GAMEPLAN: JANUARY

[inthenightmods]

GAMEPLAN: JANUARY

Hey there, Beacon bits! We hope you've had a nice holiday season, and happy almost new year!

As always, please make sure to respond to the activity check if you haven't already! December's AC is just a check-in, but you do still have to check in. We do not post warning lists, so please make sure you've posted.

january 1-15

The month will begin with our intro log on January 1! Welcome, Beacon bitties! This month's intro log will feature a myriad of New Year's traditions from... around the world, theoretically, but maybe it's just an excuse for forest spirits to pelt people with pomegranates and hang onions everywhere? It's good luck, or something. The ferry will also bring with it any specialty orders arranged with Pluto during this last Night Market visit.

The first half of the month will be relatively quiet after the intro log, but, uh oh, there's a winter storm on the horizon. A nasty blizzard will sweep through the town from January 7-11. Constant, heavy snowfall, high winds, and temperatures low as -20 F will plague the town, making travel especially difficult. At least there's plenty of snow for fort-building and snowball fights if you're willing to brave the outdoors!

Typical winter weather will resume after the blizzard is over, but the town will be covered in a layer of snow at least a foot or two deep (though plenty deeper in some places) until the spring thaw in a couple of months. The snow is here to stay! Luckily, the forest spirits in town are kind enough to provide snow removal service for all of the unlocked areas of the map. No one has to wade through waist-deep snow to get around Beacon, but all bets are off if you head out into the forest.

Another neat weather feature that will continue until the spring thaw: On January 13, Lake Red Jacket's shoreline will begin to freeze over. It doesn't happen overnight, though. The ice sheets will eventually cover most of the harbor area, though only the shallow waters near the beach will freeze, not the entire lake. The sheets of ice are thick enough to walk on without fear of falling through, but do let us know in an exploration if your character attempts to walk out onto the ice past where it would be safe to swim! Again, the lake's edge will remain frozen over until the spring thaw in a couple of months.

And lastly for the first half of the month, we've got our TDM and CR meme! to look forward to on January 15!

january 16-31

The second half of the month will kick off with yet another weather event! We have a lot of them this month. This time, characters can look forward to colorful knitted decor covering the town. On January 18, Beacon will fall victim to a yarnbomb! Whoever's responsible must've had a lot of time on their hands, as no surface will be spared. The carnage will be cleaned up by the following day, but all of the yarn and knitted decorations are free for the taking! If you want your character to find some winter wear or blankets to keep warm this season, have at it!

Next, we have our event for the month! Turn the Lights Off will run January 20-30, and it will introduce a new permanent game mechanic! The event itself is a "choose-your-own-horror" style event where characters will experience a myriad of effects at their player's discretion, all with varying severity. A list of bodily, psychological, and reality-warping afflictions will be available for players to choose from, as well as the amount of time in which they stay present. Affected characters will be identifiable by irregularities in their lanterns, and while these irregularities may flicker in and out, they're never truly gone, even after the event has passed.

More details on this new game mechanic will be released closer to and during the event, but some things to clarify right off the bat: The mechanic (and thus the event) are entirely opt-in, and it's designed to be hands-off for us mods. This means we're designing the system to have as much player autonomy as possible, given you folks the opportunity to inflict terror and mayhem on your characters to whichever degree warms your rude little hearts.

This mechanic is being implemented in response to feedback from our last HMD, so thank you to those of you that chimed in to help us improve the game! We hope that this mechanic will address the concerns brought up there.

Finally, the month will wrap up with one final weather event! ...Sort of! In honor of the Chinese New Year on January 25, a small collection of forest spirits have elected to host a celebration in honor of the Rat King's continued reign. Their majesty may be viewed being paraded around Bonfire Square in a palanquin, carried by ever-shrieking forest spirits. If you aren't sure who the Rat King is, that's probably for the best, but they came to town back in August and show up every now and then in true cryptid fashion.

ooc news

And lastly, here's our OOC announcements for the month!

• Our application process will be getting an overhaul before the next app round. We'll announce the changes once we're getting ready to open apps again, but keep an eye out for those changes if you're looking to enable friends or bring in another character! The goal of this update is to simplify/streamline the application process, similar to our recent update to the explorations system.


• Related to apps, we're increasing our total player cap to 70 and our cast caps to 7 beginning with the January app round. Exciting! That said, we want to tell you upfront that we're unlike to raise the player cap beyond 70 for any future app rounds. It's purely a numbers thing! We want to make sure our game population stays manageable for us as mods so that we won't have to sacrifice content, and we feel that 70 players is our upper limit. On that note, cast caps are unlikely to raise past 7, as well.


• We've added posting guidelines to the OOC comm to better articulate the difference between some of our game comms! The main takeaway here is to please remember to post memes to our meme comm, memesinthenight


• We're working on updating the game history page, but it's not quite done yet! Apologies for the delay and thanks for your patience, as we're still settling into our new mod team dynamic. Speaking of, as the plot of the game continues to thicken, we decided to create a sort of "mod helper" position—a game historian whose sole responsibility would be to keep track of the game plot and keep the game history page up to date. We're happy to announce that Dubs will be filling that position for us! Welcome aboard, chum. To be clear, Dubs will only be doing game history stuff and won't have access to the mod journal or any other modly things, so all mod correspondence can still just be directed to Mippins, Kit, and Danielle. We'll be updating the mod contact page soon to spell all this out, too. Thank you all for your continued patience as we get our new system in place behind the scenes!


• Hey, remember that time we were like, if you get double AC you get to play an NPC maybe? Stay tuned for deets on that during January's activity check, but here's what you need to know in the meantime: If you're interested in playing an NPC vendor during the Night Market's next visit, aim for double AC this month! Players who make double AC will be entered into a drawing for that opportunity.

the tl;dr

• January 1: Intro log
  
• January 7: Blizzard begins
  
• January 11: Blizzard ends
  
• January 13: Lake Red Jacket's shoreline begins to freeze
  
• January 15: TDM; CR meme
  
• January 18: The town gets yarnbombed!
  
• January 20: Turn the Lights Off begins
  
• January 22: Apps open; AC begins
  
• January 25: Year of the Rat celebration
  
• January 29: Apps close
  
• January 30: Turn the Lights Off ends
  
• January 31: AC ends

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