Would you attend LayoCon Online

Ok. Try this.

Lag. Rather than Hempstead or some other locale in game, create a large, half lit location. Big open space, no placables. Why? Half lit, so the text stands out. The text is why you are here. The text is the medium. The idea is to mingle. To catch snippets of conversation and interject yourself into them. To do this, you need to be in talk range or in party chat. Party chat, IIRC, can contribute to lag. Lag makes things icky. Reducing the eye candy will help facilitate this.

Conditioning. If I log in, I won't log in as Galen. I will log in as Derek. I will have the little floaty text that says "Derek". Derek is a human. (Mostly) If this is an OOC event, then you should be OOC. Or, IC as YOU. No roleplaying allowed. Want to roleplay, log on to the live server and go to town. You want to get the know the person (not persona), it should be a reasonable representation.

YMMV.

Aye. Derek is me. Derek is a 34 y/o man, one child, one ex-wife, and a penchant for bad-sci-fi. I play Galen. I log in and put Galen on when I want to escape from nutty drivers, insane users with delusions of compentency. He is an idealized version of me. He's polite, good looking and well liked. See? Nothing like Derek.

As far as a database issue, I am not fully versed in PW maintenance, but just creating a character on the server creates a .bic file. As long as we all log in to the "Meet n Greet area" we would have no attachment to the PW as well would not be getting quests, or interacting with the database. We'd all be wearing the default clothes we spawn with.

The upside that I see is if we all spawn as a level 1 human fighter wearing the same clothes with nothing to distinguish except gender and floaty text, it would enforce a commonality. YOU (Jessica) are just that, Jessica. You are not an epic Mage with godly skills. You are you.

The downside, for me anyway, is there is nothing to hide behind. There is no RP. It's just me. What if I take off the mask and people realize that I am really a schmuck? It's all text. You can't see my smile or the wrinkles in the corners of my eyes when I make a joke. I won't speak for anyone else, but if I was completely satisfied with who I was and what I am, I wouldn't feel the desire to log in and be someone else.

Huh. Plumbed the psyche a bit deep there. Need to make a witty, self-depreciating joke to deflect.

I'm tired.

Maaaybe. :)

LOL depends how many people Showed up my Pc gets very tempremental when theres 40 or so players all in the same area *grins*

Just a quick note, if a new module was made and loaded on a server without a need for the database... all this would essentially amout to IRC with 3D avatars.

I personally fail to see how IRC is linear considering imagination and role-play require only words. In fact, this whole "using only words" bit is the premise and basic functionality of table-top D&D. There has also been talk of running IRC-based quest sessions in the spirit of D&D (using the aragen bot to do the die rolling) though that's a little off topic.

Back to the topic at hand, I voted no and for all the same reasons Laldiien has stated, thus me thanking him in his reply.

( Edit: ew, just noticed this was the 13th post in the thread on Fri the 13th :P )

1) Lag. That many people in one place cause lag. Lag is not a terrible issue for me, but it's annoying and I don't want to go out of my way to be annoyed.

2) People. I see your avatar on a regular basis. To me, a Con is a connection of people, not an extension of a fantasy. If this were being held IRL, I'd be there in a heartbeat. As it's being held IG, not a big push for me.

3) We have IRC. If the entire goal is to speak OOC and get to know each other, we have an IRC channel that is currently working.

4) I am conditioned that speaking OOC while logged in as Galen is *bad*.

These opinions are my own. The idea isn't a bad one, I simply am not enthusiastic about it.