Posted by Kim on March 18, 2017, 2:27pm
If you missed this month's office hours, never fear! Here's all the Q&A that went down:I haven't ever really had an interest in getting an Epic Membership (largely because I've never looked into the actual benefits), but I still have a desire to help support the site. Outside of drawings and gifts and such, is there something like a RPR Patreon or GoFundMe?
Nope; Patreon and GoFundMe make their money by taking a chunk out of whatever you donate, on top of the fees for credit cards or what have you, so we'd get less money through people donating through those sources than we would if they just did their "donating" by buying an item in our store even if they didn't plan to use it. (If you do decide to contribute this way, you can always give the item to a friend or run a contest to give it away.) We have items ranging from $1.50 to upwards of $55, so there's really something for every size of "donation" you'd like to make to help support the site.
If you ABSOLUTELY REFUSE to receive a digital item in return for your support and are just dead-set on contributing money, I suppose someone could always give through paypal to admin@rprepository.com. Although personally, I think getting to give gifts or run contests is more fun for everyone involved
Anyone have any tips for someone who has a hard time roleplaying with strangers?.. I struggle with everything about it. I find it hard to enjoy the roleplay for some reason..
I guess my advice if *everything* about RPing with strangers bothers you, would be to try and turn people you are RPing with into not strangers. Chat with them OOC, get to know them, find out what you have in common, share some laughs.
I've only ever roleplayed with one person.. They don't roleplay with me anymore, so I havent really been doing any roleplays lately..
It sounds like you have gotten used to a very particular style, and also quite likely a certain level of trust, and unfortunately the only way to find that kind of dynamic again is to attempt lots of different RPs with lots of different people. You'll gradually get more comfortable with all the different styles, make some new friends, and be able to relax more into the experience.
An additional piece of advice offered by Jaybird:
JayBird wrote:
Once you get into an RP with another person, I would suggest talking about the RP OOCly. I do that with my partners as much as I can. It helps build a camaraderie, as well as helping to prevent some of the opposing ideas that might suddenly clash together. If you talk with them about the plot and/or where you want the RP to go, or even just sharing your "Wouldn't it be cool if..." moments, you'll learn what kind of stuff that they are into, and they will learn what you're into.
I try to keep an IC and an OOC dialogue open with my partners at all times. It doesn't even have to be about the RP, but about what's going on in your lives. My mother was in the hospital two weeks ago and I was absolutely trashed about it. My partners helped me work through my feelings, and as a result I was able to work through everything and even direct some of my negative energy in positive ways
I try to keep an IC and an OOC dialogue open with my partners at all times. It doesn't even have to be about the RP, but about what's going on in your lives. My mother was in the hospital two weeks ago and I was absolutely trashed about it. My partners helped me work through my feelings, and as a result I was able to work through everything and even direct some of my negative energy in positive ways
What, if any, is the exact birthday date of RPR?
April 24 2010 is the first day that the public was able to access the RPR. I started programming the first version of it roughly 2 months before, but I think that counts more as gestation time than actual birth.
And that's why Epic Week starts every year on April 24th, even if it's a weird day for an event to start.
What is epic week?
Epic Week is the giant celebration we hold every year for RPR's birthday. It includes tons of contests and site-wide games that the entire community has to work together to win. Sometimes monster attack to try and eat our birthday cake. But I'm sure our cake will be perfectly safe this year.
It is hands down my favorite time of year, even though it takes 4 months of hard work to get ready for every time
Hey is there an official (or unofficial) RPR Discord server?[/quote]
Not to my knowledge, but if anyone else knows one, I'd love to know about it too.
Do you plan on making a mobile app for the site?
Nope! Unfortunately we don't have a staff. It's just me, who creates and maintains all the site features out of love and a team of volunteer moderators.
It's hard enough for one person to create and maintain a site of this size when there's just one version, but to create and maintain 2-3 different app versions (android, apple, windows metro phones) is just not possible right now.
However, I do work to make the site as mobile friendly as possible, and the specific features that people might want out of an app are being methodically added to the main site. Here's a pretty good list of some of the main things that have been added, and some tips on how to get the feature you want incorporated: http://www.rprepository.com/community/newspost.php?post=477
Here's a few forum topics where this suggestion is discussed, also:
http://www.rprepository.com/community/forumthread.php?t=16646
http://www.rprepository.com/community/forumthread.php?t=12133
http://www.rprepository.com/community/forumthread.php?t=5623
http://www.rprepository.com/community/forumthread.php?t=8350
I've seen a lot of RPing in the LFRP and other forums as of late, is there anything to be done to prevent further occurrences? Is there anything site users can to do help prevent others from making the mistake?
One upgrade that's come to the LFRP forum was a "close" button, to help people realize they could easily mark the topic as not open for more players ( and also to help them get the correct format on adding the (closed) bit to the topic title, to remove it from Find RP search results). I'd like to expand on this concept and create simple prompts for moving people over to IC forums or PMs or what have you when they do indicate they have enough players.
In the meanwhile, mods help get people moved over to the IC forums and explain to them how the system works whenever we become aware of RPing going on on OOC boards like the LFRP board, so hitting the "report" button is a great way to help out. It isn't going to get anyone banned or in trouble, it just summons people who can help to break out the IC parts of the topic and get them where they need to go.
On a similar note, Are you accepting mod applicants?
Not at present. When that day comes, I'm sure there will be notices in the news and on the forums!
it's only a minor issue, but i regularly see people using the RP discussion forum as a place to discuss their own RPs. is this something you discourage? it doesn't feel like an appropriate use for the forum when PMs and private groups exist.
It's definitely something I would discourage, but there isn't really a rule about it at present. It's something we can look into a bit later in the year!
I wonder if there's something we can do with split screening or something, so OOC can be dropped directly into the RP topic itself but displayed alongside it. That would keep discussions about the thing with the thing. It's got some technical and design challenges to it, but is probably worth it. Just something I've been mulling over!
Probably you could toggle it on and off, much like someone can choose to do all their replies through the forum while someone else is doing it through forum chat. We'd pick a convention for OOC like double parens and have that break things out into its own screen for those who wanted that dual view, but leave it in the stream for those who didn't.
We've had a few community discussions in the RPR chat before and i found them really fun! are you planning to bring those back one day? if so, perhaps us users can suggest some topics when the time comes.
The last two community discussions we ran were based on user suggestions!
I'd love to do more of them, it's just a question of time. This year so far has seen my main day job company go through a merger, I've moved to another state, and there was just a death in my family and I'll shortly be traveling to attend it. Plus, Epic Week is coming up 36 days 18 hours and 35 minutes. So it'd have to be after Epic Week!Do you have a topic in mind already?
(I'd love to hear suggestions about official community discussions from anyone!)do we have a help page with advice for shy RPers yet? it would be useful to link to newbies with anxiety concerns.
No, but that would be a wonderful thing to have! It could maybe be something for a community discussion, I bet a lot of people have stories of how they worked through anxiety to join RPs.
(Gamers pointed out that there's a topic about this here: http://www.rprepository.com/community/forumthread.php?t=28631)
I've had thoughts milling around for some time, and in curious how popular it is for users to read RPs that they aren't in. If it's popular, a bookmark feature would be lovely.
To the first bit: I have NO IDEA how many people actively read other's RPs. (SeraphicStar suggested we run a poll about this.)
To the second bit: Since all modern browsers offer bookmarking capabilities, I'm not sure what we could offer that was better. You can also subscribe to any public forum topic whether you're in it or not.
What genre of RP do you generally enjoy playing? (when you actually have time to play)
I'm not very genre picky. I've played in medieval fantasy, modern fantasy, far future sci fi, modern alternate universe sci fi, accurate historical, scifi/fantasy combos, etc. The more important point to me is the group of people I'm playing with, and whether the world is self-consistent and the plot is immersive and not set in stone.
I was wondering if there wasn't one already, if you have a who's online home page feature in the works. I would love to know if the people I'm currently RPing with is on so I can send a fresh reply to them. I know I can always just click on their page and see if they're online, but sometimes, they're anonymous... So I was wondering if that's a thing, and if it would extend to anonymous players to help keep anonymity.
We don't have that feature, and it's not currently being worked on, though thanks for bringing it back to my radar for future dev!
Will it eventually be possible to get an anonymous character onto your friends list?
Currently, all "relationships" are user to user or character to character. I have somewhere on my list for development the ability to "watch" an anonymous character from a user account, which would be functionally similar to friending in that you'd get notifications about it, but I don't have an ETA for you on that feature.
can you as the admin see how many members are online at present? there's ~16k registered users iirc, so i've always wondered what the daily peak is like.
You can see how many members are online too! The total current count is on the community page at all times. We tend to peak around 130, depending on the day. The average seems to hover around 90-110.
What is your favorite kind of feedback to receive about the site?
I really do appreciate all feedback, but if I have to pick a favorite kind, it's specific feedback, good or bad. It is awesome to know that someone likes the site, but if I don't know what their favorite parts are, I can't keep pushing the parts that people actually like. I might end up eliminating something that was actually beloved because no one ever mentioned it specifically, or enhancing parts of the site that no one wants because they weren't specific about what they did or did not like. Similarly, bug reports that read "it won't let me _____" are big time sucks, because I have to play 20 questions to find out if there was an error message, or if it worked partially but then stopped, or if it worked and even saved but the next day the thing was gone, or whatever. As the saying goes, "Specific is terrific!"
How is the site doing? It still growing to where it might start actually supplementing your income, or do you think it'll remain purely a labor of love for a long time yet?
It's growing slowly, but I still think it'll be a labor of love for a long while.
Is a plan to sell RL RPR Merchandice in the works? If not that, then what about a sort of user marketplace where crafters/artist can sell their own RPR-Related works? Maybe a bit of the proceeds could go to funding RPR?
We've sold RL goods in the past. There were huge numbers of requests for them. However, when I actually got them made, they didn't perform all that well. It's made me pretty unexcited to do it again, though we might take another crack at it at some point! I think we'd do it via pre-order next go round.
Is the 10th Epic Week already being planned out/is planned out? Or is it something that's pushed way, way back on the back burner for later? It must take a lot of work for each Epic Week to be planned out, so I was wondering if you tend to plan ahead for every year.
I started planning this year's Epic Week about two days after last year's ended!
Programming and art production begins in earnest in late December/early January every year, and intensifies with every passing month. This will be our 7th Epic Week! I don't have any plans for Epic Week 10 yet, since with every Epic Week we seem to get a little more complex and have cooler ideas, and I don't know what Epic Weeks 8 and 9 will bring to the party so it's hard to know what would be available to make 10 even better Since you like to draw, are the characters around RPR your own creations?
I have even less time for drawing than I do for RPing these days! I did some of the first pictures that appeared on the RPR, but I mostly focus on the programming and event-running aspects of the site these days, and get better artists to help me out. MadRatBird, FreeJayFly, Justine, f0x1nth3b0x, Dav (who doesn't appear to have a link up anymore, hmn), Auberon and other amazing artists have all done work for the site.
The giant conglomeration of characters you see on the homepage before logging in? Those are all done by artists from the RPR community. It changes every year depending on the results of the Genre Jumble contest that starts April 24 every year
when will we be receiving our next dosage of cute piggy photos?
I will see what I can do about putting up some more photos on the forums! There's even a second guinea pig now, a much younger male. His name is Mr. Ghirardhelli.
Will Mr.Ghirardhelli be making any special appearances in Epic Week this year?
We'll see!
What was your most memorable RP experience?
Probably doing a bellydance performance IC at a national vampire LARP convention in New Orleans.
How much LARP experience have you had, and do you have any advice for newbie LARPers?
About four years? Maybe five? Almost exclusively in Vampire the Masquerade games run by different organizations. I think every LARP is different enough that it's hard to give generalized advice other than to just jump in and try it if it sounds interesting to you!
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Claine
March 18, 2017
2:42pm
http://www.rprepository.com/community/forumthread.php?t=29699