Game Update Proposals

[voidedmods]

For those who don't know, it's Bubblevoid's first birthday on the 4th of January! To celebrate, over the course of the month we will be giving the game a bit of an overhaul: reorganising the info pages, adjusting and clarifying the rules, bringing in new features, and changing the layouts and art. Sadly, that means we will be a bit too busy with that to focus on a special event that month (and with all the New Year chaos, that's probably for the better). However, we are going to be bringing in a player-run event system which will need to be tested!

The following are the current proposals for the update.

General Reorganisation

• The setting page will be split up into three. We will have a page each for the story, the environment, and the NPCs.
• Instead of using the taken page, we will be adding a much more obvious drop page.
• A new wanted list will go up, but instead of covering characters (which is difficult to keep up to date and relevant to the current cast) we will instead use it to request concepts, skills, and general character types.
• We will be adding a "careers" reference page. As we are hoping to use the town meetings to really build a society, this will be used to record when a character takes on a particular job (molepig hunting, fishing, berry-gathering, lumberjack, cooking, etc).
• Concepts will be removed from the application form. More information can be found below.
• The application form will be updated to cover any companion characters.

Rule Changes

• The maximum hiatus length will be reduced from two months to one. This is because some people do not return from hiatus at all, and with our lenient AC requirements it means that a player on hiatus can hold onto characters for a full four months while being completely inactive.
• Our AC requirements will not be changed. They are easy, comfortable, and rarely abused.
• While this is already in the FAQ, the rules on "companion characters" will be made clear. A companion character is currently considered to be any second character that ideally would not be separated from the first, resulting in two characters being played as one. For the purposes of this entry, we'll refer to them as possessions, parasites, and pokemon.

Concept Changes

• Concepts will be removed from the application form. Instead, the concept submission form will be placed on the Concept information page.
• Characters must pass at least one Activity Check prior to their player proposing a concept.
• Concept discussions will now have a specific schedule to them. Currently, we are considering mid-month.
• The current concept backlog will be wiped clean. Players who still wish for their concept to be implemented may copy and paste their original proposal into the new form. Alternatively, they may consider an alternative concept, or instead use a "burst" event (as detailed in the Events proposals below).
• The timeline will now be used for events as well as concept introductions. The timeline is, however, only a list. A new information page will describe the current concepts in more detail, particularly how they play into each other and how they have been applied to the setting - this is difficult to accomplish in a list format.

Events
We will be introducing a player-run event system for the next year! There will be two kinds of player-run event to use and abuse, and they will be referred to as Basic and Bursts. The difference between the two is that Basic events will be character focused, while Bursts will instead affect the setting.

Basic Events

Players may propose events for the game, which would be somehow caused by or arranged by that player's character. As we are looking to avoid falling into a "curse per week" trap, we will be encouraging creativity when thinking of events - in particular, we want to give characters more reason to interact with each other, rather than simply going "oh, I'm affected by this curse. I am now the opposite sex."

There will be more details on the limitations when the system is put into place, but the current limitations are:

• Event must include a way for players to reasonably opt out.
• Event must not do lasting damage to the setting.
• Event must viably be able to include as many other players as possible.

We are hoping that the recent Reaper's Game proposal and the Closed Space event will make suitable guinea pigs for this system!

Burst Events

A burst is the temporary implementation of a concept, to be run by a player. Like concepts, these will be things from a character's original world, leaking in through the cracks between reality - however, not only will there be different restrictions to normal concepts, there will also be some things allowed that would not be reasonable as a permanent addition.