TRP is a post-Great War AU RWBY RP set in Mistral City and Haven Academy with no canons, no rank claims, no maidens, and no god interference. We offer a progression system and site-wide events that change the setting based on player actions.
When membership is small, it's critical for people to be able to thread with each other and establish characters. The small setting focus is an intentional design choice, and so is limiting the member groups to students only at first. I am sticking by that at least initially, and not opening up another faction until something like the following is met to ensure that villains can actually be played rather than just kind of apped and then the player leaving because there is no ecosystem to support them. This has happened a lot, and honestly it feels a lot like false advertisement to me. If someone is able to be apped, it should be able to be played consistently and you should be able to get threads.
What I would need for another faction to open up, and this is civilians or criminals or what have you is a group of people no less than 5 that sign up and agree to be part of the same group. If it's a criminal organization, of which there are many in the City of Mistral, all of them would be part of the same one. I would also need someone who volunteers to storytell when necessary for the faction, and in the longer term run events just for them especially because some of the planned ones like the Vytal Festival are very much student focused. I don't want to allow a member group and then say they can't get EP, that sucks ass and won't happen. But I also won't be running events for the criminal faction if that makes sense. Some of the events will be able to incorporate both students and other factions, but not all of them will. That's fine, and I'm not shoehorning villains into the Vytal Festival every time it happens because it makes no sense. Villains would get their own event, and their own event would need someone to run it and preferably even multiple people.
Let's say that you get your 5 people let's say and a storyteller. Great! There is now one villain group open for anyone to app for. If someone wants their own group, great! They have to get five people too, and either get another storyteller or have the existing one for that faction agree to take them on as well.
What I do NOT want is people apping villains and hoping to be crime lords, complaining loudly in chat for a week that it's impossible, and then leaving because they got accepted and nobody will thread with them. That has happened a good chunk in the past on various sites with non-dominant factions, and I want to avoid that as much as possible. Because honestly? Those people have a point. Why would you as a site allow someone to app a concept that has a next to zero chance of actually being playable?
So to recap, if the members want more factions to be opened up they need the following:
1. Five people committed to making characters. 2. One storyteller committed to running events when necessary for the faction. 3. Five people to actually app the characters.
Once these three steps are accomplished, the faction -- let's say a villain one called the Ice Cream Mafia. You get five people together and a storyteller who all agree to be part of the Ice Cream Mafia, and all five people actually follow through and app characters. This means that anyone on the site, now and for as long as the faction exists can app someone that is part of the Ice Cream Mafia.
This does not mean that you can play a random wannabe crime don that has nothing to do with the Ice Cream Mafia, because your crime don idea needs to have five people sign up for it. The Ice Cream Mafia campaigned and got people interested, and people signed up. They showed that they're willing to put in the effort to make something that can get off the ground and is actually playable for everyone who joins the faction. Will it always be perfect? No, not at all. But I think this system will cut down on what I consider to be 'false advertising' and ensure that people will actually have immediate threading partners with whatever faction they end up making a character for.
A new thread would be made in either Character Creation or Essential Information detailing all current playable factions when we start having multiple, and you will have the opportunity to do wanted ads and stuff like that for the faction as well. Once it's made, you will have full support in any way I reasonably can give you it.