Announcements (Start here)

[Xander]

Hey everyone.

With a new admin comes some new changes to the venue. Please feel free to ask questions in the Mage OOC if you have any.

Hallows

These are once again available to anyone, anytime, including character creation.

Back in the day, we required oblation glimpses to be written to avoid a mana penalty to your base pool. The problem is you get xp for writing glimpses, so you had a carrot (the bonus xp) and a stick (mana penalty) applied to the same action (the oblation glimpse). By forcing glimpses to unlock the hallow merit, we reintroduce the redundancy we eliminated with the oblation glimpse. Sure, mana won't be as rare as it is RAW, but new players won't have additional barriers to things us old hats were allowed to keep without a problem.

Signatures and Minisheets

Effective immediately, I want all scene info recorded in minisheets rather then copy and pasted on every single post.

This was a super tedious practice and I don't really 'get' the rationale behind it, so I'm discontinuing it. Minisheets should be formatted as stated here.

The only things I really need noted outside of combat are spells, equipment, and total number of vulgar spells if you cast vulgar magic. For my plots you can feel free to note this information under your private/st info section. In any prp, the storyteller may request this information be posted under the public section of the minisheets ( Matt for reference) or the player may request to DM this information to the prp st directly. Additional information may be requested by the prp st for vetting purposes, or they can reach out to me with a link to any roll they find circumspect.

Hopefully this will be less time bookkeeping, and let you play with your metaphorical cards a little closer to your chest at the same time.

A spoiler plate with all information relevant to that plot is required in each post for that plot. Use the draft function of keep an up to date version in your notepad to copy and paste across. When multiple plots are running this is much easier for keep[ing track of what is relevant where. Minisheet should still be formatted correctly and signatures should still show the state of the character in real time.

Plots and continuity

All plots will enter continuity when the final post of the final thread is posted.

I've noticed some confusion over the years on how to handle continuity when a specific plot thread closes before the final conclusion of the plot. Moving forward, all plots in mage will have a final post from the storyteller wrapping up any loose ends and stating that the plot is officially concluded. The date of that post is when the plot thread enters continuity and when you can begin referencing it in concilium and social threads. Any follow up after that post can be discussed, but no further investigation will be conducted without prior ST approval.

Hopefully these are all clear and positive changes, but with the current plots either closing or between scenes I wanted to put this up now rather then wait. As I mentioned before I'll be putting up new plot ads sometime next week, so I wanted to let people know what to expect and put in for a hallow asap. More changes may be coming, but I don't want to rock the boat to much right out of the gate.

This has been changed plots are back to following the same continuity rules as all other scenes and venues. When the scene closes it is in continuity.

[Xander]

With the venue at an all time low, I figure now is the best time to introduce some new rules and reinforce some old ones. More might be incoming in the future, but these are the ones I feel need to be stated now.

Posting rates

The expected posting rate for the site is every other day. If you need a third day you can take it under the condition you switch your posting rate to casual on your profile. Some of you haven't been following the expected posting rate for years and it will no longer be tolerated in mage. The site expectation has always been that you as the player manage your time and commitment so that you can meet all posting obligations and follow the guidelines established on the wiki in order to retire a toon. This is the absolute minimum base expectation under my watch again.

Moving forward, I'll be writing all toons out of their scenes if they go 96 hours without posting. For every scene a character is written out of this way, I'll be assessing a 5 xp fine. I'll allow a return date or a maximum of five days if you post in the posting interruptions thread, whichever comes later. Otherwise you need to disentangle your toons from their scenes before leaving the site for extended periods.

I'll also be lowering the threshold to be marked inactive from one month back to two weeks. If you want a character back after being inactive the expectation is that you have written them out of all scenes, passed any relevant info from plots to other toons via scenes or comms threads, and a note has been left on the character sheet. If all these conditions and all others listed in the general rules and mage house rules are met, the character can reenter play in the future. If any one of the conditions isn't met the toon will not return and no exceptions will be granted moving forward if the character had to be written out of a scene.

Sight and armor

Moving forward Mage will use 2E sights and armors exclusively. We were previously giving the player a choice on which version they wanted but I think 2E makes the core mechanics more dynamic and give more opportunities for investigation and interesting narration. I love 'em personally, and everyone in the venue right now is already using them so this will be the standard moving forward.

This has been overturned the venue uses 1e armour/sight as per the core book.

Sanctum and derivatives

Slight change that I'm bringing back. Hallow, Library, and any other merits derived from sanctum will be capped by the dots in size allocated to the sanctum they are stored in. The exceptions are Athenaeum which already has it's own size requirement and scriptorium, which will have it's depth and number of subjects separately capped at size dots.