Welcome and Community Brainstorming

[catpella]

Hello new people! Welcome to the SWTOR community on Dreamwidth.

It was made at the time of the game's latest beta and launch, but we've been very quiet over here. That's because a lot of the very early luanch fandom activity went to Tumblr, especially as people really wanted to post a lot of OC screenshots and with Dreamwidth's image limits. But now that there's trouble at Tumblr and people are coming to Dreamwidth to check it out, here's a chance to get the community up and running again!

I want this to be a fun and welcoming place for people, so let's use this post to brainstorm what you want to see here. And how you want to see it, too. Examples of what I'm imagining we're going to see here includes OC bios, looking for friends to play with or guild recruitments, lore and meta questions, fanart and fanfic.

Do people want to just post whatever they're feeling whenever they want it? Or would people like to see some recurring structures? For example, maybe like Fanart Friday, OC Sunday, Meta Monday, or a monthly post for guild recruitment and friending, etc?

Comments

[pyr0clast]

I feel like OC bios are a good starting point. Kind of a getting-to-know-you type thing as people join up and get used to the DW format. But recurring events might help encourage shyer people (myself included) to post and participate - I feel weird just posting things in communal/semi-public areas without prompting. (I've barely ever posted to the SWTOR tags on Tumblr in all the years I've been over there, sooooo.)

Other ideas:
- Something like OC ask memes to get people talking about their characters and interacting with each other ABOUT their characters
- Fic prompts for the writerly types
- LFG for roleplayers

[wallwalker]

Totally agreeing on the weekly events. Maybe a question a week, to start up some conversation.

[awryenwrynn]

Hmm, a more structured thing would be nice. (hi, new here!)

In the past, like...way in the past (talking LJ here), I loved communities that did things like that. It kept things ordered that way. Though some of those communities didn't mind if fic writers posted their new chapters in seperate posts (so long as they were tagged and/or linked to previoius chapters for easier archiving and finding).

[virtualvoyages]

Structure is good. I agree with Pyr0clast about it making participation easier. It'd be nice to see a mixture of in and out of game stuff: places to share or talk about fan works, meta, etc, and help for in game RPers to connect or for people who need a hand with stuff to get a hand, connect up with guilds, etc.

So, yeah, something like what you suggest there at the end: Fanwork Friday, Meta Monday, World Building Wednesday, OC Sunday, Saturday Social, Prompt of the Month Club... I don't know. Stuff like that.

[virtualvoyages]

Another thing that might be of use that just came up on Pillowfort are guides to useful game things. Like, what are the make or break conversations for the various companion romances? (What someone on Pillowfort was trying to find out.) Decisions that actually effect the story down the line. Stuff like that.

A lot of the guides that did exist for SW:TOR are no more, and it seems like especially on the fic/RP end of things it might be nice to remake them for people.