Best spots for RP?

Herenicus

As a dude who's been picking off RP and admin-leadership for 10 years, I strongly recommend a measurable effort to contain or correct for lazy RP, generally. Even non-fascist cities should have a serious sense of mission; excessive goofiness on the city channel or in the main square makes recruiting adults from those cities practically effortless.

Aodfionn

Destria said:

Aodfionn said:

Depending on the character you want to make, I think Targ and Eleusis have the most undeveloped RP potential for badassery. 

Can you elaborate on why?

1. They're factionalized and mostly led by active, cool Divine. 

2. Their activity/ideology is still being shaped and is relatively new (Rory/Whocalion combo is only a couple RL years old now, the latest round of anti-city propaganda is still a relatively recent development. The downside to this is that there's not nearly as much canon and RP background on the ideals that you might find in, say, Mhaldor. The upside, though, is that you as a player are placed in a better position to be able to help be the one who irons that shit out for future generations.

3. Both are pretty much at odds with the rest of the game for one reason or another, so you'll never find yourself wanting for conflict RP potential.

4. The roles of militant Good and militant forestalism are just rife with badass. The former has room for all types, from nearly-mad scientists types to preacher/teachers types to insane face-crushing warrior types (hi @Mithridates) to sneaky/subterfuge roles, all held together by a factional philosophy that I personally find to be fascinating.

Good's a cool ethos when you get into the meat of it, and Good 2.0 is still 'new' enough that there's a lot of philosophical and practical challenges to help iron out. Having an active, engaging, and just overall wonderful set of Divine really helps make the faction more fun. It's a smaller community, so it's less intimidating than some of the larger cities and easier for a young character to make their voice heard on a city level, so to speak. Plus we have Aurora, which really just means everything else is icing.

Artemis/Gaia-style forestal is probably the most badass ethos/theology/RP concept in the game. The idea of Nature's sons and daughters rising up like zerg-style savages to tear down city walls is just too freaking cool.  On top of having a monopoly on the quasi-Fremen/Na'vi role that I enjoy so much, they also have two very active and very much awesome Divine for their faction, as well. Artemis has probably the coolest and most detailed realm/lore of any of the Divine I've had much interaction with, and the environment in her Order, at least, was always stellar.

Destria

...I think I may need to roll a forestal newb too. Always was a fan of princess mononoke.

Ayami

Agreed! Eleusis/Targ have some of the coolest ethos and gods, and I wish I could've found a place better in Targ at least.

Sybilla

Herenicus said:

As a dude who's been picking off RP and admin-leadership for 10 years, I strongly recommend a measurable effort to contain or correct for lazy RP, generally. Even non-fascist cities should have a serious sense of mission; excessive goofiness on the city channel or in the main square makes recruiting adults from those cities practically effortless.

You say that as though it's a revolutionary new idea nobody has thought to implement before. From the outside looking in to name a couple, I have seen people like Tharvis police behaviour in Hashan, and people like Aodfionn driving the proselytising mission in Targossas - whether they're representative of a movement on an 'up' in their respective cities, or whether they're disgruntled individuals with little sway or support is a different matter (I would hope it's the former, though I could see how the latter may still be plausible).

To quote Ayami:

Ashtan: More RP than is given credit for, though it can sometimes be hard to find because the most serious RPers are either high-ups that are often busy or in the Occultist House which isn't that big. It's kind of aimless other than said Occultist House though, (and Vastar maybe), so I always felt like I was just RPing for the sake of RP if that makes sense. There are fairly frequent encounters with people blatantly not trying to RP, though. 

You could see how this might be discouraging on both sides of the fence for those who are either unfamiliar, or intimately involved. Those Ashtani outside of the Occultists hear that on the whole they're no good at consistent RP (whether rightly or wrongly), and those within the House could feel as though there's little point interacting with outsiders because the 'best' interaction comes from within. This inevitably creates a schism and makes it incredibly frustrating to make any headway in a more positive direction.

But my point isn't to rag on the Ashtani situation, merely providing an illustration of an environment which I'm certain is not unique to our text-corner of Achaea. 

So, "As a dude who's been picking off RP and admin-leadership for 10 years", maybe you can appreciate that those of us left behind with our... um, truncheons in our hands, have a harder time climbing uphill without the support of "adults" when we're having to run after our crèche.




 @Destria asking Aodfionn to elaborate on why: likely for the reasons mentioned above. I am not intimately familiar with either city, so this is only an outsider perspective, but from what I can tell both have smaller populations with enough 'power vacuums' or rather opportunities for charismatic people on the rise to forge a name for themselves. 

Eleusis has just undergone a Renaissance (with Event news 496 (495?) giving the summary) so there's plenty of new traditions to be created, a stronger identity between the new Houses, likely new ties between Houses and City - in short, lots to get involved with.

Same can be said for Targossas, which is the newest city in Achaea and is still growing from what I understand. Again their population seems a little smaller, they have recently recalled Devotion (so Priests and Paladins) to their city, which means they have likely ruffled a few feathers with Cyrene and would therefore now be forging a stronger purpose and higher personal standards for themselves.

Ayami

I certainly didn't want to drive anyone away from Ashtan! The Occultist house is just by far one of the best RP environments in the game (and many other games, to be honest), and it's kind of hard to look at it and compare almost anything else favorably to it. It's a house where even the novice requirements are fun and involved, and it sets the bar so high it'll inevitably cause some disgruntlement with any organization that surrounded it. Honestly, I dread the Ashtan renaissance because if the Occultists are lost that'll be a tragedy for the game.

Xinna

The Harbingers in Targossas have some neat things going on, to be fair. I cannot really get into Targossas, myself, because I hate the structure of the city and Houses. The Dawnblade seems far too combat-only, while the Harbingers require you to do far too much non-combat work for my liking. It is why I am very happy with Mhaldor's House structure, personally, which encourages at least some activity in both combat and non-combat activities for everyone and does not require you to do too much of one thing (it is also very flexible and individual-driven, so if you wish to do almost entirely one thing, you can do that too).

If you are interested in Good RP, and wish to specialize in sermons, rituals, etc., you might find the Harbingers to be a very good environment for that, though. I just dislike having to write 18,000 sermons/rituals/etc. and do combat purely as a "spare time" activity. I'm more of a one sermon/book/ceremony/conversion attempt every once in a while, pk the rest of the time, type of person. And Mhaldor facilitates that mix of activities extremely well.

I played a character in the Occultists for a very long time, and the environment there was excellent. There's no telling exactly what will happen in Ashtan, though, since they have not undergone the Renaissance yet.

I don't have much experience with the other factions. I could not find much of a place in Eleusis - but I agree they do a lot of rituals/ceremonies if that's what you're into. I found it much harder to find day-to-day interesting RP interactions, there, though.

Penwize

Xinna said:

I found it much harder to find day-to-day interesting RP interactions, there, though.

You must not have looked very hard, because I get them with regularity!  The best thing about Eleusis, in my opinion, is that it is so heavily aligned and driven that you get a lot more ordinary character RP than you do rituals/forced RP, which I vastly prefer.  I really don't like the whole "yes that was a great RP.  Let's have another great RP some time!" business, and prefer things to be more fluid.  Eleusis gives that to me, even if it means I get into a lot of arguments because of it.  There's a pretty broad range of characters in Eleusis, each with their own motivations, and they all clash pretty regularly.  It keeps things very interesting.  Yes, I bitch about them from time to time, but that's just a sign that it's working.

Ayami

Well, Mhaldor has that too (in droves), and Xinna's from Mhaldor, so that's probably what she's comparing to!

Destria

Thanks for all the input! I think I'm going to go with forestal, and might bring some friends. I'm looking forward to being frienemies with all yall!

Multon

If you are going to be a forestal @Destria then that is just all the more reason to comve visit the red square!