Fade Rift Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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faderiftooc2017-03-01 11:43 pm
faderifting) wrote in faderiftooc2017-03-01 11:43 pm
Entry tags:
MOD POST ↠ March Updates
MARCH (DRAKONIS)
ORGANIZATIONAL/OOC UPDATES
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.
PLOT UPDATES
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:
- 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. - 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. - 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. - 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. - 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.
QUESTIONS
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(No my character doesn't have a vested interest in knowing where they're going to be, why do you ask? >_>)
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I'll now move my attention to trolling with ice jokes. :D
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/halo
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but then you'd need to find somebody to replace me
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that's not very n(ICE)
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Eluvians: Where are they going to be housed given that Skyhold was a pretty safe location for them compared to Kirkwall (and all the issues getting Merrill's out) with the interest in them for the two missions to get them/get them back. Are they going to be moved in any specific way or is that going to be left up to the people that they belong to at our discretion to handwave or whatever?
Carta: Say your character is born and bred Kirkwall Carta and still keeps regular contact with them because they're literally his family. And say that kind of involved things like lyrium smuggling and letter smuggling for mages back in the days (it's equal opportunities when you're making money off other people). How does that whole nebulous area go down.
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As for Yngvi, we're not sure precisely what you're asking, but we don't anticipate creating any problems for him on our end. His crimes sound pretty par for the course in Kirkwall, so even without the Inquisition's protection, running him back out of town wouldn't be a priority for the guard. The extent to which his family bothers him is up to you! However, if you want to do anything major with the Carta as an organization, make sure you run it by us.
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Re: QUESTIONS
- If Bethany Hawke is 'politely' asked to return to Kirkwall, can she make the Wardens base of operations Hawke Mansion? (Do I sort of want Bethany to be a nice Batman? I kind of do.)
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The atmosphere in Kirkwall will also be discussed in more depth later, but it is a large city and it's been years since the last major conflict there. There will be people with a range of opinions, including people who hate Templars, people who love them, and people who don't give a damn.
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KIRKWALL MOVE FAQ
If your character wouldn't want to go, that's tough luck for them. The Inquisition is a military organization, and they will be given orders to go. Members of large allied organizations with NPC leaders, such as rebel mages reporting to Fiona, will be ordered to go by their respective leaders. Freelancers and independent allies will be told that that's where the work is if they would like to continue being paid. If your character would be so against the idea that they'd quit the Inquisition altogether, that's something you as a player will have to figure out a way to handle.
I'm not sure my character's skill-set/job/interests will make sense in Kirkwall.
We're doing our best to make sure that the Kirkwall base will be pursuing a range of missions that give reason for all sorts of different characters to be assigned there. And while it's smaller than Skyhold, it's still an Inquisition base, so it will need the usual motley assortment of soldiers, spies, researchers, support staff, etc. We're confident there will be plenty of reasons for all our PCs current and future to be present.
How does this work with ally groups like the Chargers or the Wardens?
Everyone going to Kirkwall will be ordered or "requested" (which really just means ordered in a very polite way) to go, including members of allied groups. As for how the NPC members of these groups will be handled, that's something we'll deal with in a later post closer to the date. If you have specific concerns, please feel free to contact us.
But what if my character has a rough history with Kirkwall and will be murdered on sight if he returns?
If your character's name happens to rhyme with Shmanders, we believe this is a surmountable problem that, for several reasons, doesn't necessarily need to result in murder. We'll talk. If your character's name does not rhyme with Shmanders but you still have a specific life-threatening problem with your character moving to Kirkwall then, uhh. Contact us with specifics and we'll see what we can do?
Where will characters live?
We're sure everyone will be very excited to hear that the new base of operations will be housed in the Gallows, which, as a former Circle of Magi, has kitchens/living facilities and enough housing for the entire game population to sleep indoors on real beds. It also has a much bigger library than Skyhold. More red lyrium, too, but we'll deal with that.
We may allow characters to maintain separate residences in the city, but please don't start planning the mansion of your dreams just yet; more information about this is still to come.
How will this PCs having IC authority thing work?
This is a great question but also a big topic that deserves its own post, and something we think will make more sense and be less scary if we have the info pages ready for you guys to look at at the same time, so it's something that we'll be explaining in detail in the weeks to come. But don't worry, we're doing our best to keep it simple and unobtrusive, so that it facilitates RP and lets PCs grow into leaders without causing OOC stress.
You gave a lot of OOC reasons, but what are the IC reasons for going to Kirkwall?
These will be explained in more detail when the IC announcement of the move is made. We'll be NPCing the announcement post to allow your characters to ask questions (or grumble discontentedly) themselves, if they need to.
What about people with anchors being tied to Skyhold and not being able to stay away without pain?
All rifters and people with anchor shards will be assigned to the Kirkwall base, as future research into their anchors will be taking place there. This will create enough of a critical mass in the area to allow those with shards to comfortably live there long-term, the same way that remaining in the vicinity of others with anchors causes the pain to develop more slowly and allows agents to spend time on missions in far-flung places like the Western Approach.
You've mentioned this base having specific objectives. Does that mean that we can't do other things?
Not at all. You're still 100% welcome to propose and run plots on whatever topics interest you; the objectives aren't meant to be limits. They're designed to help people who want to get involved in mod plot by making it clear which plot threads will be most important to the fight against Corypheus, instead of leaving them fumbling around trying to guess what might end up mattering someday. This way we hope it will be easier for those interested to jump into mod plot-related RP, and to be confident that they're working on things that will have an impact on that part of the game's story.
Are we allowed to RP visiting Skyhold or run events in Ferelden/Orlais?
Yes, as always the whole map is available (minus a few areas roped off for future plot use), and there will still be War Table Operations and such that take place in the south. Neither the game nor the Inquisition is abandoning the region, we're just shifting our game base and focus elsewhere. That said, please be realistic. Your character has been assigned to work in Kirkwall, so if they're turning up at Skyhold every week or you're trying to have them basically live in the Frostbacks and commute back and forth, that's not going to fly.
What's Kirkwall even like right now?
It's a shithole, as always. We'll provide more details in upcoming posts.
What does the Dark Future have to do with this?
The Dark Future plot contained hints of what Corypheus and others may do, but the future can still be changed—and the Inquisition's work in Kirkwall will be one part of averting that future using information brought by the Time Travel Team. However, even with that information, things will get worse for the Inquisition before they get better.
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