Gameplay
Since the forest (and Spill) does spooky things, the mods will regularly be making posts talking about new things that are happening. Stuff like “there's a place not too far away with some new stuff” or “this weird weather thing happened” or “tonight there’s this spooky noise occurring.” These will function either as general mingles or as opportunities to explore or interact with NPCs or other features. Everyone stays together with the party more or less, just by virtue of there being nowhere else to go. Characters are free to set off the path and leave the town to explore for themselves at any time regardless of whether or not an exploration game is being run (these will happen from time to time), but they’ll mostly just find the forest (or whatever other terrain they pass through) extending around forever -- it’s even likely that they’ll end up turned around and back in town, somehow.
Players are also free to post on their own, either as general mingles or as logs closed to specific teams or characters. Players can move time at their own pace, changing to a new day whenever it seems like the current one is ready to wrap up. Mods will try to keep time moving steadily as well by posting regularly, so it shouldn't be necessary to post too many "general mingles" -- that is, mingles without any kind of theme to them. Of course, if there's a demand for such mingles they can be posted, and even themed mingles can be used to toplevel without directly engaging the theme if there's a need for it. We encourage players to post themed mingles or posts that they are running in order to keep engaging with the game.
Players have the power to exert some control over what is happening in the setting with their own posts or toplevels. Generally speaking major setting changes and events will be planned out and scheduled. Here's a few examples (by no means a complete list) of things that are allowed and encouraged:
Player posts are free to control things like weather however they like. There's no particular weather pattern or season in the forest -- it can be sunny one day and snowy the next, unless otherwise stated in mod posts. You can also decide on aesthetic things about the setting as long as they don't contradict other posts.
If you feel like having some of the spooky shit in the forest do something, you can do so within certain limits. Basically, just make sure that unless there's a scheduled event, it's something that can be ICly ignored. For instance, something like "if you go to this specific place, this dangerous/shitty thing will happen" is okay, but "and then the main area was attacked by hordes of undead" is not.
Probably the most interesting option here is to take advantage of the subconscious influence your character has on the setting. The forest is essentially "haunted" by the characters traveling through it and will be warped to reflect their memories, fears, dreams, etc. This can be anything from aesthetic changes for mingles (suddenly the path is lined with the flowers your mother used to grow in her garden) to dangers (again, keeping in mind that anything not scheduled/approved should be avoidable) to ghosts of the past and subconscious projections wandering around and talking to people. Feel free to be creative with this one. These sorts of subconscious projections can and will be used for games/events/etc as well, but even if you aren't up to running something like that you're free to throw out more subtle developments to play with.
If you want to do something and aren't sure if it's okay, just ask. This is a pretty relaxed YOLO game, so we'll probably just okay it.
When a character drops, those who they leave behind have the option of having memory of dropped characters start to fade. This is essentially to keep characters from falling completely into despair and becoming unplayable. How fast or slow this happens depends on how you want to play it. You can have them instantly completely forgotten or play out the memories slowly slipping. If you'd rather not, you can have them not forget at all, or only forget partially.
As with other team RP, games are going to be sort of a major feature here. There is the option of just running games in the traditional manner -- you play an NPC that hosts a competition, you OOCly schedule the game for a certain day and bang it out over the course of however many hours, there's a turn-in at the end, you score the game, etc.
The format will allow longer term events or challenges. These could last up to a week or even more, depending on the challenge involved. Instead of having everyone show up at a certain day/time, people could play on their own time over the course of however many days. They would be scored at the end of the period. Instead of having characters taken out of normal play for a short period and given a quick game to play, they would basically have to integrate participation with this challenge into normal gameplay. These can be issued gamewide or only to certain characters depending on the challenge and what we feel like doing with it.
Another option is character-based games -- these could be heart games, unconscious games, games related to a character's memory or something similar. These can be scored games or not. They can be run on any time frame desired, either long or short -- basically as long as you're willing to run it for. They can be just basic 'exploradora' type games, or your character's subconscious can run something like a competition or a challenge. Basically this means that you can either run heart games whenever you want, or you can use your characters' subconscious in place of the usual NPC for games. Instead of spooky underworld denizen asking you to go collect body parts from enemy teams, it's your dead mother. That sort of thing.
If you want a run a game, just send the mods an email or otherwise ping them on Slack or Plurk. Once it's approved, post a notice to the OOC comm announcing the game, giving any details, asking for signups, etc.
If you'd like to make an NPC, please contact one of the mods and they'll tell you what you need to do. Remember, NPCs can be either Arbiters or failed shades from previous groups that have been corrupted and are therefore still functional.
In addition, you can play any random character in-game that you'd like without apping or being on a team. There limits to this -- if you're going to play them long term then you'll have to make them a proper NPC as a corrupted shade or arbiter, but if you just want to pop into a single post every once in awhile with a given character or just have an itch to play someone (for example, to ruin someone else's life instantly by having their dead girlfriend show up) or run a mingle post or game with a certain character you'd not play long-term, you can contact us and we'll add the character to the comm. In the tags, characters such as this will be denoted with a ❀. (As opposed to NPCs, who get a *, and dropped characters, who get a ✿.)
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aforestdark) wrote2015-04-08 02:55 am
