Answered Canon NPCs

I have a suggestion, although I understand if you respond with a flat out no, because it causes too many headaches and complications.

All players are allowed to have an NPC account on the forum, which is linked to their other accounts. They could have x amount of NPCs (maybe three to match the three free characters) that are canons from books, films, shows, etc. In order to claim a canon NPC, a player would have to post up a (lightweight) app and have to get it approved in the usual fashion. To keep their NPC account, they would have to make three IC posts a month, regardless of whether they had one, two or three NPC canons.

Pros
• A way for players to "demo" a character, before deciding whether they really want to give them a dedicated character account. This would hopefully lead to people dropping characters less frequently.
• A possibility that it might relieve some of the issues discussed in these threads: 1 and 2, because players will be focusing more on their favourite characters and using their NPC accounts sparingly, in theory. On the other hand, it might exacerbate these issues and be open to exploitation if the NPC account has looser activity requirements.
• NPCs to fill roles in jobs and plots. For example, I would love to role-play Kemp as an anti-supernatural figure in one of Sabine's plots, but outside this plot, I have no desire to play him.

Cons
• It gives staff more work when it comes to approving characters and checking activity, although the latter sounds like it wouldn't cause any issues once the new activity check system is in place.
• Adding an extra layer of complexity to a site that's already established and rich with OOC information.
• The possibility that people would have no interest in using this system. I've tried this on another forum in the past, but only a couple of people used it. Then again, the community was nowhere near as big as this one.

But the biggest drawback of all is making a character an NPC who another player might like to play on the board.

Some solutions around this might be:
• Limiting characters who you can make canon NPCs, e.g. characters who only have five minutes of screen time in a film or show, characters from obscure or retired fandoms, etc. It would probably cause staff headaches deciding how to work out a consistent guideline to follow, though.
• Allowing players to take any NPC canon, providing they're aware that they'd have to relinquish them if somebody wanted to play them. There's the potential of this causing drama, perhaps resolved by having the player submit a "declaration" when apping an NPC canon (e.g. "I understand that this character can be taken from me at any time"). However, this still does not stop a player (especially a new player) from potentially feeling uncomfortable about taking an NPC canon from another player.

That's all I can think of for now! Feel free to chip in with ideas if you reckon this has potential!

 

@Steel:

Thanks for the prompt reply.

No rush to go there now (with Christmas on the horizon!), but could I point you towards the Morhall thread in Private Questions? Thanks very much.