The Future

[Mathew Amtrum]

Hi, my name is Ryan and I am a Xin Role Player. Some of you may know me better as Mathew Amtrum, or Endrin. I have been doing this for about 4 or 5 years now. Over the years I have been involved in several site overhauls, or rebellions. I have seen what was basically a mini war between Xin1 (now Hircine) and PHS #552 (when it was the only stat board). I have watched many skilled writers come and go from Xin sites. By many people I was considered to be the main good guy as Endrin, and the main bad guy as Mathew, yet I did not watch the flash series until three years in to Xin RPing.

Why do I bring this up? Because the concept of Xin is not a unique one, and as I am sure most of us know and will admit, you do not have to be well versed in the flash series in order to RP here and have fun. Most of you are probably rolling your eyes because I am stating the obvious, but this does have a point.

Throughout the years I have noticed that people always refer back to the flash series. Questions about whether gangs fit? Well the mentioned gangs in Xin. Qi? Again it was mentioned in the flash. There is nothing wrong with this, except that the flash is dead. Xin hasn't produced anything new in a long time, the idea of them making a sequel was made in to an April Fools Day joke. There is no more Xin coming, and with that comes a simple fact, less and less new people will see it and it will die out. Right now every time we lose a member it is very hard to replace them. We do get a trickle of members, but it isn't enough to keep the lifeblood of the community growing.

This is larger then PHS #42, this is Xin RP all together. On most of the sites we RP with the same people. And that is good and bad. On one hand we already have friends and we feel at home, but on the other we don't grow. It is the same people, normally playing the same characters, moving from site to site. Normally a new site is made when some kind of fight happens on one of the sites and the community suffers as it splits. Normally one of the sites die, and the rest transfer, a few not bothering. That is a problem, slowly killing our mostly static community.

I think that steps need to be taken to preserve this community. I think that a way needs to be found to link up all of the sites. Stat and statless. Despite our different style or RP we are all part of the same community, and with one this small we are a family. Honestly between all of the sites I would be surprised to find that there are 100 DIFFERENT people that still RP Xin. That means alts do not count for this number. Petty fights and bickering should be put aside and efforts should be made to strengthen the community as a whole.

Secondly, I think that we need to branch out from the flash. It doesn't have to be our bible. There are other series out there with high school combat. Even with Qi, or things much like it. I think if we branched out a bit, and tried to grab people from those fandoms as well we could make our community grow again. Of course we keep Xin at the base, the Pillar system for instance, but we shouldn't let ourselves be confined by an 18 episode cartoon that is fading in to the endless heap of things that make up the internet. If we do that then it will die out, at least by branching out we can try and show new people from similar fan bases and bolster our own numbers.

This advice isn't just for this site either, but for Hircine, both 552s, 259, and any other Xin site that is alive out there.

Sorry if I rambled a bit, but I would like to hear what you all think as well as ideas to help bring the community together as a whole as well as bring in people from these other fan bases.

[Allen Daughtry]

As a Hircinian native and long time veteran, I approve this message. This should have been our policy from the first days of the entire XIN community.

Best way to start: affiliations, monthly staff-to-staff talks about relations, and the revival of the age-old idea of an inter-board tournament.

[Gabriel Seran]

I enjoyed this actually, I started too not knowing about Xin and if we can get some growth in it would be our own legacy to pass down.
Maybe even if we have our own set of creative people (I know you're out there) perhaps as a whole we can rebuild our own version of Xin series...

[Adrian]

I was actually just thinking about this not too long ago.

In just a few short months, I will have been RPing in the Xin community for four whole years. I was drawn to Xin1, originally, because of a special feature newgrounds, which I frequented at the time, as I'm sure most of you have, was showcasing it near the bottom of the main page, and one day I bothered to actually scroll all the way down there.

And when thinking about that, I realized, just as Ryan II had said, that there was no way they'd be showcasing it again. Xin as a flash series is past its prime. Steve and Max, however, whether knowingly or not, created something much bigger than a storyline set up against a school.

They created a playplace for anyone to play in.

Allen's got the right idea; however, we need to do more. Like Ryan said, there's hundreds of things similar to Xin. I'm not even an anime fan in the slightest, and *I* could name at least two or three anime/manga that deal with fighting in Schools. I'm sure the Otaku (is that a dirty word for an anime nerd? I never figured that out) on the board could easily name more. Advertisement is a given, but just goign around flashing names can only go so far. What we need are ambassadors, so to speak. People who are willing to take time out of their lives to find these other fandoms and live in them for a while, get to know the people they're talking to, so when they recommend "Hey, you should come check out our site" it will sound more like an honest invitation than a blind advertisement.

It's pretty common diplomacy, and I think it'd work well. It just requires a commitment that I understand people aren't usually willing (or able) to provide. If you can, however, please let us know.

[Allen Daughtry]

Mar 23, 2009 11:50:31 GMT -5 Adrian said:

I was actually just thinking about this not too long ago.

In just a few short months, I will have been RPing in the Xin community for four whole years. I was drawn to Xin1, originally, because of a special feature newgrounds, which I frequented at the time, as I'm sure most of you have, was showcasing it near the bottom of the main page, and one day I bothered to actually scroll all the way down there.

And when thinking about that, I realized, just as Ryan II had said, that there was no way they'd be showcasing it again. Xin as a flash series is past its prime. Steve and Max, however, whether knowingly or not, created something much bigger than a storyline set up against a school.

They created a playplace for anyone to play in.

Allen's got the right idea; however, we need to do more. Like Ryan said, there's hundreds of things similar to Xin. I'm not even an anime fan in the slightest, and *I* could name at least two or three anime/manga that deal with fighting in Schools. I'm sure the Otaku (is that a dirty word for an anime nerd? I never figured that out) on the board could easily name more. Advertisement is a given, but just goign around flashing names can only go so far. What we need are ambassadors, so to speak. People who are willing to take time out of their lives to find these other fandoms and live in them for a while, get to know the people they're talking to, so when they recommend "Hey, you should come check out our site" it will sound more like an honest invitation than a blind advertisement.

It's pretty common diplomacy, and I think it'd work well. It just requires a commitment that I understand people aren't usually willing (or able) to provide. If you can, however, please let us know.

I like this. We should to this, most definitely.

[Aureus]

Thanks for bringing this up, Ryan. I think now that Xin has been around this long, people are finally feeling confined within it. The way I see it, the idea's played out and we've run as far with it as we can. If we want to survive, we need to drastically change the plot and conventions of the RP boards in addition to having diplomacy with other boards. What those changes are I can't personally say.

[nohman]

Alright well on the subject of a cross board tourney, obviously the biggest issues would be the stat issue as well as who would judge it. For judges 1 admin from each board should be more then fair to all parties. As for the stat issue, I actually have an idea for that.

For the sake of simplicity we would not allow Qi in to the tourney, after all not all boards have Qi and it is a lot easier to just drop Qi instead of making all these people come up with a Qi. Besides if you need super powers to fight, you don't really belong in the tourney anyways.

All mental stats would be statless, your ability to read attacks is determined by your RP abilitiy. However physical stats would have stats. Everyone would be given 10 stars or points to put in the Strength, Dexterity, and Endurance. You would not be allowed to go higher then 5, and you must have at least one. Such small stats show a focus instead of an exact number. A way to show what your character focuses in. For instance if I was to enter Mathew Amtrum my stats might look something like this.

Strength: 3
Dexterity: 2
Endurance: 5

Now you know I am a bitch to take down, and I am a fucking tank. My strength is decent, and while I am not slow, I am certainly not fast either. It is a very simple stat system and I think it is a compromise that everyone should be able to live with. After all you could say the same thing is in my bio, about how Mathew can take an amazing amount of hits and he is strong. Look at it as a reference sheet.

I think Affiliation is a must, not because we don't know about the other Xin boards, but because it is a sign of unity. We are a community and we should act like one. However from a member gaining standpoint. When a new member joins a site and sees affiliates and active members they feel like the site is established and isn't going anywhere. Furthermore, it gives us a chance to share people. For instance Hircine gets 10 new members, but seven of them don't really feel like they fit in. 4 leave, three click on the banners to look around and see if anything else catches their eye. 2 of those 4 decide to join a site. One of those two joins PHS #42. We just gained a new member by doing nothing that we wouldn't have gained without being affiliated.

As for monthly staff meetings between all the staffs. That is probably to unwieldy, but I do like the idea of talking to the staff members of other boards, warning them of potential problems. Trolls and the like.

As for rebuilding the Xin series. I am not sure if Max and Steve would approve of that. And it IS still their series.

Ryan, you have struck the heart of the matter. We need to branch out badly. Personally I think that Tengo tenge would be the best series to start with. High action, and the characters have abilities similar to Qi. Though finding an active board that is big enough might be a problem. Honestly I was never good at finding RP boards. XD

I would be willing to try and RP on the board, though it would mean I would be less active here. Still I notice most of you are not taking a part in this discussion and I really encourage you to do so, I know you might not think it is a problem, but if you are an older Xin RPer think back to how many people have stopped playing, and how few come to replace them. When I started there were full scale wars going on. Now people can barley manage to fill up their gangs.

So get involved, not only in this discussion but in the story line. An interesting plot is the best way to keep new members hooked.

[Emi Hitokata]

I wish I had checked out this thread earlier D: This is a great idea.

I do agree that we will have to improve relations since things aren't going so good right now>_> Just think of the reason why this board was made...

We should also do more advertising because I can think of a lot of people from other roleplays who would actually want to come here. I even have a couple of friends who are thinking of joining. If we do that sort of thing, I don't think this type of roleplay would ever die.

[Aternity]

Same deal, message approved by both Arkady and I, although he'll probably say something later on the matter. It's my firm belief that Xin, on it's absolute basis is dead. 18 episodes as I am aware of, and they were great and all. Problem is, there is only so much we can do with that. I know a few die hard Xin peeps that might take offense, but the idea is running out. There is only so much you can do with a school and some Qi.

I think if Xin is to survive it needs to change and move to something more creative, perhaps a new twist on an old idea to speak the obvious.

We can rebuild it, make it better, faster, stronger. I just don't want to spend a lot of money.