Schedule & Guidelines

[the_directors]

The purpose of this community is to make it quick and easy to find characters and players. What you do from there is up to you! There will be no game ads, test drives, or memes posted as our goal is purely to be a consistent and long-term resource. I also aim to keep things as uncluttered and non-repetitive as possible to ease browsing.

As of 2021, I am removing the member-posted directory function of this community. It hasn't been used and based on feedback from users, the seasonal posts are more desirable and so should be prioritized to stream-line the community and scrolling experience.

I hope to make this a collaboration between mod and players. As such, I'm open to suggestions in this entry. Comments are screened, IP logging is off. You may also PM the mod account for personal matters, but please try to solve any problems on your own before asking for a moderator to step in.

Some helpful resources
- enablemeplz for finding games to join, castmates, and PSL offerings
- rpanons for discussion, information, and RP ads
- dwrpmasterlist for a list of active games
- testdrives for test drives

Banning
To create a safe and comfortable environment, I'll be mirroring bans from other RP communities once claims have been provided and checked. If you notice any ban evasion or that someone has slipped beneath the radar, please PM the mod journal the_directors.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, I wanted to say thank you for making and modding this community! I was one of the anons on rpanons hoping we could have an RP directory of some sort.

But I'm unsure about trying to make it a monthly thing when we have enablemeplz doing basically the same thing. This is just my opinion, but I think it might be more useful to simply have the directory entries open until they fill up, instead of doing new posts every month. Being able to see a collected list of ads in one place would be this community's strongest asset compared to EMP where players have to comb through a post for each month.

This is all my own feelings on the matter, but I hope this community will see a lot of use. Thank you for hearing me out!

Please feel welcome to reply with suggestions if anyone other than OP has opinions!

[the_directors]

Thank you for your feedback! If you don’t mind answering a couple of questions, it would help us shape the direction of this community.

1) I see the monthly posting as a way to draw new players to the directories and to stay fresh in the minds of established players. Those are some of the benefits of similar monthly resources, especially compared to this new community that people don’t know about yet. If we waited until the entries filled to captcha, do you have any suggestions for advertising? Would posting off-comm links to the same entry be seen as nagging, or would it be a way to establish that the directories are meant to be built on over a long period of time?

2) Would you, as a player, like to see other people curating their comments? For example, if they stop playing a character, should they be encouraged to delete or edit their comment? If this is the case, should we discourage contacting each other through comments to leave them open for future edits?

Re: Please feel welcome to reply with suggestions if anyone other than OP has opinions!

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for replying and asking for input! That's something I don't see too many mods willing to do these days.

1. I don't think advertising would be considered nagging at all provided it's not being posted every two weeks to bakerstreet or such since players get annoyed even with niche memes getting the same treatment. imo posting to EMP (if it fits the criteria to be advertised) and rpanons when new posts go up is an excellent way to build up an easily browsed character listing. New communities take time to be established as DWRPers are creatures of habit and tend to hesitate to be the first out fear of ridicule, so regular advertising seems a necessity. Asking to be linked in the rpanon's resources post could also help.

2. Personally I think it would a good idea for players to either delete or edit their comments if possible when they no longer play a character, although I can't say what method would be best or most practical. As players lose interest in a character they often stop maintaining things oocly, so I imagine most would just let their character ads sit, but that seems a small downside to trying to police how the community is used.

Some finding replying to comments less intimidating than PMs or Plurk, so I feel any method that encourages players to use this comm and reach out should be accepted. Saying "no commenting to other's ads; other methods of contact only" seems counter to that. Players could even just reply to their own comment with a note saying the ad is closed. This could be useful is someone gets so many offers that they can no longer accept any new threads at the time, but they'd still be able to come back to reopen the ad later.

Anyway, thank you again, and apologies for the rambling reply!

[the_directors]

Thank you again for your input! This is the first time I've tried modding a community of this sort, so your suggestions and opinions have been very helpful. You make a lot of good points, and I'm going to take them into consideration.

I've been getting feedback in messages as well, so I'm going to reconsider how I run this community and may alter some things in the future. For now, there will be no immediate changes, but any will be announced!

[shivmeabreak]

Er, quick question about the posting of canons since I'm afraid I may have messed up: should something like a video game series which doesn't generally share worlds be listed separately for each one, even if sometimes there's overlaps like numbered sequels and crossover games?

I'm so used to the Tales of series just being under the same header that I fear I overlooked that one rule. Apologies if I made a mistake. Basically I was just wondering if I should delete my comment and repost with a more specific header?

[the_directors]

Thanks for asking, and I'm sorry it took a while to reply.

I'm unfamiliar with this canon, but generally the rule would be one top-level comment per canon world. If some of the series overlap, such as sequels or crossovers, then you can include them in the same header! The hope is that only characters that could interact in their own canons would be grouped together, not to discourage cross-canon but to make it easier to find certain characters.

I hope this makes sense, and I'm sorry for the amorphous answer! Let me know if you need further clarification, and I can do more research into the canon to try and give a stronger answer.

[shivmeabreak]

Ah, I see! That makes sense. Apologies for throwing such a complicated question at you. The Tales series is a sprawling one similar to Final Fantasy in a lot of ways, as most games aren't connected by the same world, but there are several side games and sequels that share worlds.

Phantasia, Symphonia, Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, the Narikiri Dungeon series all share a world, as do Destiny and Destiny 2, Xillia and Xillia 2, Zestiria and Berseria. Then there's crossover games like Tales of the Rays, Link, and the Fandom games where characters from different games interact but aren't canon.

Would you prefer me to repost under a Tales of Zestiria/Berseria header since they share the same world?

[the_directors]

No need to apologize, thank you for coming to me with questions! It's a good reference for the future, too.

It sounds like reposting would follow the guidelines better. I'm sorry to ask it of you. Once I see that you've copied your comment over, I can take care of deleting the previous heading.