Family Server vs. College Level Submissions

[lonnarin]

Now that the standard submission is rejected unless it has around 3-6 pages in length and enough historical Lore fact-checking on par with a college level research paper, I feel we've drifted away from the family environment we once used to have.  How many children under 12 could possibly get a character submitted these days without multiple revisions and requests for clarity that even their own English teachers wouldn't critique so harshly?

Skabot and myself are college educated and were heavy into Lit Courses, so it doesn't phase us so much.  Yet some of our friends IRL, aged 19, 30 and 50-something could only get their submissions approved with extensive help from us proofreading, annotating, rephrasings, cross-checking, etc.  This is somewhat disturbing.  If an 8 year old really wanted to play here, he couldn't.  flat out.  If a 10-year old ME wanted to play here, I couldn't.  I'd get too fed up with the process.  I'd have to be around 12 or older, judging from my notebook collection of assorted fiction I wrote back over the years, and I scored a perfect verbal score on my SATs.

We need to lighten up.  I'm curious, what's the youngest age of any player on this server who's ever gotten to log in without somebody else having to write their bio for them?  It's already getting hard enough on grown ups.

I know we would like to have every single character have the perfect awesome submission which sticks to the Lore with 100% accuracy and for every newcomer to sit down and read the near-300 page handbook in its entirety, but plenty others would also like to just be able to play a video game.

[aragwen]

Even though I hear your sentiment Lonnarin, my question always is if someone does not bother to read the handbook and cant put together a reasonable submission, how are they going to RP?
 
 And I think the comment about 3-6 pages submission is unfair. I have seen many "short" submissions be approved without a blink of an eye. But things gets complicated when people want "special" characters and background.
 
 A neutral good human fighter will be easily approved if you keep to the basics. While a lawful evil cleric of Corath is going to need a lot more.
 
 The idea behind character approval is that someone at least give the character some thought and not just put something down to be able to come into the world and then just make things up they go. It is a RP server after all.
 
 Futhermore I dont think the term family server should be seen as we want 8-10 year olds. I think it is rather meant to mean the content on the server should be family friendly. I mean even NWN has a 12+ rating, so I would say you targetting teens and above.
 
 I could hyperlink you quite a couple submission which has been approved without a single comment and others that was approved with very slight changes. And none of them were more than a couple of paragraphs, all less than a page.

[jrizz]

Aragwen said most of what I would have. What I see is that most of the submissions of late have been for very special PCs.

[Link092]

I think its just fine, and they should be critical to help straighten things out and to help fix those minor (major?) issues.


AS for 3-6 page submissions... I didn't do one that long. :p
But I do enjoy my special character though.

[Serissa]

Youngest I know of was six.  Relevant rules and lore were explained to him, but he wrote his own story for submission.  Approved on the first try.

[ShiffDrgnhrt]

Latherian Leefwalker
Shiff Dragonheart
Tyra Dragonheart
Nemo Dra'mykd'yra

All MY PCs never needed more then 1 or 2 fixes, and some where approved Right off the bat  They weren't that long (in my eyes)

[ycleption]

I agree with where you are coming from, Lon, and that family friendly atmosphere is a big reason why I enjoy the server... but at the same time, this is an RP server, and someone has to show enough competence with the game world to be able to RP... Being able to tell how a fighter learned to fight, or where a character grew up are not onerous requirements.

Further, if you really look at submissions, you'll see that most of the editing that CA's ask for is due to players not understanding or not having read the rules... submitting as CE, forgetting to put the three numbered dogma statements, not including class split, etc. Especially when players have used ignorance of the server rules to excuse breaking them, I think it's important the CA's are on top of things with the character submissions, in order to maintain the family friendly atmosphere.

[miltonyorkcastle]

Six year old wrote his own submission and approved on the first try... impressive...

[lonnarin]

How many years back though?

[Lynn1020]

How many years back though?

I agree.  It has gotten much tougher to get a character approved than it did when I started two years ago. I understand why there is the character approval process and agree with it.  I just think sometimes its a bit tougher than needed at times.

[lonnarin]

 
I could hyperlink you quite a couple submission which has been approved without a single comment and others that was approved with very slight changes. And none of them were more than a couple of paragraphs, all less than a page.

Compare them to these submissions of very *awesome* RPers about 3-4 years ago.  This is why I disbelieve in the notion that a more complex bio makes for better RP in game.  Some of these people are the absolute best RPers in the buisiness.  Would these be accepted on a 1-shot today?

Basic Approvals back in the day
--------------------------------
http://forums.layonara.com/character-approvals/90989-rurik-kessel.html
http://forums.layonara.com/character-approvals/90992-gloin.html
http://forums.layonara.com/character-approvals/91454-penitent.html
http://forums.layonara.com/character-approvals/91523-skywise-greenleaf.html
http://forums.layonara.com/character-approvals/91477-beasty-headsmasher.html
http://forums.layonara.com/character-approvals/92577-cassius.html
http://forums.layonara.com/character-approvals/92630-kelis-witchblade.html

Prior Approvals for PRCs/Special races/alignments
------------------------------------------------
http://forums.layonara.com/character-approvals/91106-jotun-bear.html
http://forums.layonara.com/character-approvals/91318-maya-eshin.html
http://forums.layonara.com/character-approvals/91622-xargylth.html
http://forums.layonara.com/character-approvals/91931-synaldur-hanodel.html
http://forums.layonara.com/character-approvals/91917-character-submission-shylah-caoimhe.html
http://forums.layonara.com/character-approvals/92075-talan-valash.html
http://forums.layonara.com/character-approvals/92323-nalue-birchroot.html
http://forums.layonara.com/character-approvals/92487-willy-catpaw.html

I know that many of the PRC subs listed are somewhat irrelevant by today's standards since the rule about no PRC acceptance in bio-subs was put in place, but I'd put those add-ons/special requests to be at around the same complexity of a special subrace or alignment bio.  Now we need a frequently updated CDT akin to a 6-8 week creative writing course in order to enter a PRC, or to bog down the GM staff with CDQ requests which take up time some might rather be using running open quests.  (as was certainly the case for myself.  I'd dread logging in and seeing another 3 CDQ requests in line, after all my slots were already filled!)

As for the basic bios, we used to see "dwarf fighter" and say to ourselves, "hey that makes sense! most dwarves are fighters and its their chosen class"  Nowadays, we would be asking people how they learned to pick up a sword by the non-pointy end, what made them have rogue skills, what makes them a dark or wood elf and not just a basic elf, etc.  We often ask our submitters to put about the same amount of effort explaining how they came to their base classes that we used to do for PRCs or Special Races.  

Keep in mind I was always pumping out long bios from day one, and others like 8-Bit, Orth, Storm and Pankoki all had AWESOME and detailed ones that are above and beyond today's standards.  But that was our choice back then.  According to current standards the bar is rather high for most highschoolers, or persons unfamiliar with the 300+ handbook pages.

I'd point out that many times when I go insane and make long ranting posts about how things in Lore like god-relations or the workings of the Al-Noth should be explained better in terms of physics and science, others often tell me to take a deep breath and accept that its only a game.  I'd say much the same thing for all these rewrite requests and LORE crosschecks and such for very basic subs..  It's only a game.  For some of us it's a way of life that we've honed and understood for years and years, but let's RP for a moment as the Layperson whose played nothing but other servers and probably hasn't played PnP for a decade or two, who might even be in gradeschool or middle school.  It's rather daunting, with the height the bar is set at today.

[Serissa]

Kid's application was a couple of years ago, and not quite first try.  I forgot he had to change his name

[Acacea]

Lonn, I'm not totally disagreeing with you, but I think the main arguments are a bit exaggerated on the one hand (six pagers and literature requirements? ), and kind of misplaced on the other due to the more information involved the longer the server is around. I don't even like six page submissions... most don't. If anything, it is easier the less you write, heh. People that write a lot, especially new players, tend to be very enthusiastic about a particular concept with pages of attempted detail, at times because it is an existing character they want to bring into Layo. The more you add, the more you are bound to start treading all over things instead of working within them. Keeping your concept simple but covering the basics is key, and can certainly be done in just a couple paragraphs.

It actually is a lot harder to write something new within a known setting, than to just plain write something new. The more fleshed out and known a world gets, the less often you can just invent some random town full of vampires and ogres living in harmony to raise tieflings. The simpler the concept, the easier the fit without change. One of the major purposes for the process at any level of detail or strictness, is to check and give information at the only level it will ever matter. Once someone is in game, it's on, it doesn't matter anymore. Even when stamping I try to pile on as much information as I can think of about anything pertaining to a concept, because there is nowhere else they are going to get it.

Since we are between handbooks, everything sucks right now for information. I mean, SUCKS. GMs, new players, WLs, it doesn't matter who you are, there is a total mess of new information that can and cannot be used, that can and can't be shared, that has or has not been written, cats chasing their own tails and mass confusion and lack of communication. Some GMs and players don't even read the OLD handbook, let alone know anything about the things that have changed. You know how many clerics of Lucinda have been submitted since 2005? How many of them mention anything about the wards of the church, which are tied to the domains? It didn't require fifty pages to acknowledge. It's very simple - if you have healing domain, you are Fallan Gis and are in the Healward, magical afflictions are your especially trained area. If you have the magic domain, you are in the Akh'faern Gis, the mageward, which is the largest one, and is obvious. Uvaer, for Knowledge, the Loreward, again... for Trickery you are not a random mischief maker but one of the very few trained in the Cerlyn Wethrina, the Guardians - the shadows and chaos of magic are your bag, and you are trained as both diplomat and spy for the church - watching both within the church and without. Hey, I can even tell you the name of your Threadmistress and some of your fellow Guardians, how's that for feeling like you're part of things? Is it necessarily their fault that they don't know? For players, no - all this "handbook only" information just translates to "no one will ever use it."

Using the information available to you does not have to be difficult. You simply take what is available, and base your concepts on that. Root things in the setting, instead of trying to force large and unwieldy ones inside from out of it. The process is unfortunately a mess of information - there is just too little of it altogether. Having your own character creation process would be much better - you could present all the information required as you made a character, instead of needing to have any paperwork submitted. Number balance can be handled automatically, as well as time/character requirements.  I dream of a submission-less but information-filled character process (As well as automatic lore checks doling out little pieces of information for an area, and GM information written in the same areas for details of how they should be handling things in it, instead of leaving all the but the dedicated few in the dark)

Until then, though, we don't have one. What we have instead are mostly default classes that can be very different from one another. An Aeridinite paladin is different from a Lucindite paladin is different from a Toranite paladin is... *Makes yapping motions with her hand.* With a different process, it would be simpler, but even now most people still grasp the differences and base their concepts around them, instead of trying to fit a Voraxian-esque LG paladin into the technically same-class LG Aeridinite paladin. Lucindite paladins are good at remembering that wizard multiclasses are accepted and encouraged, and that regardless of if they take it or not, they need to cross class SC.

What would be cool is if information could be added to the submissions wizard. It's eased a lot of the repetitive minor mistakes such as age, race combinations, etc, but if there was an information feedback depending on some of your selections, I would be almost happy! In my earlier example, this would mean that if someone selected cleric, Lucinda, "good" domain, then the box would say "The good domain corresponds to the Ardhon Gis, a ward in the church focusing on outsiders and planar magic, watching the boundaries between worlds," or something. It can also remind all the divine classes to read the information on them and include the 3 statements, and the favored equipment for a deity selected.

Bottom line is that it's not a sandbox where anything goes. Joe Schmoe the human fighter isn't a big deal. 50 page Vampirella the tiefling that looks like a half demon that ate her brother after being adopted by an ogre that was also a shifter that accidentally grafted its powers onto her in the middle of Blackford Castle, less so. It's a consequence of a more fleshed out world - not to raise the writing standard, but consistency. If you want an 8 year old to play, you need to give them something very simple and easy to roleplay to get them started... not goblins and tieflings from the Deep.

GMs unfortunately suffer from the same lack of information standard, but it's not as bad as it used to be. At the point in time when I quested with every single active GM on the server, I had to pick which DM's content I was going to acknowledge. Not out of spite, not out of rebellion, but just because of the sheer inability to reconcile two contradicting sets of information from Mister Right hand and Mrs Left... Foot and Hand... and Pinky Toe.

GM A takes a player group through an existing set of caverns and defines the reason for their existence and the main enemy for them. After long and grueling effort, players win, yay!

GM B takes group through exact same caverns the next day, with a different reason for their existence and a new long-time bad guy for them. After long and grueling effort, players win, yay!

GM C runs long series in which secret ancient grove is visited hidden within the same caverns and protected by all manners of magical beings that are the reason it never gets any worse within said caverns, awe and wonder!

Players from group A, meet players from group B and C and try to work it out amongst one another.

It is rarely that bad anymore, but on the other hand it's also a frustrating mess to run a quest, heh. Like a character concept, quests are born out of personal motivation, which is rapidly drained when there are hoops to jump through that you don't even know exist, and that's without quest writeups...most GMs (and writers, and devs, and really just people in general) are going to be focused on their own content in their own cubicles and not everything else unless they are coordinating on a project. For those that actually WANT to tie in information for their quests, you first have to track down the GM responsible and have a long PM/IRC fest trying to figure it out...

The submission process, if nothing else, helps to spare the awkwardness of having that happen on the PC level... players shouldn't have to put half the playerbase on Ignore just because their background clashes with what is actually there. Dining with nymphs and satyrs and pixies in the Whitehorn, no go, sorry. But try the Forest of Fog! There you go... Rather have a background you can RP at will with others (and possibly have them even know pieces of ahead of time because its general knowledge!), or one that everyone will look at you funny and say "wasn't that during the occupation?" that you'll not be able to use on quest because it didn't happen? Imperfect, especially in this transitional stage, but existing just as much to help than to hinder. It's just that the only place you'll ever get that information right now is right at the beginning. I wish more could be ingrained into the game world itself.

[darkstorme]

I'm torn.

On the one hand, it's unequivocal that submissions are harder now than they were in 2004.  On the other, submitters get a lot more help now than they did in the past.  Any time there IS a problem, we try to offer ways to resolve it.

Choosing one of your example submissions (Skywise Greenleaf) at random, I'd say that this one really wouldn't have needed too much more for approval.  At the time, there were(?) still wild elves in the Wolfswood, there was adequate support for the class, and it was evident that the player knew what wildelves were like - nomadic tribes featured prominently, and so forth.  More detail would be nice, but not, in this case, strictly REQUIRED.  The rule of thumb for subraces, generally, is "how much work would it take to make them their base race?"  In this case, the character grew up in a nomadic tribe in the forest.  In order to make them a
Moon Elf, the whole bio would have to be rewritten.  So subrace and class support are pretty firm here.  (We wouldn't say no to more, mind you... but we never say no to more. )

Now, since that point, deity relations have risen in prominence.  The gods of Layonara don't accept lip service from their followers, this is clear.  And deity relations are important.  So in the example submission, a little bit of detail regarding how Skywise felt about Kithairien would've been requested, since the nature focus of the character implies a more Katian orientation.  If the player doesn't make their character's attitude towards their god/goddess clear in their submission, it's difficult for an approver to tell a) whether the player understands the deity they've chosen, and b) whether the character is enough of a worshiper to engender their deity's favour when dealing with their clerics.  There's a mechanical advantage to being a worshiper of one deity or another, so this is an important distinction to make.

More generally, as I've said before I think that the submission is the time when your character takes shape.  Things change as the character is in-play, of course,  but the time writing the submission is the formative time for this character.

If you don't take the time to think about who your character is going to be, what their past was like, and how that impacts how they deal with others... you'll wind up with an upper-crust Voltrexian elf who treats dwarves like his long-lost brothers, or a Wemic who treats city life and its trappings as mundane.  Layo, as I've often said, is a story... and if you were reading a fantasy novel and came across a character who departed from the rest of the book so drastically, with no explanation... well, it would go a long way towards ruining any immersion the author had spent time developing.

The plain fact of the matter is that every adventurer is unusual.  There are no "run-of-the-mill" adventurers, even if some are more common than others.  They all have that strange spark of wanderlust that drives them to be somewhere other than where all the others like them are.  So yes, we expect a story... and if we didn't before, I have to imagine that it was more due to mechanical imperatives (expediency) than any lack of desire.

*takes a deep breath*

Now, with all that said, even I admit that it's harder to get through than it once was.   Maybe that's daunting.  But we work our hardest to make the process welcoming, even if there's a fair amount of work entailed to get through it.  Yes, it's just a game, but it's a role playing game, and submission is where that role is first defined.  Surely, then, it's worth lingering on, if only for a little while?

Edit: And as usual, Acacea said it before I did, and better.  Seriously, I don't know why I bother, sometimes.

[HooD!uM]

my character Maya Eshin back then was done before we had to do a cdq for PrC classes..it was much easier back then id admit..i like the idea of a cdq nowadays...as it keeps just such characters to a minimum..but i also know that everyone wants their character to be "special" also. Remember the influx of assmir and darkelves..where L had to stop submission them said races for months? Lighten up on subs..i agree to a point, not everyone are great rpers..but alot ive met are fantastic.i learn more and more everyday i play..

[Link092]

Oops...

*looks around, then tries to hide his first submission*

[Acacea]

There's nothing wrong with special characters If you don't mind working on details to fit, then we don't mind trying to help out with them. And I never have short... ehm... anything. *Looks resigned to her own wordiness.*

[Fatherchaos]

Don't worry Acacea. While I may not always agree with you, when I do see your posts it prompts me to grab a sandwich and a drink to enjoy the show (in a good way!)

*bites into his sandwich and sips his drink*

I guess I need to look over the character submission info. I've only ever done three. But each was a stranger concept than the first, so I had progressively more stuff to work out.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

The YAILWAP tag makes me smile like a talented author's name on the spine of a book.

[Eight-Bit]

I think a more streamlined and accessible guide to character submissions, contained within a simple post and not scattered over several stickies, would ease the pain on the entire process.