NPC Account Question & Discussion

Guest

Good afternoon/morning/evening,
I hope you're having a great start to 2018. As you might have guessed from the thread title I would like to talk about NPC accounts and NPCs in general. I understand that we are not doing dedicated NPC accounts, but I'm curious why we aren't. At the moment, my understanding is that many people use NPCs as de facto characters anyway with many even having their own profiles and participating in standalone threads. I suppose I am just a bit confused as there seems to be some ambiguity in the system at large as we are limited in character account number, but we can make NPCs and use them like any other character to work around it.

I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on the matter.

Cheers!

Guest

NPCs, in my understanding, are used in situations where you have a character you need for a specific post or string of posts. For example, Pureblood ball and/or events.

I would like to use NPCs, but I would not use them on my main account as I can't justify muddying my post count with posts that don't go towards the 100 and are not in the character-dedicated account.
If I were using an NPC, it would be on a dedicated account.

I don't get why we aren't allowed to have them?

Subject: Re: NPC Account Question & Discussion Wed Feb 07, 2018 8:50 pm

Hi all,

Thanks for striking up the discussion!

NPCs have always been, and still are, a complicated issue on the site and within the rules of the site. The Admins are currently working on these issues and the rules of the NPCs to give a clearer guide for future reference.

What we would love, is a good discussion, so that we can try to make a good decision on how to proceed, and look forward to hearing the comments from everyone!

Jake

________________________________________________
~ Auror ~ Profile ~ DADA Professor ~
~ In a Relationship ~ 36 ~ Father ~ 6' ~ American Accent ~

Guest

Here’s my thoughts on the matter. It may be a bit long and jumbled.

Firstly, I can understand why you wouldn’t want them — the cons, so to speak. If people keep making NPCs they might not make playables and that just ruins the whole need for 100 post things.

But I think this can be monitored; for example, only make NPCs if you have reason or plot. That would be up to the admins. As an example (not an accusation) Azalea already has ... what is it, something like 6 or so NPCs? That’s more than anyone else so far. (Not that it’s a bad thing, because she has plot.)

It would be on the admins, yes, to monitor, but perhaps just coming up with an additional rule might solve that — one that states an NPC can only be brought in if for a particular plot or post. (Up to you guys.)

I like the idea of an NPC account. In fact, I like it best, for many reasons. I find posting as an NPC from my main account to be confusing, annoying, and complicated. I don’t like having my main account ‘be’ someone else — and I know many, many people share the same thoughts.

I’m not just speaking for myself in this case, but many of us find it too complex to work with and it dampens our excitement to post in general, to mix things up with our NPCs and main accounts.

It’ll also be easier on the admins if NPCs were all under one account.

Personally, and I know many others feel the same from talking with them, one character to reach 100 posts can be ... I can’t find the right word now to use, but essentially boring. 100 posts is a lot to reach to get a second playable char (and while I understand and don’t mind this rule, it does get tedious). NPCs can help us break up that monotony and also give us a chance to explore which new character we might want to bring in or whatnot.

To be able to use an NPC account would, I feel, also help boost site activity by a little. Smile

I would, personally, like it if us users were given a say in it via a voting system or such, but again my personal preference.

Guest

Just my two cents on the discussion even though I don't have an NPC yet. (Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors. The train is freezing cold and I'm shivering and can't feel my fingers.)

I think having a separate account solely for NPCs is a good idea because it's so much easier, both for us and the admins, to keep track of the 100 post count on our playing character.

Personally, I'd also feel pretty weird posting as another character on a playing account - for example, posting as Ceyal, Elouise, or Seth on Sophie's account. It's quite uncomfortable for me (I don't know about the rest) writing one character with the name, signature, and face of another. Each character is unique and should have their own account but since we have a 100 post limit, having an NPC account would be the alternative for this. (Agree with Mel that it's up to admins' discretion in allowing us to have NPCs based on plot so we don't just too crazy making one NPC after another.)

Also, yea. I think a vote would be great.

Guest

Hello!

I’d like to start off by saying that I think it’s great that we can have a proper discussion as to a decision such as this. In terms of NPCs, having an account for the sake of NPCs would be convenient. For one thing, as many have stated above, often times it can be challenging to properly calculate the number of posts of your “main” character when some posts are littered by NPC posts.

I would suggest that to avoid the idea of too many NPCs it would be convenient to make sure that the NPCs are properly fleshed out with similar strictness as a normal character. (If we want to be even stricter, then perhaps even more finely toothcombed like a pure blood elite status.”).

I like the idea of trying out NPCs perhaps requiring that when the character is fleshed out and has a proper plot, with the admin approval, can be moved to a “real” character.

Just a thought to increase numbers.

Best!
Angie

Guest

Hey!

Having NPC would be cool but yeah I agree what Tess said basically and everyone above.

Let's just say having an account for all your NPC's would be useful. But people should watch out how many of those NPC's are made. Since some point, it could be even more than "real" characters.

Just NPC should be made only when it's really needed for some plot. Not just because you want to have another char next to your current ones.

I only use NPC when I really would need it. I won't really use it myself, well make NPC account to have NPC's since I don't really like to play chars under one account. It gets confusing to me. I don't mind if others do it. That's fine by me.

Basically, it's up to admins if they let you guys have them or not.

~~(sorry if I don't make any sense. I'm running on less than three hours of sleep here. I freaking hate my neighbours dog, it keeps barging outside)~~

Guest

I'm pleased to see so much discussion. Hopefully, it will help set the precedent for more of the same in the future. In my experience, open communication between both members and staff can only be a good thing.

Back to the matter at hand, however, as I neglected to fully flesh out my opinion when creating this thread. Luckily, it seems y'all have hit on many of the benefits of having npc accounts. The biggest one, I think, is the tracking of in-character posts. Given recent rule changes, the number of these types of posts has become rather important. Unfortunately, the true number of in-character posts can be hard to track. For example, though it appears as if I have 100+ posts right now only about 96ish are in-character.

If the 100 post benchmark is a good idea, well, that might be for another time...

Long story short, I agree with those who have been so kind as to provide their opinions thus far; I vote we vote.

Guest

"PCs may be handled through the same account as a PC of yours - granting NPCs a separate account undermines the spirit of what an NPC is. It also undermines the 100 post rules we have on PCs, devaluing Playing Characters in favor of NPCs."

Democracy

Subject: Re: NPC Account Question & Discussion Thu Feb 08, 2018 8:49 pm

Hi guys!

So we’ve read through all your posts and as usual, you all make some really good points, points we’d like to address here. Firstly, we are in absolute agreement with Mel over additional guidelines needed to govern the use of NPCs on the site. We’re also digging Angie’s idea of stricter requirements to prevent abuse of NPCs. And since you’ve all been kind enough to voice your concerns, we’d like to be frank and voice ours on the matter too as we believe in open and honest communication.

NPCs have been a little troubling to deal with from the start and our opinion on them has been evolving ever since they were introduced. We actually appreciate the journey from when they were first introduced and disliked by the majority to now when most of you are advocating for a separate account. We’ve certainly come a long way. But at heart, the staff believes that NPCs should play a supporting character at best. This is again in line with Mel’s idea of having an NPC only if you have a plot for them.

NPCs were never meant to take over the site, nor was it the staff’s intention to make them more valuable or covetted than PC characters. However, due to lack of guidelines, we understand how these intentions may have gotten lost in translation. NPCs at best are meant to serve as background characters and actors that enrich a PC’s history instead of going out and creating his/her own. An example of this would be Azalea’s many NPCs that always link back to a PC no matter what else they do.

We believe that allowing NPCs a separate account would be to allow them their own status and standing on the site, a privilege enjoyed by only PCs at the moment. We honestly believe it would blur the line between PC and NPC far more than we’re comfortable with because we all know Jake keeps detailed spreadsheets of PCs. Making one of NPCs might drive him over the edge. xD

So while we absolutely understand why you would want to make your life easier by making separate accounts for NPCs, we would like you to consider our point too. If NPCs become more easy to produce than PCs, we could have a potential disaster on our hands. That being said, we don’t expect a full agreement from our members, which is a good thing. Different opinions are what make the site and the world great. And even this topic was superbly helpful in us coming up with the new rules as we took suggestions from those involved.

For anyone who doesn’t like using their “main accounts” to write NPC posts, we suggest getting to one hundred to you can app your next PC. After all, PCs are always better in the short and long run.

________________________________________________
~ Auror ~ Profile ~ DADA Professor ~
~ In a Relationship ~ 36 ~ Father ~ 6' ~ American Accent ~

» So, I want to ask you a question {w/ Nikolai}
» The Very Big Question (Veronika & Jake)
» A Serious Discussion [Adelaide]