November Midmonth

[moustre]

Midmonth Mod Post: November Hello, Aefenglom! Here's your monthly midmonth mod post. First, as always, some reminders. They're pretty brief this month: • The Masquerade log is still going strong! This is the second year KJ has run this event and we always love to see it, so a huge thanks to them. • We have a combo Intro Log & Item Regain Event just recently gone live! • Acceptances have been sent out to as many applications as we have space for currently! • Our activity check also begins on November 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: PROOF 1: * A tag-out to someone else's post, top level, or inbox. PROOF 2: * Your own post, top level, or a thread in your own inbox, OR * A tag-out to someone else's post, top level, or inbox. - Comments from you on both proofs should add up to at least 10. - Comments must be from the current month to count. - One proof may be from a thread begun in the month previous, but only comments from the current month on it count toward your AC. - Both proofs cannot be with the same character. - Two proofs with cast/franchise-mates is allowed but if it becomes a pattern (2+ months in a row), you will be asked to provide a thread with a non-castmate. In addition, players are allowed to take a strike if they have at least half of the necessary activity, ie. one proof with a minimum of 5 comments or two proofs that add up to less than 10 comments. • Players accepted in November only need to provide half AC. • The calendar has all these dates as always, so check it out! Now then - onwards! The Aefenglom Journal With all the nastiness of Octeuril behind us, things in Aefenglom seem to have settled down, or so we all hope. Our Parliamentary correspondent has brought news that the Mirrorbound Council have passed a motion to allocate funding for orphan education and care, proving once again that these mysterious people from other worlds are certainly philanthropists wherever they go! Truly we here at the Aefenglom Journal find it touching how they fight to look out for the most helpless in our fair city. Mirrorbound have also proven to be trend-setters. We have an exclusive that one long-time Mirrorbound has put on a grand Masquerade Ball for the second year in a row! The glitz and glamor of it all has enraptured Aefenglom, and no doubt many in the Aristocratic District are disappointed not to have received invitations. Maybe there's always next year! Lastly, our associate at the Coven tells us a few more Mirrorbound have stumbled through mirrors at the Looking Glass House, in the middle of the month again. Could there be something to this strange timing, or is it all just an odd change of pace for the misunderstood magic deep at the heart of the ancient building? In unrelated news, many strange brass saucers have been spotted flying all over the city, often knocking into folks minding their own business! Some are seen carrying the most random of objects - what in the world could these be? The Aefenglom Journal intends to find out! OOC Updates • First of all this month, we'd like to announce that, with real life situations and holiday business going on, December's AC will be check-in only. However, if you have to take a strike in November, you will need to provide half AC in December to clear your strike. We will not offer strikes in December for missing AC, and anyone who doesn't check in or make prior arrangements with the mods will be swept. • This has happened fairly often in the last month or two, so we would like to remind players what the appropriate methods of mod communication are: either a PM to the mod journal, or a comment on the Mod Contact post. Please don't contact us individually on our personal accounts about mod business - we prefer to keep records of communication where the entire mod team can access them. We're always happy to help with whatever players bring to us, but we will not act in an official manner from our personal accounts. • We'd like to ask again for event and plot feedback! November and December are generally easy-going months due to folks being busy or needing to recharge, but we'd like to hear what kinds of events and plots you would like to see in the future. 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

[galdorleod]

Hi mods! I am late to this, I know, but I figured it wouldn't hurt for me to add my thoughts to the pile anyway. I've read the other feedback given and skimmed through the longer discussions that branched from it, so I hope I don't repeat anything unnecessarily.

Game Scope - I think a lot of the current game problems boil down to this.

The scope of the game is currently much too large for it to be anything other than a sandbox game, where people pull from what information they have available to them about the setting and make their own fun via player plots and plot investigation. I, personally, have no problem with this kind of game, and I would not mind if it continued forward in mostly that fashion.

But in order for that to work, the game needs to have thorough, well-organized, and current information pages. Otherwise, we don't have the framework necessary for us to RP in a consistent way across multiple threads between multiple characters, or to conjure up player plots that mesh coherently with other established aspects of the game's setting.

If the game is to return to something more plot-heavy, then in my humble opinion, two things should probably happen. First, the scope of the setting should be vastly reduced - no need to keep the Northern Outpost, Underground, Cwyld, and Dorchacht all relevant and active every single week when the game is meant to be more focused on monthly plot events. Maybe just bring out those settings when necessary for a major side event or story mission. I'm sure it takes a lot of mod work to have all of that going on, too. That effort could be going into fleshing out Aefenglom itself, like people already mentioned above - which areas like the Mirrorbound? Which don't? etc etc.

Second, a more plot-focused game will....... um... well, I feel like there's no way for me to say this without coming across as totally ungrateful, and that really isn't my intention. I echo EVERYTHING that has been said about 2020 being awful, and you guys doing so much hard work as it is for infrequent recognition. But a more plot-focused game is going to need faster, more responsive mod communication with the players.

AGAIN. I AM AWARE that the slow response time from mod has already been brought up in the past and that it hasn't been entirely in your control, so I'm really not blaming you for this. I'm just thinking, in the interest of preventing future problems, that it's probably going to be necessary for a plot-heavy Aefenglom to work.

You guys included a reminder about not contacting your personal accounts with modding matters, and I'll fess up to being someone who has done that twice in the past 2 months. But both times, it was because I knew that commenting/PMing had an extremely slow response time and I had an issue that was, in one instance, an emergency relating to AC, and in the second instance, it was time-sensitive because my character apped into the game halfway through the month and AC was in two weeks. In the second instance, I waited beyond the time period written on the mod post and still hadn't heard back, which is why I poked a mod in person (and, justifiably, was sternly reminded of the rule). But at that point, my question still wasn't answered, and I needed to get a thread started for AC and I had less than 10 days to get it done, which left me scratching my head when it came to the plot/setting-related question I had.

Ultimately, it was a relatively minor issue, and AC is and always was my responsibility. Plus, since I'm happy being a sandbox player I can just go with it either way (and I handwaved the discrepancies once I did get an answer back). But, I don't know if the more plot-focused players in the future would look at a similar issue the same way. If the mod team feels that they might not have the time/energy/whatever to be as on-hand and attentive as a plot-heavy game could demand, then I would vastly prefer to see this game stay sandbox-oriented and have the information pages get amazing makeovers.

Witch Disadvantages - This has also been discussed a lot already, but I wanted to add:

- I'd on the side who see Monsters as having more in-universe disadvantages compared to Witches.
- It seems to me that the real difference between the downsides of the two is that Monsters' struggles are much more clearly defined and are, for the most part, not optional. In a lot of ways, the specific downsides are what's fun about playing a monster in the first place. For Witches, while the downsides are there, they feel much more optional or easy to play around.
- Witches and the classes of magic could use a revamp overall, in my opinion. I know you just had mod applications, and maybe this is sort of precocious of me, but... if you want help, I'd be willing! I have a lot of ideas, probably more than I can get into here since this is already too long. But, what if Witches had to pick a subclass of magic to specialize in, essentially giving them a "species" like Monsters have? What if those specializations came with specific advantages and disadvantages, such that they were harder to play around and influenced the OOC decision of which subclass to pick? etc. Something like that.

Thanks for reading all of this, I've rambled long enough. Thank you so much for your hard work, I really love this game and I want to see it last. Happy Thanksgiving!!