Thorbought

[align=center]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/200474484988182528/295083391127388160/ff.png[/img] [/align] IC Info The Soul of the Sword was originally a company partnered with the Adventurer’s Guild in Limsa Lominsa. The company was founded by Sin Faye and Casa Kai. The two had grand adventures and fought to make Eorzea a peaceful place, but Sin Faye eventually died. Full of grief, Casa Kai departed and left the company in the hands of Culpora Norwood, Sin Faye’s apprentice. The company has since then broken ties with the Adventurer’s Guild and established itself as an independent mercenary company, that is a home to all who would seek refuge in its walls. Fighting bandits, monsters, and plenty of voidsent the company is a beacon to those who wish to earn gil and fight for Eorzea’s name. OOC Info We are a R8 RP FC with a large house in the Mists [Ward 5, plot 32]. Our focus is to build a strong community and to provide engaging and fun rp. Along with spontaneous rp and casual rp, we also have three weekly events and engaging plot lines. The company itself is a neutral mercenary company but would be closer aligned with 'good' rather than being truly neutral. The company has a tournament every Tuesday [10 PM EST] to allow members to have a chance to fight one another, to get some practice in, and to fight for a little bit of extra gil. Soul of the Sword also features a full functional restaurant, Soul of the Dragon, to help bring in additional gil and to help mitigate the volatility in pay of the mercenary lifestyle. The restaurant is open on Thursdays [9 PM EST] and we were even featured on the Crystal Chronicle. Lastly, Sundays [10 PM EST], the company calls for all of its members to come fight for their paychecks on the weekly venture. Each venture is different and can either be a standalone mission or tie in with previous plot lines. The ventures are very action packed and feature our own rule set for combat. There are several logs for some previous ventures located under 'DOCS' on the website. Who are we looking for? We are looking for mature and active rpers who wish to be part of a friendly community for both ooc and ic. We want people who are active on the character they apply with and have the willingness to initiate and participate in RP. You will only get out of this FC what you put in and we do our best to provide tons of opportunities to get involved and build connections. ICly we are seeking both mercenaries for the company and staff for the restaurant. We are a neutral mercenary company, free of the usual regulations and restrictions of the Adventuring Guild but we still do our best to help Eorzea and its denizens and the members we seek would do well to have a similar mentality in mind. How to apply? You can apply by filling out the application here on the website and by also throwing us an application in game. After the application, we also have an IC interview which will serve as a way to know your character a bit and to officially be introduced to you. You can also contact the following names in game for more questions or if you would like to come over to the estate and do the interview. L'cielle Lhan Ajax Avernus Culpora Norwood Silvia Kuroi Chryslinger Starhope Katalie Mindena

Those were the two I first thought about when making my character! Trixie mostly as I'm not super familiar with Zatanna but I do know of her.

Wow that sounds exactly like what I'm looking for, thanks! So far I've had my character use cards, knives, doves, and other little things. But I love this 'hat magic', especially the catching the spell in his hat and sending it back. I'd love to find him and get some inspiration from him.

So I have a character that I love rping but I wish to expand more on. They are a classic performance magician type (like cards, smoke and mirrors, doves from a hat). I have their personality and backstory down. I'd just like ideas to help brainstorm a bit more about their magic. I know it's using 'magic' and aether in this game quite loosely but I was never a fan of following it too strictly. For example, what would an effective way for them to fight using magic while retaining their theme of being a magician? Exploding cards and doves and the like? Anyone else ever do a character like this?

There's another fc that we're friendly with that have confirmed to us that there are people bad mouthing us but I personally have no idea what the rumors are, just that they exist. And the reviews for the tavern we've gotten just seem so...nit picky? I don't want to just assume that it's not valid criticism but they complain about uncomfortable seating in an rp restaurant and say we're one of the worst places they've gone to. The whispers I've gotten only say 'there's people saying bad things about you' but never tell me what.

Yeah...as someone who has gone through a bit of members..there's people willing to start shit and get upset over the smallest little issue.

Thank you all for the helpful words. It's hard to get off my mind right now, especially the bad reviews of our place, but you are all right...it's probably best to focus my energy elsewhere. And to be honest, it makes me feel better to hear it is a rather normal problem.

I am the leader of a small tavern/adventuring fc. I'd rather stay anonymous as to not invite more shit but I've been getting a lot of rumors about my fc and I'm not sure what to do. A few months ago I started getting whispers from completely random people [like level one alts] that there is negative rumors about my fc going around. I didn't pay it much mind but I was still completely baffled as we hadn't ever had any drama with outside people besides internal issues and with previous members we had to remove. The rumors didn't seem to go away and most recently I feel like this problem has gotten worse. I've been linked a few blogs that review places to visit in Eorzea and we've gotten frankly quite terrible reviews and I'm just rather suspicious of it all. Perhaps we are terrible, but the reviews seem quite nitpicky and most people who visit the tavern in person only had positive things to say. The worst of it is when I learned that someone who had given a positive review on their blog but they were messaged by someone anonymous, complaining about the positive review of us. It's again, all rumors, but I can't help but feel like we're being targeted for hate and I'm frankly not sure why. Is this normal for fcs?

Soul of the Sword In Game Theme(s): Mercenary work/Adventuring FC/LS Name : [sS-RP] Website: Click me! Contacts: Casa Kai/Sin Faye/Culpora Norwood Housing (type of establishment if it's not obvious): (Company Headquarters: Mists Ward 5, plot 32)

Name of establishment Soul of the Dragon Type of place Upscale Doman restaurant, hosted by Soul of the Sword url Our menu Location Basement in the Soul of the Sword estate [Mist, Ward 5 plot 32] Date/Days/Time open Thursdays at 9-12 EST Contact person Casa Kai/Sin Faye/Ajisai Ito

I have no advice to give. I just happen to know problem VERY well. It's really frustrating as a leader to all sorts of weekly events to get people engaged but people seem to have zero interest.

Yeah my main concern is people upset that personal plot is getting into fc plot. The personal plot I had in mind had the potential to be kind large-spanning so I wouldn't mind spinning it more into a larger plot for the company. And I understand that it should be flexible for other people to change. But as mentioned, it's definitely a concern that people wouldn't want it. As for recording things, so far we've only had stand-alone missions that don't have an overall plot so I never saw the need to chronicle them.

Money isn't really a problem between me and my co-gm so we feel comfortable returning the money for the rooms. Kind of off topic but do for a fc plot-line, is it acceptable to work a personal story into a fc-story? And would I want to chronicle everything that happens in the FC story-wise or just major events.

Yeah, hopefully no one leaves with too must bitterness or resentment over it. Most of them will probably still remain in our IC LS (a lot of people who leave the fc still remain there for some reason).

Update: I've started to talk to people who never interact with us and people who generally seem not interested in rping with us and have given them an ultimatum to leave (with me refunding their rooms of course) or to actually try and rp with us. Now I need to think of some way to have people stay out of the house more.

Again thanks everyone for the continued advice! :love: Right now, I think my main priority needs to be working on stopping the bleeding of members. They cite that it feels like the same thing every day, sitting at the fc etc, etc. I'd like to ask the more long-lived FCs how they kept their fc rp fresh and got the members to go out more while still interacting with each other. We do have weekly events (2 a week currently) but it seems that it isn't enough because the rest of the time is still the same lounging around.

I just...this is one thing I don't really get. Can someone define clique for me in this concept? Just because a group of 2-? different people enjoy or are used to RPing with each other doesn't mean you need to address it or DO anything about it. Are they friendly to other members? Are they not alienating others? Do they hold RP out in the open, friendly to other members walkups? If they are then leave them them alone imo. Too often I see this leveled at people who just enjoy each others company when they themselves are more inclusive than the people lobbing the word around. I can't speak for the OP, but in my case, I guess I mean "to address the perception of cliques." A lot of the time, new or existing members of an RP guild will blame their frustrations on "cliques." They imagine that the reason they're not getting RP is because everyone is already paired off in private scenes with their BFF's, with no room for inclusion of others. This is why I recommend getting everyone in a Skype room, or whatever, and just talking to each other. In my experience, it's far more common that multiple people are placing the accusations on "cliques," when the reality is that everyone is just too shy to RP or speak up, or they're just plain busy or burned out. This is also why I mentioned having RP hooks posted, which would be open to anyone. Give members some tools to take initiative and get involved, and help them break through those perceived "clique barriers." The the very concept that it's somehow an FC leader's responsibility to break through others rather egocentric and self depreciating perceptions is ridiculous to me. The general idea should be to encourage inclusive RP. If Bob and Dylan like to RP together then great. Just as long as when Steve comes around they invite Steve to play too or don't turn him away or ignore him when he posts. As long as they do that then there is no issue. Letting your member's insecurities rule your actions is a swift path to a rather brutal burnout. That's kind of the problem we've face before. We've tried to ask the 'cliques' to include other people or make it more available to outsiders but the request has mostly fallen on deaf ears.

Thank you for all the advice everyone. It's certainly give me a lot to mule over. I'll address some points below. Officers We actually did originally start with different branches as officers with medical, airships, field, etc etc. The problem is that it ran into problems with ooc and ic and the lack of definition for the officer role. Currently, we've just made a singular officer role for ooc purposes and the person can simply put 'head medic' in their tag for ic purposes rather than making a bunch of different officer roles. I'd like to ask, what do people usually ask for their officers? What would be too little to ask and what would be too much? Cliques I have 0 problem with people wanting to rp with their friends and close ones. I do it myself. But there's certain people that show up to no events, have 0 interaction with anyone else even when something is happening in front of them, and basically only exist in the company by name. I've even asked them before (because some of them were actually officers) to try and include company members in their plot lines and they agreed, but here we are and no progress has been made and they still are content in mingling among themselves. This isn't really that much of a problem anymore as it's a very small portion of the company but it still bothers me. Plotlines I will admit that I'm a complete newbie when it comes to running a FC story line. I'd take any advice I can on this. Like how to get people interested and creating a rp hook (and learning just exactly what a 'hook' entails).

Hey, sorry if this isn't the right place for this kind of question! I've been running an rp fc for a brief amount of time now and it's proved to be a lot more trouble than I imagined. First problem is the complete lack of officers. It's basically just me and my co-gm managing 30 or so people. We've made several officers in the past but they've either done nothing or abused the power. We've tried to get them to help us time and time again but they seem content on doing nothing and minding their own business. A few become proactive for the first few weeks but after that they kind of seem to lose interest in being an officer. Going off of that, the FC is also kind of 'fractioned' so to say. There's several groups of people who were all friends before joining the FC so they mostly just stay in their own group. Another group is the same, they knew each other before joining, and they're basically only in the FC by name. And then we have the new people who feel isolated because there's already cliques. This problem I've worked hard to fix and it's gotten better but there's still groups of people who basically never interact with the company. The final problem I feel is with the direction of the FC. It's original purpose was to be a mercenary company but it feels very aimless. It's ended up being more of a 'club house' where people just come and have casual rp more than anything. we tried to do a storyline but a few people became upset at the events that happened and the officer in charge of that just gave up on trying that again. This also leads into member-retainment where our new members have a hard time making connections and also have no real reason to stay if the FC has no goal in mind other than 'making Eorzea better'. I know it sounds very bleak from what I described but it's honestly a good group of people and we're all very friendly OOC in our LS/discord/fc (hell, some people don't even rp and are friends with us just oocly). I want to put in the work to make this FC great again but I'd love advice on what kind of events are successful for a venture based FC, member retainment, and planning a FC storyline. Again, sorry if this is the wrong place for this and thank you for any advice in advance!