JBRam2002

Persona - Academic Akrasia

@GarlandDaHero I believe she is ~

Omega Station / Boop!

Start Recording.

So... according to my phone, it's been about ten hours since the breakout. Oh, Ryobi here. Found a friend. Say hello, Kitt.

...Hello?

Thanks, Kitt. She found me, wants me to go to the Captain. I've got some other plans right now. As far as I know, we've lost a lot of the guys on duty during the breakout: Karsh, Windham, Hedrych... maybe Gris and Davis if they don't pull through. The Captain and Doc are ok, as well as Benton. Shoulda known that sonofabitch would make it when Karsh died. No word yet on Warden Pryce, but I'm looking.

Those shits were smart. Cut most of the communication, so this phone is good for nothing but these messages and a flashlight. Gonna keep this off most of the time to save battery. At... uh, I dunno, two-thirds or three-quarters left. I've got nothing else useful on me. Gotta find some way to defend myself. Otherwise, Kitt and I are toast if we meet someone.

Cap wants us to meet up back at the office. I'm having a hard time trusting anyone, but Kitt says they're legit. That's all fine and good coming from Kitt, but I'll have a hard time believing it until I see it for myself. No offense Kitt, but your models weren't exactly built with empathy in mind.

None taken, sir.

Would be nice to get to medbay. This cut is pretty nasty, but by the sounds of Gris and Davis's condition, I made it out easy. Just a bit of a headache when I move too fast.

Anyways, should get to Jan's office in about ten minutes. Cutting this to save battery. Found the button to hit so I don't sound like a dumbass at the end of these. ...Says it's still going. Shit. Oh, here we g--

~ = + = ~

Ryobi shut his phone down and put it back in his pocket. Hiding in the prison's cells might have been a stroke of genius, but it came with a cost. There was little in the way of weaponry on this side of the bars, but he knew shivs were made and hidden all the time. Problem is, the prisoners needed to be crafty with their hiding spots, and they might have taken most of their makeshift knives with them. On the plus side, he knew most of the prisoners and which ones didn't care about solitary or longer sentences. Hell, most were serving life anyways.

Were being the key word. Now they were loose. Ryobi turned the corner to one of his least favorite cellblocks. This is where they put inmates with last names starting with G-L. One of the first cells was Gardea's. Ryobi shuddered as he sifted through the items left behind. The woman was a packrat, or perhaps a kleptomaniac seeing that she was in for larceny. She had several dozen lighters scattered through her room, but no cigarettes. And of course, she kept a knife tucked away under her spare orange jumpers, tucked into the prison-issue underwear.

Ryobi's mind briefly drifted back to one of his first encounters with her. She had refused to get out of the showers in an attempt to show dominance in a subservient world. Ryobi was forced to carry her naked body all the way back to her cell. Not that she struggled... in fact, quite the opposite. She draped her arms around Ryobi's neck, coyly showing off her privates at intervals. Sure, she was something to look at, but Ryobi wasn't interested, not even after she pulled his neck down to lock lips together. Ryobi had pulled away, of course, but he had requested someone else deal with her in the showers when possible.

Ryobi stood up and waved the fruits of his searching to Kitt. "Got one," he said, exiting the cell. "That was easier than expected. I'll keep an eye out for something you can use too."

Beginner's DnD 5e Game - Group 2

Ulor’s stealthy display of legerdemain was a bit more obvious than he intended, and despite his magical prowess, the captain was easily able to see through the illusion. With his longsword, he sliced through the air, cutting directly through where the piece of paper was held, the sword phasing directly through the illusory writ.

The captain then sheathed his shortsword and waved off his guards. “Look, I can tell you’re really not capable of hurting us without a damned good reason. I’m not looking to pick fights, but you can’t be out here making giant forms of tentacle monsters in the streets. Now, get out of here. Don’t make me put you in chains.” As he turned away from the group, he noticed the pissant who had started to run earlier was still waving sheepishly at the tiefling. A quick whack to the man’s jaw, and he straightened to attention.

“The General is a busy man,” the captain continued. “Lots of people want to see him. If you tell me why you want to talk to him, perhaps I’ll schedule you in. Toss in a few gold pieces, and I might bump you up the appointment list. What do you say?”

Omega Station / Boop!

Home Bay... bodies... Pryce...

This wasn't how it was supposed to be. Sure, working on a maximum security space station wasn't the most glamorous of jobs, but the pay was good and there was enough going on with the space station to keep the families happy. And they were happy, at least as happy as any family could be. No one signed up for a full-stage prison break. Sure, everyone knew it was possible, but the likelihoods were a million to one.

Ryobi briefly considered whether he should have played the lottery more often.

He had met dozens of people during his time on Omega. Some had become great friends; some had left years earlier. Janetta Pryce was one of those people who just happened to click with Ryobi, possibly too much. The warden and he had spent some long nights working together, and some of those nights might have progressed towards things that went outside of the boundaries of "work." He had never told Sayako, but he was sure she had her suspicions. Not that there was much to do about it now. What was in the past had happened, and Ryobi couldn't fix that one time no matter how much he apologized. Or the second time... or third time.

But upon hearing Pryce's name referenced in the same manner as his own, he figured there was little choice he had. "Kitt, let's help out the Captain by finding Janetta. She's probably near her office," he suggested after a moment of silence. Ryobi turned the opposite direction from Kitt and began walking slowly to allow her to catch up. The comment about averting one's eyes particularly gave him pause. "How many have you passed? Officers, I mean." At the same time, Ryobi silently vowed to not avert his gaze. If he stopped feeling, they had already won. Even if it hurt, even if it slowed him down, that feeling showed Ryobi he was still alive. He needed that.

How can we help improve RPGuild? Community suggestions and discussion.

@JBRam2002 I've been an admin of groups over 2000 members large and I think honestly that presence is just as important as taking action. I get what you are saying and I'm not advocating turning moderators into babysitters.

But, on the other hand, having moderators interact with the community is a good thing. I definitely prefer it if the moderators were 'one of us' rather than the ivory tower. And they are just too inactive now for my taste to really get that feeling.

@Buddha

Sure, I think the mods being involved in the community is a great idea (I am definitely one of the most involved members of the community I mod). But it's also possible that some of their community interactions take place off-site (either in Discord or in private threads). I know there are a lot of members here who are active, but they don't necessarily have a lot of recent posts due to the manner in which they are active.

That said, getting the community involved starts with getting those at the top of the community involved with the community (as opposed to them being babysitters). If we want to increase involvement, then having more moderator-led events like the writing contest is a great opportunity.

<Snipped quote by Buddha>
Wait what?????

Where?

Am I supposed to pretend like I don't exist now? (for the sake of clarity, that's a joke)

That's gotta be one of the weirder rules I've ever seen, and I work for a corporation who's favorite thing is meddling dumb rules that make no logical sense.

@Rica

The rule stated in the IntCheck forum is to use FxF tags, mostly for precision.

How can we help improve RPGuild? Community suggestions and discussion.

If you and a few others think their job should be some kind of community coordinator on top of what it already is...okay. Good luck. I've touched on why that may not be a good idea, not that I feel like anyone's listened to me about that in this thread. Fair enough.

At this point I see a couple people pushing a narrative, talking at more than talking with. So my involvement in the thread comes to an end here.

@Ruby

As a moderator on a different site, this is absolutely true. Moderators are not babysitters, nor should they be expected to do any more than their job description (which is essentially to make sure that the basics are covered in their particular area). A moderator typically just keeps an eye on bots and reports, and little more. I'm not sure if there is some additional requirement for the mods here, but complaints about them not exceeding their duties will likely not be very helpful.

How can we help improve RPGuild? Community suggestions and discussion.

1. As someone who roleplays 18+ content, yes please lets add either a tag or a 18+ subforum of some kind. In a pure organization level this would be great.

2. Allowing more tags in general would be nice as well. I have a very open and vast interest in a variety of genres and 5 is way too limiting. I literally do everything but Horror, Arena, Nation RP, and Historical. That leaves a lot of genres with not enough tags to cover it

@Rica

Clipping these two points~

I would love to see the 18+ and non-18+ separated as well. It would make it easier to have visibility for the non-romance 1x1s, and it would basically be a clear indicator when one entered the 18+ section of "Here be dragons." This is something I feel mods could do without needing coding or tags, but it would be annoying to move all the IntChecks there.

In re tags: My first RP that I GM'd covered a fairly wide array of options. I tagged all the things I thought of that fit, and then was informed I could only have 5 tags. I understand from a visual perspective why this makes sense, but could we possibly remove that limit and instead only show the first 5 tags or so in areas where space is an issue? Obviously, this means the system -could- be abused, but that would be something for moderators to keep an eye on. More options for tags in general would be great too, and perhaps even an option to create our own tags (of course if they're not a common tag, searching for them would be useless).

How can we help improve RPGuild? Community suggestions and discussion.

Again, still going through everything so I apologize if this has been mentioned.

At the beginning of this thread, there was discussion about moderation. Personally, I have nothing against any of the mods (haven't been here long enough to know any personally). However, there is one major issue I can see...

There's no report button on the individual posts.

What if someone was being harassed on the forum and didn't know who the mods were to report it? Or wasn't on Discord? What if this was happening in PMs or even on an obscure RP that very few people were involved with, so this individual is the only person who CAN report it? No one is going to publicly report the culprit on a thread. There's no report button either on individual posts or on their profile. The only way to do so is to learn who the Mods are and send them a message.

So if you're a newbie like me, you send a PM to Mahz, who is the most obvious Mod. That doesn't fix the problem if Mahz is afk for a while. Instead, we should have a report button on each individual post (nothing massive or annoying, just at the bottom left and the same size as the Quote button), and a report button on the profile pages. This report button would send a message to a Mod's-eyes-only thread containing a link to the reported section, a comment from the reporter, and the reporter's name (or an option to remain anonymous if that is easy to code).

Of course, the above requires coding knowledge. I know there's a pinned message (pretty much on every subforum) that has a list of the mods and a link to their profile. But unless someone goes out of their way to read the pinned messages (I mean who does that? ... well, I did, but that's cause I'm weird), they won't see that info. Also, it's tucked away near the bottom of a much longer post, and a lot of people will get into tl;dr mode by that point. I feel like having an obvious list of the mods that's posted on the front page would help, but again, requires coding and the report button would be a better option anyways.

Personally, I'd like to give the DMs and co-DMs of a thread a little more power and responsibility in their own threads. Edit abilities, deletion abilities, etc would be extremely useful.

How can we help improve RPGuild? Community suggestions and discussion.

<Snipped quote by Dynamo Frokane>

You could have all of that in the new sub forum. You really want a specific sub forum for the people that open an arena post once a month and then post 4 times and leave again? I don't.

@Buddha

I'm a bit late and haven't read through the previous 6 pages, so I apologize if this has already been said.

I do not understand the need to consolidate the forums. Each section serves its own purpose. Mixing things together doesn't help any of the sections, and ends up hurting. In particular, I'm noticing questions about the 1x1, Arena, NRP, and Tabletop RPs.

Let's pretend this is a bakery. The baker notices that people are buying cupcakes, brownies, and muffins at a lower rate than the other merchandise. So he decides to put all of them together in a closed bin and label it as "Miscellaneous Baked Goods." Well, I personally love all of those, but now I can't find my chocolate chip muffins because they are hidden. When I realize they are in that bin, I now have to rummage through a dozen items I don't want to get to something I do. So if I'm like most people, I won't bother, and the baker will notice that even fewer muffins, brownies, and cupcakes are being sold.

The best part of this site is that the place is split into tiers of dedication and time commitment, and it is easy to find the niche items. Searching by tags would be a great addition to the site, but you don't need to lump everything into a single pile to make that happen. That would be detrimental to the RPs placed into that grab bag.

Think of the muffins, man.

DnD 5e - Beginner's Game

After walking most of the day, a chance to rest was not unwelcome in the least. However, Drajhan felt a sense of unease about the situation. It wasn't because the tense situation between himself and the Giant Kitty had only barely been resolved, nor was it because this small village transformed from a busy congregation to a ghost town in a matter of seconds.

No, these firbolgs had marched the group halfway across the forest with barely a word uttered during the journey. How could someone be so uninterested in new people so as to not talk to them for hours? Draj had a thousand questions he wanted to ask this unknown group, from their food to their culture to their command structure, but silence greeted the first few queries, and the dragonborn at least knew when to drop the inquisition. Perhaps all natives to this forest shared the same talkative nature as their feline compatriot.

Drajhan himself had fallen into a pensive silence during the majority of the march, which likely pleased the rest of the party. He had several unpleasant occurrences all at once in the past day or two. It seemed this always happened to Draj: when the annoyances began trickling in, a downpour of hardships were soon to follow. If any had asked Draj a question during the journey, he had answered succinctly, at least as far as he was concerned, and his lack of a return question was usually enough to hint that the time for conversation would arrive later.

And so now they had arrived, and so had the time for conversation. Pulling a blade on the firbolgs was much less likely to garner a response than it was for Lorenthar, so that was out of the question. Instead, Drajhan graciously thanked their host for the place to stay before turning his attention to the matters at hand. "When may we discuss where to go from here?" he asked the one who seemed most in charge. "The longer we avoid fixing the problem, I fear, the harder it will be to fix it. I for one would be willing to discuss our options over dinner.... We are having dinner, right?"

Excellent. Another problem to worry about.