Follow-Up (October Announcements!)

[labyrinmods]

Hey, it's Yon here! Just wanted to follow up on some of the feedback we received on our monthly announcement post, so here's a few updates. Most were discussed in the replies, but in case you missed them...

Network and Mingle
The previously-mentioned network disruption, and the removal of Sleepr without Vaeros to run it, left many concerned about the lack of an IC mingle for new players and CR building. It's a valid concern! We've come to two decisions as a result:

• First, starting January, we will be replacing Sleepr with another network-based social event! Once the network comes back online, we'll be tweaking the formula for a new app that takes the same role/provides similar opportunities for CR-building.
  
  
• Second, since the Network won't be online this month, we're going to be adding an in-person mingle for the entire game, also designed with an eye toward social interactions and CR-building without event-based interference.

Bulletin Board
There has also been some discussion of using communal bulletin boards and similar resources to pass messages during the period when the network is down. This is totally encouraged, and you can approach it however would be easiest for you. If you want to simply append bulletin board posts to the logs they pertain to (ie add an invitation to the toplevel of a party log), that works great! If you want to just have a poster or flyer by itself as a network post for people to see, that's fine, too! If it would be easier simply want to handwave that characters used a bulletin board to coordinate a gathering or something, hey, whatever's easiest for you.

Information Pages
Finally, the updating of our OOC info pages has taken a backseat to the writing of ongoing events, but we'll be adding two more by November. First, since we're now nearly two years into the game, we're going to be posting a Timeline page that will be updated with an overview of in-game events for the reference of newer players. Second, in response to concerns about IC information pages/documents, we'll be providing a monthly space specifically for players to share IC documents in order to ensure that all players will be able to access them. This also gives you a month to make 'em and pretty 'em up if you're so inclined!

Thank you for your patience!

Comments

[headhooligan]

Thanks much for the updates! I appreciate seeing these, both for what they are (IC mingle and re-encouraged doc-sharing, very cool) and for having the overview on the official game community, period. Super convenient for people who don’t use Plurk (me lol) and/or haven’t been watching the comments.

Are the existing OOC infopages (namely FAQ & locations) going to be updated by November as well, or do those remain on the back burner?

[labyrinmods]

Locations and the bestiary/NPC guide are next to be updated after we add the timeline, but we may not be done by November.

The FAQ is... uh... a lot. To summarize. It's almost certainly going to be the last one.

[devilishkouhai]

I know a lot of community members also stepped forward. If you need help outsourcing and redoing some of the pages, I just wanted to put that out there again!


I understand that there’s a set time for when the network will be back online! However, if players were to roleplay a solution to make it possible sooner, would that be something we could explore? Or should we focus our efforts elsewhere for now(story/lore)?

[labyrinmods]

If players wanted to make a plot out of restoring the network earlier themselves, we could work with that.

[devilishkouhai]

Thank you for letting us know! I appreciate you working with the community/listening to our concerns.

[goldilocksandloads]

Hey there! Just hoping I can get a little clarification on an idea of mine since I kept seeing conflicting info across my plurk timeline about whether or not this would be possible or allowed so might as well go to the source right?

This month I was thinking of having Yang put an idea of hers into action; that idea being making little "introductory" pamphlets that can be left in the enchanted garden for newcomers to find (or not find if they want lol) that would help explain some basics about Somnius/Visium to them IC-ly. Mainly just stuff like where they are, what's the deal with the castle/labyrinth, what the gelflings/goblins are, what the 3 potions do, just standard stuff like that.

I'd done this before in a previous game with good success because it gave new characters an easy way for their characters to IC-ly learn about some basic game mechanics if they were less likely to experiment/ask random strangers/etc. (plus it was a fun jumping off point for CR with Yang (and any other characters involved) if a new character wanted to be like, "who the heck wrote this thing?". And of course, they were completely ignorable IC-ly if the player wished (they didn't see them, there weren't any pamphlets left, they'd gotten rain on them, something ate them, whatever reason they wanted).

Anyway would something like this be alright? And if so, would leaving the pamphlets in the Enchanted Garden all month long be acceptable or would they only be able to be shared on the bulletin board/this new monthly IC Document share space?

[labyrinmods]

This sounds ideal for the future (and would be a great use of the upcoming IC document-sharing resource!)

For this month, we'd ask that you hold off because we don't yet have the designated space for such documentation and because the TDM has already been live for several days. (Also the pamphlet likely wouldn't survive contact with the potoo tbh.)