New Moon Cycle 24 - June 21 - June 27 + More Mod Proposals
❖ MOON CYCLE 24 ❂ 06/21/10 - 06/27/10
Phase: New moon. The sky is once again a dark purplish haze of doom. Even the street lamps and the building lights can't blot out the utter black of night.
Weather: Suddenly it feels as if you're in the tropics: muggy, hot and humid. Thunderstorms come frequently and without warning, lasting about an hour or more and disappearing for anywhere between a few minutes to a few hours. Torrential downpours occur several times in a twenty-four-hour period. Keep your umbrella close at hand.
Effects: This is a two-part event this week.
First is Superstitions. All week long, your character will fall prey to at least one of a number of superstitions and bad omens. This will bring misfortune to your character in some way. Here is a list of superstitions to aid you this week. Completing superstitions to ward off bad luck may help for a few hours if performed correctly. Opening an umbrella indoors is just asking for trouble. What happens to the character is up to you, however we just ask that the consequences are not over the top and be related to the superstition itself. These should be more of an annoyance to the character rather than life threatening. So for example, opening an umbrella in a room would result in a bucket of water suddenly drenching the character. Step on a crack, break Lari's your mother's back: either a close friend or the character themselves will suddenly have back problems. "General bad luck" would be things like always making a mistake, having the door shut in your face, tripping, etc. Keep it simple and fun.
Second is Dreams Made Real. If your character has a dream this week, then the dream or nightmare will have carryover effects into their waking life. A person who dreams of death, for example, will wake up more as a zombie or a ghost than a living, breathing person - in the same state as when they died in their dream. People who are injured in their dreams will wake up with said injury; they will be forced to deal with the repercussions. This event applies to physical effects on characters; only physical happenings within dreams to one's own character will carry over. However, if a dream is particularly mentally or emotionally trying, characters may find themselves more affected by the dream than usual.
Notes: Your characters may notice that the Somni City and Espoir Village NPCs may be spending much of their time indoors this week - as if they're frightened of something. They go to bed at dusk, and wake up when it's good and light out. Something about this week has them humbled and quiet.
Also remember that all effects during this moon cycle are optional. Please use the event tag !moon: cycle 24 for all logs relevant to this event.
❖ application sample change proposal
Since we've change the application to focus more on the personality and sample sections, we've become a little more strict on them in the process. To help reduce wavers and increase chances for applications to get accepted, we've been tossing the idea of requiring two samples instead of just the one.
This is the basic outline of how the two samples would work:
As this is a big change, we want to ask you, our playerbase, your opinion. Vote on the poll, and feel free to comment with other suggestions or opinions. We will gladly take in any feedback you may have.
Poll Two App Samples?
* ...That's supposed to be "for". Not "ofr".
❖ mod notification about death/destruction
We've already stated that if any major event occurs that would affect the gamebase -- like a major fight that results in destruction around the buildings -- it should be posted on the OOC Community out of courtesy for the players. At this, we commend our players for doing so and really appreciate everyone for working with this!
However, we want to add another stipulation. If you plan or realize that a log or thread will result in death or destruction, tell us. Despite the events that happen, Somarium is a peaceful world and such actions shouldn't be taken lightly.
This includes general murder, death of other characters, the NPCs, and any destruction that may occur.
You won't need to publicly announce it if it's a minor event, but we still want you to tell us either via PM or catch one of us one AIM just so we know.
This is not to discourage anyone from performing such acts. In fact, we do encourage some mayhem. While Somarium may be peaceful, with the variety of characters we have residing in it, some chaos will happen. These events can also promote future plots that we can also use for our own events. All we ask is just to be notified. We might even be able to help with such plots and give some insight on what could happen as a result.
❖ death punishments
With the growing size and expansion of Somarium's active player- and character-base, the mods have noticed a recent influx of character violence in the populace. Somarium is historically a very peaceful world with peaceful people. The most heinous of crimes involved dream tampering and/or murder. Although death is technically impermanent for visitors to Somarium, we would like to propose a more organized and "harsher" punishment system as a consequence of in-game death.
Currently our policy is to allow the players to choose a week-long effect that their character will endure. Once the week ends, the effect ends, and regeneration is complete. However, Somarium is changing and the world's magic may not be as benevolent as it once was, particularly in light of this month's New Moon. We would like to propose a steadily worsening effect on characters who die. So far, the mods are considering the following system:
First Death: A character will return in a week's time, but find that they will have a weak grasp on their corporeal form. Instead they will be a listless "ghost" with only smatterings of memories of their old identities. They may remember some faces, some vague words and faces, but otherwise they will feel completely drained, and they will have trouble figuring out who they really are. This will last for an additional week. Memories and tangible body will return after the second week.
Second Death: A character will return in a week's time, but this time they will remain a ghost for a lengthier period of time, up to two weeks. They will still have flickers of memories returning to them, stronger as they reach the end of their 'ghost' period. They also might be able to sustain a couple hours' worth of tangibility during their ghostliness.
After the Third Death, characters will remain a Som ghost until an indeterminable amount of time. It is possible to barter with someone of great power to return to a corporeal form, but this would be done on a mod permission basis only, and only with a sacrifice from the character in question. It should be noted that this is not permanent. Your character will return to normal eventually, it will just take a lot longer and require more of a sacrifice.
This is only a rough idea of what we're looking to do. What we would like from you, as players of this community, is your opinion. How do you feel about this system? Do you have any alternative recommendations for death "punishments"? What would you be interested in playing out? Either way, we would like to introduce a dose of reality into Somarium and remind the characters that life is not something to take for granted, no matter the circumstance. Magic has its limits in the end.
Whenever the new changes are implemented, only the deaths from that point on will be counted. This means if your character has already died, it will not matter. The next death would be considered as "first death".
Edit: We have received a lot of great opinions and suggestions, and we just wanted to note that we still welcome any and all of them! We will compile another draft to bring out to the playerbase at a future date, so we just wanted to note that this is definitely still a work in progress and appreciate all the feedback.
As always, any questions, comments, or concerns can be commented here on the post!
Phase: New moon. The sky is once again a dark purplish haze of doom. Even the street lamps and the building lights can't blot out the utter black of night.
Weather: Suddenly it feels as if you're in the tropics: muggy, hot and humid. Thunderstorms come frequently and without warning, lasting about an hour or more and disappearing for anywhere between a few minutes to a few hours. Torrential downpours occur several times in a twenty-four-hour period. Keep your umbrella close at hand.
Effects: This is a two-part event this week.
First is Superstitions. All week long, your character will fall prey to at least one of a number of superstitions and bad omens. This will bring misfortune to your character in some way. Here is a list of superstitions to aid you this week. Completing superstitions to ward off bad luck may help for a few hours if performed correctly. Opening an umbrella indoors is just asking for trouble. What happens to the character is up to you, however we just ask that the consequences are not over the top and be related to the superstition itself. These should be more of an annoyance to the character rather than life threatening. So for example, opening an umbrella in a room would result in a bucket of water suddenly drenching the character. Step on a crack, break Lari's your mother's back: either a close friend or the character themselves will suddenly have back problems. "General bad luck" would be things like always making a mistake, having the door shut in your face, tripping, etc. Keep it simple and fun.
Second is Dreams Made Real. If your character has a dream this week, then the dream or nightmare will have carryover effects into their waking life. A person who dreams of death, for example, will wake up more as a zombie or a ghost than a living, breathing person - in the same state as when they died in their dream. People who are injured in their dreams will wake up with said injury; they will be forced to deal with the repercussions. This event applies to physical effects on characters; only physical happenings within dreams to one's own character will carry over. However, if a dream is particularly mentally or emotionally trying, characters may find themselves more affected by the dream than usual.
Notes: Your characters may notice that the Somni City and Espoir Village NPCs may be spending much of their time indoors this week - as if they're frightened of something. They go to bed at dusk, and wake up when it's good and light out. Something about this week has them humbled and quiet.
Also remember that all effects during this moon cycle are optional. Please use the event tag !moon: cycle 24 for all logs relevant to this event.
❖ application sample change proposal
Since we've change the application to focus more on the personality and sample sections, we've become a little more strict on them in the process. To help reduce wavers and increase chances for applications to get accepted, we've been tossing the idea of requiring two samples instead of just the one.
This is the basic outline of how the two samples would work:
- Must provide both a first person and third person sample.
- The first person sample must be a minimum of 8 (?) complete sentences. Only the dialogue would count, though action tags are also allowed. Leniency will be given to silent-type characters.
- We will give prompts for the first person sample, and the prompt can also be used for the third person sample. Note: The prompts will be optional and just allow applicants to use them for ideas on samples if they're stuck.
- The prompt will be dialogue focused, so it would be more like an interview asking questions. They would designed to purposefully seek out answers that would reflect the character's personality and how they would interact with another person. The questions could also be assumed to be either in a written or dialogue format. This would allow flexibility for the silent type characters.
- The main purpose is to allow applicants more opportunity to show us how they would play their character and to allow for more creativity.
- Edit: In terms of judging, even though we would require the two samples, we would be lenient. For example, if one sample is perfectly acceptable, but the other one is so-so, we would still accept the samples. We would not waver an application if only one sample is so-so unless one of the samples did not meet the requirements, very poor, or was difficult to understand on a technical level. If both samples are so-so, then they would at least get a Waver on that.
As this is a big change, we want to ask you, our playerbase, your opinion. Vote on the poll, and feel free to comment with other suggestions or opinions. We will gladly take in any feedback you may have.
Poll Two App Samples?
* ...That's supposed to be "for". Not "ofr".
❖ mod notification about death/destruction
We've already stated that if any major event occurs that would affect the gamebase -- like a major fight that results in destruction around the buildings -- it should be posted on the OOC Community out of courtesy for the players. At this, we commend our players for doing so and really appreciate everyone for working with this!
However, we want to add another stipulation. If you plan or realize that a log or thread will result in death or destruction, tell us. Despite the events that happen, Somarium is a peaceful world and such actions shouldn't be taken lightly.
This includes general murder, death of other characters, the NPCs, and any destruction that may occur.
You won't need to publicly announce it if it's a minor event, but we still want you to tell us either via PM or catch one of us one AIM just so we know.
This is not to discourage anyone from performing such acts. In fact, we do encourage some mayhem. While Somarium may be peaceful, with the variety of characters we have residing in it, some chaos will happen. These events can also promote future plots that we can also use for our own events. All we ask is just to be notified. We might even be able to help with such plots and give some insight on what could happen as a result.
❖ death punishments
With the growing size and expansion of Somarium's active player- and character-base, the mods have noticed a recent influx of character violence in the populace. Somarium is historically a very peaceful world with peaceful people. The most heinous of crimes involved dream tampering and/or murder. Although death is technically impermanent for visitors to Somarium, we would like to propose a more organized and "harsher" punishment system as a consequence of in-game death.
Currently our policy is to allow the players to choose a week-long effect that their character will endure. Once the week ends, the effect ends, and regeneration is complete. However, Somarium is changing and the world's magic may not be as benevolent as it once was, particularly in light of this month's New Moon. We would like to propose a steadily worsening effect on characters who die. So far, the mods are considering the following system:
First Death: A character will return in a week's time, but find that they will have a weak grasp on their corporeal form. Instead they will be a listless "ghost" with only smatterings of memories of their old identities. They may remember some faces, some vague words and faces, but otherwise they will feel completely drained, and they will have trouble figuring out who they really are. This will last for an additional week. Memories and tangible body will return after the second week.
Second Death: A character will return in a week's time, but this time they will remain a ghost for a lengthier period of time, up to two weeks. They will still have flickers of memories returning to them, stronger as they reach the end of their 'ghost' period. They also might be able to sustain a couple hours' worth of tangibility during their ghostliness.
After the Third Death, characters will remain a Som ghost until an indeterminable amount of time. It is possible to barter with someone of great power to return to a corporeal form, but this would be done on a mod permission basis only, and only with a sacrifice from the character in question. It should be noted that this is not permanent. Your character will return to normal eventually, it will just take a lot longer and require more of a sacrifice.
This is only a rough idea of what we're looking to do. What we would like from you, as players of this community, is your opinion. How do you feel about this system? Do you have any alternative recommendations for death "punishments"? What would you be interested in playing out? Either way, we would like to introduce a dose of reality into Somarium and remind the characters that life is not something to take for granted, no matter the circumstance. Magic has its limits in the end.
Whenever the new changes are implemented, only the deaths from that point on will be counted. This means if your character has already died, it will not matter. The next death would be considered as "first death".
Edit: We have received a lot of great opinions and suggestions, and we just wanted to note that we still welcome any and all of them! We will compile another draft to bring out to the playerbase at a future date, so we just wanted to note that this is definitely still a work in progress and appreciate all the feedback.
As always, any questions, comments, or concerns can be commented here on the post!