Discord Reunification

As many people know, we took a poll on what people think should be done to better revive our role play. Play has diminished significantly over the last few months and that is in the face of many people being stuck at home, which should increase participation. The pole revealed that while there is a certain amount of support for killing off the Angelic Sins and Embers of Soteria settings there was far more people who (thankfully) also think everything was fine. The top two things that people think should be done were to reset everything and start over and to consolidate the servers back into one.

My choice to split the settings up into their own servers was controversial and intended to increase role play. Unfortunately it appeared to do the opposite. From the server having right around 100 people (though most were inactive) the membership has been cut in half. Also role play in AS and EoS are both at an all-time low. Since I am not very keen on resetting everything back to scratch, though that might have some advantages, I decided to reunify all the settings into a single server.

As part of this I cleared out the server invites list and generated a new invite, cleared out the old servers, sent out invites to players who were not still a member of the Molten Aether server, and moved all of the channels back. All the channels are blank of course, but my hope is that under this new (old) configuration we can once again start getting all the settings moving again.

Since roles were changing, everyone should check and make sure they have the proper permissions on Discord.

Discord Sign In Added to Forum

For those people who may not wish to sign into the forum using yet another login, in addition to Facebook and Google we also now support login via Discord credentials. If Discord is linked to the same email you used with Discourse, you can use that as of now to sign in to your existing account.

Efforts in Renewals

This is a last-ditch effort to attempt to revive the settings and generate some stories. My biggest concern is that I cannot carry this place alone, I simply don’t have the ability to do so. I need people to participate in making plots that support the main overarching plot.

I have been trying to get things rolling to revive our role play settings. We have some excellent role players and really good minds here. My efforts have shown a greatly underwhelming response. It appears that my attempts are akin to shouting into the wind. So far a grand total of 4 people have responded to my attempts to revive old story lines. I am becoming convinced that the vast majority of our players have muted the servers and forgotten about them. This is not entirely unreasonable, my work schedule combined with school and a lot of other things has created a situation where for a very long time I just didn’t have it in me to keep things up. People are fickle and bore easily, so it should be no surprised that I entirely failed to maintain this group with any cohesion. I understand this is my fault, I have made people angry, I have promised to continue stories that get dropped, and frankly any game just has a low priority.

This is a last-ditch effort to attempt to revive the settings and generate some stories. My biggest concern is that I cannot carry this place alone, I simply don’t have the ability to do so. I need people to participate in making plots that support the main overarching plot. I have loosened nearly all the restrictions on what I allow people to run but after introducing characters it appears that people just wander off, no longer interested. I don’t have a solution for this.

To help with this, I’ve created a poll. In the past we would have gotten 10-20 responses to a poll, lately I’ve gotten maybe 3 or 4.

Importing of Magic

There is already enough incredible work done on magic and psionic abilities elsewhere. As such, players wishing to use magic can import magic spells for characters much in the same way we’ve done with abilities, skills, and technology. Since magic systems are very different, players should attempt to find comparable spells via the D20 SRD (System Reference Document) first. Preference would be for d20 3.5 or Pathfinder but 5th Edition is also acceptable. Spells from the SRD can simply be linked to their SRD pages from the wiki. Spells with conflicts to the magic system or which need additional balancing with have codified canon version for the Molten Aether family of settings.

Since all 3 settings take place within the same largely continuity, any spell imported for a single setting can be used in the others. This may require some fudging to determine how something reacts with high technology areas. Also in Blazing Umbra it should be noted that almost all knowledge of magic has been lost over time and thus spells are very hard to come by. Players should be aware of this fact when designing character for Blazing Umbra that use magic.

Finally it is also acceptable to use areas of specialty and pull spells from the SRD that don’t need, strictly, to go on a character sheet. This grants a considerable amount of power to some characters which should be limited by common sense given the characters skill level and ability category. Any spells imported from outside the SRD will require some approval in their details to make sure they don’t break the magic system or throw off the balance of the game in other ways.

If you have any questions, please contact Cyclops.

Discourse Single Sign On

All users of the forum can now use their Discourse login credentials to sign into the WordPress. This will automatically link your Discourse information and profile from the forum to the WordPress database. I’m working on possibilities for using Discourse as a Single Sign On solution for the Wiki as well but that is a long way from finished.

Those people who already have accounts on both, the system will use email address to link the two, if anyone has any issues let me know and I’ll do my best to fix them. This is going to make it a lot easier for people to post their own updates for their own stories.

Infinite Codex – Notes & Tags

For a long time now I’ve been using OneNote for my notes, before that I used Evernote. I’ve used a lot of other software as well, the problem comes when you want people to collaborate on those notes.

Discourse has a feature they call a “Wiki”, by that it means a post which can be edited by anyone the way a Wiki is. This isn’t nearly as powerful as our wiki, but is still pretty useful. I have called this kind of universal notebook the Infinite Codex. As I explain in the description of the area, it is a place on the forum to put notes about plots and other ideas which can be edited by everyone, commented on, and doesn’t have to be correct nor is it instantly part of our canon. This is designed to be informal, similar to a post where people comment and reply but where the author or anyone else can go in, make changes, additions, and the like.

I’ve started by posting to it almost all of the half-finished storylines I have notes on in hopes that this will give people an idea of how it can be used. All of the information is up there, it can be easily edited, and it can be easily linked to elsewhere on the forum or anywhere else. My hope is that when people want to get some ideas out, they feel comfortable just making a post in the codex and editing it as they need.

Tags

I have also enabled the tagging feature of the forum. It’s had this feature for a long time, but until today it was disabled. Posts within RP areas need to be tagged with the tag for that setting. This allows using the tags to pull together information from across form areas. Major plots will also have their own tags for the same reason. People who’ve been here long enough to be in the “Regulars” group or otherwise have sufficient access can create their own tags, otherwise use the ones that are already there.

I’ve gone through and tagged most everything where it should be. Hopefully this will allow better organization and finding information (say from Phoenix Nebula or the Codex) and tying it to a particular post or series of posts.

Rebuilding the Community

For those who want the short version, I’m looking to have people increase participation by using the posts on this site as a starting point to have characters / NPCs who may not otherwise interact to do so. Short or long doesn’t matter, but use these as a source or a topic to talk / interact on in RP sessions. Next, help others, try to gently pull people in via inviting people into scenes. Finally, help get ideas rolling be constructive, be a sounding board providing feedback on pros and cons and help refine and build ideas for play. Don’t be afraid to be wrong or look silly, just create.

Usage has been on the decline for a bit now. Even before the server split participation has been on the decline. A few have been pushing forward anyway and being active. I want to support those players who have been active. First off, a shout-out to Winter who has been working on some amazing stuff in Embers of Soteria. Her contributions have been aided by many but her writing, effort, and creativity have been exceptional in adding a flavor to the story and components that fit into the greater narrative of the setting nicely.

I still fully believe that the server split was a good idea; though I do question it at times. Regardless the genie is out of the bottle with that one so either way that is how things are set up. I do recognize that it might not have been my best idea.

TL;DR

For those who want the short version, I’m looking to have people increase participation by using the posts on this site as a starting point to have characters / NPCs who may not otherwise interact to do so. Short or long doesn’t matter, but use these as a source or a topic to talk / interact on in RP sessions. Next, help others, try to gently pull people in via inviting people into scenes. Finally, help get ideas rolling be constructive, be a sounding board providing feedback on pros and cons and help refine and build ideas for play. Don’t be afraid to be wrong or look silly, just create.

Why is there a lack of participation?

We did a survey last year about participation. I have discussed the results at some point with the staff and I don’t think the situation has really changed that much. One of the biggest issues is that people don’t have a lot of time to sink into role playing and if they do, they may not want to role play here. It’s unreasonable to assume everyone with time is going to really become a devoted role player / writer here so I largely classify this as an unfixable problem. We cannot make people have more time and we cannot dictate how people should spend it. I myself have very few bits of time to string together and real life often gets in the way.

The other issue the survey brought up was about the games and playing; there is a feeling that the lore is at times impenetrable and there is a general enthusiasm with plots but a general inhibition or hesitation toward posting. People who are here who have a lot of good ideas, want to role play, are even talented at role play, but have no idea what to add to a game. This timidness toward being wrong or somehow screwing up a game is a huge factor, the second of all factors for people not participating (the biggest being time).

What do we do?

What I’d like to do is to use this site as more than just a collective history or creative narrative to add spice and color to the setting. I would like to use this to provide background that then people can use to base role playing on. So we have some recent posts about the Solas Tempus Marines and what their training is like. As an example, we have a lot of military characters and they could talk about or comment about the marines and their training in Finnegans (good or bad). People could NPC a group of marines for character to interact with or even make a marine character to play. This provides a place to go for shorter (or longer) role plays with characters that may not otherwise have a reason to interact. A drunk marine in Finnegans being an asshole and provides a reason for two military (or non-military) characters to react, talk, be brought together over a drink.

Similarly we had a recent post about troubles brewing around Chicago. This is intended as not just the introduction to a story arc (which it is) but also players in the Saevae could be talking about that and that could bring in other characters who normally wouldn’t interact. There’s a lot of fear that would be going on, fear is a powerful motivator. There would be everything from scam artists to heros showing up and with so much social pressure people are bound to get into conflicts. This is a jumping off point for side-RPs.

One of the biggest things I want people to take from this is to really try the dumb idea out, don’t be afraid to be wrong, don’t be afraid to look stupid. Make stuff up, you won’t be wrong. Often the crap that gets made up becomes part of the story arc and there suddenly you’ve participated in the whole arc!

Pulling vs. Pushing

I also want to ask everyone (especially staff) to begin pulling. I say pulling because I don’t think it is a good idea to go and pester people to role play. A lot of people have @here and @everyone suppressed and the server muted. So ping or DM someone whose on the server that we haven’t seen for a while and invite them to do a role play. Look at what characters they have, don’t push… Don’t ping them 3-4 times in a row and then keep at them but offer… “Hey, haven’t seen you around the server for a while, we’ve got some stuff going on, maybe want to do a scene?”

From what the survey from last year said a lot of people don’t know what to contribute, so I ask everyone to try to help fix that. Be vocal with ideas, advocate for the people that you know are good writers and help them with ideas. It’s often so much easier to see ideas for other people than it is to see ideas for yourself! A lot of this is about collaboration no one has all the ideas on their own.

Writing of a Saga

I know that most of us have spent a long time crafting responses, stories, and characters over the last few years. What is on the Wiki remains persistent and can be easily exported in the event that I can no longer pay the bill. Still there is character biographical data, setting information, but not really stories of any kind, just background and source material. In that vein, I would really like to begin actual work on writing a kind of comprehensive main plot of the settings. There is just so much to write and I cannot possibly do it on my own.

As a site we’ve been going around for almost three years now, since 2016. We’ve got a lot of stories written and a lot of those stories have yet to be canonized, some of the information has even been lost when channels have been deleted on Discord and such things. I would like to really start to cobble together the saga that we’ve built, so that it doesn’t get lost forever someday. Back in the old days we had persistent chat logs on IRC that could be saved (I have a lot of them myself, still) and forum data could be easily backed up (as our forum is). In the age of Discord and many related servers (such as Slack, Zulip, or Mattermost) there is the problem of how to get the data out of Discord. The short answer is that, you can’t. I suppose one could code a bot to dump all of the Discord information to a text file, but as I can attest to with chat logs and like they are nearly impossible to parse.

I know that most of us have spent a long time crafting responses, stories, and characters over the last few years. What is on the Wiki remains persistent and can be easily exported in the event that I can no longer pay the bill. Still there is character biographical data, setting information, but not really stories of any kind, just background and source material. In that vein, I would really like to begin actual work on writing a kind of comprehensive main plot of the settings. There is just so much to write and I cannot possibly do it on my own.

In that vein, I’m asking for help in getting this ball rolling. I’m getting some of my creative mojo back after a long span of having no real creative fire left, so I don’t mind firing it up. I’m still up in the air for what would be easiest, given the prevalence of using Google Docs, I am inclined to believe that would be easiest for everyone and thus, I envision this as a folder on Google Drive that is shared and people can collaborate, write, and start things for their characters as they want to. I will have a main file for the Saga of Blazing Umbra which will contain the main story itself and other stories be satellites to that (that also stand alone). The idea is that we’ve got the actual stories of all of our characters and plots written in a narrative form, perhaps even cut-paste largely off of Discord itself.

To that end, I’ve made a shared folder on Google Drive. The link provides view-only access, since these are our stories I would like to actually add people’s editing access as needed, to protect the work from vandalism. I have also enabled version histories, so if there are changes that a person doesn’t like to their story, they can be viewed and the original is recoverable. Please comment or DM me for direct access.

Stellar Horizon Reboot

So, it occurs to me that we’re going to need to do a reboot of the Stellar Horizon plot. We have a few spots for people to join, this is going to be formatted like your average episode of Star Trek. We’re going to have a bridge crew / senior officers and a few extras. Not everyone will be required at all times, and people can go in and out of scenes as needed.

We’ll be doing a storyline. We have two right now that we can do, that I am planning to run myself. So, right now, I know for sure that we have no active CMO (Chief Medical Officer) as that is played by @buckethead and I don’t know if Cake is interested in being involved still, also T0l hasn’t joined the server either to be involved. It has been a while, we’re going to start in-space after the ship goes through Janus Gate and is on its mission and go from there.

Looking to start this story by sometime around this upcoming week.

Pushing the Investigation

We are looking for 2-4 players to participate in a 2-3 hour long session that will be scheduled in about 2-3 weeks from now, to allow me time to finish with the semester. We will be playing off of non-combat areas of mental illness, classic horror concepts, and a much darker universe than we’ve been going with before.

So the introductory thread for the Angelic Sins setting was supposed to have been over and done with years ago. However, we have been having trouble getting players to consistently want to participate. We’ve tried to do it on the forum and such since times don’t like to add up so people can do things. However, this is a plot that I’d like to finish. At this time, I’ve put out a call for players to volunteer for an as-yet-unscheduled event in Angelic Sins.

We are looking for 2-4 players to participate in a 2-3 hour long session that will be scheduled in about 2-3 weeks from now, to allow me time to finish with the semester. We will be playing off of non-combat areas of mental illness, classic horror concepts, and a much darker universe than we’ve been going with before.

If all participants are able, we can arrange for the session to last longer, but right now I’m looking at doing several short sessions that deal specifically with this in an episodic kind of way. Rather than trying pack an TV style episode of content into the game, these will focus on one or maybe two concepts important to the whole plot, closer to a small MMORPG Quest style of episode.

If anyone knows any players who may which to participate who may not be on the server, please invite them and see if we can build a following.