Labyrinthum OOC + Memes

SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!

Good morning Dreamers! I hope this past week we have all been able to take a breather and sort out how we feel. For my part, I continue to feel excited and motivated to bring you as much as I can. I have a lot I want to cover so I’m going to get to it, starting with the most immediate changes and fanning out.

This month, November, and December will unfortunately have loose scheduling as far as when info posts, events, and CR memes will go up, but I hope to re-establish a set schedule come the new year. I understand this is inconvenient and I promise I will try my best to keep things at as close to regular schedule as I can or to give rough estimates and new dates when things will go up. For October, I have updated the Calendar with when I'll have posts up.

A CR meme for this month will go up shortly after this post with a small opportunity to plan a little regarding some of the upcoming events.

OCTOBER TIMELINE
• Mini Event/Plot for Crystal and Network Return to Function
Later today I will be posting up a mini event for those who wish to work with Myrta to restore the network and the crystal’s full power. In the interest of keeping things simple for me for the time being I am not looking to NPC Myrta but she will be around environmentally and providing basic assistance in a handwaved manner.

Because we are looking to get things back online to a baseline status both IC and OOC this log is a little railroaded, but I will take into account the efforts that are made in the log and hopefully utilize them later down the road for other elements in the game. I will do my best to include prompts for those that want to participate in this log but cannot actually help with the nitty-gritty of restoring things themselves. This should keep this post open to as many as possible. Participation is, as always, optional but I will note who exactly participates in the fixing side of things.

• Sleepr and Vaeros
Going from the consensus on the post earlier this week, sleepr will be returning. The date I have settled on for this will be October 19th, the day the network will be fully functional once again and it will come with a special narrative treat. Perhaps we’ll even see an appearance from His Highness himself.

Sleepr will remain a relaxed month staple going forward, as it is clearly a popular and fun mechanic for most of the players in the game. Not only this, it is established as a reflection of Vaeros’ personality, and while the scope of the game has changed and will continue to evolve I see no harm in letting Vaeros have his fun.

I am not against rotating Sleepr out with other network games as more of the story evolves and other options become available however! Please look forward to new things on the horizon.

• End of Month Event - Carnival / Costume Party
I have spoken with Sheep and Ellie, and we will be combining their ideas and efforts into a relaxed event that will take place the last week of the month. This event will stretch into the first few days of November as well!

Sheep has been very helpful and graciously extended their hands to help with this event, and Ellie has given their blessing to the two of us to run with their idea and incorporate it into the Carnival. There will be a few Labyrinthum lore sprinkles in the event but this is largely meant to be a fun and relaxing event that will endcap October. The event will start on October 27th which is also the same day that the Event log will go up. I will make an effort to have a plotting post go up a few days before the event proper so that the playerbase can plot before the log goes up.
HOUSE KEEPING CHANGES
Invites, Information Sharing, Permissions, Summary Lists, AC Coin, Player Cap, Dropped Character Businesses

• Invites
I have decided to keep invites open on a monthly basis. In order to app to the game a player will need an invite granted in the previous month. For example: for November’s app round, prospective players will need to obtain an invite from a current player anytime in the month of October.

Invites will expire monthly, and should an invite not be used the prospective player will need to get another invite the following month. This change is immediate and should be reflected on our invites page sometime today as well as on other relevant pages. Please feel free to submit invites for the upcoming round in November regardless of update status on the invites page. They will still need to be processed as they have in the past.

• Information Sharing
There has long been confusion and uncertainty regarding IC and OOC information sharing. I understand the concerns on both sides of this issue and wish to propose the following to clear everything up and establish something that the game can use going forward.

An IC Bulletin Board will be established as a page like previous business and housing pages. This Bulletin Board will be monitored ICly by Myrta. Characters may post information they have gathered on this Board as well as any array of silly posts they want. This can be done narratively in our network community much as something similar has been done while the network is offline.

OOCly, information that players have that they want to remain on the board should be posted on the static entry to make sure the information gathered by characters remains accessible to all in the game whether the character who initially gathered the information/made the notes/etc is in game still or not. This removes the concern about locking game information outside of game pages.

• Permissions Post & IC ≠ OOC Rules
As soon as I can get the time or find help to do it, I will be updating this rule to more accurately reflect what I want to see going forward. The suggestions on the discussion post most closely align with my views on this, and I will be providing an update to this rule by November 1st.

In order to facilitate the utilization of permissions posts and encourage players to talk to each other rather than blanket banning negative CR, players will be required to give a link to a permissions post to their entry on our taken list where they can express what permissions they need, and players can contact them regarding it.

• TDM/Event Bullet Lists
As suggested by players in our discussion post, I will be adding a summary section to TDM and event posts to summarize prompts and what is possible to do in each one as best as I can. This may be a work in progress as I figure out what the sweet spot is as far as how much information to give.

• AC Changes
As stated, October is a Check-in only Month. All I require for this month is a check-in statement to be made with our current format instead of an activity link, and you will be considered safe for october!

Those who submit full activity for October, however, will be rewarded with an Activity Coin. Only one coin can be earned per player, but this coin can be used at a later date to count for activity when they might not be able to make AC. New players can submit 5 comment AC with their new characters in order to receive a coin. Current players only need to submit full ac for one o f their characters (it does not matter which one) to earn a coin. These coins will last for one calendar year from the date they are earned. When they expire they just go away and can no longer be turned in.

I may offer a chance to earn more coins at other times during the year when AC is a check-in only month. I will be keeping up with earned coins on our AC spreadsheet and will clear them out when the year rolls over. There is no need to comment about the coins on your AC tracker, I will be responding to each comment that earns a coin for your reference so please reply to AC with the correct format as normal.

Going forward and starting with October, acceptable AC comments can come from posts made any time in the previous month so long as the comments themselves were made in the current AC cycle. This seems to be what is preferred by the playerbase and I feel it's a fair compromise compared to what we were going with before.

• Player Cap
For now, I have decided to rescind the player cap that was established briefly by the previous mod team. I may consider revisiting this in the future depending on the growth of the game. For now, I do not have a problem with how the game’s growth looks. Before I make any change, I will give the game at least a month’s prior warning.

• Dropped Characters and Player Businesses
I will be processing drops throughout this month so our usual announcement for dropped characters throughout October come November 1st will likely be a little bare. I do not want to leave drops to linger during this period to help players move forward with CR building and play.

Establishments from certain characters/players will be removed instead of allowing them to be inherited. The clinic, in particular and as an example, will be replaced as a player building and will instead be a game-established and NPC run location. It will have a different name and feel but it will essentially function the same as it has in the past. If there are questions about other particular player businesses and purchased buildings, please don’t hesitate to ask.
ADDITIONAL MODS
As much as I wish I were capable of doing it all on my own, I cannot run this game fully by myself in the long run. I do not have immediate concerns in this department for the next couple of months, but at some point in November I am going to open helper applications for the following:

List Mods, Application Mods, Plot Mod

• List Mods (Activity Check, Faq, Info Bulletin, Rewards) - (Three) People who can help with these items will work with me to keep lists counting up to date. The biggest task will be updating and managing faq questions. A HUGE thank you to Flyleaf who has already provided me some excellent help with a basic faq update, which I plan on utilizing soon. Thank you SO much already Flyleaf!

• Application Mods - (Two) These mods will help me process applications. I’ll be looking for players who have previous experience in this department. I would like a team who are comfortable giving critique in not only getting facts and elements of a character right but also towards writing quality and style. We have always been lax on quality but I would like to shore this up to an extent in order to maintain better standards going forward.

• Plot Mod - (One) I am considering looking for one other person to help brainstorm plot beats and story elements for the overarching feel of the game. This mod would be instrumental in helping me keep story straight and interesting as well as weaving in elements from our inspiration media to keep the game feeling like Labyrinthum. They may also help me with prompt writing in regards to events and other elements I am considering adding to the game.

If there are players who think they can help with more than one of these roles, I’m fine with allowing for overlap.

In order to make this easier, I have already made a helper mod account that will eventually house all of these entries so that helper/list mods have access to these lists but private matters such as conflict contact will remain private with me.
DOWN THE ROAD
Quest Board Proposal, Potential Shard Reward Changes, Game Direction

• Quest Board and Quest Rewards
I am considering replacing Labyrinth Exploration with a new Quest Board mechanic that some may be familiar with from other games around Dreamwidth. This board will offer quests and little plot snippets much like Labyrinth explorations, but will involve Myrta and be less focused on the Labyrinth specifically but the area of the game we have access to as a whole … and what may be revealed down the road.

The reward system will be separate from shards, and the rewards will be different than the ones accessible from activity shards. I have not come up with a solid list of possible rewards yet, but they may be more fun and silly and consumable in nature vs what is currently available with activity rewards.

I would appreciate a temperature check on this possible game element!

• Activity Reward Changes
I am currently considering revising the way Shards are counted and awarded in order to simplify the experience for everyone (I hate comment counting, guys). I am going to open a subtopic for suggestions.

Currently I am considering the following for Rewards:
•10 Log Comments = 10 shards
•10 Network Comments = 5 shards

Threads that consist of both can earn both shard rewards ie: a network log of at least 10 comments turns into a at least 10 in-person/log thread can earn 15 shards total.

Anything over 10 comments does not weigh in on awards.

I am, however, considering the possibility of a bonus for every set number of additional comments in very long threads. Possibly 15 additional shards for 20 additional log comments and 10 additional shards for 50 network comments as an example.
These changes will not occur any sooner than January 2025 because I want player feedback before making a decision. Should these changes occur, I will be reevaluating costs for rewards and scaling them appropriately to reflect what the rarity for the items should be more realistically.

• Game Direction
After some investigation, I can say that the direction of the game has definitely been hurtling toward something of an endgame based on what I knew of the plot and story beats when I was last a mod. However, I have no intention of putting the game into endgame and have brainstormed a way to expand Labyrinthum going forward and opening up the setting to a wider plot and reveal while not disturbing the reveals and plot beats already given and hopefully avoid as much retconning as possible.

There is plenty to be discovered about this world and setting and there has been a lot of player movement and discussion both OOCly and ICly that I would like to reward on this topic. While these developments will take time, I feel that there is limitless potential for story, environment and plot reveals I have are enough to last several years of play.

I wish to continue the pace that Labyrinthum has established with a Relaxed Month with more CR focused events and Intense Months with meatier plottier events. I would also like to utilize Dream Events, but at this time may reduce their frequency for narrative reasons. Going forward, I’m also fine with switching things around to match the needs of the playerbase and feel of the game as the story develops. I appreciate and am open to anyone who has concerns about pace and speed of the game.

Tags: !announcements, !state of the game

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We Must Continue

labyrinmods

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Oct. 7th, 2024 at 8:39 PM

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• Labyrinthum; October and The Future •

Hello Dreamers!

This is Ryn. The former mod team has given me the keys to the castle, so to speak, and I have returned to help keep this game running hopefully for a long time to come! I have a lot that I want to cover, and a single announcement is not going to be enough.

There are several topics I want to start a discussion on as soon as possible, and I hope to create sub-threads so the topics stay somewhat organized for my little brain. These are topics that will get us through the rest of October. I hope to follow up with more later on in the month (timing pending based on responses and discussion on this post) regarding the rest of the holiday season.

NETWORK CHANGES
What I would like to do is roll back the what seems to be several month long closure of the network. I would be happy to do this with a minor, brief in character announcement with a small set of prompts for players, mainly network related. I would then like to run Sleepr as was normal. It would, of course, be without Vaeros whom I understand is currently unavailable.

However, I realize that players may have moved forward with the plans for lack of network, and understand if the player base wants to play with that. I am open to civil discussion and ideas on how to proceed.

I hope to make a decision regarding this by Sunday, October 13th so that if things work in the way of a rollback I can proceed with the posting of Sleepr semi on schedule. Other options are less time-restrictive, and I'm also open to moving things around in general.
POSSIBLE OCTOBER EVENT
I would like to do something relaxed for the latter half of the month, but in addition to the current test drive meme. I do recall seeing some murmurings of a costume party. I realize that this is a little slice-of-lifey, but I would like to make it a little more Labyrinthum flavored with a few things I have up my sleeve. I understand if you may all want more details considering concerns over transparency. I am open to revealing more if that is what is needed!
ADDITIONAL MODS
I am not looking to add more cooks to the kitchen, if only to keep things less chaotic for now. I do not plan on involving the previous mod team for help or inspiration at all, and will if needed approach the original mod team for direction. By the end of October or the beginning of November I will open up mod applications where anyone currently in the game are welcome to apply. I plan on being very selective with additional mods and want to approach it as a team effort.

In the transition, I may reach out to players who have offered to help with things if needed such as coding or list updating! I am only one person and know my limits, I cannot keep track of all of you on my own forever!
OTHER CONCERNS
I have not been involved in Labyrinthum at all for a couple of months, and as a mod for more months than that. If there are concerns regarding rule changes, app changes, that could effect how the game is run overall for the next three months, please bring them to me here for me to discuss with you! Keep in mind that we are currently in a state of flux, and there will be a lot that will need to change in order to streamline the game and consider where we all, as a mod and a player base want the game to go.

I cannot please everyone, but I want to extend the chance for the player base to make suggestions that might make the next three months while other background changes are going on much more enjoyable and easy while still feeling engaging and fun as Labyrinthum has been for several years.

Thank you for the grace and kindness I have been given upon announcing being given the keys. I am not perfect, and am sure there will be hiccups during this transition but hope that we can all move forward together with a new chapter of Labyrinthum's story together.

Tags: !announcements

labyrinmods

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labyrinmods

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Announcement

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Oct. 7th, 2024 at 6:51 PM

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Labyrinthum will remain open. The mod team has handed over the keys, and there will be an announcement shortly. This post will remain for transparency.

Thank you for your patience.

( Read more... )

Tags: !announcements