3 Iron Guardsmen arrives, following Calaudrin.

Alena Sparks, unamused first mate, Silk, the Seafaring Spider arrive, following Evaristo.

Drysi, a young shaman apprentice, 2 Redrain Guards arrive, following Khanne.

Johannes, A tall and red cloaked gentleman arrives, following Martino.

Johannes, A tall and red cloaked gentleman have been dismissed.

Wendy the little brown wren arrives, following Lora.

Maxene, the steadfast ladies maid, Pellinor, 4 Thrax Guards, Honey Snuggle, a Velenosian Angora cat, Elegance, a Velenosian Greyhound, 3 Thrax Elite Guards arrive, following Alarissa.

A huge hideously ugly mastiff, a Solace acolyte named Pyotr, 1 Templar Knight guards arrive, following Thena.

Apostate says, "Yeah, just ask questions in regular 'say'"

Jeffeth says in Rex'alfar, "beep boop"

Martino says, "Going to be so many retainers in the room"

Jeffeth says, "shit"

Jeffeth says, "I mean. Beep boop."

Vitalis says, "Tests."

Sorrel boops Jeffeth.

Jeffeth sloowly sink down

Kaia, the guard, Krissa, the golden, long-haired cat arrive, following Radhilde.

Rowenova gives Jeffy a firm pat on his back.

Khanne checks her +lang to make sure she's speaking right.

Mabelle says, "test"

Aleksei says, "Maybe we can all agree at the top to put commentary in Pub or Events once we get going? There's a LOTTA FOLKS here."

Server Announcement: Server Message of the Day: Doing a Q/A session about Arx, can access my workroom from the city center with the AW exit, or page me for a teleport.

Kit, the grey fox, Primus, First of Monique's Assistants, 1 Greenmarch Guard, Tertius, Third of Monique's Assistants, Quartus, Fourth of Monique's Assistants arrive, following Monique.

Aleksei says, "For everyone's reference, the Events channel is open for jokes/running commentary and the like (to keep down on spam here). 'events on' or 'addcom <alias>=Events'"

Khanne says, "and you can use +lang to check what language you are using for you abyssally aligned folks. ;)"

Apostate says, "All right, so I'll begin with a few general announcements in very broad terms for a few major goals that players will see coming to Arx likely over the next year, mostly things that show where our focus will be. By no means exclusive, but what you'll probably see our priorities as."

Binky, an asshole crow, Gregory, an unassuming disciple, 3 Templar Knight guards arrive, following Aureth.

Apostate says, "Going to color my responses in green, since it'll probably be a bit easier to pick out from the different questions."

13 King's Own Guardsmen, Zelda, the royal messenger arrive, following Alaric.

Aleksei says, "thnxu yes"

Bayberry, an Oakhaven juvenile bloodhound, Steadfast, a dunskin stallion courser arrive, following Norwood.

Apostate says, "So firstly, as anyone that's put in an action lately or doing investigations or been waiting on a metaplot secret, our backlog is unbelievable. Right now I'd say the average turn around time for GMing is probably around 2 months. We're fortunate that we have a lot going on where people can generally find story without the need for staff on hand assistance, but that kind of delay is just represented by the sheer scope of things, and adding staff is not trivial. What this largely means is that while we're still debating details, we'll be bringing on a lot more storytelling staff."

Apostate says, "But more than that, everyone that's run a PRP knows that we've kept things deliberately very loose and handwave-y right now to avoid having a lot of structure that could impede people's creativity, or get in the way of people jumping in. The huge drawback of that is two fold though, where we have people that have no idea what they can and can't run, and also that the more handwave-y things are, the less real and organic they feel to people, the less immersive they are, and the harder for some people to take them seriously. This does mean that we'll finally be making very firm rules and structure for storytelling, bringing people on, and providing rules that will eventually be coded for storytelling whether someone is very junior and running a purely social PRP, to all the way up to something world shaking."

2 Grayson House Guards arrives, following Liara.

Apostate says, "Secondly, aside from us trying to emphasize spreading out storytelling while keeping consistent and coherent continuity, I want to finally make a big push to have a much more organic grid with much more tools for people to change the world, and that does dovetail into finally bringing about Dominion, with fully coded empire building, domain building, trade, armies and conquest, and everything that goes with it. This will mean a lot more power in players' hands to change the world without going through staff, and that will have more and more as time goes on."

2 House Velenosa Guards, Dreya, an older woman in Velenosan livery, Ailfryd, a tall, thin man with a haugty air arrive, following Saoirse.

Gregory, an unassuming disciple have been dismissed.

3 Templar Knight guards have been dismissed.

Binky, an asshole crow have been dismissed.

Apostate says, "The trick is to keep things coherent. One of the shortcomings of more sandbox-y games is that if people are telling their own stories, it creates breaks in continuity as Storyteller 1 says one thing, and someone else does something different, and the game essentially fractures into many separate little sandboxes where there's no overlap. I intentionally created Arx to avoid this, by having one big, cohesive, overlapping world where anyone can (and hopefully does), get involved in whatever they like and can change the game world. Anything we add will be keeping that in mind."

Apostate says, "Okay! Let me start taking some questions, are there any questions about what I've just talked about? Anything is fine."

Aleksei says, "Do you wanna maybe make a +line?"

Apostate says, "Yeah, go ahead and getinline"

Alecstazi has joined the line.

Liara has joined the line.

Aureth has joined the line.

Evaristo has joined the line.

Margot has joined the line.

Preston has joined the line.

Khanne has joined the line.

2 House Riven Soldiers, Oura, a white-tailed eagle, Valor, a juvenile male Oakhaven Bloodhound arrive, following Thesarin.

Apostate says, "Okay, Alecstazi, you're up first. Shoot."

Turn in line: Alecstazi

(OOC)The scene set/room mood is now set to: Feel free to getinline if you have questions

Rowenova has joined the line.

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Alecstazi says, "In regards to building a more coherent storytelling universe, will there be a codified system for rolls as well, or will that be more by storyteller's discretion? And will all PrPs be set to public view to ensure that cannon is being maintained?"

Gregory, an unassuming disciple have been dismissed.

3 Templar Knight guards have been dismissed.

Binky, an asshole crow have been dismissed.

Apostate says, "I intend to have guidelines that set the level of a plot/story, which will define the scope it can effect, the degree of risk and rewards that's appropriate for the story, and the guidelines for rolls and checks. This will ultimately be codified and come with commands, with storyrunners having more and more commands based on the level of stories they can run. And no, not everything will be set to public. Arx is a game of secrets and mystery, and that will continue even when the world becomes more and more high magic (though how that happens is something I look forward to players seeing, and will be based on how the season finishes out). They will, however, be reviewed, though we can delegate some review so it's not the current case of basically 'Apos checks every PRP that is done', since that slows things to a crawl if it filters just through me or even staff. So I'd rather a series of reviews where simple questions can be answered quickly, and just the hard ones are escalated."

Turn in line: Liara

Liara says, "Are automated adjustments to affection/respect coming along with dominion or otherwise in the works, and will there be a purpose to those values? (donations notwithstanding - I think you can donate 1 silver for 1 affection anyway, so the current system's a bit weird)"

Ailith has joined the line.

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Apostate says, "Affection/respect is going to get reworked and that will come with dominion. Faction specific mods has been on my to do list for forever, and eventually I'll be using that more for political shifts/actions. For example, if someone does something iconoclastic, they lose respect with all traditionalist houses (valardin, thrax), gain with iconoclastic (Lyceum), to show the distinct flavors of the great houses and how someone will have to counterbalance decisions based on the nature of the five great houses."

Turn in line: Aureth

Aureth says, "Do you have like... an idea of the priorities each of these systems have? Or how you're going to vet storytellers? Find a way to like... spoil people for some but not all the things?"

Apostate says, "Yeah, so there will probably be about 5 tiers of storytellers roughly, with the bottom being any player that wants to run something social and little risk, where they don't have the ability to inflict more than temporary consequence on someone, with the highest as headstaff and we sign off on things that fundamentally alter the game for everyone. Below that would be tiers of staff storytellers getting a storytelling bit, and we'll carefully unlock lore based on what they need or not, where midrange will not be able to see deep lore. My current plan is to vet people based on the stories they run and the feedback they receive, in how they become trusted to run higher tier stories. In addition to that, I want to create an OOC position in any org of story coordinator, of someone that helps coordinate plots focused just around that particular org, and is also responsible for helping make certain PRPs exist for that org. That is only for lower tier, org specific PRPs to start, and not say someone's personal metaplot secret that doesn't necessarily impact the org, or things that impact multiple orgs."

Aureth says, "Cool, thanks."

Turn in line: Margot

duckington arrives, following Tehom.

Margot says, "Oh sorry was called away on the phone a min"

Apostate says, "Sokay, just whenever you're ready."

2 Leary House Guards, Lite, a little blue canary arrive, following Corbit.

Margot says, "Are we looking at uniting/simplifying some systems, ie. why do guards / agents have to be seperate code, could these things become more intutitive under the new domain stuff when it happens?"

Gregory, an unassuming disciple have been dismissed.

3 Templar Knight guards have been dismissed.

Binky, an asshole crow have been dismissed.

Apostate says, "In short, yes. The complexity of a lot of the interface is extremely difficult for new players, and anything that has like a dozen switches is just too complicated for a lot of people to comfortable learn. Where possible, I'd like to move a whole hell of a lot of it to the website, though that'll take time. But ultimately there will probably be a lot of commands that are way too hard to do in game just showing up on the website as like, drag and drop things."

Turn in line: Preston

Margot says, "Oh that will make domain management and stuff SOOOOO much easier!"

Margot has joined the line.

2 House Riven Soldiers have been dismissed.

Oura, a white-tailed eagle have been dismissed.

Valor, a juvenile male Oakhaven Bloodhound have been dismissed.

Preston says, "I'm going to cheat, because I'm a cheater and ask a question and a second small thing. The first is about armies and the domain system, and stems from me pondering as I try to sort out armies for the next crisis round - at the moment generals can be loosey goosey, and I realised as a low active PC faction compared to the Carebears, we can still put a lot of armies in the field as Templars. Will domain be altering this so that to be in more places/do more things we will need to keep more players active? Or is the action limit alone doing a good job on that? The second minor query was on actions, and I've noticed we tend to try for 2 month gaps in crisis so actions can reset. Is it possible to do slightly more than 2 months? I've noticed many people only submit actions at the last moment, and then at the next crisis point it can cause a real last day issue and pile up."

Trig, a large dog with an intense stare arrives, following Kace.

Thena says, "He means Solace when he says Carebears"

Rowenova says, "I have wondered about the @army @action limitations, myself."

Apostate says, "Right now, armies are very very very limited in mechanical utility. I primarily use them just to keep track to make sure they aren't committed to more than one action at a time, to make certain they cannot be in two places at once. As we move from that, they will definitely have to be overhauled because the ability to split them up is going to be critical as they get used for way more than actions, and constantly ordered around. In short- using armies will NOT be action limited."

Turn in line: Khanne

Khanne says, "In regard to 'finally bringing about Dominion, with fully coded empire building, domain building, trade, armies and conquest, and everything that goes with it.' What will that mean for players who enjoy the story side of things more than the maintenance/upkeep/tasks etc side of things in regard to say... Heads of Houses? Will it be a - do these things or your house will fail at everything in life because you will have nothing (nothing, Jon Snow!) or... will there be some balance kept? Or is it not as "Upkeep" heavy as my brain is imagining? I have Upkeep PTSD from elsewhere. :("

Apostate says, "This actually brings me to another point that's lost that I want to emphasize- when planning Arx, I did not plan for staff to be kind of stuck in a reactive state responding to Actions, investigations, etc. I wanted us to be proactive, but the current backlog has made that impossible, and the more it piles, the more people feel reliant on actions. So ideally by lightening the load, the game will feel a lot more organic as staff is able to proactively respond to day to day things and not be so tied to actions."

Apostate says, "Generally speaking, I consider it a huge design flaw if ever anyone has to work hard on something they just don't enjoy. I want that to be able to be delegated, and my idea with Dominion is that domains largely will only have the chance of random incidents/crises/opportunities in relation to how much people try to build and change them. In other words, a quiet house where no one is interested in dominion and they just don't do domain improve actions will not have random events of all their crops dying or bandits raiding or whatever. It's more complicated for heads of very busy houses, and what I'd ideally like to try to do is make sure that for ones that are heads of busy houses where people are doing dominion things but the HoH doesn't enjoy it, it is very easy to delegate that away. But no, there won't be any big sword of damocles landing because someone forgot to feed their loyal soldier dudes."

Turn in line: Rowenova

Rowenova says, "Are there still plans for @project-style actions which one can do over time (or should we be using the +plot system for tracking those long-term, multi-step situations)? / Some of my curiosities that I had about dominion were answered, but Khanne's question actually made me think of a good idea: what if any positive change to a House could be run by anyone in the org who was at a rank # (under the org perms)? Those could also have to be just 'yeh or nehed' if they were super influential by HoH. That would leave command syntax to those who are okay with it but the final decision just a Y/N for the HoH?"

Khanne has joined the line.

Sebastian, an adorable gray and white tabby, Jacinthe, Arindais, a dour-looking Scholar, 3 Templar Knight guards arrive, following Sina.

Apostate says, "Yeah, projects will still be coming. So that reminds me of a technical thing that I don't think most players know about. So some of you may have noticed error messages once in a while saying the database is locked, and whatever you were trying to do didn't work. That's because Evennia was created to use a SQLite database, and while that database is very good for many things, it does not handle concurrency (trying to perform simultaneous operations). With a lower player base, this doesn't really matter, as the odds of two things hitting the database at the exact same time is low. But as Arx has gotten bigger, SQLite is in a situation of 'well, it works great until it doesn't'. I mention this because we are going to move to a database that does handle concurrency, called postgres, and that requires some really involved and difficult migrations of data. I mention this because that's the main reason projects -haven't- come in, in that we don't want to do huge changes to the database until we migrate it all, and that's why there haven't been really big coding changes later. But yeah, projects are coming.

About the positive changes to orgs, I'll think about different approaches, I think the tricky thing is if there's any kind of crisis that involves multiple dominions you have people immediately wanting to spam HoH's about it, and it's tricky to hit the right point of things that people enjoy and fiddly things they hate, so will have to be careful about balancing it."

Turn in line: Ailith

Apostate says, "Ailith might have had to step away and she sent her question in advance, it was:
It was mentioned that PrPs will become more codified with rolls. Does this mean a shift from a narrative impact to more heavily focused rolls session? What I have enjoyed is the natural development of story and the impacts made by character choices and actions, not necessarily due to rolls (ie roll to climb a wall, roll composure if upset by what's said and show that anger.) And with magic and other secrecy systems not yet coded, how does that impact PrPs? Can narrative and creative use of the scene continue to have impact?

One sec and I'll answer it."

Jeffeth has joined the line.

Apostate says, "No. I very strongly want Arx to be a narrative focused game, and I never want mechanics to get in the way of story. But I do think it's dangerous to be statless/roll-less for PRPs that have any kind of possibility to reward players, because even fair minded GMs are going to have a hard time bringing themselves to be the bad guy and inflict harsh consequences on their friends. So essenntially, for plots that can be rewarding, I think we need to have codified risks implicit in that, where for higher tier stories yeah, the chance of character loss is very real for bad rolls. This does also mean just that storytellers being able to spawn NPC objects for combats is well in the cards. But I do think it can be very clear that social stories where combat isn't in there doesn't mean worthless stories- there can be a lot of plots around exploration of secrets that are deeply meaningful that are technically the lowest tier of stories, since there's no risk there, but it can really help a character develop."

Rogue, a black falcon arrives, delivering a message to Lark before departing.

Turn in line: Margot

Margot says, "And another question, as this is a game very much about legacies with the apparent goal of us eventually moving from playing our current characters to our character's children, are we ever going to move to more coded genetics - not baby/child bits, ugh - but code re fertility/parentage/aging that doesn't require staff and players to manually track things? So I don't have to look back at my proclimations to figure out how old my kid is? And so I know how old my PC actually is vs how old she looks? (I can't imagine what players picking up chars off the roster do without a list of birth years some where)."

Tehom says, "I wanna add something to the PRP rolls question. One idea I have is to essentially crowdsource roll systems by storing different types of checks in a database model, then making those accessible to PRPs, along with suggested modifiers, situations they're applicable, etc"

Aureth says, "Well that sounds NEAT"

Apostate says, "Probably not this season, but yes. It's down in the priorities, but we'll need some code to support generational stories that don't have us trying to guess how old some kid is and whether they can be CG'd yet. Significant timeskip is also possible, which would make that suddenly become a whole lot more relevant very fast, if we get to the point where people are wanting to play a generation or two down."

Turn in line: Khanne

Khanne says, "just a quick follow up... If a person finds themselves flying solo or mostly solo in a house, will they be able to do all the things in regards to domain that they have the desire to do? Or will they be limited by personal AP/or amount of tasks they can perform (like one person can only do 2 actions and 4 assists every 60 days)?"

Felix has joined the line.

Dame Marra, a limping fennec fox have been dismissed.

Disciple Ismay have been dismissed.

Disciple Fulgence have been dismissed.

3 Templar Knight guards have been dismissed.

Apostate says, "Frankly, if something is coded and automated and doesn't need staff oversight, which I really want the case to be for an awful lot of things, then they will not be restricted by individualized limits at all. Probably just time limited and implicit to the org, but I need to also decide how to sort who is authorized to do what so we don't have pissy fights over someone mad they can't build a farm because two people are already building farms and the org is limited to 2 farms at a time or whatever."

Turn in line: Jeffeth

Jeffeth says, "To clarify: With this change of bringing more storytelling staff on does that mean that what we know as PRPs now will be plots run by these new storytelling staff? Will PRPs be ran still by whoever or will running a PRP essentially mean signing on to the low level of storytelling staff and working the way up?

Or it's just in addition to the PRP system is that there will be more storytelling staff in certain aspects."

Trig, a large dog with an intense stare have been dismissed.

Corbit has joined the line.

Apostate says, "Both. Say there's like 5 tiers of stories. 1. Social-No-Risk. 2. Minor-Consequence. 3. Org-Wide-Potential Consequence. 4. Fealty-wide Consequence. 5. Worldwide Consequence. Where anyone could run 1, people would need to be approved for 2. Players would have to be approved for a storytelling bit to run 3 or 4. Head staff has to run or oversee 5. But you could effectively say the first 3 are pretty much PRPs as we think of them now, just with much expanded tools and ability to impose consequences and give rewards. So I also don't have to personally vet, 'Mystery for who stole a family heirloom' of a rank 1 story, but I do have to review someone wanting to destroy a house in #4"

Turn in line: Felix

Felix says, "Less domain/action related: Is the combat system still going to be expanded? To allow for styles (dual wield, sword shield, etc) being more than just an rp'd thing, with an expansion of available weapon types (caestus/brass knuckles for brawlers) ? Which likely falls under the 'needing to migrate the data to postgres' because of large changes."

Jeffeth has joined the line.

Apostate says, "Definitely, Felix. Tehom's design docs for it are pretty elaborate. Working on combat is his crack so he doesn't touch it for long periods to make sure he does other things but he'll be unshackled and get back to it probably after the postgres cutover. The tricky part is just making sure there's not complexity that is alienating to new players, but something intuitive and immersive and fun. All complexity carries a cost so need to make sure it's well worth it (but yeah it's fun so it will be)"

Turn in line: Corbit

Corbit says, "I apologize if this has been answered or touched on, I got here late. But is anything being planned to help the more nitty gritty game systems become less opaque? There have been a few times where I have learned about different commands and systems that are really useful by seeing *other* players ask questions about them on the info channel. Things I wouldn't even have known to ask about in the first place. Even, sometimes, systems I do know about, I'm not sure of some things. Like, my alt was involved in a trade action... Stating OOC intent is great but there is no real point of reference to answer that from a place of informed expectations unless you simply have experience. It makes me sort of hesitant to get into certain things because I have no way to guage risk vs reward. Also, I worry that some system I don't even know exists will effect it in unexpected ways."

Courvoisier, a fluffy golden cat with a flat face have been dismissed.

Beelzebubbles, the feline overlord you've been waiting for have been dismissed.

Apostate says, "Yeah, ideally I'd like to move almost anything difficult to use to the web. These are long term goals though, as is condensing commands that are particularly arcane and hard to use (guarsd and agents for example). What would be -tremendously- helpful for me is player written resources and walk throughs, because I will be frank, there is not exactly staff running around and using commands. None of us have time to really play characters just to play them. We just don't. Meaning that I haven't used agent or guard commands probably in like 3 years, have never made a retainer, and I have no recollection at all about syntax, which means that until we rip it out and rewrite it and completely replace it, players that actually play the game are far, far, far better at answering syntax questions than I ever would be.

For future things, anything I put in would come in slowly and with long walkthroughs on how to use them, and referrable guides. And just to be explicit about storytelling- it will only be guidelines and referrable guides and using existing tools for a while, new tools would come out to make what people are already doing easier, rather than to get them to change."

Turn in line: Jeffeth

Jeffeth says, "All this storytelling stuff and PRP stuff sounds super exctiing. You have mentioned tools you guys have been planning on implementing a couple times, is it possible for you to expand a little on those tools? Like will storytellers/prp runners be able to bring in actual coded bits to use coded combat in scenes against players? Anymore you can/would like to share about these tools I would love to hear."

Alecstazi has joined the line.

Viviana has joined the line.

Kit, the grey fox, Primus, First of Monique's Assistants, 1 Greenmarch Guard, Tertius, Third of Monique's Assistants, Quartus, Fourth of Monique's Assistants leave, following Monique.

Apostate says, "What head staff currently has, basically. The trick is to make it distinct so it's something we can give to players while making sure the scope is limited enough where things don't break (ie, ain't nobody getting the py command). Like for example, the ability to spawn mobs, to create item rewards, to run combats, to adjust statistics in domains, award/remove fame, make gemits. Higher storyteller bits -would- be staff effectively, they just would be specifically limited to just storytelling and might not see all lore"

Sebastian, an adorable gray and white tabby, Jacinthe, Arindais, a dour-looking Scholar, 3 Templar Knight guards leave, following Sina.

Apostate says, "Pax can definitely speak to this one!"

Jeffeth says, "That sounds awesome, thank you"

Turn in line: Alecstazi

Alecstazi says, "Hi! So (Sorry Pax) when I first started playing there were a ton of lore files and other handy bits of info on the wiki site that made it very easy to track down bits of lore for your knowledge level, a handy guide to the gods. But it all went away. Is there any intent to make that info wiki-accessible again? (Sorry Pax)"

Apostate says, "It legit makes me cry irl that the lore command is not on the webpage yet. Yes."

Pax says, "So, to add to that a little bit, one thing I'm planning is a system for folks at the different storyteller tiers to 'claim' preapproved rewards/items for their plots. So for instance, if you just need to have a Treasure of some sort for a plot, there'd be a list of things of various tiers -- maybe one's a magic lantern which will reveal a ghostly image of whoever last passed this way, maybe one's a charm that temporarily soothes pain (but doesn't heal), etc. -- and you could find an appropriate treasure for that tier and 'claim' it to have as the reward to be found in a plot."

Alecstazi says, "Thank yooooou!"

Turn in line: Viviana

Pax winces at Apostate. The lore thing's on my todo list! I just keep getting buried in writing clues.

Viviana says, "I'm going to ask 2 (hopefully pretty tiny!) questions, please don't smite me! First, re: the generational stuff. If a timeskip or something of the sort ever happens, will there be an option for people who didn't "on screen have babies/get married" to handwave up 'oh yeah my character had a kid' (or, say, if you did have an on-screen kid, but you want to play the other gender, or a friend wants to play your sibling and you only had 1 kid).

Second, have there been any discussions, or are there any plans regarding expanding the grid any time in the future? One example being allowing actual RP (and building maybe?) in home cities and things like that outside of PRPs?"

Jeffeth has joined the line.

Jeffeth says, "sorry everyone last one promise"

Apostate says, "I hadn't thought about it but that sounds reasonable. Unless there's some extremely strong reason for it to be impossible, I generally would want to play pretty loose with what happened down the road for characters. One of the big reasons the flashback command was created was because I anticipated us doing a timeskip down the line and I wanted people to be able to RP and fill in the blanks of years that were missed, and while we'd have to be careful for things that have huge implications for other characters, I think it's reasonable to let people have even pretty impressive things happen. (Or, if they were one of my characters, die randomly by tripping on wet bath tile or something).

We hadn't really talked about grid expansion, but it's been something on my mind. In -general-, I'd like travel time to be coded and factored in before we introduced the home cities of the different factions, because I want to move more towards an organic and immersive grid, and I don't want to undermine that with handwaved travel that becomes routine in a way that is hard to reconcile, so I'd do it but it would probably have say, time locked travel. On a different note about grid expansion, I probably will desc more of the surrounding areas around Arx because I know a billion people want Cabin in the Woods to have illicit meets/hide bodies/watch farms/whatever"

Turn in line: Jeffeth

Viviana says, "Thanks!"

Pax says, "I'm going to also note that making other cities available outside of actual plot circumstances makes me wince a little bit; I think a lot of why things work well on Arx for people finding RP is that everyone's in the same city ICly. I think even if it was /just/ Farhaven and Maelstrom and Bastion and Sanctum and Lenosia that were put on grid, you still have the potential to fragment the playerbase as people just hang out in other cities. Especially if we do actually make travel time work, so coming back to Arx once you're there isn't just a casual 'zip, now I'm back! No costs or travel risks!'"

Aureth says, "Even when we just had some people in Setarco and some people in Stormwall and some people in Arx it got really awk for lining up RP, so I def agree with Pax for w/e it is worth."

Pax says, "So while adding travel-to-other-cities as an option is great, it's an element that we'll have to approach carefully, and thus won't happen overnight."

Jeffeth says, "With discovery being one of the biggest parts of the game, I know you all have talked about before a problem with taking on more staff is basically having to give up a lot on the realm of the mystery and the discovery. You have alluded to a little about this new batch of storytelling staff perhaps not seeing all lore. Are you hoping to have people dedicate thesmelves to specific realms of story? Like say I wanted to do stuff for say Eurus or something but ONLY EURUS because my characters aren't involved in that. Obviously a lot of the plot overlaps so it will be somewhat difficult to manage but is that the type of thing you will be going for? Or is it more a bunch of generalists who are capped at a specific amount of knowledge for X reason?"

Ondine, a red-breasted sparrowhawk arrives, following Brianna.

Puffin says, "Though I'm a little attached to all those rooms built so they might be staying."

Apostate says, "More generalists and more in the sense of, 'Okay, this person is running Oathlands stories, so it's fair that they are aware abotu this specific metaplot element that happens involving the Oathlands' rather than saying, 'We want to recruit a storyteller for the Oathlands'. Ideally, I'd like to see story coordinators potentially transition here. Say if someone is super active, helping coordinate all the stories for House Keaton, and then runs stories for the Oathlands that deal with the Iron Guard and King's Own also. That makes it a natural fit for me to say,'okay, here's these 18 stories that deal with those, you can play off these'. Like, to give you an idea on scope, there's 473 plots at the moment, 3295 clues- it's less of actively concealing things and more a matter of necessity that unless someone is just given access to everything and told 'hey go nuts', we'd have to actively search and tell them what they need to know'."

Jeffeth says, "Right. That makes sense. Thank you :)"

Pax says, "Man, even when I /do/ have access to all the things, there are times where I have to wave a hand frantically at Apostate and Puffin and Herja and go, 'Hey, uh, does anyone remember what <X> was about, because I can't find the GM notes on it where I'd expect to...'"

Apostate says, "That does finish the line, so I'll open things to ANY questions at all, about anything. If you want to ask anything, can getinline, doesn't have to be about what we talked about"

Dreya, an older woman in Velenosan livery have been dismissed.

2 House Velenosa Guards have been dismissed.

Ailfryd, a tall, thin man with a haugty air have been dismissed.

Jeffeth says, "Yeah totally makes sense"

Sudara has joined the line.

Turn in line: Sudara

Rysen has joined the line.

Sudara says, "Are you guys still having fun? This all seems like an immense amount of work, and burnout would have hit most staff long before now. And on a related note - is there anything we can do to help you enjoy yourselves with it all?"

Aureth says, "I worry about that CONSTANTLY so thank you for asking that."

Arman says, "great question"

Alecstazi says, "YES. I fully agree."

Felix nods.

Merek says, "ya makes sense"

Pax suddenly remembers the 'gm' command is an exit in here, not a command. :P

Corbit snickers.

Sudara laughs :)

Apostate says, "Not burning out is my super power. There's things I don't enjoy, like disciplinary stuff, and I'd rather it not dominate my time and take me away from the things I do enjoy (like telling stories), but I still have fun here, definitely. And really that's because of you guys. We have a wonderful player base, and with hundreds of players, it's amazingly non-toxic for the overwhelming majority. We're very fortunate that way, and speaking just for myself, I'm extremely fortunate to have an excellent team. Puffin is a way better GM than I am, particularly at running in person live events, Pax is both a better writer than I am and ridiculously good coder which doesn't seem fair but she's a genius and I think the world of her, NV and Tehom both have fun coding together and do tremendous work, Herja has a real gift for telling personlized stories and making people feel included, and Hellfrog and Meyneth helped make the game the way it is, and Hellfrog set the tone for the environment that made it sustainable and non-toxic. I appreciate all of them very much and it helps me keep going and be enthusiastic about this place every day."

Aureth says, "But IS there something we as your playerbase can do to help keep y'all's workload sustainable? I know it's not my turn but I feel like you are being a sweetheart instead of answering the question."

Jasher says, "prolly something like "Be excellent to each other" really"

Alecstazi says, "What Aureth said. Like, is it feasible for us to help with clue writing ever, or help with action results?"

Aureth says, "Cookie hit squads?"

Alecstazi makes a mean ginger molasses.

Viviana says, "Work to become one of the STs he was talking about earlier!"

Jaenelle says, "With the way prps are going to be, it will help if people utilize that system instead of actions for everything. That would definitely help."

Puffin says, "I've been stepping back a little and responding to a few less actions (hence the backlog) but I've also been taking a little time to have scenes with NPCs, to drive some smaller stories, and to do some GMing in a few areas that make me personally super enthusiastic. Some of those have wrapped up so I'll be slogging through actions again here directly, but in the meantime I'm not burning out, no. I will burn out when I'm dead. It helps that I'm telling stories with some of my best and most loved friends, so that helps. I would worry less about our workload, and more about quality actions.

My personal feeling is that sometimes people want a response but they don't give us much to work with. "I go into the shrine and pray for guidance" is a lot less helpful than 3 paragraphs of "I've had these things on my mind, and these other things happened, and it affected me this way, and so I've been working really hard to think about it and none of it makes sense. So I'm headed to the shrine to pray for guidance, hoping I'll get some kind of direction. I think I should do <this thing>, but is that really what I should do or am I fooling myself?"

Effectively, they're both the same act, looking for the same result. One is MUCH MORE DIFFICULT to respond to in a meaningful way."

Evaristo chimes in - maybe someone can write a little simple 'action guide' - like a set of questions one can generally answer. I know many players aren't certain WHAT to write either. OR IS THERE ONE ALREADY? :D

Aureth says, "there's both 'help investigations and actions' and 'help crisis action guide' which might be useful for that."

Puffin says, "From an extremely personal perspective - if you need me to read a pages-long thing that you've put up, 1) put it in gdocs so it doesn't disappear, 2) expect it might take me a while to get to, and 3) please god with the tl;dr as much as possible. I kind of nope out of reading other people's scenes a lot."

Apostate says, "For me, I'd say there's three big things that help. I'd say that player guides and helping tribal knowledge become commonplace is huge, and that really helps new players. Particularly being willing to engage players outside of circles of friends and help make newer players be looped into stories is a big, big deal. Tying into that, telling stories for other players and why we are moving towards more storytellers reduces workload on us, and that is always a huge help, because the more players entertain each other and the more hooked in they feel, they less reliant they are on staff. And lastly I'd say de-escalation of conflicts helps tremendously. Conflicts can be very healthy for games because it helps drive sparks, but when people get oocly prickly about things, it tends to fall on me to help smooth things out, particularly because Arx just isn't designed for PVP and we don't have mechanics for it that let people cleanly resolve things on their own in the way an RPI would, so gently avoiding and backing away from that tends to save on staff overhead, or at least conflicts that have an undercurrent of player resolution that doesn't need to be escalated to staff for arbitration."

Arik has joined the line.

Turn in line: Arik

Jeffeth says, "lol, I know it would probably not ever fly. But it would be cool if staff could rate an action as to how easy it was to answer/work with. Or maybe just a small section when an action is answered with like feedback. 'Maybe next time explain more of X' or something like that"

Alecstazi has joined the line.

Arik says in Northlands shav, "You mentioned migrating from SQLite to a database that allows concurrency. Does this mean magic and shardhvens are shelved until that is complete or that rudimentary versions will be released prior to the migration? aka any sneak peek on the eta to these systems coming out?"

Arik says, "You mentioned migrating from SQLite to a database that allows concurrency. Does this mean magic and shardhvens are shelved until that is complete or that rudimentary versions will be released prior to the migration? aka any sneak peek on the eta to these systems coming out? <repost>"

Vitalis seconds Jeffeth. Feedback (I know, write MORE stuff) would be helpful.

Sorrel says, "There are public actions available on people's pages to read. It might be beneficial to pick a few as examples to link."

Pax says, "From my viewpoint, just being patient with the enormous pile of GM'ing stuff we still have to get through is the biggest and most immediate benefit to us. But also, giving us the most context and information you can /really/ helps -- yes, what Puffin said about guidance, that. I've handled actions where the action is basically 'I go into the shrine and pray for guidance', and the ooc_intent is literally 'I hope to get something to do which is relevant to the character and interesting to me.' And then I have to spend time figuring out what that actually might mean before I can even write a response, and so that extra prep-time means that action has taken me long enough that I could've done three more-defined actions in the same time."

Pax says, "This is also true of investigations; I've had investigations -- more than one -- where the investigation is literally '<X> is looking for answers to their questions', and I find myself having to write a placeholder for that. Which, again, ends up taking long enough that if I had more information and context, I'd have been able to get through three clues instead of one."

Pax says, "And lastly, as Apostate mentioned, being chill and helping to de-escalate things between players. Last night I had set aside time to do two GM actions and write four or five of the clues we need to write this week, and instead I found myself dealing with untangling a situation among players that ate the entire time I'd set aside for creating content. And it was a situation that needed to be dealt with, but that's a lot of content that didn't get written due to it."

Apostate says, "They aren't super well set up for like, a conversation about actions. Like the problem with the backlog is we have kind of debt where the first time I even glance at an action is when I'm doing them, because I don't have time to really skim them, so I'd really need it to have another tier of storytellers that would escalate things or whatever"

1 Crimson Blades Sergeant, Aegis, a large red Oakhaven bloodhound, Rurik, a prodigal assistant arrive, following Mirk.

Pax can get the shardhaven/magic system question, lemme type a wall of text. ;)

Apostate says, "Arik, technically anything that doesn't change the schema could be released because the migrations were done with that in place, so what's already been seen is done. That said, I'd imagine we do the postgres cutover before -any- more major code, it's probably the next major thing because otherwise what happens is you have to redo the entire migration again to account for the new code change"

Apostate says, "But Pax knows better than me, that's just my understanding of timesframe"

Turn in line: Alecstazi

Alecstazi says, "Is the Guide designation something that is supposed to cover the hooking in new players aspect? And if so, would it be possible to have a Guide command so that newbies can see who the helpful folk are in each faction? And if there isn't a system like that set up... would it be helpful if there were? In Addition would it be possible to have a Mediator role where others can volunteer to help de-escalate those issues? Unless you mean de-escalate conflicts that you are personally in? .... Which probably makes more sense."

Evaristo raises hand. I got something half spammy to say, it isn't a question though, it's just a personal thing I wanan say about actions, if that's cool? (Or I can just page it really.)

Apostate says, "Guides originally there just for thematic guidance and answering questions on theme, pretty much. What I intended (and still intend to do) is farm out a lot of thematic minor calls to them, that will be coming with dominion, in the sense of, 'Someone does X political act, what thematically would this be grouped as', or minor first tier filtering of decisions. Now, I very, very, very much do want mentoring to come in, and that lines up with how eventually I want to add in a system for OOC Kudos, to generally show appreciation to people doing very positive things- helping new players, recruiting players and keeping them involved, de-escalating conflicts, etc, etc"

Pax says, "On shardhavens: shardhavens are /done/. They are written, they have been battle tested, they work. The problem is, shardhavens are just one component of the overall exploration system. I need the discovery component, where you learn a shardhaven's location in the first place (either by having the right clues to learn that location, or by going out into a dynamic world map and exploring, and potentially stumbling across one). I need the expedition component where you pay resources/money/AP to actually outfit the expedition and embark, with the costs calculated by how far away the shardhaven is, and which when you gather your group will actually move you to the shardhaven entrance. We need the dynamic world exploration system, where you can find resources (and unusual animals to capture and tame as retainer animals, or make into familiars), and maybe stumble across shardhaven entrances. So what I still need to figure out is how much of all that I need to finish before we can roll it out; is there a good way I can roll out shardhavens ahead of the rest of things (allowing storytellers to generate a random one and move a party there, for instance), or do I need the shardhaven discovery system as well?"

Sudara thanks for answers, and really hopes it stays fun for all of you. :)

Apostate says, "Yeah feel free, Evaristo."

Alecstazi says, "Thanks Apos!"

Evaristo is going to say something, this is my personal feelings though; even if actions take time and they're causing a lot of work overload atm, and you're clearly unhappy about that - this game has something many other games lack: momentum. You feel like you get things done. Your goals get reached. You get TO DO THINGS. Because the action system is so well thought out. So, I get the feeling you all feel guilty it's taking time to finish them, or at the very least, you feel stressed about it, but I just want to remind that this is an awesome system, and you get to see your characters GET SHIT DONE. How many otehr games have I not played where jobs just sit untouched, or it relies on a GM to run a scene and the GM quits and what not... I've NEVER played on a game where I've felt like I always had something fun going on and I knew it'd GET done, because it doesn't require someone to gather everyone up and run a scene and then two are on vacation or they're on opposite timezones and all of that hassle. So? It's WORTH the wait. Heck, considering - you can have 6 actions brewing during 2 months. that's a LOT of stuff one character can do.

Evaristo says, "So, I don't think it's that bad. Just saying, don't worry - there's that perspective to remember :)"

Pax says, "Similarly, the broad framework of the magic system is done and works; teaching people types of magic can be done, the progression system for magic (which does not use XP) is done, etc. However, the way the magic system works is that you basically create your spells by combining effects and modifiers to design what it is your want, and that means there is a metric ton of work to do on coding those effects. It's a Lego system, and we need to make all the Legos. Moreover, if we're going to roll out magic, we need a way for people to gather the raw magic fuel that you use in order to work magic, which... brings us back to shardhavens, because that's what the trinkets you can find in shardhavens are really good for. Dismantle them for raw fuel."

Apostate says, "Oh thank you for saying that, and I really appreciate it. Now mind you, I'm not here like, 'actions are bad we should get away with them', I do see often how people get hyped from them and how much they enjoy them. I just am more aware of how frustrating for people the wait can be, and how it becomes crucial to them, which does make a pressure of, 'OKay this person has waited 2 months, and they have a lot riding on this', which makes me take every one very seriously. So mostly the backlog is more from us not wanting to ever disappoint people, and making sure they feel very significant, and just wanting to keep that feel of consequence and importance while reducing the time for it."

Apostate says, "That's it in the line, does anyone else have any questions?"

Pax says, "So basically, the question isn't 'when will we roll out shardhavens and magic', but 'how many of the interlocking systems do I need as a baseline for a minimum viable product, and is there some way I can temporarily cut one of those pieces out to roll things out in chunks. And that, I have not had the time to sit down and really look at the interlocking designs to answer. (And now I shall stop, because we are like two or three questions past what I was answering!)"

Arik says, "Thank you Pax/Apostate."

Kace says, "Piggybacking off Evaristo, even though I'm not in line-- I'm gonna hazard that 75% of the impatience that might be in the playerbase re:actions? It's just our excitement about -things-, and honestly? I'd rather wait a little longer for an awesome response full of great story, than have you guys feel pressured just to plow through it and get them resolved asap. <3"

Alecstazi says, "I echo Evaristo's sentiment. This game has completely changed my experience playing. It is more than worth the wait to see measurable progress towards goals, incredible amounts of character development and support. You guys work your butts off and it totally shows. I couldn't be more grateful."

Martino says, "Agrees a million with everyone's positive sentiments. If it wasn't for Arx - I and a bunch of other friends who joined a few months ago probably would have quit gaming like this. So thank you for being an awesome place. (goes back to catching up on the log as he ate dinner in the middle of it)"

Rowenova says, "Will there be a couple 'styles' we can learn (major and minor) or can we learn all the styles eventually, or are we gonna be stuck with one way and that is the only way we can do the magicals?"

Sorrel says, "There will be costs for being a generalist, as always."

Lisebet just glees. that is all awesome. and I love actions/investigations.

Apostate says, "It will be very, very, very narratively focused, with something that is modeled stylistically to the character. So it will tend to be emphasized around things that fit the character, which will probably be more specialized, but some degree of generalization will be possible"

Evaristo says, "So, we can technically and codedly 'learn' a magic... school? Right now?"

Evaristo says, "Or at least, ICly?"

Evaristo says, "Assumedly after an action/what not."

Puffin says, "If you'd like to explode."

Evaristo thinks hard on this.

Apostate says, "Codedly yes, ICly it would not really be possible to perform significant magic and survive outside of specific edge cases"

Alecstazi braces for shrapnel.

Radhilde hrms

Lark says, "I love exploding."

Radhilde nods in agreement.

Felix whistles innocently.

Felix, too, likes to explode.

Puffin says, "And the likelihood of just happening into it without a teacher and surviving is infinitesimally small."

Apostate says, "Any other questions before we call it?"

Preston says, "Is Braum a good boy?"

Fortunato says, "as long as it's an aesthetic explosion."

Corbit says, "I have one real quick."

Apostate says, "No, he's the best boy."

Lora says, "What's in the box?"

Rowenova says, "The Best Boy is SIr Flop."

Pax tosses in a last couple magic clarifications.

Apostate says, "Definitely not a head, Lora. What's up, Corbit?""

Corbit says, "Are those of us who have low mana because magic wasn't much of a thing when we created our characters going to have to spend the hundreds of XP to raise it to be any good at magic?"

Rinel has joined the an elegant piano with ivory keys.

Radhilde clears throat and raises hand, "I think I missed a couple things but for magic, it's everyone that is getting access to it then it kinda comes to life with a teacher/actions?"

A huge hideously ugly mastiff, a Solace acolyte named Pyotr, 1 Templar Knight guards leave, following Thena.

Pax says, "There is nothing in the magic system stopping anyone from learning all the various flavors of magic; you can learn All The Things (albeit there are restrictions on when and who can actually use very certain aspects of magic). But as was mentioned, there are costs to being a generalist. You could have someone who is a passable adept of a given style, and someone else who is a really crappy adept of that style, a really crappy druid, and also a really crappy artificer. They both have the same amount of magic 'progression', but one person puts all that progression into one specific focused path and so moves further along it; the other is putting that progression into lots of things, but that means none of them are as far along the path. So, the only restriction is the same one in every progression system in roleplaying games ever, inasmuch as a generalist and a specialist will progress very differently."

Apostate says, "The short answer is no. Mana will be useful but it's not a single ur-stat for magic. To Radhilde, I tend to see things as being much easier with a teacher and with collaborative coteries/covens"

Corbit nods, "Fair enough, that answers my question. Thank you."

Evaristo says, "All you need is LUCK"

Sophie says, "So just to clarify also, for actions - less is more? I always worry i'm writing TOO much... like rambling of all the topics that my character might be thinking about while she meditates. If I'm understanding correctly that's what you want?"

Pax says, "As Apostate says, mana is /useful/, but it is not make-or-break. You will be able to do magic effectively with low mana, but higher mana gives an advantage. The key here is that everyone's magic system will be very slightly different; when you get access to the magic system, you'll be able to kind of design what the magic is that's relevant to them as a character."

Alecstazi says, "I think the answer was the ramble + a tl;dr, Sophie."

Apostate says, "Just a clear, 'What I really would like to see' is very helpful"

Lark says, "Not less is more. Clear specifics was more, is what I gathered."

Sophie says, "got it!"

Aleksei says, "Clarify > Length OR Brevity"

Bhandn says, "Conveying your intention."

Aleksei says, "Er -- Clarity"

Radhilde says, "Okay, cool Apostate (sorry had to answer phone)"

Viviana says, "Re : Actions, I've always been iffy on the "OOC intent" bit. Is that supposed to be a 'narrative tldr' of "I am going to X, to try and do Y." (minus any story/flavor 'fluff') or is it supposed to be a specific "I am doing X, because I want to get 200 silver.""

Zavi arrives, following Magpie.

Aleksei says, "Generally about what you're hoping to get IC or OOC"

Rowenova says, "I have that same question."

Preston says, "I'm guessing we shouldn't read in to our mana stat."

Lou says in Eurusi, "I've used ooc_intent to ask for prestige, or legend, or a new story hook, or ideas for PRPs I can run."

Lou sighs.

Lou says, "I've used ooc_intent to ask for prestige, or legend, or a new story hook, or ideas for PRPs I can run."

Jeffeth says, "how embarrassing"

Lou eyes Jeffeth. "I was here for yours."

Jeffeth says, "wahaaaaattt"

Martino says, "That's what I always thought OOC Intent was for. A little I would like A - B - C or D. Or a combination absed on rolls"

Radhilde ahs

Apostate says, "Generally we're more interested in the latter than the former. The former is -helpful- if it might be unclear from the narrative description though. But yeah we really want to know what someone is hoping to get from an action as the main person doing the action. However, I should note that assists I really want it to be something that can be covered in the main action, and can be included as happening to everyone/the main person. If there's a result that is very separate and personalized, it really should be its own action"

Viviana says, "Thanks!"

Aleksei says, "My ooc_intent on assists most often just ends up being like "uh supporting the main action intent""

Apostate says, "IE, if it's a 40 person action, I'm not going to be writing a separate vision/clue for each assist"

Bhandn just shudders at /that/ idea. "NaNoWriMo: Arx Action" >.>

Radhilde says, "Mine too Aleksei lol but I'm kinda new."

Apostate says, "Any other questions guys?"

Lora says, "One quick one:"

Alarissa says in Marin'alfar, "Can i have a pony?"

Alarissa says, "Can I have a pony?"

Apostate says, "You asked in Marin'alfar, you get a seahorse"

Lou snickers.

Alarissa says, "YES!"

Lisebet giggles.

Felix says, "That's a win."

Rysen laughs!

Preston says, "It's always awkward asking for stuff in OOC intent"

Alarissa says, "I will TAKE THAT!"

Bhandn says, "@Apos: You got bamboozled."

Radhilde laughs

Mikani says, "woot"

Pax says, "And Radhilde, if you mean 'everyone getting access to it' as 'every character will have the ability to learn magic', then yes; there is no 'you have no magic' trait, and no one will be restricted from magic. You will have to sort of 'awaken' it (which, from a practical standpoint, means having a Practitioner record added for your character, at which point all the magic system commands appear in the helpfiles and such); this 'having your eyes opened' can happen through any number of ways; receiving a revelation (you have enough clues to understand this!), the result of an action, the result of a GM'd scene, having an NPC help awaken you, etc."

Pax says, "Once you have access to the magic system, you basically get a skill tree unlocked which you can start buying skills (and the skills both benefits to doing magic, and the 'Legos' you can put together to make you magic) in; you don't need teachers for that, buy if you find a teacher (including another player who knows the skill), it will increase how quickly that particular skill improves. The better a person is at the skill, the more benefit it gives you."

Pax types slow, is at work. :(

Preston says, "Buying skills with xp?"

Radhilde rins to Pax, "Excellent."

Bhandn resists the urge to ask Pax about nine follow-ups.

Viviana says, "Once magic is more of a 'thing', will you be able to learn it from other PCs? Or are they going to be too 'new' to it to serve as teachers/guides?"

Lora says, "I'm occasionally at a loss for how to follow up on some things. Like, I got a thing this morning and threw some paper airplanes over the wall IC about it but... if I wanted to follow up with staff about it, is it okay if I chuck a +request in (dear staff: HOW do I find out more about this thing?) rather than adding yet another action?"

Aleksei says, "She just mentioned it can include another PC who knows the skill as far as teachers go, so probs yeah"

Sorrel says, "Yes, other PCs, per Pax's 2nd paragraph."

Viviana says, "Derp. Sorry."

Lark says, "I kind of have a question. Time jumps have been brushed over, and I know it is a divisive subject. But, are there also plans for sheet resets/other things reset once these new major systems come into play?"

Merek says, "I do have a question."

Apostate says, "Yeah, Viviana. And research circles/covens/coteries/etc will be a thing"

Lark says, "I didn't get in line. Sorry."

Merek says, "Will this go into effect while magic is still dangerous to attempt or will it be after all that?"

Apostate says, "Some of the things I write are pretty vague, and I know people can be lost on how to follow up. Generally when it's VERY vague, it means that it involves other players (never in a bad way), so it's something that can come up organically in RP. But, yeah, I'm totally fine if someone just feels lost in a storyline asking, yeah it's always okay"

Lora says, "Okie. Thank you!"

Bayberry, an Oakhaven juvenile bloodhound, Steadfast, a dunskin stallion courser leave, following Norwood.

Apostate says, "Maybe. There could be a soft reset at some point but I think it's unlikely without a time jump- the thing is I don't think current/stats/skills will be that overwhelming on new systems, and I'd much rather see -how- they work with the systems and reset if I need to in order to avoid problems than reset and then discover problems I didn't account for"

Preston says, "Time jumps seem like a bigger impact in some ways on Faith than Fealty."

Margot says, "Out side of the magic system, are there inate traits that some characters are born with or can develop that are coded as well that are supernatural in nature?"

Pax says, "Yeah, other PCs can teach magic they know. How much benefit you get from a teacher is dependent on their proficiency at what they're teaching; if you're an adept, then between an NPC druid and a PC adept, even as a neophyte the PC is actually be a better teacher for you than the NPC would. But if you can find an NPC /adept/ who's willing to give your adept a lesson, the teaching boost will be higher because they know the stuff far better."

Apostate says, "My general plan would be one season dealing with the chaos of magic being in the world, and then probably a time jump after that, but we'll see. Margot, yes but it's more like a very basic knowledge that a type of magic exists and can be built on than a significant starting advantage"

Lark thumbs up.

Merek says, "sounds awesome!"

Aureth says, "Gotta run, thx v much for QA. <3"

Bhandn has joined the line.

Binky, an asshole crow, Gregory, an unassuming disciple, 3 Templar Knight guards leave, following Aureth.

Margot is so looking forwards to it all

Corbit nods, "I just want to say, I love the build your own magic lego idea. It reminds me of Morrowind."

Apostate says, "Merek, magic will move from suicidal to just merely very dangerous, and how it moves from that will largely depend on player action."

Vitalis says, "Related to magic training - will it be apparent to you if you're being trained or is it on trainer side? Currently.""

Merek nods!

Radhilde says, "Sounds excitng."

Magpie has joined the line.

Turn in line: Bhandn

Rowenova has joined the line.

Pax says, "Lark, I'll note that the magic system does not use stats/skills in an appreciably different way. Since magic is inherently a personal thing, someone who is a spellsinger and someone who is an artificer will actually roll entirely different things. When you design your personal magic (set up what your sort of 'signature' is, define your rolls, etc.), the idea is that your rolls will represent your character, and what's important to them. An artificer's main rolls might be mana+smithing or dex+smithing or luck+smithing; a spellsinger's main rolls might be mana+performance or charm+performance, etc. Presumably, as a result, the things which are important to your personal magic will be the things which are important to your character, and thus the things you have /already/ bought up."

Lark says, "For sure. I meant more, encompassing all the things. I don't know exactly how domain or magic or any of the bigger systems coming in will be, and I totally get Apostate's point about seeing how it works with people with a lot of resources versus those just starting, etc."

Bhandn says, "My biggest query is kind of a catch-22, in that I've been trying to plan around the advent of magic from a @sheet perspective, but I can't plan for it without having it, if that makes sense. So in some ways I'm not sure /what/ to plan for. For example, the Teaching skill seems /highly/ relevant, yet I'm not sure I'm clear on exactly how current-sheet will square off against magic-sheet."

Apostate says, "So I had a question about coteries/covens- they won't be orgs. These will be a separate, more personal structure, so someone in a metaplot secret org could make covens inside it or distinct from that, but they would probably not be ICly thrilled if someone in a good org decided they really wanted to trade notes with an abyssal mage"

Merek says, "Sounds kinda like a paradigm from Mage Ascension."

Bhandn kind of a jumbled thought mess here.

Margot grins Merek I was thinking that.

Margot has joined the line.

Apostate says, "Think of magic as answering the question of, 'Who am I, what am I good at, what do I believe, and how do I want to change the world', and it will run off that. Answering those will matter much more for mechanical success than any specific stat or skill combination."

Radhilde nodsnods

Turn in line: Magpie

Pax points to Apostate. "Each of the paths has a defining question, and your magic is your answer to that question."

Bhandn has been brooding on that question ever since the very first clue I got, but was not sure if that leaned more towards certain IC things associated more with the Faith or not. Doesn't want to say more here since it veers into spoiler territory.

Radhilde cannot wait.

Alecstazi must away for lunch, but damn. Damn this was awesome.

Alecstazi says, "Thank you guys, really!"

Magpie says, "Off the topic of magic... Going back to actions, cause I'm late ... I see a lot of actions backed up for me personally that I'm involved in, and you said you guys are two months backed up... At this point, I feel like I shouldn't put MORE actions in about more stuff, but I don't want to leave story stuff hanging either for players I'm trying to get involved in or things my PC has been asked to do. So do you guys prefer that we wait til we see things catching up, or just keep throwing on the pile?"

Pax says, "Bhandn, don't stress about planning your sheet around magic specifically; other than whatever stat/skill make up your personal magic's roll, what's important is the skill tree that you'll be unlocking. And you'll all be starting pretty much at ground zero on that. Plan your sheet around what's important to you. If that's understanding the concept of magic and the history of rituals and stuff? Buy up occult, and maybe make that the skill that you roll in your personal style of magic."

Bhandn says, "omai, that has a nice implication in that answer"

Apostate says, "Keep it in- as long as something generates story as a result from coming in, it's a net good."

Turn in line: Rowenova

Rowenova says, "Some players may not be using all their @action slots every 2 months for whatever reason (not wanting to add to the action stack unless it seems extra imperative to do so, not sure what they want to do but still wanting to progress, etc). For backlog moments (but maybe not when caught up), have staff considered an automated system which lets people turn in their @action slots for a mechanical benefit of some kind which could be based based on something like a luck stat (or other stat) + <relavent skill> dice roll (to see how many resources, xp, AP, exotic pelts, whatever matches the skill and makes sense that the system would just give them for their action slot)? This could be something which would not need staff oversight during hectic times but still let people get something out of those actions slots they might have just let fade away?"

3 Iron Guardsmen have been dismissed.

Apostate says, "I think that I wouldn't want people to use up actions to trade it, because what I'd think would happen is people would get surprised by something happening and feel compelled to respond, and then ask me to manually remove it and retract things and it would become a huge hassle for me to deal with. But a reward that's constant while they are sitting on unspent actions might avoid that and encourage people to not put in actions unless it's critical maybe?"

Turn in line: Margot

Pax says, "Basically, for any question about magic, assume the answer will be about your character's identity, beliefs, or character narrative. The magic system is designed in hopes that it will be centered more around personal narrative than around 'this is the best way to do the dice things for the magic stuff'."

Margot says, "As someone who plays more a 'grey-hat' character I have noticed a lot of talk about the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys' but honestly don't really know who is in which camp atm (which I think is deliberate). Is the good vs evil delinitation going to mean more over time not just in the scope of this magic stuff but in the over all scope of the story? And are those camps intended to become more clearly defined over time?"

Pax says, "A lot of that answer is going to depend on the players, Margot."

Margot ahhh so it's not really decided yet.

Apostate says, "I want a lot of morally ambiguous choices and characters, I just use them as convenient shorthands rather than looking at the historical divisions between different groups that both could be considered at best morally ambiguous or antagonists (rex'alfar vs aetheris, empire vs cardia, etc). So it's unlikely things become more like a two polar system"

Apostate says, "Okay guys, anything else before I call it quits?"

Pax says, "I will note that /my/ intention as a GM, which I have made no secret of, is that I want to see situations arise that force Team Good and Team Evil and Team While You're In Your Moral Absolutist Corners Viewing the World in Black and White We Took Over The Rest of the Field (i.e. Team Gray) to all work together towards common causes."

Merek says, "simple one, do we plan to have pyran darksteel recipes?"

Magpie says, "Are you guys gonna close actions/investigations again for a break to catch up because I feel like you all need a break and should enjoy the summer"

Apostate says, "Yeah probably eventually if a player works on them."

Merek swee

Merek sweet!

Lark says, "Works on them ICly?"

Apostate says, "About that, in order to have a practical roll over I'd have to close them for a minimum of 2 months and more likely 3, and it's hard to find a good spot to do that"

Jeffeth has joined the line.

Bhandn says, "There's a lot going on, I'm sure, but at the same time, history does have its boring moments of peace too. >.>"

Apostate says, "Yeah Lark, if someone tries to get darksteel recipes from Eurus or works on developing their own"

Pax nods. "Yeah, if a really skilled smith decides to put in the IC time and effort to learn the peculiars of working darksteel and so introduces that art to Arvum, we'll add recipes for darksteel weaponry."

Pax points to Apostate.

Rowenova says, "I like your idea of constant reward when sitting on actions, esp during breaks."

Jeffeth says, "Got a question from Caith: 'ask apos if there is a priority order to the backlog? like do they just tackle things as they came in or do they, say, decide to work on secrets in a chunk for example`"

Magpie says, "that IS a nice idea. And investigations.. I sit on investigations all the time."

Apostate says, "I tend to go cyclical in groups, but all of the areas tend to be too big to finish in a single go, so it might be like I spend a day working on secrets, or a day working on the oldest actions, or a day GMing for people in person, etc"

Apostate says, "And that might be like a dozen actions out of the hundred or so waiting or whatever"

Jeffeth says, "thank you!"

Puffin says, "Where I do it FIFO for actions, unless there are a group of things that are all around the same event."

Rowenova says, "aye, I agree. Maybe if you are sitting on investigations, you could just get the most well known clues out of the blue (stuff most people have but maybe you do not have for whatever reason but would be considered 'common knowledge')."

Radhilde sits on all kinda things because she not in plots :(

Apostate says, "I still hope to put in a gossip system that would let people randomly get well known clues"

Pax says, "Does she mean requests, actions, what? Because for me, I'll grab requests by type (from oldest to newest) when working on requests -- unless it's a request that I see come in and can do in 20 seconds, in which case I'll do it right away to keep it from adding to the queue. For actions, though, when claiming new ones I always just grab from the oldest in the queue."

Margot says, "Oh Radhilde enjoy this time of quite. I have family stuff coming up for you....:)"

Apostate says, "Thank you guys. If no one has any other questions, I'll end it there- fine to take the exit of CC back down to the city center. And if anyone knows who the hell the rich mahogany jewelry box belongs to sitting in the room, tell me, because I accidentally made a typo teleporting an object, grabbed it, and have zero clue who it came from."

Lora says, "Thank you!"

Magpie says, "Thanks staff! You all rock! <3"

Merek says, "Ty!"

Lark says, "Sounds like you have a jewelry box now."

Corbit says, "Thank you!"

Lisebet Laughs about the box and heads out. Thank you!

Wendy the little brown wren leaves, following Lora.

Rinel says, "As someone said earlier, this is better than the best case scenario. Thanks."

Felix says, "Thank you all for the questions and such!"

Keso, a totally legit assistant, Peanut, an oversized mastiff leave, following Aleksei.

Rowynna says, "Thanks for all this. Take care"

Rowenova says, "Thank you for having run this."

Dycard says, "Thank you!"

Evaristo says, "Thank you!"

Sir Floppington, the soulful hound leaves, following Rowenova.

13 King's Own Guardsmen, Zelda, the royal messenger leave, following Alaric.

1 Crimson Blades Sergeant, Aegis, a large red Oakhaven bloodhound, Rurik, a prodigal assistant leave, following Mirk.

Rinel has left the an elegant piano with ivory keys.

Alena Sparks, unamused first mate, Silk, the Seafaring Spider leave, following Evaristo.

3 Thrax Guards, 2 Thrax Elite Guards, Lady Teonia Redreef, Aryka Wyrmfang, Marquessa Pudding, a doughy dog leave, following Sorrel.

Ondine, a red-breasted sparrowhawk leaves, following Brianna.

2 Leary House Guards, Lite, a little blue canary leave, following Corbit.

Brother Chester leaves, following Jeffeth.

Carita says, "Thanks for your time!"

Khanne says, "You are all amazing, thank you for all the hard work and... ALL THE FREAKING THINGS"