Fred said:
Pisces could've served as the Nepleslian/Yamataian port, though some could argue that it'd be 'too yamataian'.
Perhaps then Origin's Dawn Station could also be a possible alternative to promote this way? It happens to be situated slightly further northward, which would grant greater exposure to other species accessing the same port (Freespacers, Gartagens, Iroma and Lorath).
I agree with this.
After reading back over this thread more throughly, I also want to point out that generally speaking, it's not going to get anywhere if we jab fingers at Wes and be like, "You did this! Woo!" I mean, essentially this seems like a good idea.
We need an alternative to the traditional plot where the GM is in control, plays the captain, the players play grunts, and the party goes where the GM feels like instead of making its own choices. If we get a player that says "I want to make an RP thread where my freespacer travels the galaxy visiting all the major factions to gain their culinary knowledge" or something I want them to be able to do it. I think that playing a Star Army soldier is a core part of the Star Army RP...but there's more to us than that, and I think giving players some freedom could be a key to making the site more engaging and popular.
I like Luca.
Ok, so what does that have to do with anything?
Luca has the longest-running freeform plot on Star Army. He has a very loose GM style - he lets people write big, grand things, go places, and do anything. The sky is the limit in Luca's plot. But many of the things that make his plot interesting to read aren't the action scenes, in my personal opinion, it's the character interaction and the minor things that go on in the asides. He's dedicated to having fun, but what makes it all an interesting read is that although it's a 'cheap thrills' sort of thing on the outside, on the inside, it's beginning to get pretty deep.
That's a good example of a 'free' plot with a good GM. But even that had a direction - as though plots are stories. If memory serves, another plot is about to be struck up by SSharp that's a bounty-hunter plot that's going to be pretty free and easy; not a military plot, but a civilian or even a criminal plot. To me, that sounds really exciting.
I don't think you could really get that with freeform RP, which is why I prefer SARP to freeform RP forums. Freeform RP is very self-motivated, and requires a burning drive to write something, but it's too easy to get burnt out if nobody wants to RP with you and forcing people to tend to things other than their plots - and really, it would likely be the GMs picking up that particular slack - can burn us out, too.
When I came into SARP I wrote a lot of freeform RP - and then I joined
Miharu, and although I would update my "One Shot" page every once in a while, I have since completely stopped. My GM duties, and the number of plots I am in currently, keep me more than occupied whenever I want to write.
On the other hand, this is a good point.
As far as I am concerned, I think I can kind of grasp where you are going with this. I have one character - Morioka - who exists cross-plot. I used her in the IRC, and she has made appearances in the Gartagen forum with Ira's Redak, and then of course she is available for use within Yamatai broadly as an empire. It might not be 100% traditional, but I find it fun for my own reasons, and although I might not have explained this clearly enough, when I opened a sort of 'officers corps' in my plot it was with this sort of setting and plot flexibility in mind. Most notably, Ember, Kim's character, now has the same flexibility as Morioka. She can go cross-plot, or appear, pretty much, where-ever Kim wants to write her - though logically she'd appear only near the Yugumo cluster as this is where her duty takes her.
I guess, perhaps, encouraging people to make side-characters or NPCs on a similar principle might be fun, but I am not sure it is a viable way to introduce - or keep - new players. Typically, without direction, not only new players but also old hands tend to feel left out of things.
So what I am saying is, +1 to expanding the character creation guide, +1 to encouraging new players, and +? to freeform roleplay.
My question is; what is the core problem responsible for this line of thinking? Is it that we do not have enough GMs to take in all the new players coming in? Are there not enough variety of plots to keep everybody interested? Perhaps if we knew the core problem we could find a cure in a different direction.
