I. Jaunt Vote Results

Our October/November jaunt will be Night Falls on Yensid. There was very little interest expressed on the poll in a walkabout specifically for this jaunt, so we’re presently thinking about not holding one; please let us know ASAP if you think you will need an alternate.

II. Mingle Length

Now that we’ve had most of a jaunt’s worth of 10-day mingles for players to interact with, we’d like to check in with y’all on how you think that pacing works out. Is it too slow to get anything done, too much of an infodump when the mingle finally ticks over, just right? Is there another issue with this pacing that we haven’t thought of?

Jaunt pacing is an eternal struggle to get right, so we’re open to feedback on how best to wrangle mingle length. The one thing we really can’t do is go any longer on mingles than 10 days, as that pushes past the point where movement is necessary to keep people engaged.

III. Skills

The last SOTG generated a vigorous discussion on the nature, size, and comprehensibility of our various skill lists. We’re still feeling out a lot of the possibilities here. At the very least, when we do make new skills in the future we can endeavor to give them clearer and more widespread prerequisite skills - thanks to Fran, Blue, and Thomas making a stats sheet for the Acquired Skills spreadsheet, we have a much better idea of which current skills are the most popular and what makes for logical additions.

Regarding the sheer number of Favor skills, it is worth noting that any given character is only eligible for a small handful - there may be over forty skills on the list, but the vast majority of those are limited by Arcana marks. It’s been suggested that we add a comment index to the Favor skills page, listing what skills a given Mark makes a character eligible for; would you find this a helpful addition?

Other suggestions included the ability to un-take skills or even entire skill trees that a player’s come to regret having their character keep, and expanding the capabilities of existing skills rather than continually adding to the list. We do like the idea of being able to swap out individual skills, but not lopping off an entire line of skills at once, and would love some input on how to best make such a mechanic work. As to the skill lists themselves, the original intent behind their periodic expansions was to ensure no player ran out of skill options, as well as to reward players’ efforts to dig into the inner workings of Liminal Space and the network (that being the effort that brought us the Liminal Energy tree); sometimes expansions to existing skills will be feasible, but other times, we’ll still want to do a rollout of fresh skills.

Finally, another popular suggestion from the last SOTG was to offer new players a free liminal/psychic/combo/favor skill for hitting standard AC during their first jaunt. This would help ease the learning curve that new characters face in comparison to more established characters and give them a chance to catch up. We rather like this suggestion, and plan to implement it with the next app round. We will grandfather this back to the start of the Pogemon Jaunt--any earlier and the character would have been accepted in time for the triple skill month in celebration of the start of Phase Three. A toplevel will be added to the Activity Check page for reporting these skill gains.

IV. IC and OOC Orientation

One of the suggestions we got for helping orient new characters was to have a regular IC psychic post explaining ‘this is what you’ve just found yourself in, here’s what to do now.’ We think that’s a fantastic suggestion, as was the follow-up of not burdening one player with the constant expectation of posting it and instead having a base template that various characters can embellish upon.

To that end: How should we handle sign-ups for posting this IC explanation, and what information needs to be included in it? Something like this has been suggested before by veteran players in the past, and several characters have been willing to ICly contribute to this list in some sort of rotation system. The problem lies in the fact that at the time this was first mentioned, few people were either unwilling or unable to ICly offer up some more important meta details to newcomers, whether it be from OOC business making it difficult or simply the nature of a particular character leading to secrets being held.

This leads to issues such as not knowing what to expect from certain arcana as a newcomer (which arcana are generally seen as friendly, which are bad news, etc.), certain recurring “other” beings rarely being mentioned as being dangerous or important (the Eldritch horrors, the Illuminants, the Familiar Faces, the Starmovers, etc.) Furthermore this makes it difficult for many new players to adapt to scenarios the established players have handled before (see: the current Jaunt). We can easily throw together a Google doc with the basics and make that available to the poster rotation; the posters themselves can work out a bi-monthly rotation. We would be happy to hear your thoughts on this, and what your characters can contribute, if anything, to the cause.

Another suggestion was for a buddy system, with Synodiporia oldbies signing up to be paired with a newbie, whose character they’d thread with and help get used to both liminal space and the Jaunts. We like this idea in principle; we just need to figure out how we’d work it. It seems clear to us that the buddy system would be difficult to formally institute ICly, but it could be possible to work OOCly. If we do it, we might do what Miso suggested and make it volunteer-based where the oldbie volunteers would be put in a pool to be drawn/matched from for newbies who sign up for a buddy. Time zones, general availability, and multiple ways to contact them would be provided for volunteers on both sides--and possibly if they think they’ll be going on the walkabout or the main Jaunt, should the upcoming Jaunt have one. We’d put a new one up each app cycle, because availabilities do change, and link them at the top of the intro mingle.

Yet another suggestion that we as mods are interested in going with would be to have, as part of the plotting post for Jaunts, a sub-thread specifically for new players (and possibly new characters for old players?) where they can let people know they’re looking for people to plot with, so that those new players don’t get lost in the shuffle. Would players be interested in that?

V. Conversation Space

Finally: should Arcana introductions be the first thing that incoming characters thread? On the downside, it often means characters do not know what questions to ask, and when they are asked what the conversation was about, they have to wait until it’s done to answer, and with the mod team busy, that sometimes takes a month. On the other hand, is there a more sensible, intuitive time? Intro mingles happen after apps have closed and before a Jaunt begins - the least busy time in our modwork cycle, and the most regular, memorable moment so that we can make sure everyone gets their thread. Likewise, certain facets of the game exposition are most easily delivered up-front, before anything else happens. Before deciding on this, we’d like to hear more player feedback. Right now, the alternatives we are proposing are:

1) keep the conversation space timing as it is.

2) a conversation in the moment of time after an intro mingle and before a Jaunt (as early, regular, and low-mod-activity as possible, while not keeping players held up in their initial CR threads & giving them time to formulate questions). This has the added virtue of happening right before players are occupied by the immediate concerns of a Jaunt, so if the conversation takes all Jaunt to thread, it’s still natural that they might be kept busy with no chance to discuss it (especially if they infiltrate) until they get back into Liminal Space.

3) Give every incoming character a token they can spend at the time of their choosing to have the Arcana conversation when they are ready for it. This lets players time the conversation as they like, but the timing may be awkward for the mods, and while it lets the new characters ask their questions strategically, kind of like the World Series did, it’s actually got more player utility than what veteran characters have had - this can be bad, if players find it unfair, or good, as it gives new players a better way to take an active, important role in metaplot, which is one of the problems we’re trying to solve.

Your thoughts, critique, and patience are, as always, appreciated. Right now, we’re just discussing these options, but when we’ve heard your feedback and worked out the new possibilities, we can post a poll and put it to a vote.

VI. New Business

Did we miss something? Is there a new wrinkle in the land of Synodiporia that needs to be brought to our attention? Please let us know!