MOD ANNOUNCEMENTS: MAY
OOC & ADMINISTRATIVE UPDATES
Upcoming OOC dates:
Please make sure you add any player plots with plot impact/wide relevance to our Calendar so everyone knows when stuff is happening! We've added a lot of player plots that were missing while guessing wildly at the dates, as well, so feel free to move yours around if they're incorrect.
FAQ
We've made some additions to the FAQ to try to lay out more clearly our policies regarding character abilities, particularly how we evaluate the strengths & weaknesses in applications, the limits of what we will allow to be made up about native magic, and what types of changes to OC abilities require advance permission. Please make sure to take a look!
IC & PLOT UPDATES
The Divine
Despite Grand Cleric Agathe's untimely demise (the subject of rampant speculation and wild theorizing basically everywhere), the Grand Consensus has continued as planned, and after several days of deliberation, and a late dark horse run by Grand Cleric Elise of Ayesleigh, Revered Mother Benedetta of Rialto has been unanimously elected to ascend to the Sunburst Throne. She has reportedly taken the name Beatrix IV. Students of Chantry history may recall that Beatrix I called the first Exalted March against Tevinter at the beginning of the Black Age, and Beatrix III was of course Justinia V's predecessor and mentor.
Those debating what Benedetta intended to signal by choosing this namesake weren't left in the doubt long: as her first official act, Divine Beatrix IV announced an Exalted March against the Tevinter Imperium and its invasion forces. This was met with riotous joy from the beleaguered populace of Orlais and the tens of thousands of others who had traveled from across Thedas to see a new Divine crowned at long last. The general mood is one of excitement and energy to see the Chantry revitalized under a dynamic young Divine after nearly four years of uncertainty and inaction without a leader.
OOC, we will not be posting an event log specifically related to the Consensus announcement and Divine coronation. If you want to RP your characters going to Val Royeaux for the occasion, whether in an official or unofficial capacity, or announcing/discussing it on the network you are more than welcome and encouraged to do so! We'd originally planned an event log, but it was just going to be a mingle/reaction thing, and we get the feeling that interest is either on backtagging missions or has shifted on to the next thing, so we've decided not to belabor this subject by forcing everyone to go to Val Royeaux just to say they were there.
Instead, we'll be running a stand-alone event in Kirkwall later in the month. It may or may not involve the occupants of the Gallows getting caught in something like a Zone of Truth.
The Split
Now that the debate has died down a little bit, we've put up the survey in which you can vote for whether the Gallows contingent should separate itself from the Inquisition, and if so, how it should do so. As we detailed in our last post, the poll contains both an OOC and an IC component. What the players want will determine what happens, and what characters want will determine how it comes about. You should therefore reply to the poll even if your character is too cool for school and wouldn't participate in the IC vote that is occurring.
The deadline to vote is: 11:59 EST on Tuesday May 7.
Once the vote is final, we'll announce the results and what they mean going forward.
New Plot Cycle: Month 1
May is Month 1 in our next plot cycle. The focus on the next mod plot will be more limited than in previous cycles—rather than becoming an overarching priority that dictates many of the missions run during a cycle, it will be something that arises as an IC surprise toward the end of the cycle. We also won't be choosing it. We've come up with a few options, and like we did during Fade Rift's early months, we're going to leave the choice of which to handle next up to you. That means—you guessed it!—ANOTHER POLL. Keep an eye out for this.
In the meantime, there's still a war on, and now an Exalted March too, so things are getting kinda serious! The priorities and goals that Division Heads and Project Leaders posted on the War Table remain in effect despite the re-org, you may just now report them to a different person. These priorities, and anything that new leaders want to add or change, should be your plot focus (and IC work focus) for the cycle.
Project Reorganization
As we explained last month, we're making some changes to how projects are organized, and the requirements for IC leadership. Please read on!
GENERAL CHANGES
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
therookery rather than project/division pages.If you care about the reasoning behind those changes, read on! If you don’t care, you can skip to the next section.
Dividing the plot up into projects was meant to serve a few purposes. Some of those purposes are still important: OOC, the plot has a lot of moving pieces, and it’s easy for us and for everyone else to forget about some of those pieces while the mod plot focus moves around, so having some people dedicated to making sure specific balls don’t get dropped and then roll under the furniture to be forgotten for a year is very helpful. And IC, it’s a way to RP about characters being leaders and taking on responsibility without us having to dive all the way down into creating full-on ranks and hierarchical command structures. It’s also good for people who want to get involved in plot but don’t know where to start or who to talk to about it to be able to easily identify key plot threads and who to approach about them. So those things are important and good, and we want to make sure it all continues to happen.
But projects had some other purposes that are no longer necessary. We initially wanted characters to “join” projects—and only two per character—because that seemed like a good way to help people identify who they could collaborate with in specific plot areas. There also used to be an atmosphere of, let’s say, kind of competitive speed toward IC discoveries and plot participation, so we wanted to ask people to narrow their focus to a couple things per character instead of trying to do everything at once and as quickly as possible.
We still want plot participation and progress to be spread out among as many characters as possible rather than monopolized by the fastest few, but now that the game is smaller and slower, our problem is more often things not being done rather than too many things being done too quickly. So when someone does want to get involved with something related to a project their character isn’t part of, there are barriers there that we don’t think are necessary anymore.
Some aspects of the structure have also been unnecessarily confusing. For example, the fact that projects are housed in different Divisions has made a lot of folks think that that means their characters can’t work on projects listed under Diplomacy if they aren’t diplomats and so on. Divvying up projects between Divisions was initially intended just to make it easier on Division Heads, so they wouldn’t all have to keep up with every single project, but since the game is slower than it used to be and we have so few situations where the DHs need to be hands-on with projects, that isn’t so much of a concern now.
Lastly, we’re moving IC reports to
therookery. These don’t need to be things that everyone can comment on (though they can be)—it’s just to make it easier for everyone to keep up and to highlight and keep people in the loop on significant developments made in missions and player plots. PROJECT CHANGES
To make it so things are spread out a little bit less, we're going to be consolidating some of the projects into four new ones—with fun code names! because "Magical Artifacts and Veil Research and Also Anchors Project" is a mouthful—and otherwise making some adjustments.
All of these projects will have up to three leaders. Usually that will mean one leader and two assistants, except where we combined two projects that both had active leaders; there we'll be grandfathering them in as two co-leaders and one assistant. The four new projects are:
PROJECT FELANDARIS: A combination of Elven Artifacts and Rifts & the Veil, this project will center on research into the Veil and other esoteric magic, combating rifts, studying anchors, developing eluvians as a method of transportation, and recovering and studying ancient artifacts—primarily but not exclusively elven—that may assist in the war effort. (Leaders: Solas and Sorrel, as co-leads, and Merrill as assistant.)
PROJECT SASHAMIRIi: Combining Corypheus' History and Red Lyrium, this project will focus on identifying and learning how to best counteract Corypheus' specific special abilities and apparent immortality, as well as the Blighted tools at his disposal, such as red lyrium and the darkspawn under his control. (Leaders: Julius, two assistant positions available.)
PROJECT JESHAVIS: Taking the place of Hostile Powers, this project will focus on counterintelligence efforts in the South, such as identifying enemy agents who are infiltrating Orlais and Ferelden; stopping blackmail, sabotage, and attempts to stir up local unrest; and otherwise preventing Corypheus' attempts to destabilize the nations that are standing against him. (Leaders: Kostos, two assistant positions available—and Kostos will be out of the leadership role before May 15, so feel free to apply for it now.)
PROJECT HAVEN: Chantry Relations by a new name, this project will focus on liaising with the Chantry, including assisting in framing potentially alarming research or people in ways that will be theologically acceptable, interfacing with Chantry figures to help coordinate anti-Corypheus efforts, sorting through requests for favors to keep the Chantry happy, etc. (Leaders: none, one lead + two assistant positions available.)
Missing from this list, obviously, are Other Powers and Naval Presence. Other Powers is essentially being dissolved—which doesn't mean people no longer need to worry about the dwarves or the Qun, just that there won't be a specific project for it. Dealing with Orzammar/Kal-Sharok and the Qunari will instead be the general responsibility of the divisions, and related work can be done through whichever Division is most appropriate. Naval Presence will no longer be a project, but we're adding two new roles that will do basically the same thing as the Naval Presence leaders and report to the head of Forces.
We've also shifted the overall focus of the projects somewhat, particularly in the case of Hostile Powers → Project Jeshavis. Changing that project to focus on Orlais and Ferelden doesn't mean we're no longer concerned with dealing with the hostile nations in the north of Thedas! The project was just too broad and wound up potentially encompassing anything to do with active hostilities—so nearly the entire war/plot. From now on, missions that previously might have gone through Hostile Powers will just be general missions and go through whatever Divisions are most appropriate, and Jeshavis will have a narrower focus.
LEADERSHIP REQUIREMENT CHANGES
We don't want to make AC harder for any of our IC leaders, but we do want to make sure people aren't hanging onto positions they aren't really using. So we're adding some light additional requirements for keeping IC leadership roles. We'll be adding this info to the Rules page and updating the AC forms shortly.
DIVISION HEADS & PROJECT LEADERS: Once per plot cycle (so once every three months), Division Heads and Project Leaders need to post an accessible and substantive IC update of some kind. Form-wise, this can be a crystal announcement, a written report/update on the book network, an in-person meeting, or anything else. It must be open to all. Content-wise, it can be a general update on the state of the project/division, an announcement for a specific thing that’s been learned or accomplished lately so people can talk about what to do with it or how to use the success/learn from the failure, a solicitation for people to help in a specific endeavor or just to help in general, asking people for updates on what they’ve been doing themselves lately or their ideas for what to pursue—pretty much anything is fine, as long as it involves your character speaking in their official capacity about official business and taking the initiative to help people either get involved or get informed in the official work your character oversees.
We don't want this to be difficult! So it doesn’t need to be lengthy or a huge undertaking. If no one has done anything for your project lately, the leaders can just say that, and the post can be more like “I know we have other priorities at the moment but don’t forget, we still don’t know how Corypheus survived when Hawke killed him!” or "We need five people with anchors to come to the office today for (handwaved) research purposes.” The goal is just to make sure people who want to get involved in these things have a good point of entry and to remind everyone pretty regularly that there’s work going on and more to do. Don’t feel like you need to write a five point essay.
Additionally, they can be joint posts; if all leaders of a project participate substantially in either the top-level or the comments for a single announcement/meeting, if the Division Heads want to coordinate on a general organizational update, or if leaders of multiple projects collaborate on a post about a joint effort, it will count for everyone involved.
As usual, we're not setting hard requirements on the word count of the post or the number of times you must respond to it, but that's because we trust you all to make a good faith effort to abide by the spirit of the rule. If we ever feel like that leniency is being abused (for instance, if you repeatedly make a very brief post and don't reply to comments), this may change.
OTHER IC LEADERS: Once per plot cycle (so every three months), you need to provide an AC proof—which can be your base proof, it doesn't need to be a separate second proof—that demonstrates your character doing their job. How you accomplish that can take a lot of forms.
For example, if someone takes the recruiter role, they could put up an open correspondence post asking people if they have any skills they feel aren't being well-utilized so they can help connect them to work they would be good at. They could propose a plot to go recruit an agent in Orlais and then do a log for that. They could do an open post that includes a prompt where they're in their office and available to speak to people about recruitment. They could meet with a few specific characters to discuss needing to find more Tevinter speakers for a specific project. Etc.
This does need to be more substantial than, for example, mentioning offhand that they're the recruiter during a conversation that's mostly just about the weather, or saying in a log about drinking that the character was just in their office working before going to the tavern, and if you try to submit a log of your character having sex on their office desk for this we're going to use our frequent flier miles to come slap you, but otherwise there's a lot of flexibility and hopefully it won’t be stressful for anyone. Our goal is just to make sure that people are actually using their characters’ positions in RP, rather than potentially taking up slots while forgetting they have them, and make sure we’re able to open up positions that aren’t really being used for new applicants.
LEADERSHIP APPLICATIONS & HOUSEKEEPING
Since we halted project leader applications last month to sort all of this out, we're not going to wait until the end of May for the next round. Effective immediately, leadership applications are open for all available positions (described above, and listed here) We will be processing these applications on MAY 15. Any applications received after the 15th will be processed at the end of the calendar month per the normal schedule.
You will notice that the org comm and other project-related pages have not yet been updated. Unfortunately we just haven't had time to take care of that yet, but we didn't want to hold up project plotting in the meantime. Remember that signing up for a project is no longer required, so you should feel free to jump in and get started anyway! For now, you can refer to the project descriptions in this post for info about the work each is focused on and their leadership, and know that we will have the org pages updated ASAP.
As mentioned above, reports for completed missions should be posted to the correspondence comm—this will be the new policy going forward, even once the org comm is updated. Please make sure to use the relevant project or division tag(s) along with character tags when you do this. We hope that doing it this way going forward will make it easier to find reports, especially those that relate to multiple projects/departments, help put more of a spotlight on the work characters are doing, and also encourage (but not require) discussion to build off reports.
Griffons
The votes are in, and the next generation of griffons have been named! The last couple came down to like a 12-way tie, so we admit we picked between those ourselves rather than having a run-off. We hope you don't hate them. You can see all the names here.
Now that the babies are big enough for riders, we have a pretty healthy number of griffons available for riders (especially because our griffons don't bond exclusively to one rider for life). We're therefore going to drop the cost of the griffon rider AC Reward even further.
Effective immediately, it will only cost 10 AC points to form a special bond between your character and a single griffon of your choice. That means your PC and the griffon are bffs. The griffon will actually listen to them, they can go flying for fun whenever they like, and they have dibs on riding that particular griffon if there's ever a dispute. Purchasing the reward also means your character can become a particularly skilled rider, who can pull off tricky feats, aerial acrobatics, and even fight from griffon-back. It also means they've taken the time to learn about griffons, and are better at handling them across the board, including others besides their own.
Simply riding a griffon on a mission will no longer require purchase of the AC reward, as long as at least one character who is on the mission actually has the reward and thus knows how to manage griffons and help keep them in line. Riding a griffon without having purchased the reward will mean that the griffon will listen to your character's commands roughly half the time, and they'll be too busy holding on for dear life and frantically ordering "no, I said left! LEFT!" to do pull off anything notably cool. The chance of getting bitten, scratched, lunch eaten, stuff stolen and gnawed, etc. also rises significantly. But if missions require riding griffons to get there, and so on, you don't have to be a griffon rider to participate.
Leave a comment