My character arrived in Ojaveda for the first time last night. It has a great look and feel to it! Reminds me of my youthful days in North Africa. Kudos Zon!

- Nova

P.S. Didn't notice the boat design from ground level. 

There's no way to ask this IC...

Although still in the very n00b stage of things it appears to me that one could definitely accomplish what the OP desired IC. A friendly character could pass one item at a time saying "Try repairing this", and so on as was suggested here OOC.

- Nova

Why not make an ok / not ok button?

It certainly warrants an entry in someone's TODO list; if only to make new users sleep more soundly. 

This thread kept me captivated for a couple of hours! It has been the most captivating thread for me on my 2 or 3 days of pouring over the forum.

My status is such a n00b that my PlaneShift character can only be found in the notes.txt file where its family history, alignment and age have been rolled up. Yet this thread touched me very deeply because the topics paralleled experiences of mine in other game communities over the years.

Games and their communities have ebbs and flows. It can be painful if you allow your gaze to focus on the past. My arrival on this forum is my gazing to the future. Such communities can rebound. One cannot force it; yet if you build it right they will come.

There is no question that software growing pains can affect the player base. This must be one major factor with PlaneShift at the moment. Even having worked as a paid programmer; getting things ready for game entry has not been easy for me. Yet once the source code was on my hard drive it became clear how much work has been done on this wonderful project . It is not some bug ridden creation; but a vast project ready to have its wrinkles ironed out; to emerge ready for true Beta Status.

My feeling is that the nuts and bolts of this world; the engine; is about to reach a very stable point. This will give the dev team a chance to iron out the bumps for the non-techies to have a hassle free experience to get into PlaneShift.  If my assumptions are correct then prepare for the player base to grow rapidly.

It is a far thinking dev team to already be ready with two servers. One dedicated to RP and one not. This will work well to avoid future fractures in the community; for with the growing player base expect hackers and slashers that have no idea, let alone concern, for RP. My guess is that the GMs will point them to the proper server and life shall calmly move on.

If there is anything which can be offered to you by me at this point, it is my optimism for this project. To me it is at its true beginning; although you Alpha Testers may think its better days are past.  
 
Illysia, even this lowly n00b cares!


- Nova  

 

To me, by getting too close to one's character, RP loses it's R part, and that isn't very good. One ends up playing oneself. It is very difficult to play a consistent role for a long time; even a strong stereotype.

We are in total agreement on this point!

If we look at RPing like any skill then we can probably agree that it is something which one hones over time; or conversely is something that one will simply not get; just as some folks get better at playing the piano and others do not get much farther than Row Row Row Your Boat.

That said there were two approaches which are commonly used in my rpg world. One was to let the characters procreate. In that way it is not OOC to have the character's children have traits of the parent character. In other words it is a way to allow those players that simply play alter-egos of themselves to continue to do so in an IC way.

Another approach is to only let such players play certain character types; that is ones that are not all that different than themselves... normally humans.

Such an approach may be something to consider for PlaneShift. That is, when starting out; unless sponsored by a PlaneShift GM; all new players can only play Human types. That is something they know something about and will be less likely to play them OOC. Once they have proven themselves to be able to RP a human then more character types will be offered them during character creation. In this way a progression of character types could be added to their character creation list as time goes on.

With GMed RP Events in PlaneShift; it seems like a perfect opportunity for GMs to assess the RP skills of the players and allot them RP Skill Points in that process. This would also probably make RP Events a more saught after pass time. An old GM of mine used to use Karma Points which he allotted for good RPing. The player could then use those Karma Points to go deeper into the list of character types that they could create in the future.

Just some thoughts to deal with a situation that is not likely to go away.

- Nova

It seems it was in error to report to moderators about links in posts which are now dead. This was discovered after working my way through the forum to the topic below.

http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=35710.0

My apologies for the 4 reports which were made via the Report to moderator link.

My suggestion would be that the link be retitled to Report Abuse to moderator.

Do moderators want to be informed of postings that are now outdated, in terms of links in the posts?

If not, then my suggestion would be to create an Archive area which would contain old and out of date postings and threads. This would help new forum members, as myself, to know that that area is not expected to be current and should be saved for reading once the current threads have been consumed.

- Nova

Most of the reasons given so far seem to be summed up with LigH's comment...

For the "better second life".

Interestingly, that does not match my allure to the genre. To me the characters have a life of their own. It is not a second life for me. It is their life and the dice (on traditional rpg sessions) let them express that life. Perhaps it has been my experience of running an rpg world that has allowed me to see that the dice do, in fact, tell the story if we are open to listening to them.

If the dice are listened to, then the characters express themselves. To me the player is like a fortune teller to the characters. The fortune teller does not live their life through those whose fortune they are telling; yet helps only as a guide. To me, the character is not doing the things that would normally not be my choice to do in life; but are doing what they want to do. What the dice tell us they desire to do.

The second life concept is not foreign to me. There is one player in my world that goes from one Knight/Fighter/Beserker to the next playing countless numbers of the same alter-ego over the years. He enjoys it and finds great entertainment in it. He plays them well as he is playing his alter-ego. It is not my intention to dismiss that style or put it down. Yet to me the art of rpging is to find the life of the character; not to give them the life one has never had. To let the dice tell you what the character desires and by listening to the dice they will tell you who the character is. Oft times it can be a great surprise as the dice helps the character define themselves.

Once we know them well; then we can play them well; as we know better what they would say and how they would act. Yet that phase of getting to know the character; by how the dice define them; is my great attraction to Role Playing.

First a hello to one and all.

There is a possibility that many potential forum users are being missed. This conclusion was reached prior to finally gaining access to the forum after a few days of trying.

The first problem started when trying to register using a chebucto.ns.ca address. When this was attempted an error message reported that there had been an error; although it did not specify what the error was exactly.

Trying again with an alias for the same account the same error appeared.

My thought at that point was that a ban may have been created for chebucto.ns.ca due to a problem user.

My next thought was to access the chat to see if any help could be found there. A non-tech GM suggested that there were some problems with some accounts and that he could assure me that if a gmail account was used that all would be fine.

Next a gmail account was created and, again, registration was attempted. This time the error which was returned was more specific. It said that multiple accounts could not be created from the same ip address.

This lead me to packing up my computer and visiting my brother's house. Here registration was successful using the newly created gmail account.

If it looks like only gmail and yahoo email accounts work properly, then perhaps this could be suggested somewhere in the registration process. My guess is that not everyone would be able to pack up their laptop and try another physical site and consequently many users may be lost in the process.

It should be added that an attempt was also made trying to clear out all phaseshift.it cookies.
 
Anyway, nice to be here... yet it seems only possible to those  determined enough to do so.