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Implemented The Summer of SARP - Relax Rules to Encourage Expansion

Wes

Founder & Admin
Staff Member
🌸 FM of Yamatai
🎖️ Game Master
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This is a suggestion that, due to:
  • An urgent need for a better gallery of enemy units and other GM resources
  • More AI art than we know what to do with
  • A desire to expand the setting beyond the current sector
  • Wanting Star Army to be the place where your ideas can find a home rather than a big source of work.
We could temporarily relax rules to:
  • Allow stub articles that essentially consists of a cool picture and a brief description of the thing, which could be expanded later.
  • Waive RP requirements for submissions which are primarily located outside of the Kikyo Sector and which include an illustration
The relaxed rules would apply:
  • From May 1, 2023, to September 30, 2023, which we'll call the "Summer of SARP"
If you think we should implement this, give it an upvote using the arrows to the right of this post or below it on mobile.
 
This suggestion has been implemented. Votes are no longer accepted.
(Apologies for the brevity of this - am at work at the moment.)

I really, really like the concept behind this, but with the way it’s currently worded I foresee it causing a few problems down the line:

1. Allowing stub articles doesn’t eliminate the work needed to make them full-blown articles - it just pushes the work further down the line, where it’ll likely get ignored/procrastinated/etc. for eternity.

2. Bad actors - which past experience has demonstrated some newbies to be, unfortunately (i.e. Edto, Rascaldees, etc.) - could easily abuse this to sneak in ludicrously OP factions, tech, species, etc.

3. In my personal opinion, fleshed-out articles are of VASTLY greater utility to GMs then stub articles, because it gives them more to work with - especially when it comes to opfor characters (such as big bads), units, locations, etc. Fleshed-out articles don’t have to be technical manuals, either - they just have to have a bit more then a couple of lines of text.
 
Unless I'm wrong; Relaxing RP requirements and the like doesn't mean it gets a pass in the NTSE and submission process. It seems more that it will waive things like absolute template compliance, needing to have to establish RP before you can even submit it, and the like. Says nothing about not including DrV3, Buildup limitations, allowing magic, etc.

I am also these days a fan of lighter rules for the sake of creation and RP than what we have so it would be a good boost for those of us with so much to submit that we don't want to have to do 50 RP this or that's. Think of it as a rough draft for some that they can expand on later to make better.

More starships without an entire thread are needed before hand, which can take months at the rate of RP, etc. More PA and weapons and locations and etc.

And if it really is a concern I'm sure we can do some temporary thing with struct not that I still understand it for all articles made in that time period and it will have a list of them for the occasional run of players that like going through the wiki to correct all the inconsistencies that happen.
 
I am all for relaxing the rules for the need to have a roleplay setting/thread/thingy yet keep all others the same fits in well.

It will help get certain things that would be approved, but not able to as there is no established roleplay for the thing to get approved and all.
 
I like the idea for things like new enemies. Both the Kuvexians and Mishhu had very relaxed wiki requirements, with GMs and FMs often just putting up stubs on the wiki for plot usage. Was great and really made both factions usable antagonists.

Would not want to see relaxed requirements for existing setting elements where the entire purpose in making an article for a thing is to flesh it out. So it would be nice if pages for existing ships, stations, locations, technologies, and etc. did not have relaxed requirements.

For example, there is no reason for me to make a YSS Kokatsu ship stub page, on top of the existing plot page, that amounts to a stock Azalea picture and “the YSS Kokatsu was a SAINT Chiaki-class that was upgraded to be an Azalea-class in YE 41.” But it’d be great fun to unleash some of my cool stablediffusion stuff in articles about “this is a cool Kuvexian power armor, light scouting type YE 45.” The former is useless in its lack of effort, but the latter has purpose and adds inspiration to the roleplay despite being short.
 
(Apologies for the brevity of this - am at work at the moment.)

I really, really like the concept behind this, but with the way it’s currently worded I foresee it causing a few problems down the line:

1. Allowing stub articles doesn’t eliminate the work needed to make them full-blown articles - it just pushes the work further down the line, where it’ll likely get ignored/procrastinated/etc. for eternity.

2. Bad actors - which past experience has demonstrated some newbies to be, unfortunately (i.e. Edto, Rascaldees, etc.) - could easily abuse this to sneak in ludicrously OP factions, tech, species, etc.

3. In my personal opinion, fleshed-out articles are of VASTLY greater utility to GMs then stub articles, because it gives them more to work with - especially when it comes to opfor characters (such as big bads), units, locations, etc. Fleshed-out articles don’t have to be technical manuals, either - they just have to have a bit more then a couple of lines of text.
Thank you for your input! I can see where you're coming from on those points, and they are definitely valid concerns.

Regarding your first point, I do agree that allowing stub articles could potentially cause more work in the long run. That being said, the hope is that it could encourage more people to submit ideas and get involved in the process, even if they don't have the time or inclination to fully flesh out an article at the moment.

As for your second point, I agree that it is a risk. It would definitely be important to monitor submissions closely and ensure that they are not abusive or overpowered.

And I do see your point about fleshed-out articles being more useful to GMs. Perhaps a compromise could be allowing stub articles, but still requiring a certain level of detail or information to be included in order to be accepted.

Thank you for your feedback - it's always helpful to consider different perspectives on these issues.

Unless I'm wrong; Relaxing RP requirements and the like doesn't mean it gets a pass in the NTSE and submission process. It seems more that it will waive things like absolute template compliance, needing to have to establish RP before you can even submit it, and the like. Says nothing about not including DrV3, Buildup limitations, allowing magic, etc.

I am also these days a fan of lighter rules for the sake of creation and RP than what we have so it would be a good boost for those of us with so much to submit that we don't want to have to do 50 RP this or that's. Think of it as a rough draft for some that they can expand on later to make better.

More starships without an entire thread are needed before hand, which can take months at the rate of RP, etc. More PA and weapons and locations and etc.

And if it really is a concern I'm sure we can do some temporary thing with struct not that I still understand it for all articles made in that time period and it will have a list of them for the occasional run of players that like going through the wiki to correct all the inconsistencies that happen.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this suggestion. You raise valid concerns about the potential for abuse and the impact of stub articles on the usefulness of the wiki for GMs. However, as you mentioned, it is important to clarify what would be relaxed and what would still be subject to the NTSE and submission process. This would help prevent newbies from abusing the system or submitting overly powerful factions, species, or technology. Additionally, using a temporary struct might be a good solution to make it easier for players to identify which articles were submitted during the "Summer of SARP" and ensure that they are properly reviewed and edited as needed sometime down the road.

Overall, I think the need to do new and exciting stuff currently outweighs the need for making each page really high quality. We need to plant some "seeds" in the setting that will grow into the plots and meta-plots of tomorrow. Even having a skeleton of new enemy factions will be a huge advantage because now creators have a theme/skeleton to build on, kind of like how after I made the Mishhu, many players submitted mecha and over expansions for them.
 
I was thinking about this, maybe we could have a special namespace for these articles to go under like summer_of_sarp or something. That way after the summer of SARP we're not left fixing a whole bunch of stubs etc.

Either way, it sounds like a great idea.
 
I don't really think we need a special namespace for them (also some will be WIPs and some will be approved), and they'll probably be easy to find because they'll be in new factions specifically developed for this time period.
 
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