Just to Clarify (part 2?)

[zilla]

Just to add to what Pumpkin has already said, I think there is another problem we have not yet addressed (or perhaps it has and I've just missed it). Considering all that has been said about what can and cannot be role played, think also on the fact that canons need to post at least twice per week to meet their quota, or they get a warning, and possibly removed. It might take more than enough imagination to keep role playing for so long, actively, waiting for the next movie.

I dunno, just food for thought I suppose. Such a level of activity especially for me, seems extremely daunting.

[gollum]

After reading all these other responses I'm still a little confused. To me it feels like I'm being singled out because I joined as Gollum and none of this confusion started until after I joined, at least that's what it looks like to me. I was fine with the fact that Gollum wouldn't ever be able to leave his cave, because I was looking forward to roleplaying with Ai Li and Bilbo and especially the Riddles in the Dark scene, which was what we were doing. I don't really understand, as many other members pointed out, is that after that scene it seems like the quest just dies and the site goes completely AU? I feel like i'm making no sense... o.O As Balin said you may lose a lot of members over this, me included, because it's just very limited. A little more limited for me then anyone else, considering I don't think everyone's going to be like "OOH LOOK A CAVE LETS GO LOOK!!" I mean people just don't do that...i mean i don't think they do? Again, I'm sorry if I'm making no sense. Well, at the moment I have nothing more to say, this is really short compared to everyone else's (helps that what i wanted to say was already said by everyone else) but I just thought I'd give my thoughts.

[westernfiddler]

Pumpkin is right. I joined this place with the idea that everything past the eagles was a free-for-all, and I think I'm stayinh if it's not.

[hades]

I'm not one to complain, especially since I joined this site to be a member and to have fun, but I feel as though I signed a contract without reading it all the way through - which I did and I didn't see anything of what was going on.

I was, like Pumpkin and several have said, under the impression that we were roleplaying the quest in its entirety, not by 'An Unexpected Journey' , 'The Desolation of Smaug' , 'There and Back Again". You can't expect people to do the math. I understand the need to make the site last long, but don't forget the LotR movies after The Hobbit, even if that isn't what you're aiming for. 12 months is a very long time, and things will pick up in the Summer and that is where I think we will all start to get a bit annoyed with having to wait everything out.

It is a nice idea, but you need members with TONS AND TONS AND TONS AND TONS of patience, which some of us here don't have. (I am sorry to say that I am one of them). I don't think I can keep Thorin going sluggishly on a quest (and side quests) for two/three years! Especially since the quest itself only takes about a year to complete and another year for Bilbo and Gandalf to get back to the shire.

At the rate thing were going it would have taken about a year to get from one side of the plot to the other. I'll repeat what Pumpkin has said, your members are very dedicated to the plot of The Hobbit and wouldn't dream of messing it up beyond recognition, or, at all! If they tried they would have a hoard of members to correct them.

If we are getting all this out now I feel like I've been played/tricked/hoodwinked into this scenario, not gonna lie. If there was a specific way you were going to do this it really should have been stated from the very beginning, not... now because essentially Pumpkin and AiLi have lied to everyone on Tumbler and that isn't a good feeling, not a good one at all.

I'm bewildered and wonder-struck that I wasn't informed about this when I tried out for Thorin and got the part. I was looking forward to having him float down stream in a barrel escaping the evil Thranduil and his Elven people. And not to mention the Spiders! The Spiders!!! =/

it is disappointing that it has taken that turn... there are no words to describe how I'm feeling.

As Silence has said, it limits her own character, who shouldn't be limited to just his cave. Gollum knows the Misty Mountains and he knows all paths throughout middle earth. Aside from possibly Galadriel herself, he's one of the oldest creatures in Middle-Earth! I don't know what was said to her about this character but I feel as though she's been gypped. =/

I'm glad that I'm not the only member to feel this way.... I'm sorry if it sounds... bleh and annoying but that is as blunt as I can make it....

[westernfiddler]

I'm starting to sound like a parrot, but she's right.

[Lisa]

This board was built with the idea that the plot would follow the movies. That is what makes sense. If that somehow get skewed along the way, I apologize greatly, but it makes absolutely no sense to go and roleplay a scene that happened at the end and then jump back to the beginning. There is no logical timeline to that. Roleplaying is about developing a character…not getting to play out as many scenes from a movie or book as you can. The only way you’re going to develop a character is if they have a steadily progressed timeline. There is no point to jumping around. The point of a site plot is so everyone is on the right page, including new members. As the plot progresses (aka the Quest), people can keep up and join in as they please. But if the plot is all scattered…meaning you’ve got a scene at the end happening and also a scene from the beginning going, it makes no sense. It’s like reading a book. You don’t skip around to the next to last chapter after reading the second chapter. You read them in order and you watch as the characters progress on their journey and grow.

To address another issue, a year in RP time is really not that long. There are so many plots that could happen during the first movie. It doesn’t just have to be the main quest. I know from personal experience that a plot that is supposed to take 3-4 months can easily turn into a 6-7 month adventure. There is SO much material in the first movie/book/your own creative RP to keep you having fun and occupied for a year, and then when the next movie comes out…your muse is likely to be renewed and you’ll be off kicking again on new adventures.

The main reason I say current threads should be discarded is because there has been so much confusion on what is actually happening that it would probably be beneficial to just start fresh. By all means if you have a thread that fits in with what our current plot is, you may keep it going. If it doesn’t fit though, I’m sorry to say it needs to be archived.

Yes, as canons you’re going to be somewhat limited. That’s what happens when you play a canon, especially when you play a canon on a board that basically follows the book. That is just one of the downfalls. But, that’s why we have original characters and aren’t strictly a canon site. We are completely okay with bringing in the AU aspect of it, but things need to make sense when interacting with canon. That’s all we ask. Gollum can roam the Misty Mountains and can interact with characters, as long as it doesn't change any of the Quest plot and he is back in the Mountain when Bilbo arrives. Like I said, there is a lot outside the books/movies we don't see...that's what the point of this RP is. To play out those scenes that we never see. We just want it to make sense with where we are in the main plot.

I apologize if some of you joined under pretenses that we were a completely AU site, but we are not. I hope none of you leave as you are all very talented writers, but if you feel that is what you must do, then I wish you luck in your future roleplaying adventures.

[pumpkin]

Thank you for that response. I still feel as though I was lied to when I joined this site (or that it was never clear what was allowed, even though I wrote when I first joined asking what was allowed and never got the answer to that). I also feel as though I've lied to many people on Tumblr, who I asked to join here. I will refrain from doing that in the future, and I feel insulted and stupid that I did.

About the current threads...so far there has been NO confusion between any of the members about the current threads. So far the only people who have seem confused are the admin, but you guys really aren't writing in those threads, so maybe that's why? The one thread that seemed to cause this problem was "Riddles in the Dark." But we're still not hearing why that thread was a problem, which we have asked about over and over again, and it doesn't seem to make sense why that one thread has made all the others "too confusing."

Given that most of my posts on here are no longer allowed because they happen "later in the movie" or "after the first movie," I don't seem to have a place here on the site anymore.

With that, you have my goodbye. I wish you luck, I really do. Because I can't imagine that things are going to go well inhibiting members like this. I'm sorry. -_-

[westernfiddler]

I feel lied to. I was recruited via Tumblr by Puck and Pumpkin, so should Puck follow Pumpkin's lead I will cop out of this group. I am sorry, this seemed like such a good idea but now I know it wasn't even what I thought it would be. I feel deceived but I don't blame Pumpkin or Puck.

[zilla]

Jan 19, 2013 11:46:45 GMT -5 @westernfiddler said:

I feel lied to. I was recruited via Tumblr by Puck and Pumpkin, so should Puck follow Pumpkin's lead I will cop out of this group. I am sorry, this seemed like such a good idea but now I know it wasn't even what I thought it would be. I feel deceived but I don't blame Pumpkin or Puck.

I second this.

[banaili]

I think jumping around with threads is up to the members themselves. If they can keep it organized in their heads (or in a thread tracker, which I started for my character--you can find it in the plot board), then it shouldn't be for an admin to worry about, since that's something members can keep track of on their own. As long as we're staying canon, I don't see why it would be a problem. I've never seen a site that had a problem with characters jumping around on the site timeline, so long as they didn't do it too often and also kept track of where they did so.

Also, I've never developed any character I've ever written--be it a canon or original character on any kind of site--by just sticking to posts "in order." Inspiration crops up when it wants to--it doesn't have a set timeline. I develop my character by skipping around on his or her timeline, and I am able to find who that character is and who they become by doing that. I think that's really up to the roleplayer of the character and their style. Telling us we have to discover our character in a way that only works for certain types of people is severely limiting.

Finally, I think I know what the biggest issue is here, although I've noticed it has been carefully avoided since this all started.

This all started after the Riddles in the Dark post. You're saying now that all the posts everyone on this site has done are "too confusing" and should be discontinued for that reason, but there wasn't any problem with any of them until Gandalf said that our Riddles in the Dark post could not continue.

I also noticed that while the site plot seemed to change drastically over the past few days (going from being canon with slightly AU, to canon up until Riddles and then a AU free-for-all, and now strictly canon by the movies), there was only one aspect related to those plots that did not change: that Riddles in the Dark could not be roleplayed out. Now, I'm not saying I want to roleplay Riddles in the Dark that badly, although at least it would give Silence something to do with her character. I'm just wondering why Riddles is actually a problem to begin with. I think I'm more curious than anything else, since it looks like it's been so carefully avoided that the plot has been changed multiple times to accommodate doing so. I think if we could just be told that, it would solve many a problem that we are all having right now.

(I also noticed that while you guys kindly addressed the majority of the questions we posed in this thread, yet again the question as to why Riddles in the Dark is such a problem has been ignored. Gandalf told us that it could not be roleplayed because of "principles," but he did not elaborate on what those principles were when we asked, so we still do not know. They must be something important to risk hurting members' feelings like this.)

I know from personal experience that a plot that is supposed to take 3-4 months can easily turn into a 6-7 month adventure. There is SO much material in the first movie/book/your own creative RP to keep you having fun and occupied for a year, and then when the next movie comes out…

But you're not allowing us to roleplay the whole first movie. You said we have to span it out so that it takes up the entire year, right? Even then, that's still quite limiting...people will want to roleplay past the first movie and certainly don't want to wait until December of this year just to roleplay up to the Eagles scene. And what about threads that take place in the future and are not part of the movie or book at all? From what I've been told so far, those are completely out of the question, as we would never get to them.

I only wish that after how hard we have all worked for this site that our voices could be heard. It feels very much like we are being forced into a very tiny box that we're not going to fit into. Of course we respect that you all are the admin and thus have the final say on this site, but considering the members are the ones who help keep up the activity here (and I hope it's not too bold to say that I think we the members have done a great job of that), we should have some say in whether or not our threads can be continued or whether the plot is suddenly changed while we are in the middle of roleplaying it. If there is a specific reason as to why the plot is suddenly changed while we are roleplaying it (and again, I think it has something to do with Riddles in the Dark, although we have not heard what yet), then that's something the admin need to tell us. Otherwise it just causes mass confusion and chaos as we wonder when things suddenly changed.

I apologize if some of you joined under pretenses that we were a completely AU site, but we are not.

As I mentioned in the post "Questions from the Members," most of us joined thinking this was a canon site which allowed for some AU. None of us joined thinking it was a completely AU site. It is Gandalf who said that the site plot had suddenly changed to being completely AU. That's why we were confused. And it's just so confusing for us to know what is going on here now too. I don't know how treating members like this is supposed to keep us here... T_T

You have to understand, by this point I think we all could have left and found a place that would work for us. But I think we all wanted to stay to see if we could make things work out. The site I originally joined had been a great one--I don't know why things changed. I really loved it here.

So with that, I think I'm going to have to join Pumpkin in leaving, if things honestly can't be more accommodating for the hardworking members. Thanks for your time.

[Lisa]

I really am truly sorry to see all of you leave. To answer your question, Ai Li, the Riddles in the Dark thread is what caused all this commotion because it isn’t following the natural progression of things. If that thread were happening later down the line, it wouldn’t have been a problem. I’ve been on sites that allow members to free-form timeline, and it doesn’t work. It gets incredibly confusing, especially for new members. Say one of the Dwarves leaves when the Company is in Rivendell, and a new person comes in wanting to play the same dwarf. They know that they are coming in when the Company is in Rivendell. They don’t have to keep up with ‘oh this scene already happened, and oh this changed.’ It makes things flow nicer.

I apologize as well as it seems the staff (in the past couple days) have been trying to accommodate different things and have been trying to work out a plan. That’s why the verse has changed so much in the past couple days. We are a canon site with AU aspects. AU doesn’t mean doing things out of order though, or RPing future or past events (though we could set up a board specifically for that). AU means that you can play out the scenes with characters that aren’t necessarily showed. You don’t know that Ginger or Cindrallic aren’t people in Middle Earth. You just know they weren’t in the movies or books. That’s the preface we’re trying to portray here.

I think the main problem is you guys feel limited by the timeline moving so slow. But, it’s really not. Like I said, there are hundreds of plots that could happen between the shire and the eagles. And the reason we’re doing it like this is because, say we were to allow the whole quest to happen in a year. What plot does that leave us afterwards? By the time the third movie comes out and muses get flowing from that, there’s not going to be anything left to RP except an entirely AU site, which is fine, but after only a year of being open, that makes no sense to me. This board was made with the pretense that it would last a while. Not just be a one-year thing and be done.

So…that’s my peace. And for Ai Li, I wanted to answer the question you’ve been wanting answered. Again, I’m sorry to see you all leave, but I wish you luck in finding what you’re looking for.

[gollum]

I'm sorry to say that I'm reverting to leaving as well. As I said, I've been feeling a little limited and singled out. I'm also feeling like sort of the root of the problem...so...well, goodbye all you amazing people, I really hate to go but :/ I'm sorry, I wish you all the best of luck on your site. I hope it works out the way you wish, just sorry I can't be part of it. Bye guys.