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Post by The Scrac that Smiles Back on Jun 2, 2015 12:46:16 GMT -5
Hello! Should there be an "Original Characters" category, like there is for franchise characters? All original (true original, no fan characters) can be placed in said category and further sub categories can be added later, if the writer so chooses. So far I'm the only one to create a category for my originals, so the other originals can only be found under the "All Characters" category. Mail and Prooobably Not Jeffely, since you've added to the character pages, I'm particularly interested in your opinions. It might be worth it? What I did for this was just to specify whether they were original or not in some of the text...at least I think I did that? I think it could at least help for searching up characters like if i'm not sure if someone's rping a fandom one or not. How would "Neo OCs" fit into this? Like if they share the species of the fan world, but otherwise they're their own characters? Would they still fall under fan characters? Yeah, Neo non-official characters are fan characters and fall under "franchise characters" unless we want to separate franchise fan characters and franchise official characters
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Post by Mail on Jun 2, 2015 13:04:26 GMT -5
It might be worth it? What I did for this was just to specify whether they were original or not in some of the text...at least I think I did that? I think it could at least help for searching up characters like if i'm not sure if someone's rping a fandom one or not. How would "Neo OCs" fit into this? Like if they share the species of the fan world, but otherwise they're their own characters? Would they still fall under fan characters? Yeah, Neo non-official characters are fan characters and fall under "franchise characters" unless we want to separate franchise fan characters and franchise official characters Who knows. x-x Are there statistics of how many people use franchise official characters? Enough to warrant distinctions?
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Post by The Scrac that Smiles Back on Jun 2, 2015 13:11:09 GMT -5
Yeah, Neo non-official characters are fan characters and fall under "franchise characters" unless we want to separate franchise fan characters and franchise official characters Who knows. x-x Are there statistics of how many people use franchise official characters? Enough to warrant distinctions? There used to be more, but most of those people are gone. So I don't really think so. And the sorting between official and fan characters gets complicated with AUs of official characters.
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Post by Mail on Jun 2, 2015 19:59:30 GMT -5
Oh geeze....honestly I'm leaning a bit towards keeping significant AUs as their own characters in terms of pages? As in Alter. I think personally it would be easier for me if he had a separate, but linked page....
But this is just personal scenarios for me, ahah.
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Post by The Scrac that Smiles Back on Jun 2, 2015 22:15:47 GMT -5
Oh geeze....honestly I'm leaning a bit towards keeping significant AUs as their own characters in terms of pages? As in Alter. I think personally it would be easier for me if he had a separate, but linked page.... But this is just personal scenarios for me, ahah. That's a given, I meant "franchise" before fan and official in that post. I was thinking along the lines of @torkie10's AU Mega Man official characters, should she or anyone else writing AU versions of official franchise characters decide to make character pages. Although it does make me wonder what fan characters of another Tacoer's original world should be categorized as.
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Post by The Scrac that Smiles Back on Jun 4, 2015 11:31:06 GMT -5
I will not be adding character pages, for numerous reasons. Primarily lack of (outside) interest. And secondarily a lack of talent. (I find the coding on the pages to be much too difficult for me, template or not. I don't think my material warrants putting someone else through the formatting. That's why I didn't make more than a few pages.)
Overall, resulting in a lack of motivation. So you needn't worry about that.
I am quite willing to talk with individuals who want to know more/tidbits of trivia, though. Mm, okay. Have you tried using the classic editor? It's not much different than using a word document. I would say the lack of outside interest is not particularly true (do you mean outside of Tacoers? In that case you're likely right, but that applies to pretty much all of our stuff)- I know a few people are very interested in reading summaries of your stories, and I'd like a character page to link to when I fill out character relationship fields. But regardless of whether you intend to add anything, you were an example, and many other characters would have the same classification as your own, in terms of AU official franchise character.
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Post by The Scrac that Smiles Back on Jun 4, 2015 11:56:23 GMT -5
So, the main categories we have so far are: All Characters Original Characters Franchise Characters Other Characters
"Other" would be the catch-all for fan characters of non-franchise storyverses and other classifications we might not have thought of yet. Fan and Franchise Official can be divided out later with subcategories. Franchise means it has media, whether written, drawn, or something else, and products related to that media for sale.
The idea here is to add your character to every category that applies to them, besides the "Character" category itself. So if your original storyverse becomes a franchise, you get to add your stuff to both categories.
I was thinking Level 3 and up subcategories could all go under "All Characters". There's no limit to how many of those subcategories there can be (to my knowledge), so create away. Just no redundant categories, please c:
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Post by Holly on Jul 25, 2015 14:06:14 GMT -5
Since we're probably starting a new Taco on August 1st (since we should have started one July 1st, and it makes more sense to wait until the new month at this point), I figured this might be a good time to bring up an idea I had... I was thinking for the next Taco that we might be able to relax the side board rule? Not get rid of it completely, but the rule at the moment (as I understand it) is that if you leave the plaza, you have to create a side board. I think it would be enough to just have that rule apply to if you left the city, or if you have a particularly intense/violent plot happening (which could discourage people who wanted to just join in casually). My argument for it is this: - The main threads have been inactive compared to the side boards. The activity of the sideboards shows that people are interested, but the side board rule is moving activity away from the main thread.
- If you're just in a back alley or public place in the Taco, it is not entirely impossible for a character to decide to wander in there instead of the plaza, so even if someone accidentally (or intentionally) responds to you when you're not in the plaza proper, it can still possibly make sense.
While a fair amount of side board activity involves other planets entirely, which would still probably be best suited for side boards, moving some of the activity that is just back alleys and other districts back to the main thread may work. If people agree, we can try this starting at the next Taco, and see how it goes.
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Post by The Scrac that Smiles Back on Jul 25, 2015 14:28:39 GMT -5
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Post by Mail on Jul 25, 2015 14:33:32 GMT -5
Since we're probably starting a new Taco on August 1st (since we should have started one July 1st, and it makes more sense to wait until the new month at this point), I figured this might be a good time to bring up an idea I had... I'm alright with this personally. My characters have little reason to sit around in just the square, so might as well expand this to the city since they walk around in there sometimes, yeah. At the very least, none of my interactions have them remaining in the square.
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Post by The Scrac that Smiles Back on Sept 1, 2015 23:02:29 GMT -5
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Post by The Scrac that Smiles Back on Nov 5, 2015 16:41:05 GMT -5
Made a general placement map. Questions and comments?
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Post by The Scrac that Smiles Back on May 26, 2016 15:20:51 GMT -5
Okay, so today I was asked about a possible reset of Taco City, which I think is a pretty great idea. So great, in fact, I did it last year with input from former Tacoers I was in the most contact with. It was admittedly not a TOTAL redo, as the city is still called Taco City and Tabloid Town is still somewhere in the yonder distance and Harbor Town is still on the harbor. Other than here's the present canon: - Our planet is called Netwaffle because that's what I've seen it called elsewhere around the forum.
- Warp fields bring in people from different worlds and but also take away people. I like it being an established fact because rping the grief every time someone went missing was repetitive.
- Because real life happens, characters vanish in warp fields when something happens that they would have been been part of if not for their writer's lack of free time or interest. They can show up anytime with or without memory of vanishing. Writer's choice.
- Warp fields in the abandoned district and dark forest can create or bring in monsters. Hero-types can often be found guarding the border between the populated part of the city and the abandoned district.
- Taco City is an anarchy. Hey, all the people who wrote the cops left and I had no interest in it.
- Some neighborhoods could theoretically band together to form their own little governments.
- Still, most of the city has the 'peace' kept by fighter groups who range from idealists with weapons to mercenaries to plain ol' thugs.
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Post by Holly on May 26, 2016 17:11:41 GMT -5
So I'm the one who suggested the reset, and after talking more in Skype we eventually reached the point I wanted to get at but was avoiding because I didn't want to be too blunt: Scrac's Taco City is kind of a violent dystopia, and is hard to have as wide of a range of moods and plots in. And... she agreed on that point. XD
At this point we also realized we were already basically writing in two separate universes/branched timelines as it was: Scrac is writing in Taco City, a wartorn anarchic scifi city, and I'm still writing in the Icy Taco, relatively unchanged from how the setting was in 2010.
Until this point neither of us realized the other was doing this (Scrac thought my stories were in a time bubble, and I never realized the extent to which Scrac had changed the Taco), so any time we were in the main chat together we had fundamentally different ideas of what the setting was. Which... is kind of a problem.
Both Taco City and the Icy Taco on their own are also intimidating for different reasons: Taco City requires very intense storylines that some may not be interested in, and the Icy Taco is more or less a loosely connected series of in-jokes that is basically impenetrable to a newcomer
So my suggestion for the reset: Take the feel of the old Icy Taco, where it was more or less just a quiet town where zany things could happen, and add in some of the improvements of Taco City, like allowing for characters to vanish if it would cause a plot hole for them to just not show up somewhere when the Writer is busy. For a working title, we can call this Taco Town.
Taco Town would be a completely blank slate, if you want it. None of the events that happened in Taco City or the Icy Taco are canon to Taco Town, it's a completely new setting. If you want to keep your old characters, obviously it's fair game to just put the Icy Taco or Taco City versions into Taco Town, just like bringing in characters from any other fictional work. Or, you could bring in new characters without the weight of past events on their characterization.
Of course, people are still attached to their Taco City RPs and Icy Taco stories, so stories and RPs in those settings would still be fair game as side boards, but the main board would be converted over to Taco Town. Therefore, since you can bring in old characters and write in old universes, the only difference is that the old plazas would be relegated to side boards instead of the main board.
Obviously it's hard to say just by talking about it how it would work, so I'd like to propose a test run in a side board. I know some people are still taking finals and some people are going on trips, but if you're game for trying this out, let me know when you'd be free.
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Post by Mail on May 27, 2016 10:56:34 GMT -5
Take this with a grain of salt, because I haven't been a part of these specific boards for too long so my opinion shouldn't be counted much!
I'll start off with some things though: 1. I know next to nothing about the history of the city (nor do I even know where to find out about it). "Violent dystopia" is also news to me. I personally interpreted the city as fairly calm...but that's also because I haven't seen anything bad happen yet (apart from what specific characters have done in side rps, but those were the characters acting and not really the actions of the city or citizens). 2. I can agree with the "impenetrable to a newcomer" point. I use the boards differently than likely intended...and as such the main ic chat doesn't have much to offer for me so I don't spend time there. This is for a couple of reasons. - I personally like having some plot as opposed to just casual chatplay, so i'll only participate in more casual stuff if I specifically feel like it.
- A lot of people a part of the Taco community come and go cause of RL/circumstances/etc. Personally for me, if I take part with someone in a casual chat, I get the general impression i'm only gonna get 2-3 posts out of them before they disappear for months. Nothing against specific people about this, but for me that isn't enough to have a conversation or actually do something (even if it's characters trying to make friends). What i'm looking for doesn't really suit this type of interaction, so I interact more with people that are regularly active.
- Building on the above point, while I could migrate to the other rp chats, those don't suit me either. While I usually paragraph rp, because of my own rl circumstances I barely have time for that. Semi chatplay/small paragraph is what I can pull off consistently/daily while being fair to other players and not making them wait a loonngggg amount of time. Paragraph is fun, yeah, but the expectations of the other boards require like....10+ paragraphs and I just don't have the time or energy to write that fast and keep the other person happy with my response time. It doesn't feel fair to me to make someone wait weeks for one post - so i'm not doing that myself.
3. The actual layout of the boards and rules confuse me a lot. It's all over the place, and the rules specific to the Taco boards are nowhere to be found/same with history. There's no summarizations or easy way to get this info without reading every single old board...and who has time for that. Because of that...I sort of feel like i'm just bumbling around trying not to step on anyone's toes because I have no clue. The wiki sounds like a great place to put summaries and rules, but we have to actually use it. 4. With regards to the change, this doesn't really affect me since I don't hang out in the main board. If it'll make the main board more active and fun for other people, by all means, but the above points can sort of give a sense why I stick to side rps. That isn't to say i'll never be in the main chat, or that i'm opposed to hanging out there more...but the current way it is, it's not really for me.
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