END OF MONTH: JANUARY

Announcements and updates

Happy New Year, neighbors! Is it too late to say that? It feels like December was only yesterday, but we're already coming up on WSH's third month. Go us! You'll find that our EOM posts for relaxed months will mainly be filled with quality of life improvements, reminders, and various other talking points about the game's mechanics instead of plot and setting updates, so give yourselves another pat on the back, grab your favorite snack, and get to readin'.

GAME UPDATES

In this month's application round, we gained a total of 22 new characters, three of which were apped by existing players. This brings the number of the game's players to 48/50. Per the rules, applications will be closed for the foreseeable future and will reopen when there are at least five player slots available.
After processing our first round of regains, we have decided to make some small changes to our application as well as the regain guidelines themselves to account for animal companion/pet requests and abilities. For pets: Characters will still be able to regain pets and animal companions from their character's homeworld; however, they will be permanently nerfed of all supernatural abilities and powers and will be unable to regain them for the duration of your character's stay in the game. For abilities: Players are now required to only list abilities they intend on having their character regain down the line; essentially, if you put it on your app, we will assume you will request it back at some point and we'll make nerfs as appropriate. Please list abilities that have a firm basis in the canon you're applying from (for example, if you apply as Thor from the MCU, you will only be able to regain the abilities and weapons he uses in the MCU, not the ones he has in the comics or video games).
Our Calendar has been updated for February. Check it out to get a sense of what the coming month's event structure will be like.
Our Story page has also been updated with January's events (if you call harassing a man on his lunch break an event). Check it out!
Finally, a quick reminder that January's Activity Check is nearly at an end. If you haven't turned in your Activity proofs, don't forget to do so here before the 31st.

NOTES ON FEBRUARY

We will not be doing a catch-all intro mingle for new arrivals. Instead, we encourage players to go out and meet their new neighbors by making their own intro logs and network posts to play out intros. This will be standard game procedure going forward.
February's plot-heavy event will consist of multiple parts spread across the month, similar to December's event. From February 5th to the 7th, we will be holding sign-ups for players to... volunteer their character for special involvement. Slots will be limited and RNG will be used to pick the final group of characters from the pool.
This event will cover possible body horror, surgery and dismemberment. We will give a more thorough list of content warnings when the OOC plotting post goes up, but those three things will be a tenet of the event and will not be optional for characters who sign up for special involvement. If you sign your character up, you are opting into those elements and are okay that permanent damage may be done to your character with potentially lasting consequences for the rest of their time in Santa Rosita. Please consider this before signing up! You'll have time to think about if this is something you want to deal with and to adjust your Permissions posts accordingly.

FEEDBACK

Lastly, with this being our first relaxed month, we would like some feedback on the relaxed month structure! Did you guys enjoy the low stakes of January and the opportunities for mingling we provided? Is there anything we can improve upon for next time? Let us know here. You can also use this space to discuss other areas of the game; for example, we're interested in how content people are with the pace of things. All feedback below will be unscreened; please post to the mod contact page if you would like to give us screened feedback.

That's about it! We hope you had a good January. Now that it's over, the real work can begin.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

hi mods!

when is the next cr meme? i don't see one on the calendar for this month. as someone bringing in a new character a cr meme would be handy for coordinating doing my own intro. if mods aren't planning to run one could the players put one on the meme community? i know there's an ooc planning post for the event but i'm not sure if intros and making cr plans is a part of the event plotting, if that makes sense.

thanks!!

Hi there! We had planned to put one up but hadn't quite figured out the right date! Time sure has a way of slipping away.

If any player ever feels like there is a need for things like CR or plotting memes, don't feel like you have to wait until one goes up! The meme comm is open for anybody to take the initiative and post memes like those on their own.

do I ever relate to this...... mood...

Okay, thank you! That's good to know, I will post one tomorrow if nobody has faster fingers than me!

Hey mods! Bundling together my notes for the EOM of December - sorry for not posting to that! got super busy, eek. - and putting it down here here as well for the sake of convience:

NOTES (DECEMBER)
Enjoyed the month's events! Especially it being staggered into different months so there was breathing room for mingling/getting to know the other characters/players and then doing something big/action and-or-plot heavy.

I also enjoyed the fact there was an OOC plotting post before the posts, so players, ahead of time, could reach out to others. It was especially useful for me especially since I don't plan to throw up toplevels anytime soon and wanted to touch base with potential/established CR to see if they had any plans for a toplevel and if they did what will it be and so on.

NOTES (JANUARY)
I really enjoyed the fact it was a light month. It allowed characters to get a breather from events and allow characters to do some CR-building/strengthening with chats, discussions, and other things. I'm definitely down for a breather month between heavy events and activities so the characters can unwind and both players and mods can rest after such a strong month.

I also like the fact because it's a light month doesn't mean it's a slow month. The surprise NPC post was a delight to see. While I was sadly too busy to hit it up with Daylight - I'll get a chance yet! o9 - it was fun and exciting to see the other characters interact with Harding and slowly gather clues/insight from him

QUESTIONS
Regains (Powers): For characters with multiple facets to their characters' abilities - an example: Daylight's force field generation being able to do a number of things like create multiple shields for others, move the shields at will, etc - that understandably need to be done in chunks and bits: Would it be alright for us to approach the mod team in advance of the regain period and work out a tier list of regains together if we need help figuring some things out?

I realised that while making a regain list for Noelle since her powers are pretty busted, I never did so for Daylight, whose powers are also pretty busted. I'm making a regain list now to remedy but I thought it wouldn't hurt to get the okay from you guys on certain regains + conditions for him ahead of time.