Non-Star Wars Roleplay

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

The biggest negatives that could be put on the idea for now is "It could have a lot of initial enthusiasm and then die off", which if that's the case then we gave it a shot. And if it works, and we end up attracting the attention of folks who might not have initially been sold on the idea of a Star Wars roleplaying experience, all the better.

[member="Mrrew"]

The problem with that is that a lot of those things wind up not feeling at all like Star Wars, and I know that puts some people off. Me in particular, if someone came at me and started using the force to act like a firebender, I'd be a little put off. Yes, I know the Shapers are technically canon, but such an act lacks a strong Star Wars feel. It feels like a skin-deep grab for Avatar fans.

I like the idea of this non-Star Wars roleplaying area because it provides an outlet for folks who want to write things other than Star Wars, but feel like they have no choice as this is a Star Wars board. Like Asemir said, going to a new board sucks. If this helps folks out, great. If it doesn't get used, oh well. I see a lot of positives but not a lot of strong negatives.

 

[Asemir]

I for one may start a Battletech/Mechwarrior RP in the Off Topic forum regardless...

 

[Mrrew]

I have no idea what Battletech is, but, I'd probably jump in any DC Comics, Avatar, or Fantasy roleplays that appear.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Ayden Cater"]
The problem with that is that we're not attracting outsiders...they'd still see this was primarily a Star Wars board. We can't really advertise as a general RPing board when only 5% of the space is given to that.
So basically it's a diversion for those already here. And sure, we could give it a try, it's not hurting anything to try is it? Well, I actually think it'd be actively detrimental to do so.

However, like always, I'm willing to be proven wrong.

 

[Mrrew]

It may be a good idea to give it a shot as a sort of trial period. Test it out for a week or two, and see what happens. If Tef and his x-men admins decide it's worth it, then it could always be a full time thing. If they decide it's not? Kill it with fire.

 

[Asemir]

It would take much longer than a couple of weeks to measure the effectiveness. It would take at least a few months at minimum to measure the true impact.

@Valien Nantaris

But why is it detrimental? You're saying there wouldn't be any interest. If that's the case, it's not distracting our members because activity would be low, right?

Edit: honestly, I don't feel like debating the merits of this now because I'm tired. Lol. The reasons have been stated, and 26 people have expressed interest. We should give it a shot.

 

[Zac Grayson]

[member="Tefka"]

Looks like a yes to me

 

[Ellie Mors]

[member="Asemir Lor'kora"]
You would have some people trying (in vain) to create a small community, within the community, of a different subject for role-play, thus detracting from the SW role-play, while at the same time not at all helping the off-topic forum with growth with not enough interest for growth, while too much interest for completely dying off.

 

[Ellie Mors]

[member="Asemir Lor'kora"]
Basically, the amount of interest is at what marketing agents and advertising companies consider to be the most dangerous demography-

There's potential, but

The interest is too low for the sub-community to actively grow and see what this board sees in terms of posting and activity, while it is too high to simply die off on its own. There would always be some people there, but it would never be enough to make it as its own community, nor would the community be as cohesive as the over-arching community it is within.

I'm speaking from experience, as the last community I came from was a gaming community that included a small role-playing community within it. It was a client-based engine that featured games created from within the community, but what essentially killed most of the games was rampant stagnation. Everyone wanted to do SWRP for one year, then the next month it became gundam, then the next it was anime, and after each fad ended, so did each game's player base. Eventually the community became littered with roughly 700 games with an average of 4 to 20 players each, 20 being considered "good" as far as user-base went.

The same premise is going to happen here, with 3 people wanting this "battletech" (I have no idea what that is) theme, another 10 wanting marvel, 8 wanting DC, and a slew of random animes and such being spread around - you'll have too much diversity with not enough people interested in each individual thing.

 

[Zac Grayson]

[member="Darth Sinna"]
[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

Take out outside advertising which I don't see as possible. What I do see is people having a lot of accounts and spending a lot of time on here regardless so having other forms of RP shouldn't hurt, just give more things for people to do while they wait for replies. Look at me, I am active on 4 characters currently.

 

[Ellie Mors]

[member="Darth Ares"]
I was going to make a smart reply about some of us using only one character, but then I realized I was the drastic minority here in regards to that.

 

[Zac Grayson]

[member="Darth Sinna"]


No offense meant, but you are still new. I used only Hakora for about 2 or 3 months before I made Darth Ares (Darth Ares was Captain Xalan which was my first account, but I made Hakora and used him mainly and never used Xalan.)

 

[Zac Grayson]

[member="Tefka"]
[member="Darth Sinna"]
[member="Asemir Lor'kora"]
[member="Ayden Cater"]
[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

Also speaking of interest, if we took the 25 ish people who have shown interest and took all their alts and checked the percentage vs how many members are on this site (I assume takes alts into account) I would say 25 people interested is a good percentage and that would probably be higher since most people don't check this forum area unless they need to use it.

 

[Asemir]

If having a separate forum actually required significant upkeep costs, I could see the concerns as valid. But there is a very minimal upkeep sits. You create the forum and let it run. Since there's no persistent world or RP rules, there's very little need for staff to adjudicate IC disagreements. Create the forum and let people have at it. There's no client be necessary, there are no giant rules or campaigns.

I'm just not seeing how having only ten people post in that forum is considered detrimental, especially considering many of the people who would like to see this forum are very active in the actual SW RP. This is an outlet, an option, to normal RP. It's in fact, not very different from the silly posting game threads and such.

All of the major concerns are truly only valid if the main SW forums have an interest/activity problem, where a separate RP would pull partcipation away, and if we are trying to build a massive, cohesive, persistent RP forum. Neither of those are true.

In fact, you could even just open another forum dedicated to original and fanfiction, and call it a day. It'd be the exact same as the Art forum, except for writing. Let people post "collaborative" writing projects. (That's a euphemism for RP, if you couldn't tell.)

See, if we had framed it like that, there would be almost zero argument against it.

 

[Ayden Cater]

^

The clone took the words right out of my mouth.

 

[Asemir]

Wow there's a lot of typos in my post. I blame the phone.

 

[Mrrew]

That's a good way to do it, minimizes detrimental effects. Everything would be holed away in a 'Fanfiction' subforum. You could have your DC, Battletech (what the heck is that anyway?), Marvel, etc fix without taking away from the community. No real need for new character accounts, either.

 

[Asemir]

Battletech is also known as Mechwarrior. It's the genesis of MechAssault.

It's a mecha universe but everything is based on real physics. No shields or anything. Conventional forces still play a major part, but Mechs are the superstars. They range from 20 to 100 ton bipedal war machines that make AT-ATs look like toys.

The lore is amazing and encompasses over sixty novels plus a dozen video games plus hundreds of RPG source books.

Too much to explain on a phone!

 

[Grand Moff Helranth]

[member="Asemir Lor'kora"]

Add code guiss mechs to this and I am in.

 

[Asemir]

I'm not sure I understand.

[member="Cloud Utada"]