[hider=I might be stirring up the pot a bit with this idea but]
After that rather eventful thread in the News section, it had me thinking about the state of the guild. Sure, the site itself needs some care but not only that, the community itself is sick. There is almost no contribution from the community from the guild in the News or the Welcoming section while Spam, Off-Topic and the Roleplaying Discussion are becoming stagnant, that is when people are not bickering at each other. 

It's not just the Admins or Mods that keep this place running. We as the community are a major contributor to this site with our posting and actions. As a community we can work on our end of things and help bring this site out of this sick phase. I'll be working on a weekly discussion here to try and bring life here but I can't do it on my own so I hope there are others that see this and want to help bring life and activity back to this site. Post and discuss here, stir up (good) activity in this and the other sections and maybe together we can jumpstart RPG into a healthy state.

Saying that, here is my one and final warning about the state of the site, it might be the reason I started this but any negativity brought to this thread about it will (not maybe) be reported to the Mods. If you want to talk in the PMs, fine. However that discussion is over and this thread will not be used to stir up trouble.[/hider]
Rules:
[hider=Read Them]
[center][img=https://web.archive.org/web/20131019011126im_/http://clip2net.com/clip/m12690/1249254097-clip-33kb.jpg][/center]
If you've read the [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/531/posts/ooc]Fundamental Rules of the Guild[/url], you should know what this means. [u]No Fonz, Know Mods[/u] will be the our key rule here. If you are not acting Fonz-cool here you will get to know the mods and depending on the severity of things it can be anything from a warning chat, posts being deleted, the banhammer and if needed (which I hope won't be the case) closing the thread. 

Besides that there are only a few other things I'd like to mention before getting this show on the road:

-Please keep things on topic
Discussion is good! New discussion elsewhere is very good! Taking the discussion away from the focus is a no-no. If you are going down a rabbit trail that is far away from the topic, please take it to another thread, the PMs or anywhere else that is applicable. 

-Feel free to bring up your own on-topic questions
I can only come up with so much content about a topic and as things are discussed, more ideas and questions will be raised so please bring more things to the table :sun

-Please give me ideas!
If I'm going to keep this on a weekly basis, I'm going to run out of good things to discuss eventually. If you like to help out with the weekly discussions or have an idea about roleplaying you'd like me make into a discussion, feel free to PM.
[/hider]

Love them, hate 'em or sometimes assigned to assassinate them, NPCs are something you are faced with while roleplaying. Throughout my time GMing and roleplaying I've seen them being used both as a GM inclusive device while other times they've been free to use by anyone. Sometimes it is even a mixture between these two extremes with roleplayers having a limited use of an NPC or it being a case by case situation. I've seen important NPCs that would have so much details and even an inner monologue written in a post that they almost seem like a character instead of an NPC while other times I've seen an NPC with equal importance that go without the inner thoughts and such with far less background information. Although not as controversial or seen in a variety of ways compared to others things concerning roleplaying, it will be a great starting place for us. 

As a launching point for discussion here are a few questions to get things rolling:
What is your take on an NPC? How much of an importance should be put on them? How should an NPC be dealt with in the IC and who should be able to control them? GM/roleplayers, what has been your experience with NPCs and what has worked best for you in the roleplays you've been in? How is a good NPC played?