Hey all,

An idea was brought to my attention regarding Seekers of Adoulin, scheduled to drop here roooooouuuugggghhhhhllllyyyy tomorrow (I have my doubts on whether SE can successfully roll it out on time).

Given that the main cast probably won't be hitting Adoulin for quite some time, it was suggested that as an option, we could do another side RP setting in Adoulin, not unlike the Untold Tales of the Shadowreign Era, which takes place in the Wings of the Goddess expansion, with different characters.

I imagine that doing something similar for Adoulin would work in the same way it did in Wings of the Goddess. Characters would need to be different from the main cast, etc, although it could set up future tie-ins and plotlines that we will run into in the future.

I think something like this will be important to have, especially since I foresee a lot of players returning to FFXI for Adoulin, which may include roleplayers. I think there should be a way for them to experience and roleplay some of the new content, so long as the mission line isn't incorporated in the storyline.

We'd probably set it up on an off day. Thursdays and Sunday (evening) were suggested as options, but other times as well could work.

I've set up a poll, just to gauge the interest in this idea. Please vote and give your comments and thoughts regarding the idea below.

I'm rather iffy at RPing something like this, for three particular reasons:

1) We don't know SoA. We can't tell what will be related to missions and what not. This could cause accidents and several re-scripts. Not to mention, by avoiding missions we're likely to have to go blind about most of the Adoulin lore, since I'm pretty positive not everything is revealed in the Life In Vana'diel pages. Many things may get contradicted by missions.

2) To RP something that would possibly connect to the future of ToV. Some of us may have plans regarding their character's future, but I know most of us don't. This could cause other issues.

3) I cannot speak for myself here, but I don't know how many people will be agreeing to use/level a different character for this (unless they decide to use their main char as an alter-ego and don't care about losing the cutscene-flagging of quests that are inevitable to be done in order to even access Adoulin, but imho that's a bad idea).

I need to think about it, but right now I'm more leaning to saying no to this.

My only thought, is that any alternate character that participates in a SoA side-story never become a main or alt; at best they get the occasional cameo. That way, there is little 'cheating' when it's finally time to hit SoA

My thoughts on this are to have it be completely separate from the main cast. No tie-ins, no long lost family, no eventually joining the main cast no nothing.

I don't know about anyone else… but I plan on doing the missions as they come out and would like to RP them if others want to. I would be using Aurou, however would make a separate/alter-ego character profile.

If you're going to separate it, make it completely separate. If you want to RP on your In game character, it would be as an different RP character (For instance, how I RP Etadial on Saerun). Echoing Aurou, no tie-ins to the current cast.

I have this week off from events, so if anyone wants to do missions, and RP them on the side, I'll be able/willing to do them when I'm not at work.

just as I did for the (S) scenario, I'd avoid including missions in the adoulin side-RP scenario. We've had many people complain they couldn't see cutscenes cause they had already done missions during the actual RP of a storyline with ToV. So if this side-RP is to include missions, I'm stepping away.

I only have a couple minutes, but wanted to swing in really quick to give a couple thoughts.

I think if the Adoulin side-RP has no tie-ins with the current cast, and in fact includes new characters, then doing the missions are fine. I'm not expecting people to wait for the RP to catch up to where they are in the game and keep them from progressing.

In my opinion, the more roleplay, the better. We've had similar tangents like this in the past happen, I think it was with the Moogle mini-story, where there were roleplayers that did the storyline as different characters with the intent of repeating it later on with the main cast.

That being said, and maybe I'm misreading tones here, but I'm not going to tolerate people getting nasty at each other over this on the forums. We should be able to have a friendly discussion about this, and just because some people may have a differing opinion on how they would like to approach this issue does not mean they are trying to bring your fun down. We'll come to a solution that's best for the group.

If we decide on a "Zero Tie In" RP, then we should just do the missions as well. If you complain about having already done the missions, the dialogue's on FFXIcyclopedia, and Avina tends to re-write it out.

It's going to be YEARS before we get to SoA. We've barely dipped our toes in ToAU, still have WotG, and Abyssea to go. I'm not saying we should rush, but just the opposite. I'm willing to bet a high percentage of people are going to have done these missions on at least one character by the time we get there, so why not RP them and do them as a group?

I don't know. This isn't a mini-expansion like AMK. I think doing those missions on a side scenario would kill half the fun to do it with the ToV main cast later. The way I was imagining this was closer to the Untold Tales of the Shadowreign Era:

Stories of people belonging to that area (I'm pretty sure the NPCs in missions will treat you like someone coming from a foreign land and will point it out several times, just like in AU.), that live on following their personal goals and that build up their own plot completely separate from the mission lines.

On a side note, I'm more and more worried this kind of thing could possibly sidetrack the LS from its current course. I'll step out from reserving sunday for (S) if necessary, as those RPs are getting spare, but I also can't help but remember what happened when we opened Aht Urhgan access to the LS.

I'd hate to see people not showing up to the main RP events or social to instead focus on this scenario, and I'm already seeing people that haven't RPed to socials in a long long while (or took a break, either way) reappearing for this idea alone. What also worries me, is the poll is showing more votes than the number of active roleplayers throughout the week (considering that half of them is usually composed of Avina dual-triboxing). I'm not too sure how fair I feel about the activity of a linkshell to be possibly impacted by decisions made from someone that hasn't had/wouldn't have to deal with the consequences of it the most. That's not too different from seeing the election of your country's president be affected by a sudden huge amount of votes coming from tourists.

It's good to see interest again, but is this going to be only for the Adoulin scenario? Will we see more people in LS for this side-RP rather than the main ToV RP itself? And at that point, if the current IC story of ToV becomes something only the minority of the LS participates to, would this turn ToV into a main Adoulin-RP LS? If this is something that will separate us, I suggest we handle this with care and with lots, lots of thought.

I hope no one of this is interpreted as aggressive. I don't really mean it to be so. If you read angst in what I write, please just consider it fear of change or negativity.

If you have issues and take offense with me posting my opinion when I'm taking a break, then I can bow out and leave you to your discussion.

Regardless - there's going to be a lot of hub bub over Adoulin for a while. It is a large expansion, not just a little add on. There may be a lot of focus on it, especially at first. But be patient, cause it'll die down. If anything, Adoulin might bring more focus back to the main RP, if you don't go excluding members, and make it excruciatingly difficult for them, especially if they have one of the new jobs.