What does inclusiveness look like to you?

[ReverentBlade]

A good start is not ignoring people trying to RP with you.

[Vespidae]

What are some things other people have done to make you feel included, or inclined to be interested in their story?

Buy into my character.
Read my bio, observe how I'm RPing, and figure out what sort of RP I would probably find meaningful. When I was a slave, random Underdarkers would find some gruelling (but entertaining!) chores to demand of me while making sure the whole time that I was enjoying it. When I was a simple peasant, Nobles would come and scoff at my simple ways while still ensuring there was plenty to latch onto.

What are some grave sins that turned you away from feeling included by someone in the past? (No names or finger-pointing, I just want to know about the experiences you have had that could apply to other situations)

Basically it boiled down to "Congratulations on joining our faction! Now, grind hard and reach level 30 so you can RP with us!"

[Dovesong]

It's the OOC "win at all costs" mentality that makes things terrible. I had this mindset very, very early on when I first started playing and I realized very quickly it just made me a jerk.
Play a character with real motives and goals, but be flexible and have a backup plan if those plans don't work out.

. . .

That, more than grand PVP battles, was a truly toxic "win at all cost" issue that I ran into. It not just a mindset of always having to win every IG conflict, but ALSO the mindset of always having to win every OOC disagreement and needing to always be right.

I've known you since Mifune and I can honestly say you are one of the best players I have had the pleasure to interact with.

This, right here, sums it up. Of course your character wants to win. But if that win is repeatedly coming at the expense of the time, effort, and fun of others, something needs to give, because that's not fair.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

Everyone's playing here because they want to be seen / heard.

An inclusive player just sees / hears as many characters as they can.

[Paint]

I haven't been playing Arelith for a bit, so I'm just going to take a shot at the DM team. I remember asking for something that fit the character arc of one of my characters -- something that didn't require direct DM intervention, but permission, since it skirted the lines of what characters were capable of doing.

I was told to either kill my character or nix the concept entirely. (Which was already heavily underway.) Instead of working with me to find a solution for the thing I proposed and the situation I'd found myself, the DM I spoke with just shut me down. In the process of searching for something that allowed me to still reconcile the plot gracefully, I brought up other things that had been approved before, and that didn't fare much better. (And summarily, those things that were approved were retroactively unapproved, so I guess I got some other people in trouble. Oops.) I did manage to end that plot, but in a way that was fairly unsatisfactory, and in a way that I personally didn't enjoy. I really dragged my feet on it.

I remember thinking to myself, "If I'd just never gone to the DM team to ask permission in the first place, I could have gotten away with all of this scott-free, because they wouldn't have noticed," but doing it the right way killed my fun and made it feel like the way I wanted to roleplay and the themes I wanted to explore were excluded entirely from Arelith. That, I think, is the only specific example I have of feeling excluded aside from stuff where the exclusion was pretty reasonable because it was the direct actions of my character.

This hasn't always been the case with the DM team, and most of the time I've spoken with the team about things that I felt I needed to ask permission for, when what I wanted wasn't reasonable or too complex to play out on Arelith, we've managed to find good alternatives. I realize the DM team is usually pretty overworked and has the horrible job of being the people that do have to say no, but there are ways to say no while still providing answers and ways forward. I think a community that can't trust its DMs to support the kinds of roleplay they want to have is a community that's always going to have people in it that feel excluded.

Including people in a server like this isn't giving everyone exactly what they want the way they want it, but finding ways to pull them and their stories into the larger community and make the things they want to do work.

In more recent years, I think this has gotten a lot better, as the DM team hasn't just supported various roleplay types, but has gone the extra mile to run entire events for not just settlements, but large groups. The Jotunhold comes to mind, and a lot of the roleplay that came out of there was as a direct result of the DMs involved humoring the playerbase there.

As far as including people goes, I'd say give everyone a chance to talk to you. Reach out to the weirdos. Notice things about people. Make bad choices that put your character at risk because it might make for a more interesting story that can include someone else in it. Even the people you might consider to be bad RPers because they don't use proper grammar or capitalization, or talk in short, brief sentences? They can be pretty surprising.

I don't really mind IC bigotry, but when it spreads into the OOC, like people seeming to genuinely think that every elf is doing sexy elven fun times, I do mind that a lot. Being an open book and keeping an open mind are essential to communal roleplaying.

Oh and as a side note, stop killbashing people. You're good at PVP -- we get it. Now, make a cool story out of it with the people who lose, dork. Nobody likes being a footnote and what comes around goes around -- remember that the next time someone makes you into a footnote.