oocinthenight | GAMEPLAN: NOVEMBER

GAMEPLAN: NOVEMBER

Hey there, Beacon bits! Thanks for hanging out with us for past month!

As we head into November, please make sure to respond to the activity check if you haven't already! We do not post warning lists, so please make sure you've posted!

november 1-15

The month will begin with our intro log on November 1! Welcome, Beacon bitties! You've come at a great time, given that the entire town's been waiting for your arrival with baited breath. What's going to happen with... the ferry?

...But you'll be waiting a bit longer, unfortunately! 😃

What we will tell you is this: The ferry will arrive safe and sound, almost as if it had never crashed in the first place... Almost. All newbies and supplies will be delivered as per usual—the typical store restocks, that is. Rastus can't exactly order items when the ferry's fate is up in the air.

After the newbies arrive, it's not long before another mini-event is on the horizon! Light Up the Night will run November 5-7, and it'll kick off with an NPC post from your local Lighthouse Keeper! In honor of the earthly celebration of Bonfire Night, Robin will be asking the citizens of Beacon to spread the wealth a bit. That's right, it's time to take torches from the bonfire and light up the town! They've got all those torches just sitting there in the bonfire, so she wants everyone to put them to use!

While Rastus will readily be handing out torches for permanent placement around town, you do still need to report torch-taking and placement to the item requests page so that we can update our records accordingly. More info on how the event will work will be released once it's a bit closer.

Weather-wise, winter is steadily approaching and is due to hit on December 1! Until then, it's the usual cold, blustery, drizzly weather with some bouts of heavy fog mixed in throughout the month. Take a look at the calendar to see when to expect the fog to roll in.

And lastly for the first half of the month, we've got our TDM and CR meme to look forward to on November 15! Exciting stuff. What a relaxing start to the month, don't you think?

november 16-30

But, ha ha ha, November's not going to stay relaxing. Things have been getting a little too cozy around here. Can't have that.

November 16 will kick off our Enter Mr. Sandman event, which entails... A harvest feast! Wowie! Overnight, and somehow without anyone seeing, the forest spirits will set up a long, long table in Bonfire Square, piled high with all kinds of delicious goodies. There's enough seats for everyone in town, so take a seat and tuck in!

...Or maybe that's not such a good idea.

Characters who partake at the feast will find themselves quite sleepy afterward. Once midnight hits, anyone who has eaten any food from the feast will slip into a coma, unable to be awoken by any attempts from the outside world. Those tryptophan myths really do check out, huh?

Comatose characters will "wake up" seemingly just a few minutes after they've conked out, and they'll find themselves... in the sunshine? It's the same Beacon they left upon falling asleep, but now, the sunlight is bright overhead and songbirds can be heard throughout the forest. The bonfire has been replaced by an ornate fountain, like a proper town square, and there's no lighthouse out on the peninsula. Strange.

Meanwhile, characters who have not eaten from the feast are still awake, unawares of what their sleeping counterparts are up to. Probably for the best, really, as awake characters will have their own troubles to deal with. It's awfully convenient for some certain more hostile forest spirits that a good chunk of the town is defenseless...

OOCly, here's the skinny: Enter Mr. Sandman will be a horror event that splits the town into two groups: The comatose characters (who will get to explore dream Beacon of the past), and awake characters (who will have to defend the town from the green-eyed spirits). Both options will include heavy horror elements, but in different ways.

Comatose characters will be treated to quieter, psychological horror as they learn more about the town. Players/characters who enjoy customized headgames, solving mysteries, and working in small, assigned groups to explore and learn about the plot, this one's for you. This is essentially the "opt out" for the more intense, potentially triggering, more physically-oriented horror that the awake characters will experience.

Awake characters, on the other hand, will be getting body horror and gore (and then some). Defending the town will take some serious effort, and it will be very dangerous. No one stays awake without paying the price. Players/characters who enjoy action, combat, violence, monsters, free-for-all planning (no group assignments, we mean), and physical status effects should consider staying awake through the event! In general, do you want us to fuck your character up? You've come to the right place. However, keep in mind that staying awake does mean your character has a very high chance of dying or at least suffering some serious maiming.

Time-wise, this event is a long one! It'll finally wrap up on November 29, but how it will end depends on you all. :) The Lighthouse Keeper's all out of deus ex machinas after the whole ferry incident, so don't blow it!

As a final note: Sign-ups for this event will go up well in advance, so you'll have plenty of time to plan!

ooc news

We have a couple of big changes to announce! So, let's get down to business.

First of all, we're going to make some changes to our explorations system, and as we work to get that system revamped, we are closing the exploration page entirely until November 3. This means we will continue with any explorations currently underway, but no new exploration requests will be accepted from now until November 3.

More information about the changes will be released when explorations open again, but in the meantime, here's the gist of what you can expect:

We're ditching the expeditions/minor explores system. Instead, we'll be simplifying it to just general explorations without categories, which some of you may remember from when the game first opened.
We're implementing a "time limit" to keep explores easier to track. With the current system, it's a bit tough for us to keep track of what's active and what's not! So, once a mod response is sent out, players will have one week to tag us back. If that week passes, we'll be considering that exploration closed. To be extra clear: the time it takes for us mods to respond to your exploration is not included in that time limit. The timer starts fresh each time we tag you back.
Similarly, explorations over 2 weeks old will be wrapped in the next mod response. This is to prevent explorations from dragging on for too long, which will slow up our system, but more importantly, it'll make for awkward timing issues in the game! We don't want to leave players waiting on exploration outcomes to be able to engage with the rest of the game.
Characters may only embark on one exploration at a time, no matter how small. Pretty self explanatory! One at a time, please. If you play more than one character, you may send them on concurrent explorations, but keep in mind that we might deny exploration requests like this to give other players a chance to hop in.
We'll be instating a limit of 8 total explorations before we close the queue to new submissions. To explain how we drummed up that random number, here's a look at how things will function behind the scenes: Explorations will be assigned to an individual mod to handle from start to finish, which will help us speed things up as... well, how we were doing it before isn't important, but it clearly wasn't working! Assigning explores in this way, as well as limiting each mod's individual workload to 2 explores at a time, will allow us to respond to players in a much more timely manner.

And that's the sum of it! All of these changes might sound a bit intimidating or disheartening, but the whole reason we're overhauling the system is to lighten the workload on ourselves so that we're not holding up the bus! Streamlining and efficiency are two of our big goals behind the scenes, and the current explores system wasn't working as intended. So, we're trying something new! Please feel free to ask questions below, but do remember that the new system will officially start on November 3, and more information will be available then.

•••
Next, a quick message from mod Leu: due to several factors (none of them are anyone's fault, don't worry!) I have decided to step down— or rather, sort of diagonally?— from my post as "head mod". I'll now officially be known as the "vice mod". My primary duties will remain much the same as they are now; apps, faq, npcs, plot, and so forth. Nothing will really change on the player side of things, just on the mod end. To be clear, I am not leaving the mod team, just moving into a slightly different role. Mippins is now the sole head mod, though you can still feel free to ask me questions about the game or come to me with issues and concerns. Thank you for your understanding!

•••
And lastly, we have some small modly updates! These are features we've implemented over the course of the month, though none of them were big enough to warrant a whole-ass mod announcement on the OOC comm. Instead, these updates as well as any other future updates will appear in the gameplans for the month! So, here's what we've got:

The player plots page has been updated to better explain what exactly counts as a "player plot".

We've created a new FAQ offshoot page to house questions asked over the game's Discord server! This feature was requested by some players on our recent HMD, and we're excited to roll it out! Players asking questions over the Discord will now be required to post their questions/our answers to said page so that no one outside of the server is left out. This page can be found linked at the top of the FAQ page.

Reminder! If your character has taken a torch from the bonfire for exploration purposes, make sure to either have them return the torch or let us know where they've permanently placed it! The torches currently in use can be seen here, and you can also find this spreadsheet linked on the page.

In addition, please remember that characters must request a torch via the item requests page in order to count having that torch as game canon! This applies even if you're just using the torch for an explore; stating in the explore itself that you have a torch doesn't count if it's not logged on the item requests page.

Reminder! If your character is in charge of a player project, please give the page a read to make sure your project's info is up to date! Some of the projects are still listed as works in progress, and we want to make sure the info on the page accurately reflects the state of the project! The player responsible for the project is also responsible for keeping us in the loop with regard to updates.

the tl;dr

November 1: Intro log
November 5: Light Up the Night begins
November 7: Light Up the Night ends
November 15: TDM; CR meme
November 16: Enter Mr. Sandman begins
November 20: Reserves open
November 22: Reserves close; Apps open; AC begins
November 29: Apps close; Enter Mr. Sandman ends
November 30: AC ends

QUICKNAV
comms	\|	network • logs • memes • ooc
pages	\|	rules • faq • taken • mod contact • player contact • calendar • setting • exploration • item requests • full nav

GAMEPLAN: NOVEMBER

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