I've been thinking for a while now.
Specifically, I've been thinking about the state of the RPG Forum.
Many times over the ages (and yes, I know what I'm talking about, I lurked for a good few years before joining BZP), people new to roleplaying have attempted to join the Bionicle RPG Forum. Nearly as often, they have been immediately recognized for their newbish ways and scorned.
I'm not going to blame anyone here; I feel like all RPers have perhaps done it at some point. Y'know. You come on, you see a terrible IC including metagaming, maybe, an OOC where the person you're thinking of as a newb refers to their character as 'I' or 'myself', or maybe even an all-OOC discussion in an RPing topic. And you maybe type something a tad inflammatory into an OOC and attach it to an IC wherein your char scorns theirs, explaining (or rather, pounding into said newb's head) what they're doing wrong. So eventually, tired and unhappy, they go, and you get back to RPing, happy that they've gone.
However...
Almost all great RPers, or ones whom people claim to be at least halfway decent, were newbs at one point.
I know I was. I clearly didn't know what I was doing. Looking at my old BZPRPG ICs, I'm astounded I got that far.
However, I think I know now how my RPing eventually matured and grew up. It was mainly due to one thing:
People accepting me.
If, say, Vezok's Friend's dude hadn't actually interacted with one of my chars in the old BZPRPG's final season, then I probably wouldn't have even read his ICs and been able to learn from them. Newbs aren't born, they're made to continue being newbs by people who are tired of their ignorance and vent at them. VF and others were a lot more patient with me than I ever realized. And because of that, I grew to become a far better RPer who loved playing.
Therefore, I feel it is in the duty of us TBRPers of the BRPG forum to educate newbs and accept them into the community with interactions, constructive criticism, and examples of good RPing. How? Through a little group:
The CRANE (Coalition of Roleplayers Against Newbishness, for Education)
The CRANE has no leader; it doesn't need one. Being a coalition, all you need to do to be in it is pledge to accept newbs into the RPing community by educating them on how the forum actually works, interacting with their characters and providing examples of good RPing, explaining what the rules are & mean, and giving them a chance in the first place.
I cannot stress that last one enough. Even if you really want to help out, you're not going to get anywhere if you have pre-concieved notions of every newb as the average dolt come to ruin your forums' beauty. Realize that there are actually real, living people just trying to make their way around in the world just like you, with goals, a physical being, and personalities. They aren't really that different from everyone else.
They're real. They're here. And they're not going to get any better unless we help them. As some guy said, and I paraphrase: "Is it not true that when I make friends of my enemies, I destroy them?"
-Members of The CRANE-
I will soon have a cont. block up in my blog for the coalition, fear not. Please join CRANE, guys-I honestly feel like even if we can only get 10% of RPing newbs to become halfway decent RPers, then there will be noticeable effects on the forum.
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