"Character Development" forum

[FreelanceWizard]

The reappearance of a thread about what our characters like to eat prompted me to recall all the various RP prompt threads that the RP Discussion forum has seen. We've had the famous and brilliant "100 Questions About Your Character" thread, "What would your loot table look like" thread, "Where do you sleep at night" thread, and many more. Unfortunately, these sometimes get lost, even when they might be fun for RPers new and old to answer about their characters.

 

It occurred to me that we could move these threads into a new forum for Character Development. This forum would only consist of these sorts of open RP prompt threads and would serve as a resource not just to learn about others' characters, but to develop your own using the prompts within. This would be a single forum for characters from all servers, as the prompts aren't server-specific.

 

So, do you, RPC-ians, want such a forum? Do you think it'd be useful, or just more clutter? Please vote and post any questions/ideas on the concept here.

[Zhavi]

I think it could make a really nice resource sub-forum type that would allow people to browse without having to filter through tons of non-related other threads. Go for it, says I!

[Dat Oni]

I'm particularly guilty of making threads like these, so I suppose I can get behind a new subforum for them.

[Gray]

It could't hurt, right?

[D'ly]

I think it could make a really nice resource sub-forum type that would allow people to browse without having to filter through tons of non-related other threads.  Go for it, says I!

So agree with Zhavi here! :3

[Naunet]

Eh, I'm not a fan of lots of highly specific sub-forums. Unnecessary, IMO. Could help if we had tags we could add to threads, perhaps.

[Melkire]

Eh, I'm not a fan of lots of highly specific sub-forums. Unnecessary, IMO. Could help if we had tags we could add to threads, perhaps.

 

This. I can't see such a subforum accomplishing much that RP Discussion doesn't already handle other than, you know, siphoning threads away from RP Discussion.

 

...not that I wouldn't use such a board.

[Aya]

...not that I wouldn't use such a board.

Osric can really use all of the character development that he can get!

[Austratus]

I like looking through nonsense threads like this sometimes, so bring it on!

 

EDIT: I'd probably suggest a stickied thread for general character concept brainstorming.

[Flickering Ember]

I voted "Yes, and I will use it." 

 

Also, any chance we could get a 'making connections' forum?

[Naunet]

I really think a better solution would be a tagging system to aid in searching for specific types of threads. Tons of subforums just makes the website cluttered and dilutes discussion.

[Zhavi]

There is only one other subforum ("Chronicles") -- which is partially why I think a subforum off of the RP forum would work well. I agree that more forums/subforums tend to promote clutter, but in this case I think it will prove useful in its utility. People might be more inclined to create more character-oriented threads with a specific subforum, and it will make browsing easier.

 

Searching with tags does work, but people tend to not tag things or put in tags that don't belong, and in the end, in my own experience, it is not as casual-browsing friendly as just having a specific forum for those sorts of threads (plus, search functions are always hit and miss in my experience).

 

There are enough threads and people interested in a place to look at those threads to warrant it in this case, in my opinion.

[FreelanceWizard]

On the topic of tags, I'd be interested in any MyBB mods people can dig up for tagging (I'm aware of this one on the MyBB site). So, if those advocates for such a system can post links to such mods that they find, that'd be helpful. I'm not wedded to a subforum, but it is an easy and non-opaque way to see what's going on. FWIW, I'm not a huge fan of tags because, in my experience, if users can tag anything with any text (as they can on, say, SE's forum or, to a lesser extent, StackExchange or any given JIRA bugtracker or Salesforce instance), tag search ends up being not much better than free text search. However, I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.

 

Regarding a "Making Connections" forum (for seeking RP), I'm going to make a poll on that topic, too.

 

EDIT: An alternative to tags is thread prefixes (see this explanation), which gets around the "free tagging" problem, but manipulates thread titles.

 

EDIT 2: One major problem with thread prefixes is that you only get one per thread. So, we'd either have to have a lot of them, or live with a smaller, less descriptive set.

[Flickering Ember]

RPC has a very small amount of forums. Nothing outside the four general forums are used for discussion or planning since the other forums are mostly just archives. It may look like at a glance we have a lot of forums but actually we have few. 

 

The RP discussion needs to be cut down because half the time it tries to be a place to discuss the nature of RP and the other half it tries to be RP planning. I believe separating these kinds of topics into their own separate forums will stimulate activity as they are topics that are staples to any RP community. 

 

My opinion has changed somewhat: I believe that it would beneficial to first create a character connection forum and then see if a character development forum is still needed afterwards.

[FreelanceWizard]

A similar thought had occurred to me, which is that if we moved the prompts and RP connections both to separate forums, it'd shrink RP discussion down to basically requests for advice, questions on lore, and discussions on the art of RP. Certainly, that's a lot of space conceptually, but most of the traffic in RP discussion is requests for connections. It's a tough question, certainly.

 

As promised, the other poll is now up.

[Zhavi]

RPC has a very small amount of forums. Nothing outside the four general forums are used for discussion or planning since the other forums are mostly just archives. It may look like at a glance we have a lot of forums but actually we have few. 

 

The RP discussion needs to be cut down because half the time it tries to be a place to discuss the nature of RP and the other half it tries to be RP planning. I believe separating these kinds of topics into their own separate forums will stimulate activity as they are topics that are staples to any RP community. 

 

My opinion has changed somewhat: I believe that it would beneficial to first create a character connection forum and then see if a character development forum is still needed afterwards.

 

Ahh, hmm you make a good point. I guess to me when I had first supported it it wasn't supposed to be that active of a forum. It's a place you direct new people or those who are having difficulty parsing their characters; they might post in there, but largely participation would probably be mostly passive -- ie, you make use of the prompts without necessarily posting in them. Or, if you do, it's a place where you can easily find the older prompts without needing to dig through a bunch of other threads that aren't related. Likely you'd have more thread necros happening, but on the whole it wouldn't be as active as, say, rp discussion itself.

 

And that's great, imo. It's mostly just to be able to have an area set aside for, well, character development and the sorts of prompts and questions that make all rpers pause and think for a moment.

 

I dunno, I mean, I guess my own sense of functionality breaks down to visibility and ease of redirection. Even if forums slow down, it's a matter of being able to have a solid place and a solid link where you can go and look without hassle. But eh, that's just what I've gotten used to over the years. What, you're having a hard time finding rp? Have you tried posting in the ___ ? Have you tried looking in the ____? What, you're having a hard time with your character? Check out the ____ . Those sorts of things.

 

You could always nix the Balmung/Gilg event forums, roll that traffic into RP Discussion, have one Server Directory category with Balmung and Gilgamesh forums, and then add character dev and connections subforums to RP Discussion (because to me they are subforum type of categories, not worth forums of their own).

 

edit - alternatively, ditch the directories and direct that traffic to the wiki. Put in a form there, add some server categories, and there you have it.

 

'Cause honestly, when I'm looking for Balmung characters I go to the wiki. I have never gone past the first page in the directory.

[FreelanceWizard]

This poll will soon be over, so if you haven't voted yet but want to, please do so soon.