Tybolt says:
"When was the last time you had any sort of freeform roleplay experience that didn't start from a common meeting point like a bar or tavern, forcing you to wade through an entire city to find the place only to end up never leaving it?"
Oh, that's right. You didn't.
During my time running Village of Benicoeur, I came upon an interesting conundrum!
As we expanded the map and added more buildings and facilities for all the in-character residences, patching in unique objects and making it, at the time of its peak in popularity, the largest medieval village map on Furcadia, none of it ever got used because everything occurred within the tavern.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "But doesn't that mean you weren't running the community well, failing to inspire players to play in their individual zones?"
No. If you're going to go through the effort of roleplaying, one's first instinct should naturally be to want to do it amongst as many people as possible. If you've the need to do it away from the largest group possible, the most rational reason would be is that you're participating in an erotic roleplay, but then you could just do it in whisper. I think that's one reason dreams like The Golden Tether happen to be so popular, if you want to roleplay in the main area, you've got a veritable audience to perform in front of. Why would my players want to cut themselves off from the hub of all the action?
Also, I believe there's far too many roleplaying settings within Furcadia that require a needless amount of preparation and advance reading before you can have the chance to feel out of your comfort zone in a setting you had no part in creating and will most likely make no true, lasting impact in because it's simply not your original content.
Face it, the furry community is the same one that will go bananas and cry lawsuit if someone in it feels like you've copied their custom race to some extent without express permission, why would you expect anything different in a creative group storytelling environment?
A lot of these communities also impose custom character race framework as well. Instead of being able to enter with whatever character you'd like, and being ousted by the community itself for playing something obviously wrong as would be done in the halcyon days of IRC-oriented freeform
(Dragon Ball Z characters in the medieval-set tavern!?) or a character that could technically fit but doesn't quite match the demographic
(Sorry, eight-thousand year old demigod vampire-angel time lord... At least your character was furry, though!) so as it appears now, many current roleplay settings also require a lot of tweaking to your original concept and designs if you want to "fit". Where's the fun in that?
Surprisingly, this was never really a problem in many older settings such as Goldwyn on Furcadia that had a "pick up and play" attitude in which everyone brings something to the table under the banner of a very loose main theme. While I believe these "fully realized" settings have their place and of course, deserve respect, having to slog through a large amount of self-appreciating continuity materials and then compromising your character's original design to mesh with the rules of this self-contained universe you won't be impacting in the long run isn't for everyone and shouldn't have to be the norm.
The Bennecourt Alehouse is designed to specifically "cut the fat" and deliver an open area for roleplayers to bring in their concepts and to just play!
The dream itself is considered to be part of the Dragonlands continuity -- the default setting for medieval roleplay on Furcadia. If you take the time to glance over the website if you have somehow not already during your time in-game, or may be seeking a refresher course on it, I'll instead remind you that for all intents and purposes, this material is essentially non-existent and bears no implications on character design or concept in any form.
The most important thing to remember about this setting is that it's intended to be fantasy medieval in design. Due to the allowance of magic, all bets are off concerning technology and as such, even low-end steampunk characters are capable of fitting in at baseline.
That said, I'd like to state that the name of the game here is common sense. If you're going to play a character that completely clashes against the core concept, or if you're having trouble wondering why I would even state this, you most likely do not belong in this group.
While I wish to capture the spirit of "classic" freeform and openly accept the disarray that comes with it, I would however like to prevent total anarchy. Obviously, some gray area concepts can work in a setting like this with the provision that "it works" and the other players are alright with it as well. I expect the player base to "self-police" itself to an extent in this regard.