OOC Calendar

We have a calendar for 2017/9:43 here. The previous calendar is linked from that page and will remain available for reference. Please refer to it for our OOC and IC schedules, and make sure to add any player plots or major events your organize to it as well!

Activity Requirements

Going forward, we'll be simplifying the AC requirements for canon characters. Our plot participation requirement was an experiment, and we appreciate everyone's cooperation with it, but it's proved to be overly strict and complicated in practice. Beginning with March AC, that rule is abolished. Instead, we'll require Dragon Age companion/advisor characters to post something open—an open log, an open rookery post, or an open top-level comment in an event post—every other month.

The two-proof AC requirement is still in place. Just make sure, every other month, that one of those proofs is an open post. Open posts must have IC content in the post itself or comments with open prompts; they can't just be a catch-all header.

We're not going to set a hard limit on how many replies canon characters must make to their own open post in order for it to count, but we expect a good faith effort at responding to folks who comment. We will be keeping an eye out and if we feel people are abusing the spirit of the rule, we'll have to have a chat.

Mod Plot Participation

Something new we're going to try with mod plots going forward is choosing a couple of alternates. When we have sign-ups where interest exceeds available spots, we'll announce who got the slots, but we'll also announce the couple of people who were next down the list when we RNGed. If any members of the team fail to tag into the plot thread within three days of it being posted (without prior arrangement with us), they will be replaced by an alternate. We hope this will balance the desire to give everyone a chance to participate with the need to prevent limited places in mod plots from being taken up by non-participating characters.


Dark Future, Part II

We'll post the second leg of the Dark Future plot in the next few days—the push to get the Time Travel Team back home where they belong, which will come complete with plenty of open opportunities for future AU character to go out in blazes of glory, if you're into those. We still have people working on plot assignments, and you can continue to do your own Dark Future Adventures in the open log if you don't plan to participate in the second portion of the plot.

The Big Move

This is both an OOC and an IC update and is a huge game-wide change, so please read closely!

Beginning in April, Fade Rift is moving to Kirkwall.

Here's what's happening IC: Based on recent strategic developments and information learned from the team that traveled to the future, the Inquisition will be establishing a new secondary base of operations in Kirkwall. This has not yet been announced ICly and won't be for a few weeks. Keep an eye out for a rookery post once the Dark Future plot has been completed. The new base will open in April (Cloudreach), with characters able to move in gradually over the course of the month. By the end of April, every PC should be based there.

Skyhold will remain the Inquisition's primary home, and only a portion of the greater organization will be transferred to the new base. It will just so happen that that portion will include all of our characters. This second base will be tasked with some specific objectives that we will outline in more detail later, but they will also be expected to use this new foothold in the North to increase the Inquisition's presence and influence in the region and to continue the general work of combating Corypheus and restoring peace.

The base will still answer to the Inquisition hierarchy headed by the advisors, but the PCs in Kirkwall will be the ones in charge of operations there.

Here's what's happening OOC: It's been a good year and (almost) a half in Skyhold, but it's time for a change of scenery. In April we will transition the game's main base of operations from Skyhold to a new outpost in Kirkwall. All currently played PCs will be transferred to the Kirkwall base, and all future PCs will be assigned there on arrival. Events and missions will continue to take place throughout Thedas, including in the South, but this will be where our PCs live and work for the foreseeable future.

Our OOC reasons for this include, in no particular order:

1. Focusing in on specific plot threads.
   
   You will always be able to do player plots about what interests you, and we'll still incorporate elements of the canon plot. But we have always planned to expand the conflict between the Inquisition and Corypheus and construct a new path to victory that requires more cooperation and broad player involvement than drinking from a well. While the rest of the Inquisition's forces are working on maintaining order and generic battles, the characters who move to Kirkwall will be given a specific, narrower set of objectives that you can be confident will affect the outcome of the game's plot if your character participates in them.


2. More immediacy.
   
   Skyhold's isolation from the world is a great feature in a fortress, but it limits RP. Moving the game's home to a central city will bring the PC Inquisition agents in direct contact with the world. Instead of being able to relax, safe in the knowledge that they are miles from any enemy in the sanctuary of an impregnable castle, the threats they face will now be on their doorstep. They'll be living cheek by jowl with average citizens with a wider set of opinions than Inquisition members, and the actions they take will often have an immediate impact on their neighbors. We hope this will bring a fun new atmosphere and make the conflict and controversy of Thedas an even bigger part of the game.


3. Allowing more opportunities for PC leadership.
   
   The move to Kirkwall will allow us to cut the Inquisition's NPC members out of daily life. At Kirkwall's much smaller base, there won't be a sea of NPCs with more experience or seniority to call shots. PCs will be pretty much it. They'll have objectives from above, but they'll be the ones in charge of seeing that those objectivesare accomplished.
   
   So far, we've put most authority in the hands of NPCs and a very limited set of PCs, without many ways for PCs to directly take on responsibility. If, for example, you wanted to play out someone struggling with the demands of unwanted leadership, or fighting to get noticed and tapped to lead despite their youth or station or race, or anything along those lines, that has been pretty difficult to do because PCs were so rarely ever really in charge of anything. We'd like to change that, and offer a richer experience that vests more power in our PCs and allows them to rise and fall on their own merits.
   
   This will also allow us to more easily off-screen inactive canon characters--especially advisors--by keeping them at Skyhold, rather than having them inexplicably leave for months on end or asking you to handwave their daily presence. The advisors will still be in charge of the Inquisition as a whole, but they won't need to be consulted about or aware of day to day activities in Kirkwall.


4. Fun.
   
   Skyhold is cool but it's time to shake things up. We thought about making up a brand new location, but Kirkwall is OOCly already well known and well documented, so hopefully players will have a similar comfort level and be able to play without feeling pressured to constantly check with us regarding setting details. There's plenty of room in this labyrinthine city for players to create and extrapolate. Invent your own tavern, sure, go for it, etc! We're excited about the opportunity to revisit a favorite (weird, chaotic, nightmare) location and also to shift the focus to the regions of Thedas around it that have so far gone mostly unexplored. We hope you will be too.


5. MJ is really tired of writing about ice.

Mission Interests: We mentioned earlier that this base will be assigned some specific objectives, in addition to pursuing the general Inquisition mission of stopping Corypheus and restoring stability. We have plans about how to both continue on-going projects and introduce some new plot threads, but we want to make sure that we're including and highlighting the things that you are excited to RP about. To that end, we've put together a very brief survey available here. Please go take a look and let us know what you're most into.

Questions: We're sure you have a lot of questions, and there's a lot more we'd like to tell you! Rather than make this post so long that other important announcements get lost in the shuffle, we've prepared a FAQ in the comments below, where you can also ask any questions we haven't yet answered.