Town Hall Avatars
OOC "members" vs IC "characters"

I realize that this might mess with the "RP Awards" because we want to acknowledge the CHARACTERS in that context. That being said...

As a new player I have been enjoying discovering the game. That discovery includes new places, new gear, new things to do and most importantly new characters.

It's been almost a year and I still get excited about riding the lev and seeing new characters who I have not seen before. It gives a sense of wonder about just how large the population of characters is. It gives a sense of newness when I come across yet another character that I never knew existed.

When I went to my first town hall and saw all of the CHARACTERS there it was kind of disappointing. Specifically there were characters who I had interacted with via SIC, but never seen face to face. And yet here we were, face to face and free to "look" at each other and get a bunch of information that otherwise would have been unavailable. I resisted the urge to do that because I wanted to run into those characters ICly, but still it sucked to have the curtain pulled back.

Given the huge emphasis placed on avoiding IC / OOC crossover at all costs, it seems strange to me that we participate in town halls as our characters instead of as our players.

What is the logic there? Why not make the town hall room in OOC space, just like the bar at the end of the universe that we pop into when we @ooc?

If you want to flex nuts with your Xo5 and grenade launcher and fifty gold rolexes on your arm? Go for it.

I don't think anyone's going in there taking notes on what people look like.

If anything, I find it -refreshing- to see someone my character may not even ever in their respective lifespans.

On the other hand I really enjoy the THs not just for the obvious purpose but the kind of silly, rare coming-together as a community moment it is, and I think the sorta weird conflicting layer of it being the characters, but in an OOC environment is....I don't know what word I want. But I like it. It's...refreshing? Like what Holy said, it's a chance for some characters that might never meet to grin at each other, flash their genitals, shout how much they enjoy roasting each other on pubSIC or whatever, scope how their neat threads or dope armor, and say hey, great RP, thanks for playing with me. Or, like, hey, you don't know this character, but maybe you knew a past one, and I've missed our RP, you rock.

Sure a lot of that could carry over with OOC aliases instead and whatnot, but I think it'd be missing something. If there are a lot of people uncomfortable with it I could see a change, though. Maybe allowing people the option to come in with an OOC 'disguise' option or something, if they so choose.

There is so much going on in a town hall that I don't look at anyone nor would I even remotely remember what I saw. So I'm fine going as characters. But now I suddenly understand why there was so much discussion about groin flashing at my first one.

"Should we use juggalo names for all anon channels? (50 character minimum, looking at you ExMachinae)"