Eva

I had thought from early forum posts (maybe mostly on the previous forums) that Roegadyn were going to be much more popular than the galka were in FFXI. I'm honestly surprised there isn't a better representation in the voting on this demographics page. But it may be from people who haven't joined up on the new forum yet. :?

-=NecroBump=- Was given this little gem by someone in the Alpha. :cheer: [attachment=0]

What I think a lot of people don't realize is that strengths and powers are overrated, and weaknesses and shortcomings are really what make characters unique and interesting. Up to this point, I've given most of my characters a plethora of weaknesses and maybe one or two "strengths" which sometimes themselves turn out to be more of a curse than a blessing. Case in point - Dyterium on the surface was a strong knightly type who was admittedly very strong but was shown to possess no actual powers aside from some difficult-to-interpret visions/dreams. His shortcomings were much greater. He was extremely stubborn (there was always much talk of the Zelorius stubborn streak, and pretty sure Kes will inherit some of this). He was socially inept. He grew to have severe trust issues, and as a result had a difficult time retaining friendships and throughout RP had very few close friends. Physically he had a visual impairment where bright light hurt him. His close ties to his wyvern (which while a bit 'supernatural' possibly, were a very far cry from overboard) were more often a source of weakness than of strength. He was never meant to be very attractive - a bout with one of Castiel's characters' avatars left him with scars across much of his body. His one redeeming quality was always his unwavering loyalty to the things to which he dedicated himself. While a pretty big tangent, I just wanted to point out that I've always found weakness and "the human element" to be far more interesting than strength. It seems to me to be more inviting to conversation in many instances than always talking about how great and awesome people are. Maybe that's just me though. To conclude, and to get back on track though - I make no assumption about RPers based upon whether they choose to carry out RP involving mission stuff. I will admit I've always thought it dangerous to tie one's storyline too closely to existing NPC's (i.e. Cid's illegitimate son, Trion/Piejue's secret half-brother, etc.) But RPing missions and such, so long as nobody gets snubbed, has always been ok in my book. I guess like many of our debated discussions, perhaps this is a spectrum as well, and I find myself right around the middle of it with a fair amount of leeway in both directions.

This is hard to avoid, and from a leadership perspective even the best efforts will fall short at trying to conglomerate groups that simply don't mesh well together or don't want to. Cliques are a way of life, both in RL and in any sort of in-game social network. I spent much of my time in FFXI sort of bouncing between the cliques and never really falling into any one, and that was sort of my existence. It's easier to just sort of accept that it's going to happen, and not to burn any bridges unnecessarily. As far as the rest of it goes, I did participate in Castiel's RP relating to the Archlich for 5-1 and that was a lot of fun. I had also run most of the CoP storyline in-character with a group of five other RPers. While the group had been established early on and there was really no opportunity after that point for outsiders to join, we were not what I would call 'exclusive' about what we were doing, and continued along with other missions for non-CoP participants in parallel, doing such things as Assaults and coffer keys and the usual gamut of what I guess could best be called 'midgame'. It worked for our purposes, and when it was done many of us made a push to try to get others through the missions, also in an in-character fashion. I can't say this is definitely the best way, or worst way, of handling such mission-related RP. Every RPer has his or her own preferences. We did make an effort not to come off like we were 'snubbing' those who weren't participating with us though, and never RPed any spoilers or secrecy around those who weren't privy to the mission details. In short we weren't all like, "omg we know something you don't!!" :lol:

Oh my favorite (and probably most commonly used): :frustrated:

Elezen Female Shader Unsure where I'll be starting out. I want more information about the three cities before I make a decision, but leaning slightly toward Limsa Lominsa from what I've read so far.

Wonder if this thread is going to give birth to the "What's your element?" thread. I remain neutral on the deity thing. I have thoughts and plans, but I am not yet prepared to reveal them. I may as well briefly add my own views on atheism to the discussion, since it has been brought up. I have never had a problem with atheism or atheists in general, so long as my own views are accepted. I would never call an atheist foolish for believing something different than myself. By the same coin, I am offended when I hear atheists name spiritual/religious people accordingly. I think for anyone to make any claims with any absolute certainty in either direction to the point where "everyone else is wrong" is narrow-minded. Of course that's just my view, but I have heard slanderous things said by atheists about the faithful, just as I've heard the extremely devout namecall nonbelievers and try to bash their faith [in the belief that no god exists]. It's all just enough for me to /facepalm. I wonder who the water god/goddess will be. :mrgreen:

Just wanted to say hi again to those who may have missed my greeting in the thread on the old forum. --What MMORPG background do you have? I began my MMO experience in the rather broad MUD world of Elanthia (a game called Gemstone III, though now I'm told it's GemStone IV). I was a half-elvan empath and have always had an affinity to healer classes ever since, though I do still miss many of my old GS3 days. After that I left MMO's for a short while to play The Sims Online for a year or so before coming back to a game called Shadowbane which held my interest for about a month. Then Final Fantasy XI was released in the fall of '03 and my new addiction began on Gilgamesh where the original red-haired Dyterium got to a whopping 41DRG before I got fed up with the lack of RP. After about a month off, I found out about a group on Sylph and started my character over there and the rest is pretty much history. --Is this your first RP experience or are you a veteran? While this is not my first RP experience, I would not call myself a veteran. I would say I have a good deal of experience though. I briefly played tabletop (a game called Synnabar, never had a chance to get into D&D). I RPed a great deal in GemStone III and then led Crystalline, a successful RP linkshell on Sylph for about 6 years. I am greatly looking forward to continuing in FFXIV with Kes. --Have you brainstormed any ideas about your character and if so, can you give us a simplified version? While I haven't settled on anything concrete yet, I'm fairly certain that Kes will be a female Elezen of the Shader clan. I will be adapting my story from FFXI to fit the lore of Eorzaa. Kes is the daughter of the character I played in FFXI, Dyterium. She will probably go by some sort of an alias for reasons I'm keeping to myself at this point. She will probably be some sort of a merchant - I haven't decided entirely what craft she'll take up, possibly weaving or maybe leatherworking if it's an option. I figure she'll probably design garments or somesuch. I'd thought about having her create and sell weapons too, but I'm on the fence with regard to this as well. Additionally, she'll probably take on the role of pugilist or lancer - again more indecisiveness. In the end, I don't have any major plotlines figured out, and she will probably be more of a supporting character than have a storyline of her own. --How did you learn about the coalition? Zarik/Castiel approached me about organizing all of the RPers from FFXI and a plan to try to get everyone onto the same server. --What kind of a role-player are you aiming to be? Light, casual, moderate, heavy, or something in between? I am not planning to participate in much in the way of endgame activity in FFXIV unless it can be done in shorter timeframes with fewer people at the drop of a hat - so I will probably be spending a considerable amount of time RPing. I would say heavy RPer. --Anything from real life youâre comfortable with sharing? (Work, school, hobbies, etc) I'm a 30 year old computer technician (both software and hardware repair mainly) who is also an aspiring author (nothing published yet). I enjoy writing, reading, graphic design, web programming, and I've recently taken an interest in audio and video editing as well and will be looking for opportunity to create music videos using FFXIV footage.

My character on FFXI was extremely religious, to the point of refusing to even speak Altana's name, feeling it blasphemous. Sure, it slipped a few times when he was angry or shocked, but he had always regarded her as the goddess, or the dawn goddess. Towards the end of my time RPing him, he began to regard Altana less and less, instead taking on a more abstract worship of the sky itself - often talking about its moods, emotions, and misgivings. I figure if there is a god or goddess of the sky in FFXIV, than Kes's father will probably be a devout worshipper. Otherwise he will probably just continue to regard the sky as something sacred. As for Kes, there's a very good chance she may be atheist. I've still got a few ideas bouncing around in my head, but I want to know more about these deities and the rest of the lore before I make any final decisions on that front.

Hirilonde and Devon are trying to jumpstart a RPLS on Sylph now that we've assimilated the Fairy server. He just told me the name last night, but I honestly don't remember it. At this point I'm no longer participating actively with RP in FFXI, but I may take a pearl to listen in and serve as a supporting role on a part-time basis. If I talk to him at all tonight I'll see if I can get the name and find out more about it.

I also voted yes, even though I think it's a bit more wordy than it needs to be. It is adequate.

I suppose 'Lone Wolf' is a bit cliche, but I like to think I pulled it off pretty well in FFXI. I'd participated in RP and usually kept to the sidelines, often going to events grudgingly and with little enthusiasm. The character was intended to be respected more than liked (FFXI mirrors RL?) and I had a lot of fun dancing the line between all-out isolation and "being a good sport." I'll add another since it was a hot topic for awhile about my own character. Cliche or not, I left a lot of details about one of Dyterium's grandparents to the unknown and a number of people were led to believe that he was 1/4 Zilart. He never had any superpowers or anything like that -unless a sort of imagined sense that he was some kind of prophet counts. I'd had a debate with myself and with a few people in the LS at the time as to whether this would be plausible or not and while there was really no objection, I rather enjoyed the fact that nobody ever really know whether it was true or not, even at the very end. I am in full agreement with Verence, though. Loosely-regulated RP fosters creativity by reducing boundaries and making a broader range of possibilities... possible... Such RP that encourages over-the-top behavior is fine and well for some people, and I am sure that there are people that will be drawn to such groups. I'm just not one of them is all. Also while it's fresh in my mind, vampirism was a pretty hot issue for awhile there but it was only ever discussed and I don't think we ever had anyone actually openly RP it. The common argument was that it existed in the game already, but was uncommon and probably would have grown stale pretty quickly if done. We also had someone who was considering doing a werewolf sort of storyline after the gnoles came out in WotG, but wound up leaving the LS before she could get a chance to do anything with it.

Some call it the highest form of flattery. Others call it plagiarism. Fine line, I guess.

That was the issue though. A lot of times such overdone (or over-the-top) RP does kill the fun for many of us. Also when an idea is creative and original, and then others jump on the same bandwagon and do the same thing, it sort of trivializes the original concept. I have known people who've gotten extremely irate at having their own unique ideas assimilated (and often subsequently bastardized).

EDIT: If you don't have the time to read through the entirety of this thread, Faust has come up with a sufficient 4-word summary for everything that follows: "Don't be a copycat." Inspired by Mason's inquiry in the other Male M'oquito thread (quoted near the end of this post), I was wondering what sort of cliche storyline elements other folks have seen over the years so we know what we're getting into. It's conceivable that something unique and fresh from one server might be cliche and overdone from another. I can only speak to Sylph, but I'm interested to see what other servers have seen, gotten tired of, etc. One of the most cliche storyline elements, at least early on, were demonic possessions (not like Kindred, but like evil spirits). This of course led to a lot of dispute over who was really responsible for crimes committed. It was really only cliche because it was done by 2 or 3 people concurrently fairly early in our LS's history. After that it was somewhat taboo, and the moment someone mentioned 'demons' (again not in the 'Kindred' sense), people groaned and complained. We did have a mass murderer let off a half dozen times for playing the demon card, and for earning various other members' pity. That got pretty old fast too. Prison breakouts seemed to take a close 2nd, because of course everyone knows that prison is easy to break out of, and while it's super cool to get incarcerated, once you're behind those bars it's pretty lousy RP. We had gone through a phase where we actually banned prison escapes because of this. Seems a little extreme, I know, but it was becoming bandwagon, and the RPers who were helping guard the prisons (myself among these) were getting put off by how ridiculous this trend was becoming. We had some female characters RPing a full pregnancy out within the span of a week or two, in one instance involving a demon (again, not Kindred). We had a guy with wings whose wyvern could somehow talk. (this didn't last long) We had a couple of people who were 1000+ years old (which soon thereafter was regarded by most of the community as, "3000 years old, really? They have a nice padded cell for folks like you.") They continued RPing it, and they were probably the only ones that believed it. For some odd reason we had a lot of corruption in the San d'Orian cathedral. Apparently San d'Orian priests are often evil or something. Was kind of a bum rap for people that were serious about that sort of RP. We had a number of half-breeds. My own character was meant to be only half elvaan. This was unique 6 years ago and I had a lot of fun backhistory to go with it. Since that time, I think 6 or 7 others came forward, including one who was a taru-mithra hybrid (which prompted a guideline that hybrids should not involve taru/galka). There are probably a good dozen or so that I'm not thinking of at the moment which I'm sure others will append, but this is a pretty good sampling of what we'd seen in Crystalline. Please feel free to share your own experiences! And to address the original point: Fast restoration seems plausible as there are curative magic spells and such. Something like a missing limb or other serious injury being cured miraculously might not float, depending on the circumstances. The prison escapes I covered above, and speaking from a personal perspective, RPers should not set out to commit crimes that they would get caught and incarcerated for extended periods of time for without being willing to put that character into 'downtime' for that duration.

My advice to new RPers upon joining our linkshell was always to look and listen for awhile before actively participating. I think that's a Universal concept. While I admit we had a few good ones, I was always wary of the members that would join and immediately try to involve themselves in everything that was going on right away. I think most new RPers stand to benefit the most from watching other RPers in action for a short while, even if they have previous RP experience. This way they get a sense for how the community operates and what the social structures are like. Tends to avoid a lot of drama down the road, too. An introduction and some basic history are a very good start though. I would also advise new RPers not to tie their own RP too closely to one individual or small group, as we've seen that tends to limit things down the road if there are disagreements, drama, or the other person leaves the game. Sometimes it's fun maneuvering around this stuff, but my general observation has been that it seems to aggravate a lot of good RPers.

I still like Webster's broad and all-encompassing definition. Setting down a hard-and-fast definition about what isn't roleplay is where things are more open to interpretation and I don't think it's really necessary for this little project. A carton of eggs isn't RP. My dish towel isn't RP. I fail to see the relevance. Maybe it's just late or I'm just confused, but I don't think the point is to pin down what we're not associating ourselves with.

Might even be better to leave the two definitions for hardcore/casual as you have them, and define it as a spectrum, since you can fall anywhere within the range, depending on how you RP, perhaps indicating that there is middle ground between these two extremities. I can make an illustration when I get home to help demonstrate this and/or examples may be provided.

I agree with the reasoning behind this statement, that being that *asterisks* (and :colons: or ::double-colons:: ) should be reserved for character emotes. In my experiences, I've always left my name off, as follows: *runs toward the armory* I must also point out that while I'm sure it was an example, the *feels sad* is not actually an emote. As an RPer, I am not privy to what other characters are feeling (unless I suppose I'm some kind of an empath or telepath possibly, but even then it wouldn't be privy to all surrounding characters). Emotions should be conveyed in emotes through specific actions. It has always been a pet-peeve of mine when people use emotes to blindly indicate their feelings, rather than actions (in the above case a frustrated sigh might work, or a somber expression on the face, or possibly crying, depending on just how much sadness is felt). I didn't mean to detract from the discussion. I just felt obligated to point that out. I do agree though, that :: and * should not be used for OOC overall, and possibly some sort of an accepted guideline for the expression of OOC and emotes be agreed upon. To append, we've used the ~ to indicate a sing-song tone, or sometimes singing as well.

Throughout the day I've posted some explanations of RP as defined by various credible sources. It sort of evades the real question, which asks how do -we- define RP. My answer to this is as simple as it is complicated. Roleplay is, to me, a state of mind above all else. I don't feel it can really be qualified or quantified in any particular way. And, like art, it often means different things to different people. To some it is a way to escape life. To others, an extension of life, or possibly even a way to enhance some elements of their own persona. Some people enjoy RPing characters who are very similar to themselves. Others like to venture into unfamiliar territory and explore what it might be like if [insert conditional here]. When I RPed as Dyterium, I got to not only breathe life into a character, but I got to shape him and his course in a way I saw fit. He was in many ways similar to me, and in other ways an embellishment of my own persona, where he would say or do things that I would never have dared - but may have wanted to. I might even go so far as to suggest that the character that I created, in some ways, helped mold my own personality. While I don't feel the definition of RP is as important as the distinction between types, it is important to have some sort of a description for what we collectively do - even if it is as broad and all-encompassing as Merriam-Webster's. That distinction will probably reveal itself through the individual communities/guilds that crop up. Like-minded roleplayers are going to RP together in the manner in which they most prefer to do so. I personally have always favored either the (parentheses) or ((double parentheses)) to denote out-of-character speech. I've felt anything besides this a pithy attempt to gain attention or express nonconformity or whatever. I did use [brackets] to indicate tone when speaking. e.g. [sarcastically] Oh, I was unaware of that. Also, I RPed in all channels - and used parentheses to denote I was being OOC in all channels as well - and by all channels I include /tell, mostly out of habit sometimes when it wasn't even necessary. The only times I really went out-of-character outside of parentheses were events such as pickup xp parties or groups where non-RPers were present. Mostly I did this out of respect because I learned pretty quickly that the general non-RPing population perceives our emotes and our behavior as a kind of "chat pollution." And I'll freely admit it... I didn't want to be 'that guy.' As a linkshell, we were probably more to the 'hardcore' end of the spectrum. We seldom went OOC unless something really significant was going on. A few of the events which spurned some OOC dialogue (which was still enclosed in parentheses) were the day that train was bombed in England a few years back, when one of our members graduated high school, the first job that dinged 75, etc. Easily 99.9% of [non-mistell] linkshell chat was in-character, and enforced as part of our rules. The rule should be dependant upon the guild, and generally would be to go with the consensus. A casual RP group might designate certain times for IC events and use the LS as an OOC chat medium. A more serious group might require that all OOC be left off of whatever FFXIV's equivalent of a linkshell channel will be. Really, like most of what we've been discussing here, it's all open to interpretation and very abstract and subjective.

Refraining from posting my opinions on the matter for a little while longer still. Here's some additional definitions: (pasted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roleplay ) and from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_ ... aying_game My own thoughts and view to come shortly. Busy day at work, but looking to slow down to a screeching halt very soon and I will have more time.

Merriam-Webster defines roleplay as: This is a bit broad for our scope, but I think it makes a good starting point for this discussion.

Also discovered this one yesterday, along the same lines as Llama and Badger (both bookmarked at work to help preserve my sanity!) Try to watch this without laughing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V55Zq5whVCI <-- fail after 9 sec