Mae

Allu, I'm in the same LS as Blue, and to answer... As someone who is well past where the story is being considered (they're on "It's Probably Pirates", which is level... 16, I think? while I'm on "Lady of the Vortex" which is somewhere in the 40's), it's generally considered polite for those of us who have already gone through the content to not consider it as 'happened' until the pacekeeper reaches that point. We also have the choice to run alongside the pacekeeper and participate as if we are doing the quests ourselves for the first time. As Blue said, quest text is copied into /ls for us all to see and react to. For those who progress slower, we don't have that much of an issue with that right now (leader is in the middle of a killer college semester) But in the future, I would assume that we will do as we did in FFXI, and work with a newcomer to get them caught up OOCly and then have them 'join up' with the group at whatever point the pacekeeper is at. How these people got to the same point the pacekeeper did is up to them, and if they wished we would work with a newcomer to help come up with an alternate 'path' to how they reached that point.

Provided that I am not in the middle of Amish country in Pennsylvania, the black hole that is Ohio, or trapped in traffic on the George Washington Bridge in NYC, I should be there and attending as Kara.

Blue: "What is this thing, that follows me everywhere?"

Ooooh, I'm perfectly aware of the profanity filter. And I'm also aware that it has it's little quirks and will occasionally bleep out part of words because it perceives that someone is trying to get around the filter (had one instance where it attacked a word that ended with "sh" and then the word "it" afterwards... "wash it"?, "finish it"? something along those lines). I used to play a game years ago that had a mandatory filter and it would attack the silliest of things: shoes... basement... farther... Saturday... Spica (this one being the name of one of the game's SERVERS), so I get twitchy about filters. And again, I'm not throwing a fit over all swearing. I swear, my character swears. If this particular word had been used once or twice in a whole conversation, I wouldn't have noticed. It was the excessive use in the short periods of time that I've been around this player that I found offensive. This is another reason why I didn't want to report. I have my filter off by choice, because under reasonable circumstances I receive no shock value from people swearing. The filter is often more of an annoyance to me. ... If you were my kid, you would've had worse things than soap in your mouth >_> Kids don't have a reason to know or use swears until they hit puberty and have acne, growing pains, period cramps, and have wet dreams when they doze off in the middle class. Aaaanyways. Person is on /blist, and if the person wants to try and RP to me, hopefully someone will nudge me and I'll pull them off the list to see what they want. Ultimately, it saves my husband the hassle of dealing with me when I get irritated.

My tip, especially for a newbie... is to lurk. Even if you're rolling an alt so you're not associated with the creepy voyeur in the corner. You can read handbooks and check on LS/FC sites and view profiles until you're blue in the face, but what you can actually sit and observe is often the best tool. You'll get an idea of who you could be compatible with and what some of the IC topics/issues are. (If you need a lurker buddy, hit me up. I'm new to the community myself and still doing the lurker thing a few times a week.) Once you've gotten all the lurking out of your system, it's time to start taking chances. To quote a quasi-RP-leader I knew in another game, "Welcome to the Community, wallflowers need not stay". Don't just sit in a chair, waiting for people to 'click' on you like you're an NPC. Emote getting yourself a cup of coffee in whichever tavern you're in, have problems getting on your porter 'bo, lose your money purse and have to go find it... you don't have to think up something earth-shattering, just something do for ten-fifteen minutes to get yourself out there. From there, you'll eventually cultivate a group of other players that you get along with (ICly, OOCly, or both), and likely from one of them you'll find an RP LS or FC that suits your style. I always like to base a character on, or give/assign, a goal to be achieved. Nothing huge or horribly specific, just something for them to work towards and can be achieved through multiple paths (for example, my main character has a goal of... finding a goal in life. She's spent her life so far 'surviving' and 'existing', which was fine for her before, but now that she's been introduced to the concept that there might be something better or maybe even special for her to do, she's struggling to figure out WHAT that something better or special is). Some people like to plot out/semi-script what their character is going to do from start to finish. Others make a character and just throw them out there, and what happens happens. It's all about your play style. Knowing the extent of your morality is also important. Not just your alignment, but where your character sits on the greyscale and how far you're willing to move in one direction or another. Sometimes events will pop up that if you go by alignment alone, it seems you would have no reason to go/participate. Whereas if you look at the greyscale, it's within your limits. Don't cut yourself out of events just because you're strictly adhering to your alignment. Easy. Whenever you don't feel like RPing. Don't push yourself to RP when you're not in the mood for it, or when you're doing something that needs your complete concentration or you're in a time crunch. Or when you're doing something that doesn't make IC sense. You've already heard about godmoding, and a couple people have touched upon being too perfect/being the best at everything. Personally, I like to go on the idea of "if you can't use the ability normally, then you can't do it". Of course, that gets messy when you consider the game gives you the ability to change job/class at whim... Use your best judgement and, when in doubt, ask. Of course. And, y'know... there's always the chance you might infect them with the RP bug... Some people just make up family trees with names listed and mentioned from time to time. People who are prone to writing supplement stories to their RP often feature the family members that are 'off-screen'. Some people make siblings/spouses/cousins/whatever as alt characters and cameo them. Sometimes friends/RL couples will roll related/engaged/married characters. I saw you asking questions about having relationships with other player-characters. Two tips: don't revolve your entire plot around having a relationship with someone, and if you get in a relationship, make sure you have good OOC communication going on. Oh, and keep things classy; if you are not one to go with 'fade to black', double, triple, and quadruple-check to make sure you're not about to throw some awkward MT's into one channel or another, and just emoting "/em gives a passionate kiss." is just fine for a PDA, you don't have to go into description on how you're making out with someone. Having kids... my honest opinion (from personal trial and a LOT of error) is to avoid having kids (unless you've got a character that's older and could have children that are at least in their mid/late teens, or you're basing your character's entire plot around finding your lost/missing child). Realistically, if you've got a female character, getting pregnant means you're not going on any fun adventures for a long, loooooooooooooooong while. Giving birth doesn't free you up; recovery time and... feeding... the baby will keep you homebound. MAYBE at this point, if you're a Keeper of the Moon, you can start leaving the baby home and have the father take care of it alone, but for the most part you now have a little NPC that, if not glued to your ti--hip, you really SHOULD be home with before dinnertime every night. When in doubt, save the babies for when you retire a character. I personally love short stories. They're little snippets and glimpses into character's lives, thoughts, and sometimes dreams that sometimes just aren't easily conveyed through RP. Even just typing up a section of chatlog is good reading, because it puts a special emphasis on an event that may have seemed insignificant to others, but to your character had a great impact. I haven't had an opportunity to fully poke through the section, but I think the Town Square is for stories? Someone correct me if I'm wrong on that part. Anyways, there is a way to make a sort of timeline in a forum thread by using short stories and a few content tags. You could also use a blog site. So go ahead and write the short stories, just make sure you note down the date that an event happened ("Based on RP that occurred on 4/2/14" or "Aftermath of RP on 2/27/13" or "Events that transpired before RP on 3/15/14"). Yes, the game has its own calender, but considering that one in-game day = 1 real-world hour... it can get confusing. If I missed questions, I'm sorry; I skimmed the last couple posts. Just one other thing I'd like to toss out, though, since you're an RP newbie... You're new, you're going through growing pains. That being said, you are likely to find (major) things about your character's design early on that you suddenly don't like (storyline, behaviour pattern, etc), or even can't RP. I know the Handbook here says to avoid retconning, though this is more in relation to events (if I'm reading the entry right) that effect others. If you need to retcon something out of your design to make the character something you want to continue to play, then do it.

Reporting is the last thing I want to do, though I won't lie and say I hadn't considered it the second time I had to leave the area. It would be hypocritical for me to do it, though, since my character has sworn before, and will almost certainly do so again in the future. Again, it's not that the word was used once or twice in a conversation. Used like that, I would probably never have noticed. It was the excessive use that caught my attention and I found offensive... and the response I received when I asked that they tone it down (I did not ask them to stop). In the end, I suppose I'll have to /blist the person. To quote a favorite character in a book, I "do more damage out of simple irritation than most men can do in a towering rage." It's the reason I've been just removing myself from the situation instead of ICly mocking the situation. OOCly, I'm not a nice person when I get irritated.

... does foul language cross the line from "It's RP, deal with it" to OOC'ly offensive? I ask this because today I was reminded why I've been avoiding hanging around in the Quicksand. There is a certain someone who seems (to me, at least) to take a rather juvenile delight in throwing a certain word around, much like a toddler that's proud of their first word(s). Now... in real life, I swear. Not constantly, but enough that I have no right to (and don't) flinch when I hear them being flung around me. In my lifetime, swearing has gone from being taboo and about shock-value to being commonplace in everyday language and conversation. I deal with truckers on a daily basis and I'm subjugated to some rather nasty language. About the only time swearing would really shock or disturb me would be if my saint of a grandmother said something as mild as 'damn' (anything stronger than that from her, I'd probably die of a heart attack. Or think she was replaced with a pod person). But, really? The word 'c--t' appearing ten times in the ten minutes I can stand being within 'earshot', almost every time I've encountered this person?* Am I wrong to think this is offensive BECAUSE it's excessive? The first time I witnessed this person's behaviour I was on an alt and after the eighth or so time the word popped up, I did send a /tell politely (or at least I thought it was polite...) pointing out that the word was considered highly offensive by most and asked if they'd tone it down a bit. Server is NA/EU, so I erred on the side of caution that they might not be a native English speaker and while they had a good command of the language, might not realize the full impact of the word. The response I received was some permutation of "get a thicker skin or go away". I opted for the latter, because at that point I felt it wasn't going to be worth the time or aggravation trying to reason with this person. For a couple weeks, I felt like I was being pushed out of the Quicksand on several occasions because of this person arriving and continuing the behaviour. The past two-three weeks I haven't really noticed the behaviour because I've been so busy that I haven't had time to lurk. Then this afternoon, I ran through just to get my armor repaired... and there this person was, and in the time it took for me to get my repairs, the word popped up twice. Now, I know I could just /blist and never 'hear' this person again. Problem with that for me, though, is that it's another roleplayer. It's not some mundane who has nothing better to do than troll RPers, or a gil-spammer. There is always the possibility that this person might walk up to me and try to engage me in RP (granted, after watching/listening to this person, I would come up with some IC reason to not stick around for very long), and I'd rather not have this person raging behind me and causing a scene that I'm oblivious to because I've got my camera pointed the other way. I suppose I could also just go back to avoiding the Quicksand, but I'm trying to get more involved with the overarching community and a -lot- more happens at/in/around the Quicksand than other locations in the game. I'm also not saying "This particular word should be utterly banned!". It's the excess use that I have a problem with. In the... appropriate situation, I can understand it being used once in a conversation. MAYBE twice. A conversation being the entire period where involved people are in the presence of each other and conversing, from initial greeting to final farewell. Not every other line/sentence/phrase out of their mouth. And it doesn't even look natural when used that often. ... And before someone says "it's just text, it doesn't mean anything" and arguments about 'freedom' and 'immersion'... Text is words, words are thought, thought means everything. Freedom comes with a responsibility to others. And why should my immersion be ruined because another claims that toning down an excessive/offensive behaviour would be ruining their immersion? Our immersions should be ruined equally through compromise, damn it. *This statement might be a tad bit exaggerated... it might've been closer to a twenty or thirty minute time period that first time. The amount of times the word appeared on my screen from that one person, though, is still fairly accurate. Note: I've honestly been sitting here for about two hours, my mouse hovering over the 'post thread' button. I'm new here (to the forums and open community), and I know I'm running the risk of starting some serious drama if the person I'm talking about is a regular on these forums and gets uppity. I guess what it kind of boils down to, is me trying to figure out if this sort of behaviour is both common and acceptable with the community and if I'm going to have to come up with some equation that'll tell me when the number of RP'ers I have /blisted or avoid has become a greater detriment than me going back into the private RP sandbox I've been spending most of my time in.

So... yep, I do art. Or try to... it's hard to draw in my current living space, so I don't manage to do it much anymore. Kara Planning on colouring this some day... eventually. My first time drawing Kara, with her nemesis lurking behind her. Wind-up Plushie Pardon the fur, my dog likes to cuddle with this little one. [Pattern] [Before assembly]

So... hi. I'm not horribly good at introductions, so bear with me. I'm just new to the RPC -- I've been on the server since one of the invite-Beta's, and RPing mostly in out-of-the-way areas. My roleplay background extends back to when pen-and-paper was the most common medium, and includes some LARPing, various forms of forum-based RP, and time spent RPing in Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft (don't get uppity, my server wasn't one of the notorious ones), and a few other games that have come and gone since then. I eventually went back to FFXI because the changes the game was going through (I had left it for WoW because XI was suuuuch a massive time-sink even for the most minor tasks), and was pleasantly surprised with the changes that did affect me. I actually still play and RP there. Let's see... what else... My play style leans towards making characters that are very fluid in their morality and minor/intermediate goals. I like dabbling with grayscale-areas, and as long as I'm given an option on extent/heads up beforehand I am usually open to taking an injury that benefits a scenario. I am not against my characters getting into relationships, but under no circumstances will I participate in ERP (just wanted to make that part clear, as I've come across several people/groups on the server that seem to think that RPing relationships means/requires going out and exploring the differences between boys and girls). I'm not a big fan of tavern/tea-party RP; I'd rather be out and RPing doing something outside the cities. Me personally, I'm female and married. I currently do not have a job (by choice; I'm basically on year two of a three-year vacation). My husband is a cross-country truck driver, and I live on the truck with him. It's been an interesting couple years. I've been to each state, seen lots of interesting things. Before this, I've worked at a hardware store, garden center, as a restaurant dishwasher, done home-care for physically disabled, custodial work, and did the typical array of teenage jobs (fast food, gas stations, etc.). I'm also an artist and writer... I don't know how good I really am, but people seem to like/request stuff from me at times so I have to assume that I don't suck at either. I'm also starting to get into fabric/felt crafty-stuff: scarves, hair-clips, barefoot sandals, plushies (I'm writing this while taking a break from making a pattern for a wind-up sylph plushie) and fabric-based home decor. I'm also a fairly decent cook, and have a lot of interests in herbal/wild medicine and foodstuffs. ... I think I've babbled enough. Nice to meet y'all, I'll see you around.