I had a discussion with Rippen today regarding looking at ways to motivate RP in many of the unused areas of Hathian. Through that convo, I came up with an idea that she liked ... thought I'd pass it on to you guys for further critiquing.

We have a lot of newcomers coming in; in August I processed over 800 apps, even after adult verification, we're averaging 500 a month. Looking at the average, there's still a large discrepancy over those who apply for a general civilian/criminal app vs. for a job. One of the primary purpose of the employment groups (http://jobs.thecrackden.com) was to get newcomers streamlined into role-play.

I've heard from a few of you in the past about starting up a mentor group ... Rippen pointed out that a lot of folks want to help by becoming an official mentor without having to commit to leading a group. Makes sense to me! Well, with the stuff developed so far, what I can do is create a mentor group, and then have all newcomers who are accepted into an role/group through the application process also get an additional invite to this mentor group automatically.

This group is purely optional, but hey, out of those 500 apps a month, I am sure there are a good amount of folks who would appreciate access to a pool of players who are new to role-play and might be willing to meet? Hell, I am sure we can have some in-character connection to this group ... what aspect of RL can we call this where basically, you have people who join a group for the sake of meeting other people?

From what i've observed and read in a lot of the applications, I would go out on a limb to say that a lot of us are introverts (I know I am!). And hey, from a newcomers point of view, CD really is intimidating ... from the high-quality RP to the intricate storylines we weave, people may feel disruptive in trying to get involved. If there was a group where folks can start chats to see who's interested in playing, or need some guidance, might be worth a shot in trying. Best of all, this requires little overhead ... just another damn group to hold lol.