John Spiegel

How to deal with metagaming in general: Have very sparse public information (Forum posts, RPC wiki, etc) out there. Yes, yes, we all love talking about our characters, but people can and will metagame if it helps them meet their desires whether it is to push themselves into a plot as the hero or romantic interests. I started a wiki years ago. I think it has bare bones on it if that. I do not wish various aspects of my character(s) to be metagamed as the mystery is most of the fun for portraying the beautiful boy my avatar reflects. Your particular instance: Lay out a cease and desist. You do yourself a disservice if you do not lay boundaries and express your dissatisfaction. If that fails, break the IC=/=OOC boundary and cut all ties because sacrificing your happiness isn't worth keeping the IC=/=OOC boundary up.

I would argue in both the game itself and RP, dark knights are rather rare as to be one is a hard life that not many RPers want to take up (and NPCs get hunted by holier-than-thou people for being perceived as being demons and junk) Dark knights specifically in name are tied to Ishgard by the term "knight". You can safely be a sword-slinging user of the dark arts and never have been tied to Ishgard. Or even a sword slinger vigilante that doesn't use dark arts. The thing so many people do when they go around RPing as a DRK is that they act edgy and really don't flesh things out at all. The DRK storyline is fantastic at highlighting the sacrifices and inner turmoil along with the general outcast nature of it all. Like a few other jobs, DRKs are fueled through emotions but unlike other jobs, it is misinterpreted by NPCs as voidal/evil magicks and the sort. It's a hard road to be a proper dark knight in roleplay in my opinion and in fact the three (well, one had to be killed, so two) people John has put on the Path were not done lightly and for quite awhile, he felt guilty about it until he accepted that they 100% wanted it.

Off the top of my head, naming convention for goblins are BlahblahOX DescriptiveGobSurname for females (Brayflox Alltalks) I wanna say male goblins are ---IX end for the first name. With that said, here's some ideas for names. Blinkix Papereyes (as goblins use sometimes slightly confusing word combos to mean other words, so Papereyes could mean Blinkix is a Reader or Bookish goblin) Floix Lettertaker That's all just shooting off the hip. My goblin-fu isn't that detailed as I rarely draw on it lol.

Yup. Still a thing. We'll continue to fly under the radar. Till the next month (that I remember)!

A run around Ishgard hyur names yields: Redwald Rothe Herewart Aelmer Eustacia Haimirich (said he's from Ul'dah but serves House Foretemps, captain of the Oschon's Raiders).

I make/edit/manipulate digital elevation maps and the sort primarily via ArcGIS. I consider it a point-and-click adventure game at times. I rather enjoy the job even on crappy projects. The boring/crappy parts aren't that bad, just hard to stay focused when it's not engaging but when I'm creating a map? All my geology nerding and video game nerding comes out. So yeah, I feel you.

GOONIES NEVER SAY DIE!

Sounds about right. I especially look for some focus on the FC culture and especially on RP from a FC application process. The process should bring in people you want, and not be focused on excluding those you don't. The recruitment process is a good indication of the FC and any process that is over 60% about what not to do is a sign that this is an oppressive FC in my experience. So buyer (applicant) beware. I got five rules. Rules one and three are the same. Rule five is a joke. So I got three rules, really. There's a common misconception that since we all play the same game/same hobby (RP) that we're all able to play nice with a different group. That's a lazy and idealist point of view. Have your group and nourish your group. It's like any real life group of friends. There is indeed individual FC culture. Through my many travels both in the real world and in digital, I can get a good feel for someone based on their application.... such as their ability to form coherent sentences, an actual interest in the group rather than "I'm bored and need constant stimulation me me me me!" and other indicators. Couple that with a chat and blamo. It's much easier to personalize an OOC interview than to have a large application. Also, I hate long apps since I'd have to read all that shit and would have no one to blame but myself.

Application -> OOC interview -> IC interview -> Recruit status -> time -> Full membership. That's what I do. I dislike making an applicant wait for a response so my turnarounds are within 24 hours. That being said, the short application and OOC interview are my gauges to see if an applicant is fit for my group. I do not and will not cater to people that don't fit with our established mojo. Two options: 1. Make your own FC 2. Find another FC I have directed a good bit of people away from my company just based on a few criteria since I ain't about compromise lol.

Still here. Still small. Still happy. Pls no inactive me pls.

Alright, this is an issue I have with people taking the lore literally. Dark Knights ARE a construct of Ishgard as that there was the "first dark knight" who went and slew a man of the cloth for being a creeper, won his trial by combat, and cast his banner aside. That was @500 years ago. In the entirety of spoken crawling across the world, there weren't other cases of people going against the law/fighting injustice or using perceived evil to snuff out untouchables? There -had- to have been. They just weren't called dark KNIGHTS! FFXIV likes to lock a particular style or profession somehow to one city state.. but in the lore, for example, Ala Mhigo, Gridania, and Ishgard all have marvelous lancers each with their own specialization. Ala Mhigo had the griffin-mounted lancers that took the Elementals' intervention and the Eorzean Alliance to fight back in the Shroud in the Autumn War. Ishgard got their pikemen and dragoons. Gridania got hippy lancers. Sure, they all might have originated in Glemmora or some pre-current society and branched out when that nation died. I like to think the Dark Knights that are centered in Ishgard (the "first dark knight", Frey, Grumpylizard...) are all one variety of "Dark Walkers/Weilders" in that, despite some things changing for them over time, they can trace their original to that of a knight. Frey and Sid weren't knights at all and became dark knights. Frey was a Brume runt and Sid was a lizard that survived ethnic clenching from Ishgardians thinking au ra refugees were dravanians. TL;DR -- Silly to tie weilding darkness or being a vigilante to Ishgard!

I stopped doing Wikis years ago because metagamers. I keep all my information in private documents.

Friendly reminder, our main page is over in the FC section since it's cleaner. http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=17448

We are still a thing. Just not flashing about. w/e. Here's a (you), me.

It would be silly to believe Ishgard is the only place dark knights happen. Sure, yeah. Calling them dark KNIGHTS is a thing in Ishgard because they cast away laws and order and whatnot. But to believe in the entirety of the history of the world that in other lands or individuals didn't drink deep the darkness to protect others. They just weren't called dark knights. Anyways! If you call JJ a knight, he will say he was never no knight. Dark Knight is just a common realm term because of the history Ishgard has with such.. that's what I'm going with anyways... ANYWHO, HERE'S YOUR QUESTIONS! 1. In what sort of ways does a dark knight become one? Is communing a method to advance their learning of their art? One becomes a dark knight by 'scratching that itch' of a whisper in their heart, the soul gem amplified one's inherent abilities as is lore for soul gems. I equate Communion as something similar to the way the Greybeards taught the Dragonborn shouts, through sharing one's knowledge/aetheric imprint of an ability as a means to "light a torch along one's Dark Path"... kind of lets one's mentor or whatever give the student a flavor ability or whatever. 2. Is Darkside one common impulse of violence, or does it manifest in differently in different people like a Jungian shadow? Would Kallera's Darkside be different than another Dark Knight's? The Darkside is merely your internal self-preservation speaking up. It can and should manifest in people differently. The way my group goes about it is that the person's strongest emotion, positive or negative, is the root of the Darkside. Say deep down you are really an angry person, anger always having been the emotion you used to hide how hurt you were. That is amplified by the Darkside and would be a pretty good standard emotion of your Darkside when in your headspace. Say your deepest emotion was sadness, the visual representation of your Darkside could be the standard red-glowey-eyed form PLUS a trail of red from both eyes like tears. 3. iirc, "Frey" was seen as a rare occurance by Sidurgu, how is control over the Darkside usually attained? Is it again a matter of psychology between the user and their impulses? I like to think of it as remembering why you became a dark knight as being what helps you gain control (or lose it). Those that travel the path for others safety have that matter of grit to remember to not drink deep the abyss. Those that did it for pure power and selfish reasons might find themselves slipping deeper and deeper out of control.. 4. I take it a habit of using Darkside for the effects would be a nono, right? With great power also comes great crux. Having no adverse effects to some power, whether it be having to take time to recharge that photon laser beam or having to eat cookies to recharge magic juice for spellcasting, a good RPer will have some sort of built-in system for this... someone that uses the Darkside constantly is probably getting drunk off power so they'll lose control and whatnot. All that being said, everyone does things differently. These are just a short summary of how -I- go about the Dark Knighting.

Hey y'all, we're far enough along with it to share this new thing we have! http://crystalline-rp.tumblr.com/ We've made a tumblr. We're still working (and are lazy a bit, and busy IRL) on this thing. The main post has been edited to have this URL there. It is more or less a carbon copy of this forum entry but I can throw cat pictures ALL OVER IT WITH EASE if I wanted to. (Which was reasons four through meow why we made a thing!)

Godbert is a highlander. He's in the Syndicate. Rhaubro is a highlander. Syndicate. It's more of a "earn your way into money" though maybe Godbert was of the line of highlanders already living in Ul'dah.

If you wish to join the LS, feel free to simply poke me ingame on Avelyn Firestone! I might be on Lyanna Farborough or Virella Douront, but it is most likely I'm on Avelyn. As well, we got an event 5 November, so if you can't make it 21 October, worry not! I'm making some event every 2 weeks ! Okie. o7

Oh, there's an AMR group. Neat. I've often idled in Little Ala Mhigo trying to find folks around. This makes me happy. So I have two monks, Alex and Grace, in their forties. They were in Gyr Abania back in the day and all that. Their sect, the Windfist Sect of the Fists of Rhalgr, was one of probably various groups that helped smuggle people out of the Mad King's wrath. The Windfist, being the surname first worn by their grandfather, follows traditional highlander naming conventions of being created from feats or abilities. Their grandfather was a legendary monk for the Fists, his son, daughter and two grandchildren are no-names in comparison. Anyways, following the escape from Garlean invasion, the Windfist twins (and their father, JJ, who isn't a monk so shoo, JJ!), thrust into the wider realm at eighteen, but enlightened with the world-traveled wisdom of their father, took to helping the Ala Mhigan Resistance in two distinct ways. Alex took his hobby of botany and, with much effort, was able to join the botany guild of Gridania despite being a heathen from the cursed nation. Gridania was his uneasy home for the bulk of the two decades until the Calamity. He also took to alchemy, traveling to Ul'dah frequently. Following the Calamity, Alex fell into Crystalline and ultimately its leadership, which he runs right now! Grace took like many Ala Mhigans to Ul'dah, though her pride and stubbornness never had her bowing and scraping like so many of her kin. She took musclework and such. She's as fleshed out as Alex but she mostly is a background character due to playing Alex or John mainly (and by mainly they're equally geared at i243 right now) Both contribute gil and what items Alex is able to make -- commonly medicines, to their kin of Ala Mhigo and for the Resistance as a whole. They just aren't up in arms at throwing away their lives to a cause far from their reach... which has sometimes landed them in a fist fight with younger pups that were born after the fall. Though some factions within the Resistance are playing the long game too! .... so either of them might be known just by their contributions in their own right as well as know they're from the home country and devout of the Destroyer. I say all this because: 1. Highlanders! 2. Ala Mhigan! 3. Monks! 4. Hug meeeee! I see there's an event for Friday the 21st, sadly it is one of my few Fridays away for large part of the day but I would definitely like to be a part of y'all in some fashion.

As slightly promised six days ago, I got around to massively updating the pages. I'm not one for super fancy stuff, maybe someone in the crew might be inspired to make a fancy thing. Might not. To further elaborate on my brief note on the contact page about our forums -- we're looking into chopping down our paid forums to a free mode as we're more heavily invested in our modular discord than a paid forum with functions we never use. URL might change or site entirely -- we're still figuring that out! (Thank you based maintenance after work for making this update possible.)

Mercs with Morals ...nothing more, nothing less. Along the many flyers in your local tavern, perhaps slightly obscured by many newer ones, a large blue crystal in the top center of the page catches your eye. "CRYSTALLINE -- A free company for free people dedicated to helping the realm in tasks big or small." Along with the amusing tag is an address of Ward 1, Plot 15 of the Lavender Beds and contact information for hiring for work or to look into joining.

I have three characters. First off, my company and circle of RPers know I have three characters, two of which they see regularly. I take advantage of not always being in demand as well as RPing over a pearl with either character on one character. The third character, admittedly, is a background character that does a lot of off screen stuff. Whatever. The trick is to 1) Not get heavily invested in multiple plots with different people as different characters. 2) Realizing you don't always have to be on GO! all the time. Tuck someone away for a bit, especially if it's feeling like a chore. Stories aren't meant to be churned out in rapid succession. 3) Just have fun!

What we are: A small, but marvelous band of blokes. The Company itself, Crystalline, is a mercenary free company with the unofficial tag of "Mercs with Morals" and our members come from all walks of life. Seasoned adventurers. Grand company folks. Fledgling fighters.... who most all share a common goal: Do good things and hopefully get paid. How to Find Crystalline: Anyone with the tag. Our HQ (Ward 1 Plot 15 of Beds). Me personally (Alex Windfist, John Spiegel, rarely Grace Windfist). My discord: BadlandsJohn#7312 My skype: john.d.spiegel My account on the RPC (though admittedly I poke around about once a week) Back again. We're still small. A few of us had a bit of a content hiatus prior to 3.4, personally I worked on Fallout 4 play. Didn't wanna get burnout of XIV! Anyways. Our forums' days are numbered. Since we rarely use it anymore we're going to let the bill lapse. This doesn't mean we're a dead company. On the contrary. We have a very active Discord channel for all OOC needs. We have had a company house in the Lavender Beds for ever and I'd like to think it fits the merc-home meme pretty nicely. Cozy but lore friendly (I redecorated ages ago and am pretty proud of it >.> #ego). Admittedly, with 3.4's release and pre-3.4 we been slow in terms of the RP in house. I'm not sure we can rightfully call ourselves a "heavy RP" company unless the metric is deep stories and dark tones, we got those for dayyyyys. Just sometimes we are playing other video games or watching the new episodes of Jojo. We have a spotlight time Sunday that most us agreed works usually for the majority of us to either do an RP mission/gathering or for new-newish content. With 3.4 out, we will probably be doing the new Alexander and then the Goddess and RP for those of us that aren't yet sated! ...but weeks Sundays that follow will be just Alexander and RP. As said in past posts, our overarching story is a collection of personal stories that weave in and out of the spotlight. With the apparent tip towards Ala Mhigo in the future, you can bet your dodo steak that Alex, an Ala Mhigan, will have much to say and desire to do about his homeland and I hope some things happen that get people in the company to see more of that side of Alex. I don't want to spoil that! Some might find this sort of company a bit boring. You would be right, at times we are boring. The majority of us are post-college adults and have other things we want to do in either the game or real life. We've no mandatory meetings. When there is occasion for one I try to work with as many peoples' schedules as I can but no, since I have been benevolent dictator, I have never and will never force someone to be somewhere for my ego and chest beating needs.

New goals. If your character is so focused on something, say, revenge, and they get that revenge, what sort of fallout or prologue would that character experience? Would they remain vengeful everlooking for the next kill to sate their anger or would they take a step back and have an epiphany that the goal of their conquest was shallow but the steps and people they met along the way were what was important. The way me and my group goes about things is in a realistic sort of fashion. Let's use my main, JJ, as an example. When I brought him into 2.0 I had no goals for this aged but not old dark knight. He's seen so much, done so much and bled so much, but at his core he's a wanderer. Sure, things have happened to him over 2.0's time, but there weren't any goals to work towards -- he was more reactionary than proactionary. Now let's use my other two characters, Alex and Grace, JJ's children. Both are monks that escaped King Theodric's and the Garlean's bullshit. While they're not grand super sayinn monks, nor currently (in the past, yes) directly involved with the Ala Mhigan Resistance, they harbor a strong desire to reclaim their maternal ancestral land. This has been my longest running and coldest overarcing plot for these two as Ala Mhigo has yet to be hit up directly in the game. Now once that happens, depending how it happens, that would wrap up a major part of their story in terms of "getting to the goal". However, along the way, Alex especially, has been quite active. Running Crystalline and doing this or that within the company's work and so on. Moral of the story: If you define your character with one thing to do and they finish it, but you want to keep on going, get into your character's head. What do they do as a hobby? Do they have friends? What might that character think about doing x y or z? DETAILS!

I'm back for this moon's blurb! For nearly a cycle we had an unofficial OOC pearl with a group that we loved but they've not been around for ten moons (MMO hoppers!). I made the decision to split from that inactive pearl that none of us had ability to create more pearls for and make a second pearl for Crystalline, an OOC pearl. While we promote we have a /FC for OOC chat, not every avid member wants to join a non-Raid centered FC. There was much debate back in the day for an OOC pearl or whatever, so I ended up making our initial Skype group. As time passed on, we got that old OOC pearl and then also went from Skype to Discord. I personally want anyone to have a possible vein in either in game or out of game to the group. Some people have 8/8 pearls, some people are on consoles. Whatever! IC pearl - CHECK (and required! The others aren't to be part of Crystalline) Discord - Check /FC chat - Check OOC pearl - Check Inquire at me here, ingame (Alex Windfist, John Spiegel, Grace Windfist) or on Skype (john.d.spiegel) or Discord (BadlandsJohn#7312) for any questions or collaborations with a rag tag group of Mercs with Morals!