so, with every pretty much set(the few of us still here) on restarting from scratch, and trying to make this mill better, what do we do next?

Im pretty sure that we’re gonna start a whole new world, or else elro will probably have trouble keeping himself from picking apart posts etc. But before we start this new world, we need to change something. I take that back, we need to change a lot. but before we can change anything, we need to know what needs to be changed. Im going to outline every last problem that this mill has. And ways to solve them.

Probably the biggest problem is theres not enough people to keep it going. This has many causes that need to be found and stopped. One is its so hard to get in and get going. When I first came here, I was hoping to see something like, you actually play your character out, but don’t really do anything to the other characters. Basically, I post something like this:

Fereno finally worked up the nerve to enter the cavern. He cautiously looked in, and began to take steps towards the darkness ahead. Out of nowhere, a small, ugly fellow jumped out and startled Fereno. He drew his sword and demanded “who are you”

Then shadow(not to say your small and ugly….well maybe) posts

Grient calmly pushed the warriors sword away and told him “you should be careful who you draw your sword at, wouldn’t want to get yourself in a bunch of trouble”.

Then I post

Fereno jerked his sword at Grient, “I said who are you”

I think you get the point. But I found what the mill is at today. I didn’t like it too much, but I dealt with it because I couldn’t get this anywhere else. But most wont deal with it, so we need to change the format we use to get more people here. So to get more people here, first we need advertising. Maybe work a deal out where, “we put your banner on our site and you put our banner on your site” with some major fantasy realated sites. For example, a major dungeons and dragons site, or perhaps tolkien.net. Another thing that I found hard was getting something started. After reading a few posts, I realized how long my posts would have to be, and I didn’t know when to start. So we should definitely change the format to a couple of short paragraphs, with open ends to allow more people to jump in on the story.
Another thing that gave me setbacks is all the rules that I had to follow. Not ones like, no overly powerful characters, but ones that said don’t make a character do something he wouldn’t normally do without permission from the owner. I knew nothing about what the characters I was rping with were like, causing some frustration So I tried to avoid this by leaving my posts open ended. I didn’t get replies, which gave me more frustration. so we need to not just change the rules, but also make it easier to get a story going. The rules part can only change if the format changes, again I mention this. The format needs to be easy to use, and allow newbies to the mill the chance to rp, while still allowing you to have fun with it, etc, without making a character do what he normally wouldn’t do. So this format would not just be a couple of short paragraphs with loose ends for anybody to jump in at, but it would be a format that would allow newbies to jump in without fear of making elrohir cast a fireball when he actually knows no magic.(just an example, elrohir[the character] knew some magic, im sure). So the format I have above needs to be moded a bit. So heres another try at the format, using the short story I have above.

I post this, with some obvious loose ends to work with for a newbie to get his/her character, or for someone to get another character:

Fereno finally worked up the nerve to enter the cavern. He cautiously looked in, and began to take steps towards the darkness ahead. Out of nowhere, a small, ugly fellow jumped out and startled Fereno. He drew his sword and demanded “who are you”

The little fellow calmly pushed the warriors sword away and told him “you should be careful who you draw your sword at, wouldn’t want to get yourself in a bunch of trouble, now would ya?”.

Fereno jerked his sword at him, and said “I said who are you”


There could probably be more, but im trying to compress this a bunch.
Then shadow, deciding he wants his new character to be the short and ugly fellow, replies:

Grient knew that if he didn’t say something to this warrior soon, he would find the sword he just pushed away in his side, so he choked up “Im grient, who are you”

The warrior quickly replied “that doesn’t matter, what are you doing here?”

Grient felt a bit of courage and, while pushing the sword away again, chimed up “you know, if anything, I should have a sword at YOUR throat. YOU are the one who just trespassed in MY home. So you should probably but that ungodly weapon away and tell me who YOU are and what YOU want.”


Again, his post would most likely be longer, but im trying to make this short, without getting to far off track.

Ok, this is good, but what about making another persons character do something it shouldn’t, and what if you don’t like any of the characters other people are leaving open for someone to start with?

Well to answer the first, we need to keep bios of all the current characters on the homepage. Someone that knows HTML and has the free time should do it. I probably have the free time, but I don’t know that damned code. To create a new character, simply e-mail the bio, which describes the character’s personality, how he looks, how he fights, what he knows how to do, etc. to the designated person. They will then put it up on the homepage. Hmmm…..i got an idea to make it easier to get someone to do it, and id do it if you do this. Put a posting script on the homepage with a password you need to have to post. On this, you have complete control of editing, posting, deleting, moving, etc. Theres a “forum” for the current characters, for the old characters, for the current stories, and for the FAQs and other helpful things for newbies. When someone wants a new character, he/she simply e-mails the bio to the designated person, and within a day or two, the bio should be up in the proper forum. You don’t have to immediately have a bio though, like if you just got this character, and your not sure what hes like yet, or you want to keep him mysterious, you simply send what you do know, and let them know that you will have a finished bio eventually. And whenever it is decided that a character dies, etc, the designated person gets an e-mail from the characters owner and just moves it to the old characters forum. The current stories forum, I take back, I have a better idea. Put the FAQ forum I say keep. Anytime someone can create a FAQ and send it to the designated person, and it will be put up in the FAQ forum on the homepage. Of course, this designated person can say, this character is to powerful etc and reply saying what needs to be changed for it to be accepted. And if the FAQ is no good, or basically the same as another one already up, the designated person would just take anything, if any, that isnt already up and is helpful, and put it up, and reply saying what was put up and what wasn’t.

The only other problem I see keeping new people from coming is the history is so strictly followed. Remember, just because no gods have effected a plane, doesn’t mean that a god can’t effect it. So even if theres never been a centaur on phaema, accept the fact that a deer raped some poor girl(or maybe shadow really likes deer….j/k…..hehe). Basically, we need to be able to change the forum as it needs it, so the forum doenst get into a rut again and we have to do something so drastic.

Ok, theres one more problem that I see, and that’s bringing back things that have happen very recently. For example, I tried to start another storyline on the black bastion and the first evil. I did not know how long ago in phaeman history the original occurred, and figured that it was a while ago. I was pretty wrong. But weve solved this by dating our posts. Theres still a few things that need to be changed. The dating needs to be like this, if your in the same storyline, your pretty much on the same day. If you post about something that was a week ago in game time, then it wont effect anything that already happen. But if your storyline is completely different then another, its ok to be a few weeks behind the other storyline. But there shouldn’t be definite stories. I mean, if a character is in the BIS, then he can still interact with another character in RBS. (just examples, as usually). And game time should be displayed on the front page of the mill and the homepage. Basically the year and maybe the month to help out. And of course history can be kept about what happen in the past in the world of as long as its all dated so we know when it was.(maybe this could be the stories forum the non HTML knowing RPM updater that I decided to say we didn’t need, ok we need it. Just so the history can be continually updated).


Ok, that pretty much solves the problem of attracting new people. The next problem I see is things that are supposed to be pretty descriptive on what we should do are vague, What I mean is that we are vague about the concepts we use. We just say we are based loosely on M:TG, but we don’t say what exactly we use. We need to get what exactly we use. Which, all really use is some of the spells, the mana concept, and a modified version of their planeswalking concept. Which, I think we need to modify the planeswalking concept. The planes “float” around like in M:TG. A planeswalker can only pass through this inbetween planes for so long because of the intense mana. The stronger the planeswalker, the longer her/she can be in this area of intense mana. If our new world is far enough from other planes, it would be very rare that a planeswalker would come to it, because most wouldn’t survive the trip. Of course, it may float close enough to another plane for weaker planeswalkers to traverse. This leaves us with many options, in case we need a planeswalker for something. And remember, planeswalkers can get stronger. If, for example, urza was the strongest, and couldn’t get to our world, in a year or 2(game time) he might have the strength to do it. Once you get to a world, you are very drained, especially if it was a longer trip. Everything else is fine, as long as we remember that, if this was related to M:TG, we are the cards. We are the warriors, the elves, and the monsters. Our spells may or may not be more powerful then a planeswalker’s. Planeswalker means that you can traverse to different planes, not that your powerful. But, most likely, a planeswalker will have considerable powers, because if you can toake the intense mana for any length of time at all, chances are, you can harness magic pretty well. Also, lets not limit ourselves to just the spells M:TG has. I like some of WD’s ideas, and I thing that something like mages mark, and plasma spells would work. I also have some ideas to help describe spells, etc, but ill talk about that on a different post.

The last thing that I see wrong is that no one has enough time. This is because they have to write “chapters in a story”. If we just write a paragraph or 2 at a time, most people would have the time to do it. But If we get to short, then it would take forever to finish stories. But the format I have above I believe would work. This format solves another problem too. The first time I was here, I tried to interact with KAATN. Well, I didn’t know anything about the guild, so I figured that after I knocked on the door, I would just wait until someone posted with them answering the door. I realized that no one probably would, so I created a new character as I didn’t know who was there. Of course, this new character didn’t go so well with elro because he just popped out of nowhere into KAATN(there was a few other things wrong, but that’s not the point). But with this format, we can just knock on the door at the end of our post, and wait for someone to answer. The perhaps sage advisor could post(well, shadow as him) answering the door, and so forth. This will give us some extremely short posts, but only when we need them. Otherwise, a paragraph or 2 will seem to be the best.

Well, im done trying to solve the mill’s problems. Whether or not you guys use any of this is up to you.

BTW, if you do the forum thing on the RPMHP, ill gladly put the bios and current stories up there, etc…