Forum Suggestions
A copy was sent to my DMs also. Fun ideas and thanks for having them. A few quick clarification points.
1. The authors: we do offer this (to a minor extent). NANO and in the summer we also have a writing camp. The completed product ends up there. We also have student run year books. Players also write short stories throughout the year. These can go on the shelves. So have at it.
There is also nothing wrong with a book writing club.
As for textbooks, that is a lot to look for. Textbooks are big, detailed and often have a team to develop or are the culmination of someone's career. Won't say impossible, but a lot of work for a novelty.
2. I might need some clarification on this one. We have no plot based prizes.
Players are always allowed to run their own personal plots and adventures. Opeila and Ming being examples of moderated instances done on the player level as well.
3. Assistants. Already touched in above. We have 4 assistant roles presently to support the Profs. As for possibly requiring more assistants, the is a present unknown. If the present staff is pulling their weight and Profs state a need, we can definitely look into it.
4. Can you elaborate on what you mean by backstory checkers? Is this a program for players to help players set up their encyclopedia or is this something else?
Players are always welcome to lend new players a hand with anything. I have a feeling this might be more specific however.
There is something about ambition, how it not only propels you but also defines you.
1. The authors: we do offer this (to a minor extent). NANO and in the summer we also have a writing camp. The completed product ends up there. We also have student run year books. Players also write short stories throughout the year. These can go on the shelves. So have at it.
There is also nothing wrong with a book writing club.
As for textbooks, that is a lot to look for. Textbooks are big, detailed and often have a team to develop or are the culmination of someone's career. Won't say impossible, but a lot of work for a novelty.
2. I might need some clarification on this one. We have no plot based prizes.
Players are always allowed to run their own personal plots and adventures. Opeila and Ming being examples of moderated instances done on the player level as well.
3. Assistants. Already touched in above. We have 4 assistant roles presently to support the Profs. As for possibly requiring more assistants, the is a present unknown. If the present staff is pulling their weight and Profs state a need, we can definitely look into it.
4. Can you elaborate on what you mean by backstory checkers? Is this a program for players to help players set up their encyclopedia or is this something else?
Players are always welcome to lend new players a hand with anything. I have a feeling this might be more specific however.
There is something about ambition, how it not only propels you but also defines you.
Forum Suggestions
@Solomon Lear and @Winnie Harper
1) Well, thats true, the fact we do have NANO and that stuff, but I mean to write IN World stories, the stories being of something that would help out in ways with HiO, and it could be sort of a "job" made official in this club.
2) Well, in this case, I mean, like something besides Errands and Main Story. This would be for the top earners of the month, perhaps the top ten, whereas they get to have their own form of chaos, but as the plot team decides on this. The plots could be as chaotic as desired, and perhaps help on improving the character stories IC, but as the suggested clubs I have named in my original suggestion are Out of Character, they would not be an IC role. Just OOC, and they help design stories and plans with the current staffs we have now.
3) Understood. Thank you!
4) These people would help the newbies with strengthening their backstories, their ency, before it reaches the Index. That would be the club's main purpose
1) Well, thats true, the fact we do have NANO and that stuff, but I mean to write IN World stories, the stories being of something that would help out in ways with HiO, and it could be sort of a "job" made official in this club.
2) Well, in this case, I mean, like something besides Errands and Main Story. This would be for the top earners of the month, perhaps the top ten, whereas they get to have their own form of chaos, but as the plot team decides on this. The plots could be as chaotic as desired, and perhaps help on improving the character stories IC, but as the suggested clubs I have named in my original suggestion are Out of Character, they would not be an IC role. Just OOC, and they help design stories and plans with the current staffs we have now.
3) Understood. Thank you!
4) These people would help the newbies with strengthening their backstories, their ency, before it reaches the Index. That would be the club's main purpose
Forum Suggestions
1. I am not sure how that would specifically differ. But having someone write short stories that would be found in books in the hogwarts setting is something anyone can do with or without a club. So if a group of people got together to write stories, they can.
2. Facilitating a group of 10 every month to build a story adventure would be impossible. Try getting 10 people to agree on anything and you will see what I mean there. Also it takes awhile to make a worthwhile plot. It takes the ball planning committee about a month to prep for a ball for instance. The actual event you'll takes 2 to 3 months to complete. There is no way to make that viable.
As for offering an adventure a month, I am not creative or fast enough to make up something for players to do every month. Again these adventures take months to complete. I usually cap myself at 3 concurrent adventures. In addition, often the adventure was offered to the house rather than the 10. Finding a way to make all 10 feel included and seen specifically is hard. The highest earners may feel they deserve more attention and consideration. If for example it is July and logically the place 9 of the 10 will be is summer camp, but number 10 says they are not going to camp then they are left out. This is something I have gotten specific complaints about. Also, there was a request to know in advance what the adventure will be. Without knowing the winners I cannot know what hook or where, their counter is that some adventures are not worthwhile to them (paraphrased). In fact the complaints I got were the sole (the only) reason I stopped the MS. In the spirit of fairness (they are not scape goats nor am I looking for people to speak poorly of them) we changed rewards so the top earners are already being rewarded with prizes that hopefully are universally more engaging.
That said, there are activity based clubs (swag) as well as clubs no longer being used (dws) that ate more story-based. Having a club to run a certain plot between the members is certainly doable.
3. N/a
4. Offering to help someone is something any group or individual can do to make people feel welcome. Having a club that helps that is possible. The staff has been discussing (for a long time) on ways to also improve the new person experience. There is something that we are going to be (hopefully) releasing in the near future.
There is something about ambition, how it not only propels you but also defines you.
2. Facilitating a group of 10 every month to build a story adventure would be impossible. Try getting 10 people to agree on anything and you will see what I mean there. Also it takes awhile to make a worthwhile plot. It takes the ball planning committee about a month to prep for a ball for instance. The actual event you'll takes 2 to 3 months to complete. There is no way to make that viable.
As for offering an adventure a month, I am not creative or fast enough to make up something for players to do every month. Again these adventures take months to complete. I usually cap myself at 3 concurrent adventures. In addition, often the adventure was offered to the house rather than the 10. Finding a way to make all 10 feel included and seen specifically is hard. The highest earners may feel they deserve more attention and consideration. If for example it is July and logically the place 9 of the 10 will be is summer camp, but number 10 says they are not going to camp then they are left out. This is something I have gotten specific complaints about. Also, there was a request to know in advance what the adventure will be. Without knowing the winners I cannot know what hook or where, their counter is that some adventures are not worthwhile to them (paraphrased). In fact the complaints I got were the sole (the only) reason I stopped the MS. In the spirit of fairness (they are not scape goats nor am I looking for people to speak poorly of them) we changed rewards so the top earners are already being rewarded with prizes that hopefully are universally more engaging.
That said, there are activity based clubs (swag) as well as clubs no longer being used (dws) that ate more story-based. Having a club to run a certain plot between the members is certainly doable.
3. N/a
4. Offering to help someone is something any group or individual can do to make people feel welcome. Having a club that helps that is possible. The staff has been discussing (for a long time) on ways to also improve the new person experience. There is something that we are going to be (hopefully) releasing in the near future.
There is something about ambition, how it not only propels you but also defines you.
Forum Suggestions
Thanks. Must've missed itNicholas McCowan wrote: 19 Feb 2022, 12:43Kachow! Was linked in general announcements as well, Auri.Aurelia Notrésvace wrote: 19 Feb 2022, 12:01Not a suggestion but is the duel 12 round limit announced anywhere yet? I might have probably missed it
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Forum Suggestions
I understand, and thank you so much for answering!Dealla Prince wrote: 19 Feb 2022, 09:18ReducioA little late but to answer this, it's unlikely that we will extend posting deadlines. Reason: Duels last a lot longer than Quidditch and Broomracing matches do, due to the fact that the ending criterion before this stage was knocking out your opponents, so if people dump stat points in Stamina and Evasion (which has been a recent trend), duels just go longer and longer. There is actually still a duel from the first stage ongoing, and another one ended very recently.Lindsey Springhall wrote: 14 Feb 2022, 09:092) Lengthen the duelling posting extension to 5 days. Both Quidditch and Broom Racing have 5 days for players to post until deadline, but duelling only has 4, and one more day does matter as no matter how it can cover one weekend day or at least a Friday night (like the mod’s up on Monday morning, and the deadline will be until Saturday morning so a Friday night is covered). I am aware that some players are more active during the weekdays, but similarly some are extremely busy in RL those days. So, I suggest lengthen the extension of duelling to 5 days/120 hours instead of 4 days/96 hours. I do understand the fact that a duel usually lasts more rounds and it actually requires less time to come up with a strategy since there are less players involved in a game, but I still want to bring this up since an extra day can really do a difference and nobody wants to have their planned action void.
That's the reason we introduced the 12 round limit for this stage, which was done with clear calculations in mind. We need breaks between stages to avoid both mods and duellists burning out. If we now extend the posting deadlines, we will end up having the same issues as before, unless we set the round limit even lower, which then shifts even more power to high Stamina builds. Giving another day may not sound very much, but remember that it's one day per round, so an additional 2 weeks to each duel.
So unless we introduce some major system overhaul to make decreasing the rounds per duel feasible, extending the posting deadlines would be detrimental to the system. That's not to say it won't happen, but it wouldn't be an easy or fast undertaking.
I do understand that 96 hours is not a lot of time. That is the reason that Sports posts only require 50 words rather than the usual 200, which corresponds to 2-3 sentences usually. Perhaps if you know that you will likely be busy before the next deadline, you could pre-write your posts when you have time and just slightly tweak them before you post, which can be done in a minute or two.
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Forum Suggestions
As an addition to the new forums for NPCs- I think it would be really cool to have discord channels for the NPC schools, because I think currently, only few people know who is in which school. It could be a self assigning thing like the year channels.
Forum Suggestions
Spell / Potion suggestion:
Since there are so many genderfluid / nonbinary folk around, I think it would be really useful to have a spell / potion that allows them to change physical gender at will (preferably able to be purchased, or taught in early years, so that this change is not restricted by age).
This mechanic would make the change not permanent, only lasting a couple hours at a time, and preferably would be easy to do or get in large quantities?
It would also be nice to have a permanent spell / potion for the trans folks in here.
Since there are so many genderfluid / nonbinary folk around, I think it would be really useful to have a spell / potion that allows them to change physical gender at will (preferably able to be purchased, or taught in early years, so that this change is not restricted by age).
This mechanic would make the change not permanent, only lasting a couple hours at a time, and preferably would be easy to do or get in large quantities?
It would also be nice to have a permanent spell / potion for the trans folks in here.
ITS STILL RAINING. WHY IS IT STILL RAINING? sta • 13 | eva • 8 | str • 1 | wis • 15 |arc • 7 | acc • 9 |
Forum Suggestions
I appreciate the thought behind this and where it's coming from. Unfortunately, changing appearance to any great degree is exceptionally difficult with the existing laws of magic as set in place by canon. The two main methods through which a wizard can alter their human form are being a metamorphagus or via polyjuice potion. The former is an innate talent that you are born with, the latter an exceptionally complicated potion to brew.Draven Mirador wrote: 21 Feb 2022, 15:12 Spell / Potion suggestion:
Since there are so many genderfluid / nonbinary folk around, I think it would be really useful to have a spell / potion that allows them to change physical gender at will (preferably able to be purchased, or taught in early years, so that this change is not restricted by age).
This mechanic would make the change not permanent, only lasting a couple hours at a time, and preferably would be easy to do or get in large quantities?
It would also be nice to have a permanent spell / potion for the trans folks in here.
In addition to the complexity of polyjuice potion and the general difficulty with changing appearance at all, from a potions point of view, it's unlikely that such a potion will be introduced. Especially not in any way that makes it easy to access for the general student body, given the complexity. The potions system itself is also still under development but it likely wouldn't be equipped to deal with a student brewing and consuming the potion daily. Because of this, were it to be incorporated, it would need to be something handwaved as opposed to existing under site mechanics such acquiring potions via the homework system.
It's a nice idea but a gender changing potion really isn't in the cards at all.
The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts
Forum Suggestions
Here I am again, suggesting things:
Lore Vault
I have an idea to propose, which is preliminarily named a 'Lore Vault'.
What is a Lore Vault?
A Lore Vault is a place on the site, where students (not only staff) can propose low-to-mid level magical <insert items or paraphernalia here>. These items would be available to anyone, they aren't 'special' personal items, so much as the intent is to have a growing and expanding magical item list to draw on for thread/story plotting.
Why bother with a Lore Vault?
This is most easily answered with: it gives students a chance to get creative, propose some magical objects and things, where the staff can assess and approve/deny the proposal. Not only would this allow staff to vet any items to make sure of balance (not too powerful or dangerous, etc), but it would also give students a pre-approved list of items they could dip into for their threading pleasure.
What about ownership of creators?
That's the beauty of it, this vault (in the OOC sense of where things are applied for) would be wholly reliant on members being willing to create a community shared item list for students of any year to find something magical and fantastical to include in threads. No single creator could lay claim, beyond saying 'I made that for everyone to use', because the agreement for the vault is to have a list for all.
What about higher year students who want more 'risk or danger' with items?
That's easy enough to solve! Depending on how complex the idea is made to be, using a simple grading system - based on danger/risk/item capability - that limits items to year levels. An immediate idea that comes to mind is the magical creatures grading system:
At the moment, there's no specifics, this is just spouting an idea that I thought could have some merit.X - Mundane (1st year+)
XX - Average magical item (2nd year+)
XXX - Advanced wizards (3rd year+)
XXXX - etc (etc+)
What kind of merit?
Well, there's always been a level of limitation on random items or creations. So much so, that there's been need for consistent moderation to avoid members just 'making stuff up'. By using an actual vetted and approved magical item creation method, staff can both control what is being created and how it can be used. And the where and when comes down to the students, because they have access to the approved list to draw from.
We're hesitant to introduce custom items, what if it breaks lore?
That's why the approval system is in place. If item applications get too crazy, they get denied, and aren't added to the approved lore vault list. Not only that, but we're still an alternate version of Hogwarts, so some staff-approved wiggle room is entirely viable, surely.
But, again, if an item is too out there... it doesn't get added. Simple.
Why bother with all this?
Students need some agency in their stories. This is Hogwarts, it's meant to be about exploring school and magic. So, not only does this give some creativity to members who want to create magical things, but it also alleviates some of the pressure on staff to provide stories or events, because - hey presto - students can run a small plot using a pre-approved magical item that could cause a reasonable amount of trouble (without breaking the place)!
But this could start a flood of items and add pressure to staff loads?
Maybe initially, sure. But there's also limitations that can be put into place, to help regulate the work load. Limited item application windows, one item per person, post count restriction, whatever gives some reasonable limits to just being bombarded.
The best thing, though, is that since it's all creative lore focused, there's no systems needed. You make an item, you state what it does, you fill in some fluff for flavor, and if the staff think it's not going to kill everyone involved, add it to the list.
What about misuse?
That's always going to be a problem, yes. There will undoubtedly be some outliers who try to push things, but usual thread moderation should pick that up per usual modding duties. Additionally, the Lore Vault (and it's items) are not necessarily a right - so if you start getting troublesome members who always 'take it too far', it can be simple to implement a three strikes and you lose vault access system.
That said, though, any member restriction should be wholly reliant on limiting the 'naughty ones', not the other way around, where an approved member list is created. The point is - and should remain - to make a toy box for anyone to take something out to use for a time.
And everyone should have access. Until they break it. Then they sit out in the corner.
Anything else?
I think something like this could be a unique direction for HIO to go in, while providing some additional student excitement and wonder to pursuing magically focused plotting and ideas, outside of schooling.
Hopefully it's something to consider and implement. And I think it has potential to become something special, with a HIO-specific item list for student fun and recreation at Hogwarts.
I think that's everything. I probably missed some points, but hopefully the idea gets across.
Thanks for reading.