MANY THINGS WILL BE KIND OF HANDWAVEY as a lot of stuff is just sort of assumed/osmosis knowledge, but hopefully being able to ask about things will give you ideas for how to use or engage with them!

ANYWAY so I'll kick this off with a little bit of talk about NPCs and people can interject anytime with questions about that or anything else, honestly.

SO NPCS!! Court actually is meant to have NPCs that come and go the same way our player characters do.

:|a There were also a bunch of named ones that did random jobs around Court like looking after the junk shop and doing housekeeping and laundry and stuff like that but they're sort of out of use and were just the names.

But pretty much those jobs are available to any player characters too, so I don't think they were native to Court or anything, just the people who happened to be doing those jobs.

Since there aren't as many player characters that like to do events or do status effects and stuff these days, people should feel free to assume that higher ranked NPCs are filling in those gaps, and if you want to do a post your character wouldn't do themselves, there's always the possibility of some other contestant out there doing crazy stuff

to mess with people, or it's their objective, or what have you.

Are we just doing existing setting questions cuz I had an idea or two I wanted to bounce around

Also if there are businesses you wish Court had, I'm giving you free reign to assume someone built it if your character wouldn't. Feel free to do posts where new businesses open if it wasn't there before. WE USED TO WANT TO KEEP TRACK OF THIS but that seems to have made things a little less spontaneous.

zazzle: You can totally just be like 'WOULD THIS BE COOL?'

I definitely think if we make more buildings those should be tracked, I think it would be super confusing to not know what existed

Tho we could make it easier to create and track them. The setting has been pretty static for sure

A tag to indicate posts where a new business appeared could be a quick way to do that, and make it easier to collect and add it to setting info later.

just have an entry/top-level somewhere where people can comment if they make a new building or such?

We do have a Player Building post, if people would prefer to use that instead! HERE and it's currently linked in the Navigation.

I think part of the problem is people kept forgetting to actually add to it when court was in more expansion

Also I'm not sure people particularly have ideas for what can/should be added

I know a few times I'd go "I think there's an x building" and couldn't find it in the post so I'd start searching my threads haha

like we've made a Legend of Zelda sized village and then it's like

well that's everything that exists

There's a lot of setting info that's languishing and needing revamping also, which is also partly why I'm doing this plurk too, lol. I can point people at what exists or hash it out if it doesn't!

I think partly there's not a lot for people to "do" because there's not a lot of impetus to do anything

/nod

I say as someone whose characters are still super active, just like, there's no risk/reward or struggle so eventually people don't bother to even do objectives

This is only a slight tangent!! I'm just thinking like, maybe revitalizing or revisiting some of the core features might help

We have a creepy Theater that nobody really goes to anymore cuz nobody gets hurt?

We have Master & Servants but sometimes my characters totally forget about that cuz there's not a big enough bonus to it

Or like, badass labyrinth but characters are like "ok but no thank u"

Yeah, a lot of those features were best served when there were characters particularly prone to pushing in those ways: competing by collecting servants, going out of their way to hurt other characters, etc. :|a I'm not sure if people want the 'setting' stepping in to provide the impetus now that the character demographics is different

which if it does, essentially my first idea is to say that the NPCs players use to make event posts are certainly allowed to be sources of violence too.

Though that's of course not as good as having a more solid personality there to work against.

Nah, I mean I personally am not asking for more violence? lmao

YEAH I just mean that as an example of what could be done.

ALSO (a thing I edited out of an earlier comment), I am working on rewarding players who engage with setting stuff in certain posts with responses on those things!

That's something I want to try doing a little more, but that's kind of an experiment and not a promise to achieve any particular concrete result.

motefloat: fwiw I got super excited when Booth checking the music box out for a response, I like yelled

(Other than people being a little more curious when they see a thing)

LOL THANK YOU I'm glad!

I mean booth didn't technically top-level with poking one but... i thought it would fit...

:x I still have a couple top-levels to hit with those.

ANYHOO ZAZZLE I will definitely think more on the revitalize/revisit thing, I hope it didn't sound like I meant 'There is already a solution!' or anything. I know it comes up a lot in discussions that it feels like the M/s contract doesn't mean enough, for example.

:|a I know for some people the way it already is is what works for their characters so I don't want to like, mess up existing contracts by changing them up...?

((pure speculation now, but I wonder if having old contracts stay as they are and having new contracts do something different/come with different benefits could be interesting? Have a window of time where people can get on signing up for things how they currently are and then all new ones will do something a little different))

I think it could be interesting -- just throwing it out there and it might not be a popular idea! But. if, say, contracts longer than x ic days get a new effect, like, idk. Emotionsharing or occasional memory share or something under some circumstance

To revitalize old contracts that may feel stale or kick people into oh god we need to break this and try something else or sthing

HMmm :|a I mean speaking personally and not as a mod, I like how the old contract worked out for Shima, so idk if I'd want to like mandate a change of 'after x days this happens' without grandfathering the old contracts...

(opt-in grandfathering maybe?)

THIS GOT A LITTLE AWAY FROM Q&A BUT

all good thoughts regardless.

AN ACTUAL QUESTION is the official Mod Position on post-drop worldhopping these days just like, /HANDWAVE

because on the actual drop page it says it's not allowed but some folks don't play it that way! AND I DON'T WANT TO LIKE, RUIN ANYONE'S FUN but yeah clarification would be good because it can get weird ICly when like

a character is assuming that they can't do that (because that's at least what's stated atm as a rule) and another character is like NO TOTALLY YOU SHOULD JUST GO SOMEWHERE NICE INSTEAD OF BACK TO YOUR MURDERHOLE, MY FRIEND BOB DID IT

I would be 100% fine with "Court's just a dick to some people and won't let them worldhop but it's cool for others" to account for like, people that are only in Court in the first play to get away from their shitty worlds and ALSO account for people that get feelbads about dropping without that happy ending

BUT YEAH JUST??? CLARIFICATION??????

I would go with the 'Court's just a dick to some people' option :|a since it probably depends what motivates the character--kind of similarly along the lines of 'you can choose to have your character selectively brainwashed by Court so that they're staying willingly'-but I know that's not followed 100% either.

oops

NICE gotcha :|b!!

edited the strike-out. BUT YEAH the brainwashing suggestion is there to encourage characters to stay, and I'd say it's similar for how easy/whether or not a character can get to another world or their own. Some characters would stay or come back to Court happily even if the way home or anywhere else was always open, so for them it's like 'no need'.

Being blocked from just going where they want can be hand-waved as part of the agreement for being in Court, or some people can buy their way out, or what have you. I'd say nowadays I don't mind players wanting a kind of happy-end option; ideally they worked hard for it in Court.

I think the premise that people at court are there willingly is REALLY CRITICAL actually

So yeah I think if ppl are blocked it has to be something they agreed to

kerbox: SINCE IT WAS IN RESPONSE FROM MY QUESTION I think it was meant as "blocked from worldhopping" and not "blocked from going home/leaving in general"

so people would still be in Court voluntarily, because they could technically go home at any time (though that's not great for dead people but HAS been the rule up to this point), but not all people would be given the option to just fuck off to Stardew Valley or w/e

Cool :Y

Well i mean, that's what I mean mostly, that characters at least THINK they are choosing to stay of their own will and aren't trapped

Whether that means that means they think they willingly blocked themselves off from other options or w/e seems workable for opt in

AH SORRY rereading I think I misunderstood, I thought you were interpreting Mote's comment as "it would suddenly be a thing that people wouldn't even be able to go home without winning Queen"

but nah we're on the same page MY BAD

but y I think it would work well as a system to have it be like, "becoming queen/this much silver is YOUR SPECIFIC price of entry if you want to go to another world," and then other characters just didn't get suckered into that deal/bought their way out/whatevs

I'm good with whatever as long as it's like OK YEAH IT'S MEANT TO BE ICLY INCONSISTENT because it could get confusing before when it was a product of OOC inconsistencies instead haha

Yah, pretty much!

OK FRIENDS I NEED TO BE ASLEEP but feel free to use the plurk for any questions! I'll keep answering as I'm able until the weekend

Giving this a day bump!

I have a very dumb question: The OOC post talks about a claim post in the works, but is the application reapp method still valid right now or... how do you app/reapp at this time?

Just letting me know you'd like play some characters, and leaving a C&C with the character's journal name at the top for easy copy&pasting is enough! For new players they'd need an invite on the invite page from a current player (or be someone I know, honestly) and then they can join the OOC comm and leave a C&C

THIS STUFF WILL PROBABLY CHANGE AROUND A LITTLE WHEN IT'S FINALIZED. I'm gonna have a couple requirements for claims in the future, but for now that's all I need.

I'll invite the journals to the main comm once the C&C comment is put in.

to the player contact post right?

Yep!

(if your journals are already/still in the game, just make sure your C&C is there/still there and you can start playing)

shiny thank