Site Revamp!

Khaat made a thread earlier about how happy she was everyone is back and I gotta say I am equally as happy. It's been forever since I've roleplayed out of a tabletop game and I've really missed all of you. A large portion of my teen years were spent on this website and I feel it really developed my ability to write all my papers at uni the day before their due. That being said, we're all back without much of a site.

I know in the past there's been a plethora of confusing and downright ridiculous plots. Changes have been made to forums that people have agreed and disagreed with. And, I was even guilty for this, a significant lack of communication between admins and members. That being said, we have a lot of work to do both on the admin side and on the non-admin side. I really think what you guys have to say about the site is important.

So I wanna hear some suggestions about plotting and how we want the Harry Potter universe lore to play into the forum. Basically, how canon do you guys want the site to be? Do you want us to get really original with plots and areas to roleplay? Or do you guys want us to strictly stick to things in the Harry Potter universe?

I just wanna create a dialogue here, no responses need to be formal or anything like that. We just wanna hear what you guys think we should do from here on out?

Obviously we will have the claims section to keep track of the various things but some things to think about are:

• Should people have to apply for magical abilities?
  
• Should we keep character roles simple or expand them further?
  
• How do you think we should handle magical items?
  
• Ways to prevent people from overpowering their characters.
  

Once we have a discussion going I'll edit this thread to add some of the more popular ideas tossed around based on how often people are agreeing with each other. There are also some admin ideas that need to be discussed concerning the more "rules" side of the site instead of the RP.

I think for now, at least until we get good foot traffic, that we should go under a generalized site plot for now. There have been a lot of forced plots over the years that kind of honestly took the fun out of it. I’m not opposed to getting really original with the plots or areas to play. I say if we have a good one then we should go for it. I mean we already have some things via discord that aren’t exactly HPU like the student chatroom. I think there should be certain magical abilities that might would definitely need to be applied for so you have a good idea of how they got it, however, you shouldn’t have someone saying I learned parseltongue applying about how they learned it since it was a trait they were born with. I don’t know. As we grow I do think we can expand character roles, but for now keep them simple. Also, I think a good way to keep someone from overpowering their characters comes down to good admin and moderators. Right now I know everyone is getting approved, but when new members come it, I would think that would have to be changed to actually going over their app and asking questions if things don’t make sense.

Basically, bottom line is I want it to be fun again. I think we have a team that can make that happen for us too!

This is great Christy and I honestly agree with all of it! I think that while it's just old members we're totally good on our system of just trusting and working together, but if we do get new members we will have to look at actually going over apps. Right now it feels like a playground, so it's all a matter of making the playground safe to play.

So....this just crossed my mind, and completely feel free to tell me I'm wrong but if you look at the Fantastic Beasts movies, especially considering the books and such is it conflicting information regarding legitimens and such? Or is that a trait that could be learned aside from being born with it? Asking because I'm generally curious considering how they portray it with Queenie and how that would correlate to the site. Like I said completely feel free to tell me I'm wrong and all by the way.

I'd honestly always put the book lore above the films.

Well and the reason I ask, and I'm the same way is because the FB movies were written by her. So I was curious

yeaaaaaah but for me, personally, book lore supersedes, since the films aren't as good and also have a loooot more outside input. I'm welcome to hear other thoughts or maybe finding a way to mix the two? Maybe some people are more predisposed but it's training that gets you to control it.

Works for me. Like I said completely feel free to say heck no. Was just a thought process in my head that I needed answers to regarding the site because it honestly made me very confused.

No I def think that's a good point and something we should all consider

I'm going to chip in here, for what little it's worth. My understanding of Legilimens and Occulmency is that they are skills that are really advanced magic and, according to the Wiki, not usually taught at Hogwarts, probably because of the dangerous potential for their use by dark arts practitioners. We've always sort of been a tad lax here on who could learn those skills, I think, in comparison to how the canon would probably done. My guess is that in canon, those skills are probably far more rare.