A matter of community

[Zabuza825]

Might be a good idea to try and get some new blood once we can go out and establish ourselves as a bit more active.

It's hard to build a community from the ground up - people won't stay unless there's a community, but a community won't form unless people stay. It's a catch-22 that I had a very hard time dealing with in the sites I tried to make.

We have an advantage that I didn't have when I was in the business of managing RP forums - we already have people and somewhat of a community. Now if we can just bring people together and make that community stronger, we can bring new blood in.

btw, if we aren't going to limit ourselves to strictly NS MTRP, I know of a great site where we can advertise ourselves (provided we put a small button linking to another site somewhere on our site) and find new blood. My guess is the vast majority won't be interested in nation-based politics RP, but if that's okay with people then I can send Lines a link and the final decision will lie with him.

[His Wizardness]

I used to feel the same way back when I started role-playing. You see I have been busy with my studies because I want to go to a foreign exchange to Iceland really bad. And when I do have time to myself, I am usually playing the Yuletide festival on Lord of the Rings Online, or playing Europa Universalis IV. Recently however, I have been playing Subnautica, but you get the point. I just simply don't have time to write down my idea as much anymore.

[Sal]

Since I proposed the idea of the writing challenge, I'd be glad to set something up under the new Writer's Bloc subforum.

I have a few ideas about how it could be set up, but I'll need to know if you all want this to be just for funsies, or if you want there to be a judging component to it (because that will be the more difficult aspect, really - finding impartial judges, anonymous submission, etc.)

We can always restructure later if we want the first year to be all about Participation Trophies and maybe later years to be about Defeating The Enemy.

pls advise

[Ayzek]

@zab I'm sure we're open to ideas. And alternative RP. The bigger question is how much of a commitment we'd need to put into that site to be reasonably attractive, cause commitment is a bother. But, yeah, I reckon you could put this idea forward.

Keep joining us as you can, Wizard.

Thanks Sal. <3

To start sith, for funsies may be the way to go, for practice and to get blood flowing. Once we've got a good body of participants, we can get competitive tournies going. Lemme know if you need any admin support. I was thinking it'd be a good idea to give prompts and competitions their own sub-forums.

Edit: on the subject of new meat: i actually began NS recruitment last week. Eternity's NS population has doubled. None have wandered to the forums yet, though.

[Sal]

I was thinking it'd be a good idea to give prompts and competitions their own sub-forums.

If you wanna. You could make a sub-subforum under the Writer's Bloc since it's a general writing thing and should probably fall under that to avoid redundancy. Or just wait and see if we even need one; when it's not a competition, everyone the person running the challenge should just be able to post to a single thread and occasionally update it with a new prompt.

If you're thinking of having a competition subforum for non-writing things (art, photos, design, typography, whatever), too, you could maybe just change the Writer's Bloc to the Creative Bloc and make it more all-encompassing.

But I am not admin, so do what ye will.

If possible, I was thinking of starting the first prompt thread in January and trying a quarterly thing, so if you're going to set up a new subforum or change the existing one, could you pretty please with hot fudge and edible gold dust on top do it some time around the first or second week or January?

[Ayzek]

Well, yes, it would have went under the Bloc forum. With competition forum, i meant for the writing stuff. But now that you mention it, /should/ we set space for other forms of art too? I'm skeptical we'll have much non-literature creative works.

You may not be admin, but you are acting organizer, so I'd say your input for the infrastructure is just as important, if not more so. One thread per member for prompts works, but I'm concerned it'll end up cluttered over time, especially if we add in any other occasional events/thing/unno, and user input/questions/discussions, like Zab's.

[Sal]

Re-reading my previous post, yeah, I'm not sure why I stated it the way I did, but that's not what I meant, so I'll go back and edit.

I'm not thinking one thread /per member/ (that's what I wrote for some reason, I know), I'm thinking one thread. Period. I'll post the prompt, people are free to respond to it until I close that prompt and post the next prompt, at which point they should submit for that one. Maybe one thread per year, like 'the 2017 Author Challenge Thread' and then 'the 2018 Author Challenge Thread' and so on... Does that make more sense?

Also, I don't see a reason not to have the space for people to talk about other forms of creative works they've done. We probably won't get much, but for people wanting to make commissions off anything, in particular, it could be helpful?

[Flo]

I was planning to have a challenge where people could write vignettes or short stories about people in late medieval floland