midmonth post: may 2019

[moustre]

Midmonth Mod Post: May

Hello, Aefenglom! It's your incredibly thankful mods, Bella and Snow, bringing you the game's very first Midmonth Mod Post! We have a lot to talk about this time - as you might expect from our first month - so buckle in.

First though, some reminders:

• The event log will be going up at 3PM EST later today! That's three hours from when this post was... well, posted!
• Reserves, as well as the test drive meme, will be going up on May 17th; reserves will open at midnight EST and the test drive will be going up at 3PM EST. Reserves close when applications open, and all reserves expire eleven days after they open - so this month, reserves will expire on the 28th.
• Applications will open on May 24th at midnight EST and close at the end of the month! As a reminder, all acceptances are sent out at the end of the application period; revisions are sent out periodically throughout the application period as needed.
• The plotting and investigation post can be used for characters looking to get into shenanigans or looking further into the mysteries and magic of Aefenglom, as well as suggestions for future plots or heads-up about player-run plots! It can be found over HERE. We've really loved what we've gotten so far, so keep it coming! Let us take the time to plug the quest suggestions thread HERE too - it helps us with filling the quest board, and helps all of you bring the kinds of quests you'd like to see to the table!
• Finally, our first activity check will begin the same time applications open, on May 24th. While we'll have the requirements on the activity check itself as a reminder, here they are right now so you can start figuring things out:

10 comments minimum from you across two threads OR one network post/log made by you with at least 5 comments from you and a second, separate thread with at least 5 comments from you.

In addition, players are allowed to take a strike if they have at least half of the necessary activity, and TDM threads are acceptable as long as they're from the last month's test drive - for May's AC, it would be April's TDM, and for June's AC, it would be May's TDM. Inbox threads and personal overflow threads also work - they just have to be from the current month!
• The calendar has all these dates and more, so check it out !

Now, onto the meat of the updates post.

The Aefenglom Journal

Thanks to the efforts of the city, the Coven, and the new arrivals, The Haven is officially cleaned up and ready to house the arrivals that came at the beginning of this month, as well as anyone else who might show up; Miss Nerissa Bell isn't taking any chances, considering she - and the Coven's best minds - still aren't sure just how this happened in the first place. The Parliament will be expecting answers, however, and they'll also be expecting that the new arrivals do their part to help around the city.

As for the city herself, things continue on as ever. A hundred-odd new people isn't such a major deal in a city as big and populated as Aefenglom, and the natives are a generally friendly bunch. The ones most opinionated about the newbies are those affected by the decision to section out a piece of the Aristocratic District for The Haven; they're largely disgruntled and less-than-thrilled about being forced from their homes, especially on short notice. The Parliament is doing their best to keep the peace, though they can't watch everything or everyone.

The Coven greatly encourages community in the Haven, meaning that their suggestion as they're getting people moved in is to find familiar faces or like-minded people to move in with. While there is a great deal of space in this new district, many of the houses are on the large size - this is, after all, a previous part of the Aristocratic District - so one may find them a little lonely if they were to move in to one alone. Apartments are, of course, an option, and smaller homes if they're looking for something a little less... luxurious.

(They also don't know how many more people are coming in - it would be best not to take up all the space right off the bat, don't you think?)

A final set of buildings are of particular note: the barracks. Flushed against the Bright Wall, the barracks haven't been used in their intended capacity in quite some time now. The Coven offers it to the new arrivals for their use, whether it be renovated into apartments, used as a resource center, a place for training or storage. All weapons and information stored there by the army has been removed, however. No funny business!

With so many new arrivals, and so many people to attend to, both Nerissa Bell and Mhairi Ainsley can be contacted by letter if one finds a need to do so. Appointments to meet face-to-face can be made that way as well, and any over-the-watch contact is now available as they pick up their own devices. (Rather like Skyping your boss or teacher or encouraging mother.)

Another reminder is that the full moon is coming up on the 18th - take care of yourselves and others, and be mindful of the rest of the citizens of the city!

OOC Updates

We do have some gamekeeping updates as well, before we get to the very end.

• We've had some discussion, and with how quickly the limited quests were snatched up - which is an incredibly positive reaction to them, and one we're really happy about! - we've decided to talk about putting limitations on limited quests. Ideally, our limitations would be thus: one High-Risk quest per character, and/or two Wilde quests per character, if the ones they're signing up for have limited spots the way Lost and Lost did this month. Not all Wilde quests will have limited spots, as evidenced by Out of the City and Herbology Help, and we'll try not to do too many in the future either! Or if we do, we'll give a greater variety/more chances for each limited spot. This is something that would be implemented next month, but we wanted to get a feel for what the game as a whole would think - particularly on the number of quests taken per character.
• We did want to make specific note of the Witch and Monster info post code that has been mentioned a couple of times. While it's still on the table, it's been temporarily put on hold for the past two weeks. Snow here to specifically apologize - I'll be attending a convention this weekend, and so it's likely that the code won't be live until next week at the earliest. However, it's still on its way! We promise!
• After some one-on-one feedback and FAQ inquiries from players, we've decided that we'll be restructuring information on the Bestiary, Coven, and Bonds entries. This is to ensure that there's an ease of reading for everyone, as well as sections devoted to certain topics that have been fine-tuned. We ask that if there's anything that players would like clarification on, whether in these entries or others, to stick with us for the very end of this post.

And, to wrap this section up, a general note regarding intro and midmonth logs: depending on the IC climate and events in Aefenglom, the midmonth log will sometimes be a little more lowkey than the intro log, and vice versa. This month, because of how exciting the new arrivals were and the fact we had a festival coinciding with it, today's midmonth log will be the more lowkey of the two.

Interest Check & Feedback

Due to inquiries, we have one interest check available at this time: a Discord server for the game!

Think of it like another supplement to announcements and communication the way Plurk is. All announcements, CR memes, and plotting opportunities would be made on the OOC comm, with notices posted on Plurk and hypothetically the Discord server. It'll never become our main venue of contact or answering questions about the game, the world, or events that occur; we have places for those types of things.

In the event that this server is created, we would ask this: are any players interested in acting as moderators for the chat? There are quite a few of us here, and currently only two game mods; we would greatly appreciate the help in simply making sure everything ran smoothly and everyone played nice.

Finally, we talked about having a feedback post! It's incredibly important to us to keep our players in the know, and for them to keep us in the know, too, especially about how they're feeling about the game. Since this midmonth post is already fairly long, we've made one over HERE. Take your time in reading over it and give us some feedback if you have any, positive or constructive! You can give your opinion on the interest check for the Discord server there, too.

And that's the end of this midmonth post! We both hope you're looking forward to the event post today, to the TDM coming up in just a few days, and to everything else as we march through the rest of May and head into June!