New Mane RP Arrangement Guide- Now complete! Oct 3rd 12:36 AM

-Update Oct 3rd, 2011 12:36 AM-

The move over is now complete! Thank you for being patient everypony!

If you take a look at the Mane RP forums, you will notice that the old sections titled East, Central, and West, no longer exist. In addition to this, many of the forums have been deleted, and re-arranged entirely. In an effort to better streamline the RP experience and to create an 'immersive RP world environment', the staff and I (but mostly Dio- thank you Dio!) planned out a new organizational system that will be flexible for our Mane RP as it grows in the future.

So, hows is it different? Glad you asked! Our new setup divides our known concept of Equestria into three main regions- then those regions are further divided into 'provinces'. All RP takes place in these new provinces; and landmark locations, towns, cities, and points of interest are all categorized by our new tagging system. If you open up one of the province forums, you will see all the RP's from locations within that province, and you can then easily discern where each RP is taking place by glancing at the prefix RP tag that displays before the name of the actual RP topic. When you create a new RP topic, you can click the tags box and select the location you wish to RP in from the drop down menu that appears, then click the box just to the right that says "use first tag as prefix". This will put the prefix you chose (which should always be location name) in a nice little bold box before the name of your RP topic for easy reference.

What is even cooler, is using the RP Portal Artax implemented recently, you can search via tags and prefixes to quickly find any RP's involving a location of your interest.

There are other tags available as well to help further define your RP such as Open, Closed, and Invite Only. You can throw these tags in after your location prefix and they will appear on the topic list of the province forum, and you wont have to put [open] or [closed], etc, in the name of your RP. This metatag system is similar to what users have been manually doing previously, but now it is all cleanly automated and displays it in a very convienent manner, while saving you title space for you RP topic.

In addition to this, our new setup will include regional maps (they are in the works as I type this!) that will highlight all of the new regions you will see if you click on any one of our three mane regions, Aquellia, Greater Equestria, and The Outlands. Then we'll have zoomed in maps for each province so you can see where landmarks and cities fall within each province. Even cooler- we are working on concept art and layouts for every landmark and city in our RP. What is really cool is that we are accepting material generated by YOU, our users. Want to have a hand at designing the layout for Manehatten? Be our guest. If it looks good, we'll make it cannon. Have some concept sketches of the griffin lands, or the outlands where the dragons rule? Send it our way. You can help design the cannon RP here at Canterlot with your unique input! Peek around- a user has already done a lot to develop Fillydelphia- and I will be crediting them as soon as I get some sleep!

You may also notice that a few areas of our RP have the exploring tag. That means that if you carry an RP and 'discover' something that works well in our Canterlot RP- we might just adopt your material and make it cannon as well! Not everything will make it, but we are definetly opening the gates to building up the Mane RP, and theres no telling how long this opportunity might last.

TL:DR version:

1) Layout is now: Region (Category) > Province (Forum) > Location/Town/City/Landmark (Metatagged)

2) Please tag and prefix your RP topics from now on. Prefix (first tag) should always be location.

3) Added Open, Closed, Invite Only tags. (These come after the location tag)

4) We are accepting concept art/design/layout for ALL cities/locations/towns/landmarks.

5) You can explore some key locations and discover (suggest) new material that may be cannonized.

If you are having difficulty finding the location you were RPing in, here is a quick breakdown for you:

Below, everything in purple is a category (non postable), everything in grey is a Forum (topics may be posted). The city names/locations will all be meta-tags attached to RP Topics to show where the RP takes place.

Aquellia > [Category]

The Canyons (East) > [Forum]

-Talonopolis

-Rockwington

The Low Country (South) [Forum]

-Clopton Shore

-Neighples Delta

-Soggalong Swamp

Greater Equestria > [Category]

The Borderlands (West) > [Forum]

-Roughrider Ridge

-Beakbreak City

-Bareback Gulch

-Painted Pinto Desert

-Appleloosa

The Heartland (Central) > [Forum]

-Everfree Forest

-Ponyville

-Nimbusgait Lakes

-Trottingham

-Cloudsdale

The Foothills (East) > [Forum]

-Canterlot

-Solstice Heights

-Whitetail Wood

The Strand (South) > [Forum]

-Hoofington

-Saddleveil Plains

-Fillydelphia

-Seasaddle Bay

-Gallopoocus Island

The Frontier (North) > [Forum]

-Stalliongrad

The Outlands > [Category]

The Borderlands > [Forum]

-To be explored

The Savannah > [Forum]

-To be explored

Let us know if we missed anything- its very possible that I did, things get kinda woozy this late at night after a day of work! I feel that this system is much stronger than our previous one, and will allow for expansion of new locations as the RP grows. I'm glad to finally see this see the light of Celestia's day- its been about two months in the making. Super major thanks to Dio for countless hours into the development, concept, and multiple revisions of this new layout!

-Original Post-

As of right now 10:17 pacific standard time, I and staff will be moving all RP's from the Mane RP into their appropriate new locations under our new Organizational layout.

I will be posting a full guide immediately after the RP's have been moved explaining all of the changes, and how the new system works. Its rather intuitive and easy to grasp, and its also very very cool.

I highly suggest not posting anything to the RP's right now- the move shouldn't cause any real problems (with the exception of perhaps links), but if you dont want to take the chance of your RP post getting lost, you may choose to wait until after the move to post your RP. We should be done hopefully within 2 hours. I will post here with an update once the move is complete.

Thanks everypony for your patience!