Just Relax[/color]
Game-master: Aqua
Supervisors: Gideon_Gideonson, Nefretiri
*****[/CENTER]
Hey. Welcome to the Stands. Sit back, put up your feet, crack open a few metaphorical cans of your beverage of choice, and just have a grand old time. ‘Cause who wants to stay in character all the time? Besides, we want to get to know each other. We’re all in this together, so why not make it a little more fun? It’s a social hobby. Let’s play it up.
To make a long story short, the Stands is a completely OOC thread, with absolutely no connection to the games going on around us. Talk about them if you want, but leave the nitty-gritty stuff in the Arena Grounds. This is the place to introduce yourself, chat, get to know people, and just fool around, even if you’re not normally a part of this forum. Who knows…we may even convince you to join us! Anyway, take a break from it all. Have fun!
…and keep it clean.
-Gideon Gideonson, Artificer Extraordinare
As anyone looking at The Map will be able to tell you, I've been working on a treatise about role-playing to help anyone who isn't comfortable/familiar with it adapt to our forums. I'm looking for ideas.
More specifically, I'm looking for music or pictures that might help someone think of characters...I'd pick them myself, but I want a wider range of things than my tastes include. So if you guys could give me a few links to Youtube, imeem.com, or just image pages, I'd really appreciate it!
Also, any advice you recommend to budding role-players (or skilled role-players looking to get even better) would be awesome. I'm always open to including new ideas!
On a different note, have anyone heard of/played Dawn of War II? Or even the original games? Or even warhammer?
Warhammer I've heard good things about, although I've never played it (normal or 40k). I have a lot of friends into it though, so I may get a chance to try it soon. I'll keep you posted. :D
As for the links: take all the time you need! And thanks.
Some friends of mine were talking about a very similiar, much cheaper game recently though...I'll see if I can find out what it's called. Several Warhammer enthusiasts have given it pretty good reviews, from what I remember...
and yeah the price tag is mind-boggeling and annoying... there are a few tricks to fix the paint issues and if nothing else, you can remove and repaint.
The warhammer I played was fantasy mind you.
as to music.... Sonata arctica, nighwish and cradle of filth makes for nice sources for me ;)
As for music I prefer instrumental stuff, here's an example from someone I know on another board.
With Courage - Artemis' Theme
Game Name (Cmpgn) (Campaign IC/OOC) -- Recruiting!
Then, obviously, "Recruiting!" becomes "Players Only"
I used Cmpgn instead of Adv since adventures are normally part of a larger campaign, and Cmpgn distinguishes it as its own distinct thing.
Seem good?
Do they overlap Baator and are just an OOC replacement or is this an entirly new IC story? If it is a new storyline, is the new one seperate from My Baator or replacing it?
I agree. What's going to happen?
That's the only real difference.
As for the old thread, two options exist, depending on what people want. Firstly, we could keep it. Secondly, I'm willing to begin going through the old thread and copying every (or almost every) IC post to a new Archive thread, so we never lose the old stuff (or we could put everything on the "do not archive" setting, so that it lasts forever here on the forum). Personally I feel two competing arenas may be hard to maintain, but that's just me.
Also, please don't get the impression that I'm trying to erase the old stuff, seize control of this forum, antagonize all of you, etc. Aqua and I discussed this at length, and got the input of several members of the forum, and we thought it to be the best idea for trying to pull new members. If you all disagree, I suppose we can remove the new infrastructure and re-institute the older stuff...I know many of you dislike changes, or have grown comfortable with the old and don't like the new direction--I'm open to opinions, and Aqua and I are willing to work with everyone.
We're also looking for assistance in many things, ranging from just ideas/critique to people interested in judging the matches (3 more would be good...so that a judge vs. judge battle would be possible) to people interested in the supervisor role (which was created strictly to help Aqua with questions/critique/enforcement of the forum rules, not as some sort of power play--I'm going to keep emphasizing this fact so that my motives are not misconstrued). As stated, I'm looking for people to help Aqua and I create and run this, so that we get a wider range of opinions than just ours.
Your setup is amazingly organized and well worded. But thats also the flaw I see. Your new setup seems too organized and untouchable. Its chopped up into too many different threads and seems over-invasive of the forum. You have five OOC threads with only two IC threads, I believe.
Your threads, while making their points very clear and explaining everything in depth, turns the reader away by being too wordy and way too lengthy. You may want to cut the wording of each thread down to a paragraph or two.
Also, just because a rules thread says its mandatory to read it before posting, does not mean everyone (or anyone) will read it. In fact something like that implies that the forum is overly-complicated and not worth the hour it takes to read the rules forum just to join.
Another point of argument, we had new players joining every month or so with the old ways. I say we had a fairly steady population of players and it was self populating for the most part. When some of the older people would leave, we had a few newbies come in to replace them, and when the newbies wandered off somewhere else, we would still have either old players come back or more newbies join.
Sorry if I seem overly negative about the changes, tis my nature though. Dont get me wrong either, Gid, your new structure is magnificient, just maybe too magnificient though.
thing turned into another form of it too. I used to just go to different parts of the forums and post just to advertise the arena and get people to join up. When I did my random posts, I was sure to make them meaningful and not-off-topic posts though. So I encourage people to link to the MoTP in their sigs and go to new exciting places to post and spread the word of our little community.
As I said before, wording is important. You have to use psychology here, draw people in but dont lose their attention. Generally people have very short attention spans and wont read some boring rules for more than a paragraph or two.
I'm not sure we should scrap anything just yet. Lets wait for Aqua's opinions on all this and we'll all work together and come up with something that will work wonderously.
Also, I've made backups of all my stuff now. So we're good on that front now.
Like I said before, and also see the GM thread for a few of my idea comments, I think that a little adjustment is needed, but that this is otherwise a good idea.
I think Ice has the right idea. Take that first post in my OOC thread and tweak it a little. Update it and reorganize a few things and we'll have something to work with then.
*Is confused*
Isn't that exactly what I did? I updated it, reorganized it, and added a description of how it works, which was lacking in the old thread. What's that different?
As I said before, wording is important. You have to use psychology here, draw people in but dont lose their attention. Generally people have very short attention spans and wont read some boring rules for more than a paragraph or two.
I didn't consider it that long...just long enough to convey what we all consider the unwritten rules of the arena, as learned over the course of over a hundred pages. I concede the point that it's a lot of stuff, but how else to convey it? I did put more interesting stuff at the beginning, as well as a link to the other threads with less demanding rules...
Besides, only the Map and the Arena have anywhere near a large enough amount of text to irritate someone away. The original OOC Arena thread is 8 pages in Microsoft Word. The new one is 5. The Map is 6. Three pages more, and it covers a wider range of information in a more easily navigable fashion. I don't see the problem (although there may still be one).
I'm not sure we should scrap anything just yet. Lets wait for Aqua's opinions on all this and we'll all work together and come up with something that will work wonderously.
Agreed on this point, at least. :D
I think Sorcen is right. This is Aqua's show mainly, at least that is how it has been made to look to me, and we need his opinion too.
He's the forum game-master, so yes, up to a point. I believe the rules in the threads I've posted give him more power than he is technically entitled to, but I'm not complaining...in fact, I did that for a reason. I trust his judgment with most things. :D
Check out my post in the GM thread, BUT - Gideon, you may wanna be more clear as to what thread belongs to what cosmology. That said, I'll be checking out the new OOC thread later.
Jess, you are an incredible person, you know that? Thanks...my brief period of ill ease has been rather settled thanks to you.
That said, the reason I went with the generic names is to avoid a cosmology. It's a place for anything, without a story in the background. The reason for this is to avoid any large adventures that might threaten the structure of the arena or it's functionality. They're allowed, certainly, but the Arena as it is is unrelated to every existent plane.
How would you get that across? I'm open to ideas. :D
He's the forum game-master, so yes, up to a point. I believe the rules in the threads I've posted give him more power than he is technically entitled to, but I'm not complaining...in fact, I did that for a reason. I trust his judgment with most things.
I'll admit I haven't actually read them. However, as GM, he has a lot of power or very little power, depending upon how you define "power."
As GM, Aqua is empowered to set any rules for this forum. The only thing he's explicitly prohibited from doing is contradicting the CoC. Otherwise, a GM is permitted to be as strict or loose as they want. For a quick example, a GM is completely within his/her purview to declare that threads cannot be created without GM approval. (and, in fact, a few of the forums have exactly that rule.)
Much like a D&D game, the GM has final say. So if that's the sort of "power" you meant, then Aqua has it.
On the flip side, GMs have to rely on others to do things like sticky threads, get older threads locked, and so on. We don't have any "power" to actually do maintenance type stuff. (OK, not completely true. A "full" GM - somebody with the tag on their account - has the power to lock their own threads. Other than that, we're powerless.)
For that sort of power, we need to rely on the Community Management team at Wizards. So if that's the sort of "power" you were talking about, Aqua doesn't have it directly.
I'll try to find time to review the rules thread in the next couple of days. If I see anything that's troublesome, I'll let Aqua know about. I suspect, however, that everything is going to be OK.
I will try and do what I can to help this get settled but we all need to keep a open mind. I dislike changes and Nef can testify for that but I am willing to do what must be done to help out even if some of those things I might not fully agree with but if it helps out our community then thats what must be done.
We all need to work together. Its my place to post here as it is for the rest of you. I know there will be some things not all of us will like that might happen with changes but we can adapt.
So lets all get working on building this so that all of you feel comfortable with it.
And thank you Gideon for your trust, I hope that people can depend on me. I am here to help.
So lets start throwing ideas around! :D
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1162835 - The Portal
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1162683 - The Map
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1162739 - The Stands
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1163040 - The Academy
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1164963 - The Battlefield
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1164857 - The Arena Grounds
I think thats all of em. I was too lazy to properly format those, sorry.