Yo, I figured I'd give an introduction. I'm known as "Shoryu Magami" by most people who've met me.

After taking a 5 minute look at this forum, I can tell I'm what would be considered an "Advanced" role-player, since I definitely don't do the whole single line or couple of sentence type of posts unless it's something like goofing around on messenger (joke RP, essentially), so I'm basing this mostly off the way the site seems to categorize the topics. I'm also someone who does a lot of battle-orientated role-play and I've been considered quite proficient at it, but that's probably not something I'll get into on this site for multiple reasons.

To be completely honest, I only really joined this forum because I've only just recently gotten access to a working PC again that I can reliably RP on, and I haven't been in the scene much for a good few years now. With a PC that works (well, works by my stands of having abysmally bad luck with technology), I wanted to get rid of the rust a bit, per se. Unfortunately, a good majority of the people from my RP circle have left role-playing in the time that I've been away, and in general there's been a steady decline in forum role-playing for years now anyway, so I figured I'd join here for the time being. Whether or not I actually get into some role-playing here, and how much, is really undecided. I sort of just joined the forum on a whim, even if being whimsical is pretty out of character for me.

Anyway, I've been a storyteller basically my whole life, though I only started doing text-based role-playing somewhere in the region of a bit over 10 years ago (couldn't tell you exactly, since I deleted the account I first used on the initial RP forum I joined, but definitely over 10 years), since I didn't even have a PC until that point (unlike a lot of people I seem to run into, I didn't have a PC since I was a toddler, and while it might be different here I'm usually fairly old compared to the other role-players I meet). I'm actually less known for forum role-playing though, and more known for the major story project I've been working on that could in many ways be considered my life's work and my soul, which is called "Guardian Ascension".

Though I started out my forum role-playing on a couple of fan-based forums, beginning with a couple of Final Fantasy ones, for the most part I only role-play exclusively using the setting of that project of mine I just mentioned, and I've actually run multiple forums related to it in the past, with full intentions of creating another one in the very near future. That's one of a few reasons I don't know how much you'll see of me, since my passion for writing is honestly tied very closely to my passion for my project and I lose interest very quickly when I write using outside settings. I've also assisted a few other people's role-playing forums as a part of the staff in the past too or just offering general support, and I've been told by people I make an exceptional GM, but, like I said, I don't know how much of this you'll see here. I just wanted to give a more solid introduction of myself, rather than the usual one line intro that a lot of people use.

For those of you who actually decide to take the time out to read this (I'm fairly aware of the fact that I make long posts and I don't particularly intend on watering myself down for anyone), nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you!

I'm new too and had just joined yesterday but welcome! I hope that you are able to make new connections despite losing touch with your old ones (same happened to me) and have fun GMing as well.

Pleasure to meet you Shoryu and welcome to the Guild, if you ever have any questions or are looking for a partner please feel free to drop by, I have always thoroughly enjoyed role-playing Final Fantasy plots.
If you think you're ready to take on some roleplays you should check out some interest checks, there's also lots of lore building threads you can check out and maybe discuss your project Guardian Ascension, Good luck.

Cheers to both of you.

Kyla - Yeah, it's a real shame when the people you're comfortable role-playing with because they're like friends, your community essentially, up and disappear. To be exact, I haven't lost contact with all of them. The majority of them vanished though, or stopped writing entirely, and those who remain are either people who are hyped for my next forum or are people who want to get involved but are unsure if they have the time to give. Like I said, pretty much joined this place because I feel rusty and might want to do some role-playing to get the morale for my project work back.

AdamantiumWolf - It's been well and truly several years since I actually role-played with the Final Fantasy setting in any extensive depth, since the last attempt to revive that first forum I mentioned I joined sort of fell flat on its face (I spent roughly a year revamping the forum with a few other people who wanted to see it revived, moving a rebuild of the whole forum forward, and then for various assorted reasons the majority of the people on the forum disappeared one after another like dominos for seemingly no reason for explanation), so I have no idea how comfortably I'd get back into that. Either way, if I actually decide to role-play here, you'll know about it.

On the subject of discussing my Guardian Ascension project here, that's a really big maybe, Wolf. I honestly think that work might be considered a bit too heavy-handed/controversial for a public role-playing forum. Even back in the old days, my role-playing forums had a membership which ran on a strictly invite-only policy.

Welcome to the Guild.

I am one of the Guild's Welcoming Committee members, if you have any questions feel free to ask though I am sure you will have everything well in hand.

If anything comes to mind, I'll ask. Cheers in advance.

Ah, I know how you feel having bad luck with technology. I can't tell you how many computers I've gone through and how many repairs I've had to get done. I'm trash with computers and trash at pretty much everything lel

I personally only started roleplaying to improve my writing so I can write my stories and make them good.

Welcome to the forum, know the feeling when circles die and things fade away. Been there many a time. It's a good place here with a lot of variety. It shouldn't taken long to find what you are craving and find a group that fits you well.

NekoMizu - We're similar in both those senses then.

Technology pretty much hates my guts, and I've made a multitude of jokes in the past to people that one of the powers that be, or some cosmic entity that holds dominion over technology, must really have it in for me and wants to prevent my project from going public no matter what.

I didn't so much start role-playing to improve my writing so much as I did so to experiment with it, plus I did it to work a few personal things out, so my start as a role-player was honestly quite bumpy. I definitely view myself as a writer before a role-player, even if I consider them connected, so we have the same type of motivation to role-play. This is also, like I said, why I usually only have an interest in a role-playing setting that I can relate to my project.

Lady Amalthea - Cheers for the welcome. Hopefully that's the case, yeah, since I would like a place to get back into the role-playing atmosphere before my new forum related to my project starts. I just question if my project is appropriate for such a large/public forum.

@Shoryu Magami You could always run it by someone to get their opinion. Never hurts to drop a pm to ask. Open if you'd like some input.

I might take you up on that. I'll be keeping tabs on this topic while I get myself back to work on the project (I'm in the process of recollecting and trying to sort quite literally thousands of notepads of data related to the story, a lot of which I have probably lost due to PC issues and some other technology-based issues, so I guess you could say I'm running damage control again; this has happened before), so I could probably run a PM by you in the background while I'm working.

@Shoryu Magami Totally understand the damage control issue. I've actually taken to old school spiral blinds to keep my notes in this last year for the rps I Gm. Feel free whenever if you wish, I'll reply as I can and hopefully sneer any questions you have. If I don't know, I'll try to point you to others. This forum has a lot of great folks.

Greetings. I'd ask for your soul, but it appears the horde has already arrived.

You wouldn't be the first person who tried to take my soul by any stretch, and you won't be the last.

Cheers for the welcome.

NekoMizu - We're similar in both those senses then.

Technology pretty much hates my guts, and I've made a multitude of jokes in the past to people that one of the powers that be, or some cosmic entity that holds dominion over technology, must really have it in for me and wants to prevent my project from going public no matter what.

I didn't so much start roleplaying to improve my writing so much as I did so to experiment with it, plus I did it to work a few personal things out, so my start as a roleplayer was honestly quite bumpy. I definitely view myself as a writer before a roleplayer, even if I consider them connected, so we have the same type of motivation to roleplay. This is also, like I said, why I usually only have an interest in a roleplaying setting that I can relate to my project.

I wanted to roleplay my story on here, mostly because I know it. But I don't mind branching out towards other rps, just would love to rp my story, which I would hope is similar to what you described, like a big project. Also I was told by the person who helped me replace my power supply, "Technology loves misery". lel

Yeah, I don't mind trying to branch out, which is why I even bothered joining a Final Fantasy RP forum in the first place where I had my beginning with forums, but I definitely find I lose interest quite fast if I can't translate over my characters or concepts in a way that I'm satisfied with. The days where I make a totally random character that has nothing to do with my project and then toss them into some random RP topic, just for the sake of doing some writing, died pretty much as soon as I got a taste of writing with my setting ever since one of my friends on that Final Fantasy forum recommended I create an RP forum based around my project.

@Shoryu Magami
I mean you could always use your character, I always use the MC of my series, just have him fit the rp a bit. Maybe you could join something similar to your project. What was that about exactly? I would compare mine to your typical light novel.

NekoMizu - What's my story about? I figured eventually someone would have to bring on the tough question. I guess it could be considered light novel-ish, but only in the sense that I considered the story to be way too large and complicated to possibly be written in one or two novels, so instead I basically have it written as if it was cut up into "episodes" of sorts, so each novel would basically contain several of these "episodes", almost like you were watching an anime DVD or reading a manga series. I actually have every segment of the storyline dated, so even when the story jumps back and forth around the timeline, it's not too hard for people to put the jigsaw together by using the dates.

As for what the plot itself is about, it's largely rooted in my own philosophy and experiences, and my world view in general, hence why I refer to it as more like my soul rather than just my story. I've never found a work of fiction that I could completely use as a good comparison to it, but it's got a combination of a lot of different types of fiction. I would probably define its genre most closely as contemporary fantasy, but it's way too complex and overarching to be summed up, going into numerous other genres such as psychological, romance, mystery, horror, action, thriller, philosophical, and supernatural/paranormal, to name just a few. There's some elements that would likely be viewed as sci-fi as well, but without spoiling anything a lot of this is sort of an illusion/deconstruction.

There's many real life elements, in the sense that the characters are generally quite believable as people and several of my contacts have noted how a lot of my story is actually believable and doesn't feel entirely fictitious; even the fictional elements are created in a way that makes them feel frighteningly possible and as a result the world is heavily rooted in reality and feels very similar to our own. I wouldn't really consider the story like the slice of life genre at all beyond that though, since there's no way of comparing my project to a TV Sitcom or something like that, so I really wouldn't count slice of life as one of its genres at all and I personally have no real interest in writing an entirely slice of life plot. There's too many elements from other genres in my project for it to possibly work like that, regardless of its realistic elements.

When I say my project is rooted in reality, I mean the actual plotline isn't heavily reliant on the fictional elements and could have been told without them, and the characters generally work without them, but I chose to include these elements because entirely "realistic" stories usually bore me, especially during fight scenes, and because I delve heavily into a lot of philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, esoteric thought, and the human condition in general. These things can be presented far more effectively with a less conventional setting while still giving a message and premise that's entirely relevant to the real world. There's only one story I've ever actually enjoyed that took a mostly 100% realistic approach to how it was presented, which is the anime called "Naoki Urasawa's Monster". I only watched it a few weeks ago, with it easily becoming one of my top shows of all time, and if I did choose to take my work down a 100% realistic direction it would likely be something like this, but it's not a path I'm pursuing because there's clever ways I can use fictional elements to make the plot more interesting while still completely maintaining the same type of relevant story that anime had.

Honestly, just taking one look at the genre options available in the RP topics here makes me question how I would even register my work.

I also do a lot of deconstruction and reconstruction in it, and it's definitely got a lot of social commentary and political criticism in it as well. I really struggle to find a good way to summarize my project without giving someone content from it, particularly when I have to put it into a genre. I believe the most appropriate term for it would probably be "literary fiction", but it's hard to say for sure since defining a piece of writing under that is always controversial, but the story definitely feels more serious and mature in nature as opposed to just being a piece of fiction.

My fiancé actually has, in her own words, "a hell of a time explaining it" whenever her friends ask about it.

Given that you seem to be into anime, I think you'd potentially like my work at least from a visual perspective. Hard to say beyond that. My story does have elements that would feel like an anime or manga (though to some extent also like a JRPG, as well), there's some elements that I personally don't think I've ever seen anime touch on, though I haven't technically seen/read 'anything' go in some of its places. I'd say that anime/manga/JRPGs/etc inspired some of the "aesthetic" of my work, while I don't really feel like the story itself was directly inspired by anything other than my personal expression.

The heavy-handedness of the narrative and setting is one of the reasons I usually avoid role-playing it on a more public forum. One of the reasons it's difficult to translate my characters over to other topics, on the other hand, is largely caused by the setting having a lot of unique concepts which my characters sort of don't work without. There's probably ways to water down some elements of those concepts for the sake of fitting into some other topic, but how much I have an interest in doing so can be tricky.

@Shoryu Magami
Also there's a button on the bottom right of each post on a thread quote and @mention. If you're talking to someone, you should use those otherwise they won't receive notifications.

Have you ever thought about actually making a LN of it? Sounds like it could be a fun thing to try.

@NekoMizu
Ah, so that's how you guys are doing this. Cheers.

Like I said to a few people, the primary thing holding my project up is thousands of notepads worth of information that needs to be sorted and collected in order to write it effectively, and along the way quite a lot of my data has been lost due to those technology problems, so it could be a while before I'm truly ready to bring it out in any official sense. I've been trying to boost my morale lately, due to it being made worse by the most decent bunch of info that got lost, which is why I'm pushing myself to get back into the RP scene again since that usually helps.

Once it's ready to properly bring out though, I do imagine it would end up being like a light novel series, like I mentioned earlier. The WordPads I've currently been writing all the drafts of my episodes into could very easily convert into something of a series of light novels when the time comes to turn them into physical copies of some sort. In fact, that was more or less the plan, as I explained.