From Raider to RPer

[Deahfel]

Hi everyone, my name is Deahfel and I just transferred over to Balmung to join the RP community. Have been getting my feet wet so far checking out a couple of the RP events and communities that Balmung has to offer and trying to find what is going to be the best fit for me. So I figured it was probably time to hop on here and introduce myself.

 

MMO Background

My first MMO was Everquest during the planes of power days where I was blown away by everything an MMO could offer and all the interesting stories and people you could meet. From there I jumped over to WoW and finished burning crusade before heading back to the familiar world of Everquest 2 where I spent most of my time raiding full time. Starting to burn out from that I noticed my enjoyment was starting to turn more casual so I moved to Guild Wars 2 which ended up not having the depth or sense of community I was looking for. I had heard mixed things about FFXIV from launch but proceeded to try it out. I really enjoyed the community and cleared through the MSQ. I ended up getting somewhat tired of the content and grind when I started growing more and more interested in player run events and RP reading about them on this forum. That ultimately lead to my transfer to balmung and here we are.

 

RP Experience

Almost all of my RP experience comes from tabletop RPGs like DnD/Pathfinder where I am an avid GM and player. So I am still working on translating those tabletop skills into their MMO counterpart. Other than that I am still learning the nuances and constantly reading up on the RP guides here.

 

Character Info

Right now my main RP character is a loyal guardian of her friends and I have been working on fleshing out more and more of her backstory. https://wiki.ffxiv-roleplayers.com/pages/Deahfel_Pharasma 

 

RP Style

I am still kind of searching for my RP weight and find that a mix of light and medium are balancing well. I generally like light RP for more social encounters, and medium for more serious plotlines where my character will be growing and not doing just the day to day. I am currently working on a plot with some FC mates about a missing artifact and they have been enjoying that enough to ask me to host a few events/scenes based around that. I was wondering if anyone had some tips or a guide to running events out in the field? My initial thought was to have a type of ruin expedition with some flavorful exploring, a few traps and challenges, as well as a puzzle to solve to advance the plot. I think it is my prior tabletop experience taking over, but something about powerful magical relics being lost in the world seems to inspire my imagination. Also if anyone has any tips for creating the rumors in the wiki I have been struggling with that!

 

Anyways, thank you for taking the time to read my intro post. If you are on Balmung and you ever run across my character please feel free to send me a tell or join me for some RP. If you ever need a relic guard or have any interest in checking out my plot let me know as well. My character loves to spend her evenings in the Gridania Roost so feel free to drop by!

[Thunderbolt300]

Welcome aboard to Balmung! :thumbsup:

 

We can always use a few more dungeon masters to visit eternal suffering on the player base. Bwahahahaha!

[Maril]

Welcome aboard! o/

[Deahfel]

Thank you for the warm welcome. Haha I hope to use those GM skills, haven't decided for evil or good yet!

[Faye]

Hello there, welcome to Balmung!

[Ren of Many Alts]

Hooray for new RPers! And welcome to Balmung!

[Random Encounter]

Welcome to Balmung! New friendly faces are always a good thing, hope to run into you in game at some point!

[Blackwell]

Hello and welcome friend! :love:

[Thunderbolt300]

I was wondering if anyone had some tips or a guide to running events out in the field? My initial thought was to have a type of ruin expedition with some flavorful exploring, a few traps and challenges, as well as a puzzle to solve to advance the plot. I think it is my prior tabletop experience taking over, but something about powerful magical relics being lost in the world seems to inspire my imagination. Also if anyone has any tips for creating the rumors in the wiki I have been struggling with that!

 

Anyways, thank you for taking the time to read my intro post. If you are on Balmung and you ever run across my character please feel free to send me a tell or join me for some RP. If you ever need a relic guard or have any interest in checking out my plot let me know as well. My character loves to spend her evenings in the Gridania Roost so feel free to drop by!

 

I just realized no one really answered this question for you, and I must have missed it on the first go around here. 

 

So, it really depends somewhat on the audience you have. My FC, for example, likes to do major events in Discord in more of a tabletop setting, so I had to adapt a bit to that in order to cater what players are used to. It's really a tradeoff with ease of access, more robust access to media, and being able to properly represent the persistent world of FFXIV. 

 

That being said, in-game events still have a pretty strong place in my heart too, but with those, you'll need to decide how open you want your events to be and how many players you can accommodate at once. 

 

Since there is a party limit of 8, if you want a plotline to be invite-only and otherwise closed, you'll have to squeeze the party into 8 players or use a linkshell for operating the plotline so you stay out of the generic chat channels. Otherwise, you may end up with some randoms tossing in. Still, when you get up to 8 players to a single DM, you're going to get overwhelmed pretty easily. At that point, you may need a wingman DM or two to help out there.

 

Otherwise, you can just keep it wide open and deal with walk-ups also tossing in, but again, scale may be a concern there. On a more general note, one thing that I tend to do is to whisper players with the result of whatever action they take- say, a player examines a crystal fragment and, based on their mining skill, can determine various things about it. It gives specific players some ammo to take the spotlight, so you can spread that around as needed. Combat stuff can usually be broadcast to everyone. 

 

Aside from this? Just pick your location and get after it! 

 

As for RP though, you're more than welcome to hit me too- Kasi is usually wandering around Gridania somewhere, and while she'll stop in taverns on her trade route occasionally, she's not much of a tavern-goer. If you're looking for connections as well, we can certainly explore that too! 

 

Hopefully this answered your questions!

[Syranelle Ironleaf]

Hey there and welcome to Balmung, Deahfel!  

 

On running Storylines...

 

 

For on-going Storylines, I break mine up into chapters and I give each chapter a three-month window.  The purpose behind this is two-fold:  

 

1.)  It gives me an opportunity to take a break between chapters and let others host events during my downtime.  This prevents GM burn-out and ensures that you aren't the only one stuck with the duty of hosting all the time.

 

2.)  I've found that anything longer than three months tends to start to weary people in the wrong way.  "When is this storyline going to end?" -- "God, this thing has been going on for six months!"  Allow people to resolve a problem so there's a sense of completion and it doesn't feel like the story is just dragging on unnecessarily.

 

Storylines also need to have a purpose besides just providing a RP outlet.  There should be a goal that everyone is working toward, there should be rewards for completion and detriments for failure.  Take into consideration the character(s) that are involved and tailor experiences toward both their strengths and their weaknesses.  Storylines should always provide opportunities for character growth and have a lasting impact beyond, "Oh, it's just this thing we did this one time."

 

On Roleplaying in the Field...

 

 

I love to use the world environment and old dungeon content as set-dressing for roleplay.  Make sure you know the world!  So make sure you explore often, poke around with FATES, and really get to know the world of Eorzea from an in-game perspective.  You'll come to know what FATEs, dungeons, or world environments suit a roleplay scenario.  (Or what areas may have interference because of FATEs, Sightseeing Log locations, or Questing interruptions -- Not that it's ever happened to me...!  >_>U)

 

More often than not, I use dungeons as placeholders for other locations.  Like we used Amdapor Keep in one roleplay event that I hosted, but it was a different part of the city/keep than was in-game.  This is to prevent you from treading on established lore and forcing your canon on anyone else.  

 

Some advice I read once:  Blow up a tree, but don't blow up the moon. Change little things that don't really affect anybody, but don't change something that can affect everyone.

[Haven's Fox]

Just jumping in to say 'Yay for Pathfinder'! It's become my new addiction over the last year thanks to my FC lead... Also welcome.

[Deahfel]

Thanks Kasi and Syranelle for all the info, that was exactly what I was looking for. I am tasked with hosting our first scheduled event in the plot this Sunday so these tips will definitely get some use. I will definitely have to go exploring some more to get a better understanding of the location and any specific FATE challenges that might occur (that would be pretty immersion breaking). This plot is definitely on the shorter end, at least initially and is more in scope to a module than a campaign if that makes sense.

 

I like your quote about not stepping on the lore and since I am still getting up to speed on that I plan to interrupt the world as little as possible by playing in areas that shouldn't have lore expectations too built in.

 

My FC is relatively small atm and attendance fluctuates pretty wildly, so I will plan for a group of 4 and if anyone else shows up I will have some backup stuff prepped for scaling. Whispering and the hidden information is exactly what I had in mind for sharing results of "checks" so that way they can choose what information becomes public and in what manner.

 

Thank you guys again soo much this was exactly what I needed to solidify my prep!