Crystal Dragon

We love all people, no matter where they came from, or what they look like. I am very glad that you were able to continue to do this Brand, reach out to us if you ever need a hand or support for anything at all. We share this little corner of the digital world, and it's only right we help each other out and support each other.

Get well soon Brand! Rest in the meantime friend.

Copy pasta from the HC and CoRP Discord servers. A quick heads up for RP beginners interested and vets that wish to join us this weekend. We'll be hosting over in Gardens-18790 Pagoda Garden's this weekends session starting Friday evening at around 5PM EST. We may kick off a bit later at 5:30PM EST depending on how many shows up and events ongoing on the server, feel free to fly around and explore before hand! I will not be clocking a time for when we wrap things up for the first session, so this may be a late run session night so grab your notes and lists of questions and drop on by Friday night!

If I'm in a public space and alone, I tend to sort of listen in for openings to join the conversations. I'm very much turn-based in mindset in regards to RP and likes to give everyone a chance to talk and share their story, even in small bits. I do tend to mirror-post in reply length to avoid overwhelming players that are inexperienced with multiparagraph roleplayers. But we do exist! We're kind of wide spread on the server but we do exist. 🙂

Hi, I wrote a quick popmenu macro for Chat Ranges a while back and have it up on Michiyo's modder library for anyone to use. 🙂

I'm a bit of a daily haunt. When I get some rest I'll probably end up opening up something for an RP thread, but it's nice to know there's other players that do forum RP as well.

That's what I hope, if folks can let me know where they RP if not in game, that would be cool too but not a hard line ask. ^^

Yes, thank you! Brainworks are NOT well oiled this morning, I need more coffee...*eye twitches*

I just want to get a general idea of how many of us actively RP in the game, and if not, where else? Forums, discord, whichever!

Just kind of checking to see who all checks the boards and getting a count of how many of us still lurk here and pay attention to the boards.

Sometimes the simplest actions can lead to a slew of RP happening. A player stopping just short of joining a group talking could indicate shyness, hesitation, before speaking for themselves. (Yes yes, this is in reference to last nights Workshop, thank you for stopping by with that, really helped with the discussion actually.) A player shifting in their seat to get comfortable. Even just the animation of drinking and eating can lead to a bit of RP happening. What matters is the location, who's there, and how you conduct yourself as a character in those spaces. Raising a ruckus in public spaces tends to lead to a lot of backlash, but muttering under breath about some minor inconvenience, or reflection of the day ahead or past can open a whole lotta doors. It's not always about making the RP happen but rather leaving the door cracked open to let folks engage. The less busy your character appears to be, the more interactive opportunity you yield.

I tried to get as many shots as I could of the participants, what a great crowd! I had a blast helping out. 🙂

Tonights lessons with @McSpazz blew my mind. I hadn't expected to many to show up, thank you all for coming out to help and guide the new players, we very much appreciate the assistance! We have a couple more scheduled for tomorrow and monday is an open floor workshop to help anyone in need of figuring out a description for their bio, or further discussions about roleplaying that you might have missed in the prior two sessions this weekend. So damned proud of Everlasting right now, yall keep on being awesome folks!

I am hoping that the release is implemented smoothly. I do have some duplicate characters on a second account I use for rping multicharacter scenes with friends that I hadn't leveled (And I really should just to secure the names for good on that account.) so I get the worry about the alts getting genericed. Not to mention I have a third account coming in with Victory merging. No characters on that account yet, but I have some ideas.

I am thoroughly intrigued, I read the original book and am a bit of a fan of the radio show and the musical versions of the retelling. If you don't know Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds YOU MUST LISTEN TO IT AT LEAST ONCE! But uhhhh yeah, wishlisted to follow developer updates and DEFINITELY going to try to get in on early access as soon as play testing becomes available! :3

O_O I got the happy-goosebumps going watching these clips, ...are they looking for play testers yet?

Well, since someones decided alternative name choices are a "bad idea" I guess I get to drop these links to help those seeking a unique, and meaningful name for themselves. https://www.thesaurus.com/ https://translate.google.com/ (Most, not all languages do translate well into character names on here.) https://www.fantasytranslator.com/ (For the elvish, dwarvish, and common word searches.) List of D&D related language translators via D&D beyond forums https://www.vulgarlang.com/ (Or you can create your own language.) Another I'd like to share is lingojam, there's thousands of language translators on there for name choices to pick from. There is no harm in searching around for workable solutions to naming a character, and these are the ones I tend to use personally. 48 characters, and only maybe two handfuls of those characters are named in english. Go ham with it, seriously. There's some great translators out there for helping break down the name crunch issue.

Must be a new policy enacted that was after I left the game. All of my characters on it still have their names and still hadn't been touched. I hadn't even so much as installed or play wow since 2014.

I've done a bit of tooling with Bing over the last few months, and played around with Pilot's preview to try and teach it how to create dragon-kin type characters without making them anthropomorphic. I'd copy and paste the prompts that led to these results but the conversation gives a way too much details about the tirikan characters I and my husband both play and I'd like to keep that private for roleplay player canon reasons. But these two, were the best results of the discussion that guided the AI in relation to the tirikan and what the males may look like.

Well just to give my own two cents to this. The idea of using the Auction house to trade names would be good easily exploited by people that currently collect unique names. Sorry but bad idea. Notifications to current playing accounts for a name request release isn't too bad of an idea but this would fall flat with those that have left the game entirely and abandoned their accounts so the impact of such might not be as big of a change for name releases as one might think. Lengthening the name character field MIGHT help significantly but we would run into this same problem later down the line. I like the idea about gifting a badge to those that do release a name. I can imagine a number of players having qualified for this but I don't know if the devs would want to put that much work into it. What would be the qualifiers? Especially if the name was released from one player, to another through calm request in private chats? That last one, "The" being part of the name, I like that, it would be nice to see that as an option but I'm unsure if such can be done. To note, I played wow from 2008 until 2014. The naming policy on wow does not have a name release feature nor does it do naming purges of inactive accounts. I still have the names of my old characters on my abandoned unsubscribed account to this day. However there are millions of ways to name a character that doesn't require the English language, and alternate spellings are also a good option to pursue to find a name for a character that's unique and specific for that character. The naming release feature here isn't implemented yet but the name warnings are, to keep down name hoarding from happening. (Which I do think it should be made active once the de-tangled noodle codes have been worked out.) As someone that's played here since 2019 and was a live player as well, I'd just recommend this: Get creative, check out other language translations for the name you wish to use, don't be shy about using alternative words or terms in the thesaurus, you might be surprised with what alternative choices you might find.

When it comes down to player absences, I tend to background the characters, or put them to work with something else to keep them from just getting rusty as a character personality. I find it really helps with making that absence a little easier to manage for the characters and gives my partner players a chance to figure out a story for their characters reason for the absence as well. I tend to play a lot of different character personalities so each one of them have a different day-job, role, and behavior in regards to how they manage the absence of their partners but it seems to work out quite well. Sometimes we find time to RP on discord, but I don't push it because I know schedules can be packed during holidays and seasonal sales for the folks that are in retail for their offline jobs.

At the moment there is no active global channel promoted, but this may change in the near future. For the most part folks organize outside of game in the discord groups for HC and CoRP both for events, as well as SG group discords. I do know that there's lots and lots of RP team and mission runs announced in LFG on Everlasting that anyone can join.

TWO years overdue, but here we go. DM'ing guide!

Alright, I promised this a couple years ago, RL swept me up and got me caught up in a spiders web of nonsense for a good bit, and for that I do apologize to the community for the long delay. Introduction Here we are going to discuss roleplay DMing, or guided play style with an agreed upon selected player taking the lead as the story teller for group events and gatherings. This form and style sometimes requires die rolls based on the tabletop format of making big decisions and choices that could determine how the story is to next unfold. This form of play is usually best hosted with players that agree on the terms to trust the DM, the selected player to be the arbiter of the story telling aspect. Every players character voice counts in this format, and each action, decision, or choice is taken into account with all levels of levity for the story tellers twist in narrating the tale. How it works What this breaks down to is what formats are agreed upon for the "die roll". Sometimes coin flips are a good replacement for overly complicated die and maths involved, but for those that wish to do this with basic tabletop sheet systems, die rolls are a fair way to receive a random result with every roll of the die. Some systems allow for modifiers to rolls, and some do not. When it comes to DMing, being open with your players involved is pretty important, it allows them to trust you with the results of the encounters your group faces, and gives you lots of creative wiggle room to provide a random element to the roleplay that most might not expect. The important part of this form of play is to ensure all players in the group encounter are on the same page, with their mini-sheets (If one wishes to have a sheet dependent format), and clear with their character stats in regards to perks/bonuses and specifications in reflection of the players own canon for their character. Respectively, this can also be a bit of extra work for the DM player to work out the best way to maintain an even playing field for the players involved in the encounter. What does the DM do The goal of a DM player is to maintain an fair game, whether it's the encounter with bosses, minibosses, or regular NPC foes, or the interactions between the players of the group encounter. This means there is a weight of importance with keeping those same players in the loop on what content is to be expected of the play format, and any hurdles they may have to overcome along the way. Whether it's a limitation to the characters power by effect of the NPC's involved, or some outside force de-leveling them in a sense to keep the game play balanced and fair for all involved. Randomized encounters based on die rolls can be hard to go by, because the chances of a flubbed roll is still fairly high but the narrator/DM can actually provide chances for the players to recoup from the loss/flub even if it's unconventional ways. One thing about this style of play is not to give TOO much of the story away, foreshadowing for instance, is perfect for giving the players in the encounter hints of whats to come but without detailing too much to ruin the genuine surprise element of the encounter. Something to bare in mind when it comes to tabletop to in-game encounters of this kind is that the DM is intended to be trusted to be a reliable story teller, what one character might not detect in a die roll flub, another in the group might pick up on. The necessity of keeping player agency is something that's quite valid in this style of play as well. Mini-sheet systems, or micro tabletop systems are actually really designed specifically for this style of play and I do encourage those interested in DMing to look into micro tabletop systems for this specific reason. The importance of player agency and not violating player-canon Every system has it's own rules not just for combat but for player discovery and skill checks as well. Some systems use a reduced or condensed number of skills per character to make the encounter more easy to translate from tabletop sheet to in-game encounters, which I do recommend looking for actually for ease of DMing and encounter experiences for the players involved. One thing that I'd like to really put weight upon is making sure the players, and the chosen DM/Narrator is clarity. If there's a rule in the sheet system that may make or break another players character concept, discuss it with them to try to find a good workaround for them to still be included, whether it's accepting that a specific power cannot be included in the encounters, or the use of innate abilities being put aside for the encounter itself, there's always a way to work around personal canon without violating the players agency. An example if I may: The elements of this play to keep in mind is the importance of story telling and ensuring your players involved are aware of the difference between In-Game encounters OOC wise, compared to IC encounters for story telling. It can be hard to write off raid encounters, and npc encounters of the past to be included in the story encounter, but sometimes this is the best approach to take to build a cohesive story for all the players involved including the DM in turn with their encounter foe. What is built into the game, isn't considered written off entirely, involvement with certain NPC organizations and groups could actually be woven in as well as points of contact, mission turn in points for the encounter group and even for information gathering as well. But to tailor the story to involve not just the player characters, but their canon too is something that is a primary goal for the DM to build an inclusive story and encounters based off of the story for all to play a hand in creating together. What type of conflicts come up from this type of style For the most part the conflicts that come up from this type of play style can often be written off as miscommunication between the DM and the players in the group, and sometimes it's frustration from the player involved in the group for not having their part in the story included. The importance of inclusion of those interested in the encounter is something that can often take a lot of work for the DM/Narrator to commit to, and sometimes these stories can take not just a few hours to tailor but days, weeks and often times even months or years to develop. Not every player has that level of commitment to play the role, and sometimes you have players drop from the encounter group to tend to other obligations, real life, school and other such events in reality that can interfere with further developing their character in the story play involved with the encounter group. Some DM'd groups are more open and fluid to adapting to the time away for the players interested, so always speak to the DM headlining the group to ensure they are in the know of your characters absence, most DM's will be happy to help tailor a reason for the departure temporarily so that you don't miss out on the details of the story and how it unfolds during your absence. Some conflicts happen out of character, characters headbutting or not getting along, sometimes it's the DM themselves that are the problem along the line, but building a cohesive story can be really rewarding in the long run, even if one has to step down as a DM to let another continue the story thread from where it was left off with the original DM's departure. Most DM's are willing to communicate the baseline of what the story is to the replacement DM so that the cohesion of the story can continue to fit and make sense to the players involved. AE as a tool for DMing encounters Now for my favorite part of DM style play. AE arcs can actually be created to help facilitate the encounters the players face without the need of mini-sheets or tabletop systems overall. The results of the fights and encounters in the AE arc can be woven into the story overall for the players in the group and easily be respected as canon to the group of players. More often than not, this can be really hard to do if the DM specifically isn't sure of their AE creation skill, so I would recommend doing some test runs with random players before releasing the arc into the wild, however, if you feel it's something that might not be widely accepted for character development, you can always keep the arc saved for doing test runs with rewards enabled for the players of the group instead of submitting it to the AE directory. Improv after completion of the arc with the DM and players group involved can help actually make the development of the story continue further to branch into other stories as well. Respecting Player Agency and Content Consent Something that can sometimes be a bit difficult to do is ensuring the players agency is respected even if the content might not be acceptable to the player themselves. Background involvement is always an option for those that wish to still take part in the story but don't wish to play through the content that can be otherwise unacceptable to themselves. Whether it's handling negotiations, gathering further information, remote handling of drones and technology, ect, these are ways you can work around the content barrier that some players might hold objection to without directly exposing them to that content specifically. A DM can use tact to summarize the encounter for the player stepping to the background without detailing the content they might not be okay with and still keep the story cohesive for all in the group of play. Inclusivity for those that might be sensitive to some subjects that can come up in play is something that the DM is meant to help manage and be responsible for, bridging the absence in cohesive ways while still maintaining the story fluidity for adapting new players into the core story. But something to really keep in mind is that we are all players in the theater of the mind, and sometimes we encounter things that are disturbing, harmful even to those that are not ready to approach those subjects. Safeguarding your players involvement is something that should be widely accepted, along with informing them of what they are to expect content wise to help them navigate when is a safe time to be involved, and when it is not. Everyone has their own personal limits and boundaries in what they feel like they can handle in encounters, and respecting that, and finding ways to continue their involvement while accepting their limits by backgrounding them temporarily from possibly "triggering" content is perhaps the best and safest way to manage your players involvement. Afternote: If you would like to share some of your experiences with DM'd events in the game, feel free to post about them here! I'd love to hear about everyone's experiences with this form of play style and can answer questions along the way if there is anyone that would like to know more. ALSO, one more thing I need to really put through to a definite base line for all RP. If the player doesn't consent to the encounter, don't violate their trust by doing it anyway. It's rude, abusive, and can be taken as a form of harassment.