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riverviewooc2018-06-08 08:15 pm
mod post: monthly state of the game
Hi everyone! Welcome to June's State of the Game post! Contains information on the UPDATED ACTIVITY CHECK STANDARDS, the STATE OF THE MOD, and INFORMATION AND PLOTTING OPPORTUNITIES for this month's Exploration Mingle.
updated activity check standards
As some of you may have noticed, and as was posted on the mod plurk a few days ago, I have put some more thought into the Activity Check Standards that I first introduced in May's State of the Game post. After using reminders for two months of activity check, while I did see some improvement across the board, it was not as much as I was expecting. Because of that, I have decided to instate the potential for penalties if requests to provide stronger AC are repeatedly ignored. These are outlined on the Rules and Procedures page as follows.
● Activity check standards have been put in place as of April 2018. These standards have been put in place to ensure that players are engaging with the game at large rather than sandboxing or squatting. Players submitting AC that shows a low level of engagement with the game for three months in a row (from any of the bullet points below) will be given a reminder to submit stronger AC the following month. If this reminder is ignored for three months in a row, the player will receive a warning for Activity Participation. Two warnings (total of 9 months low-engagement AC) will be considered grounds for removal from the game. The following types of AC submissions are considered low-engagement:
● Split AC: This is when a player submits two short proofs instead of one proof to AC standard. This type of split proof is intended only to avoid a strike in the event of a rough month and shouldn't be relied upon consistently.
● Castmate/Close CR AC: This is when a player consistently submits AC-length threads only with castmates, ship partners, or other close CR. This is one I don't always catch because I am not completely familiar with the relationships that every character in the game has, but I do notice when AC is submitted very consistently with only one other character or group of characters. Please note that attempting to circumvent this by just threading with the same friend's second character will be noticed and counted under this bullet.
● Late AC: This is when a player makes AC but is consistently on the warning list
After giving it a couple days of thought, I have decided that warnings for activity will not be reset/removed by one month of good activity, but by six. That means that a warning will remain in place until the player in question has provided AC that does not fit any of the above bullets for a total of six months, and gaining another warning (an additional three months in a row of weak AC) within that period of time will be grounds for removal from the game.
If you have any questions, concerns, or feedback regarding this, please respond to the AC Standards Questions subheader in the comments below. The Rules & Procedures Page will be updated shortly to reflect this clarification.
state of the mod
I mentioned on plurk a couple of days ago that I was struggling with some burnout, and I wanted to just make an official update on that. I've had a very rough time of things in my real life (health, etc.) for the past month or so, which has been sapping my motivation and energy.The burnout has to do with my real life, and has nothing to do with Riverview - I'm not struggling with my workload in the game, I'm not running out of ideas, I'm not tired of running it. I'm just very physically worn out and stressed out.
That being said, I would really appreciate if you guys would bear with me over the next month or so while I get my things sorted and back to normal. If I forget something that you've asked me to do, or missed something please tell me. I am always open to feedback, so if something matters to you and I'm not handling it, I would much rather be told about it than not.
monthly plot: abductions in riverview quarantine
Over the past few months, an ongoing series of events has been unfolding in Riverview - after the flooding and the discovery of the Guardians of the Deep and the ancient settlement they were guarding, some things in the quarantine have been getting increasingly stranger. Children have started to go missing, first only a few, but more recently it's started to become a major source of concern in the city as more and more go missing every day.
Starting on June 12th, a few days before the Exploration Mingle goes up, adults and teens are also starting to go missing. This includes PLAYER CHARACTERS, no matter their ages. These characters will be abducted by a group who have taken up residence in the structure under the city after last month's exploration died down. The group is starting to slowly take on cultist tendencies, believing that the remaining spirits of the First People still live in the structure, that it is a temple, and that those First People need offerings of host bodies to inhabit so they can return and bring their wisdom and magic back to the moon.
In other words, they're a little off their rockers. Unfortunately, they're also smart and strong, and the group includes members that are skilled with both magic and technology, which means they have several illegally built power suppressors for their stronger abductees.
This month's Exploration Mingle will consist of two groups - abducted characters and rescue teams. The abducted characters can start being kidnapped on June 12th, in whatever way and with whatever level of violence works for your character and what you'd like to get out of the plot. Characters who are abducted will be held in the central chamber of the underground structure. With the orb removed after last month, the Guardian at the central chamber is back in hibernation, which leaves the heavily-fortified chamber empty for the Cult of the First People to hold their prisoners in makeshift cages or shackles with their powers suppressed. Abductees will be fed only enough to keep them alive, and will be kept from sleeping much, in order to ensure they are disoriented, tired, and low-energy. The amount of violence or deprivation that they experience individually is up to the individual player's discretion - the Cult can get very nasty if crossed, and may make examples of people; they may also treat some captives better than others in order to lower morale in the group.
Phase One of the Exploration Mingle will consist of the abducted characters working together to get a message out of the structure. How this happens is up to the players involved - group together, plot it out in this entry, and play it out in the mingle when it goes up!
The rest of the Phases of the Exploration Mingle will be for the rescue of the abducted characters, which will consist of teams of characters creating a distraction to draw the cultists away from the abductees, an infiltration team to get into the entrance the cultists are being distracted away from, and a team of fighters for when the cultists inevitably return attention to the rescuers.
Please see the comment sections below to sign up your character as an abductee or a rescuer, to ask questions, or to submit your plotted out ideas for any of the phases in bolded and underlined above (multiple ideas can be submitted and I'll find a way to get them all in). Beyond that, plot up a storm individually in the comments to this entry!
cast cap
No changes here. This is just a note to let the game at large know that I'm a sensitive creature who feels bad about one single person sitting alone in a queue, and so I am going to allow the MCU cast to go to 16/15 for now.
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While playing the recorder relentlessly listening for clues.