an idea about a new rule

Well, I was thinking of something. I am pretty sure that every captain has been through a situation in which no member of the crew is posting because of inactivity. That made me think a little bit and I came up with an idea I want to discuss with you as a possible future rule. I was thinking of the following rule:

When a member of a crew becomes inactive then the user of the captain can use that Playable Character and control him/her as if the character was his own, without counting the character in his character limit. The captain's user RPs the characters as regular characters and not as NPCs and they can end up being captured or dead, like regular characters but with a different user. While that sounds as a takeover of the character from the captain's side, it brings a solution to the problem that many people tend to join crews and do not Roleplay with the characters they joined, making the crews stick to a thread for quite a while as the captain has to wait for the people to take an action (something that often leads to the thread's slow death). Of course, from one side, it looks unfair but if one considers the fact that most characters are made for specific crews and that they are bound to follow the crew once they join, this problem can be overseen (at least in my opinion). What are your opinions?

Well, I suppose that as long as that ruling implies some level of authorization, from the inactive member, to the one that is going to use his character, then it should be good to go.

The thing is that once somebody agrees to join it is like giving authorization. That's the point of the rule

I see, so it's sort of a requirement when you join a crew .. I like that. Of course, if that gets allowed, it should only work on characters made or used after the point of this rule becomin a staple.

Any improvements for the rule are welcome.

I think we should define inactivity. Inactivity should be, say, anything over a week. That's fair right? I also want to say if the character is captured or dead when the member returns, they can still use it as if that never happened if they so choose.

Then that would made the rp pointless with that character and the rule as well. Though to avoid issues like these we could have the captivity as the worst possible outcome.

It wouldn't make the rule or rp pointless. It would make it so that if someone goes inactive without any fault of their own isn't penalized. Everything else would remain the same. The character would be used to further the crew's plot and prevent the threads from slowing or stopping, just like the rule is intended to do. The idea is that when they come back, if they don't like the changes, that they, and only they, would rp as if it never happened. As far as everyone else is concerned, it did happen and this a new person or something. Doing it this way is a bypass, as opposed to a transfer of ownership. This is only for someone who goes inactive without notice. With notice, they would give permission first. If they give notice but don't give permission, it goes back to the bypass.

About the inactivity, I suppose it should be absence of over .. say, 3 weeks, or even a month or so, as 1 week, for example, wouldn't justify usin someone else's character.

I think inactivity of over a month from the said character would warrant a right to 'control' the character. If this rule goes, I think the 'death' part of this should be a nono, since it's a plot hazzard. If the person came back in the middle of a war after he/she got stabbed through the heart and vaporized, it'll be hard to come up with a legdit reason for him/her returning.

Also, if a character is taken over there should be a rule about putting the character through some sort of personality change that isn't explained by the new controller of the character. It's a stretch, but if a person came back from their 'vacation' and took control over their characters again it'll be easier for the original owner to say "I was brainwashed/ deppressed/ temporarely psychotic over ___________" then to have the owner completely ignore everything the character did IC and act like it never happened (which is VERY plot hazzardous).

I think we're forgetting some things that are very vital here. First off in the time of a week or month the thread will likely have died anyway so skipping the character seems more logical. Now let me ask you all something. Would a thread full of only your own characters really be any fun? Because of you're trying to combat inactivity with this rule then you're going to just run into situations where it'll be just you controlling a multitude of different characters. Not only would that be boring as hell, it would also be hard to keep track of.

I think in fact that it would be fun. After all, crews eventually end up to the state that the users of the members do not rp and that is more clearly seen in the steel village crew, blizzard crew and my dusk crew, which are the oldest crews here and that problem also lead to the death of anubis' crew, which was very vital to the site. In any crew there are numerous occasions during which people tend to join and then they forget it, even if their characters are quite important for the crew. And to be honest, I wouldn't mind losing the fun of rping, by doing this with multiple characters by myself, especially if I knew that if I Did not, my crew would lose its stability, the rp history would be a failure because of the constant changes of members with the same occupation (which also leads to the boring recruitment threads all the time instead if a good story) and many threads would die because characters who were important in them decided to leave from the site, slowing down the thread until they feel like they have the role-playing spirit inside thempire again or until the thread dies to the point that even the maker gets bored of it and skips it.

For example, arden. I recently (as in like a month ago) made my first crew. He joined my crew. Ozo blakeheart (nikz), and tamako (death) did as well. Without notice mid rp, he disappeared. He was pming me like crazy about the thread, and he has been gone. My thread is halted currently. If he doesn't return in a few more days, I'll have to remove him from the crew and cut my losses.