Fail RP, Rep, and Forum "Roleplay".

[The King Of The Moon 7016]

 

How Did We Get Here?

 

Over the past few years, 'forum RP' has seen a steady rise in popularity.

Back in the day the forums were reserved mostly for OOC socialising and server pragmatism - lore, settlement applications and other player discussions -  whilst IC concepts on the forums were few and far between. Governmental missives, guilds, bounties and the occasional character theses made up the bulk of forum roleplay, which even then were heavily scrutinised by the (often overzealous) Forum Moderation Team. 

 

You need only go back to the Atlas subforum to see how starkly different things were. The further back you go before then, the more distant the then-purpose of the forums seems to the purposes they now serve. Of course there were exceptions, but generally the forums' function in aid of roleplay used to be regarded at best as an arbitrary catalogue for character sheets, culture and history posts, event and group organising.

 

The change in attitudes by and large came about during Arcas, or in non-lotc terms, during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

 

Perhaps more than any other map, Arcas reconceptualised people's perception of Lord of the Craft and Roleplay more generally.  Those of us who were there before and after it saw the community explode with a myriad of faces old and new. The 'Minecraft renaissance' amidst lockdown helped many new players discover our niche community, whilst many older players that'd either completely quit or could only dip in once every few months to say hello now found themselves with the free time to return in force. 

 

Most noteworthy for me, however, was our shift to Discord; that app staff had encouraged us to abandon our coveted Skype Chats and Teamspeak Servers for toward the end of Atlas, which many of us luddites thought would never catch on. We'd seen Mumble and Ventrillo crash and burn - this would surely be no different - after all Skype and TS were tried and tested.

How wrong we were.

At this point there's points to be made that I'm sure some of you see coming, and have seen made before so I won't repeat them. Though in the briefest of terms it was from this point that we became far more OOCly connected than ever before, which came with a number of pros and cons already discussed at length here:

For the first time, many of us were given the opportunity to share our roleplay posts en masse. No longer confined to single-channel chats, personal DMs or the reach of the OOC chats on the actual minecraft server, LotC forum content could (and sure as hell would) now be put before large groups and kept stored in a visible medium for later reference.

In addition to this, the decision was made by administration around this time to merge the Forum Moderation and Game Moderation teams into simply 'Moderation'. Whilst sub-teams have come and gone within the new structure to handle the forums, and there are still Moderators that dedicate significant time and effort to monitoring the forums, there simply is not the manpower to comb through the sheer volume of posts on the forums and scrutinise them in the same way. There also isn't the same design philosophy; once upon a time FMs would call out certain RP posts that overshared IC information as 'metabait', a concept that simply does not exist anymore. 

The impact this had on roleplay is impossible to tangibly measure, though irreparably our view of LotC was changed. Like the real world advent of the printing press, so too did characters (usually handwaved by 'birds' making proclamations known) suddenly have access to mass information from every corner of RP.

For better or worse, IC access to information is now only restricted by how far the player wants to suspend their disbelief.

If you had asked the average Haelun'or character who the King of Oren was in Vailor, they might've been able to tell you it was Guy de Bar. If you asked them how he came to be the king, they'd have probably shrugged and (incorrectly) assumed he inherited it. If you asked them who played the King of Oren they likely wouldn't have a clue, unless they had an alt in Oren themselves.
Why? Because at this point the vast majority of RP took place on the server. If you weren't involved in it, you as a player likely didn't know about it - let alone your character. Though there were proclamations on the forums, most people didn't see them. In fact, I recall as a new player getting the vast majority of my information on nations from minecraft signs on noticeboards... Most cities don't even need noticeboards now. Why would you go check one, when you can just tab out to check your nation's #announcements?

This post isn't meant to look back on those circumstances and advocate nostalgia win out over convenience. Whilst it certainly takes away from IC realism that everyone knows everything proclaimed on the forums - in fact, it's an expectation to keep updated on IC communities and groups; people will call you stupid if you're a human who doesn't know what the Church's stance on Azdrazi is - it's also just now the way of things, that would be impossible to change without excessive 'metaplay enforcement'.

I don't think there are many of us that see this as a feasible thing to reverse, given the 4ish years (far longer in certain circles) in which this culture has become embedded, and I suspect there are even more of us who would be opposed to the reversal - after all, it can be beneficial to RP to receive IC information in a timely fashion. Narratives that would've been far more drawn out or confined to "/msg [!] Bird:" are now able to touch more characters more quickly. This isn't a black and white bad thing, it's just... Different. The server is old, and with its age the world has changed. It'd be silly to expect LotC to remain a stagnant 2011 time capsule, and so this post doesn't hope to 'fix' that.
 

In Defence of Forum RP
 

With Arcas came what, in my opinion, was the most successful Staff orchestrated event line in server history: the Inferi Invasion. Through the coordinated, momentous efforts of @Riftblade, @ScreamingDingo and many other dedicated and talented individuals, the bar was set for the storytelling capability of our community.

Though other eventlines before and since - Undead 1.0, Mordskov, Apotheosis - were in their own ways brilliantly orchestrated, the Inferi Invasion is noteworthy here as the first time in which our playerbase (bolstered by the aforementioned 'Pandemic Generation') had the higher stakes of our lore and IC setting spelled out to them through forum posts cataloguing many criss-crossing storylines and buildup, coupled with the unprecedented level of OOC coordination which Discord had allowed staff and players alike to use in maximising event interaction. 

Though many today gawk at hundred man events, intimidated by an ocean of emotes and the general chaos of handling such, it's important to highlight the utilisation of the forums and Discord really were the first time in our server's history that these were made possible. Every player understood there was an invasion underway, and more importantly so did every character. We all in some way big or small had our personal narratives touched by this storyline, that was made impossible to ignore both on the forums and on our minecraft server. 

So then what problem is this post trying to address?
 

Fail RP

Whilst there is no set definition for this term, and many old LotCers will likely cringe at it as the term itself fell out of fashion in our community many years ago, the consensus amongst online roleplay communities is that 'Fail RP' or 'Non RP' is roleplay rooted not in logical IC interaction but an OOC desire to derail the RP of others, through intentional disruption, trolling or - as I see most prevalently in our own community - attention seeking behaviour.

I'm sure plenty of you have seen myself and others groan and vaguepost about this before. But here's some regurgitated examples:

 

This issue can be described with a myriad of different names. 'Rep farming', 'Twitterfication', 'Reddit RP', though they all stem from the same root, and feed into the same broader issue of what @squakhawk's aforementioned post meant to highlight: metaplay. 

We've all seen this social media style of forum use creeping up over the past few years with OOC quips being poorly dressed up with "my character says:" at the beginning of statements clearly aimed at players, not characters, in the IC context of an empty room. It's nothing new, though this past year in particular has seen the forum roleplay devolve into an absolute quagmire with Moderation accommodating memes and flat out OOC commentary on roleplay so long as it's under a spoiler - which even then is inconsistently enforced.

We're all guilty of doing this at some point or another, myself included, though due to the recent actions of certain bad actors the lines between OOC performance and IC motivation have become more blurred than ever. 
 

Rep Over Reason

 

It's understood without controversy now that social media has an impact on our psychology. You need only look to the countless studies about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram to understand the two basic premises.

 

Firstly, human beings are social animals with an inherent pack mentality. We are instinctively drawn to behave at a bare minimum of conformity to the larger group. This is sometimes referred to as a mob mentality, or crowd psychology. When we see that 'most people are doing X', we're quick to assume there's a good reason for it and follow suit. Regardless of if we want to be contrarian or not, objects of attention draw our attention as well. We all know about the latest big meme because enough people have referenced it in front of us for us to look it up, and probably reuse it ourselves. We've all listened to the newest album because everyone's talking about it - even if only to smugly disagree. There is controversy, though in social media spaces our engagement with popular content is simply a fact of life, due to our psychology and algorithms that feed into it. On this latter point, though our forums certainly aren't built with the same philosophy as other social media sites, we can still see the echoes of (or perhaps precursors to?) it on our front page (current topics not relevant to this post).

 

Secondly, human beings are social animals that crave attention and gratification. We are stimulated by others engaging with us, and what some call 'social media addiction' is a direct product of this. People share posts on social media websites for a myriad of reasons, though almost always the engagement of others - likes, comments affirming the thing you are representing, actions clearly borne of your stimulus - give us a sense of happiness and self worth. This isn't anything new, but it's important in the context of our forums.

These two phenomenons have in recent years changed the way in which we use and respond to the LotC forums, and in turn have greatly diminished the value of actual roleplay done on our server.

I have already mentioned the way in which the relevancy of the forums to roleplay has exploded since the days of Arcas. Once upon a time, interactions done on the server through emotes, builds and mechanics were the be-all, end-all of roleplay.

If characters were Canonist, this was demonstrated by communities coming together for Mass in regular RP, characters being converted with actual emotes and Canonist acts being regularly carried out by characters.
If a character had an opinion on something, it was held personally unless shared with others through actual actions and dialogue.
If two groups went to war, they would march on eachother and fight.

If characters had disagreements with one-another, they would be (or at least, should've been) settled on the server through roleplay.

Whilst all of the above are still options, and still occur, they are no longer the only option. 

 

Roleplay is no longer the exclusive solution to in character issues.
Why?
Because OOC popularity is more useful, and therefore important.

 

For many narratives now, the 'meta' is not to roleplay on the server; it's to make a forum post about it. 

If I want other people to be Canonists, all I really need to do is make an RP post calling them out and get more rep than the other person. Pack mentality does the rest; 'if everyone is upvoting this post calling this guy cringe... Well, he must be cringe and maybe I just lack the context'.
If someone is posting about something my character disagrees with, what I should really do is reply to his post and try to ratio him; 'if this comment has more rep than the original post, it must be right and the other one must be wrong'.

If I want to win a war, my best bet is to attack from the forums first and the server second. So long as my friends can make better memes than the other guy depicting his group as a bunch of losers and my group as a bunch of chads, more will want to join me than him... So long as they don't outrep me first. 

If my character disagrees with someone else, FAR MORE people are going to see things from my character's point of view if I send this "IC" letter to them via a publicly accessible forum post (regardless of if it is meant to be ICly readable by the public) rather than via the server's aviary plugin that wouldn't broadcast my writing to anyone but the recipient character.

It feels right to rep the person you agree with, and it feels right to agree with the person with the most rep. It feels better to get a post that will stand the test of time on the forums buried in rep by my friends than it does to post a fleeting emote in the server chat only to be seen by those involved in the roleplay.

 

At this point there will be those of you rolling your eyes at the mentions of psychology, and there will be those of you that think this is a strawman - that you're impervious to the forum post > minecraft emote mental. But you're not. None of us are. We're all guilty of looking to what's popular and aligning ourselves with it. We all want to roleplay with the group that seems to be winning, and that has the most activity. The forums are where this is most widely broadcast... And this snowballs into the reality of our narratives.

 

Forum roleplay now impacts narrative exponentially more than OOC cabals in 'metaplay chats'. It does far more to determine each and every character's struggles and stories than any IC conversation might. On the personal level, playing on the server is still the best way for characters to develop and communicate, but if you want to push for a movement, no shout emote will ever be loud enough to reach every single player in every nation. No IC spoken word or aviary letter or minecraft book can reveal the OOC popularity of a cause or group.
 

But a forum post can.

Metaplay and Toxicity

 

More often than not, OOC popularity determines what our characters can and can't do. To some extent this is natural; no-one can be expected to join a group led by a player understood as horrible, after all. We have shared values - as players - that will always effect the scope of one another's characters. 

 

Though the difficulty we're now faced with is where the lines blur our OOC and IC conceptions of others. When emoting in context, we filter our interactions through our character. In an ideal interaction your character forms their response to others through their worldview and the limited information available to them, often coming to a conclusion about another character distinct from your own opinion on another player or group.

 

On the forums, however, this filter doesn't exist. Your character cannot rep a post. Your character cannot see or hear other people's comments quipping in response to said post. You, the player, are the target of these narratives whether intentional or not. 

In the same vein you, the player, are performing to other players when you choose to post on the forums. Roleplay posts are by and large written to inform and entertain other players, in a manner quite removed from how you engage with others in your immediate vicinity on the server. Subconsciously or not, therefore, your character quickly ceases to be the medium for whatever it is your RP Post is trying to get across.

 

Whether it's promoting an ideology, publicising roleplay, or looking to slander someone else, you, the player are demonstrating something to others with your roleplay posts. It's how you become visible, which is now an expectation for some communities.
A magic group that lacks a forum presence 'is an inactive circlejerk' in the eyes of most players. A nation without a forum presence may as well not exist. It's in everyone's best interest to the extent that it's a requirement to forum roleplay.

Unfortunately, these semi-OOC interactions are very quick to spiral in a nonsensical manner. We've all seen some dark mage's "nothingburger" post get ratio'd by a based protag character making fun of them in the comments. We've all seen a nation leader blatantly attacked as a player with a meme in a spoiler comment. Not only does this effect our perception of these narratives in a way that without fail supersedes what a character's logic should be, but it also - unsurprisingly - has a pretty awful impact on the communities and individuals they target. 

 

I had typed up a storm giving a recent example, but have since decided this post is more than long enough to get my point across. What I will say is, it is incredibly upsetting to spend hours upon hours roleplaying with others toward a goal, only for someone with little to no involvement and a cursory opposition (who often seldom logs in) to take to the forums and make fun of you "IC". It is exhausting to see roleplay completely invalidated by those who put in the bare minimum effort of Fail RP, to the point where roleplaying on the server feels less and less worth it to those with a mind for large scale narratives. Even then, the small scale is easily diminished and invalidated by a single well crafted post to attack your character or group. 

 

It's easier  to take to the forums. It's more rewarding to take to the forums. It's more popular. 

 

Why bother pouring time and effort into creating narrative on the server, if it's going to all come tumbling down the moment someone funnier or more popular than you decides to make a horribly out of character 'roleplay' post or response clearly aimed at you as a player? 

And why do we, as a 'roleplay community', stand for this kind of behaviour? 
 

The Solution?

 

I hope the sheer length of this post goes to show that the issue is multifaceted. There's a whole host of problem behaviours that need to be addressed not only in each other but ourselves. We each, myself included, need to be more mindful of what weight we give to the forums as a roleplay medium. There are, as mentioned, times when forum RP is not only useful but necessary. 

However if there's a point to be taken from this post it's that the forums should never supersede our server. We should respect our own efforts and those of others more than that, and take in-characters posts as they often are: a few paragraphs compiled in a couple of minutes before being pinged in our discords, more often than not defying our in-universe logic should we decide they reach our characters. They are not the hours, days and weeks of roleplay that they're often up against. They're a one-sided, personal projection of an often OOC perspective.

 

I'm sure at least one person will reply to this with some meme or a "haha didn't read", and chances are that person will be amongst the problem players alluded to earlier, though nonetheless I hope this post can bring out some of your own thoughts pertaining to this issue. To reiterate, the vast majority of the problem stems from player mentality - not just actionable staff interventions.

 

Though, knowing plainly as we do that the green arrows do not exist in our characters' universe, perhaps taking forum rep out of the RP equation would be a good start.

[Karina 1881]

hmm,, ,, u talk about rep farming being bad

and then make a rep farm

how curious 

[The King Of The Moon 7016]

12 minutes ago, Karina said:

hmm,, ,, u talk about rep farming being bad

and then make a rep farm

how curious 

If you're going to be so defeatist as to dismiss this entire thread with a shitpost before you've had time to read it, does that not make you even more of a repfarmer?

In all seriousness though I'm trying to open a discussion about the state of the community we all care about. I'd rather we have a constructive dialogue than throw smarmy quips. Please.

[Epicethan4 948]

Higher forum standards would be nice. Cracking down on meme-posts and OOC stuff. That’s about my only take. That halfling post that got like 200 rep was in my mind possibly the best post that represents everything wrong with modern forum posting. 

Edited October 18, 2024 by Epicethan4

[siglms_ 932]

inb4 all the LOTCers who have the reading comprehension of children say this is a rep farm

 

It's like criticism is anathema

Edited October 18, 2024 by siglms_

[CHARLES THE BALD 2615]

The recent Halfling war was a great example of the new "generation" of roleplayers that have joined our ranks. A 200 rep post that did nothing to advance the narrative, rather it was used to promote memes and other stuff to "get one" over the orcs. The post was a joke and didn't make narrative better nor did it make improve the war itself. The Halflings didn't even try to win the war as I have seen, they turned the thing into an OOC war because they didn't care about the roleplay of the orc community. We should think about where we put our foot down going forward with this type of post. They showed up to the warclaims to do half-assed efforts and their leadership cried in the mod discord. It's not like Lurak didn't do the same either.

 

I would agree with you at a 100%, ever since covid and the allowance of small communities to integrate the realm, it has only led to this type of mentality where people care more about OOC rep than creating a narrative that pushes others to actually roleplay.

 

Not only recently in the dwarves, I created a call to a trial, an IC event and these new generation players created at least 5-10 different posts trying to get rep on the forums and "expose" a situation while they didn't even roleplay. I almost created a ban report for metaplay on a whole nation just because of it. The truth is that they didn't meet IC to create these posts, they talked in discord and obviously I just abandoned the narrative and killed the character and will allow them to do what the hell they want to do.

 

Not only that, I would also include the post by the GMs like @SimplySeo where he asks where murder should be legal on LotC a type of "staff-approved" forum farming where it only encourages this type of action. As much as I like the boys, there are things where we can keep on discord/private convos.

 

If we have come to a place where people do not RP events IC and try to push their narrative on the forums, I'm just not gonna entertain any of the narratives I put forward and my character will find themselves dead really fast. My narratives clearly make people experience emotions, it would be cool if they used that on their characters.

 

EDIT: Yes, the people coming here and trying to meme the post and farm while it's in the right category are a big part of the problem.

 

Edited October 18, 2024 by Charles The Bald

[framalam 837]

i’ve only had the forums for roleplay for two months. i do not think it’s fair to portray the forums as used maliciously because ‘its better’ or ‘its easier to get more people to agree with you’. i had far more success lizardposting irp than i ever have on the forums. the forums, and i think ppl like kunuk (despite the repfarm chudjaks) and royalcrafter show it best, are pure writing and engagement within the narrative. people who use the forums for the purposes you accuse them of are bound to do the same in discords and /messages anyway, and devaluing it for those pesky metapushers is 1. not gonna do anything and 2. unfair. the dissemination of ic info is admittedly kinda crazy though.

 

granted im a newgen so maybe im wrong.

Edited October 18, 2024 by framalam

[Helmet 1454]

11 hours ago, The King Of The Moon said:

...Secondly, human beings are social animals that crave attention and gratification. We are stimulated by others engaging with us, and what some call 'social media addiction' is a direct product of this. People share posts on social media websites for a myriad of reasons, though almost always the engagement of others - likes, comments affirming the thing you are representing, actions clearly borne of your stimulus - give us a sense of happiness and self worth. This isn't anything new, but it's important in the context of our forums...

 

 ...Pack mentality does the rest; 'if everyone is upvoting this post calling this guy cringe... Well, he must be cringe and maybe I just lack the context'...

 

...Though, knowing plainly as we do that the green arrows do not exist in our characters' universe, perhaps taking forum rep out of the RP equation would be a good start.

Appreciate ya spending the time to write all this out.
I do think that the whole "social media-ification" is the largest issue, and an idea just popped up in my head that i'd like to bring out.

Though while it may be a simple band-aid fix, I think removing the visible rep number to everyone that isn't staff would do wonders. Maybe not completely fix the issue, but perhaps help with healing this wound we've made on the narrative.

My hope is that this encourages free thought in people making their own opinions when looking at these things from an IC perspective, and also actually have people express their irp opinion of a missive or post in character- but then again half the forum posts in #announcements are followed by some manner of "rep pls."

 

EDIT SOME 10 HOURS LATER:

11 hours ago, The King Of The Moon said:

Though, knowing plainly as we do that the green arrows do not exist in our characters' universe, perhaps taking forum rep out of the RP equation would be a good start.

I skipped this part at the very, very end when writing this comment
literally the last f*cking sentence

gonna end myself now

Edited October 19, 2024 by SlitheryC1

[Andustar 4143]

I think you raise some good points as to how a lot of the narratives we develop on Lord of the Craft are now shaped outside of roleplay. Nowadays, there are many more instances of communities being opposed to one another based on lines that were drawn in OOC, and the toxicity that comes with those divisions is enough to put anyone off playing for a considerable length of time. Whereas before our interactions on the server had a significant impact on our choices playing the game, Discord has undermined that in a way Skype and Teamspeak never really could, perhaps due to a lack of accessibility by comparison.

That said, I'm not certain this is a new thing altogether, but rather something that has become more pronounced in recent years with changes in how we use social media. Going back to Vailor, I can recall a lot of 'rep-farm' posts being put up during the Dukes' War and the later rebellions during the time of the Fifth Empire. Nation leaders have always been targets in said posts as well, as many people consider them the face of their overall community. It would have been harder for people to distinguish who exactly the nation leader (the player behind the persona) was years ago, but the herd mentality, and the narrative that this faceless individual was 'cringe' or needed to be wiped off the map, I do recall quite vividly. 

The cliques that expected a specific trend in roleplay were also present, they just weren't as immediately obvious as they may appear to be now. The infamous 'Coal Miners Union' is often referenced as the prime example of back door schemers, though perhaps this is somewhat overplayed as a bit of boogeyman. It's a matter of size and visability in my opinion - Discord servers platform larger friend groups with greater ease, whilst simaltaneously making them more visable than your typical Skype chat.

 

The easiest solution would appear to be for people to come to an agreement on enforcing higher standards. Yet, we have seen with the recent application of the metaplay rule that people frequently disagree on what exactly these standards should be. They grow hostile to one another, point fingers and then let the tensions feed into whatever OOC disagreements already exist. Character-bleeding then occurs and the OOC hostility translates into roleplay animosity.

Honestly, I think the better question to ask sometimes is why are people so attached to this server? What does the experience it provides mean to them as individuals? An easy thing to say at face value, and two questions I should definitely ask myself often enough. In short, I think that as the standards for creativity have grown, so too have people come to view Lord of the Craft as less of a silly game and more a passion project. A creative outlet which we, as a community, inevitably get defensive over in the same way you would treasure an original painting.

[The King Of The Moon 7016]

33 minutes ago, framalam said:

1. not gonna do anything and

Removing rep prevents people from posting exclusively for attention and trolling. You strip the opportunity for horrible attitudes to be validated.
 

33 minutes ago, framalam said:

2. unfair.

If you see the green arrows as a sought and earned thing that it would be 'unfair' to remove, then you're not seeing the forums as a medium for storytelling and bolstering server roleplay. You're seeing it as a subreddit to farm karma on.

I think rep is a useful metric for popularity, which often can be helpful (albeit the extent is debateable) on OOC topics like staff announcements, feedback and lore submissions - all separate to the Roleplay Subforums this topic is exclusively referring to.

Rep adds nothing to narrative. For the reasons mentioned it often detracts from narrative. It is a net loss to the purpose of our server as a roleplay medium.

 

I'm advocating steps to strip away the most tangible incentive for and enabler of Fail RP, Metaplay and Toxicity. I'm also hoping for people to challenge themselves on their personal use of the forums; something no amount of staff intervention can change overnight. 

 

I'm not advocating the removal of forum RP altogether; If you're posting to creatively write, and share information that your character wants shared, you can and likely will continue to do so without social media validation.

[Nectorist 12869]

Very good post. As the server is shifting to a newer, younger generation, they’ve brought over the Internet culture and morays that they’ve grown up with. Twitter and Discord are now the most prominent vehicles of online socialization instead of scattered forums and chat rooms. The former two promote a far greater association between your online persona and who you are in real life, they promote greater attachments with mutual friends, they promote group identities and cliques and all of that.

 

I act differently on here than I do irl because I feel that I’m mostly just playing a character online. I don’t have many strong personal attachments with the people on here. I don’t divulge much about myself. It’s not unique to me, but it’s just how things were done more in an earlier age of the Internet. I see a very clear separation between what happens on here and what happens in the real world, neither really affects the other.

 

From newer/younger players, I’ve noticed the lines between real life and what happens online get blurred a lot. They’re very quick to share personal details, make friends and emotional attachments, and really get invested in server in such a way that it often becomes a strong part of their life. There isn’t as much distinction between who they are as a person and who they are on here, so their actions- their RP reputation, the amount of likes they get on the forums, their ability to “call out” other people, becomes a lot more important. It’s why the forums become such a great place of emphasis, because it’s where your identity, your persona, is seen by everyone and contributes the most to your reputation.

 

However, I don’t actually think this is totally a generational thing. It’s also an age thing. When the old generation here was younger, we had a thousand or more scandals about cliques, petty beefs between power groups that dictated roleplay, and weekly e-relationship drama. Sure, it didn’t spill over as much on the forums aside from those 300-upvote “takedown” posts, but beating someone in a warclaim and driving them off of the server became a clear testament to your OOC supremacy. Doxxing people’s information and spreading ERP logs were commonplace. It mellowed down a lot as we got older, but now has resurfaced a bit as younger players have begun to join again. 

 

Younger players will have a greater attachment to online communities and put a high priority on the clout that they receive from them. Especially now, when Twitter takedown threads and Discord friend groups are a core part of their Internet upbringing. I don’t think it’s a bad thing inherently- we mirrored a lot of those same things when we were young, and we were definitely a lot nastier- but it’s hard to really hard to deal with this through the rules. I think a lot of the problems that have taken root will sort themselves out as players get older and mature more, but I agree that it has contributed to an overall drop in RP quality.

[salamanderfantasy 1340]

31 minutes ago, Charles The Bald said:

The recent Halfling war was a great example of the new "generation" of roleplayers that have joined our ranks. A 200 rep post that did nothing to advance the narrative, rather it was used to promote memes and other stuff to "get one" over the orcs. The post was a joke and didn't make narrative better nor did it make improve the war itself. The Halflings didn't even try to win the war as I have seen, they turned the thing into an OOC war because they didn't care about the roleplay of the orc community. We should think about where we put our foot down going forward with this type of post. They showed up to the warclaims to do half-assed efforts and their leadership cried in the mod discord.

 

I would agree with you at a 100%, ever since covid and the allowance of small communities to integrate the realm, it has only led to this type of mentality where people care more about OOC rep than creating a narrative that pushes others to actually roleplay.

 

Not only recently in the dwarves, I created a call to a trial, an IC event and these new generation players created at least 5-10 different posts trying to get rep on the forums and "expose" a situation while they didn't even roleplay. I almost created a ban report for metaplay on a whole nation just because of it. The truth is that they didn't meet IC to create these posts, they talked in discord and obviously I just abandoned the narrative and killed the character and will allow them to do what the hell they want to do.

 

Not only that, I would also include the post by the GMs like @SimplySeo where he asks where murder should be legal on LotC a type of "staff-approved" forum farming where it only encourages this type of action. As much as I like the boys, there are things where we can keep on discord/private convos.

 

If we have come to a place where people do not RP events IC and try to push their narrative on the forums, I'm just not gonna entertain any of the narratives I put forward and my character will find themselves dead really fast. My narratives clearly make people experience emotions, it would be cool if they used that on their characters.

 

EDIT: Yes, the people coming here and trying to meme the post and farm while it's in the right category are a big part of the problem.

 

NOT gonna argue it bigtime in the comments of someone elses post, but i dont think th halfling post w/ a handfull of memes is the best example here. Yep; it got big rep. No, it had no affect on the war longterm. ppl thought it was funny, and then that changed nothing about the war's outcome in the end. dont think its the best example of whats being talked about in the post above if the topic's ppl tryin to influence RP through makin popular posts

[CHARLES THE BALD 2615]

2 minutes ago, Nectorist said:

I act differently on here than I do irl because I feel that I’m mostly just playing a character online. I don’t have many strong personal attachments with the people on here. I don’t divulge much about myself. It’s not unique to me, but it’s just how things were done more in an earlier age of the Internet. I see a very clear separation between what happens on here and what happens in the real world, neither really affects the other.

 

I'm from that generation, while on here I am known as a ruthless hacker, doxer and someone who has gotten banned 10++ times for infractions, most of it is to entertain people and make them laugh. In real life, I am the first one to pour tears when a show hits me hard, buy flowers to people, invite people over and be generally kind with other human beings, thanks to the administration, I've been allowed to show that side of me and get unbanned everytime but yeah

 

When I see the threads of the people leaving LotC and see it causes them anxiety and other mental problems, it saddens me because Lord of The Craft should be an outlet for your creativity. It shouldn't be the place where you try to socialize with others using a character that's not like how you are IRL. In 2024, people get too attached to their "first experience" with someone and when they actually get to know that other person it usually fixes all the problems they first have with them. It's just a continuation of modern dating practices where guys/people are just a face you can swipe to the left or right and forget.

[Karina 1881]

1 hour ago, The King Of The Moon said:

If you're going to be so defeatist as to dismiss this entire thread with a shitpost before you've had time to read it, does that not make you even more of a repfarmer?

In all seriousness though I'm trying to open a discussion about the state of the community we all care about. I'd rather we have a constructive dialogue than throw smarmy quips. Please.

It just feel like the point has been beaten to death especially over the last three months. Maybe I'm cynical or jaded but partly due to the fact it is a newer generation of RPers, it's not something we can just push our glasses up on and change overnight. The halfling war stuff (as has been pointed out) is a generally good example of this. Constant OOC toxicity for people effecting their slice of life spaces. 

The flipside is that the grass is always greener on the other side, right? I've heard from a lot of oldheads that in regards to even the issues you speak of - things were WAY WORSE back in the days. I can't obviously speak to that first-hand, but it's from trusted enough sources I have not been given reason to doubt. Places like Sutica, after all, existed. 

If administration wanted to crack down on this behavior, they would. We've seen that with the recent metaplay rules and subsequent bans for community leader violations amongst other things. Having come from other RP avenues, despite the issues LOTC has - it is still LEAGUES above most other mediums in these cases. 

That is to say - I think the doomerposting about it all gets a bit tiring. Yes, there's a newer generation. Yes, the "BG3-ification" of some media is real. But people have been saying that sort of stuff since DnD entered 3rd edition. Things are pretty good right now. I think it's better to enjoy it, rather then beating the same points against the wall. 

 

[CHARLES THE BALD 2615]

15 minutes ago, salamanderfantasy said:

NOT gonna argue it bigtime in the comments of someone elses post, but i dont think th halfling post w/ a handfull of memes is the best example here. Yep; it got big rep. No, it had no affect on the war longterm. ppl thought it was funny, and then that changed nothing about the war's outcome in the end. dont think its the best example of whats being talked about in the post above if the topic's ppl tryin to influence RP through makin popular posts

 

I personally don't think you are not in the place to argue here when you've spent the last weeks on mod discord trying to gather sympathy to your side. The post didn't advance the narrative, the forums are not the place to be funny. Your people/nation knew what they were getting into when creating a nation, they should go see narratives fully and show up to warclaims if you want us to take you guys seriously going forward.

 

You guys went around every old/new player discord to get people to rep it, like do you guys know how to roleplay ? The forums are not the place to get one over others or make funny posts.

 

You are highlighting the big problem and a clear example of that new mentality. It's also quite sad because there are "older" players on LotC that could've guided you.

 

It's obvious you guys cared more about your OWN narratives than creating a major narrative for EVERYONE on Lord of the Craft. It's not because you have a realm that you are protected by outside politics and not interacting with others. You didn't encourage your players to show up to warclaims, you allowed them to cry in OOC. You didn't create a guard force or try to get your people protected, you didn't try to negotiate in good faith IC, you didn't try to talk and rally your people, you didn't try to be better, you tried nothing at all. I can name so many different narratives you guys could've gone through and actually rped out. If you want to be a peaceful nation, then be a peaceful nation, do not try to recruit and host spooks/nations.

 

Sorry if it's rash, but to me, that's the truth.

Edited October 18, 2024 by Charles The Bald