↠ FADE RIFT OOC - January 6th, 2019

06 January 2019 @ 08:55 pm

MOD ANNOUNCEMENTS: JANUARY

OOC & ADMINISTRATIVE UPDATES

Upcoming OOC dates:

Native Applications: Open indefinitely
Rifter Applications: February 1-5
Next TDM: January 20
Next CR Meme: February 20
Next Deadline for IC Leadership Applications: January 31

Please make sure you add any player plots with plot impact/wide relevance to our Calendar so everyone knows when stuff happened! (Our new 9:45 calendar is a little sparse at the moment, because we just got back today, but it's there and waiting for you if you have anything you need to add.)

We also have some IC updates here. IC news announcements will follow shortly.

Rule & Policy Changes

Effective immediately (unless otherwise noted), we're making a few changes to various game rules and policies. Please read carefully! Ignorance of posted rules is not a defense.

AC Rewards: Instead of 3 tags being sufficient to earn an AC Reward point, you now need at least 5 tags. This applies to log, network, and inbox threads.
App Caps: The cap on Wardens is now 2 per-player (though we encourage people, as always, to avoid situations that mandate close CR between their own characters) and Warden side characters will be allowed. Elf-blooded humans will also no longer count toward the per-player cap on elves. All other application caps and limits remain in place.
Advisor Apps: Anyone wishing to app one of the four Inquisition advisor/leader characters (Cassandra, Cullen, Josephine and Leliana) must contact us via the Mod Contact before submitting an application so we can discuss it. This is because having those characters present in the game would potentially upend the IC authority system we've all been working on and place a great deal of IC power into one player's hands, so we would need to work out ways around that with prospective players. Because of the IC authority those characters inherently come with, applications for these characters will also be scrutinized more strictly.
Side Characters: Some character concepts will be too special to remain side characters indefinitely. For these characters, we'll impose a deadline (typically 3 months, but it may vary) by which the character must either be apped as a full character or dropped. This is something we've already been implementing in practice—we're just making it official now.

Additionally, beginning March 1, we may begin implementing some plots or changes that could render unclaimed canon Dragon Age characters unappable—some might die, some might move into positions or plot roles that would make it impossible to integrate them into the game going forward, etc. We're giving everyone a head's up now so anyone on the fence about whether or not they'd like to app a particular canon DA character has some time to make up their minds without worrying that the character might die at any moment if they don't app right away. We also don't plan to kill off all unplayed canon characters on March 1 or anything, but after that point we'll consider them fair game and will not provide any additional warning before rendering a character unplayable.

Rifter Applications

From now on, rifter applications will be tied to the plot cycle, occurring in Month 1 (out of 3, for those who don't remember). We hope this will time arrivals so that new characters are better able to become acquainted with the game and get involved in the plot before major events happen, rather than frequently apping just a few days before major plot events take place.

This means the next round of rifter applications will be open February 1-5. The following round will most likely be May 1-5, but that will be confirmed in a later mod update.

Network Updates

The reason for the recent crystal mis-messaging chaos was that researchers were hard at work implementing some much-needed upgrades and someone made a mistake. Thankfully it was swiftly corrected, and the work is now complete. Effective immediately, Inquisition researchers have successfully implemented the following improvements to the sending crystals and the attached notebooks that are issued to each Inquisition member, official ally, and trusted Rifter:

the ability to remotely deactivate/destroy specific crystals from Kirkwall/Skyhold
the ability to save specific crystal messages (up to ~an hour of total message time per crystal, so please be reasonable)
the ability to skip through saved messages
the ability to request the name of the person who owns the crystal from which a specific message was sent. The crystal will play the name the person gave at the time they officially received the crystal and set up their 'account' with the Undercroft. It only know who owns the broadcasting crystal, not who was speaking.
the ability to read off a list of names associated with crystals and then manually "group" those names under a new nickname, to allow easily messaging groups of people without reading out each individual name every time.
the ability to use the transmitting notebooks outside the Gallows. Note that each is linked to a specific person's sending crystal, and will only work when that crystal is inserted into the spine. If the crystal is removed (or deactivated), the book will immediately appear blank.
the ability to send a 'verified' notebook message which will display the name associated with the crystal that is being used to activate the book. This is now the default setting. Sending anonymous messages is still an option, but must be specifically chosen.

In addition to these overall changes, the researchers have already created a small number of crystals with special properties. These special crystals include:

a closed-network set of crystals that broadcast only to each other and are not connected to the overall Inquisition network
several crystals that do not send or receive, just record. They are automatically activated by sound and go back to sleep after 10 minutes of silence. They can record hours of conversation, but will fill up and need to be retrieved, wiped, and replaced in order to continue

These are only available to be used for official Inquisition-sanctioned missions, and must be signed out from the Undercroft (not the actual Undercroft in Skyhold, that's just what they insist on calling the equivalent research space in the Gallows) and promptly returned when the mission is complete. The recording crystals are still an experimental prototype in very short supply (3-5 total), so their use must ICly be approved by the Division Heads.

IC & PLOT UPDATES

January Event

This month, we'll be doing a one-off event involving ghosts haunting the Gallows. We'll be making an event post soon, but to allow you all to begin planning and plotting, we've put up an OOC plotting post with information about how the event will work.

Mod Plot

We'll be continuing to use the three-month plot-cycle system, with the next cycle beginning running from February through April. The focus of this cycle will be the election of the next Divine, and we'll post more information on what that will involve next month.

Having now run one full plot cycle to see how it works (and because we're relentless tinkerers), we're looking into ways to adjust and improve the process for everyone. We're currently nailing down some adjustments, based on our observations as to what definitely needs to change, but we'll also be posting a survey later this week to get some feedback for the things we're less sure about and to see if any of you have ideas of your own. So keep an eye out!

Anchors

While some people may have already experimented with closing rifts with fewer than the usually-required 3-4 anchor-bearing individuals, those who have had anchors for twelve months or more—both rifters and natives—will find that they now have the strength to close most rifts individually. However, assistance from others will still make doing so easier, and abnormally large tears will continue to require multiple anchors to close. It will be very difficult to make any sort of direct comparison, but in general, all other things being equal, the longer a person has had an anchor the stronger it will be.

Additionally, those who have had anchors for that long may begin to notice that they're slightly larger and occasionally more painful than in the past, and anchor-based abilities are growing somewhat more powerful. The changes will be very minor—anchor-based shields, for example, may cover a few more inches at most—but nonetheless noticeable.

More info later. :)

Leadership Apps

First, congratulations to the following new appointment:

Naval Presence Project Leader: James Flint

The list of current leaders and vacancies is available here, and there are a number of open positions. We'd particularly be interested in applications for Project Leader for the Other Powers or Rifts & the Veil projects, which have been without PC leadership for some time, and Assistant Leader for Chantry Relations, since the Chantry will be the focus of the coming cycle's mod plot.

As a reminder, we're now processing leadership applications every month instead of every other month. We're also working on some additional guidelines and information for our assorted non-division/project head IC leaders, so if you have a character in one of those roles and are feeling a bit adrift, hang on a few more weeks and we'll throw you a rope.

Tags: ! mod post

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06 January 2019 @ 09:06 pm

MOD EVENT ↠ KIRKWAIL

MOD EVENT: KIRKWAIL

Or, The Gang Gets Haunted; or, City of Rattling Chains; or, Haunt in Hightown; or, Hey Now, You're A Ghoul-star.

During the night of Wintermarch 20 (forward-dated; the log will be posted OOC on January 10), the Veil will thin dramatically, and the Gallows will begin to seem haunted as heck as the spirits that have accumulated there over hundreds of years of hardship and bloodshed begin to show themselves. Initially, these spirits will only appear briefly, conducting their routine warped reenactments of the Gallows' bloody history before flickering back out of sight. As the Veil thins further, they'll become longer lasting and gradually turn their attention to the fortress' current occupants.

From that point until the end of the event, the spirits will be attempting to elicit emotions from your characters. The most common will be rage, despair, and fear, as spirits focused on those emotions have concentrated in the area, but nearly anything is possible, including positive things like hope and faith. These spirits will remain ghostlike, translucent and unable to physically influence the world except in occasionally poltergeist-like bursts, such as slamming doors or breaking objects. But they may take on shapes familiar to your characters, speak to them, or play out scenes designed to provoke emotional responses.

Their attempts can be things that really happened, slightly altered versions of things that really happened, or things that never ever happened and never will. The spirits can be subtle and silent, or they can follow your character around screaming at them. All of it will be observable by other people, and the spirits might even try to meld things from different people's memories together to affect both of them at once. Bottom line: you can pretty much haunt your characters however you want.

For rifters, the effects will be even stronger, and rooms in the Gallows—while always solid and visible—may appear overlaid with entire ghostly landscapes and scenes from their home worlds. So if you've wanted a chance to show other characters what your rifter's world is like, now's your time to shine.

To end the haunting and escape the Gallows, your characters will have to solve a seven-step problem that players collaborate on OOC using clues we'll provide based on questions you ask us, which must all be in rhyme.

Jk. The event will last 48 hours IC, though it can feel longer to the people involved due to Fade-y perception-warping nonsense, and the problem has an easy solution. We'll provide more information about that when the log goes up, and we'll randomly select a couple willing participants to be the heroes who figure it out first.

WHAT TO DO RIGHT NOW

First, think about what you want to do with your characters! You can go dark or go light, little or big, whatever you want. We don’t usually do status events/jamjarry CR-building and -jumpstarting things in FR, so that's pretty much the point of this. Air out your character's dirty laundry or make some new friends via shared trauma. Or do something uplifting! Or something silly! Whatever. There's a plotting form in the comments.

Second, if you plan to participate, you can fill out a form to tell us about any spirit debris you'd like to be scattered around the Gallows during the event. We'll compile a list and post it alongside the log. For more details, see below.

SPIRIT DEBRIS

If you want haunted stuff connected to your character included on our list of debris that can be found around the Gallows, fill out this form. Each player can submit four items, and you can apportion those items among your characters however you want. The types of things you can use include:

Spirits taking the form of living beings and acting out a scene without interacting with anyone directly. (If you want the spirits to directly acknowledge or speak to someone, you'll have to write that out yourself.)
Physical objects, like letters or weapons or anything else, with the caveat that no one will be able to interact with them—so a book's pages would need to flip on its own for anyone to be able to read it, etc.
Disembodied sounds, including conversations, music, or whatever else.
For Rifters, ghostly tableaus of places in their home-worlds (no bigger than roughly the size of a large Gallows bedroom).

We'll compile these things into a list and link it with the log for everyone to browse, so people might use your debris in their own threads or say that their characters saw it later without consulting you about it. If there's something you only want used by your character or certain other people, don't submit it.

The list we post will not include anything but the descriptions you provide, so if you want something to be anonymous, just describe it in a way that doesn't identify the character attached to it. E.g., you can have someone write MYROBALAN MURDERED ME on a wall in spirit blood if you’d like, or you can have someone just write HE MURDERED ME if you don't want your character so blatantly accused. It’s up to you.

The deadline to submit items be included in the list is January 9, 2018, to give us a little time to compile said list before the log goes up.

OPT OUT

If you don't want your character to be involved in this event, they just need to leave the Gallows before it starts, for whatever reason. If they usually sleep in the Gallows they can have a random errand to run on the mainland. The event will take place over about 48 hours, starting in the evening when the ferry is no longer operating, and for its duration reaching or leaving the Gallows will be impossible due to inclement weather, so people who aren't there when it starts won't be affected and may even manage to avoid knowing it's happening at all.

Tags: ! mod post

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