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synodiporia_ooc2017-03-05 01:27 pm
powersthatbe) wrote in synodiporia_ooc2017-03-05 01:27 pm
Entry tags:
March State of the Game
I. JAUNT VOTE
For our next Jaunt, we have a few second-place setting options from previous votes that we’re bringing back for a shot at the big time:
Olympus Upended: Classical Myth & Fantasy, set in a Trojan War-era Greece full of gods, monsters, & titans, the Olympians and their chosen heroes must deal with the machinations of fate when their powers and domains begin to ebb and flow, faltering or in some cases transferring to others. Whether a curse, a trick, or the inevitable twilight of the gods, before the last oracle is cast and the mystery revealed, the foundations of the world will shake.
The Ark: A cyberpunk dystopia on a harsh alien world, all that keeps this fragment of humanity alive is a massive Arcology, or Ark - a self-contained, overcrowded urban environment, full of unimaginable technology that’s slowly running out of power under the strain of population pressure and a populace that’s not as well educated as its predecessors were, before an event they call The Fall. Rich in metaplot, dangerous crime, survivalist themes, social revolution, and subtle dangers, the Ark is a dark, heavy plot, one of the most dangerous we’ve considered so far.
Enterrado: In a frontier town in 1800s Nevada, a dead prospector is found with a large, rough nugget of pure silver in his bag. Who killed him is less important than where the site of his find is, in the mine-riddled hills around the city, and whether miners, bandidos, gunslingers, or outsiders will find it first - and what will befall anyone who’s suspected of having a lead on the stake.
Voting will close Sunday, March 12th, at 11:59 PM CST, in order to allow time for a walkabout vote if necessary, and for both jaunt and walkabout to be finalized. As always, first-place votes count for two points each, and second-place votes for one point each.
II. SKILL DISCUSSION
We’re preparing some new skills to be rolled out within the next couple of months, possibly in time for March AC but almost certainly no later than May. In the meantime, we’d like to hear your thoughts on the skills we currently do have.
First: Do you think any of the liminal, psychic, combo or favor skills currently on offer are notably overpowered? Do you think any of them are notably underpowered? What concerns you about these skills? We can take a poke at potential problem skills as part of the upcoming rollout and see if we can’t clarify matters and fix issues.
Second: Is there anything you’d particularly like to see in new skills? We can’t promise they’ll be incorporated into the immediate rollout, but we’re always open to suggestions for new stuff (for example, the rollout’s going to include a couple liminal skills with Object Portal as a prerequisite, to help encourage folks to pick up Object Portal).
If you have an idea after this discussion’s moved on, you can email it to the mods (synodiporians at gmail) at any time and we’ll add it to our list of possibles.
III. HELP WANTED
The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of recruiting players to help us with various modly functions we can’t always fulfill ourselves.
First: Due to the loss of one of our previous volunteers to RL and the ascension of the other to full modship, we once again need one or two folks to help out with NPCing Familiar Faces on an as-needed basis. (No doubt those of you on the walkabout have been feeling this need acutely; our apologies for taking so long to get you guys NPC’d up.) Familiar Faces take on plot roles when players cannot, or when a particular role is necessary for some reason but less than thrilling to play. Each Familiar Face has a defined personality and role in the metaplot, and is never seen anywhere but in infiltration.
To enable Familiar Faces to be used as extras or cameos with greater frequency and ease, and to lessen the burden on mods who play them (especially if there are Arcana to play in the Jaunt as well), we’re asking for experienced players with a good activity history and an interest in metaplot to sign up in the comments below if they’d like to take on one or more NPCs on a regular or occasional basis. We’ll contact volunteers to discuss the possibilities further. This is in no way a mod role, although it does come with occasional access to privileged information.
Second: We’re also in need of a helper mod for tallying AC, to help make sure it actually gets done in a timely fashion. One of our previous volunteers has left the game, so we’d like to bump the number back up to two, in order to keep the load from being entirely on any one player.
Third: We’d really, really love to have a volunteer to put together an Infiltrator Directory at or near the beginning of each jaunt. The directory’s been handy the couple of times it’s been put together, but as you’ve all probably noticed from the fact that that’s been all of twice since we decided to offer the option, the work is one of the first things to fall by the wayside. It’s not difficult, just time-consuming, often involving wading through both the plotting post and the first week’s worth of played material. This role could easily be done alongside one of the other helper roles.
If you’re interested in volunteering for one or more of these positions, please let us know in the comments below. As a reminder/reassurance, helper mods ARE NOT involved in app reviews or handling complaints in any way, shape or form. You guys are there to do useful paperwork and help relieve us so we can do the hard stuff.
IV. CHARACTER CAP AND WHAT IT MEANS
The last app round, as a few of you may have noticed, brought the game up to brushing against the character cap. While we’ve had a few drops since then, we wanted to take a moment to discuss the character cap and how we’ll handle things going forward.
First, one major reassurance: Idled characters may still come back in via dungeon at any time, even if the cast list currently shows we’re at cap. If we hit around 110 characters, we may revisit this; the character cap is to help us bring you plots everyone can engage with that the mods can still draw metaplot-relevant conclusions from.
Should we actually hit the cap, we’ll hold off on accepting applications until the character count dips below 100 again. At that point, we’ll start with any acceptances we had to leave hanging because of the cap, bringing them in in the order they applied. We have, other than the post-Dodgeball round, typically lost roughly as many characters as we gain in an app cycle over the course of the next jaunt, so there’s a possibility we’ll just keep dancing close to the line and never actually hit the cap, but we wanted you all to be prepared for it, just in case.
V. OTHER ISSUES
Did we forget something? Is there a pressing concern you’d like to raise? Let us know under the appropriate toplevel!
For our next Jaunt, we have a few second-place setting options from previous votes that we’re bringing back for a shot at the big time:
Olympus Upended: Classical Myth & Fantasy, set in a Trojan War-era Greece full of gods, monsters, & titans, the Olympians and their chosen heroes must deal with the machinations of fate when their powers and domains begin to ebb and flow, faltering or in some cases transferring to others. Whether a curse, a trick, or the inevitable twilight of the gods, before the last oracle is cast and the mystery revealed, the foundations of the world will shake.
The Ark: A cyberpunk dystopia on a harsh alien world, all that keeps this fragment of humanity alive is a massive Arcology, or Ark - a self-contained, overcrowded urban environment, full of unimaginable technology that’s slowly running out of power under the strain of population pressure and a populace that’s not as well educated as its predecessors were, before an event they call The Fall. Rich in metaplot, dangerous crime, survivalist themes, social revolution, and subtle dangers, the Ark is a dark, heavy plot, one of the most dangerous we’ve considered so far.
Enterrado: In a frontier town in 1800s Nevada, a dead prospector is found with a large, rough nugget of pure silver in his bag. Who killed him is less important than where the site of his find is, in the mine-riddled hills around the city, and whether miners, bandidos, gunslingers, or outsiders will find it first - and what will befall anyone who’s suspected of having a lead on the stake.
Voting will close Sunday, March 12th, at 11:59 PM CST, in order to allow time for a walkabout vote if necessary, and for both jaunt and walkabout to be finalized. As always, first-place votes count for two points each, and second-place votes for one point each.
Poll #18064 April/May Jaunt
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41
What is your first choice Jaunt for April/May?
What is your second choice Jaunt for April/May?
Would any of these Jaunts winning require a Walkabout for some or all of your characters?
II. SKILL DISCUSSION
We’re preparing some new skills to be rolled out within the next couple of months, possibly in time for March AC but almost certainly no later than May. In the meantime, we’d like to hear your thoughts on the skills we currently do have.
First: Do you think any of the liminal, psychic, combo or favor skills currently on offer are notably overpowered? Do you think any of them are notably underpowered? What concerns you about these skills? We can take a poke at potential problem skills as part of the upcoming rollout and see if we can’t clarify matters and fix issues.
Second: Is there anything you’d particularly like to see in new skills? We can’t promise they’ll be incorporated into the immediate rollout, but we’re always open to suggestions for new stuff (for example, the rollout’s going to include a couple liminal skills with Object Portal as a prerequisite, to help encourage folks to pick up Object Portal).
If you have an idea after this discussion’s moved on, you can email it to the mods (synodiporians at gmail) at any time and we’ll add it to our list of possibles.
III. HELP WANTED
The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of recruiting players to help us with various modly functions we can’t always fulfill ourselves.
First: Due to the loss of one of our previous volunteers to RL and the ascension of the other to full modship, we once again need one or two folks to help out with NPCing Familiar Faces on an as-needed basis. (No doubt those of you on the walkabout have been feeling this need acutely; our apologies for taking so long to get you guys NPC’d up.) Familiar Faces take on plot roles when players cannot, or when a particular role is necessary for some reason but less than thrilling to play. Each Familiar Face has a defined personality and role in the metaplot, and is never seen anywhere but in infiltration.
To enable Familiar Faces to be used as extras or cameos with greater frequency and ease, and to lessen the burden on mods who play them (especially if there are Arcana to play in the Jaunt as well), we’re asking for experienced players with a good activity history and an interest in metaplot to sign up in the comments below if they’d like to take on one or more NPCs on a regular or occasional basis. We’ll contact volunteers to discuss the possibilities further. This is in no way a mod role, although it does come with occasional access to privileged information.
Second: We’re also in need of a helper mod for tallying AC, to help make sure it actually gets done in a timely fashion. One of our previous volunteers has left the game, so we’d like to bump the number back up to two, in order to keep the load from being entirely on any one player.
Third: We’d really, really love to have a volunteer to put together an Infiltrator Directory at or near the beginning of each jaunt. The directory’s been handy the couple of times it’s been put together, but as you’ve all probably noticed from the fact that that’s been all of twice since we decided to offer the option, the work is one of the first things to fall by the wayside. It’s not difficult, just time-consuming, often involving wading through both the plotting post and the first week’s worth of played material. This role could easily be done alongside one of the other helper roles.
If you’re interested in volunteering for one or more of these positions, please let us know in the comments below. As a reminder/reassurance, helper mods ARE NOT involved in app reviews or handling complaints in any way, shape or form. You guys are there to do useful paperwork and help relieve us so we can do the hard stuff.
IV. CHARACTER CAP AND WHAT IT MEANS
The last app round, as a few of you may have noticed, brought the game up to brushing against the character cap. While we’ve had a few drops since then, we wanted to take a moment to discuss the character cap and how we’ll handle things going forward.
First, one major reassurance: Idled characters may still come back in via dungeon at any time, even if the cast list currently shows we’re at cap. If we hit around 110 characters, we may revisit this; the character cap is to help us bring you plots everyone can engage with that the mods can still draw metaplot-relevant conclusions from.
Should we actually hit the cap, we’ll hold off on accepting applications until the character count dips below 100 again. At that point, we’ll start with any acceptances we had to leave hanging because of the cap, bringing them in in the order they applied. We have, other than the post-Dodgeball round, typically lost roughly as many characters as we gain in an app cycle over the course of the next jaunt, so there’s a possibility we’ll just keep dancing close to the line and never actually hit the cap, but we wanted you all to be prepared for it, just in case.
V. OTHER ISSUES
Did we forget something? Is there a pressing concern you’d like to raise? Let us know under the appropriate toplevel!
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