I think there’s also very much something to be said about intentionally discouraging players.
Like, most people aren’t going to be swayed by what a random naysayer posts, but if someone comes into a discussion saying “oh I’ve just tried out x and I’m having fun” and another person’s first instinct is to say “it’s a pity that x is so full of these terrible awful things” when it’s purely subjective it’s just really quite telling about that person.
You don’t get people trying new things if all they’re told is how bad it is by more experienced responders.
I routinely see (and sometimes participate in) adventure and expedition RP events, once I organized a symposium event in Sharlayan, all without being shot down. I know at least two active adventurer RP communities — there are probably more since I haven’t really been paying that much attention. From my experience, the Chaos RPC admins are quite receptive to a variety of RP.
Heck, there was even
Endwalker spoilers
an Ancient gathering in Elpis where our characters exchanged their recent concepts.
The Tavern Roulette isn’t even organized by the RPC staff, it’s the Lynx’s initiative, and it exists mostly so that people have venues of walk-in RP available to them in the absence of a universally recognized open world RP hub.
If your event was denied a post on the Chaos RPC for breaking the lore, then chances are, it was breaking the lore. Since I don’t know of the event in question, and I didn’t see it ever posted on Chaos Archives (which doesn’t care about the lore accuracy of events as long as they don’t break the TOS), I can’t judge.
I mean, personally, I couldn’t really care less about sticking stringently to the lore. All I’d personally expect is an event organiser to slap a ‘headcanon’ or something tag onto an event so that attendees know that things might stray off the beaten path.
I do get the annoyance, I remember back when I still bothered with ESO at some point the RP community was just entirely disintered in doing anything but tavern nights and the occasional marketplace event - as someone trying to get small events going here and there, it felt very discouraging when people were like “oh I’d love to, but I already need to go to the [third of the week!] tavern night”
People are naturally free to enjoy doing whatever with their hobby, but it does get disheartening when all they want to do is the one thing you’re either not interested in, or don’t want to do all the time/exclusively
It’s totally valid to be frustrated by something, but lashing out and blaming people for having different interests and priorities just ain’t it, y’know?
Also refer further up to “people should roleplay what they want.”
Also you kind of blew a hole in that argument if an event being hosted in THAT PLACE you mentioned was allowed to be promoted. How is that not an overstretch?
The Alabama-loving closeness and collusion between the RPC admins and FC leaders is hardly a well kept secret, but not relevant to the topic here. Only the fact that it is ‘approved’ rp by them.
This is precisely what I am getting at. It gets even more frustrating when there’s one ‘community’ that has deemed itself the speaker for everyone else and the arbiter for what is ‘allowed’ and ‘not allowed’ I am entirely within my rights to be annoyed, as I much prefer FFXIV’s worldbuilding to WoW.
But Zodiark as my witness, some of the people there are the most awful i’ve had the experience of dealing with.
“oh that’s cool, unfortunately we’d all prefer to spend every night of the week writing /me sips from drink, smugly peers at the bosmer’s tiny skirt” every time just breaks a man eventually, is all
Every tavern and market should come with people recruiting people for little adventures or random little stories. I mean… maybe not on every tavern night, depending on how often those are. But sometimes just going out and helping someone find their lost key does sound nice.
i play a dunmer, which means its your god-given duty to simply assume im very down to erp and do that loads, and if i dont im a lorebreaker because canonically all dunmer women are women of loose morals, for a lack of better words to get around the funny forum chat filter
I think that should is a bit of a strong word. People should do whatever they like (within the bounds of RP/social etiquette), but I do agree that having those things would improve a hub’s ambience.
I think a huge problem as well both in FFXIV and in WoW is that people are afraid of doing it, and it’s much easier to complain about it and put up a cutout cardboard figure of a made up person and starting to blame all your troubles on the big man that’s standing right there, menacingly, with his eyes of crayon and his face of thinned watercolour paints.
People will personify their fear of rejection towards their writing and either blame it on the elusive concept known as ‘the community’ or pin it on ‘roleplay community that I have beef with’ and call it a day.
After all, it’s much easier to leave what’s troubling you unresolved and associate what’s bugging you with some unsurmmountable brick wall that only exists within the confines of your mind than to just do something about what’s really annoying you.
Quick aside: I just got to the first quest where you meet Laurentius in ARR and am currently lamenting that I can’t just metagame slay him on the spot and ptooey on him afterwards.
also I just want it said as a matter of a personal peeve even though nobody asked:
People who act like every dunmer mage must be a Telvanni. The Hlaalu Battle-Merchants (they’re actually battlemages) are highly skilled mages in their own right who won the Hlaalu-Dres war by obliterating Dres forces. A Hlaalu Battle-Merchant stepping out of a portal was described as the worst case scenario - for their enemies.
Telvanni are powerful mages, yes, but to act like they’re the only ones is a disservice to dunmer lore as a whole. Ca. ESO, the Dunmer are the magical might of the Ebonheart Pact – and the Telvanni are not part of it.
