I have very low expectations for Starfield. Fallout 4 but the jetpack no longer requires you to wear Power Armor and everything's been shined up a little. And probably still shit tier writing.
How about a Shang Chi type if Shang Chi was a Jackie Chan movie?
Police Story / Rumble in the Bronx type vibe.
Great fighter, very agile, can take a beating, gets harder/better/faster/stronger as he fights. Maybe as a sort of gimmick he carries a pistol/rifle but never actually uses it because reasons.
I bigly and enthusiastically agree with you Havoccultist.
Below is my ranting. Helpfully hidden so the folks who never pay any attention can more easily ignore this. Helpfully divided into five subsections and then a little bit about how maybe the circle could be broken. I'm just so helpful.
Problem 1 : Mismanagement (not involving Mahz)
Problem 2 : Divided Userbase (by method of interaction)
Problem 3 : Mahz (as a digital manifestation of mismanagement)
Problem 4 : Who to Hand the Reins To
Problem 5 : An Increasingly Niche Hobby
Here We Goooooo
Problem The First : Mismanagement (not involving Mahz)
One of the bigger, if not THE biggest, problems with this site/Discord/community at large is that the Discord has, over years of mismanagement, become much more active than the forum yet often not due to the purpose of the Discord/Forum. There are many reasons for this. Primarily the one Havoccultist pointed out.
The political channels have for many years been the main source of much of this issue. Whether they're called Current Events, Current Affairs, Debate, Discussion, Politics, or whichever iteration they've served as little more than an echo chamber...yet having stood as long as they have when they are eliminated the issues once contained there end up distributing themselves throughout the rest of the Discord. Without a proper balance or staffing this inevitably leads to mass conflict which inevitably leads to a seventh or eighth or thirteenth iteration of such a channel in order to quarantine such discussion. The circle remains unbroken to this day.
Problem The Second : Divided Userbase (by method of interaction)
Another cause of this problem is just inherent in the form. The community is divided into three essential forms, in my thinking.
Forum Sidebar Discord
Each serves a different purpose and has different writing requirements and expectations.
If all were calibrated primarily toward RPing there would likely be a more vibrant RPing experience. They are, in descending order, instead, increasingly calibrated to socializing. So you get forums with relatively few posts but mostly RP related and not a lot of socializing. A small portion of the community actually posts RPs with any regularity. On the other end, in the Discord, you have a massive user base with many many posts very few of which are actually RPing or even calibrated even vaguely toward RPing. Many of the most prolific users of the Discord have not actually RPed in a year or more. Some haven't even posted on the forum at all for over a year.
Somewhere in the middle are the folks who primarily just mess about in the status bar. There's probably more actual folks in this group that occasionally write than there are in the Discord, despite there being dramatically more Discord users than Side Bar users.
Few use all three methods. Many who use one or two of these methods are unaware of many of the users who use the other ones. It doesn't help that the community has further divided itself through separating out into increasingly small cliques.
Problem The Third : Mahz
For years now, as long as I've been here and long before that as well, Mahz has been flaky. I use that term euphemistically. Not here far more often than he is. Not engaged even when he is here. Fobbing off most of what most would view as the duties of the owner of a forum onto one admin or another. Taking a completely hands off approach. Steadfastly refusing to deal with the issues plaguing the community even when he does on occasion acknowledge them.
Yet not ever willing to leave it in someone else's hands.
Problem The Fourth : Who To Hand The Reins To
Having been here for some time, though admittedly not near so long as some others, and having been active in the forum, status bar, and at one time the Discord, there is no apparent best choice to replace Mahz were he to decide to hand over the reins, not that he ever will.
I do not believe if he were to just decide tonight to hand it over to one of the current staff, or as Hedgehawk just said one of the former staff, that it would fix anything at all. It would, in my opinion, lead to little more than a temporary shakeup followed by a return to the status quo. Much like the rule change the forum had a year ago or so. Rather than a group of folks with varied approaches who have learned from the mistakes of the last few years we seem to me to just have a collection of mini-Mahzes. Which is a fun thing to say or write but not so terribly useful for managing a community.
Were that to happen, were he to hand over the reins, and it won't and he won't, it would still likewise result in little to no lasting or fundamental change. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Problem The Fifth : An Increasingly Niche Hobby
Much as I, like anyone, would like to think that the state of this place is due entirely to INSERT CURRENT LEADERSHIP AND OR PETTY PERSONAL GRIPES and that if only I had control every fault would immediately evaporate and things would flourish under my iron rule...it is a hobby which has always been relatively niche and which is losing ground to other more immediately gratifying hobbies.
It's a problem bigger than Mahz/Hank/Ruby/Legend/Poo
Not bigger than me, but then I'm special.
RPing is a creative endeavor which requires some creativity, some writing prowess, some effort, and some participation from others with similar or greater creativity, writing prowess, willingness to put in effort, and perhaps most difficult to achieve interest in whatever goofy ass idea you or I have decided we want to write about.
It is a fucking miracle anything ever gets written at all.
So how do we solve all/any of this?
1 - Establish a Diverse and Balanced Mod Staff for the Discord / Close the Discord / Abolish Politics and Enforce Rules Evenly (likely via a Diverse and Balanced Mod Staff)
In all fairness this one may be much less of an issue now than it used to be. I've heard good things in recent months and if that shitshow has now been tamed then big hand of applause for whoever tamed the savage beast.
2 - Attempt to direct Discord/Status Bar activity more towards actual RPing and less toward Current Events activities better suited to Twitter. Push contests and similar events more, participation in general.
3 - Nothing. Mahz needs to decide to fish or cut bait but cannot be forced to make that decision
4 - Expand that Diverse/Balanced Mod team to the forum and focus on the community. Introduce democracy so the user base has more say. Help foster an environment where someone might become the next leader after Mahz. Ideally a position where there are several folks who might aptly take the reins.
5 - Just write more. Help Calle make room for more writing contests by setting them up ourselves. Maybe a fan fiction section. The best way to ensure there is more RPing here is to RP more. Discussing Movies and Games and Music is great. Writing shit is better. RP as a band. RP out the movie you want to see or the alternate ending you'd rather have seen. Be the difference you want to see in the world. Other motivational speech sounding type shit. You can do eeeeet.
Are there roleplays where it's good to list where you are, the time of day and perhaps the name of your character at the top? Are Headings for roleplay posts important?
Are different colors for players posts a good thing or bad?
Sorry just curious.
1.
I generally find it best to do these when you either literally have two (or however many are involved) writers characters in a relatively small or time dependent space. For instance, we're doing a crime caper RP. Our characters are in the elevator down to the garage getting ready to start this job.
The timespan is tightly defined, the involved characters are tightly defined, and if this goes on for pages because no one wants to not get a little more in it will look stupid.
Collaboration allows us all to monitor how long the post is going and cut out some extraneous dialogue. If my character says something dumb the other two characters can roll their eyes and say something like "we dont have time for jokes, we're almost there" and if I'm irritated with that we can massage the dialogue out until everyone is happy rather than go off on a tangent.
They're also handy when you're doing a lot or getting into deep lore for multiple characters or factions. This can be as simple as collaborating by saying "Hey, I've got a post for Danathar The Barbarian but it involves him talking about the Scythiaron Rebel Alliance you're writing...can you give it a once over and let me know if I have misconstrued something?"
It can be very useful.
2.
Absolutely a thing. Generally used by the OP or Original Poster, the person who started the story off or is running the story.
These can be great to jump from one big event to how the characters or groups have adapted to the consequences of that big event. Everyone could always allude to what has happened between that event and the current time if they desire to.
Ex: The Last of us, if I recall correctly, you don't follow Joel in real time from the introduction cutscene through to the final cutscene. Nor is that the case in the sequel. There's a time jump from the intro cutscene and that limited gameplay to the gameplay with Ellie that makes up the bulk of the first game. Likewise there's a time jump from the ending of the first game to the beginning of the bulk of the gameplay in the second game.
You could still write an entire story about what happened during those time jumps, but it serves the story they wanted to tell to just jump forward a bit.
Another Ex: I once did this for a Fallout RP. A previous RP had ended when all our characters got tangled up in a big war with another faction. Everyone had stopped posting. I waited quite some time and then wrote what was originally intended to be a short Fan Fiction based around a time jump to the very end of that war. We had defeated the enemy, at great cost, and were just mopping up some their sinister work. Specifically we were freeing folks who had been enslaved by raiders. It ended up catching the interest of all the writers of that first RP because I mentioned characters that weren't explicitly but quite implicitly their characters. Ended up sparking off a whole new RP with a new cast of characters and several returning but changed ones.
3.
Yes.
The more moving parts the more useful these things are.
In a 1x1 RP taking place in a single room involving two characters there is very little need for any of this. Your partner knows your characters name. Both your characters are in the same place at the same time. No Heading is needed as all of that was established in the opening post and re-established in each subsequent post. Colors aren't needed because there's only two characters talking and your partner can reasonably be expected to deduce what is his own characters dialogue and what is your characters dialogue.
As more and more characters, factions, locations, and dialogues become involved these things become more helpful or even borderline necessary.
If we're doing a United Nations RP, with 8 posters, wherein there is some great enemy, let's say Aliens, all our nations are trying to attack/defend from/reason with/sabotage it pretty quickly becomes very helpful to define these things at the start of every post. This is also where a time skip will eventually likely be necessary.
Ex:
United States of America Washington D.C. White House Situation Room July 3rd 2027 11:48 PM or 2348 Hours Military Time President Ritt has gathered his cabinet to enjoy a last moment of peace before the launch of Operation Clean House
Imagine that all in Blue maybe. Does a lot to set the scene and let you know what characters are involved and exactly when. You know it's right about to be the 4th of July and that the President is about to launch something with a fairly ominous name.
You could use that for any war RP or just about any dystopian RP.
Just beginning with "President Ritt sat in the Situation Room and took a heavy breath before consulting with his cabinet" Could have a lot of the same details added into it but would have as quick and dramatic an impact and would also require more reading.
The format of that heading, that being...
Nation State/Territory/Province Location More Specific Location Date Time
...allows you to quickly set a very specific stage
There's also plenty of problems and I personally don't think just handing the keys off to the current admin/mod team would fix it.
Mahz needs to come back and be present for awhile, but that's probably not going to happen. Thus we remain in a "make the best of a bad situation" situation for another indeterminate span of years.
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