New faction 3 month rule.

[Alex Hart]

As the title states, a lot of people have been throwing around the idea for a 3 month wait before people make new factions. I think this is a good idea to make sure that people who want to make a faction have a good sense of what the setting is like, and experience roleplaying on Star Army before they get their feet wet in the deep deep end of the pool that is faction creation.

What do you guys think about this idea?

 

[Miko]

I would expand on this to assist new and old players alike by working with them on a road map. Having a faction is wonderful but working to build a road map to give direction would greatly help both the maker and the players.

 

[SirSkully]

A road map could be a really good idea honestly, we kind of have it in the form of the secret hush hush GM forum but that tends to be a lot of posting what is happening/has happened rather than what will happen (from what I've seen in my short time poking in at least, correct me if I am wrong)

 

[Wes]

Honestly, I'd like to see it based on posts rather than time. Anyone can register an account and just wait it out. But I like the idea of encouraging people to be active members of the community.

I would expand on this to assist new and old players alike by working with them on a road map. Having a faction is wonderful but working to build a road map to give direction would greatly help both the maker and the players.

Can you give an example of what you mean by a road map?

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

I think they should. I'm not saying so to put down newer players with ambitions of their own but instead i feel as though they should have proper time to:

• Learn the setting and lore.
• Rp with other players
• Have time to recruit other players.
• Have a good amount of time to work on said faction without rushing through it.
• Spend your time Rp'ing and enjoying the setting instead of instantly putting all you time into a faction.

This gives time to spend on the discord and wiki learning the setting and meeting and talking to other players. Compared to instantly joining and making your own custom species/faction/idea. Because that has traditionally ended up with dead factions and ideas that never set off when people abandon them.

I also think we should go back to making new factions SUB FACTIONS. For new players at least, As it gives the responsitility of their faction to an experienced FM that can care for it if/when they abandon it like what seems to happen. This gives a chance for your faction to grow and have interactions with other factions until it has grown enough to split from that faction like what S-6 did with 188604.

 

[Alex Hart]

That a roadmap or list of steps to go through is a great idea, but somewhat off topic for this thread. However, subfactions create the issue of new subfactions being abandoned and then just growing an existing faction because of that.

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

Honestly, I'd like to see it based on posts rather than time. Anyone can register an account and just wait it out. But I like the idea of encouraging people to be active members of the community.
Can you give an example of what you mean by a road map?

I disagree with post numbers if thats what you're saying. Thats the kind of thing where we get people double posting and making multiple, short, low quality posts just to increase a number.

*edit.* Maybe we can come up with a system like posts and time. im not sure. But you're also right about the waiting part. I think that people who do that, Just doing very little and waiting that time out without RP'ing arent the kinds we should let make factions in the first place because it shows poor RP'ing behavior and conduct

 

[Miko]

Sure Wes,

Having a faction to me is a pretty big deal. So having a general idea of what said faction aims to get done short term can help flush out direction.

For example I have kicked around the idea of having a Belmont plot ship. What I am working on now is a short agenda of what I plan to do with said plot ship. Same can be said with the Compound. I talk about this openly in Discord to feel out if this fits.

End of the day we want every faction to be a success and bring new possibility to the universe.

 

[Rascaldees]

My personal stance is this:

A faction can be a useful tool in an arsenal of any DM, GM or storyteller. Simply the whispers that it exists can be enough to motivate a character or faction to take action. Take for example a whisper of a rebellion in a plot. The rebellion might not actually exist but it can be an excellent hook for one to start.

Not only this but if all players must start as a part of another faction that means the culture of that character will be heavily influenced by it. This is a really good way to quickly create many copies of the same exact culture with the same ways of thinking about problems. If all players start in a faction, why would they ever bother leave? They'll become invested in plots which can quickly stagnate.

There are many dozens of reasons. I can keep going if need be but limiting new players to only playing a character DOES limit them. If they can't run a faction how can they play a leader? Diplomat? Perhaps a foreign dignitary? How about an Admiral?

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

One thing about that, @Rascaldees is that you can make as many characters for as many factions as you can stand. you dont have to force yourself to play yamatai all the time. And characters arent bound by faction. An ex yamatai soldier can go and play in nepleslia and vice versa.

And plot wont stagnate if you give them your time and attention.Like characters you can be in as many as you want. Some of us play in multiple factions while Leading a faction. Im the CO-FM of a faction and i play in indipendent as well as yamatai just as much as my own nepleslia. And the full FM of my faction also plays in other factions.

For the rest tho there is a setting discussion and places you can advertise and recruit for plots. But for factions its 1000x easier if you've RP'd, know the setting, and people have played with you and you with them. They know how you write and rp and your dedication and might join you.

And i would reverse what you said and instead propose how can you run a faction if you arent willing to play a leader, diplomat, or etc. first? That might turn people off if you arent willing to RP with them first and just want them to come to you when you wont do the same for them.

 

[Alex Hart]

Players can play more than one character, and generally they do. It's extremely common for people to play in multiple factions, even after playing in their first one. I'm not sure what you're talking about with copies of culture or rebellion. Characters don't all think and solve problems the same way within the same faction, far from it.

 

[Rascaldees]

What I am saying is that for some people they become heavily invested in a 'main' character, so to speak. Typically for myself and people like me, it will be the first character we ever use on an RP site.

We like to see not just their successes and failures but we like to see the story take them places that they never thought they could go before. With the group I'm bringing in there's a crashing of cultural influences, scientific ideas, morality, philosophy and so much more that may never have existed in this universe, coming to a universe that they have no idea what anything is! Even the language is different!

There is so much possibility and potential for an RP like this. It has not only the potential to express new cultural ideas and provide political, economical and social commentary in an indirect and constructive way but also has the potential to inspire others to think in new ways.

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

And what the site offers isnt good enough for what you envision?

We already have all of that. And you can still do that, But why be in such a rush to do it that you refuse to even try to join other plots and factions like they are going to steal your creativity? Im not trying to insult you but i cant find a way to word it out other than i wouldnt want to be part of a faction with someone who refused to RP with me cause he felt his own RP was more deserving and i should be interested in his instead after he shafted my plots or faction and said his is so much more interesting!

 

[club24]

I don't mean any offense by this, but have you taken the time to trawl through the entire wiki, researching every faction, plot, and article to so confidently say that these cultures don't exist here? there is a lot in SARP which people don't see without spending time playing and reading.

we have evil groups that experiment, we have the good guys, we have all sorts of reflections of real world cultures.

I've been here since late 2017, i run 4 plots and the only reason i even run a faction is because i inherited it, the biggest i ever strived to create myself was a company which myself and my pal skully have made a lot of articles for. this company has also allowed us a ton of RP opportunities and spans across several factrion, not every GM needs a faction to do what they want to do nor to play important characters, all it takes is discussing your ideas with the FM's of current factions and asking

 

[Toshiro]

Maybe your faction has the potential of being rich and contributing to the setting, I will not judge that at this point. What is an issue is that you cannot have learned enough about the community and setting at this point to properly tailor-make and integrate such a faction into the setting. It is best to start as a player, learn how the RP works and its nuances, then craft a faction after you've gained knowledge of the setting and trust in fellow players along the way. This just seems like you are attempting to import your own narrative upon a community and story you don't know, which typically does not work well. You also need players to join and support you who not only believe that you have a good idea, but that it is a good thing for the setting and that you will stick around and follow through.

You simply haven't earned the trust yet, by any measure.

Roleplay first, learn the ropes, make connections with the playerbase, and see later if the RP is actually a good fit for this faction and vice-versa.

 

[Rascaldees]

I keep seeing a lot of 'so we're not good enough' being tossed around. If this is going to be the case then would it not also stand to reason that my ideas are also 'not good enough'?

There are merits to arguments however the faction I am bringing is also not influencing the entirety of the universe yet. There are many pieces of information people seem to assume rather than verify which is a poor way of making a decision. The first seems to be the size of the fleet which granted, is quite large. However this is also assuming that the fleet has no requirement for maintenance, infrastructure, resources they cannot produce themselves, parts that need to be manufactured and many more problems that all come with being from someplace they simply can't 'go back to'.

Not to mention the language barrier that doesn't seem to exist in this setting given that the 'Trade' language exists which everyone seems to speak. This already by itself opens up various opportunities that can be exploited by a clever and well versed GM.

Morality is a fragile subject. But each culture is going to have its own set of values that, even if the same, will have wildly different ways of going about those values. The Egyptians, as an example, would often loot the tombs of their predecessors once the new pharaoh was crowned with the bodies unceremoniously dumped elsewhere. However it was considered to be a grave sin to them to do the very thing they were doing as bodies could not rest unless properly buried. The Christians for example have a similar philosophy but how did they go about it in the early days of civilization? The same concepts can be applied here to this setting.

Also reading an ENTIRE wiki is time consuming and would take months on its own. It's not only impractical but near impossible because it seems as though every single day new articles are being added and updated and changed. If that's the case that people should read and scour the wiki each time they join then the requirements might as well not be 'three months here' but instead 'read the entire wiki' because it would take three months just to read the wiki in the first place.

Additionally, I still don't see the big deal here. Most of the people that have come to me with a problem have typically been worried because "well you're bringing 3 trillion people" which has been explained multiple times in the span of an hour to the exact same people over and over again that the majority of those are probably going to die before any settling occurs in the first place. Not to mention the majority of that population is currently cryogenically frozen; meaning they're useless unless the fleet decides that they'd like to wake them up and spend precious supplies that they already cannot afford.

Aside from the fact that there seems to be little factual basis other than 'trust hasn't been gained' which is entirely subjective and not based in logic or science as well as the argument that 'that's a lot of people' which is made by people that aren't listening or not asking questions about the faction in the first place; in the end what does it matter? The faction isn't suddenly pulling in three trillion soldiers, it's pulling in a total population of three trillion with only a hundred thousand Marines which is far less than one percent of the population and also on par with most of the smallest factions around.

I don't see a balancing issue. I don't see a lore issue unless someone wants to point out one. I don't see an issue with this faction being here. Not only are all these points certainly valid but the permissions from the site owner were given and screenshots of that permission are available upon request. Certainly if the owner of the setting says that it's fine then there's no reason to worry about there being any potential for upsetting the balances of power or the like?

Not to mention, maybe some of us just like running factions as an RP. Some of us just really like crunching numbers and seeing how the cards fall. Maybe a lot of us just want to bring a fresh perspective on something. As I said before and I will say many times; the only people that are bringing these rules up seem to be people that are upset that this faction is arriving in the first place.

I suppose the bottom line question is:

What does it matter if a new group appears? Surely it's better to be diverse and give players an option to experience wonder from a perspective that simply doesn't exist here?

And before anyone says "well we have that in this setting"... no you don't. Because that's what this entire thread is about. Another faction came from another universe. If that's the case then obviously nothing like that exists here otherwise this thread wouldn't exist in the first place.

 

[Krigsvann]

As writers, I’d assume that we all share a similar passion for roleplaying. For many of us, the ideas that we introduce have likely been things that we’ve constructed over a course of several months or even several years. Upon creating these ideas, as roleplayer’s, I’d also assume that we also want to share what we create with other people. Every writer who makes one idea may always inspire the next writer, and so on. When it comes to different websites, and different communities, one thing will always stay the same; that passion to write. Roleplaying is what brings us all together, I’d say.

What I can also say, is that most of us have likely roleplayed for many years. At that point, the only thing that changes between each website and it’s community is the rules applied to them. Restricting people to certain things on a website for 3 months may be a good thing for people who are new to roleplaying as a whole, but for people like Rascaldees and myself, we come to bring our ideas and share them, because we want to see what we’ve invented come to life. But coming here, I see a lot of “play Yamatai” and “play Nepleslia”, and it almost seems as though you don’t want to allow something new to introduce itself. Nobody is saying “my idea is cooler than yours” or anything, people are saying “hey, I have this idea, can I bring it into your universe”.

Sci-Fi roleplay can’t possibly change THAT much between websites, that you have to be restricted to 3 months of playing something specific. It’s just not possible anymore. Most ideas that people come up with have either already been done by bigger names and franchises, or have been to some degree inspired by them. What I’m saying is that though the rules change a little bit between websites, there’s no way that a science fictional universe can change that drastically between communities. Wouldn’t you say that each universe is at least similar to each other? Now I’m not trying to be offensive, or even say like “oh this isn’t original” or anything, I’m just saying that things can’t really be all that drastic from each other.

Another note, is that this potential new faction that Rascaldees is introducing could be roleplayed as something very tiny, and maybe he could roleplay it as journeying through your universe as a creative way to discover the community and learn more about the universe you all have created. There IS a way for this to be done that may even be considered unique, and not only would Rascaldees’ faction develop, but his knowledge of the universe will too. Rather then restrict people to 3 months of playing Yamatai or Nepleslia, let people discover your universe the way that they find interesting. It may even encourage them to stick around.

 

[raz]

Members seem to be concerned that you aren't interested in learning about a setting that's been established for well over a decade before contributing to it yourself. You seem to want to bring a pretty basic vision of sci-fi with heritage from Earth and call it a faction without understanding how many times such tropes have been attempted and rejected. I think your long post trying to justify it in the face of well-meaning veterans attempting to guide you gently doesn't really help the case, and demonstrates that you seem to be missing their point entirely.

That said, I'm of the belief that it's up to Wes. Although I think you should hold off making a faction until you've cut your teeth with meaningful roleplay and OOC interaction, the worst I believe can happen is that you'll RP for a while before either acknowledging/changing the faults in what you're trying to justify or you'll become disillusioned by a wiki canon approval process that will likely ask you to heavily edit your concept, and neither are particularly terrible outcomes.

Also:

There are merits to arguments however the faction I am bringing is also not influencing the entirety of the universe yet.

That "yet" part is kind of funny. SARP isn't really a game in which we vie for dominance. It's a roleplay with a lovingly-crafted and unique setting. There's no "yet" about it, really, so I think you're looking at the RP here from a flawed perspective in the first place.

Rather then restrict people to 3 months of playing Yamatai or Nepleslia, let people discover your universe the way that they find interesting. It may even encourage them to stick around.

Many players have started out with independent and non-affiliated characters. It does not require transplanting a mismatched setting to explore the SARPiverse without being a part of the site's major factions.

 

[Krigsvann]

Then why is having a fleet any different? Wouldn’t each ship be no different then having a non-affiliated character?

 

[Rascaldees]

Members seem to be concerned that you aren't interested in learning about a setting that's been established for well over a decade before contributing to it yourself. You seem to want to bring a pretty basic vision of sci-fi with heritage from Earth and call it a faction without understanding how many times such tropes have been attempted and rejected. I think your long post trying to justify it in the face of well-meaning veterans attempting to guide you gently doesn't really help the case, and demonstrates that you seem to be missing their point entirely.

That said, I'm of the belief that it's up to Wes. Although I think you should hold off making a faction until you've cut your teeth with meaningful roleplay and OOC interaction, the worst I believe can happen is that you'll RP for a while before either acknowledging/changing the faults in what you're trying to justify or you'll become disillusioned by a wiki canon approval process that will likely ask you to heavily edit your concept, and neither are particularly terrible outcomes.

Also:

That "yet" part is kind of funny. SARP isn't really a game in which we vie for dominance. It's a roleplay with a lovingly-crafted and unique setting. There's no "yet" about it, really, so I think you're looking at the RP here from a flawed perspective in the first place.


Many players have started out with independent and non-affiliated characters. It does not require transplanting a mismatched setting to explore the SARPiverse without being a part of the site's major factions.

Firstly, every faction influences a setting. It's what is referred to as world building. This can be done through who trades with who, what nations are at war, which ones have political ties to one another and more.

Also "basic" scifi? This seems both completely ridiculous as a concept as well as redundant. There is no such thing as a "basic" scifi. If that's the case then in the mainstream media only Starwars would be considered some kind of "advanced" scifi as all the other mainstream scifi medias have referenced Earth. Such as Mass Effect, Star Trek, Starship Troopers and many others.

Additionally I still come around to the point that no one in this thread is even bothering to attempt asking questions rather than simply crying "MOB RULE!" and metaphorically bringing forth the witch to burn at the stake. Maybe I did have a good talk with Wes in voice and had an exceptionally good idea? But no one here will ever know since we're all too busy crucifying the new guy instead of trying to take a logical and rational route about this.

"Many players have started out with independent and non-affiliated characters".

That's great. We're also not many players. We're us. We are individuals. Not the masses. This conformist behavior only breeds the idea that we should all think the same way which is not only a toxic way of thinking but is entirely detrimental to any sort of diverse plot.

Rather than continue trying to simply crucify everything that's new and different... why not instead give it a try?


For example, can you tell me precisely what's in the fleet? Aside from its population. What are they carrying? What are their weapons like? How about their armor? What kind of technology do they have? What's the history of the people that are being brought into the forum?

I would bet money not a single person can answer the majority of these questions and yet we wish to judge before we even know all the facts.