dagung | June Midmonth

Entry tags:

* modpost

June Midmonth

Midmonth Mod Post: June

Hello, Aefenglom! Here's your monthly midmonth mod post.

First, as always, some reminders. They're pretty brief this month:

• What Lies Beneath

• It's app month!

Reserves

applications

As a reminder, applications will only be open for 24 hours

•Our activity check

June 24!

10 comments minimum from you across two threads OR one network post/log made by you and a second, separate thread, that together add up to 10 comments total from you.

half of the necessary activity

• The calendar

check it out

Now then - onwards!

The Aefenglom Journal

The surge of Mirror-unbound from Maiuril vanished back to where they came from by Iuneril 1st, leaving hide nor hair of themselves behind. We reached out to Nerissa Bell at the Coven for a statement, but she couldn't tell us anything new. Without mirrors in the Looking-Glass House they were not anchored to the world as strongly as the rest of the Mirrorbound. So how did they come here in the first place? A mystery abounds!

Speaking of mysteries... Where in the world have many of our Mirrorbound gone during the latter part of this month? Our informants have reported seeing fewer faces around the Haven, and we have reached out to the Coven for a statement. According to the husband of one Coven representative, they have taken on a mission outside the city to make contact with a previously-unknown civilization. Will the mysteries never cease?

Litha comes again as well to Aefenglom, and thank everything that the skies have kept their regular color! Last year's red skies put fear into the city, so a nice Litha is just what we all needed. Be sure to check out the new attractions this year - the pair boats are proving to be quite popular!

OOC Updates

inbox and mod contact post are always open

allowing threads from the last 7 days of a month

either

thank you

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:

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i think that's a really good idea re: AC! i would be down for that because i notice a lot of people tend to be a little hesitant about starting things toward the end of the month and i think that's at least partially because it wouldn't potentially count for the subsequent month's AC but they likely already have AC for the month. i think it'd help with backtags and keeping things moving between months.

+1 this sounds fantastic

+1 I've been in a game where AC worked kinda like that, and yeah, it meant a lot more mid-late month threads and posts got activity. I've found that I get most of my AC in Aef from threads started the first week, and I suspect it's since there's more flexibility to get enough comments in time.

this is also my experience and what i've observed. people don't seem to be that interested in doing new things toward the end of the month and that's a shame, and i think creates weird pacing at times. esp with the lunar cycle stuff.

I agree! It would be nice to have the option and make people less hesitant (myself included) to start stuff late in the month

i also want to say i love the ac idea. i'm sure we've all noticed how much threading in this game grinds to a halt sometimes at the end of the month. this will definitely mitigate this.

i never really want to start anything toward the end of the month as i've sometimes struggled to get enough tags into threads even when i have multiple active threads on the go just because of differing timezones or tagging speeds or whathaveyou, so i try to avoid setting myself up to be focusing on something that won't actually count for ac and then finding i've been active but have to take a strike. a bit more flexibility this way would be A+.

+1

having the last week of the month count for either current or next month AC this way would be amazing. yes, please!

I think the only opinion I have is regarding AC. I think it might be nice if one of the two threads could be one started in the previous month (all tags being from the current month of course, and never reusing a thread more than once). Mostly because I think it would be simpler than mods having to look and double check if a tag is from the 23rd at 11:59 pm (not ok) or the 24th at 12:00 am (ok!) and also because it would be nice to have more time to dig into things like the underground event/take on a bigger tag load without worrying that I won't be able to finish a thread in time for someone to make AC with it. Especially if rl makes you a couple days late to a mid-month event.

I know that wasn't one of the options but figured it was worth throwing out there. Otherwise +1 on any option that allows more flexibility on backtagging. I'm really enjoying the games and the events! Thanks for all of the hard work, mods!

Edited 2020-06-21 01:48 (UTC)

i think that's honestly fair and reasonable if the mods wanted to go this route instead!

i would suggest though if going that route, it might make more sense for there to be an AC page where each character (or player) has their own header and they add each month so mods can have an easier time double-checking that thread wasn't used twice. i think posting a new AC check-in every month would just potentially make it a little tedious. doable, but tedious.

Agreed.

I definitely live off backtagging (as a lot of people in this game seem to) and even if the AC isn't demanding by any stretch, there's always a voice in the back of my head discouraging continuing to tag old threads because they can't be used by either party for AC.

I want to take it one step further and suggest allowing threads started in the previous month for AC. For example, threads started in May would count for EITHER May or June AC, with each thread only used once for activity. I only throw this out there because events tend to go up mid-month, which means there's not much to work with in the first 15 days, and people essentially have 15 days to make AC using the mod events. I understand that quests go up in the beginning of a month, and that players have a wealth of content to make use of for threads of their own, but given the timing of mod events I think a full month's grace period would be fair. And also way easier to keep track of than 7 days!

Ultimately, I feel like 10 comment AC isn't asking too much in a 15 day period, and I've been comfortable here. I just think if an allowance/change is going to be made, it's best done by a whole month.

I expect I'm going to be in the minority, but I think AC is pretty easy as it currently is (especially since text threads count), so I don't see a change necessary. Usually by the last week of the month I have already met the requirements, so I don't feel concerned about starting threads "too late" by then.

I understand not everyone has the same experience as me, and I'm fine if the change goes through to accommodate others! Just wanted to throw a different perspective out there.

Edit: As an afterthought, I don't think the "start" of a thread should matter much as long as the comments submitted for AC take place in the current month. I believe past games I've been in did it that way. Still, I think AC is fine right now, for me personally.

Edited 2020-06-21 02:40 (UTC)

AC feels very lenient to me. In addition to text threads counting like Julia mentioned, you guys also allow inbox threads, which I feel is really generous. Since we’re going to be implementing a game cap on characters, I don’t think we should be making AC any easier than it already is.

Hi mods! I think a lot of the game focuses often on backtagging when we have significant threads (and things like the importance of the calendar and timing for full moons adds to this). Because of that I like the idea of not focusing as much on when threads start.

I would however suggest that to counterbalance this with the upcoming game cap (as mentioned above) we might consider actually raising the AC requirements to more comments. Aef's is definitely on the lower end for games that I've seen and if the date requirement were removed or made more lax it would allow for a lot more flexibility in what threads apply!

If things do change, I would much rather see a change like this.

ia with this, the cap's gonna' make the game pretty beefy. it's super easy to squat, which'll deter new friends from apping in if the game trims down again!

ik i had to drop some things because i felt like i couldn't feasibly start new threads in the month of ac without dropping some of my backtags, which i didn't want to do... i think it'll make it easier for people to follow through on the threads they really care about!

Ohh I like the counterbalance idea. That'd help with the awkwardly timed threads.

So throwing my two cents in here about AC:

I like the way AC is done in this game because I don't think AC can be too lenient right now. If this was any other time during any other year it might be reasonable to be more strict but I think leaving the comment count where it's at, allowing the last week of the month to swing either way, and being more open about when threads start is what we should be doing right now.

I'm sure we're all playing these games to be able to have something nice away from the fact that the world is literally on fire right now and there is no sign of that not being the case for the foreseeable future. Being supportive of this hobby being fun and not more work is I think a good change. None of us can know when we might be personally impacted worse or when someone's mental health takes a sudden downturn and having more flexibility allows for people to take the time they might need and still have fun and not get swept from the game. I understand that the game is going to be capped and that makes it harder to get in but if someone is doing poorly to the point that they can't make AC after a hiatus they're probably gonna drop or end up getting swept anyway.

i completely agree with this. i definitely want to see more flexibility with ac and not less.

honestly in games which have a low ac requirement i feel like i'm MORE active than in games with a high requirement, because once i've actually made ac i feel free to tag around and start threads and backtag, as opposed to needing to focus on a couple threads likely to have the highest comment count or phoning in a commentspam just for the numbers' sake while meatier threads are progressing at a slower clip.

having the ability to not tag for a week due to either life or work or mental health or whatever and not need to worry that threads won't reach ac length because of that would go a long way toward letting rp stay a fun escapist environment rather than an obligation to monitor like a job.

Edited 2020-06-21 11:56 (UTC)

I agree with everything you said in here so much. Honestly, in my experience, AC doesn't do huge amount to keep people from squatting more than just clearing out people who dropped without using the drop page. People are as active as they're going to be and if that doesn't match up with AC and if they don't want to drop, they'll supplement that with last minute boomeranging network/ic inbox threads. ~~Thus is the law of dwrp since time immemorial.~~

That's definitely how I feel about AC too. The easier it is to just bang it out in a day / week and forget about it, the better.

regardless of whether or not mods decide to increase AC in the future, i agree that this is not the time to do it. "being supportive of this hobby being fun and not more work" is really the best way it can be put, so i won't try to rephrase that. i will just say that there are already measures in place from the mods regarding strikes and hiatuses/proofs to offset potential issues brought up by the low AC. if those become insufficient in the future, that's one thing, but now is not the time.

as an additional note, i think it would be a mistake to preemptively increase AC to discourage squatting due to a character cap — not just now, but in general. we already have a decent number of characters dropping or being swept each month, and in my experience in capped games, people are more conscientious about not taking up a slot than in non-capped games. upping AC to address a theoretical problem that hasn't happened yet would be discouraging to all players, current and future. one of the less great things about being in a capped game/queue system is that some people will have to wait to get in, but that's the nature of the system and is a trade-off for positive aspects of the system, which, again, hasn't been put into place yet.

Hi Min! I really like your feedback here, and I agree that it's important to ensure this hobby remains fun and supportive with everything else going on in the world right now. Things are a mess and stressful life circumstances are going down for a lot of people, so I absolutely agree that trying to raise AC at the moment is a bad idea; I doubt the mods will make a decision like that.

But I do think the mods should consider that, possibly sometime in the future, an increased AC would help for the longevity of the game. The main reason is just due to the nature of the cap they're implementing. The sheer number of reserves for this round suggests to me that the game is going to be backed up for months before any slots even become available. And it's impossible to make a claim that people will certainly drop when they can't handle AC anymore; we just can't know what people will do.

All that said, I don't really have a dog in this race either way re: squatting because it's hard to predict what will happen, I just wanted to raise another perspective toward the currently lenient AC rules (with a counterbalance of no month "thread start" requirement). I'm enjoying all these different options/suggestions that people have posed.

Edited 2020-06-21 17:29 (UTC)

I'm just speaking generally here, but in my experience, a higher AC isn't that effective at preventing squatting. If someone wants to hang around by the skin of their teeth, they'll find a way to do it. I don't think I've seen any AC system that's been effective at preventing squatting, really.

That's a fair critique. My understanding is an AC check should combat situations where people are not being active. If it's not working, that's unfortunate. I don't really plan on apping anyone else, but I'm sure others might be waiting around for a while and it could be frustrating.

Do you have any suggestions or ideas for how to deal with this kind of problem, then?

Here I am with no suggestions but I'm unsure on the possible AC changes. So my thoughts, as useless as they are. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Cause I've noticed there's normally a rush of posts at the start of the month. And towards the end, it slows to a crawl causing it gets saved because it wouldn't be useable for AC.

On the other hand...AC is 10 comments and I might be in the minority here, but that's really not a lot. But I'm also a former MG player where it was 20 comments a week so my thoughts there are gonna be very different.

The closest I can think of is just remove the start date part, and just see how many comments in the thread took place in the AC month. Which also helps with really backdated threads caused by the world being a mess at the moment.

Probably awkwardly worded example.
-I start a thread with X on the 10th of April.
-We each get a tag in.
-Then due to RL emergency X has to go on hiatus and no tags happen for the hiatus time
-They get back mid-May and we boomerang and end up with a 30 tag thread but can't use for AC

Edit
This might just be a me issue, but I wouldn't mind having a two-month calendar, so like, the July calendar goes up at the start of June.

It'd make plotting in advance easier because I had a lot of trouble in May from things I'd planned at the end of April conflicting with the May events.

Edited 2020-06-21 12:22 (UTC)

even if it's not the start of the month preceding, during the midmonth post just a little sneak peek of what's to come would be helpful sometimes. it doesn't have to include a ton of details though, just the basics of like the name and it'll be from this date to this date.

i think if the mods wanted to release a little more info ahead of time, info like if it's an event that will take place outside the city noting that and whether or not it'll be possible for characters participating to move between aef and the other location. or noting if there is a portion of the event that will have a rng sign-up and what size the group will likely be.

releasing the full details as they've been released so far in the game (i.e. during cr meme and then during a specific plotting post if needed) would be totally fine since that seems to work! but i think a sneak peek just to kinda get a vague sense of what might happen next month before the end of the month so it can be planned for accordingly might also help with some of the lull toward the end of the month.

Edited (typing is really hard in this text-based hobby, wow) 2020-06-21 13:48 (UTC)

yee, I'm not bothered about full details until the event. But knowing the date, location(and maybe if it'll be serious or silly) would help with plotting.

Because last month I planned for Mika going feral, then we had an event which made characters more likely to be feral.

I just want to raise a concern that extensive calendar two months forward would probably come at the cost of negating open-ended adventures with ooc-trackers, where players' actions determine the eventual course.

I may not be a very seasoned dwrp player, but in two games that I was part of I've noticed that people tend to sometimes do very extensive plotting based on these short-blurbs. And short-blurbs are exactly that, short. They might not convey the entirety of the event concept. To give an example there may be a note telling that next half of the month will include "sea adventure and confining the threat of robbers". It's not a stretch to have a player come up with a big plot for a sailing adventure, combined with their characters learning how to swim or sail ahead of time— and by the time the actual event and its plotting rolls in, it turns out there is no sailing and pirate ships involved as everything happens underwater. Hence disappointed players who imagined the event will be something else.

Would saying 'there's an event in Dorchacht from the 10th - 15th, characters will not be able to go back to Aefenglom during this' count as extensive though?

Because that's about as much detail as I mean. Just so people don't accidentally clash on the timing of things.

This actually is a good point and makes me reconsider the two-month calendar suggestion. It might make plotting murkier rather than clearer.

oh yeah, i don't think there should be blurbs. but i think just saying the title, anticipated date, and if there will be a logistical thing like "characters who participate will be out of the city for the duration of the event" so people can be mindful of that sort of thing.

i really like the idea of previewing the month ahead since everyone is generally eager to do their plotting just before the announcement posts anyways. it can be vague, keep the suspense of what happens next, but at least some idea of what to expect would help gravitate that plotting energy in actual, functional directions.

ooooo, i like this a lot... ty for saying so, kitty!!

Edited 2020-06-21 14:32 (UTC)

I like this suggestion!

I also sometimes struggle with making solid thread plans due to a lack of information on events. Like for example with Litha, I wanted to do a lot of stuff, but it wasn't until the event post went up that I could contact my thread partners for specifics. I know we could look back on last year's festival, but there were also some new features - like the boat rides and pools - that still changed things.

I don't know if this is always the case, but it was this month because the CR/plotting meme went up several days before the event log itself with all the details. Not sure if this can be changed or what and it's not even a huge deal to me since I could contact people, just something I noticed. It made the CR meme feel more like a 'placeholder' rather than where gritty plotting happens.

Edited (sorry kitty for these edits) 2020-06-21 17:49 (UTC)

But if this amount of detail has been given ahead of time, wouldn't it mean the whole event post would have to be released at the CR meme? In that case, essentially posted two times (during the CR meme, and as on the event itself).

In that case, wouldn't posting the plotting post along with the event post, instead of before with short blurb, fix that problem?

That's true, which is why I don't really have a suggestion for a solution. I guess it's kind of mixing the concept of what a "CR meme" is with what a "plotting meme" is. In this case, it was called both - but I think it functioned more as a CR meme, because I was just going around like 'hey, I want our characters to interact!' without specific plans.

So exactly like you've said, having a plotting post put up with the event post could fix it, I'm just not sure how it would be balanced with a CR meme... if one is even needed at that point! I agree that having it the other way around, with a short blurb, is just redundant.

I think I might have misworded something in my first comment. But I just mean knowing when the events will be. Especially if the event is in the first week.

And with the full moons getting closer to the start of each month

Edited 2020-06-21 17:59 (UTC)

I personally don't plan things out two months in advance, so thinking about this again, it wouldn't change anything for me to know when the event is going to happen next month. I kind of like the surprise of it. Plus, having a two-month calendar set in stone could be restrictive for the mods, who might want to change things based on the outcome of an event that is still ongoing.

Sorry, I don't think I fully addressed your comment: maybe you're saying something with less detail. That would probably be up to the mods, since I don't know how they do their event planning. Maybe it's possible? Again, I don't plan that far out ahead myself.

Edited 2020-06-21 18:11 (UTC)

Oh that's true on the restrictive part. I'm still not used to having events where there are outcomes.....If that makes sense?

It's just a small thing I've noticed, with the full moon gradually going into the first week of each month.

I've never modded so I don't really have a solution other than maybe have a first-week preview just to cover the last few days?

Yeah totally! I also think I did misread you on the "when" versus "what" part. Maybe just knowing the dates would be easier, but it's probably up to how much flexibility the mods want to keep.

And that's something I didn't notice, re: the full moon. I imagine it's just modeled after real full/new moons that are variable every month. Hard dates aren't a big deal to me personally, but just having the moon dates and maybe the weather available seems doable, if fairly minor.

Yup, it's understandable the full moons would change. It's just awkward for people plotting for characters going feral if there's an event happening right before the full moon they've not accounted for.

Weathers a good point too seeing as some monsters are affected by that.

Tbh, I'd be okay not having hard dates to. I think a part of it is timezone related. So people in ~~the future~~ some timezones can end up a few days into a month before the info goes up.

===
You replied before I saved my edit for the last comment but also
--

Edit -;djsao;efidk Thinking on it, the easiest solution is a player one. And that's just not do 'plot with me for x month' posts. Because these always happen in the last week and it's

The last game I was in would put up a monthly rundown for the coming month's events in the last week of the previous month and it was one of my favourite features of its organisation, because it really gave you time to think about what your characters would be doing. One of the difficulties I do have in this game, much like you, is that I feel like I can't properly plan out what I'm doing with my characters because there isn't much to go off until closer to the event start.

I don't know if the mods could find the time to do a full rundown post like that game, because this game is A Lot and I know they have their own lives to live, but if there was a way to maybe provide some information a little sooner, it would be appreciated.

Echoing the comments above with regards to maybe shifting to considering the month in which comments were posted rather than the month in which the thread was started. I like the idea of encouraging starting new threads in the present month by not considering older ones, but in my experience it actually has the opposite effect: for me, I tend to backtag threads for about 6 weeks to 2 months, so if I start a lot of threads one month I end up not being able to start as many threads the next month because I'm still backtagging the previous month's threads.

Obviously don't allow using the same thread for 2 ac periods, and it might be prudent to set a time limit on how old the original thread can be, but overall I feel like this allows a little more flexibility on a month-by-month basis.

I do have a comment re: what is considered a "post" vs a "thread" for ac standards as they stand. Given a lot of people like to do catch-all logs to keep things organized, I wonder if it wouldn't be more prudent to start considering multiple threads in a log post valid for ac?

As it stands (correct me if I'm wrong) it seems like if I make a catch-all log with multiple threads on it, I can only use one of those threads for AC regardless of how much activity takes place on the log. I've had at least one catch-all log where I wrote close to a dozen individual starters for people and had a hundred or more comments of activity for the month, and it feels arbitrary to me that that post with all those log comments would count for only half of the required AC while I can post 10 comments to two separate network posts and that counts as full AC. The former involves objectively more activity and tagging out with regards to plotting, while the latter only counts because it's across 2 separate posts.

That said, I do feel this should only apply to logs, not network posts, mainly because these catch-all logs tend to involve a lot more of a player putting in the legwork to reach out to people oocly to plot.

Having read some of the conversation around the AC changes, I think I'd just like to drop my two cents here to say that if there are to be any changes to AC that I would strongly prefer that the requirements did not become stricter with a higher comment count. I think 10 comments is fine and I guess I just don't like the idea of RP becoming more demanding when RL is still what it is?

Also I would like to throw ina +1 for the suggestions made about allowing one proof to be used for a thread started in the previous month with all the tags being from the current month + not being able to use the same thread for multiple proofs. I've absolutely caught myself strategizing around when to post things based on if they would / wouldn't count for AC and I know I'm personally pretty disinclined to tag into posts made in the last week or so because I have to think ahead for AC the following month. Taking the focus off of when a thread was started and shifting it to whether or not people were actually threading during that month seems like a step in the right direction to me.

Also throwing a +1 at the idea someone suggested about creating a static AC page to make bookkeeping easier for the mods so that it'd be easier to confirm that the same threads weren't being used repeatedly for AC.

Thanks for all the hard work, mods!

I'm of the opinion that one proof needs to be started during the current month, but the other's starting date shouldn't matter at all. As long as the comments themselves are from the ac period. Sometimes I want to let my character lie low for a month and just focus on finishing up plot points I'd rather take my time writing and fully flesh out. If I take a hiatus to try and do that, the other partner in the thread still needs full AC and thus has to put back tagging second.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

June Midmonth

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