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january sotg
GOING (SEMI-)PUBLIC
Hello Kenos! The primary purpose of this post is to give a status update about the game going (semi) public and offer any feedback before the TDM is posted and applications open next week.
To start and give you the mod perspective, we think that we’ve essentially reached “saturation” on our invite-only system! That is, most everyone who has friends who are interested has already been invited. In our last few app rounds, we’ve seen far fewer invites and applications, and just from my point of view (Christy) as an experienced mod, DWRP games do need a healthy supply of new players to help offset the drops that naturally occur over a game’s lifespan. We like our small game and it’s been very manageable! But when it gets too small, it can be hard to move the game forward, especially in a plot-forward game like ours.
So! We’re opening up prospects for new folks to join us!
Functionally, the process of applying to Kenos isn’t changing at all, but we’re just nixing the need for new players to have an invite from a current player. Instead, the verbiage has changed to player screening. All new players will still need to go through the screening process, which will be conducted in the same way. A new player will comment to that post, and their information will be posted by the mods to the screening post for all players to review. Writing samples are also required in applications for new players, since we similarly want to check and make sure that they’re a good fit in this sense too.
To give prospective players a better idea of the game that they're apping into, we will also be making all RP communities public. If you have a specific log that you have posted that you would prefer to be private, you can go change this setting (or ask the mod to do it if you're not able because I'm not 100% sure how the permissions pan out). This will also be the policy going forward where players are allowed to private their logs/entries at their discretion, but events will always be public, and we also ask that highly event-involved posts (such as the gossip posts) also be public.
Finally, in the interest of preparing the game for new eyes, many pages have been updated! The most notable is our FAQ, which has been given a bit of a facelift/overhaul to help orient new players and update information that may have been part of our original vision for the game but has changed. Other pages have received updates or been removed (such as the “how to run an event” page), but these are more minor.
If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to let us know!
To start and give you the mod perspective, we think that we’ve essentially reached “saturation” on our invite-only system! That is, most everyone who has friends who are interested has already been invited. In our last few app rounds, we’ve seen far fewer invites and applications, and just from my point of view (Christy) as an experienced mod, DWRP games do need a healthy supply of new players to help offset the drops that naturally occur over a game’s lifespan. We like our small game and it’s been very manageable! But when it gets too small, it can be hard to move the game forward, especially in a plot-forward game like ours.
So! We’re opening up prospects for new folks to join us!
Functionally, the process of applying to Kenos isn’t changing at all, but we’re just nixing the need for new players to have an invite from a current player. Instead, the verbiage has changed to player screening. All new players will still need to go through the screening process, which will be conducted in the same way. A new player will comment to that post, and their information will be posted by the mods to the screening post for all players to review. Writing samples are also required in applications for new players, since we similarly want to check and make sure that they’re a good fit in this sense too.
To give prospective players a better idea of the game that they're apping into, we will also be making all RP communities public. If you have a specific log that you have posted that you would prefer to be private, you can go change this setting (or ask the mod to do it if you're not able because I'm not 100% sure how the permissions pan out). This will also be the policy going forward where players are allowed to private their logs/entries at their discretion, but events will always be public, and we also ask that highly event-involved posts (such as the gossip posts) also be public.
Finally, in the interest of preparing the game for new eyes, many pages have been updated! The most notable is our FAQ, which has been given a bit of a facelift/overhaul to help orient new players and update information that may have been part of our original vision for the game but has changed. Other pages have received updates or been removed (such as the “how to run an event” page), but these are more minor.
If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to let us know!
KOWLOON KLARIFICATION
After some discussion on the server, we’ve noted some confusion about the events taking place in Kowloon and Springstar, so we’d like to offer some clarification about the events leading up to this change as well as the changes themselves!
As a refresher, Kowloon is a largely independent, semi-anarchist “city” in the Below underneath Springstar. Kowloon is a place where less-than-acceptable behavior is overlooked, and it’s the place that Meri and Zenites alike know that criminal elements hang out, which keeps their cities safer in turn. One part of the activities in Kowloon is the “district” of Ryad, a section of the city that’s designated as a place where people look the other way towards murder. This district was established by Yura Szczepanski, its overseer, for the sake of giving non-human people with less than acceptable diets (such as vampires) a place to hunt, if they so choose. Yura oversaw this process with an iron fist and would personally punish those that would choose to hunt elsewhere, including in the cities above. However, because of the changing balance of power in Kowloon (more on this below), Yura had recently decided to stop enforcing this rule and allow these people free reign to do what they wanted.
Our wording was unclear, so we’d like to note that the “monsters” that are stepping into a Springstar are a combination of these people that would be frequenting Ryad and those who have been partaking in a little too much of Silco’s Shimmer drug. That is, the monsters that are causing murder and mayhem in the city of Springstar are very much thinking, sentient people! They may be mindless in the sense that they could be blood-crazed vampires or that someone really hopped up on Shimmer has essentially taken turbo meth, but these are not like monsters found in, say, Alenroux that are more bestial. Some of these people will even have Shards! We wanted to provide clarification on this, since we noticed some confusion about what “monster” meant in this case and how characters might feel about tackling this problem could be much more complex as a result.
In addition, we’d like to add some clarification on the events in Kowloon that have taken place over the past ~year via player plots and plotting. Some of the characters who have built up these events have since dropped the game, so the majority of action has been pushed forward by Silco and was all well before Jill stepped up as a mod!
As a short version, Silco has been slowly working on amassing power and influence in Kowloon by hostile takeover and introducing the drug from his canon to the streets of Kowloon. This has made Silco (and those associated with him) major players in Kowloon, and the people of Kowloon largely respect Silco, even if they don’t necessarily like him as a person. He’s given many of them power, made others money, etc., and this is what has tilted Kowloon’s balance towards favoring Zenith, with Yura at the more extreme end.
As such, while Springstar can certainly fight back against this encroachment under their city, they’re going to find the situation to be more delicate because the people are more against them and they’re also at risk of creating a power vacuum (that, say, Silco could fill). Or to put it in OOC terms, we encourage Meris to respond, but because of the work done over a long period of time, they’re going to need to work over time to push back Kowloon rather than having success immediately. This is now a reactive situation rather than a proactive one, essentially, and it’s going to be harder!
As a refresher, Kowloon is a largely independent, semi-anarchist “city” in the Below underneath Springstar. Kowloon is a place where less-than-acceptable behavior is overlooked, and it’s the place that Meri and Zenites alike know that criminal elements hang out, which keeps their cities safer in turn. One part of the activities in Kowloon is the “district” of Ryad, a section of the city that’s designated as a place where people look the other way towards murder. This district was established by Yura Szczepanski, its overseer, for the sake of giving non-human people with less than acceptable diets (such as vampires) a place to hunt, if they so choose. Yura oversaw this process with an iron fist and would personally punish those that would choose to hunt elsewhere, including in the cities above. However, because of the changing balance of power in Kowloon (more on this below), Yura had recently decided to stop enforcing this rule and allow these people free reign to do what they wanted.
Our wording was unclear, so we’d like to note that the “monsters” that are stepping into a Springstar are a combination of these people that would be frequenting Ryad and those who have been partaking in a little too much of Silco’s Shimmer drug. That is, the monsters that are causing murder and mayhem in the city of Springstar are very much thinking, sentient people! They may be mindless in the sense that they could be blood-crazed vampires or that someone really hopped up on Shimmer has essentially taken turbo meth, but these are not like monsters found in, say, Alenroux that are more bestial. Some of these people will even have Shards! We wanted to provide clarification on this, since we noticed some confusion about what “monster” meant in this case and how characters might feel about tackling this problem could be much more complex as a result.
In addition, we’d like to add some clarification on the events in Kowloon that have taken place over the past ~year via player plots and plotting. Some of the characters who have built up these events have since dropped the game, so the majority of action has been pushed forward by Silco and was all well before Jill stepped up as a mod!
As a short version, Silco has been slowly working on amassing power and influence in Kowloon by hostile takeover and introducing the drug from his canon to the streets of Kowloon. This has made Silco (and those associated with him) major players in Kowloon, and the people of Kowloon largely respect Silco, even if they don’t necessarily like him as a person. He’s given many of them power, made others money, etc., and this is what has tilted Kowloon’s balance towards favoring Zenith, with Yura at the more extreme end.
As such, while Springstar can certainly fight back against this encroachment under their city, they’re going to find the situation to be more delicate because the people are more against them and they’re also at risk of creating a power vacuum (that, say, Silco could fill). Or to put it in OOC terms, we encourage Meris to respond, but because of the work done over a long period of time, they’re going to need to work over time to push back Kowloon rather than having success immediately. This is now a reactive situation rather than a proactive one, essentially, and it’s going to be harder!
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1. Player Retention
2. New Game Features
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1.
So, this is something I (Christy) am aware of and have been aware of since the game started, and unfortunately the answer is kind of that I don’t have a fix for it either. We’ve tried several things over the past year to try and encourage more diversity in where plotting is offered, from Plurk to Dreamwidth posts, and we just haven’t seen them utilized. Ultimately, Discord ends up being more convenient for people, and convenience wins out.
That said, because we’re aware of this, we’re also making it something that’s (hopefully) fairly clear to new players. We’ve added a new question to the FAQ to specifically point out that we utilize Discord heavily and we plan to also include a blurb to that effect in our game advertisements. That way, it’s hopefully not a surprise to incoming players that our game is structured this way.
If you have suggestions on how to improve these kind of impromptu plotting opportunities, we’re open to hearing them, that said! We definitely realize Discord isn’t an ideal solution, and I’ll look at also setting up a preset for the truly most important channels (like announcements, plotting, etc.) so that a new player could truly just pick those and keep everything else muted if they choose to.
We do also hope that with a bunch of truly new people coming in that our playerbase will help welcome them and hopefully help them feel welcome in the game, IC and OOC. New games and especially new servers can feel overwhelming, so we’ll be doing what we can to help newbies acclimate, but we hope fellow players assist, if that makes sense.
And having written all that out, I do hope that doesn’t sound like I’m shifting blame or anything, since that’s not what I mean! It’s more that this concern isn’t something that the mods are able to control so much as the playerbase is, so it makes it a difficult one to address. We truly are open to player initiatives to diversify these offerings and would support them in any way we could!
2.
Much shorter at least! We can definitely let the (ke)notebooks be an optional feature at player discretion for their characters. They’re absolutely not meant to replace Communion, which is the primary “network” for the game, and we think that’s reflected by how it’s disincentivized in only being worth half AC.
As for the polling aspect, we didn’t feel it was necessary because it’s meant to be a supplement, not a replacement. If it ends up being something that’s not widely used, that’s totally fine! We’ve had a few ideas over the course of the game that just didn’t click and weren’t used, and that’s a-okay. This is just an option for purely “text” style threads for those that might want that, since it’s not something Communion intuitively provides.
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That said, while I get that the notebook system is meant to be a goofy fun thing and that's why it was implemented without polling, I do feeling like polling would be appreciated in the future if it's going to be for any sort of system that's applied across the board, instead of being explicitly opt-in. Looking at how the announcement for the notebooks was written, I'd guess that it wasn't originally written to be an opt-in system unless the matter was brought up? And I can see now how the OOC disincentivization indicates it isn't meant to replace Communion on an OOC level, but it still didn't provide much IC reason for why characters shouldn't favor it over Communion, and having to come up with IC reasons for why a character wouldn't just use the notebooks all the time probably would have gotten tedious after a while. Not a big deal now that it's something we can opt out of on an player level, but it was definitely real startling to see it announced without any warning or prior discussion.
Either way, thanks for being understanding about wanting to opt out of it. The amount of work and thought you guys put into running this game is highly appreciated and I'm always grateful for it, but sometimes a thing just doesn't work for your blorbo.
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Also therefore noted that even if it's something "lighter" like this, we'll at least prompt some discussion of features in the future, even if it's just casual to make sure that we don't miss things like this. 👍
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Again, and I can't say this enough: thank you for all the time, love, and effort you put into the game.
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Also this is for my own curiosity, but with the game going semi-public how are we handling advertising it? Is it still going to be mostly word-of-mouth or are we planning on posting to places like RPA, EMP, etc?
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As for advertising, we are planning on using the EMP, as we planned the TDM for the day before the EMP dropped specifically so we can have it open along with the advertisement! We have not considered using any anoncomms at this time for advertising.
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+1
So thanks for changing it to opt-in! Super appreciate it!