Verad

From a commercial perspective, it was a good decision. It will make them more money than less to pay more attention to the actual preferences of the playerbase (races and genders played) than to their stated preferences (polls heavily reliant on self-reporting indicating a desire for a more "beastly" race). From an aesthetic perspective, it could still be a good decision, because while it may not be reflective of verisimilitude, it is far from the sole or even the highest aesthetic goal in fiction, storytelling, and world-creation.

You have an ideology. You may have integrity with regards to following this ideology, but integrity by itself doesn't point to much of anything. I get it, really. It would be much better if the Au Ra were used to help provide a transformative, progressive model of character design in verisimilitude by having non-standard, non-idealized body types. I'm sorry that didn't happen.

Far from the comforting song of the Horde, far from the arms and camaraderie of the brethren, and, most damningly, far from anything resembling a good Ishgardian wine, Fraideoux Morelz found himself considering, with ever-increasing frequency, when and how to call off the hunt. When word had reached the brethren of the relics scattered among Ul'dah, traded out amongst the stalls like so many cheap trinkets, his rage had been as great as any other man's. When he had been chosen as part of the force to retake them and punish the offenders who dared let them reach heretical hands, his joy had been just as great. And when he had been chosen to lead one half of their forces? His pride had swelled at the chance to serve the chorus. And now? Now, after moons of stalking and surveillance, he found himself seated at a cheap cafe in the late evening and, in-between mouthfuls of an anonymous and sour local vintage, the bottle already half-empty, staring out of the corner of his eye at a box placed against a wall across the street. There were no guards around the box, though the way the Blades patrolled so close to it suggested that they had been asked to give it a watchful eye. There was nothing about it that implied that items of great value were within, or even that the box itself looked especially valuable; indeed, it was downright cheap, barely a crate taken from the scraps in the city's poor districts and forced open at the top. There should have been nothing at all about the box that mattered to him in the slightest. And yet, every so often, somebody would approach in a furtive manner (everything about this city was furtive, he thought, as if every soul in the city was born as part of a scheme and with a scheme of their own) and drop some anonymous item therein. At times they were in pouches, and at times dropped in without any coverings, allowing a viewer to get a glimpse of crudely etched draconic imagery, of rosaries that might, maybe, have been of Dravanian make. In his heart, he knew they weren't. The No-Eyed Man's declaration of paying for the delivery of relics, whatever his goals, had led to little more than the appearance of cheap fakes from his own observations and those of his agents. Where the markets had briefly been devoid of their quarry, now they were flooded with what was worse than nothing, worse because they could not afford to overlook the prospect of such thing being genuine. And where were they concentrating? At the boxes. And so here he sat, as did his other people, across the city, and here he drank. It hadn't started this way, of course. The two cells had come with more aggressive plans - his, Greenwing, to find the relics and reclaim them, and the other, Redscale, to find and punish the thieves. They had followed protocols and engaged in their purviews well. Then Sylvetrel of Redscale had been captured following the righteous execution of local bearing a rosary. By rights he should have been silent, accepted his execution, but his cell had attempted a rescue - baited, he was told by the sole survivors, by the presence of a dragoon near his cells. They were slaughtered, and Fraideoux forced to incorporate the survivors into his own forces and attempt to do twice the work with half the men. Worse, security had been compromised, passphrases and meeting placess divulged. He knew not if Sylvetrel had succumbed to torture or proved weak in spirit, but Fraideoux found himself entertaining offers of compromise and peace from fools, a local who did not understand that some peace could only be obtained in blood. He had made her an offer - she did not accept it, left with threats on her tongue that had, to date, proven empty. Refugees had followed next, confused initiates going south rather than north. Fools, but he had taken pity, and made an offer to them - the death of the thief of the relics in exchange for succor. Here Fraideoux allowed himself a bitter smile as he drained his glass. Finding Bellveil's identity had been the only triumph, however small. But he was well-guarded at his estate, and rarely left the premises. Getting to him, let alone punishing him, was near-impossible with the forces they had remaining. That, and the sense of the empty, the lingering absence of the chorus singing bright and strong, propelled his thoughts. The matter was settled, he thought to himself. The thief was dead, some anonymous interloper, easy enough to take from the streets, and most of the relics restored. The loss of the Tears was a problem, of course, and for that someone would be punished. Most likely Fraideoux. But it would not deserve death with Redscale's mistakes to blame. Yes. this could work. Another glass and another bell's slowly simmering bitterness might have made him call his agents, but the shifting of a chair in front of him and the appearance of a shadow over his wineglass, one made by hands knitted together over elbows resting on his table, gave him pause. "You don't mind the interruption, do you?" The voice was polite, pensive, a little mocking. "You seemed lost in your thoughts. Spiritual matters, I'd say." Fraideoux considered telling the man to leave in some of the more colorful language he'd been hearing in the south, and his mouth opened to voice the first of many volatile syllables. Careful study of the intruder's face, however, made his eyes narrow. "You." He received only a smile and a tilt of the head in return. "Me. Plans going well?" Fraideoux found himself reaching for a sword he didn't have; bad enough to be watching a box, and far worse to be armed and watching a box. There was obvious suspicion of the No-Eyed Man's appearances, and then there was regular, everyday, attract-the-attention of guards suspicion. He had chosen to avoid the latter. Lacking weapons, he hissed in irritation and drew his bottle closer to his side of the table. "Of course you would come to this city, of all places. What better home for the corrupt than corruption's heart?" "A little predictable, I admit," said the man with a shrug of his shoulders. "But it could have been anywhere; I merely saw the opportunity here. And surely not so predictable as yourself, hm? Tell me, how many of our brethren will I find watching these?" He glanced over his shoulder towards the box. As he watched, a man stumbled forward along the street, drunk, clutching an empty bottle. This, in a spirit of local civic-minded compromise, he deigned to dump in the relic-receiving crate. "And such important work, too," he continued, turning back to Fraideoux. The Dravanian's grip tightened on his glass. "Are you only here to mock the faithful? You are not part of our mission, Gerchon, but I will gladly - " The man held up both hands in defense. "No! No, nothing like that. Happened to espy you and yours scouting out these boxes, guessed your purpose, and, wouldn't you know it, it suits my own. You're looking for relics and thieves, correct? Don't answer, of course you are. Blasphemy must be punished, the righteous must be reclaimed. I know the song and all its notes the same as yourself." Fraideoux poured himself another glass, shaking the bottle upside-down to eke out a few more drops. "Spare me. Tell me what you want and go, ere the guards take too much notice of the talk." "Well, it's just I have this unconscious thief on my hands, you see. The one you're looking for. Bellveil, isn't it? The merchant?" Fraideoux gripped the table with both hands. "You have Bellveil." "Mm. And his accomplice. You're not going to drink the wine?" "Why ought I do that?" "Well, it just seemed the sort of thing which ought to cause you to spit something out of your mouth upon hearing." "In a farce, perhaps. You fancy yourself a mummer, Gerchon?" The man shook his head. "Hardly, but things rub off. Look, do you want Bellveil or not? I have him trussed up with his accomplice for delivery. Take him somewhere scenic and cut his head off, honor the chorus, have a very solemn moment with your kin, and then you can leave." The slight forward lean of his upper torso made him seem to loom over Fraideoux. "That's what you want, isn't it? To leave? We've both heard what's coming. Surely you want to be there." There was a frown, a scowl, a clenching of the fists and the grinding of the teeth. And then submission. "What must I do?" Gerchon's smile widened. "Well now. How many of your men do you actually need?"

I also get the impression that there's a hope, however slight, amongst some that enough people failing to acknowledge a character acts as a kind of silent treatment in the aggregate, and that enough social pressure will force such a player to change their ways.

So then why does it matter if you choose not to acknowledge them?

If one chooses not to acknowledge a WHM, what does the WHM lose?

I don't understand the question. Verad is always going through Stage 3. Why would there be other stages?

There's a rule in pizza delivery: Wait at the door. Don't go into the customer's house. This isn't an actual law so much as it is company policy in most major chains for which you can get in trouble. In practice, the rule is violated with some frequency. There are good reasons for the rule to exist, to be sure. If a driver robs something small and valuable from a customer while inside, then it protects the company from at least some liability - they have a policy against it. It helps keep the customer safe from liability if a driver hurts him or herself in the house. And most importantly it's a guideline that can keep a driver safe from getting robbed or assaulted. Nevertheless, there are times when you're at the front door of the house and you've got an armload of four pizzas and the old woman in front of you is a third of your size and she asks for help carrying them to her kitchen table and there's nobody else around. And in those times you're going to break the rule because the alternative is to be a jerk. This was not one of those times. This was just me being stupid. I used to work in a region that was part suburb, part rural, all desert. Big mix of neighborhoods, with well-off working professionals and retirement communities next to trailer parks and junkyards. This particular order - small one, large single topping and a two liter, not much more than ten dollars and change thanks to a coupon - took me out to the far end of our delivery range, where there was nothing but rural blight and broken down double-wides. That should have been warning sign the first. This particular trailer isn't in worse shape than the others, so no red flags beyond the distance. Besides, I am an egalitarian person who tries not to stereotype based on living condition. I knocked. The man who opened the door was late-middle aged, by my reckoning, probably a hard late-fifties if I had to guess. Taller and heavier than I by a fair bit. A German shepherd padded along beside him. There was a bandage around his neck, but only the front, as if it had been recently slashed. Should have been warning sign the second. I gave him the corporate spiel about the order, confirmed what it was, and the total. He was quiet for just long enough for the silence to be awkward before stepping away from the door and mentioning that he had the money inside, just come in and he'd get it. That was the third sign, and this too I ignored. I couldn't say why; idiocy on my part, or maybe it was a slow night for tips so far and I felt like if I refused, I'd get exact change and nothing else. But still, stupid. I went inside. The dog fell in step behind me, but stayed by the door, as if guarding it. "Don't mind him," the guy said. "He just smells dinner." My throat went dry with the knowledge that this was a bad idea, but I was committed. The place looked like a caricature of a Coen brothers' film, all wood panelling and casual grotesquerie. Porn DVDs everywhere, littering the floor and a coffee table. The man's wife, older from the look of her, wheelchair-bound, smiling thin and not paying much attention to me. Empire Strikes Back on low volume on the TV. I remember that very clearly. It was my only sane point of reference. The customer sat down in an easy chair directly facing the hallway towards the front door and again said nothing for long enough to be awkward. I glanced over my shoulder, but the dog wasn't moving. Well-trained. Making an assumption, I placed the order on the coffee table, near his wife, and stepped back in front of him for payment. I repeated the total. Silence. Not quite a dead stare from him but not much life in it. He starts fiddling with his wallet. "You doing this for school?" Setting aside that I have a face that says "I am putting myself through school for a higher degree," he was right, and I said so. "What are you studying for?" By now he had a fistful of money and I thought he was just making chitchat. I relaxed a bit and said it was for my Master's in English. "English!" He snorted and looked at his wife like that was funny. She laughed but it was more of a wheeze. Silence again, and then he split the money into two fistfuls, one in each hand, and looked me dead in the eye. "So what's the state capital of New York?" I didn't know why the geography, but I knew a trick question. "Albany," I said, and he looked momentarily impressed that I didn't say NYC. "What's the capital of New Mexico?" I lived there at the time, so of course I knew that one. "Santa Fe." He smirked and crinkled the money in his hands. "Answers quick," he said to his wife. "You can see it, he just wants to get the money and get out." Then his attention was on me again. "What's the only state capital that's also the largest city in the state?" This, I did not know. I said as much, and, looking over my shoulder to see that the Shepherd hadn't budged from its spot near the door, resigned myself to being a victim of the Pop-Quiz Killer. "That's Phoenix," he said, with some pride in his voice. Then, after another moment's long silence, he offered me the money in his left hand. "You go on home now." The dog moved aside. I took the money, trying and failing to control the shaking in my hands, and thanked him. Kept my walk controlled until I was outside the trailer and had closed the door. I bolted to my car once I was out of sight and drove fast enough on the bumpy dirt side-road leading to the place to risk my suspension, until I was back on proper asphalt and near a stop-light by the interstate. Then I breathed, and slowed down, and bothered to count the money. I mentioned that the order was only ten dollars and change. I was holding sixty-one. I don't have a moral to this. If you get into pizza you still shouldn't go into somebody's house. I wasn't secretly clever all along for having crept into the guy's house, and I had no closure or explanation for the circumstances. But learn your state capitals. You never know.

Does it make you . . . madda? *Sees himself out.*

Because when it doesn't work, the results can be disastrous, not just in terms of causing members to have a bad experience, but in providing an easy venue for predatory OOC behavior. As you yourself said - competently portraying IC leadership doesn't guarantee competency as an OOC leader. Anyway, Kiht asked for some possibilities. First, I think keeping the FC pretty small helps a great deal. Rotating IC leadership positions also allow players to be involved with running things on an OOC basis. Limiting what authority the OOC leader has over IC play helps a great deal as well. Some of this we frankly already do on an ad hoc basis - FCs will have situations where a character is in trouble for IC behavior, but this doesn't translate to OOC removal or sanction - but outlining clear guidelines in terms of what the OOC leader can and cannot do helps remove a lot of ambiguity, allowing the OOC leader to act less like a leader and more like a manager of the FC as an organization. And, in FF14 at least, I think a number of RP roles don't actually require an FC. I think it's somewhat frustrating to say this, because on the one hand the game has provided us a means by which we can have the organization of an FC without the leadership roles in the form of Linkshells, but has also given RPers an incentive to form FCs in the form of player housing and private rooms.

I strongly dislike when the leader of an RP FC has both an OOC and IC position of authority.* I've often found that in other MMOs, such guilds lend themselves towards cults of personality and the encouraging of abusive and predatory behavior on the part of the leader. Often, people join the FC on the strength of their roleplay with the leader without considering whether the rest of the FC will be as entertaining, and it encourages plots to be about The Adventures of FC Leader and Supporting Cast. None of the above is universally true, of course, but I've seen it happen enough, especially within the "House RP" community of World of Warcraft, that I am leery of any FC with a history describing how so-and-so leader is central to the foundations of the group. *Disclaimer - Dubious Distributions positions Verad and myself as the OOC and IC authority within the FC. I am extremely uncomfortable with this position and fight it by mocking his actual level of authority over anybody in the FC whenever possible. Take that for what you will.

Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou RP of Garuda towards thy unsuspecting audience, who, being naughty in Her sight, shall snuff it. She gets it. Generally, though, don't be worried about how people will accept the concept long-term. All but the most stalwart guardians of the lore are willing to accept all kinds of things so long as they're "done well," the RPer code for "in a style I prefer/by a player I like." Worry instead about how to attract partners in the first place. Um, what do you mean exactly by partners? RP partners. People with whom you will RP on a regular basis.

Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou RP of Garuda towards thy unsuspecting audience, who, being naughty in Her sight, shall snuff it. She gets it. Generally, though, don't be worried about how people will accept the concept long-term. All but the most stalwart guardians of the lore are willing to accept all kinds of things so long as they're "done well," the RPer code for "in a style I prefer/by a player I like." Worry instead about how to attract partners in the first place.

Come up with at least three bizarre Garuda-centric religious practices that she can perform without getting into fights about it. Engage in them, IC, in front of strangers. Watch RP happen. Seems reasonable.

1. 35% likely 2. 10% likely 3. Yes. 4. Choose whatever has the potential to make the character more miserable. 5. Yes, people tend to RP Fantasia-induced character changes.

Verad used to brag that he was at the Battle of Carteneau and could have won the thing if he'd had five more minutes. He stopped that after Carteneau vets kept getting mad at him for it. As for the truth, who knows? Maybe on this one point he's actually telling it.

New markets, new sources of dubious products, new customers. It's possible, based on how the Scales plot resolves, that there may be a hook in that direction as well.

I don't know. What national and ethnic stereotypes are there regarding blue elves?

It's okay to like overrated games. You don't need to dismiss others because of that.

Which, of course, requires imagery depicting the modern action game as infantilizing the player. It's the only way.

Your post is, of course, in no way equally dismissive. The image is coincidental.

"Dune-turd" for Ul'dahn lalas.

What are the participants here even arguing about at this point?

If it's any depiction, that sounds very much like a you-specific problem. The depiction thereof can have some useful aesthetic purposes, and setting aside that it's a depiction of what minors tend to actually do, I'd hate to lose works like Lolita. I could see it being more troubling in RP than in other media because of the semi-private nature of the depictions and, as you've pointed out, it can have some questionable implications, though I'm much more ambivalent about making pedophilia claims. You may have to transfer to more exclusive RP and set limits on what you consider acceptable play in order to really avoid the problem.

Fair enough, but there seems to be a strong emphasis on playing an age range similar to ones' own - you open your post by showing how close your character's age is to your own. Is it more or less uncomfortable if the OOC age of the player is significantly higher than the IC age of the character? And is the discomfort RP-specific? Or do any depictions of sexually active minors, regardless of medium, cause the same discomfort?