Warren Castille

Oh, I misunderstood "In the Holy See" as "located therein" and not "A part of the establishment." English is a wonderful language, carry on.

That's the whole "burden of proof" thing. You show me where the lore specifically says I can't fly, or summon meteors, or turn invisible, or teleport, or whatever. We don't know a lot about aether, but we know we don't know a lot. That's why people tend to color inside of the lines until the game reveals more of itself. "They didn't say this is impossible" is frankly shitty rationale. Sidurgu exists. His backstory is very specific and not liable for large groups of people, but he does exist.

Post above mine is excellent. Something I've always considered when looking into custom magic and stuff: If you're inventing something that would revolutionize the world (Someone creates at-will teleportation with no cost, or someone figures out how to cast Fly, etc) then we can presume that it WOULD revolutionize the world. Tangent: I've had long conversations with people about both Canon Teleporting and Red Magic since both of these things sort of break the hell out of the setting. They're canon, though, so that's my No Fun Allowed kicking in. If there are suddenly people with forbidden or new magical techniques walking around and demonstrating them, you can bet your ass they'd be researched by the world at large. Imagine if you were driving to work and someone in a legit flying car just buzzes over the expressway. There's zero chance that person keeps their tech secret. Same goes for reasonable fantasy settings: as soon as someone figures out a better way to do things, it would become the standard and not the exception. And if you resist, the Ossuary/Syndicate/Alliance/WoL would probably just kill you for being a threat.

Due to some other roleplay going on at the same time as our finale, I can now announce Percival Turner as the yet-again champion! That's like fifty wins for Percy, and we look forward to seeing who comes forward to challenge him in the future!

This is the part I wanted to comment on. To begin: Magic tournaments aren't as popular melee ones because of three things I can think of: 1) There isn't any established magic tournament that didn't get a management reboot every couple of months. 2) The power level at most magic tournaments is gonzo bonkers and that is extremely divisive. 3) Melee's easier to explain ICly. ICly, people are allowed to have opinions. Trust me, I understand it can be hard seeing people shit-talk something you have a hand in creating or organizing, but there needs to be a hard divide between IC and OOC. Now, that's not to say that people don't use IC chatter to voice opinions they themselves maintain OOCly (and it's usually super transparent when that's the case) but remember that character dialogue is not 100% representative. To that end, people who are willing to expose the fact they're using [illegal, banned and dangerous magic don't get to complain if ICly people take issue with that. The reason these players will be degraded or become the center of a witch hunt is because is is illegal, banned and dangerous. It's similar to the same danger that Garlean roleplayers face: If it becomes widely known you're the enemy, people are going to treat you that way AND be justified ICly. Disclaimer: That isn't me saying it's cool for people to act like dicks to people for no reason, but part of the appeal of playing the dangerous seedy stuff is that it's dangerous and seedy. Once you remove the danger and seediness, what's the point? Also, there are boundaries on magic. The game's lore establishes a lot of it. Again in my opinion, if you handwave away anything you want with "Oh, it's magic" then you don't even need FFXIV as a setting for your RP. It's taking some of the elements you agree with and ignoring the ones you don't. As to the event stuff, there's a complex simple answer: People get burned out or don't realize what they're signing up for when hosting something. Weekly events that toll long hours can take a lot out of you. When an event is created, there's always going to be some ironing out of the problems and learning process, and when the actual stewardship of an event changes hands, it's a lot like recreating it. Runestone changed hands multiple times. Hell, Grindstone changed hands multiple times. There have been lots and lots of combat tournaments made that only lasted a couple of weeks, if that. Lastly, my generic advice for anyone running anything: Care for the audience you've got, not the one you want. If you're starting out and you get a dedicated (but small) number of people, don't let yourself think that you're not achieving anything. Especially don't compare to other events. Focus on polishing your experience for the folks who are enjoying what you have.

It doesn't make sense, this isn't FFXI.

Eorzea is extremely xenophobic and something turning up with beast traits would probably get it murderkilled because racism. Yugiri makes it a point to not reveal herself for not wanting to get herself killed. That happened relatively recently, not even years ago (that would be required to be of adultish age in current timeline). On the other hand, Eorzea welcomed infinite Au Ra despite the lore, so really, flip a coin.

You're misinterpreting again. My issue isn't the story or the lore or the world, it's the ridiculous pacing SE confirmed (despite past interviews being timey-wimey about it) and the fact it was unnecessary to pointedly state. I suppose if you want to include that one sentence as "the story and lore" than okay, I've got one problem with it, but that's splitting hairs.

You're conflating my complaint about the MSQ timeline with other people's roleplay. If people want to live in the MMO timebubble that's their prerogative but it doesn't change the fact the WoL has done an insane number of literally-world-changing things and that doesn't even delve into the side stories, raids or relics. I know SE doesn't make this game for roleplayers but it makes the worldbuilding seem pretty shakey, which is entirely my opinion. Fighting a new primal threat every three or four months seems reasonable given the way the world is designed. Remember, prior to Ifrit being summoned way back at level 20 there hadn't been any primals summoned in years and years. And then after Ifrit pops up, a dozen of them and several elder gods all show up, one after another. I know suspension of disbelief varies person to person but...

Tell her to wait until 5.0 and then just "reroll" as a "new" character. There's zero guarantee they'll come forward as playable, and there's zero basis for lore/background/whatever. Easiest not to risk it, unless they want to risk having to retcon a couple of years' worth of RP for the sake of being a bunny. Edit: Ask the undercover void-based Dark Knights and the secret Au Ra how the game panned out for them sometime. And the secret red mages. And the secret blue mages. And the secret (insert FF class/race/job/trope)...

I wasn't trying to come at anyone's RP, but the sheer number of impacting events is just too much to pretend this was in a calendar year. That's just logic and politics (two things that don't work together, hence the squished timeline being dumb). Edited edit: Just counting the stuff I posted (which ignores everything leading up to lv50 quests) that's 27 events in 52 weeks. A major milestone happened every two weeks, give or take, up to and including starting a war and finishing one.

While not wrong, this is completely stupid and I don't know anyone who uses that in their RP. Edit: Spoilery post containing a lot of complaining about this:

There might be some information in the lore book about it, but alas I don't have a copy handy to check. If there isn't, though, there's actually a lot of leeway to play with there. While XIV can be infuriating in how much it doesn't tell us, the silver lining is that that makes a lot of the grey area our personal playground.

Guess who forgot to update the thread for a week?! That's right, it's me! Congratulations to the victor of the 233rd Grindstone, Izea Dzmael! Tonight crowned a new champion in Valindra Carelle!

Dude... Dump her. She wanted you to genderbend your characters to get them pregnant(?) but also wants to jump worlds to keep roleplaying with other people and cutting you out. Again, this is a learning moment. She a ho, fo' sho'. It'll hurt, but you need to get over her ASAP and realize that people who are worth caring about won't rake you over the coals and do this type of shit.

The Grindstone continues! Tonight saw 49 people gather to fight it out, and we crowned a regular in their first title victory, P'tajha Dhol!

In order for me to reply I need a resume posted in public and at least ten references who can vouch for you. I also need to know exactly what you hope to achieve, where you were born, whether you believe in God, and how you feel about global warming. I won't get scammed again!

This whole thing is fucked. The issue with your relationship wasn't her wanting to RP with other people, that's a symptom. Failure to communicate is the big thing here; You were upset and didn't want to "burden" her with that, and when you did? Well, now you know. It's a lesson learned. Hold your head up and gtfo, and now you can recognize when partners definitely scoping out the rest of the playing field. I'm sorry it happened to you, but honestly? It's a blessing to get out this soon.

Tonight saw 42 brave souls line up in Central Thanalan for the chance to become Grindstone Champion! With the previous champ knocked out in an earlier round, the finals came down to a longtime veteran and a relative newcomer, with the Grindstone culminating in the midnight hour! Rebel Yell screams more more more and is the newest champ!

Whole forums were down for most of today. I also noticed the image gallery is throwing up stuff from 2014/15 as most recent. Edit: Detailed here.

Tonight's Grindstone saw 40 fighters turn up for gil and fame and getting hurt! Our winner tonight proved that he ISN'T actually a robot in armor, so congrats to Josiah Covey on his most recent win!

Chiming in to echo some other folks' opinions from the view of one of the people hosting events that incur injuries: It's super annoying when someone agrees to the setting of an event and then refuses to let healing take place, or undersells it, or otherwise takes what would be the end of a segment (your match ending) and turns that into a new segment (the sudden battle against life or death because my other RP just ended so now I want to monopolize the healer's RP time). In a random setting or smaller-scale setting, feel free to emphasize your injuries and make that a dramatic scene as needed. For the various fight clubs that have many people in the waiting, it's needless unless you're dragging your own contacts in to stabilize you on the side. Roleplaying is about cooperation. When people try to unilaterally decide rules for everyone to follow it ends poorly more often than not. Not accusing OP of doing that, but roleplayers also tend to interpret things in the worst possible way. Not accusing anyone here of doing that either, but you all know what I'm talking about.

You do the /blacklist <t> command and stop stressing over it. Dude won't get the hint, stop dropping hints and just remove the problem.

The Grindstone saw 31 people line up to beat the shit out of each other, and in the end we saw Stehl Helmgarde claim her first championship! And absolutely nothing happened afterwards.

Is it possible to have them display unless hidden? There's literally an option in your Management thing for "Show people I follow this" or is that more of a meta-profile thing and not a display thing? I want people to be able to see there's a subforum for the Grindstone /vanity