OOC Calendar

Check the calendar for additional dates, but here are the upcoming important OOC dates:

APPLICATIONS: NOW - November 5 (11:59 pm EDT)

RIFTER ARRIVAL: approximately November 8

TEST DRIVE MEME: November 20

RESERVES: January 1 (11:59 am EDT) - January 5 (11:59 pm EDT)

ACTIVITY CHECK: Due by November 30 (11:59 pm EDT)

NEXT APP ROUND: January 6 - January 10

NEXT CR MEME: January 20

Our TDM and CR Meme are now bimonthly and posted on an alternating basis. To make sure this doesn't leave new characters in a lurch, from now on our OOC intro posts will be more character-focused and serve as a mini CR meme for new players/characters.

Mod Holiday

As a gift to ourselves (and because we're traveling and busy, and because there are cool new things for the game we need to work on that we never have time for on top of everything else), the mod team will officially be on vacation for the month of December. This means:

No applications in December.

No activity check.

No mod plots or new war table operations.

A moratorium on all non-essential questions. The only questions we'll answer in December are ones that are essential to ongoing plots.

No new player plot requests. If you have a player plot you would like to run in December or early January, make sure you submit that plot request before November 21 (and preferably sooner) so we have time to process it in advance.

The app round for January will be pushed back a few days to accommodate holiday travel.

After January's app round, everything will return to its usual schedule.

Activity Reminders

As mentioned above, there will be no activity check in December. You are still welcome to post an AC comment and to count reward points for the month if you'd like. Regular AC will resume in January.

Most canon companion players must meet their plot participation requirement by the end of November. In the spirit of giving everyone a break over the holidays, we'll skip December for this requirement as well and restart the three-month timer beginning in January. As a reminder, you can meet this requirement by participating in a mod plot or a war table operation or by running a player plot. War table operation sign-ups are currently open for November.

Survey Results

We want to thank everyone who participated in the survey posted for the game's one year anniversary! We're still compiling and discussing all the information collected and we're working on a big separate post addressing the feedback you've given us and how we're planning to use it, but there are a few things that we want to address right away here because they're either quick easy fixes we're going to make right away or major points of concern we want to get cleared up immediately.

PLOT REQUESTS

A number of you have expressed concern about the idea of the advisor players having a say in whether your plot requests get approved, so we want to put those concerns to rest and be very clear that that is not what happens. The authority to approve or deny a plot request rests solely with Cass, MJ, and Bella. We review every plot request and make a decision among ourselves about whether to approve or deny it, and about what restrictions or requests to place on it from an OOC standpoint, if any. Once we've decided that a plot can go forward, we let the advisor players see the request and our decision. At that point they have an opportunity to inform us of any IC concerns—for example, if a plot involves an official mission but the advisors would not authorize that mission IC, or if the plot might result in characters being punished.

Involving the advisors helps in two ways: first, it prevents the advisor characters from being held accountable for authorizing or condoning Inquisition activity that their characters would not actually have authorized or condoned. The alternative to our current process would be requiring every player to coordinate with the advisors directly to get IC approval and then provide proof of that to us, and that would be cumbersome for everyone involved. Instead, this lets us handwave that process and just tell you whether your character would get Inquisition support or not. Second, since advisors are in the position to punish and even jail or execute other characters, this process ensures that players aren't surprised with consequences that could make their characters unplayable.

In the event that the advisor players tell us that their characters would have a problem with a plot, that does not mean the plot is then rejected. It's still approved. It just means we mods will come back to you and work with you to find a way to run the plot anyway. For example, if the advisors wouldn't authorize the use of Inquisition resources to fight a mob of nugs, we can work it out so the team believes it is looking for a mob of highwaymen and discovers the mob of nugs instead. IC consequences can be more difficult to work around, and in some cases there will be no avoiding them and you'll simply have to decide whether you want to go forward with a plot and RP out the consequences or not. But we'll always try to explore options to find an outcome that works for everyone if we can.

Thus far we've been sending out our responses to plot requests and asking that you wait 48 hours to make sure the advisors don't have anything else to add. This seems inefficient and unnecessarily confusing, so from now on we'll instead hold off on sending our approval notice until we've given the advisors a chance to comment. This way if there are any notes on a plot they'll all be contained in our initial reply and once you get it you can immediately proceed.

MOD PLOTS

We are going to be making a couple of immediate changes to how mod plots are run based on feedback we received from the survey. Many of you requested more GMing in mod plots, so in the future we plan to do our best to make sure that there is a GM tag every 48 hours. We hope that this will help to keep threads moving, while not being so fast that players struggle to keep up. This does mean that GMs will tag on a timed schedule rather than waiting for a full round of tags, so at times players may get left out of a round here and there. As far as we're concerned, this is fine! Regular participation is more important than being in every single round.

SETTING & ATMOSPHERE

There were two other proposals that seemed to gather almost unanimous support and so we will be instituting these as soon as we're able.

The first is IC News posts providing more information about what's going on across Thedas, which we hope will provide a sense of the broader scale of the many conflicts currently going on, and insight into how they're being spun by the different factions in play. We plan to make these happen regularly between mod plots, to help us show the impact that the last round of plots has made and to seed the next round. We will have the first one up in the next week.

The second thing is a roster of adoptable character concepts we think could be cool to see in game. We hope this may encourage people who are interested to play some underrepresented types, and is something we'll work on unveiling after the holidays.

We have further thoughts and some plans in mind regarding setting and atmosphere, especially with regards to maintaining the balance between faithfulness to the canon dynamics that make Dragon Age compelling, and keeping the game fun and flexible for our players. We'll get into these in detail in our later, survey-focused post.


Upcoming Plot Developments

ORLAIS

The on-going Orlais plot will conclude this month with an event similar (but not identical!) to the Winter Palace in Wicked Eyes & Wicked Hearts. Inquisition agents will be in Orlais in large numbers to attend peace negotiations at an Imperial court ball. This will ICly take place at the end of the month on Firstfall 30. OOCly, the night's events will be split into two logs, the first to be posted on 11/10 and the second on 11/20. More logistical and plot details will be coming soon, but we can tell you that at least some portions of the event will be open to all characters. The outcome of this event will determine the political situation in Orlais for the foreseeable future. Have we said the word event enough times in one paragraph yet? In the event that we ha(e)ven't, we'll consider eventual seventies eventing events eventuating.

WAR TABLE

The November War Table Operations are currently available for sign-ups! We've done our best to provide a more diverse set of plots this month, with one specifically tailored to non-combatant characters (though anyone interested is welcome!). It's looking like we may have some slots left, so we're going to extend sign-ups through tomorrow, November 3 @ 11:59pm EST. Go toss your names in the hat! Check them out HERE.

Miscellaneous

As always, we close with some reminders for players new and old:

Please remember to submit a report after your player plot is completed! They help everyone keep track of what's been going on without having to read every log, and help us make sure player plots have impact on the bigger picture. These are now required in order to claim AC reward points for running the plot.

Remember also to check out the IC Org & Contact page for info you and your characters should know about how the Inquisition works, and for contact info for advisors, their direct reports, liaisons, and groups like our Mage Council (which is always taking new PC members!).

We also have a page for IC news and gossip, a Wanted page, which is currently taking the place of ATP and also allows players to offer up NPCs they've created from their character's background or from around Skyhold for others to app. We've created a spreadsheet for Character Residences, so you can see where everyone is living and let people know where to find your chars.