldn't create a specific RP server, but instead they designated the Landroval server as "RP encouraged". Codemasters set up the Laurelin server as an official RP server, and added some specific terms of service for that server that basically covered derp and troll behavior. Lore-inappropriate names (Spanky McBottom), trolling ("Look at the RP f***!"), and setting-inappropriate behavior (being that one Dwarf who jump-runs in circles in the Prancing Pony while spamming AOEs) were all banned, and they were pretty decent about policing it. I was on the Landroval server, of course, because people in north america couldn't get on EU servers and visa-versa. It was a decent RP community, but there were definitely parallels with things that happen on Balmung. I'd heard stories of how good Laurelin was, but I couldn't go see without buying a Codemasters version of the game and using a VPN. A few years ago, Turbine bought the EU business back from Codemasters, and brought the EU servers under their own umbrella. They didn't change anything about them - Landroval remained RP encouraged without any special rules, and Laurelin remained "official RP" with it's special rules. The big difference was now anyone could get on any server. I decided to make a character on Laurelin to see what the difference was. It was amazing. RPers were still probably in the minority, but there wasn't the sort of derpage or trolling that you'd see on Landroval - or Balmung. The Prancing Pony - the LOTRO equivalent of the QS - had musicians (LOTRO has an amazing player-music system), storytellers, random patrons drinking, people having hushed meetings in the corner. It felt like an actual tavern in that setting. No Spanky McBottom spamming AOEs. No trolls in their underwear going around to RPers and sitting in their laps. I found RP while questing in out of the way swamps and such. It was amazing. Perhaps official RP servers in other games haven't worked out, but that doesn't mean that the concept can't work out. As for whether I'd move or not? It depends. Being assured of carrying over my assets and not losing my housing (I like the house token idea that's been thrown around) would help. Knowing that a ton of RPers were moving would help.

I do want to add one unrelated thing. I'm not saying that the OP does this, but it's something I've seen a lot of, and that is people being extremely vague about the sort of RP they want, and I think that sort of vagueness leads to less RP opportunities. Here's what I mean: A great deal of my RP revolves around dark/crime subjects, which is understandably not everyone's cup of tea. Sometimes when I don't have anything else going on, I'll take a character into the QS (or other RP hub) and look at people, looking for RPers. If they look interesting, I'll send them a tell. "Hi! What sort of RP are you looking for?" Chances are, if they reply, their reply will be something in the lines of "Anything, really." You see the problem here? I'll typically send another tell, then, explaining: "I do a lot of dark RP and crime RP, and not everyone goes for that, hence me asking." And chances are I'll get a reply that says "I'm really fine with anything" At which point I usually drop it. These days, I usually drop it after the first "anything". Because if I then come up with a hook and send it to them, saying "How 'bout my character sells yours a drug, and we can get a friend of mine who plays a Brass Blade to try to bust us, and there can be a fight..." or "An enemy of your character hires mine to try to rough your character up in an alley", they'll typically reply that they were more looking for some other sort of RP. And these are often the same people who complain about not being able to find RP. So my advice to anyone who's having trouble finding the RP they want: be specific. In your search text. In your tells to people. Come out and say what you want. You'll find it.

The Quicksand is a seedy bar in a decadent city filled with wealth. The fact that 30-50% of the RPers in there at any given time want to get their rocks off with someone else is entirely fitting with the scene. I will say that it has gotten tougher to find serious RP on this server. Not because it doesn't exist, but because there's so many of us here that it's hard to find what you're looking for. In other games with smaller RP communities, I've played characters that have gone along with whatever plots I could find, simply because there was far less to choose from. On Balmung I can be choosy. On Balmung we can all be choosy. And I suspect a lot of us are a lot more choosy than we think we are, so things feel like there's a lot less going on. And honestly, housing hasn't helped. I mean, it's great that there are houses people can go RP in, but it does tend to make a lot of the more serious RP happen literally behind closed doors, for better or worse.

Last week continued Patron and Pariah, with Kakase making contact with the mages, and laying the groundwork for further infiltration: Mini-event #8 - Patron and Pariah, Part 2 - Kakase meets the mages and receives a linkpearl, to her surprise. Foreshortened chats could lead to longer alliances.

It's been difficult running events the last few weeks, but they're starting to pick up again. This week's was an unadvertised one featuring one of our long-term players: Mini-event #7 - Patron and Pariah - Kakase seeks vengeance against the mysterious mages of Little Ala Mhigo, and finds help in a most unexpected place. The threads of obligation rest on her shoulders.