June Announcements & May Update Log

[avalonmods]

Important Announcements for June:

• Weather Report: The first week of June is gross and muggy. A pack of storm sprites has come down from the mountains and with them brought the rains back just as a heat wave hits. Get ready to get wet and sweaty for a full week, and look forward to a quest related to helping the storm sprites take off back to the mountains. Once they're gone, the weather is clear and sunny through most of the second and third weeks of June, followed by a sunny thunderstorm toward the end of the month.
• It's pride month. Characters can obtain a special spell from a number of local shops free with any purchase called Recipe: Loud and Proud! This spell causes their shoes to emit a Nyancat-esque flow of magic when they run, customizable to whatever flag they associate themselves with. Must provide your own background music, effects are only visual.

NEW Housekeeping Updates:

• None new to announce tonight, we did a buttload of updates the other day and everything else we're working on is still in the works.

Monthly Updates Summary:

• New section added to FAQ: Player-donated resources
• Clarification added to the Apply page under the "Canon Point" section- it is not new information, but added to the page in an additional location to help alert applicants ahead of revisions/rejections: "Our policy on spoilers is that your canon point or canon release date must be available to the public for at least 30 days. This has been our policy and has been listed in our FAQ since the start of the game. Failure to adhere may result in revisions (if adjustable canon point) or automatic rejection (if character or canon was introduced less than a month ago)."
• Synchronic magic was added to the FAQ under the question "Are there any types of other magic available that aren’t related to the familiars?"
• Fiona fixed the coding on the FAQ and Locations page so now it is consistent and clean. Which was a lot of work so naming her specifically!! Thank you!!
• Also thank you to Orange Crates who made our Received Applications page automated so the second you submit an app, it should update within 5 minutes exactly as you submitted it. This was live this month but I think I forgot to mention it in the official updates, so here it is!!
• The application was updated to alter the Q&A section. There are now 20 questions available, of which you CHOOSE 5 using drop down menus. This way, there's more options for you to find questions that better fit your characters or you may find more inspiration to respond to. (The original 5 are still there if you already started working on your app ahead of time, don't worry.)
• The following changes were made to the Rules page for clarification. No rules or processes were changed in this update:
  • Under Activity: added a link to the navigation in the following: The activity submission page is a Google Spreadsheet and linked in the Navigation. Added this sentence immediately following the above: The link is updated each month; if you have to request access, you are attempting to access a previous month's activity check.
  • Under Moderation: The following clarification was made in the rules regarding contact on plurk: Please refrain from sending private messages to the moderator plurk account, as we only check them when we are signing in to give announcements and may easily miss your question.
• The following changes  were made to the Application to improve clarity:
  • A "Read Me" was added at the beginning of the application to express that deliberate exclusion of required sections will result in automatic rejection (ex: if you put "I don't have that" in a required section) and a specification about moderator app processing times.
  • Under Contact Information under the Player Information section, the following sentence was added to the note We do not send application responses via Plurk, Discord, or other social media accounts.
  • Canon Name under the Basic Character Information section was changed to "Name of Canon" to more clearly differentiate from character's name after a number of mix-ups with this each month.
  • The following note was added under "Name of Canon": "Type "OC" for original characters. Otherwise, this should be the name of the series that your character is from. If from an ongoing series that is broken into parts, please use only the main series name, not the numbers (ex: Xenosaga 2 would just be "Xenosaga" because it's part of a chronological series). If the series is numbered but ultimately separate games and stories (like Final Fantasy or Persona) please list the number."
  • Name under the Basic Character Information section was changed to "Character's Name" to more clearly differentiate from the name of the canon after a number of mix-ups with this each month.
  • The following note was added under Canon Point: "Canon points must be at least 1 month old to be appable. Series or characters within ongoing series that have not been released for at least 1 month will result in automatic rejection. If it is an existing character with a canon point that is less than 1 month old but there is enough previous material to app from, you may receive a revision to choose a different canon point. Additionally: If you are apping from a phone game, please include the event name for your canon point. This was already true, we're just including it here as a lot of people seem to miss the 1 month thing in the FAQ so we wanted to make sure it's easier to find."
  • The following clarification was added under Thread Sample: "Thread must contain both dialogue samples (can be speaking or texting) and samples of physical action or internal thought." (We need to be able to get a sense of the character in the thread, and we cant necessarily do that if we don't have a clear view when things like text-only threads are used as samples.)