asgardfinis | MOD POST: UPDATE #5 + NPC APPS

updates & NPC applications.

Howdy howdy, everyone! Faith here, finally back home after a wonderfully exhausting trip and ready to prepare some new toys for us to play with! It has however come to my attention that you beautiful monsters hit captcha in the intro log (mind-blowing, y'all, you are amazing), so Kier posted an overflow log for you to be able to continue your threads if you'd like to. We've realized that a lot of you are still mingling there without having the chance to move on to the event or other things going on in the game, like the wonderful god house mingle logs that several players have put up, and this says to me that we could probably benefit from adjusting our event pacing!

After having some discussion about this on the discord channel, I'd like to ask everyone what they think about easing back on our events to give us some breathing room to settle in. Constantly playing catch up is not the most fun; I'd like for us to be able to start new things from a clean(er) plate so we don't get overwhelmed or feel like we're falling behind. Event pacing was one of the biggest things I wanted to make sure we adjust accordingly, so I'd like to know how you all feel about slowing down to one event per month, at least until we've hit our stride as a game.

If we move to this proposed event schedule, our next few months would look more like this:

July: one mid-month mod event; there have also been player plots running afoot to engage with, it may be fun to look into one of these or even see about starting your own!
August: the intro log for new characters, which would be tied into our event for the month so there is one main shebang to focus on while we welcome new people into the game.
September: TBD! if we feel comfortably caught up with July/August stuff, we can consider doing two mod events or stick with one mod event. this will be discussed in another post like this one when it comes around.

This is purely hypothetical, since it still isn't guaranteed we'll open applications for August although I would certainly like to and will be aiming our efforts at making sure we're prepared for that. But this is the idea! We'd put up one mod event to be our focal point for the month, and then we can consider adding more to the plate if we're feeling confident that the pacing suits our needs/capabilities. Or we can keep things the same! We have options here, and I'd like to know how you guys are feeling about it before making any decisions.

Please let us know your thoughts on this poll as soon as possible! This does mean I will be posting July events a little later than the 1st as scheduled so we can give people time to respond, but I already have things planned so it shouldn't be too long of a wait. Getting your opinions will be the determining factor in how that plays out, so I appreciate your patience and feedback!

On a completely different note, we have unfortunately lost another of our NPC players, so we will be opening applications for Njord, Skadi, and Heimdall! Our NPCs are really at the heart of this game, so it's important to us to find people that are genuinely interested in the characters and can commit the time/effort to playing them. We love and appreciate our NPC team more than the moon and the stars, so it would mean a whole lot to us if you joined us on this weird adventure. If you're interested in considering applying, please head on over to the NPC rules page. Anyone that wants to join the NPC team has to agree to follow these general guidelines for fairness in the game, so please do read them first; the link to the actual application page is at the bottom for this reason. Applications are tentatively set to close on July 7, but realistically we'll keep them open until all the roles have been filled. Let us know if you have any questions about any of this! We really hope you'll consider joining us, and I personally really look forward to reading your applications. ♥

Whoof, okay. That's a ton of stuff, but I have one more update for you, which is the result of our player poll regarding what time we should use for apps and reserves. Pulling ahead by a full ten votes, we will be going with 12AM EST/9PM PST for when we open and close anything for now. Hopefully this works out better for the game overall, but let us know if you have any questions or concerns about this!

And just because I love you, I'm going to remind you all one last time that Activity Check closes tonight! Some of you still haven't responded, and we'd really like to avoid giving you a strike just for missing the post. Please be sure to get those done before midnight!

That's it for this update! As always, please let us know if you have any questions/comments/concerns/dirty jokes in the comments section below. Please be sure to respond to the player poll, and I'll see you soon with our July event(s)!

navigation.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

/shyly puts up hand

It does feel like things are a bit hectic right now? We've barely started, half of us didn't have our powers approved, and suddenly giant dragon to fight... I know on my side, living on the other side of the world always has issues, but it's a bit jarring to wake up, find that all the plotting has been done for an event already and then it's happening without me having time to work out how to maybe contribute.

Oh, I 100% agree. Hectic is putting it very kindly, as far as our side of things goes. Haha We started with a set up that did not account for this many people right at the outset, and it very quickly overwhelmed us on both sides. This is why I'm thinking we could do with rolling things back, because we're struggling on the mod side of things too and everyone could probably do with a little breathing space to get things wrapped up. The power applications are the perfect example of that, and the event schedule is another.

How the event unfolded though is something that will have to be more clearly defined moving forward. The event posts are meant to describe a situation for our little world that I came up with, and then I want you guys to tell me how your characters react to that. With the dynamic of our plot and our NPCs, writing some of Eventide events felt like we had a story to tell and the PCs were just kind of there for it, which I didn't really enjoy. As I've tried to express in as many of the game pages as possible, I want Genesis to be more interactive than that. I'd like to know what the PCs are doing, and write a story around that instead.

For this reason, the mod posts will often be used for event planning. Not for every event, but for more open-ended things like this one where anything could've happened. I wanted the decisions and plans that the PCs made to decide how the battle went down, which is why I asked for those ideas throughout the post and created a thread for responding with everyone's plans. I read through every single one of those comments to decide what was going to happen!

But I'm hearing that a lot of people didn't respond to the post because they didn't know it was being used for that purpose, and that's on me! Responding to plotting posts will never be required to participate in an event, barring events with special volunteer positions that require a deadline like submissions for the Deluge plot. But it is the easiest and most direct way for me to know what you're getting up to so I can take that into consideration when I write what happens in an event. This is how I want to write our plots, which means responding to the posts will be important if you want your character have a more direct impact on it. It was really fun getting to read through everyone's discussions and let that guide where we went with the story! And I'm looking forward to doing more of that, but I will be better about communicating that so everyone knows what I'm up to.

Sorry for this very long response! I just want you to know that I am 100% with you on things going too fast this month, and that I also very much want to know what your character wants to contribute to the world! In any moment, not even just events. I wanna know what's going on so I can build the world out from that. This is my goal with Genesis. :)

So I'm really sorry about this first month being as chaotic as it has been, but I'm hoping to get things settled so we can have a smoother ride moving forward. Thank you for your patience with us as we figure it all out!

No, no, don't apologise! It was an awesome response, and thank you for understanding and working to sort something out for everyone!

you (faith specifically) confirmed in chat that the gods do somewhat localized/smaller non-"event" happenings sometimes.

i was thinking: if two events per month is too much but enough people like two events per month, you could bump the secondary event down to a localized god 'happening'. this a) would take the pressure off for people who prefer one event per month to feel like they have to do something just because there's an overarching event, and b) would kind of 'showcase' the various gods and their personalities, priorities, domains, etc., which would give folks a more balanced experience with the various gods + would give you a god-specific thing to link back to for a reference picture of what that god is like.

and like, these would be things that happen to the characters - like if the god is njord, characters visiting the temple or surrounding area would inexplicably be compelled to act out the parts of his favorite epic poem or would be unable to keep a secret/tell a lie for the next however long (as an example), or the example i mentioned in discord for skadi - as opposed to just 'look how cool my god is' circlejerks. the gods would be interactable but interacting with them directly wouldn't be necessary or even the main focus in contrast with the actual curse/happening.

plus this could usher in things like players having the chance to vote for which god they want to see featured next month (maybe not all the time but sometimes), or people being able to be like "oh man this is a frigg month, i bet it's gonna be real fuckin sappy and i'm here for it" or shit like that.

just my thoughts!

Edited 2019-07-02 07:13 (UTC)

Q1: what basic personalities do each of the available gods have? what is known about them? we know their domains and thus their core values but beyond that. like, mr. heimdall vigilance could be a tight-ass about it or a chill motherfucker about it, as an example. pls advise

Q2: how married are y'all to their PBs

I kind of very intentionally left it wide open so that you could have free reign over their personalities, honestly. I felt it was more important for you to feel that investment in who this character is, than to strictly say "this is what I want them to look like." If this game had a core theme that everything is built around, it's the idea of "what if this?"

That said, there are some things I kind of hinted at so it's not 100% vague nonsense. I would give the following general ideas for the three available NPCs:
- Njord: his god power page describes a bit of how he views the whole of existence in relation to... well, himself, mostly.
- Skadi: her god page describes her eternal yearning for something that is decidedly not you.
- Heimdall: his god power page describes a burden no one asked him to carry but he just be like that tho.
So when it comes to specific personality? It's whatever you think the embodiment of This Thing is. The God of Loyalty and Vigilance could be a hardass whose idea of safety is rigid control over everything, or he could be a doting older brother that just wants to protect his littles. I've given them things to drive them, but you can flesh that out in any way that seems fun and makes sense to you. This is why I want designing them to be a little like a conversation between us like, "okay, what about this?" and I can try to give you more information to work with in that direction!

Literally not at all. Not one single bit. 8)

Thank you for your questions and your interest! Please let us know if there's anything else we can do to help lure you into our totally-not-a-trap. ♥

MOD POST: UPDATE #5 + NPC APPS

MOD QUESTIONS

MOD QUESTIONS: EVENT PACING

no subject

no subject

no subject

less a question than a generalized thought/idea

MOD QUESTIONS: NPC APPLICATIONS

i was sent here with these questions for propriety

ty ty 💕

MOD QUESTIONS: APP PROCESSING TIME