The Fabled Poll!
No seriously, we've been working. Sort of. Anyway, there are a couple of questions/projects we wanted to get your info on so take the time out of your day to vote yeah?
Time Change
Point the first. Earlier in the summer we asked what people thought of our current time change system. Too fast? Too slow? Would you prefer to see it changed one way or the other and would that make it easier for you to play? Answers were pretty evenly divided, with quite a few people responding that it didn't matter either way. So, because we have nothing to do but sit around and think about things like this, we came up with a possible tweak for the time change system.
As you all know, right now we run with two RL weeks to one IG week, with the change every other Sunday. The idea that has been suggested would keep with that format with only a slight twist; one IG week would still run two in RL but the first week would be set aside for playing the school week, M-F, and the second week would be the weekend, Saturday and Sunday. This would probably be an unofficial time schedule, but the thought is that it may help those of you who feel like there is too much time to play at once by breaking things up. Also, it would give you a chance to focus on the school week and the weekend separately, without having to change things midway through a thread because something that happened on Tuesday suddenly conflicts with your character's weekend thread. Again, it would be unofficial, more a way to help us all structure our timetables than anything else. Also, keep in mind that just because the RL week is over and we've "switched" into the IG weekend (or even the next week) it doesn't mean that you have to stop threads that are already going. You can play threads for as long as you like. This has been the case for some time.
Poll Time Change
Plotty Stuff
Which leads me nicely into the next (though less complicated) question we wanted to ask. Okay, Lacey wanted to ask. You see, every few months I try to come up with a general plot brainstorm for the next three or so months IG. This makes it really easy for me to write DP articles because I have a framework for where the plot is going in my head, what I want to lead up to, etc. It also never fails to make me giddy because my brain is full of possibilities. And that got me to thinking, would other people like to be in on these things? I try to keep a pretty open format for plot suggestions (and am always willing to take people up on offerings to involve their chars or NPCs) but maybe if you guys were privy to where I see things going, you'd be more apt to engage and jump in. So.
Poll Shared Brainstorm?
Jump/Five Years Later Idea
And finally, we wanted to talk about the idea that we brought up at the beginning of the summer about a Five Years Later rp for the comm (or as I like to call it, 5YL). As you may remember, basically what we were asking was whether people might enjoy a bit a of a change, something to mix things up and new ground for our characters to cover. The idea was either jumping the comm or creating a new side comm where we could play our same (or new) characters five years into the future. There seemed to be some interest in the idea and so I did some brainstorming on it.
The idea I had, rather than creating a whole new side-comm, or dedicating anything exclusively to a jump I thought it might be cool if we hosted 5YL events in Plotting. It could be a once a month deal where on a given weekend/week, the mods throw out a prompt for some event or random day in the future and everyone gets to play with that however they want in the post. It wouldn't even have to be the same time jump every time, it could be five years, three, ten. The prompt could be anything; a holiday, private ball, Hatchy concert, whatever! Auror graduation? The day Voldemort is killed and the DEs keep going without him. The first day of school for NP 2nd-gen. The list goes on. We could have a an open post somewhere for people to suggest things they'd like to play and the mods would pick one a month or so to post. We could get really crazy and do completely unrelated weekends; WWII rp, Shakespearean acting troupe (with hecklers), crack in general? Or maybe that's best left to Dublin. The point is, if you guys wanted to mix it up some, this might be a fun way to do it.
Then again, as Julia pointed out, playing it this way doesn't really create a new, continuous future-verse which was kind of the point of 5YL in the first place. So, maybe you guys wouldn't want to play it this way at all. Or maybe we could combine ideas and use occasional prompts to keep things going in this seperate 5YL comm. So, it's time for us to run these ideas past you guys and see if we're just on crack or if there's something here you'd like to try.
Poll 5YL
As always, comments are more then welcome. Let us know what you think! If you don't want to speak up in a public format, you're more then welcome to hit us up at Contact the Mods.
Time Change
Point the first. Earlier in the summer we asked what people thought of our current time change system. Too fast? Too slow? Would you prefer to see it changed one way or the other and would that make it easier for you to play? Answers were pretty evenly divided, with quite a few people responding that it didn't matter either way. So, because we have nothing to do but sit around and think about things like this, we came up with a possible tweak for the time change system.
As you all know, right now we run with two RL weeks to one IG week, with the change every other Sunday. The idea that has been suggested would keep with that format with only a slight twist; one IG week would still run two in RL but the first week would be set aside for playing the school week, M-F, and the second week would be the weekend, Saturday and Sunday. This would probably be an unofficial time schedule, but the thought is that it may help those of you who feel like there is too much time to play at once by breaking things up. Also, it would give you a chance to focus on the school week and the weekend separately, without having to change things midway through a thread because something that happened on Tuesday suddenly conflicts with your character's weekend thread. Again, it would be unofficial, more a way to help us all structure our timetables than anything else. Also, keep in mind that just because the RL week is over and we've "switched" into the IG weekend (or even the next week) it doesn't mean that you have to stop threads that are already going. You can play threads for as long as you like. This has been the case for some time.
Poll Time Change
Plotty Stuff
Which leads me nicely into the next (though less complicated) question we wanted to ask. Okay, Lacey wanted to ask. You see, every few months I try to come up with a general plot brainstorm for the next three or so months IG. This makes it really easy for me to write DP articles because I have a framework for where the plot is going in my head, what I want to lead up to, etc. It also never fails to make me giddy because my brain is full of possibilities. And that got me to thinking, would other people like to be in on these things? I try to keep a pretty open format for plot suggestions (and am always willing to take people up on offerings to involve their chars or NPCs) but maybe if you guys were privy to where I see things going, you'd be more apt to engage and jump in. So.
Poll Shared Brainstorm?
Jump/Five Years Later Idea
And finally, we wanted to talk about the idea that we brought up at the beginning of the summer about a Five Years Later rp for the comm (or as I like to call it, 5YL). As you may remember, basically what we were asking was whether people might enjoy a bit a of a change, something to mix things up and new ground for our characters to cover. The idea was either jumping the comm or creating a new side comm where we could play our same (or new) characters five years into the future. There seemed to be some interest in the idea and so I did some brainstorming on it.
The idea I had, rather than creating a whole new side-comm, or dedicating anything exclusively to a jump I thought it might be cool if we hosted 5YL events in Plotting. It could be a once a month deal where on a given weekend/week, the mods throw out a prompt for some event or random day in the future and everyone gets to play with that however they want in the post. It wouldn't even have to be the same time jump every time, it could be five years, three, ten. The prompt could be anything; a holiday, private ball, Hatchy concert, whatever! Auror graduation? The day Voldemort is killed and the DEs keep going without him. The first day of school for NP 2nd-gen. The list goes on. We could have a an open post somewhere for people to suggest things they'd like to play and the mods would pick one a month or so to post. We could get really crazy and do completely unrelated weekends; WWII rp, Shakespearean acting troupe (with hecklers), crack in general? Or maybe that's best left to Dublin. The point is, if you guys wanted to mix it up some, this might be a fun way to do it.
Then again, as Julia pointed out, playing it this way doesn't really create a new, continuous future-verse which was kind of the point of 5YL in the first place. So, maybe you guys wouldn't want to play it this way at all. Or maybe we could combine ideas and use occasional prompts to keep things going in this seperate 5YL comm. So, it's time for us to run these ideas past you guys and see if we're just on crack or if there's something here you'd like to try.
Poll 5YL
As always, comments are more then welcome. Let us know what you think! If you don't want to speak up in a public format, you're more then welcome to hit us up at Contact the Mods.