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Back in July of last year, I started playing The Sims 4 again. After Realm of Magic was released, I started playing and stayed playing and anyone that's ever played The Sims knows how hard it is to stay interested in it sometimes. Anyway, I got on this kick and I kept playing, and TLDR I'm still playing. LMAO I started formulating a story in my head based on the interactions between the Sims in the game and in November of 2019, this turned into Throw Me Away, a short quick Sims fic that I posted on the official Sims forums. I had more lore than that and back-story and world-building that I wanted to expand on in my head, so I was going to do a sequel, and then decided that I was doing two sequels and a prequel. Oh, and a rewrite of TMA, too, and this series altogether became Of Frost and Fire. I also started a Sims RP site based on the lore that I came up with for OFAF, which was running since Christmas. At the end of February, a semi-big name in the Sims community joins Simprovise. I took a step back from being an admin to deal with some personal issues and this person immediately attacked my substitute admin for 'stealing' from his comic. What'd we steal? Blood-bonding, fairies, the concept of humans stealing magic from fairies, vampires being possessed instead of undead, and Morgyn Ember being agender and getting a biology degree. Hmm. Vampire: The Masquerade, Celtic mythology, Lineage II among other things, Vampire: The Masquerade, and the actual settings on the fucking Sim. Also biology isn't a weird degree to get. Morgyn has a twin brother, you might've seen him around here before, he's been my avatar for like ever, and he has a heart condition. Morgyn's motivations for taking biology is the hope that someday the science and magic might converge and lead to Morgyn saving this brother's life. So there's an in-universe REASON why Morgyn took that degree specifically. Ever since then we've been dealing with this idiot off and on, and I believe I just got an anon message on Tumblr from one of his lackeys yesterday (can't tell, they all smell the same to me). At this point, I don't even know what the fuck this idiot wants anymore, and quite frankly I don't think he knows either. He sounded creepily possessive of me at the start of this and then turned on me when I repeatedly rejected his attempts at "protecting" me from my friends so tbh this whole ordeal doesn't have great connotations. The only thing that makes me feel better is this psychopath lives in Italy, and thus is a whole pond away from me. I don't know. Some part of me wants to quit the fic, quit the site, quit the fandom, and just ignore other people play this stupid game and be left alone in peace. I don't have to deal with this shit. The other part of me doesn't want to let some idiot halfway across the world manage to make me stop doing something I enjoy because they can't come to grips with reality. I mean seriously, how fucked up do you have to be to think you were the first agender to ever agender? Please. You're a couple thousand years too young I'd bet. Anyway. If anyone wants to read it, you're welcome to ask for the link. Otherwise, send me some good vibes cause I can really use it right now. I'm running out of the patience and mental fortitude to deal with this shit. At least I'm used to being the bad guy. P.S. It's funny that you need to make it out like I stole from you to make yourself look even half as good as me.

Despite the fact that the amount of tabletop roleplaying I have been fortunate to experience can be counted on one hand, I follow what’s going on in that world closely. I look to it for ideas, concepts, and similarities in the socio-political sphere. Each year there is a prompt calendar in August for the tabletop roleplaying world to answer in whatever way they see fit. I’m rather quiet and being a new member of staff, I thought I would partake. It also helps promote my site I plan to open up after the holiday season. Of course, it is long since past August, but I was sick with two internal infections and am now feeling better. I don’t expect to be able to do this thirty one days straight. The idea is just to get each one done. For a few, I might not be able to think of anything interesting and will provide a youtube video or use an alternate prompt from a different day. Everyone is free to use the blog section to partake. I’m interested in seeing others thoughts. With that out of the way, let’s start with prompt 1: Scenario. I looked up various dictionary definitions as well as people who responded to this one to get a feel. My favorite that I found the most relevant to rp was on one blog (which of course I can’t find now) that defined scenario as an incomplete story or a story in motion. He stated that a story is something complete and whether or not fiction depicts the past. What I see my position as an admin is to create a world that allows for the most Shandification. Shandification is a term created by the youtuber MrBTongue regarding narrative. To sum it up, movies and television stories typically go from A – B – C – D. This is just a snapshot of what’s actually going on. Events happened prior to cause A. B likely didn’t happen solely because of A, but also other events, interactions, and even characters we are not seeing on the screen. His definition of Shandification is: A shandified story is one where the narrative is free to move in its own direction and pace in a setting well realized enough to allow this freedom of movement. If we look at A – B – C – D to be the plot or series of threads and events between two characters, both of those characters are interacting with other characters causing and affecting those events. Character 1 has not only the above plot with Character 2, but also with Character 3 that Character 2 has never met. In addition people leave, things come up, new ideas come forth, causing the plot between Characters 1 and 2 to end up being A – B – E – H. Going back to the world of tabletop, a game master’s role is to run a scenario. The players will eventually not notice what the gm wanted, notice things that gm never noticed, and the player characters will go off in a new and different direction. A good gm will let their players do this while hitting the essence of the original campaign allowing for a unique scenario. The other option is to try to force the players back to the original concept, which is referred to as railroading and is widely disapproved of. I see an rp site as a complex clock. Each post and thread being winding gears and pistons. The site forum itself being the frame and the characters being the bird that pops out each hour. It’s always moving and even when it stops or breaks it can always be repaired and brought back to life. Unlike a clock, the members of a site can grow bored and restless, taking their gears, pistons, and birds to another clock. This makes Shandification all the more important and going back to the definition a well realized setting is key. The big question is how do we do that? That goes into day 2’s prompt. Here's MrBTongue's Shandification Video

I guess each RPG - which is a collectively written story - gets sometimes the misfit. But while we encourage the misfit as a character in various ship crews, as a personality interesting to explore in the interaction with other characters, we don't encourage the lone wolf in a creative endeavour based on collectivities (ship crews). Yes, the odd one or two might happen, as secondary characters, forging their paths among the collectives - but they are rare sights. (Exactly how women sailors should be rare sights too, the odd one or another). Unfortunately, most often it doesn't happen so, and I don't understand why the writers don't try more to work on their characters and make them fit the story. Because if the character doesn't fit, the experience on the site, ie in writing the story, won't be as good as the one for those whose characters do fit. Instead of looking strangely at the suggestions and rejecting them, you should look widely at the story as a whole, to see what characters are really needed and how can you adapt your ideas so that they really fit. What we get instead (and they don't stick much around, when they are the wrong characters for the ongoing story)? 1. The captain. There are people who want their characters only as captains, and they are disappointed that here the captainship (or any higher position) is gained in the story, by being a dedicated writer, involved in the story, doing properly the needed research, bringing good ideas and collaborating with the others. They don’t realize either that crewing a ship is extremely difficult (“so what? I’ll have crew immediately” – yes, and this is why in 4 years, after having several captains, the ships in our story are still undercrewed… so why would we want even more ships?). And I think these are the more control-focused and individualist writers. They don’t want the captainship for the reasons me and a few others who got it wanted it – to help push the story forward when nobody else did. They think that it sounds cool and that being captain meant doing whatever they want without any rule… and it is not true in the given setting. For a captain like some cruel ones wanted to be (and didn’t stay because we didn’t offer them this opportunity… especially when speaking about a character too young to be really a captain), the pirate crew (because pirates do elect their captains, unlike in Navy and merchant shipping, where they are appointed) wouldn’t have elected them as captains first and foremost, or they would have demoted them at the first signs of dictatorship. (And if they didn’t want to step down, what about killed in their sleep?) 2. The present day/ fantasy guy. There are people who don’t want to do research at all, and who want to write about a historical setting as if it were a present day story, just with different clothes, but with the same mentalities and facilities as in the present, or who want only their fandom and nothing else. For these sort of writers, a fantasy setting would suit them better (and eventually not a RPG site, but a fanfiction/ individual story). And I am adamant about keeping the experience of the historical setting, because this gives the charm of a historical fiction story: having, through the characters, the experience of living in that particular century and place, with their mindsets and challenges. Strangely, but many people don’t care about it, at all or not so much. Come on, guys, if we, those who don’t have English as mother tongue, could do research on the 18-th century and on life aboard ships, those who do have English as mother tongue could do it even better than us. Especially that most things are, now, either copied on the site, under resources, or given as links to internet articles - which is much more than I ever had on the first site I had joined, when I wasn’t sure how to formulate what I was searching in order to find it. 3. The lone wolf. Again, an embodiment of a control-focused and individualist writer, who wants a character who doesn't take orders from anyone... and who isn't, actually, integrated in the story, having only short thrills with immediate satisfaction, when in the world of writing everything happens gradually, in time, as the chapters (threads) succeed one over the other. A lone wolf as a secondary character, getting occasional plots from time to time, while the main characters are seafaring focused and part of the crews? Yes, it is perfectly all right. We do encourage exploring all kind of characters; but we have a main focus. 4. The colonial lady. Nothing against such a character in itself, as long as her mentality fits the time and setting and she doesn’t want to be a modern day feminist misplaced in that time. Ladies, slaves, prostitutes, honest housewives of working men or women working hard to earn their living are interesting to explore. It works well, in the same mindset as the case above, as a secondary character who has plots from time to time, as the story ideas ask for it. What I am adamantly against is the ones who want to transform a seafaring adventure into a colonial life story, by not having people aboard the ships (again, because this usually asks for research), then they complain that the site shouldn't be seafaring focused. Well, what does "Age of Sail swashbuckling adventures" tell you? Not exactly, or not only "colonial life". The site, story, setting is seafaring-focused, with the colonial life only a side bonus. Yes, the story is obviously focused on the four ships’ seafaring adventures. People should have first a character aboard a ship. Then, for the times when that ship’s story is less in the limelight, to create characters aboard the other ships and on the islands. One can create any character fitting the setting, or to write for existing or newly created NPCs where the action is in the moment x. Creativity is free, but in the limits of the historical setting and of the story (which is continuously expanded, and reasonably added to - for example, when we do have 3 islands as main setting, one can have an odd thread in another location, as long as it makes sense - such as Cuba, or Bahamas, or the Mainland. But having a part of the story taking place in Europe just to suit a character's / writer's whim... wouldn't be advisable. Who is not in the setting, is not active in the story. 5. The “here but not quite” people. Unfortunately, in all factions, there are lots of people who don’t understand that writing a story together with others is a collective endeavour for which everyone’s absence harms/ blocks the story. They post once in a blue moon and they aren’t invested in the story because they don’t give themselves the time and the commitment to get invested. I can’t help seeing the potential of all characters for various stories,and missing them in the story, because they were the ones who had the power to make things happen. Ultimately, this is the characters’role, to make the story happen. And by not writing, people not only reject this potential and the development of stories which would need them; they reject other characters’potential development too, because writing stories alone within a RPG sometimes is a solution, but most often it is not.

There isn't some self-agrandizing in death. No. Not unless you die doing something particularly ridiculous that in some way glorifies your death while also being self serving to your memory. Or at least that's how it typically is. You don't remember those who are just simply dead. Or maybe you do. But there are thousands of people who die every day and not everyone gets even so much as a funeral. Some are simply gone. Their bodies are sent to be cremated. The ashes are dumped unceremoniously or put in a box on the shelf in the back of the crematorium. Not everyone gets a funeral. Please click the spoiler tag to continue reading the story. © Ghost, 2014