Smiling River

The Dark Knight... mmm, yeah. Yeah! Even reading that I want to watch it again. Who do you guys think is the best movie villain ever? I think the joker in the Dark Knight and Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds.

I love Star Trek TNG! In fact I had a marathon when I watched all the episodes from the start... need to find a place to catch em online :cry:

I've been waiting for the saints sequel to come out... but it just passed me by it seems! I saw it in 3D too, and I heard that it's actually slightly worse quality on IMAX... but I'd def go again to compare. That picture is beautiful.

I think Avatar should win for best picture this year, although they have some tough competition (Inglorious Bastards). Crash has been on my computer a long time, I keep delaying watching it.

I love that film! Especially when the guy sees something far off in the sky... you know what I am talking about. The zombies were actually pretty scary in comparison to some other flicks, being fast and all. I highly recommend it as well.

Yeah it's very fun. I'd also just like to watch some new movies so I'll definitely try to check out any that I've not seen before. I got one more... Deadgirl

Write down your favorite movies! Maybe if we get enough people participating we could have viewing nights All watching a movie at the same time and commenting on it via chat or something. I love way too many but I'm going to start light... Funny People

http://www.ffxivcore.com/topic/2992-rol ... otten-art We should all go over there and support what this person proposes. When this site goes public perhaps the writer can edit the RPC website in the article. This article achieves one of the things we all want to do here as members of the RPC, connect better with the general public.

You might be right. I was thinking that people have a free minute on the weekends to go and read up on some topics, where during the week people are usually busy with work, school, etc.

15th is also a Monday. I'd say go public on the 12th or 13th because those sites probably get more traffic on the weekends. Another site was that MMORPG site someone posted about here. I don't have an account on there. I'll go on a website hunt once I have a some time to spare.

Yep, that's pretty much what I've proposed to resolve the issue of communication w/o adding an organization specific LS. Your other suggestions sound good too, I can see how a chatroom might be useful in planning certain things or even real-time strategy/coordination.

Innovative establishments... interesting idea, except I don't see the need for LS use for this. Especially since everyone seems to be concerned over taking people away from their main LS for any kind of smaller RP sessions. What you described seems to be possible over /say

I agree with you that assassins on every street corner is over the top. Even though one may create a server-wide organization, based on thieves for example, and create imaginary NPCs doesn't mean that there should be hundreds of them. Let's keep it real folks. LS based Factions are cool, but their scope is very small. For example an LS has 40 members in it, 15 of those are Knights. Now, what power would these Knights have outside the LS itself? (I am assuming that characters aren't solely interested in just their group but the world around them). 15 is more of a street gang with no real power, thus making the idea of this Knighthood slightly invalid. Perhaps they can patrol the streets of some shady district, or guard one caravan... but even those would literally take the whole force of the hypothetical 15 person Knighthood to do. In my experience it was hard to keep these factions stable in XI. Only at the very begging of RP on Sylph, when there was one RPLS, were player-based factions really a force to reckon with. This was because there were a lot of RP'ers under one LS, and the leader literally played the head of almost every faction himself , so even the success of that is somewhat artificial. Since then I've seen problems with membership decline which led to Factions having no real power, or absence of leadership in which case the faction likely fall apart. However I do love the idea of factions/organizations and what they can potentially accomplish in terms of RP when they are actually working. This idea of external factions/organizations/agencies does potentially remove many flaws I mentioned above. FFXI had a divided RP'ing community which made this idea very limited. Now however I am very excited to see as all under one roof, and perhaps it can work. I'm planning to start one based on assassins/killers/mercs who are willing to do anything for the coin. The leader and the organization itself will be heavily tied to both my character's history and main plot line. By opening it up for the public (after all it will be rather public once some killings begin) I figure might as well make it accessible to whoever wants to RP as part of it, or against it, or somehow effected by it, etc. It'd definitely be a small band of 15 or so NPCs at first, so... no assassin on every corner hehe. I'll stop here before I get ahead of myself. Your thoughts are welcome and appreciated.

I think by using "neutral" MMO terms my original post wasn't as clear. I'll switch to FFXI specific terms here just to clear things up. I am not advocating for a Knight only, or thief only LS. I am also not saying that a player has to be the leader of such on faction. For example: The Underground is a thief network which shares info, tips, gathers like minded people, sets them up on jobs etc. PlayerA creates this faction (provides history, HQ location, charter, etc.) but their character doesn't necessarily have to be the leader. The faction is an entity within the world... it can have many imaginary members, not just limited to one or multiple LSs. So player B and player C join this thief underground, but they might be from different LSs. Factions can have a space on RPC forums to plan events and such, so they wouldn't need any pearl of their own. Plus the underground would provide back up characters that anyone can create for fodder or their own plots (unless thefaction is naturally small for some reason, like a little Knighthood, or a street gang). Even if the player who initially outlined it goes away, or even if all the members move on, the info about it would still be posted and any interested RP'ers can join it. In essence the faction will still be alive within the world, just wont have any active players in it for the moment. My idea is to turn factions (mercs, rugues, knights, etc) from mom n' pop stores into corporations. EDIT: Optionally of course. Some factions may want to be LS specific, or even an LS on their own like Kier mentioned. That's fine.

Assuming that you can only be part of one group at a time (one "LS"), I would not suggest creating an organization-specific guild but rather having a section on here to communicate, plan events and stories server-wide. For example someone could create a rogue type group that has already been present in the world and people can join it if they like it and it fits the characters. Then it's just up to the players to figure out what they want to do with it. Also there could be more than one knighthood (for example), with slight variations and different types of characters. Heck the leaders or command structure of these 'big' organizations could be made up NPCs, as long as they are kept constant, and used for RP. Just a train of thought...

:idea: What do you all think of organizations such as knighthood, vigilante, mercenary, merchants, thieves, assassins etc. being large entities that any RPer on the server can join? Do you think that individual guild rules would get in the way of this? On Sylph there were times these type of groups drove RP, gave people something to chat about, helped develop LS-wide plots as well as individual stories. However as the RP population rose and fell, these organizations died out. They had a flaw, they were completely player run and LS-specific (most of the time). Meaning if LeaderRogue doesn't want to be the leader anymore or leaves the game, the whole organization usually collapsed. Of course being grounded to a single LS meant that if membership goes down organizations became weak and eventually empty. Later some RP'ers started creating organizations that came from an external source. One person basically had to come up with an interesting concept and history, put it out there, and their own character would join as a member along with whoever else was interested. This way the organizations were always there and were to some degree independent of the creator. To my knowledge we've never tried server-wide organizations on Sylph (correct me if I am wrong). Now that all RP'ers are going to be on one server, meaning a much larger population than we're all used to, I feel like this concept could thrive. I'd like to hear my friends from Sylph opinions on this, but I'm also interested if players from other servers had similar organizations and how they worked. What do you think, can large server-wide organizations work? Thanks for reading and I look forward to reading your responses.

There are many things that can go wrong in an election... :twisted: But seriously though, I see what you are saying there Kes. Depending on the story people come up with the actual members who are "council" may only be regular members IC. Or perhaps the RPC IC would ban someone who is clearly a villain like Darkcat was, and the rest of the people would have a reason to catch them. There'd be a bounty, etc... which can result in some good RP. It depends on what the story behind this organization would be.

1- Another con is of course the attraction of l33t players to the RP server who'd be trying to dominate end-game, thinking that most of the server will not be as aggressive towards obtaining aw3s0me wpns! That could be annoying. I suppose a RP friendly atmosphere can be created naturally, but with a lot of publicity. If we really make our presence known and be a vocal, significant minority of the server I'm sure that over time most people wouldn't mind hearing random RP even if they don't partake in it themselves. I'd really like to see others chime in on this, we should make a seperate thread discussing it once we go live, since the next major goal of the RPC would be to get a server. 2- Yeah, I'm the same way. Perhaps we can go with some kind of an adventurer's organization? Bah, I'm really brain dead at the moment, need a nap

Just a few thoughts I'd like your opinion on regarding the RPC. 1) Send SE mass emails about having an RP server. If they do, we wont have to pick one and it'll be easier for newbies to find us even if they don't look for any kind of a coalition or guild ahead of time (I know I didn't in FFXI). Also it gives power to the RP'ers to call a place theirs, meaning if someone decides to grief or call us out they will obviously be in the wrong place, wrong server, and we can tell them that. There are many obvious reasons to have an official RP server. What do you all think about drafting a letter to SE? First we can send just one from Castiel and see if they respond, and what they say if they do. Next of course if they don't we mass email them, 'cause we all know sometimes SE doesn't respond unless they are hit over the head with it. 2) Writing contest on how to implement RPC as an IC concept. This is mainly for the future when we get more lore and such. Before the game goes live, we can try to implement the RPC In-Character. Do you want RPC as an in-character entity? I prefer to have OOC things somehow transfer over to IC, even in a loose way. Let me know what you guys think.

:idea: I think you guys are both saying the same thing.

Obviously it's not a direct comparison, in fact it was a very loose, half-serious one at best. And yes of course the bottom line is to have fun while playing a video game. The core of what I said isn't in that silly comparison, in fact that's just my take on what can happen down the road. I hope for the best but prepare for the worst. In this case too my idea is to just give it a shot with loose guidelines, this coalition itself bearing no power but at least having the ability to eventually add firmer measures should they be needed. Fun is relative, just like time :lol: Not everyone can just have fun together, sometimes you need a little regulation to make sure that everyone can have fun. Sure, it's more fun when you have fun your way completely, but I think everyone can give up 10-15% of fun for server-wide events just so we can all enjoy each others company. That's just my personal opinion and a hypothesis of how things might pan out. For now though, def no direct regulation on behalf of RPC. We'll learn as we go along. It'd be cool if I am wrong and everyone is happy just like in that other community Tsumi mentioned before. That being said, dibs on Thomas Paine.

I had a wall of text outlined, but I deleted it to just make it short and sweet. I'm hung over The RPC should have a bunch of suggestions from past experiences put up somewhere that's for sure. This goes along with not forgetting the past but using it to perhaps prevent some fallout. But yeah largely the event organizers should probably mention something about specific RP rules to follow at their gathering, if any. The debate on how much structure/power the RPC will have: I think starting off with very little is the way to go. The people who will be the maintenance crew here need jobs too, which would be to add certain rules when necessary. Starting with a clean slate in this new game and adapting as problems arise. It's easier to add regulations little by little as needed than to start with a whole bunch assuming that they will be useful. If all is well and the community runs as smooth as some people predict, then nothing will be added and everyone wins. Personally I am one of those that think we will need moderate regulation in place. Using my limited knowledge of political science, a good example would be the US. Started with independent states and very weak federal government, but as history took it's course turned out that we needed stronger federal laws to make all the states, nay the Union, run better. Tangents pulse from my fingertips like serpents in all directions.

A lot of great questions Castiel. I'll try to give my input on question by question basis. About neutrality... I don't think that we should have any power to ban or block people or guilds. One thing that I'd like the RPC to become is a crossroads for information between guilds. In your example the RPC would notify the individual and the guild they are in as well as every other guild. Let people react accordingly, depending on the circumstances some may never want to RP with the person again and /block them while others may just brush it off and continue to RP with them. I believe if the person/guild acts... less than graceful, they will notice the repercussions of their actions as people drift away from them, not wanting to RP or get involved. From my experience drama bombs don't just go off once, but multiple times, so I think we'll all know who these people are that keep causing trouble everywhere. I say let everyone react to them as they see fit. After one too many fallouts such individual may not be welcome in any guild at all. Again from my experience, guilds that have problems with everyone are born from members that have problems in any guild they join. They go off and make their own guild which is full of animosity towards everyone else. The RPC's action towards such guilds should be similar, just let everyone know that said guild said or did something offensive to the whole community and let every other guild decide how to take it. If it's really bad then that fringe guild will likely die out because no one will want anything to do with them. That's an organic way for a griefing person/guild to essentially no longer be part of the RPC. A Russian proverb comes to mind: "If you spit on the community, the community will cringe, but if the community spits on you, you'll drown." Unless someone creates an event and specifically makes/edits the RPC etiquette, it should be followed anytime members of 2 or more guilds meet. If there is a dispute between people in terms of standards/etiquette, those who did not follow the RPC etiquette should be considered in the wrong by other members. This also (more or less) takes care of the concerns in the "Events" part. Any events set up with more than one guild in mind should automatically be assumed to follow RPC standards UNLESS it's mentioned that some are omitted or edited. One exception would be if a guild has an event by itself and a member of another guild decides/is allowed to join in, the event will still be held with the main guild's rules/standards. Structure and Public: Basically 2 people from each guild should be the maintenance crew AND the PR people for the RPC. Basically their job would be to keep everyone else up to date with what their guild is up to, create server-wide events, take care of the site/forums, and advertise the RPC on public sites. To be more open the RPC should petition big sites like ZAM and Core to have a roleplaying section. We should encourage people to repost their stories from their main guilds not only here, but in those forums too. We should also try Open RP threads for those that may want to do that. It will benefit the RP community greatly by exposing us to anyone who looks over the forum sections Plus it'd be like having a constant ad for the RPC. That's one way to be more open, maybe I'll think of some other things later. Thanks for reading.

I don't see how personal grudges and being ignored could be solved by the RPC anyway. If one person simply can't stand another's RP, or their OOC nature they shouldn't be forced to interact with them just because it's a RPC event. This is just me though, I don't know about everyone else. Everyone's trying to have fun in the end after all. :roll:

That's a compelling argument Castiel, BUT... a group that had problems with other Guilds to that point probably dislikes most/all of the RPC community already. For example if we had something like this back on Sylph, that LS wouldn't care about being isolated because it would already be on bad terms with every other LS listed... so just isolating them wouldn't really effect them as they probably wouldn't care to have anything to do with other shells anyway. Plus that group, in their minds, already had a reason for saying that. There wont be many instances where one group is clearly wrong. To them, they are right in saying that and perhaps that's how they felt. I fear voting on such things will partially be a popularity contest.