Warren Castille

No worries, I get where you're coming from. There's definitely a space for suspension of disbelief. That's sort of required on some level to roleplay in the first place, after all. Hell, in a random one-off where the episode title is "Minfy and Tataru Shop for Shoes" there's no need to worry about any of the things I mentioned. One-offs aren't as-common on RP servers, though: Most of the people here have existed for weeks and months and years. Some of the people here have been roleplaying since the 1.0 release in 2010(!). RP as a hobby brings people from all sorts of motivations and rationales. The biggest challenge is that as soon as you do something that incorporates random people is that all of those philosophies are thrown into a blender: The one-offs and the hard-lore people and the light-fun people all end up dropped into the same place. I wasn't trying to talk you into or out of anything, though! I just wanted to explain why some people are so resistant. It's most-often a case of "You are too important to hang out with us, this would fuck up the Main Story if it happened and that's the law of the land" sort of things.

I don't roleplay as an NPC but the conversation has come up a bit here before. It's a divisive topic (as you're already away) and I think I get some of the insight into it. Mix and match from the following as needed: 1) Most people doing it tend to shoehorn in their fan-canon personalities. Since only the official writing team knows how NPCs would react at various instances, the best any player can do is an educated guess at best. Some people do it pretty well, but there's also those who are just in it for the attention. Haurchefant got several people roleplaying him on Balmung, as did the Heaven's Ward. 2) The spoilers you referred to. Tataru and Minf doing some light shopping is impossible according to the lore. 3) Connections. NPCs come with a level of renown: Yours, for example, works with the most powerful adventurer on the planet and is respected by more-or-less every single important country leader that we know of. It's the political equivalent of Superman just throwing all of his problems into the sun. This has an odd extension when it comes to other players, though, since anyone who you would become friends with would technically have you to call upon should they have need. This is pretty easily remedied by being unavailable or keeping these sorts of excursions limited to your group of friends; I'm speaking for the more broad archetypes where people are roleplaying in bars and pubs and actively LOOKING to make connections. These things are impossible to utilize while staying in the rough boundaries of the canon. There's nothing wrong with using NPCs in your own stories, but if you're trying to mesh into open-world roleplay it can get tricky. What happens if someone else decides they want to play your character? Any connections you've made don't necessarily exist for that person, so it splinters any sort of coherency you've established.

As I write this the end of the Saint Valentione's Day Massacre II: Massacre Harder is coming to a close. The formal tournament had a raucous 84 people show up to fight in what is now recorded as the largest Grindstone tournament ever. The community continued their incredibly outpouring of support for our/their event and brought in over 20,000,000 gil to further the winnings for future champions in the months to come. I can honestly say that I've never seen anything to this degree in an MMO before, and we'll have managed something like 50 million gil once this haul is distributed. Congratulations to our winner of the tournament tonight, Mathias Renderra! He's the reigning champ of the biggest set of competitors ever. Additional special thanks: The wonderful folks over at The Crystal Chronicle who have been working hard to cover numerous events and going-ons about the server! They're looking for any brave souls who might be willing to join their staff and help cover the numerous combat sports that have cropped up around the server, so please check them out and support them! The wonderful team of healers and overseers that do all of the hard work at the Grindstone! I beat this drum a lot but it cannot be overstated: The Grindstone runs smoothly because of the dedicated volunteers who donate their time and attention on the weekend to making sure the environment continues to provide room for those interested. That leaves, obviously, all of you: The fighters, the spectators, the people who stumble on the giant army in Central Thanalan and the people who turn up in mass each and every week to support, take part and help make the Grindstone what it is. I will continue to sing the praises of everyone who comes out and spends time with us. And we hope to continue to give everyone a space to beat the shit out of each other at the behest of people yelling from atop horses, stones and hills.

Courtesy of someone else: A complete circle. Praise be to display limits.

You're doing it fine. Use it as a plot device, not a weapon. If people you meet are amenable to you finding out about their pasts with the Echo, go for it! Having it on stand-by is A-OK for most people. Language is pretty weird in Eorzea, as an aside. That's something that was also seemingly retconned from 1.x: Beast tribes didn't speak common and the Echo was required to talk to any of them. That's been quietly rubbed out in ARR. I was legitimately surprised to see them invoke that with Krile since prior to that, the only instance of not speaking the language is with Moenbryda not knowing what an ascian is saying. It's unlikely you'll need to invoke that aspect of it very often unless you're running into a lot of Au Ra [talking in brackets] .

WAR IS LOVE BABY DON'T HURT ME DON'T HURT ME NO MORE [video=youtube]

We are bored Linkshell to linkshell we chat No promises, no demands Love is a battlefield We roll strong, no one can tell us we're wrong Searchin' our dice for so long Both of us knowing Love is a battlefield [video=youtube]

Not all posts need dialogue, keep in mind. If you're capable enough at it, it's perfectly fair to just demonstrate an opening without the need to verbally prompt someone. If you're asked about a touchy subject, for example, emoting distress and looking away or otherwise descriptive body language can be just as powerful as outright telling someone something. Like Gegenji mentioned, I've also seen people just string together long runs about thinking of their harsh journey and how difficult their life was and how challenging it is for them to hold together despite the immense crushing pressure of their responsibilities and - good for them, but if you don't mention any of this at all in your body language or expression, it's not possible for people to jump in on that juiciness. If the only way you leave for someone to get into your attention is to force them to metagame, that feels unjust to me. Just one dude's opinion!

I consider roleplay to be a cooperative effort like anyone else does, but I try to weigh a lot of my posts with "how does this move forward the scene." Failing that, a simpler "does this give my partner(s) anything to respond to?" Roleplay is like tennis in my opinion: If the ball never gets to the other side of the court, it's not much of a game. To that end, I find 99% of internal emoting and dialogue worthless. As an audience, sure. Seeing other people RP that way, it gives me insight I wouldn't otherwise have. The thing is, not everyone is your audience. Some people are your co-stars. Anyone interacting with you might find it wonderfully interesting that your character thinks back to something, but if you don't put anything out there to earn a response? I think that's sort of inadvertently downplaying the give-and-take of a scene. It's somewhat similar to the wallflower discussions that pop up every now and then: Without a hook or something to draw other people to you, it means everyone has to work harder to get anything worth a damn out of someone else. It makes roleplay a one-sided game of pursuit. When people actively resist becoming engaged or deviate from an encounter (in walk-up, anyway, formal groups tend to ignore most of the rando-RP "norms") it becomes a chore for some. I also tend to do most of my roleplay in just dialogue. I'm atrociously bad at emoting anything in expressive detail beyond general actions or movements and to some degree I blame MMO roleplay being a visual medium, but that's covering my own ass and excusing it. Thoughtful edit: I am a fan of one-sentence offshoots that give players more depth of someone's character. I am bored to tears by the paragraphs-long waxing and navel-gazing that is just IC-blogposting in an MMO format.

Or... You could begin a league.

Aegir plz

On the subject of lore-breaking characters, and how to reel them in: Don't. Don't even try to, or think about it. People's personal arcs aren't something for anyone else to judge, and if they bring up something completely ridiculous feel free to give them benefit of the doubt, while also being free to doubt. "I can't believe that I, the slayer of Bahamut and childhood friend of Raubahn and Azure Dragoon and 13th Chakra Monk, have been defeated in combat!" That kind of behavior should be noted and ignored, in my opinion. Don't go full MST3K and snark on someone's story, but feel free to wonder incredulously about someone's accomplishments, especially if it sounds like they're trying to save face. Your job as an event organizer is to facilitate roleplay, not judge it or try to influence it in your favor. If people want to show up summoning DoomTrain-Egi, let them, and then wonder how much they spent on illusion dust to make their carbuncle look like a train.

I can answer this one as it pertains to the Grindstone: It was to explained to me when I asked similar questions that at the onset of the game's launch, a lot of roleplay styled itself towards super flashy mega-powerful mages and magic types. The Grindstone was partially created to give people not on that scale a place to hang out and meet other people of that same level of power.

So far I've finished the first Mistborn book, but I picked up the Wheel of Time's New Spring before beginning the second of the Mistborn books. I'm current on Stormlight, which is only 2 books, but I continue to think about it. November seems to far away.

Strap the hell in, I've got like ten days left between now and then.

Welcome back! Some things have changed, but some things are still the same!

If Edison never invented the light bulb, we'd never have had a light bulb! No one else would have ever created it; It simply wouldn't exist outside of that specific date and time. ...I know the lore establishes that DRKs in Ishgard discovered the arts but I'm content to let people dwell in that rather expansive grey area.

[video=youtube] anyone can make what I have built

So, this game sort of hates roleplayers and there is sometimes a wide distinction between a Job and a job (emphasis on the capital letters). By the lore, a Dark Knight is someone who has witnessed the corruption of the Ishgardian church and has risen to fighting it, Punisher-from-Marvel-Comics-style. Buuuuuut the Dark Knight method of using emotional balance to fuel their powers isn't distinctly or specifically limited to the region. Someone could have hypothetically come up with a similar way to burning feelings to get results (In fact, Warrior as a Job comes pretty close to channeling that sort of thing!) so you kind of have to ask yourself: Do I want to be a Capital-D Capital-K Dark Knight and be bound to Ishgard? Or do I just want a greatsword and some special powers? The answer might surprise you! (SE does similar shit to Paladins (royal guards, not just Knights) and White Mages (Eorzea EPA, not just healers) and Black Mages (criminal scum, not just spellcasters) and Dragoons (exclusive Ishgard Spec Ops, not just jump rope enthusiasts) and Monks (warrior-priests, not just punch artists) and so on and so forth.)

I've mentioned it in conversations before but if you go and look at Regulus' stance in ARF he's got a decidedly-bushido thing going on with the way he holds his guntana. I half-wondered if that'd be related to when the job was inevitably added. edit:

Oh, that'd be some next-level shit. It's unlikely but possible I suppose. Yoshi knows we datmine stuff; He specifically asked people to not rip the Turn 11 cutscene reveals and post them to social media or youtube so it'd remain special and for the most part, the community listened to that.

Nah, .dat mining is a tried and true tradition. Making shit up is 1) highly frowned upon and 2) easily proven fake.