Improving the Forums

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I think the time frame should be a bit longer than a year. Call me sily, but some single Rps take longer than a year to RP. Charley, Navaria and I are Rping a thread right now that had been in the works for two years, and we've been Rping it for over a year now. So we reset, and everyone gets to do... two to three RPs, and then we're resetting again?

Force users would spend their whole reset time just trying to gain ranks back, etc. If we reset, it should be for longer than a year. Year and a half to two years.

That being said - I love the idea. Let's do a "living under Vong slavery" universe. Or a 'what if anakin never turned to the darkside' story.

[Anbira Hicchoru]

Originally posted by Lilaena De'Ville
I think the time frame should be a bit longer than a year. Call me sily, but some single Rps take longer than a year to RP. Charley, Navaria and I are Rping a thread right now that had been in the works for two years, and we've been Rping it for over a year now. So we reset, and everyone gets to do... two to three RPs, and then we're resetting again?

Force users would spend their whole reset time just trying to gain ranks back, etc. If we reset, it should be for longer than a year. Year and a half to two years.

That being said - I love the idea. Let's do a "living under Vong slavery" universe. Or a 'what if anakin never turned to the darkside' story.

Putting a deadline in effect will light a fire under our collective butts, which I think would settle this issue. We either expedite the task, or we don't do it. Call it strategic planning for roleplaying if you will.

With a start and finish time, we can cut through all the niceties and BS, and get to the heart of the matter, which is exactly the way we should be roleplaying in the first place.

A year is the longest period of time that I would recommend. Anything longer really has no point at all.

[Rognan Dar]

Let's do a "living under Vong slavery" universe. Or a 'what if anakin never turned to the darkside' story.

Would that mean we could add in real characters like Luke and Wedge and Lando? And just play around with them in that story? Could we also bring in Zonoma Sekot?

[Morgan Evanar]

Originally posted by Rognan Dar
Would that mean we could add in real characters like Luke and Wedge and Lando? And just play around with them in that story? Could we also bring in Zonoma Sekot?

We'd have to dance too close to copyrights to really do that

[Dae Jinn]

I like the idea, only because Dae has become stale, and this is great way to totally change her.

I'm assuming though, that I can keep my other characters relatively the same, and play them as they are, but in a different setting. None of them really have anything set in stone aside from Trrics' being a Sith in TSO.

The way Charley explained it to me was that your character can be repeated over and over, only the setting will change, right? So ranks and stuff like that would stay the same unless you change the character (assuming again).

Another thing about voting, and the whole "let's change the whole board" idea - what about people who won't want to do this? Are we going to end up alienating a bunch of rpers with this idea?

[Wei Wu Wei]

Well, as long as people who gain ranks (Jedi, Sith, and otherwise) can keep what they've earned after the story arc is over, then I would not mind. Otherwise, I would have to say no.

[Anbira Hicchoru]

Originally posted by Dae Jinn
Another thing about voting, and the whole "let's change the whole board" idea - what about people who won't want to do this? Are we going to end up alienating a bunch of rpers with this idea?

I'd say plenty of people are already alienated at this point with the stagnation of the current setup. Either way, we're going to break eggs for an omelette, I think.

[Anbira Hicchoru]

Originally posted by Wei Wu Wei
Well, as long as people who gain ranks (Jedi, Sith, and otherwise) can keep what they've earned after the story arc is over, then I would not mind. Otherwise, I would have to say no.

Keeping what you got is fine, and I expect a lot of people will want to do this. No problem.

[Master Yoghurt]

Some nice suggestions in this thread

I suggest, if you are going to do a "featured roleplay" or a "featured RP character" for the month/week, you should also have a featured thread and poster overall for the rest of the boards. That way its equal for both the RP and non RP section of the forums. Being a featured poster is a nice carrot for the regulars to start up new topics with high quality content. You could have the "featured topic" on the portal page for instance. I always believed that the best way to get a forum active is through a constant flow of new threads, which is in itself a catalyst for more post activity overall.

Also, its been said before, but we need more members. One way to do this is through afiliation banners, advertising etc, but an even better way is through a recruitment program. You could have some sort of award or recognition if you manage to recruit a certain amount of members to the board. For example if you recruit 5 forum members, you could get say 3 or 6 months of supporter account for free (just an example). There are many other ways to do it as well.

Recruiting is good, because you can select people you allready know (friends and family), and have a better chance to get quality posters on the boards. Personally, I wont probably be able to recruit that many, but I know there are members who do have that opportunity.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

^^ I love the recruitment idea, and the featured poster/content idea for the rest of the board.

We have also been thinking about starting a regular movie review feature, which could draw in some other recognition, if we do enough movies well enough.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I'm gonna recap the ideas we have so far.

1) Prearranged chatrooms using Trillian/Yahoo/etc

2) Yearly and monthly awards for Roleplays

3) Thread showcasing

4) Thread commenting

5) Adverts

6) RPer awards in several different categories

7) Yearly reset / 'tv show season' type structure
a. Opening scrawl for the RP forums to describe the year's basic goings-on
b. Voting by all members on said yearly goings-on.

8) Featured thread (boardwide)

9) Featured poster (boardwide)

10) Recruit for benefits and prizes


So far so good, everyone Keep 'em coming.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

We could do a universe where the rebellion failed at the second death star, and all the 'heroes' of the movies were killed (to explain why they aren't around).

[Anbira Hicchoru]

Oh my God, yes.

[Morgan Evanar]

If you weren't married I'd be on the next plane to Oregon.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

er thanks.

edit: We're all paid up on group forum space, but if we reset the galaxy every year... what does this mean for groups? If we're paid up, our old group threads go into an archive forum at the bottom of our boards? We get to invent new groups every year, with said archive forum filled with past reincarnations of the group?

We get nothing, and our boards are erased? I would not be in favor of this last option, or any option that includes erasing threads.

And did we decide on rank holding over, etc? I believe it was discussed that we could keep rank at the reset if we wanted to... or not. Obviously, if we went to a universe right after the non-destruction of the second death star we'd have no trained Jedi anywhere.

[Morgan Evanar]

We can keep ranks, I assume. There is no reason there couldn't be a few Jedi who decided to stop being Jedi and hide. Remember, we're already giving the universe a good thwack.

I think that perhaps the Rebellion's attack on the Death Star didn't succeed, but Luke's results were about the same, only he doesn't have a very solid opportunity to escape and does not.

The Empire has an incomplete Death Star 2. The Rebellion's and the Empire's core fleets have been bled heavily, and it's a phyric victory for the Rebles who have lost much of their fleet and heros. They jump and cut their losses.

The Empire has lost much of it's best and brightest with the Executor destroyed. The remainder is on the DS2.

The rest of the Imperial fleet was perhaps damaged more than the Rebellion's. With the death of the Emperor and his lack of battle meditation, movements were sloppy and a hardened Rebellion did as much damage as it could.

Several Imperial and Victory class destroyers have been scuttled and are considered irreperable and are salvage at best. Endor's orbit is filled with debris clouds not seen since the Clone Wars.

With the exception of the Trilogy's core heros, most of the Rebellion's leadership is alive, and is back to savaging the Empire's supply lines.

The Empire still has quite an edge with an operable but incomplete battle-station.

[Lion El' Jonson]

Originally posted by Morgan Evanar
A bunch of good ideas.

Sounds like the Rebellion and the Imperials would have quite the opportunity to have some slugging matches.

We'd have to do something about the canon idea that the Empire has 25,000+ Imperators, but I have a feeling that could be remedied easily. From a fleeting standpoint, I'm very happy.

[Anbira Hicchoru]

Aside from the painfully obvious "Jedi who didn't die during the purge" method of explaining EU Jedi, we could pull a Mormon angle with this whole thing, and get rid of the assumption that the ghosts of Qui Gon, Yoda and Obi Wan only attempted to train Luke Skywalker.

So in effect, we could have an entire central corps of seasoned Jedi who trace their lineages back to the spirits of the fallen canon characters.

The Sith angle is even easier, as all of the rejects and flunkies that the Emperor and Vader held down as adepts and "hands" can vie for the vast reservoir of their ancient teachings, essentially creating dozens of Bane-style "master & apprentice" duos

[Morgan Evanar]

Originally posted by Anbira Hicchoru
Aside from the painfully obvious "Jedi who didn't die during the purge" method of explaining EU Jedi, we could pull a Mormon angle with this whole thing, and get rid of the assumption that the ghosts of Qui Gon, Yoda and Obi Wan only attempted to train Luke Skywalker.

So in effect, we could have an entire central corps of seasoned Jedi who trace their lineages back to the spirits of the fallen canon characters.

The Sith angle is even easier, as all of the rejects and flunkies that the Emperor and Vader held down as adepts and "hands" can vie for the vast reservoir of their ancient teachings, essentially creating dozens of Bane-style "master & apprentice" duos

This is awesome. I wouldn't put all of my eggs in one basket, either

[Lilaena De'Ville]

The group forum question was still not addressed, however. I love the ideas.