In character channels and the future of guild chat.

Hey peeps,

Ok, so, /g is a little quiet being restricted primarily to the flower shop. To fix this, I have a couple of plans that should be discussed at the guild meeting tomorrow. I won't be there, but I'll roll with whatever you guys think. I'm also going to use this opportunity to make a case for my personal preference (indicated with a *).

Plan A) The Hearthstone (or something) is a magical communicator that works across all dimensions and distances. Sure, it's overdone, but at least we can all RP when our characters aren't in the same space. We'd have to RP how we all suddenly have these stones, but that's doable. This is not my personal preference.

Plan B*) There is no method for cross-country/dimensional communication aside from the in game mail. We will use /g for narration and important storyline going on around your character locally in a place for everyone to see and participate in. This will REQUIRE narration and flavor text to give people a way to immerse themselves. Basically, /g will act like a cooperative storybook, and anyone active in a particular storyline has a pen and is contributing.

Plan B alleviates the need to include everyone in every story (which is carebareish and unrealistic) and keeps everyone involved and in the loop. People won't have to wonder why four guild members are standing around in Winterspring or wherever and didn't invite anyone. They also won't have to godmode and pester them about it over the hearthstone chat. Occasionally, multiple storylines might be progressing at the same time, and at that point, we will open up temporary channels so that different stories can be color-coded.

The thing about Plan B, is that it's going to require a lot of OOC maturity, as the temptation to godmode is going to be on full blast. If your character is not involved in a story, and you are reading the events that are unfolding in said story, please resist the urge to know what happened IC. Also, try not to use the guild storychannel for smalltalk conversations and whatnot. Try and push character development at all times when using it, and keep the channel interesting to read. Basically, just don't have drinks and talk about the weather in our precious storybook.

Plan B is a real opportunity to make storylines rich and immersive and all that great stuff we signed up for and hoped for when we rolled on RP servers.

If you're still not sure what I'm getting at with it, just ask and I'll be happy to give some examples.

Like I said to you in-game when we were discussing this in /youcleverdevil, I think that Plan B is an good idea, but one that we will definitely need to discuss as a guild. I have done hearthstone RP before, and while it's very loose and allows for a broad range of RP, it's also a tad overdone at this point and most people are sick of it. The issue right now with having /g be locational is that it's so static, and there's only so much you can do in a tiny basement, really. Since we've started, I've noticed as well that /g has been getting less active, and I feel that we should do something now instead of waiting until it really becomes a problem.

This will be a very large portion of the discussion on Friday's meeting. As a heavy RP guild, I feel it's necessary to our core that we have active storylines and a busy guildchat (though it's understandable that it will be quiet sometimes). A dynamic, locational and narrated guildchat is something very unique that isn't often seen, but at the same time there lies the issue of it being very complicated and difficult to explain. While this could include new people in unique scenarios in RP, I am also concerned that it could similarly push others away.

What I would like to do is propose a compromise.


Plan C:
We keep the guildchat as the basement, but, via an in-game storyline, we expand the space. I noticed that Kvasnikov appeared to have some interest ICly in expanding it, which gives us a base, and Sahak and Slelis both happen to know "demolitions experts" from their prior uh... less-than-legal exploits. This is a great lead-in for a storyline and a plot we could do where we request Alliance funding and seek to expand our base.

Stormwind presumably has underground tunnels / sewers as well, which we could connect to. This would create a MASSIVE space for us to RP in. Think of RPing under the canals and running into the Sewer Beast for example - yoikes!

However, just in case that space becomes static as well or people want a change now and then, we could also include Plan B - but in a channel-based setting. This would obviously be something we'd need to discuss more in terms of how exactly it would work, but I think that this could be a very viable solution and something we should consider as well.

Well!

After a long discussion, things have finally settled:

/G is for use in the basement, the shop, and outside the shop front. We might expand the shop into the tunnels for some more shady RP in the future, but for now that is what it is.

However, we have set up a channel for narrative RP, and I would like for all of you to join it. To do so, type in: "/join takemeon"

Thanks to Sahak for the idea for the name.