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The Covenant: Near-Future Modern Fantasy written Jan 9, 2022 20:06:52 GMT
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Short Form Pitch

"Kerch sits atop beautiful land. The oceans are clear and filled with life. The sky is a brilliant, unspoiled blue. The cities we’ve created are awe inspiring in their majesty. Generations of people, able to live and pursue their dreams in the world we’ve created. It’s a land worth living in. It is a land worth fighting for. Don't surrender it to the darkness."

The Covenant is a site concept set in an urban fantasy world besieged by monsters called Corrupted Objects that fight through the thin layer between Earth and another dimension teeming with monsters who emit an energy poisonous to living beings called corruption. An elite group of warriors known as Counters have stepped up as the defenders of humanity since the incursions started, their distinctive watches both unlocking superhuman abilities and providing them with a near immunity to Corruption Rays present both on Earth and the Other Side for as long as the watch is charged. The federal government of the Federation, the Administration, has made it their mission to spearhead the movement to fight back the Corruption. For generations, they have held the remnants of humanity together, and succeeded enough that each city-state had risen back to roughly the standard of living enjoyed prior to first contact.

General World Notes

This will be an original site basically mashing up the “unending alien threat to humanity coming from another dimension” Counter:Side and the “commercialization of what was once honorable warfare into spectator sports due to the increases in technology, safety, and security of the state meaning that total war was an alien concept to most of the population” Kazimierz in Arknights. The setting is future Earth set in around 2212, well after the first contact and subsequent failed wars against the monsters known as Corrupted Objects slipping into the world. The playable region has stabilized, and while worldwide communications are still down there are eight remaining megacities left that comprise the Federation, the new attempt at a world government.

The forum itself will focus on one of those megacities, located in the remains of modern day Crimea in the Black Sea. A tentative pitch for that city goes as follows: The City-State of Kerch has the third largest population in the Federation with roughly fifty-two million inhabitants that are part of the island nation with its population split among two major islands and several micro islands around them including the eponymous Island of Kerch which is roughly 750 square miles (~1924 Square kilometers) in area to the right and the Island of Yalta to the left of Kerch which is slightly smaller at roughly 650 square miles (~1683 square kilometers). This high population density leads to vertical solutions being the solution to most land scarcity issues, and most of the population would live in skyscrapers which each house thousands of people. The government has smaller scale floating cities in the ocean that are made up of hexagonal platforms perched atop the water which can house permanent populations of a few thousand workers who need to keep essential functions working as well as military bases, but constantly need to be resupplied and the artificial platforms cannot sustain enough weight to have comparable population density to natural land. Only the very rich can fund the expensive and inefficient land reclamation process and thus afford to build small artificial islands with beaches for their estates or company property. These bits of artificial land almost always have a geographic area of at or below 8 square miles (~21 square kilometers) and will be located within 50km of the major islands unless the builder of the island is truly a recluse.

Exiles

Exiles, put simply, are people from a different world than the main setting on the site. The more corruption and blight take hold on a world, the thinner the barrier between the two becomes. Any society that has progressed to interdimensional jumps will invariably have some people who will risk jumping to unknown or random coordinates in order to escape being killed by Corrupted Objects (COs) in their own world. The vast majority of these jumps lead to the death of everyone on board the dive vessel, as the Other Side is the most common destination for these jumps. Those who are particularly lucky, though, will land in a space in the Other Side that connects to another world… one that isn't under immediate threat of annihilation.

This concept does have a few restrictions, however. Exiles must be humanoid in shape and general size, fitting somewhere in the ballpark of one to four meters in height. Exiles must also not break the setting by existing with either powers, items, or physical attributes they possess. They must also not have knowledge of technology or magic sufficient to replicate any of it that is more advanced than the setting itself.

The first rule means that there are no pixies who are no taller than a foot and no giants who are ten meters high. Orcs, elves, and satyrs are fine but a sentient sponge or a dragon is not. The second rule means that essentially it's not okay to break system rules and justifying it by saying that the previous world the exile inhabited had the banned ability like Corrupted Object control, the ability to time travel, divinity, or the power to summon a swarm of dragons. The third rule prevents an engineer from coming from a more advanced sci-fi universe and making bigger, better, intergalactic ships from Star Wars with their knowledge or a grand wizard with magic far beyond what our system allows.


General OOC/Structure Notes

Site will be on Jcink premium with a custom skin. Working model is really slick right now and I’m really excited for others to see it once it’s finished.

System still in development, but the first version of the system will focus on Counter Companies fighting both monsters and each other in an effort to get all the fame/glory and rank up in that Company Leaderboard to get bigger perks, pay, and the ability to go on the talk show circuit as a celebrity. Help or hinder other Companies while you work to destroy hordes of monsters and recover ancient relics that are akin to magic items and advanced technology that can lead to setting improvements for everyone back in the main city. Systemless option available for those not interested in combat.

Application will be pared down following recent trend, with many sections being made optional. Systems specific sections will have to be filled out still to ensure powers/etc. fit within approved spectrum but most of the flavor stuff will be optional so those like me who prefer long form applications can do it and those who want to jump in and do it later or never can also do that. I’m not really worried about abuse of this to slip things past the radar, because while it will definitely happen at least once I think a policy of just kind of trusting that most people will not break boundaries set in rules will work better in the long run for the day-to-day roleplay.

Progression system tied in with the combat system. General ways to progress will be either IC posts or IC total word count, with no word minimum/maximum in either direction. Some form of first character bonus and canon roles so people who don’t want to do the zero to hero thing can start more mid-range if they want.

Noob Ramps

This is a term I have for ways for new people to get in and contribute very easily to the site, and this concept is made from the ground up with this in mind.

The setting itself is a megacity where you would have to try really, really hard to make your character unable to interact with others. If you’re in the city, you can interact with each other and that’s step one.

Bulk of the combat will likely be group of PCs against monsters. PCs who fight monsters organize themselves primarily into Counter Companies, which have a more fluid membership compared to something like a Naruto or RWBY team. Openings in existing companies or noobs coming together to make their own companies provide early things to do and the leaderboard lets you have an alternate form of progress in the form of fame/prestige as well as the ‘getting stronger’ type of progress common in sites.

Making the bare minimum for applications take as little time as possible so people can just kind of jump in and see if the vibe is good for them so they can jump in while still hyped.

DMless mission boards that will act basically as thread prompts for you to go out and do a thing. A man in a dung beetle costume has locked themselves into a gas station, go resolve the situation. Coming up with thread ideas/etc. is hard and having changing prompt lists and replacing ones that people use over time allows for a quick way to do an action-y or at least focused thread by picking a prompt you think would be neat.

Easily swapped subgroups. Let’s say you make a character concept to join an open slot at a company and don’t like the vibe or whatever. It’s not a hard lock sort of deal where you have to massively change your character – just quit your job IC and look for another one. Since one of the main systems will be focused on Counter Companies competing with each other, poaching and shit will happen and be perfectly reasonable IC. Because it’s all in the same megacity as the home base for the site, everyone is nearby and your OC could just go off and do something else if they don’t find success in one thing. People will make their own subgroups and recruit for them, and I think that’s the way to go.
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Staffing Confessions written Dec 27, 2021 2:06:27 GMT
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Almost going on three years for my current site.

It's the longest running site I've ever been a part of. My current OC is the longest running OC I've ever ran with two years of continuous writing. It's the longest I've ever been a staffer, and I've been running basically nonstop events for three years straight.

And it's not sustainable in its current state. It would take a lot of effort and a full site redirect to get it back to even where it was at ~10 consistently active members, let alone peak at ~15. It's a staggering amount of work and effort that would be required for what will likely be little payoff.

But I think I might give it a shot. Forum RP has been a part of my life for 16 years, and my current site has gotten me through the Coronavirus process with my mental largely intact. The members that are left have been there for a year and a half or more and have dumped hundreds and hundreds of posts into my site. Hundreds of posts with characters that I've really grown to love.

It's kind of crazy how overwhelmingly emotional the looming and very possible doom of a forum can make me. I get intensely attached to games/characters/people at sites and always get this way of like panic of things that may be outside of my control in the end. I've been doing this hobby for 16 odd years and for the first time I actually made a site, ran it, and did everything required to maintain it for years when I got sick of how short and transient the experiences on other sites were and how hard it was for me to get attached to characters that would only live a month or two on a site before it died.

Now I'm attached harder than I've ever been to a site and to a character and it really is a double edged sword.
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Quick Interest Checks written Dec 26, 2021 21:13:43 GMT
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Monster Hunter type Powered School but in like an Urban Fantasy type deal with some inspiration from Ravenloft and how their Dark Powers/Dark Lords work. Maybe set in the 1990s so there's stuff like AIM chats for an excuse to use IC chat via discord but nobody is like super techy yet with smartphones and shit to easily find information and the ability for me to write WWE style promos and talk shit to other PCs from other classes in the Monster Hunter school who are losers because they're not part of my class with over the top powerpoint presentation transitions.

Maybe a couple of different areas of the world from some incident long ago basically have the barrier between Earth and another not so great world grow really thin so stuff slips through more often and they set up these monster hunting schools there to prevent that since conventionally fighting monsters would be insanely expensive and really bad as a first resort -- like imagine the PR nightmare if five vampires got to like New York City or Tokyo and the authorities could only find and destroy three of them?

Could set entire industries around the monster hunting for like rare materials + paramilitary organizations dedicated to going around world and fighting major infestations.

Basically want formula to be like

Mostly normal urban fantasy where average Joe grocer can live life normally -> Bad stuff happens to interrupt peaceful life -> Back to normal.

I think a lot of settings take similar ideas but make the baseline so bleak and depressing nobody wants to live in the world and there's nothing to fight for. Having a legitimately like normal good happy baseline and having supernatural shit fuck it up occasionally allows a bunch of pulling from spooky folklore and monsters and stuff while having ability to have like purely social/real world events like carnivals and circuses and stuff in between the potential world ending calamities.
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Jcink vs Proboards written Dec 25, 2021 4:26:42 GMT
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ProBoards is what I used for my site and what I prefer from an admin perspective. Been using it on and off since literally 2008, I donate monthly still because I want to support the host that's given me years of entertainment. I dearly love ProBoards and deeply appreciate all the memories I've made there and Recent Posts feature is underrated as hell.

That being said, if you're making a site now, Jcink is better to learn by a long shot IMO because it just has a bigger potential member base and you won't have to reskin/code the thing in a year or two. There's a ton more Jcink only people than ProBoards only people.

If/When I'm involved in making another one, it'll be on Jcink and I'll be relearning Jcink. They have a decently active coding commission community as well which is another big upside for me.
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Site hunting written Oct 15, 2021 0:15:26 GMT
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Hello! Gonna slap a site overview + ad here since our site has systems/magic equivalent/modern fantasy setting.

Systems are going to be pretty basic for someone used to any TTRPG insofar as abilities/resolution of actions. We have several DMs who rotate to run site events in single threads for both major factions (Currently Government Forces/Council and Revolutionary League) in a civil war currently happening with players free to participate in only those or side threads detailing their life outside of events as well with other players.

Gist of recent events/setting is that this 'verse has what amounts to an endlessly reproducing horde of monsters called the Grimm who can be killed, but new ones take their place eventually. They are drawn to negative emotions and thus permanent settlements are few and far in between. Most of the population is centered in heavily defended megacities in a naturally advantageous area, and the bulk of the work keeping those monsters back are done by a warrior class called Huntsmen. Huntsman Academies train these elite warriors, but a few years ago a freak accident killed almost the entire Academy + Staff. Death rate among those who pursue that profession is high so losing essentially a full 3 years of trainees in the pipeline had disastrous and long lasting effects on the country and basically forced the government in recent years to only focus on the capital and leave outlying villages to their live and die on their own as they focused only on the defense of the capital with the remaining huntsman + the police department.

Two major factions as mentioned are the Government/Council who consist of basically anyone affiliated with the legitimate government including police/huntsman trainees and remnants/mercenaries/etc. in a country very much modeled/flavored on Post Soviet power structures and corruption at all levels getting in the way of everyday governance and the Revolutionary League who started as an armed militia in the slums of the capital city but got attacked/driven out of the capital by governmental forces and are holed up in one of the outlying villages right now building up a force big enough to fight composed of essentially a coalition of people who hate the Council enough to actively fight against it.

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Staffing Confessions written Oct 10, 2021 21:31:32 GMT
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Oct 10, 2021 16:56:02 GMT said:
What are everyone's thresholds for banning someone? I know most people do a "strike" system but is there any time you would just forgo that because someone is just... So awful?

I personally think if someone is causing disruptions in the community, maybe not breaking rules but going into an active safe space and handing out passive aggressive remarks, but also just being rude to everyone. I say cut the loss, if they're harming the community's vibe. But I'd like to get more opinions about such things. It is always great to hear other ideas!


I don't do strike systems personally. I've legitimately banned two people that weren't spambots in two and a half years and only have written warnings to a couple more for one-off behavior. I prefer to just ask people to leave if vibe doesn't work out but the following behaviors are to the level where I think the staff team is actively choosing to make the site and community worse off if they allow it to continue for any length of time.

1) Suicide baiting. Anyone who is willing to threaten to do this in the face of any disagreement, usually trivial, is pathetic and they know what they're doing. It's not my job to be someone's therapist or crisis hotline on demand and anyone who tries to bully you or any of your members into being this for them shouldn't be in your community.

2) Completely ignoring other player boundaries/site rules on a consistent basis even after this is addressed clearly and directly to them in private. One of the bans outright admitted to never reading character profiles while simultaneously going out of their way to trash talk how unoriginal and derivative everyone's character concepts were. Ended up banning this person twice, because they changed their IP and rejoined months after the first ban. In both instances they completely ignored combat system in important moments to write in freeform about how their character curbstomped other PCs because they were so cool and experienced and gritty.

3) Not treating other people as people and instead as objects meant for their entertainment and their entertainment alone. Ever been harassed because you're not replying to someone instantly 24/7? Ever been told to rework your character so your OC can be a better romantic option for someone's super cool and suave OC without any prompting or discussion beforehand? Ever been asked to just axe site rules/systems/etc. to satisfy a guest? Ever received death threats/etc. for disagreeing with people over minor things? I have. This happens and I think this is the core reason why occasionally you encounter someone who will draw their line in the sand over something that seems extremely trivial and implode until banned. You and everyone else are play dolls who aren't following directions to people like this, and this viewpoint won't change because you're just faceless internet people who don't matter if they won't play the way this person wants.

4) Someone who is toxic and also has a bad IRL situation, and guilt trips people constantly about their IRL situation to make sure nobody challenges them. This never, ever ends. I try to be understanding due to IRL circumstances, but if your IRL circumstances have turned you into someone who is an extremely toxic person who will lash out and make worse the lives of everyone you interact with that's not my problem and using those IRL circumstances as a bludgeon to smash on anyone who disagrees with you is not something conducive to the long term health of any community.

The line there is that you as an admin need to be mature enough to differentiate #2/#3 from a legitimate disagreement. This hobby is filled with people who have no idea how to handle conflict in any sort of healthy way and will default to extremes over trivial things. It's not your job to talk them off a cliff every time someone OOC doesn't like their favorite genre of music or whatever, but identifying people who just have no idea how to interact with others and those that are actively malicious is sometimes hard and you have to decide whether to treat them differently if the outcome is the same. Either one works, and it's really sad when someone who you're positive isn't being actively malicious nevertheless has such a negative impact on the site due to their inability to interact with others in a healthy manner that you have to ask them to leave.

Not for a site, but for an example had a member of a TTRPG table recently express that he had no idea why Mineta from MHA got so much crap and that he felt that some people were giving his archetype too much shade. Other people responded their main issue with him was that he had no narrative purpose and there's nothing he could have done that other members of 1A could have done and his shtick was honestly really icky for 2021 and could have been excluded completely and made the story better. Guy got progressively angry and kept talking past people about how Jiraya was a pervert too and everybody liked him and it was unfair that Mineta got the same treatment until he just imploded because nobody else in the chat liked Mineta like he did.

I don't think it was malicious, I think the guy just had no idea how to interact with others in a healthy way and wanted to say that it made him upset when people didn't like a character he liked. Instead of saying that, he started a debate and got more and more angry that people weren't agreeing with him and kept continuing to argue past people by ignoring everything they said and instead debating to "Those People" who didn't give our hero Mineta his due. Anyways he left the game over it because he felt his point of view wasn't being supported enough after he successfully blew up a complete nonissue into the most important thing in his life for several hours as he argued with multiple people for those several hours straight. He was so invested in it that he was willing to burn every bridge possible in order to not concede anything and defend the most important thing in his life in that moment.

Covid has reduced social interaction for many people quite a bit over the past year and a half, and some people have gotten really out of practice and unfortunately picked up some really toxic social habits. Or maybe not picked up, just had them reinforced over the past year and a half even if it's not intentional. While I've moved past the phase of thinking it was my duty to "fix" these types of cases because it is quite frankly way out of my lane and has a super low % of success due to stubbornness it's not uncommon for me to fall into the trap of trying to do so anyway for an hour or two before snapping out of it.

Mineta wasn't the root cause of the issue and it was never about the character in MHA. It was about the guy feeling that his opinion wasn't treated as valid and getting angrier and angrier that once he expressed it again in what he likely felt was a safe space where he'd get agreement from everybody it instead turned into a debate and he didn't know how to deal with it in a healthy way once it got the opposite response he expected. I don't think he was in love with Mineta or his archetype, but to being right or maybe more accurately not feeling like he was wrong. He made the decision that not being wrong, in my view, was more important than any interpersonal relationships or the game he had invested a lot of hours into in that moment and decided to choose not being wrong over everything else.

I might be completely off base and it might have been something else. I'm not a therapist, and it's not my duty to 'fix' this person so I let him walk because he made the decision to do so. It's not my job to talk people off cliffs. I came into the table to have fun, and the guy made it impossible to have fun.
last edit on Oct 10, 2021 21:32:05 GMT by wolfe
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[PB] OC RWBY AU Wanted Characters written Oct 10, 2021 19:57:57 GMT
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Site name and link: The Remnant Project and its associated discord.
Site genre: Fandom
Site info: TRP is a post-Great War AU RWBY RP set in Mistral City and Haven Academy with no canons, no rank claims, no maidens, and no god interference. We offer a TTRPG like progression system with experience and skill levels on abilities and site-wide events that change the setting based on player actions.

Your name: Wolfe
Your primary staff account: Profile Page
Contact info: Attached Discord or through Discord DM at Wolfe#0180

Canon(s)/role(s) requested:

Name/Gender: Player Choice

Species: Human

Narrative Role: Pragmatic Revolutionary Financial Backer (Hereafter referred to as RFB)

Concept: Current heir to a huge pharmaceutical company, the RFB could simply wait for their terminally ill parent to die and inherit the company… but sees that change is coming to Mistral. Three and a half years ago, one airship crash caused a new era of chaos and anarchy due to the entire student population of Haven Academy drowning in arctic waters outside of Atlas.

All the money in the world doesn’t matter if the Grimm breach the outer wall of the capital city, and the Council have proven themselves ineffective in securing the safety of the same. When a rival appeared and gathered enough power to be a threat, instead of incorporating them into the defense of the city the leaders of the country started a war that threatened to tear apart the kingdom at the seams.

They fund and support the Revolutionary League with the explicit expectation of military support both now and down the line. Rival company shipments mysteriously disappear while on the road, and bandits just happen to unfortunately shoot down an airship or two filled with precious cargo every so often that would heavily cripple a competitor during a critical time.

Their position is precarious, however, and if their plots were discovered they would be hanged at worst and disinherited at best. They operate within the capital city, under the protection of huntsmen, but actively collaborate with their enemies for profit. They have to keep their involvement secret and play smart in order to come out of this ahead.

Additional skills for this canon role: In addition to the standard experience (1275 base + 300 extra if it’s a first character for someone who has the money to get private martial training equivalent to a combat academy) the character will start with E rank disguise and D rank wealth noncombatant skills.

Roleplaying Opportunities: The RFB will live in the capital and thus be able to interface with any Council side characters easily on the day to day, and their disguise ability will allow them to slip away and make it to the Revolutionary territory without being detected for meetings there as well. IC role makes it so that many PCs would seek out their help for one reason or another, and while it would start as a political/social role primarily you could also use the opportunity to beef up some combat capabilities over time and get involved there as well if you wished.


Name/Gender: Player Choice

Species: Faunus or Human

Narrative Role: Undercover Agent (Hereafter referred to as UA.)

Concept: The UA was a student at Atlas Academy in the snowy tundra of Atlas, but quite frankly was never a good one. They immediately fell behind their peers and never really recovered, which made perfect sense once it was learned that the UA’s transcripts from combat school were forged and they weren’t qualified to be in a huntsman academy at all. The trial was quick and the evidence was clear, but the UA was offered a choice between prison and… something else.

The neighboring kingdom of Mistral was having issues with a growing terrorist group that sought to overthrow the Council and install a new regime by way of violence and were having issues getting any information whatsoever from the inside as the moles already planted were toiling in the lowest level positions with very little access to actionable information.

The UA was good enough to be useful, but unknown to the terrorists and not good enough to be immediately recognized as a plant. While they were a failure of a huntsman trainee, they would be markedly above average for a ragtag band of peasants and would stand out among a sea of criminals and refugees. If he does his job, the charges in Atlas will be dropped and the Huntsman Academy in Mistral will be more than happy to accept him into the fold as a reward for good work. If he doesn’t… well, he gets ripped apart by bloodthirsty terrorists and the problem solves itself.

Additional skills for canon role: E rank deception non-combatant ability to be better at lying.

Roleplaying opportunities: UA will be extremely on edge initially, being spoonfed propaganda about the Revolutionaries being essentially bloodthirsty terrorists who are immune to things like reason or morality and instead participate in what amounts to a death cult. The UA will be largely around the Revolutionary League, but they will occasionally find excuses to sneak back to the capital or a Council-affiliated city to give a contact all the information they had learned so far about the terrorists and their activities.

Upon closer examination, it is completely possible that the UA finds the Revolutionary methods horrendous and needlessly violent and their resolve deepens to see them exterminated and do their mission. It is also completely possible that they instead are turned to the Revolutionary point of view and are forced to make the uncomfortable decision of choosing which side to stand on when forced to choose, especially when they had already betrayed the Revolutionary League by giving information to the Council for their entire stay.
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DMs wanted for RWBY AU written Oct 5, 2021 2:18:16 GMT
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Hello!

I am the owner of The Remnant Project which is a stat based RWBY AU site.

This isn't a traditional staff request, and bottom line up front we're looking for another DM or two to cycle between for events.

I ran all events and all secondary event threads and ran all the NPCs for about the first year, year and a half of site existence. Over the last year and a half I've ran about half of events overall, with the other half being split between about three other members. Over the last six months I've run about a third of events, with the other half being split between the same three other members.

In a scenario where we have multiple people wanting to run an event, those that participated in the last event vote based off of how much in-game currency they got from the last event by participating. Someone who posted every round gets more of a say than someone who posted once, for example, to help ensure that the next event is something the high activity people want. Near ties have happened before, but lately we've only had one request per cycle and I'd like to change that.

There's a lot of leeway to be given with this, and DMs have created their own regions of the kingdom, monsters to fight, NPC organizations and legions of individual NPCs throughout these events over the past two and a half years. We've had a total of eight events along with four mini-events for 12 total before our current shakeup where we have two major factions: the government faction with all of the 'legit' huntsman and forces working with the Council who are on their third faction event and the Revolutionary League which comprise largely of former refugees and faunus cast out by society who are on their second faction event. This leaves us with a total of around 17 events so far.

This wouldn't be you running all of them for all time or anything, literally like once every few months would be a big help and would let people be players only for a bit longer than currently. Because we run essentially back to back events with short breaks, there are provisions in place to prevent one from dragging on to infinity. Posting requirements would be between 3-5 days every round barring occasional delays. This means that we don't wait for everyone to post for a cycle to end, we just end it. Having one event run super long means that the next person can't run theirs and it in general means everyone gets less to do.

Incentives include a significant amount of in-game currency to boost the skills of your character and the opportunity to have players willing to go along with basically anything you want to do that follows some level of narrative structure and doesn't contradict with site canon. There's multiple people willing to idea bounce, but a general outline is required to make sure that someone else can take over the event in case anything happens and you can't finish it yourself as standard procedure. In the current setting of split events, someone without a character on that faction generally gets the outline alongside you to have as little spoilers for people playing in it as possible.

Going to link two current events for reference for general activity level currently + style. I freely admit we're coming out of a site-wide slump over the summer, so this represents activity floor more than anything.

Current Council Event.

Current Revolutionary League Event.

Contact me on Pixel Perfect if you're interested and we can exchange Discord information. Getting a flood of random requests from bigger video game discords right now that spam scams at me so don't want anyone to get lost in that sea of spam.
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Looking for Something! [site search] written May 19, 2021 16:56:33 GMT
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Hi again Milk.

Not throwing an ad since I know you were with us in beginning and just wanted to post here to let you know we still around and evolved a lot since that awkward early stage where I didn't really know what I was doing for events. Currently have ongoing ones in both major factions right now that can be jumped into at this point.

Hope you're doing well and good luck in your search!
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Sites You Want To See written Apr 26, 2021 3:35:02 GMT
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Apr 7, 2021 17:29:30 GMT said:
a "omniscient reader's viewpoint" inspired rp. modern-day apocalypse where "incarnations" (humanity) are put into "scenarios" (events with high stakes, usually death) with monsters, traps, and human vs human craziness, all for the viewing pleasure of "constellations" (gods/demons) through "star stream". or, basically, an apocalyptical setting with death games created by evil gremlins for the entertainment of divine beings through a celestial twitch livestream service. (it makes more sense if you read the webtoon or the web novel ngl)


If you ever find one hit me up.

I went looking and even the discord RPs for this died out before I read the series a few months ago. :(
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site search written Apr 24, 2021 21:03:57 GMT
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Gonna post because I enjoyed roleplaying with you on previous sites and other fandom inspired sites posted first. We meet your activity requirements and arguably even the plot one -- given that we're basically doing whatever we want in the RWBYverse 60 years before the show starts in huge timeline divergences from canon due to IC member actions. We stat based site with systems, which might be a dealbreaker but frankly Endorrain had more systems than we did I think. More accurate to call us RWBY inspired rather than RWBY AU at this point, so not knowing canon honestly probably a plus because I've been known to straight up ignore show/book canon that conflicts with site canon in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Blurb below.

The Remnant Project is set twenty-eight years after the Great War in an AU timeline and is focused primarily on the struggle between Council forces and the so-called "Revolutionary League" in a brewing civil war. The site has a progression system that is designed to last through years of user play, and will attempt to deliver on the fantasy of starting off weak and progressing into a legitimate hero with a list of significant accomplishments worthy of someone with that title by way of giving people clear ways to enact change in the world and site events that will change the setting in both big and small ways over time.

❂ ENTER ❂

❂ ADVERTISING ❂ RULES ❂ AU HISTORY ❂ DISCORD ❂
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Getting back into rp, need a site written Apr 24, 2021 20:59:31 GMT
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Going to post because my site fits most of what you want and frankly power systems sites are not popular at all in animanga right now -- I'd go as far as to say I'm one of the few advocates for it left here. The only other ones I'm even aware of are in the Fire Emblem sphere, which you've specifically excluded in original post.

We're in transition phase after a timeskip and a site plot reorientation, but the good news is that at this point we're basically RWBY inspired rather than RWBY AU so you don't actually need to know the source material at all. The lore is present but mostly done IC and frankly the only thing you need to know is that we're doing a standard Government vs. Rebellion plot and those are our factions.

We have a progression system that's been going steady for two years OOC set up with exponential gains between ranks so the amount to catch up to someone's rank past a certain point is noticeably less than it is for the higher person's rank to increase in a skill. We have combat systems largely used for PvP and a streamlined system meant for group threads/events that is specifically designed to remove stalling and encourage proactive play.

We're recovering from an activity downswing right now, but even then we have multiple posts a day with events in the pipeline which always result in a decent activity spike. I've completely moved on from having a plan for the site plot overall, and have shifted basically entirely to letting players decide what they want to do and how they want to change the setting and refocused my energy on my own faction. Overview blurb below:

The Remnant Project is set twenty-eight years after the Great War in an AU timeline and is focused primarily on the struggle between Council forces and the so-called "Revolutionary League" in a brewing civil war. The site has a progression system that is designed to last through years of user play, and will attempt to deliver on the fantasy of starting off weak and progressing into a legitimate hero with a list of significant accomplishments worthy of someone with that title by way of giving people clear ways to enact change in the world and site events that will change the setting in both big and small ways over time.

❂ ENTER ❂

❂ ADVERTISING ❂ RULES ❂ AU HISTORY ❂ DISCORD ❂
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Revolutionaries Wanted for RWBY AU written Apr 19, 2021 20:46:20 GMT
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Alright, bottom line up front. I recently decided to shift focus on my AU RWBY site and split into two factions and two major hubs the standard Rebellion Versus The Man™ plot. We just did a time skip to transition the site, and I’m advertising for the brand new hub that only opened up post-timeskip. We're also a site that uses stats and systems and progression, which I realize is a deal-breaker for some people who prefer freeform.

The rebellion faction has a small but dedicated group of members who aren’t going anywhere. One has 330 posts in the past 12 months, one has around 195, one has 39 and is one of several characters of a player with over 500 combined posts over the past two years. I’m the one with around 195, and I’ll be playing the leader of the Rebellion™ and will be running periodic events/group threads as part of that where we clear out Grimm infestations, expand territory, get into skirmishes with The Man™ and his Huntsmen, etc. We’re the smaller major faction by far, and while we’re perfectly capable of self-sustaining with three I’d like to get one or two more to round out the roster – more would be awesome, of course, but only hoping for 1-2 bites. Putting in the post counts because it's not a concern that we'll go away. We're here regardless and looking for a few more to round out the group and open up some plotting opportunities.

Currently there are two major canon groups within the revolutionaries, and broadly they are a coalition of bandit tribes and my faction, the Kozaks. The latter as one might be able to tell from the name inspired by the Eastern European groups who were known for their militarized societies, democracy, and the most insulting letter than a Sultan has ever received.

None of the Revolutionaries are good people, per se. Each has committed high crimes and misdemeanors that would see them in prison or executed outright at some point, even if their only high crime was joining the organization at all and being branded a traitor to the Kingdom. The difference between the two groups is basically just standards. The inspiration from sources like Final Fantasy Tactics' Corpse Brigade and Fire Emblem's Black Eagle Strike Force acknowledged because I love both of them.

The stock standard Kozak values honesty and the needs of the community above themselves. They recognize that personal security cannot exist without group security, but are also known to be hot headed. They rush to the scene of a fight without thinking, and tend to swarm it and over-committing resources to the first sign of trouble. Their goals and priorities on paper are arguably even noble due to their focus on collective security above all else, but when those goals and priorities clash with other groups they are ruthless in rooting out and destroying the enemy through any means necessary. Terrorism, guerilla warfare, and even strategic use of Grimm is not off the table in order to save the lives of those in the community from enemies both internal and external.

The bandits do not have any current members, and if they do end up being of interest my goal with them is to have a sort of ideological conflict. I want characters who look out for themselves first and put individual security over collective security, and basically have the opposite world view. Looking at life like a zero sum game where you must take in order to receive, they might not even have the same ideological conflict with the Council that the Kozaks do. Attaching to a group that’s the enemy of your enemy is perfectly valid, especially when that group has resources and manpower and coordination that you can take advantage of in the short term to strike out against your enemies while having alliances to back you up in the case of trouble.

Specific character requests have never really worked out for me here, so I’m trying something different. I don’t know what the hip and happening Face Claims or personality types are. I’m not someone who particularly cares about Face Claims for the most part, and I’m someone who is willing to work with someone to fit their personality into a role and some ready made connections for some plots and immediate threading opportunities. Let's go save a country by burning down half of it, together!


last edit on Apr 19, 2021 22:00:37 GMT by wolfe
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Staffing Confessions written Apr 10, 2021 23:29:08 GMT
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Honestly seeing someone have a much more put together site in the areas where you're struggling with is sometimes the best thing because it both gives you the kick in the ass to change things and also a place to take ideas, especially in how they structured it, from.

I've been lazy at overhauling site plot/how information is presented for a long time, and seeing someone present that information in my mind damn close to perfectly made me hyper-aware at how much that may have hurt in the past year.
last edit on Apr 10, 2021 23:29:40 GMT by wolfe
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How to retain new members? written Mar 24, 2021 1:05:27 GMT
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I feel like I can respond to this both because my site is 25 months old and the 2 biggest posters after myself (admin) both joined 14 months into the lifecycle and because I’ve had a surprising number of members come back after 6+ month hiatuses, which literally never happened to me before on other sites. We are also basically the last RWBY forum rp site active, in a fandom where the other sites that lived and died or are on long site-wide hiatuses refuse to even consider a move from jcink to proboards where I am now.

Honestly the main thing that I think is the difference is the fact that many of the dead sites tried to be generalist. They tried to appeal to everyone, and in the end nobody was invested enough to actually power through the slow periods because everyone got a mediocre experience out of it. The sites had no core audience, in other words, and thus failed due to appealing to nobody. On my own site I was very transparent with the type of system and type of environment I was trying to create – and more than happy to exclude entire playstyles that weren’t compatible with mine.

It's the same concept as a Session 0, getting everyone on board with tone/general preferences so we can all be excited to go in the same direction. If you like freeform battle systems where rule of cool reigns supreme and you can express your creativity by using your unique power a million different ways… I don’t want you on my site and I made that extremely clear. My entire system is based on well-defined limits and being able to at a glance at a character sheet tell you someone’s general combat capabilities and perhaps more importantly what they can’t do.

By excluding people with incompatible playstyles to my own, I’m allowed to engage in the type of roleplay that I enjoy that will sustain my desire to continue.

No matter what you do, the % of people who stick around will be low. This is one of the only hobbies where people routinely brag and write essays about how much they hate it and how much they don’t want to do it… and yet they still join sites. There will be some who just use sites, especially in a Covid environment, as a chatroom rather than an RP and they never had any intention of roleplaying at all. Whether you allow this is up to you, I generally don’t care even though none of them ever convert to be members. I only remove them once they start to actually prevent RP-related convos from happening, which is most of the time within a month or so in my experience. They get angry that people aren't using it as a chatroom only, despite the fact they joined an explicitly rp forum site discord. People are weird.

There will also be a constant trickle of people who will never get past character creation phase no matter how many hours of effort that you or your members put into helping them. They will suck on your free time forever until you burn out and stop helping them, and this is also a pretty common OOC character I’ve seen in the past two years. If you get baited by them, it will suck and you’ll feel like you did something wrong. You didn’t, and the fact of the matter is that some people find creating characters much more fun and fulfilling than actually playing them.

I’ve also found that spoon feeding threads to players via site events is a great way of weeding out who is and isn’t worth effort. If someone doesn’t take threads being thrown at them because they’re not perfectly tailored to them or not wanting to read a less than 500 word event intro or something… yeah. I just don’t waste my energy on them, because they have no intention of participating. Events is what hooked most of my current members, because they actually wanted to write and took the opportunity and made a cool experience from it and that got them past the “Ooo cool new site” phase and carried them through however long they’ve been on the site.

The biggest thing I’ve been told that OOC made the people on hiatus come back is consistency and the fact that I have zero problem removing people against their will from the discord/site if they try to abuse me or my member base. Many sites die and many people burn out due to OOC drama, and if you’re consistent it makes it very difficult to start any against you when the rules and expectations are transparent, and everyone knows them. There will always be people who rage and try to bulldoze you because they can’t handle basic responsibilities such as activity checks, doing their claims, or reading the introduction post to a thread… but those people can’t be allowed to stay and poison the site for long periods of time and burn other people out.

Also, frankly, I have zero problem telling people their character concepts will be difficult to make work if I feel like they are. Letting someone come in on a completely dead faction/area with no interaction possible with others or with the intention to make 10 wanted ads that they will RP with exclusively and allowing that to go through is just a waste of everyone’s time. Who and what you exclude, both IC and OOC will always be more important than who you include.

Speaking of which, one of the biggest pieces of advice I could give anyone generally is making your game world small.

Yes, small.

There is absolutely zero point of having 12 kingdoms on 12 continents if you have 10 characters on the site in total. It’s a waste of everyone’s time and makes it hard for any of them to do anything. Restrict the setting until everyone can reasonably interact with each other until you reach the point to where you are confident you can split the character base. The goal should absolutely be ensuring that every character, no matter the permutation of faction/location/flavor should be able to interact with most if not the entire site theoretically as soon as their character is approved. If you have locations/factions/flavor allowed that doesn’t allow for them to interact with anybody or are counting the 3 people who decided to app a faction but haven’t posted in 6 months ‘other people a newbie can interact with’ you’re just railroading them into a terrible experience.

And even if you do all of this people can and will just ghost randomly! I’ve seen new characters who could conceivably interact with 20+ that I came up with neat plot ideas for that could have some real mileage out of them because their personality on app would mesh really well with one of my characters and reached out to players individually as soon as their characters got accepted and just…

Nothing comes from it. They either post an open without informing anyone and ghost or just ghost. I’m thinking about one in particular that still makes me sad because they made an OC that fit exactly the type of personality I wanted in an ad that I was 150% willing to thread a bunch with that just… never responded to me and ghosted.

The emails to inactive members actually tend to bring 1-2 of them back for me every time, so thanks for reminding me to do it. Occasionally sometimes cold DMs to members who ghosted just to check up if you thought you were friends tend to work on my end too. Ghosting is much more common post-Covid I feel like because a lot of people have very unstable life/mental situations and frankly I don’t blame anyone for cutting a hobby out of their life so they can focus on their own health.

There’s also the extremely common OOC character who just takes on more sites than they can chew and your site is the one that drops first as the newest one when they realize they can’t handle multiple sites at once. Or maybe you’re like me and decide to join sites and write entire apps at 3am and wake up and wonder what in tarnation you just did. You could also have people who just randomly make accounts before they even read the rules or anything, which is also semi-common for some reason.

Or someone who joins because the only FC they wanted to play was going to be activity checked in 24hrs but the person comes back after 2 months after posting 0 times IC total to just make the activity check and deny you the FC you wanted – yeah I’m still salty.
last edit on Mar 24, 2021 1:06:40 GMT by wolfe