TFF's Official RPing Academy

[DragonHeart]

Toph, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you shouldn't be criticizing anyone when it comes to grammar. Yours isn't perfect either. Neither is mine. English is one of the most difficult languages in terms of grammar, for native or ESL speakers. Although bad grammar drives me crazy, I don't think it should be heavily weighted in the grading for this reason. That, and most of the students will probably still be in high school IRL, which is definitely not the place to learn proper grammar. It's more of a college level, or like in my case, self-studied type of thing.

And it's up to you if you want to stay or not but I don't think you're giving this project a proper chance. At least wait for it to actually be up and running before you decide to bail on us. Demonia differs far more from what this club is trying to accomplish.

And call me crazy, but I like T.G's style. It's a real throwback to the old days, TFF's 'golden age' of RP. He reminds me of our old RP vets like T.O. and Mydako. Personally I think the last thing anyone should be doing is dumbing posts down, especially for RP purposes. In fact, I think it's the exact type of post all students should strive to learn. Let us not forget that we used to write with such detail and indeed were expected to. I miss those days.

But, at the same time, let's have fun with this too, shall we? Enough with all the doom and gloom here, this is supposed to be an enjoyable experience. Plus we'll scare away all our students with all this second guessing and doubt.

Just my thoughts on things right now.

~DragonHeart~

Edit: I don't know about anyone else but I've already started my character profile, which is looking to be rather involved as I want to have a very complete character. That said, I have a question regarding the technological level. I'm assuming each continent has a different level of advancement and I was wondering what they might be. I have a character who is not originally from Ivalice, so I would like to know what kind of limitations there are regarding what I can and can't include. This is mostly for background purposes, but it also has a bearing on what skills my character can bring to the table.

[Mistress Sheena]

Actually your grammar and my grammar are awesome. I don't know why you're saying it's not. I mean look at the post you just wrote. The grammar is perfect.

His intro post has nothing to do with what I was talking about. I was talking about his thread on the world information, for pete's sake. >_<

His intro post is fine, but I honestly didn't really read all of it. But from what I read, it doesn't really remind me of the old school.

And as far as I'm concerned, I believe the academy to already be started; It's just that no one is doing anything. >_>; The only one that posted so far is joesteel. I doubt anyone else will.

Just prove me wrong.

[DragonHeart]

Well, I'm still working on my character so it would be pointless for me to post right now. Plus I feel that I don't have enough information to properly 'equip' said character. I have a fairly ambitious idea in mind for her background but it relies primarily on the question I asked in my previous post.

As far as no one doing anything, that may be true but keep in mind you're also included in that category.

I feel that as far as the world information goes, it could stand to be a bit more organized and definitely more in-depth. I'd be more than happy to help contribute to the world's development, if only I knew what needed work.

Besides which, you know as well as I do that things like this take time to get off the ground. I'm just hoping we don't end up like the Clan/Forum Wars.

~DragonHeart~

[Merlin]

While I'm not a member of your little RP resuscitation, I figured I'd point a few things out that might be helpful. I've been keeping tabs on the RP community for quite some time.. since like 2001 if you want to be exact. I have been absent a good while due to life, but I still keep up-to-date and write stuff that is never published. If you feel like nuking my post since I'm not a member, that's up to you.

In any case, I'll point out that I'm not trying to piss anyone off, so don't start jumping to conclusions. Like I said, if it bothers you a ton, feel free to nuke it, you aren't hurting my feelings in the least. I'm just trying to help.

First order of business is Toph. Seriously dude, I like you... but it bugs me every time you jump on your high horse about your writing. You've improved your grammar a lot over the long haul, but IMHO you are not a rp vet. You still have a lot of work to do. For one thing, the majority of your characters are cookie-cutter replicas of each other(a smattering of irony due to your post on singular chars). It disappoints me whenever I read your bios because their personalities, behavior, looks, skills, etc are all so similar. I really don’t even need to read your bios because I can fully grasp the (lack of) depth within the first few lines of your intro. Your archetype is predominantly scantily-clad, full-figured women who use their looks to defeat opponents. You give them certain pseudo-unique qualities, but if you peel back the outer mask they wear, the core is eerily familiar. You need to branch out beyond your little niche and do more interesting and less stereotypical characters. Your characters have no soul… which means the reader can never connect with him or her. That also leads to short posts with no real character development. It is as if you never fleshed out your concept before starting. Your character says a few lines, strikes a pose, and your post is over. Where’s the meat? All I see are potatoes.

Secondly, T.G. Oskar, while I have not read through as many of your posts as I have others, I sense that you have a similar weakness to that of Andromeda. You are capable of developing vibrant, unique worlds rich in detail, but your expression of such detail becomes clunky and cumbersome due to grammar issues. Your grammar is not poor by any means. The main issue seems to be flow. The sentences and fragments simply do not blend together smoothly. I’m not trying to single you out or anything, just pointing out something you might wish to look into. I’ve seen it with quite a few people.

For example, I’ll just use the world’s first descriptive paragraph:

The history of Terran Fas Fafner, due to the constant warfare, is a fragmented, shattered, and almost forgotten one. Few is rather known by the general population, but a legend spoken and recognized by the people speaks of the Covetous Dragon, Fafner.

Read straight through, this makes absolutely no grammatical sense and is hard to read. One idea I always give people is that if at any point in a sentence you have to stop to think, your sentence might need revision. If you are pausing at places where pauses feel unnatural, there might be a problem. Let’s start with the first sentence. “due to the” is one of those weird grammar chunks that should never be in the middle of a sentence. It immediately makes you stop and try to figure out what it is pointing to. Why? Because the effect is fragmented into two pieces with the cause smashed in the middle like the cream in an Oreo cookie. The warfare is fragmented, shattered, and almost forgotten or is the history?

The second sentence starts off bad and continues downhill into confusion. ‘Few is rather’. What are you referring to? Do you mean ‘little is known about the population’ or ‘the general population knows little about history’? Also, a legend cannot speak. It sounds as if people recognize a legend and speak of a dragon

To summarize, here is a different version of the paragraph:

Due to constant warfare, the history of Terran Fas Fafner is fragmented and shattered, long forgotten by the general population. Their only clue to unlocking the mystery is the legend of the Covetous Dragon, Fafner.

Don’t get me wrong… it is part style. Unfortunately, style is a poor excuse for confusing flow. It is just something you might want to think about. It isn't personal. Hell, we all have problems. Most people are just too scared to point them out.

~~~~~~
One final note: I am pleased to see that people are trying to once again revive the RP forum. I really want to see this forum flourish. I just ask that you try to keep the overall world simplistic to a degree. The more complicated it is, the less likely people will be to participate in it. The major point of Roleplaying is the interaction between different writers, allowing a unique experience and story to be created from the blending of ideas. Forcing people down a given path not only bottlenecks creativity, it often leads to resentment and disinterest. That is not to say that it should be totally open to interpretation. Think of it like a MMORPG. You are given a basic world with a basic story. How you choose to go down that path is up to you and those you are with.

[T.G. Oskar]

I'll just hope to have Vicious get online to remain working with the world, but about the technical advancement, that shouldn't be so hard...

Ivalice would have a technological advancement level roughly similar to the Early Renaissance, although as any good Italian Renaissance town (for those who do believe the Renaissance was only an Italian movement, not an European movement unlike the Baroque), and like most of Europe, it is capable of getting some of the technological advancements of the other continents via caravans and trading merchants, as well as a hefty merchant marine group of families. You could say Ivalice has some tools out of it's technological advancement level, such as, say, flintlock and percussion cap guns, early steam engines slowly surfacing, but nothing to really determine a shift in technological level.

Ordallia is definitely the most advanced civilization, and almost completely based upon Industrial Revolution, but with the typical gadgets that would be present within Steampunk. So don't be scared if you see steam-powered machines that would be present instead on a more advanced technological level, such as the Modern Age, given the spirit present in Steampunk. Also, expect the bulk of the cities to have the grim spirit of Steampunk. That does not mean all of them accept such ideas; the outer limits of Ordallia still retain their forests. But reach to the center, and the civilization becomes rather grim.

In between both of the two technological levels stands Rozarria. While the architectural motifs of each city state vary, the average technological level is roughly similar to the average technological level of the combined cities of Ivalice and Ordallia. However, while Ordallian-neighboring lands are forcefully advanced to close-Industrial age, Ivalice-neighboring states tend to be a bit more advanced than their neighbors.

Culture-wise, Ivalice and Ordallia are quite European based, with Rozarria serving as a group of states that could house theoretically any kind of civilization as long as there's a good explanation for it, given the great liberties within each state which would suggest a cultural attachment.

As a final point: I believe I've explained and clarified what seemed to be wrong: the world setting. I don't want to work anything more until Vicious comes, as together we can enhance the first post much more than myself alone. Still, if you wish to have any discussion related specifically to the world, such as ideas or suggestions, I'd prefer to keep them in that thread.

I have to add this because a bit of a confusion has stemmed from the intro post and the world setting. What seems to have all the horrible atrocities is the world setting, not the intro post. The intro post is just large. And the explanation a little bit too complicated. So, if you're going to judge, make it based on the lengthy world setting, which I'd already mentioned I'd fix out along with Vicious.

UPDATE: Vicious is undergoing a revision of the original post. That means he'll do a closer check of the original document and add more data (such as, hopefully, more info on Korxians and Krysterians, his two races). That'll also mean he'll add his own style to mine, so it'll be a style shift.

Don't take this as if I were giving up. He's also one of the world builders, it's more than natural for him to make the revision. This also means any further additions to the world will take several hours, days, or even MONTHS to complete. I will no longer write a wonderful yet flawed story in a couple of hours to have the same problem as I did with this. I recommend anyone to do the same.

[Mistress Sheena]

O.o;

I know that's true for some of my characters, Merlin. But they're not copies of themselves. They're copies of who I am on the inside, if you catch my drift. And besides, haven't you read the bleach RP? I don't see any girls defeating opponents with their looks there. >_>;

I have a girl with big boobs, yes, but there's more to her than that. I have her sister who has small boobs *gasp* and defeats her opponents with her fists. Then I have a guy character (yes, a guy) who is calm and serene and majors in tactics and history. Then I have another female character who isn't all that bright, but enjoys running and sports. Then I have another guy character who is another martial artist, but is pretty obnoxious and rude, and cocky.

Then I created another red-head guy who is serious and seeks vengeance.. who happens to like omelets.

I'm still trying to branch out and stuff. There was even a dead RP where I created a girl who had practically no boobs at all and rarely spoke anything.

I mean, what's wrong with creating characters with the attributes that you prefer? Sure it gets old, but it's not against the rules or the law. And where have you been? There's plenty of meat. I write in first person now, and that fleshes out my characters a lot more than my half-assed difficult third person.

Edit: Wanting to be your best and Elitism aren't the same freaking thing. Wanting to be your best is part of human nature. So sue me if I constantly want to be at my best. I mean, if I can't have confidence in my writing, what should I have? Pessimism? Seriously, come on.

[Anomaly]

...Can we keep the personal comments to a minimum? I know this is largely supposed to be about improvement and how we all could do with some, but it's getting a little ego-centric around here and I should know...my ego is HUGE. Not so huge that I will spend an entire post ranting about myself or my views on others. I will save that for my blog or for any actual judgment posts I will be required to make in the course of this little venture.

Getting distracted at this stage is unacceptable.

As to the actual project at hand of the intro posts...I'm actually ready to make mine. my character is by no means complete, but he has enough substance to him already that I, quite frankly, love him. I can't wait for him to start moving and breathing on his own. (That kind of feeling is something I think we should try to engender with ALL of the characters we make in this project, disposable or not.) I would love to go ahead and grade joesteel, but narratively speaking it would make sense for Oskar to judge him first, unless we're not doing this in a narrative fashion and all in OOC. I wasn't very clear on that.

The only reason I'm waiting to post is I wanted to do a batch of a lot of students in one go. If thats not going to happen and Joe is going to be our only active student, then I don't care. I'll stick with this until someone else posts or this whole idea is run into the ground. What I will not discuss anymore are the relative merits of someones writing style when THEY'RE NOT EVEN BEING GRADED. It's a waste of time.

[Mistress Sheena]

...Yeah. We don't want the club to be turned into the previous ones that were full of nothing but arguing and hate. >_<;

But anyway. I'm also working on my character profile. My character will be a Krystalian. I took a look at Leonarc's profile to see the basics of a Krystalian, so I should be good to go when I create my profile. I also, for the sake of curiousity, logged nearly every single character I have ever made at TFF into a notepad file. ...Out of the 27 characters that I have created, ...only three of them are voluptuous and have the personality to be scantily-clad; and one of the three is just a blatant scantily-clad whore with huge breasts.

Three out of twenty seven doesn't seem like "most" of my characters, eh? Sadly probably about 60% of them never really got used much because the RPs failed to start.

But ANYWAY. Profiles, yes. I'll be posting mine when it is complete.

[Blacksmith]

*ahem*

I think a new subject needs to be suggested so we can move things along, lol. I'd like to bring up my idea of using classes for the characters of TFF as a way to help the students understand how to develop their own characters on a greater level. It composes of using the basic FFT system and starting out as one class and then "leveling the class up" in order to access another class. The difference is there won't really be any experience involved because what I figured would work best is by giving students job points (JP) after they do a mission depending on what they do.

Like let's say we send three students out on a mission to take out a weak monster harassing a farmer. For completing said mission, success will reward them with JP the same way you do little side missions in FFT. The students will role-play their way through the mission and a teacher will control the NPC of the monster.

I bring this up to know what the other staff members think of that. So what do you think? lol

P.S. - Merlin, if you wanna become a teacher, I could totally throw you in there, lol.

[DragonHeart]

I think that kind of approach has a lot of issues inherent with it, not the least of which is the tendency of the system to become overly complicated. That's really what killed the Clan/Forum Wars, cause we tried designing an RP-based system, it got out of hand, and everyone just got fed up and left. I cannot honestly recommend such a feature as a good idea because I've seen it fail too many times.

Not only that, but I believe since we are trying to encourage higher quality posting, putting a numerical value on the writing will only serve to cheapen it. You'll have people rushing through missions as fast as they humanly can in order to rack up job points and earn new classes. It's the same grind syndrome as that in RPGs, in order to win it you've got to be the highest level, with the best weapons. Obviously it's not exactly the same thing, but the mentality still applies. Too much emphasis on forward progress.

That's just my take on it. I'd love to see a system like that work, but realistically it's more a kiss of death for this type of project. Whether or not we pursue it is up to the rest of you, I'm just trying to provide a little bit of insight into previous attempts to use the same basic idea.

~DragonHeart~

[Blacksmith]

Well, the difference from the things you've experienced in the past and now is that I wasn't there to help better that system. I perfectly understand that if I imply too much RPG elements into an RP, then things do become cheaper and lose their quality. I've dealt with plenty of similar issues over my years and what I've come to develop is a knack for altering such things to properly fit what I need. In a sense, to me, it's like taking one part of a machine and putting it into a different machine in order to create a different, yet unique effect. In this case, we need to develop something that can allow students to learn how to creatively build their characters without hurting the quality of the creativity or role-playing.

How about the idea of a sharing system? Missions will require the use of a buddy in order to complete them and if the students succeed, they must divide the points depending on who did the most work. The idea will teach the students to learn how to interact with one another in order to accomplish many things, while at the same time creating that flare of competition, like--"If I'm going to get more points next time, I'm going to have to do better!"--that kind of thing. One of the single most successful ideas in all kinds of games is the level of competition, quite often creating such fierce rivalries or levels of friendship that it goes beyond what we see. The bonds I have with many of my online friends came from playing with them in online games and working together in order to improve ourselves while having fun.

Now, of course, there will have to be rules of respect so that things don't get out of hand with people throwing tantrums, but if there is anything that will bring people together, it's unity in similar causes.

How about that?