It's that time again...

[crone-mod.livejournal.com]

Hi, hi, hi. Me again. This is a very special episode¹ of the Growing Pains edition of poly mod posts.

As you know, we have over 200 players (211 as of most recent count) with 611 characters in play (unless someone drops before I get this thing up in the comm). That means we have a whole lot of new people and a whole lot of people who have been around for a long time and may need to adjust some of their play realities based on the fact that we've gotten freaking bigger than the originators of the game could have expected.

Thus, I get to bring you a list of things that don't really need a separate post, but which do need to be addressed. Let's start small and work our way through the list in no particular order:

• Affiliating with polychromatic
  YES! We're happy to.
  
  Just contact us, give a link to your community, and as long as your community is an original creation - not, say... a link to CFUD's wiki with a note that says "We're doing this, ask us how!" We're delighted to affiliate.
  
  As we did with ad_interim, we have no problem affiliating with games that share aspects of the game conceit with poly. There's enough room on LJ for all RPs and we don't insist that you drink the kool-aid² and only the kool-aid when you join this game. ♥♥♥
  
  
• The Hiatus Post
  While we try to watch tldr for hiatus posts, tldr is filled with so many posts (forty is the record for one day so far) that we can't be certain to see your hiatus post there. Please use the official hiatus post to notify us that you are going on hiatus. It saves us a lot of trouble and you a lot of stress when you see your character on the inactivity list. That doesn't mean that you can't let people know in tldr that you're going to be on hiatus. We have no problem with that at all. Just let the mods know about your absence, too. We try to see everything, but it's that whole growing pains, 600+ characters, 200+ players thing, y'know?
  
  
• Journal Deletions
  When possible, please don't delete your character journal when you leave the game or drop a character. Other characters have interactions in those journals and it's a courtesy to other players to allow them to continue to have access to that history.
  
  
• Curse Leftovers
  Unless specifically noted in the calendar, curse leftovers don't leave over. In other words, things like Cloverfield spawn? No bodies the next day. They're curse objects and are gone when the curse is over. Special events like money raining from the sky? Yes, that'll stick around. You generally are assuming correctly if you assume that a curse item doesn't last beyond the 24 (or 48 or 72, etc.) hours of the curse. If you're not sure and you're hoping otherwise, check with a mod (IM's often fastest) to confirm.
  
  
• Resident Critters
  The Underground has various nasties. Maybe you'll find a sleestak colony down there. Maybe you'll find a purple worm. Maybe you'll find something more interesting. Maybe not. It's up to you. But what lives down there, stays down there, barring curses or mod-arrangement.
  
  The Wild provides similar opportunities in a more Wildish context. Use your imagination. But like Vegas, what happens in the Wild, stays in the Wild.
  
  
• Little Courtesies That Mean a Lot
  Notifying your play partners/crew members when you make planned out (not out of organic play) major changes/traumas to your character is a wonderful and considerate thing. You don't have to defer your play choices to other members of your crew, but when someone finds out that their in-game (IG) father-figure has been tortured and murdered as the consummation of an ongoing plot, say, three days after the fact, that can negatively affect other people's play and IC reactions.
  
  It's a matter of thinking about the people your characters have formed relationships with and considering not just the repercussions for your character, but for other characters and their players.
  
  We're not making a rule telling you that you have to be considerate, just saying it's a nice thing.
  
  
• Player Communication
  We want to encourage you, once again, to have a personal concrit post for your characters and to use our directory of said posts to let people give you feedback. It is absolutely up to you as to whether you log IPs or not, and whether you allow anons or not. You may find it takes some of the stress out of HMD if you have another venue for people to use. Also, we do ask people making characterization complaints whether they've used your concrit post if you have one. If you don't have one, they've lost an avenue of discussion with you, which may lead them toward the official route sooner than they would otherwise have gone.
  
  We encourage you to do this one-on-one. We recognize that there will be instances where several people (or even an entire crew) may share concerns about a particular play or characterization choice, but from experience, (and we do try to learn from experience) we can say that people are more receptive to being talked to on a more individual level. It also lends more weight to your concern as a player when you are addressing your concern and not acting as a mouthpiece for others.
  
  
• Deleting Other Players' Posts in Your Character's Journal
  Unless they are harassing or from people not in the game, DO NOT DO IT. And if they are harassing or from people not in the game DO NOT DO IT until a mod has seen it and given you the go-ahead.
  
  Don't delete mod posts in your character's journal unless you clear it with us first.
  
  Of course you can still delete typoed posts or another player's posts if they agree to it.
  
  
• It's OOC for him/her not to...
  "It's OOC for my character not to... XYZ and I'm miserable about it."
  
  No. Mostly no. Sometimes, yes. But mostly taking the fun out of play for that degree of ICness is not needed. Yes, sometimes there's stuff within your crew you may not be thrilled with. In that case, see above and try to work it out one on one. Canon associations can range from hard to ignore to impossible to ignore. We recognize that and encourage the adults in our game to work things out like adults. Talk to your fellow player, use their personal crit threads if they have them, and if you find that those routes don't work, we are here to hear you out on your complaints.
  
  If it's not intra-crew, it's a lot easier. If you think that it would be OOC for your character not to react to a post, assume your character doesn't see it. "How? It's right there in blinking sparkling all caps! How can my character, The Human Eye, miss that?"
  
  "Network glitch. Traffic volume. FILTERING." The City is more than 600 people. In fact, after being asked repeatedly to quantify the City's population, we have updated our FAQ with a lovely formula for just how many people are in the City. (Item 27.) So, at the moment there are officially over 600,000 people in the City. They all (barring infants) got communicators when they ended up there, too. They all have network access. If you don't want to see a post, assume, quite ICly, that it was lost amidst the hundreds of thousands of other City network posts.

That concludes our Very Special Episode. We can all give thanks that the bicycle repairman isn't going to do anything naughty to us in the back room.

¹Yes, that really is the Growing Pains Very Special Episode™
² Context for the kool-aid

Comments

random, but.

[eccentric-ox.livejournal.com]

The whole deleting posts/comments thing reminds me of the other day when I got a mysterious anon comment. I thought it was from someone IG, but it seems like it was just a random anon. I had been wondering if I was the only one the anon found/got to. XD

Re: random, but.

[crone-mod.livejournal.com]

Dunno. I know it happens now and then. I had someone friend my Granny Weatherwax account seemingly unaware of how the whole idea of RP works. She apparently thought that I was just hanging out typing random things as Granny.

We like to know when people get hit with anons and non-game commenters just in case there is or develops to be a pattern of such postings.

[haleysings.livejournal.com]

So, at the moment there are officially over 600,000 people in the City.

Holy CRAP! I always assumed that there were lots of people but....that's lots and lots and lots of people. @_@ That's like...gosh, that's like how it was in India! I'll have to remember that for future reference, particularly for characters from smaller communities when they arrive....

[crone-mod.livejournal.com]

The City and its environs is assumed to be roughly the size of Hawaii, so it isn't as though the population density is India-ish. It does mean that anonymity is entirely possible, though and that network traffic is heavier than what we see just in the game.

[great-healer.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I was given the impression, when I read the cursey thing, that the smaller creatures would be left. It was because it specified that the monsters and the damage would have no trace left of them, but that the smaller ones would simply be assumed to have either been killed or to have spontaneously died. Hence, the apparent misunderstanding. :)

[crone-mod.livejournal.com]

It's just a misunderstanding and especially understandable with newer players. No harm, no foul. =)

The ongoing pattern has always been that, unless otherwise noted, curse-related objects and creatures don't last past the day of the curse.

[fun-in-here.livejournal.com]

A question about the concrit. I've done that in character journals in the past, but I've wondered if I could make an entry in my personal journal, and link off to that one, for convenience's sake?

If not, that's okay, and sorry if I missed this someplace else, it seems like something I should already know. Thank you.

[crone-mod.livejournal.com]

It's fine to have it just about anywhere you want as long as people have a way to know it exists. I keep my concrit post for all of my characters in a central location instead of trying to keep four to seven of them at any given time.

[mendaa.livejournal.com]

Re: Journal Deletions

Just something I thought I'd bring to your attention, I know there are players out there who like to reuse character journals. I've seen my fair share of "if you from GAME A, please remove this journals, I'm going to be at GAME B from now on" posts. And in cases like that, it's inconvenient for the player to not delete or screen all previous entries.

[crone-mod.livejournal.com]

That's up to the individual player. It is a courtesy to other players to allow them access to the game canon they have collaboratively created with the leaving player, but we are not legislating courtesy.

However, I've recycled journals from game to game and simply put up a post that says, "All posts from before this date are for X game and do not relate to Y game in any way."

[inyourbusiness.livejournal.com]

I like these reminders, thank you! Particularly about deleting things. I always get a bit terrified when someone I interact with drops--if they'll delete their journals and cause those records to disappear.

[crone-mod.livejournal.com]

It happens and we don't have the stringent rules against it that some games (I know one game where it's a perma-ban if you do it) but I think it's nice to remind people that RP is a collaborative effort and it's polite not to delete another person's work.

[godsentpr.livejournal.com]

[crone-mod.livejournal.com]

[i-themagician.livejournal.com]

when someone finds out that their in-game (IG) father-figure has been tortured and murdered as the consummation of an ongoing plot

H-hey!

at the moment there are officially over 600,000 people in the City

omfg, that's actually way less than I thought! You guys said over a million before, didn't you? ...But so long as it's over 9,000 we're good.

But, yeah. :O I don't have much of anything to say about what's up there because I am a good little playerling and did scary amounts of reading before joining here, but one thing I did have trouble with when I first joined AND STILL DO AS YOU WELL KNOW is with knowing what to come to the mods about and how far in advance to do so. I'm usually very much a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants sort of person when it comes to plotting, but sometimes I'm not and I want to know (oh shit, she's got a colon AND a list!):

- what's your guys' approval process for plotstuffs, anyway?
- what sorts of things can I just randomly IM you guys about and expect a more or less immediate response on, and what should I expect to wait about?
- How much of an idea should I have about what I'm doing before I come bother you guys? Like, should I already know who's going to be in the plot first?

These things are probably common sense to a lot of more experienced people, but I honestly do not know how to mine for plot and am afraid of doing something stupid. Since I'm sort of hoping to kinda plan a pretty big plot in the not-so-distant future, I would like to avoid stupid as much as possible.

[crone-mod.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, apparently everyone had a different idea on population. It is now codified since that became a necessity.

-It depends on how big it is.
-It depends on how big it is.
-You should have an idea of how many people you expect this plot to affect. Just a few people is no big deal. Half the City is a very big deal.

Okay, a little less glibly. Small stuff, we just grab another mod and once two mods have given it the go-ahead, it's good to go. Sometimes it can take five minutes.

Big stuff, we put it in the mod comm and try to get a majority consensus. Sometimes one of us will know something that the others don't and it helps to get that input. Whether it's a dropped detail, a mun-dynamic thing we weren't up on, potential wank, conflicting schedules, etc. The bigger the plot, the more details we have to be sure of behind the scenes.

The thing to keep in mind right now as applies to "pretty big plots" is that the community as a whole is pretty burnt out on the big stuff. The response to the Social Club poll indicated that people really want a break and I know that there are other players who want to plan big stuff as well.

In cases of "pretty big plots," it will help everyone if you can manage both a fairly fleshed out idea of what you want to do (since it's frustrating for everyone when we think we're approving one thing and it changes just before it hits the ground and we realize, "Hey, this isn't what we signed on for" and put the breaks on it) and can manage to be flexible on just when you're going to run it.

That's the hard part about being in a big game like this. There are so many people wanting to do so many things.

A plot that doesn't have City-wide ramifications is a whole lot easier to manage than one like the poison plot.

[ohmykethe.livejournal.com]

Thaaaaank you for pointing out the last point, right thar. Thaaank you so much, dahling ♥

THIS IS GOING TO SOUND SMALL AND WHINY BUT since I have you hear... and if this has been mentioned or asked somewhere, I apolgize, but. Where exactly is the disconnect for what is and isn't okay to ask mods about, plotwise? I always thought you didn't need mod-approval for things like... getting volunteers for small non-plots, like 'X needs people to bake cookies, can has'? or for curses, like 'X needs people to be doing Y for this curse'! Small things that won't spill over ('X needs people to spontaneously combust for this curse!'), damage city property ('Please note that as of 12:34am, the forest has been burnt down by X!') or cause massive trauma/drama ('X is going to kill everyone who replies to this post's first born!'). But if it's bigger than that, and dones any of the three things mentioned, needs mod approval? But lately I've noticed that things that I thought didn't need mod approval (some small sign-ups for curses) have noted as having them in tldr, and some that I thought should, didn't. Soooo, can you explain to me where the disconnect between the two is, plzu?

TL;DR: WHEN CAN I NOT ASK FOR MOD APPROVAL FOR SOMETHING? WHEN CAN I? HALP PLZU, IS CONFUSED.

[virginia-lupus.livejournal.com]

You know, you've asked an enormous question. Like huge. Like so big that it isn't really possible to give you a hard and fast answer on it.

Common sense is a biggie but we all know that people have different definitions of common sense.

I think people bring expectations from other games here when it comes to getting an okay for some of the small stuff. We don't want or need to give approval on things like a bake sale or throwing a party or a couple of people fighting out in Xanadu.

We do need to give approval on plots that are going to affect more than a handful of people directly. (See above for my comments on the ripple effect.) Or plots that are going to cause more than localized damage zoops, burned a shrub does not count. Oops, burned down a large part of Xanadu does.

Past that? Common sense. We'd rather have people check if they aren't sure than end up looking at stuff that appears in tldr and go, "Um... you should have run that past us first."

[sisknowsbest.livejournal.com]

The monsters in the underground/forest were actually something I was curious about. So it's up to us to decide what exactly is lurking? The ones underground are more dangerous than the ones in the forest, right?

[virginia-lupus.livejournal.com]

It's up to you to decide. I offered up a couple of examples. The forest has monsters in its depths that can be as dangerous and threatening as those of the Underground. This is player discretion.

[bright-shield.livejournal.com]

Bouncing off the other plot-ty questions, the central e-mail addy for getting plot permissions would be 'polychromatic.mods@gmail.com', right?

[crone-mod.livejournal.com]

We still get mail for that one, but the updated mail that forwards to all of the mods and is listed on the infosite (http://www.polychromatic-rp.info/modcontact.html) is mods@polychromatic-rp.info

That would be a better choice than the other, since I'm the only mod who consistently gets email from the gmail one.

[doujin-dork.livejournal.com]

Raaaaabuuuuu. That's hot.

Uhhh, nothing else? ♥

[crone-mod.livejournal.com]

Groovy. Have some cake? ♥

[pitfallen.livejournal.com]

In regards to "curse-related objects", if it's one of those theme curses where they're wearing a funny outfit, that still sticks around, right? Just to double-check? Since I've had Excel keep every one of her curse costumes she's had thus far because I can see her stockpiling them in the event of needing them for infiltration purposes.

[crone-mod.livejournal.com]

Ahh... those are curse-related objects. Per the rules, they really shouldn't stick around. Rather than asking you to retcon them out of existence, though, it would just be good if Excel didn't accumulate any more of them.