[A] Foal RP?

[LOLTERNATIVE]

The rule

4. No RPing your soquili on lines that you do not own. This includes, but is not limited to, obtaining an adult custom and then RPing them as a foal. THIS IS NOT ALLOWED. You may only RP a soquili on stages you own.
If you wish to write out your adult soquili as a foal, you may only do so in stories that you post in your teepee, but you will not get stats for them =OR= the non-cannon RP portion of the guild, where again, you will not get stats for them and they are not considered 'official'.

I just have a question about this rule. I'm just.. I'm wondering why this isn't something that can't exist? It says you can't RP lines you don't own, so therefor you can't RP foal lines. That just seems a little silly to me since no one would be stealing lines - you can't steal something that doesn't exist.

As someone who is working my way towards an eldership application with my first soquili who was a CYO plushie conversion and only has her adult form it's a little bit of a damper to not be able to RP her as a foal - except in a forum where the RP won't count towards anything.

I'm just wondering if there was a reason for this other than 'you don't own the lines'. I get that. But what I do own is the character and in her backstory she was a foal. She didn't just appear out of no where. She had to come from somewhere. If this can be changed, that'd be great. If not, I'd just like to know the reason why.  

[Samuel Carlin]

I asked this exact question in a meeting, and it seems that the problem is that some people have played Soquili that are currently adults as if they were currently foals.

In other words, let's say I get a basket and it pops. Tada, foal. Now, let's say you want to play with my new foal. But you decide to play ... Lissa, f'rinstance, as a foal. Today. Current time.

That's a little weird, yes? I think so.

But if you wanted to play *Lissa* as a filly, you -can-, if you do it in the non-canon section of the forum or write it as an RP in your teepee or something. So it's not that you can't play her as a filly, but that you can't *officially* RP her as a filly. You can't earn stats for those RPs. But you can use them to build character for her, etc.

(This is not an official staff answer. I am just sharing what I learned.)  

[LOLTERNATIVE]

But in the rule it says RP like that won't count towards anything soquili related (i.e. elder applications). So the problem is RPing Lissa with a filly that has just popped wouldn't make sense. I get that. But what if it was a solo RP. Like a flash back kind of thing, but I was actually RPing it as it happened.

Would that be okay if I mentioned that it was something that occurred before now?

EDIT: Also the whole adult RPing as a foal with a foal who recently popped is mostly done by people who have the foal stage, not those who only have the adult stage. I know there's a lot of foal RP with foals who popped and grew ages ago and those who only recently popped. D:

It's just.. soquili has a lot of restrictions on RP related stuff - backstories, powers etc' and I'm not going against that but I think if you're RPing your adult as a foal and it's not interacting with any foals it wouldn't have realistically known at that time it shouldn't really be a problem canonly?  

[Uta]

The real reasoning behind this rule comes down to fairness. Nissy and I both remember this rule from when we joined the shop in 2007, and for some reason, it kind of got lost over the years.

The reason a person should not be able to officially RP an adult on lines they own is because that isn't fair to people who (especially with customs) purchase the more expensive 'growing' soquili. Why should someone who ponied up the money (be it Gaia gold/items or RL payment through Sirenz' slots) to get all three of those lines have to watch as others who only paid for an 'adult' line get to RP their character as a foal?

To me, that just isn't fair. Even if it was a freebie and you won a adult soquili and didn't pay a thing for it, it still wouldn't be fair.

Furthermore, it wouldn't be fair to those who finally get their 'first foal' or growing soquili. If anyone can just up and RP their adult as a foal, something gets lost. That excitement of having a foal-aged soquili gets taken away. . .

If you let people start RPing officially in the shop on lines they don't own, what's to stop them from RPing with soquili they don't actually own? This shop isn't a 'free for all' . . .you have to actually own a soquili to RP a soquili, so it makes sense you should only be able to RP the stages of the soquili you own. A lot of shops have this rule in play, so I don't see it as being particularly restrictive.

Furthermore, we've made rules to 'lessen' the restriction. If you really desire foal RP for your 'adult only' character or want to develop the character as a young spirit, use the non-cannon portion of the guild. Or write out back story in your teepee. Just because you can't use the foal RP or interactions as 'official' RP for Eldership honestly won't matter in the long term. If you're applying your soquili as an elder, whether or not you have submitted foal RP most likely isn't going to matter. If you think your character is deserving enough for the position, then you're going to have a lot more story, growth, and development long after they become an adult.

And just because you don't get stats, that shouldn't matter either. People shouldn't RP purely for stats anyway, they should do it for the joy of writing. n_n; Stats are merely a perk.

Also, if you really MUST have development of an adult at a younger age, why not just say they are barely mature? They can still be exceptionally young and still growing a little. Sort if in a 'teen' sort of stage - where they're young enough to be naive, but older than a foal. That's perfectly acceptable.

If you want foal RP, you have to wait to have the lines. The reason we allow people who have adults RP on foal lines perhaps LONG after their grown is for many reasons. On the one hand, it is usually two-weeks for a foal to grow. That's not nearly enough time to get a foal developed, and would be incredibly restricting. In other cases, maybe a person is pulled away by IRL or they plan foal plots and those plots take years to finish. There are a lot of reasons why foals who should have grown long ago still RP on foal lines. . . It happens. But I think it would be much, much, much more restrictive if we banned people from RPing their foals after they grew to adults, don't you?

Looking past the RP, the reason it isn't fair for adult-only characters to be written on foal lines is because you never had the lines to begin with, and it isn't fair for those who do.  

[LOLTERNATIVE]

I wasn't suggesting banning people from RPing adults as foals; no where did I say that. The question I asked in my previous post also wasn't answered. Am I allowed to RP her as a foal in a flashback? A memory?

I get why the rule is there now, thank you. But at the same time it isn't fair to punish those who can't afford to by all 3 stages. n_n; Rules are rules, though. So I'll leave it at that.

If I re-customed Lissa to get her from adult to foal would all her current RP be lost? She would look exactly the same, I'd just get the basket and foal stages.

Could I simply custom a foal stage for her?  

[Uta]

I know you didn't suggest banning people from RPing adults after they grew. You had mentioned how things were getting restrictive, and I (as usual) tend to ramble and go off on tangents. Trust me, I wasn't accusing of you saying that at all. ^_^ I'm just tired and probably shouldn't be answering questions this late, haha. I brought it up because, at the time, it was another way of addressing this issue. You had asked about why we allowed others to RP their adults who WERE on foal lines even long after they grew.

If we weren't to allow it, the only option I could think of this late at night was banning people from RPing them after they were grown. That's all.

But I digress.

You can RP her as a foal in a flashback or memory, but we have rules on flashbacks too. Funny, how this situation came up maybe a month ago. You can't have an entire RP as a flashback. You have to actually have the post be in 'current' time as well as addressing the flashback.

~ ~ ~

I.e.

Bella thought about her life, about how far she had come since the days of her youth. Once she had been such a naive foal, such a young and lost little thing.

The young filly laughed loudly as she ran down the hill, closing her eyes as the wind rushed past her ears and her nose. She looked beihnd her, wondering if Twilight would catch up to her, of she would be lost amongst the tall grasses of the plains.

Ah, how they were fond memories. So long ago, but so full of warmth and naivety.

~ ~ ~

Every post has to still bring your character 'back to the present' . . . That way we don't get entire RPs that are flashback foal related stuff.

As for recustoming Lissa to get her on foal lines . . .that. . . isn't something I've ever considered. So I'll have to talk to other staff about it to figure out how that worked or if it was allowed; or if it was considered a 'regeneration' and, therefor, would make all her previous RPs and memories mute. So I can't answer that one right now, but I'll bring it up in the next staff meeting and we'll see if we can't figure it out.

Edit: Just a quick FYI. For those who want staff to review this rule we already did review and discuss this rule not quite a month ago. And everything Samual and I said was what we concluded.  

[LOLTERNATIVE]

Alright. Thank you very much for answering me. n_n;  

[~Kiana_Nala~]

Well, on the question of people RPing foals that are now adults with other foals I think if they were born around the same time it shouldn't matter. >..< Because someone might have been away from Gaia and missed part of their foal stage, thus the soquili's childhood is gone and the point of having now seems almost pointless, ya know? And for others, it may be that they have plots for them as foals but now that they are grown those plots are supposed to disappear? Or quite possibly, others have been waiting a long time for their adult stages and thus have been led to further extend plots. But then once they grow they have to forget about them.
I think that part is unfair.

But if a soquili has been grown for like... a year or longer I think that is when it becomes a rule breaking. UNLESS it's with soquili who were foals at the same time they were. (Same batch, posted a few weeks before them or quite possibly even after them). If that makes sense?

Just my opinion. x3  

[Yumitoko II]

~Kiana_Nala~

Well, on the question of people RPing foals that are now adults with other foals I think if they were born around the same time it shouldn't matter. >..< Because someone might have been away from Gaia and missed part of their foal stage, thus the soquili's childhood is gone and the point of having now seems almost pointless, ya know? And for others, it may be that they have plots for them as foals but now that they are grown those plots are supposed to disappear? Or quite possibly, others have been waiting a long time for their adult stages and thus have been led to further extend plots. But then once they grow they have to forget about them.
I think that part is unfair.

But if a soquili has been grown for like... a year or longer I think that is when it becomes a rule breaking. UNLESS it's with soquili who were foals at the same time they were. (Same batch, posted a few weeks before them or quite possibly even after them). If that makes sense?

Just my opinion. x3

*points to what you said above*
What if a year on the plots the owner has in mind for their soquili still haven't been RP'd out because they haven't found the right people for the part or the other owner(s) had gone missing?

I don't think it's fair to say it's rule breaking if the people have the foal lines, some people like to do background RP long after their soquili was grown to build character. If you look at the plots of many soquili, none are done entirely chronological.

And restricting them to RP those with the same batch or around the same time sounds restrictive because there maybe times when there are few.

It'd seem more logical if the owners could match up their timelines.
Maybe RPing as foals with people in the same year or so because in the shop they only take a few weeks to grow, but in real life and in terms of character development they take much longer and some people enjoy the foal RP.

Just sayin'. ;D