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Incoming rant because Iโ€™ve had a bad day:

I think we make a mistake in calling the people who run sites โ€˜staffโ€™. Staff implies employment. It implies servitude. It implies that we are there to be at the beck and call of members at all times. It leads people to feel they can treat us however they fancy because we are there to serve them and provide them an experience.

News flash, we are not. We are roleplayers who have decided to create a world we want to write in, and weโ€™ve chosen to invite others to join us in that world. We get to pick the rules. We get to decide how it runs. But we also get to decide who is in our world and, news flash again, players are not entitled to be there. The better term for us would be authors. Authors with our assistants, who are there to create a world, to share it with others, and to write and tell our own stories. Not staff on hand to serve.

In my opinion, these attitudes are why sites close so quickly these days. Itโ€™s fine at first. Seems fun. You set up a site thinking an idea would be fun. You create the world, come up with some rules, create some ideas. You invite people in. They have qs. You happily answer. They have apps. You give them a look to make sure they fit your world. Maybe you have a gander at creating a site plot for others to engage in. You come up with some events. Itโ€™s all cool.

But slowly, over time, you find that instead of role-playing, youโ€™ve become a 24/7 help desk, putting on a customer service face, trying to settle disputes and questions, dealing with assholes who donโ€™t care about your well-being or boundaries, who get mad at you if youโ€™re not progressing the site plot like youโ€™re being paid to handhold their experience, and itโ€™s like โ€˜fuck, why am I even running this world when I donโ€™t get to write in it?โ€™

It needs to change. We should not be holding site authors to these standards, and we should not be demanding extreme professionalism and customer service care from an amateur, hobbyist activity. And we should stop calling people who run them staff. Period. Call them authors. Architects. Volunteers. Whatever you fancy. (I quite like architect.) But they are not employees at a playerโ€™s beck and call, and they should not be referred to that way. When we open a site, we invite others into that world. Players are not entitled to that access. That invitation should be treated with more respect. And so should site authors.

This has been my grumpy ted talk. Thank you for coming.
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While helping complete newbies to rp can definitely be anโ€ฆ experience, if we donโ€™t help out new role players and take the time to help newbies learn the hobby, forum roleplay will eventually die off. There are a lot of competing mediums now where players can go to rp, discord being one of our biggest competitors right now, and we need to encourage new roleplayers to try out our version. Forum rp can be intimidating enough already without putting up additional barriers to newbies.
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I would be interested in joining and taking a look! Just reading through the info, I have an idea for one character I'd want to bring, and I love the focus on discrimination against the powered. The use of collars and other enforcement are +++. Do you know if there will be a psychopass (sort of) element where powered people will be used to capture other powered people?

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My disgust for the Artemis Fowl trailer is indescribable. I knew it would be bad but this is worse than I imagined
Excuse me while I nervously go look this up...

Edit: I'm not even half way through and... why? Why did they do this? It had a perfectly good story. What is this? This is not Artemis Fowl.
last edit on Mar 2, 2020 23:56:13 GMT by zero
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I've just finished up a long running one-on-one and am now looking for a new home for my character, Terrance Dewitt! I've played him for about five years, and am very keen to keep playing him in a new home.

He is a 42 years old police officer with a strong sense of justice, a righteous person with a desire to do good by people. Heโ€™s stubborn, inflexible when it comes to justice, prone to drinking and destructive habits when it goes wrong, but ultimately a kind, good person struggling to to be right and fair within a system that is not.

Iโ€™d really like to rp him in a site where certain groups of people (be it species, powered versus non-powered etc) are discriminated against, as a key plot I want to explore with him is the choice between what is legal and what is right, especially in the context of prejudiced or corrupted regimes. He is a character that cares strongly about the law, and believes it is important to be followed, but Iโ€™d like that belief to be challenged.

His current FC is Kotetsu Kaburagi. I'd really like to keep it if possible, so if this is already taken, I probably wonโ€™t be interested (though if you recommend a good alt, I might change my mind xD).

In terms of the site, active and friendly would be brilliant! I'm keen to have some more dramatic plots with him, so uncovering a major crime, pulled into police corruption, that sort of thing. 

Willing to check out anything that might fit!