December Midmonth

[moustre]

Midmonth Mod Post: December Hello, Aefenglom! Here's your monthly midmonth mod post. First, as always, some reminders. They're pretty brief this month: • Going on all month is December's Event: Winter Medley! Have fun, explore, and kiss all you'd please -- the coldest months bring the warmest interactions, or so they say, and it's a wonderful time to bond with your neighbors. • Our activity check begins on the 25th! 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: For December only, we are asking for halved AC as our "full" this month: That'd be 5 comments from your character, and no less! While having them between two threads will be acceptable, it's not necessary. Additionally, as we're already into half AC, strikes will not be accepted this month; those with circumstances must come to us before the AC period ends to discuss what can be done, but otherwise we're trusting that everyone can get this meager amount. Inbox threads and personal overflow threads also work - they just have to be from the current month! • The calendar has all these dates as always, so check it out! Now then - onwards! The Aefenglom Journal Joys on joys! Mischief- and merrymaking are in the air, along with sprigs of holly, mistletoe, and all manner of Turnskin-friendly varieties. We remind the general populace to please not consume the berries, as they are highly poisonous to most species, and to make sure that it remains out of reach of all children and elderly. The storm which settled droves of snow across the city has drawn to a neat close, with all ages enjoying the remnants in the form of snowball fights, snowlptures, and snowcream; the cause is known now to be the unusual sighting of ice pixies celebrating the chill in their own way, and the Coven thanks those who'd brought them forward for investigation, along with the elderly population who told all the tales and more. Now, for a special number: Though unconfirmed as of this moment, sources say that trouble in Dorchacht has settled enough for a message to be tasked through within the coming weeks. We strive to bring you the freshest updates, the most novel of ideas, and will keep the city at large posted regarding our sister city, of whom we have welcomed many into our arms. Stay merry, stay bright, and be sure to act nice for this years' wren! OOC Updates • Our last uncapped application round will be coming up in January! The app rounds in following months will be capped. That cap will be determined after January's app round based on the size of the game at the time and the state of the mod team. We'll remind you all about it in January's midmonth as well, but look forward to it! • We do apologize for any delays on investigation replies. The holidays are a busy time for everyone, us included, and we may take longer to get those responses out. If yours is time-sensitive, please let us know and we'll try to prioritize it! Otherwise, thank you all for understanding that December is a time of many obligations. Feedback We're here again to offer everyone the chance to give some feedback, if there's anything that you've noticed or would like to possibly seem implemented! Talking Points: • Info posts that you'd like clarification for. • Quests. In general, what kind of quests would you like to see more of? How can we improve with these? What's working, and what isn't? • Plot investigation feedback. We've gotten quite a few good investigations, and honestly it's been fantastic seeing what everyone does with their information. • Events. What type of ones would you like to see, what ones are working, what aren't? • General feelings on: the game, the timing of posts, how events and such are set up, etc. • And more! Tell us what's on your mind. We honestly appreciate all kinds of comments, and we want to make Aefenglom a wonderful, fun, and comfortable game for everyone who joins. This post will remain unscreened, so if you'd like to take something to a more private venue, you can either PM us or comment here.

Comments

[digiorno]

I would really like to see some darker gamewide events and more involvement of metaplot elements. I understand that doing that during the holidays is pretty much impossible, but I did want to put it out there now rather than later. the heavy focus on slice of life and socialization would feel more organic and enjoyable if there was more conflict to contrast it with.

thank you for all that you do!

[moustre]

November and December we feel are usually bad times for metaplot and darker events since many mods and players alike are busier with RL obligations (major US holidays, finals, etc.) or on hiatus, which is why those months have been lighter and less involved. We do have more exciting plans for events after the holidays are over, though. Rest assured, plot will resume.

We do also accept suggestions for plots and events here if there was anything in particular you'd like to see!

[tryhard]

Thank you, mods! You guys have been awesome and we really appreciate your hard work!!

I had a similar question as the one above me, but as I see you have answered that, I just wanted to pop in and say I'm really excited for plot pans and can't wait to see what you guys have in store!

There was a quest a while back, the one with the cave exploration, that was a lot of fun and gave more of an opportunity for quest-goers to interact with each other and new parts of the world. I'd love to see more of those types of quests every once in a while, or even something similar incorporated into events that allows characters to icly explore new parts of the setting.

Thanks again for all the time and effort you put into this game for your players! I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season! :)

+1

[whomthebelltolls]

This actually came up ICly for me, even, where Maria mentioned they went out into the Wilde, found and cleared out a cave, and then never really had another expedition after that. Exploring the other cities on the continent is awesome, too, but since so much of this place is covered in infected wilderness, actually starting to make a dent in pushing it back, and seeing what is left underneath it when they clear it out is something I would definitely like to see explored a lot more, if possible. And there's so much opportunity for it, and the worldbuilding it could provide that I'd love to do more with it.

Also +1 on thanking the mods for everything they do. You guys are awesome, and thank you.

[showsnopiety]

It just occured to me that in game, we could Death Stranding this...(as in, build roads to places) but that's not here nor there!

First off, thank you mods for all your hard work. I am forever grateful to be here in this game, where people are great, the mods are great, and things are chill oocly.

Avi and I were talking last night, and we came up with an idea-basically to consolidate the information that we get every month. Whether it's on investigations, faq questions, quest questions-

That we as players link this information on a info post, make sure that everyone can at least know of it OOC. It's more or less what we did when we were in the Dorchacht investigation post, just more or less on a monthly basis, and possibly a good thing to link to if people are wanting to act or leak the info.

This could be posted by players or by the mods-whichever would suit us better!

+1

[clickclickbang]

I am all for this. I get overwhelmed pretty quickly with info and stuff and having a sort of one-stop-shop for this sorta thing would be great for keeping up with plots and stuff!

+1

[sylphid]

A central info thing would be good. Another suggestion, which might be too much idk, is to separate it by ooc and ic knowledge or have a section of stuff players know but characters don't (yet). I know I've had to skim back to places to figure out what isn't common ic knowledge, so something like that might be good to alleviate that scavenger hunt.

[moustre]

Smugha Cave was definitely not the last expedition-style event! Without going into detail on what or when, there will be more similar events to open up new areas of the world to PC exploration. There have been some OOC hurdles, but we're definitely hoping to get back on track with regards to expanding the known world outside of Aefenglom and digging deeper into the lore.

We appreciate everyone for sticking with us and hope you have a wonderful holiday season as well!

[moustre]

More expedition style events are definitely something we're hoping to do in the coming months! As we stated below there have been some OOC hurdles, but we're definitely wanting to get back on track with regards to opening up new areas for PC exploration and digging deeper into the lore of the world.

[moustre]

A central place for players to put their information together sounds like a great idea to us! We definitely feel you that sometimes it can be hard to keep track of everything that should be generally known, and we'd love to help make this easier. We're currently in talks about how to implement this (currently leaning toward one permanent modpost that we can link every so often, that players can add to any time), but I'd love to see if you all had any suggestions for how to organize things? One suggestion below that we liked was having a section for things that are common IC knowledge, but we'll happily hear any other ideas!

[fiddlestick]

I don't know how comfortable the mods are using it, but my own suggestion would be to use google spreadsheets to organize any past information (aka older than a month). You could make multiple pages for different topics (Dorchacht, Cwyld, the Coven, etc) and you wouldn't have to worry about character limits like one would on a Dreamwidth post.

As for the current stuff, I'd say make a compiled post each month at some point (or even just make a post that players can comment to with info they found, to save the mods on some work). That way it's not forgotten about in some far-off info page.

[moustre]

Well, our initial thought was that players would actually compile the information under different headers, to make reading through it easier. We're not currently looking to add the amount of work that would come with the mod team compiling information - at that point it becomes a pretty large undertaking and we're not currently in a place to handle it, especially with our planned ramp up in events, the app round coming in January, etc. Unfortunately there are a lot of other things that we have to prioritize right now, though maybe in the future a mod-compiled information bible would be on the table. If so, it would be a very long-term project.

A permanent post (or multiple monthly posts, if players would prefer that) for players to add to and read each other's comments on seems like the best route for us to go right now, unless there are other suggestions. We love the idea of having things in a central place but at this time, we have to be realistic about how much work we as mods can put into it, so none of the other important things slow to a crawl.

[fiddlestick]

Okay, fair enough. Just thought I'd throw that suggestion out there since dreamwidth posts can easily get unwieldy. But I can empathize with mods having so much on their plates as is!

I personally think permanent posts have a way of getting forgotten about unless it's being regularly pushed, so I'd lean more towards monthly posts if it's feasible. But this isn't an issue I feel strongly about, so I'm not about to heavily push for one format over another.

[usurpers]

can’t the google spreadsheet be player edited/run, though? i understand that your one fear here is probably having one more thing to tidy up and look after as a mod team when your time has only now been adjusted to the workload, but imo it’d work just as well, if not better, than a mod post with headers.

speaking from experience! permanent posts where we could comment under headers by topic seems much more easier to manage on the surface, us players can just comment and boom, you have a place for info. i’m doing something similar and quite honestly..... it’s easier to post, sure, but it’s definitely more cluttered and harder to find answers or specific info the bigger the comments run. it’s organized at first but the more I comment the more I have to start a scavenger hunt for one particular investigation, and it’ll just get worse from there. mods, in the end, would have to make an index of info like the ones in the faq, and that just seems as consuming as an extra post to take care of. I haven’t had the chance to change it now because I don’t know what other format to use that’s quick and easy to. probably going to take it to google sheets now that it actually does seem easier.

posts to gather the info on a monthly bases could be formatted like your quest page— monthly, as yuff said, so that people don’t forget there’s actually a post. there could be monthly headers and we could comment to them just to keep track of how much is gathered in a month, but in the end it would all lead to the google spread, for example. other players who have the extra time could even help the people who forgot to post their commented info into the spreadsheet, all of that. the mod team would only have to give us new headers on the dw “reminder” post monthly.

[moustre]

Well, the thought was to have different headers for different topics/locations, and somewhere to note if a particular piece of information is publicly known or not, to keep things from being too unwieldy. That said, we're still discussing, but if it has to be mod-run, it's looking like it will be a permanent post (since we already have quite a bit to post every month). If so, we will make sure to include the link in the CR memes and Midmonth posts every month, along with adding it to the navigation.

That said, a player-run project like this however players see fit to run it would be perfectly fine - we'd be happy to toss any links around and help get the word out. Being transparent, we just don't have the time or manpower to make it a large project that we have to keep up with right now.

[moustre]

If a player or group of players wants to step up and take this on as a project, we absolutely welcome that, and those players can run it however they see fit. We'd be happy, in this case, to put out the links and help get the word out about it.

If it has to be mod-led, though, it's looking like we'll wind up putting up a permanent post with headers for various topics/locations for players to add to, and linked in the CR memes / midmonth posts (the latter of which we would also be glad to do with a player-run post/spreadsheet). We've discussed it, and adding another monthly post to the checklist, along with keeping up a spreadsheet, is daunting, especially during app months when back-end work increases massively, and during months when a large-scale event is being run - and we do hope to have a few more of those.

If anyone wants to take this on, we do ask that they send us a PM with an outline of how they want to do it and what we can help with, but if it comes down to being mod-led, that's our general idea, in order to keep from piling more work on ourselves that we can't keep up with.

[fiddlestick]

Yeah okay that's fair. I know mods have a lot on their plate.

As for a player run project... I can't say I'm personally interested in doing lore filing, but if there is interest from other players to do that aspect, I could help at least help set up formatting and technical troubleshooting with coding/spreadsheets (though this week would be slow due to traveling/holidays).