Welcome to Gaia! ::

In case y'all haven't noticed the Academy has its own subforum now (yay!) but we're still in the process of fixing it all up so don't post there yet. >.>

Where you can post is right here giving us any suggestions on things you'd like to see in/done with the Academy!

Specifically we need to figure out how to handle movement outside of class. Since we're going to be letting y'all go explore campus we need to figure how that's done. So far we've got two options:

a) We'll start Location threads and you'll post in whatever thread you are located in at the moment then when you move to a new location you move to another thread. I believe this is how OiM does it.

b) We'll start Group threads and you'll post in whatever group (party/team/ bunch of people) you are in then when you leave the group you go into another thread. This is how Elsewhere does it.

Either of these ideas have their good and bad so we want to hear from you which y'all think would be best.

There's a reason we let Jikial play advanced characters - same reason we let him help make the campus. . . which is in the way rough draft stage btw so expect changes.

Aaand for the different threads thing, let me take a shot at explaining it.

So, if we go with the Location ones you'll have threads like:

Library (public)
Food Court (public)
Train Station (restricted)
. . . and so on.

So say Alex and Zane (for example) want to get a bite to eat after class. Well, then they would go into the Food Court thread and start posting there. Now say D'cund wants to go to the library (which he probably will) so he would post in that thread. But let's say after eating Alex and Zane want to join D'cund in the library. Well, then they would make a transition post in the Food Court leaving it and then an intro post in the Library thread to enter it. Probably be best if they have a link between the two in case someone wants to follow the story. They would do this every time they transitioned between locations.

Now if we go with the Groups then you'll have threads like:

Conspiracy Team (Alex, Zane - Food Court)
Rockies (D'cund - Library)
. . . and so on

So, same scenario, Alex and Zane want to get food so one of them starts a thread (with a clever group name then the group members and their location in parenthesis) and they just go do it in there. D'cund wants to go to the library so he just does that in his thread. Then when Alex and Zane go to visit D'cund they would jump into his thread and abandon theirs, merging the two groups into a new one (Jikial would update the title accordingly). It could probably be up to y'all which thread gets merged into. Again they would link back to their old thread so one could follow the story and the old thread would end there nice and clean.

Pros of the Groups are that it would probably be easier to follow the storylines as it would stay with the characters and not jump around as much (assuming people change locations more than they split off groups) and the threads would generally be cleaner, only having one, linear story to each. Cons would be that there could potentially be a lot of threads and it might be hard to keep track of the setting in each as it changes - especially with y'all starting your own threads.

Pros of the Locations are that there would only be as many threads as locations and you'd know where the setting is at all the times but cons are that it could be hard to follow the storylines jumping around threads like that and piling multiple stories into one thread.

From what I've seen/heard OiM has had some trouble with people not knowing where to post using the Location threads. Mel hasn't had trouble yet with Elsewhere's Group threads but she stays on top of them and all the players (left) in there are pretty advanced so it might be harder than she makes it look.

Hope that helped explain and please do respond to this so we can finish up the Academy. Y'all can't get out of class till we know how you're going to move around out there. smile

Conspiracy team HELL YES!! They're going to hire Isa to take stabs at the terrain with her tools to find the cruise missile launch site that's rumoured to be located under the Quad.

I'm for locations threads. That said, I say start out with a few locations (no more than seven, perhaps) so it doesn't get too hectic. Besides that, group based threads might make them seem a bit more closed-off, which could hurt interaction.

This family/friends stuff is harrrrrd.

Teams can be handled by colour, which would give us a blend. In this way, groups can move about locations by easily recognisable colours and locations can be threads.

The problem would become the interaction of colours with other colours, and which group would assume which colour when they merge.

Either way colour for groups and threads for locations would be a good way of going about it.

I suppose when groups interact they can assume no colour (automatic) and then revert when they split again or take one when they merge.

First off, guess who's back?....and missed a few things as well? sweatdrop

Second off, I missed you all!

And thirdly, while I really like the location threads that OiM did, I remember another RP that attempted the same thing (Project: Eden) and it got so confusing for anyone who wanted to jump in. The problem that I see is that if you don't know keep up with where the story is heading (i.e, you don't keep up), you're going to have lots of problems seeing a plotline in one location thread going "suddenly, the kids decide to go to the dorms..." to the next post reading "the kids returned with blood covering them from head to toe and one of them appeared to be missing a limb. Oh and ____ was missing." I remember looking back on that thread and trying to figure out which thread I had to go to to find out the missing plotline and it got confusing. I really suggest using links to wherever the plotline goes to keep it flowing as smoothly as possible.

I would like to see colored text incorporated in case we do have several groups who want to do different things within a location. I agree with Jikial about the no color when groups meet. That would probably help show that groups are meeting and that the group dynamic might change (for example, Reina was a part of the Artistic Team with Evan before deciding she wanted to change groups and go hang out with Conspiracy Team).

Allow me the pleasure to show everyone the compendium of all things awesome.

I figured that it would help if there are links to info about people's characters, since we don't have complete profile sheets on hand at the moment. I guess it would help with keeping track of assignments too, however I did not note down the assignments/cases where people were just commenting on each other's characters. I also skipped that part of the class where everyone was listing traits of good/bad characters/RPers.

Please let me know if I've missed something/your post.

ISAAA~ *hugs*

We misseded you!

Now do your work. eek

And thanks for that list Watervoir (noticed it a few days ago from stalki- browsing the site). You've made the finals a lot easier. Speaking of which those should be coming up soon so everyone please let us know what classes you want to take next. So far it looks like POL 101 is winning.