Manchester Honors OOC

Just a little note to let you know that Dori is bringing in her third character, Adrian Miller, a muse. Cailin is also bringing in a new character that some of you may recognize, Breeze Tavern, a vampire. Breeze will be the librarian and House Naur's counselor. Sadly, Cailin is dropping Autumn. So please update your friends list here and get to plotting with the newbies!

Hi, everyone!

I just wanted to let you know that today begins the fall semester for Alden University. Not every class will begin today, but by the end of the week each class will have had its first meeting. I encourage you to make up some sort of schedule for your character. It doesn't have to be coordinated with anyone else, as there are multiple classes being taught by multiple teachers at different times and days.

Also, if you haven't seen this post about your character's class load, please read it and adjust your character's classes. Remember that each Freshman should be taking Appreciating Paranormal Diversity, either in their first or second semesters.

There will be some fun activities coming up in the next month, so we look forward to those as well as a game-wide plot.

I have updated the list of sports with the months in which their games/competitions will run. They will compete against other houses for the first couple of months and then go national to compete with other Supernatural schools the last month or two.

Just FYI, we seem to be experiencing some trouble with people being spontaneously removed from the community without Mark or I doing the removing. If you find that you cannot suddenly see the posts or post to either the OOC community or the RPG community, please let us know and we'll get you put back.

As the game has progressed we have had several people ask us about the world surrounding Alden University and how the interactions between humans and supernaturals is affected. Here are a couple of points everyone should be aware of:

The Supernatural World vs. Humans
Humans have known of the supernatural for a very long time; practically as long as they have known about themselves. However, in centuries past, the supernatural community in general was very secretive and tried to keep themselves hidden, because of reigning persecution. It was around the 1960s, that much of the violence and persecution began to lessen, which gave the supernaturals a sense of security and caused them to expose themselves. Van Helsing, witch hunts, etc. were all very real things that happened to the people in this world.

They are citizens of their respective countries, but have very few rights in the United States- other countries have different rules and laws regarding the supernaturals. They may own houses and have jobs, they may own businesses and have families, but they may not vote, and they are discouraged (sometimes violently) from mixing with human company. A supernatural and human marriage is illegal. Supernaturals are feared for their powers and differences and treated like savage minorities. Some humans don't mind them, and may even like them, but the majority of the humans hate the supernaturals and fear them. The supernaturals are segregated from humans, they have separate churches, schools, restaurants, bathrooms, drinking fountains, etc. Humans are discouraged from using supernatural facilities, but they aren't as heavily discouraged as supernaturals are from using human facilities. Because Alden is a predominantly supernatural school, the facilities surrounding it are either primarily supernatural or allow both humans and supers to use them but have separate areas for each. Obviously, some of the more prejudiced humans would have issue with this, which causes problems the closer facilities are to the borders of Manchester.

Alden's Houses and Their Purpose
The Houses were formed to house supernaturals of like nature together, form bonds and create teams for inter-University competitions. This would ensure sound body as well as sound mind and create a healthy sense of sportsmanship and team comradery. The Houses were divided using the 4 most basically recognized elements: Air, Earth, Fire and Water. Humans were placed in the Houses based on their western birthsigns.

Arvandor- The ‘Air’ House. Celestials, Extraterrestrials and supernaturals that move through the air, Faeries, Pixies, Banshees etc, are housed here.
Kemen- The ‘Earth’ House. Forest dwellers and plains dwellers, tree spirits and giants, hobbits and dwarves, centaurs and satyrs…all those who live upon the good earth itself, or are a part of it, find their home here.
Naur- The ‘Fire’ House. All those creatures you prayed were fictional…Vampires, Dhampir, Werewolves and other Lycans, Exotic Djinn, Demons…they all lurk in House Naur.
Shae- The ‘Water’ House. The spirits and supernaturals of the sea, rivers, lakes, marshes, etc live here. Merfolk, Selkies, Sirens, Naiads, etc.


If you have any questions or need further clarification, please let us know! Thanks!
♥Mark & Ally

Hey everyone!

We know that the classes taken at Alden are not the most important aspect of this game. However, we would like to bring some points to your attention so that you may adjust class schedules accordingly. The fall semester at Alden will begin August 16th.

1. Your character's major probably doesn't require a slew of supernatural courses, their focus each semester should be on their major, not the supernatural courses offered. Unless, of course, your character is majoring in Supernatural Studies. Please be sure that your character is not taking more than two supernatural courses per semester.

2. Please be aware that most students take five or six classes as a maximum. More than this requires studying and homework pretty much all the time, leaving no time for extracurricular activities, especially a job. However, they should be taking more than three classes per semester, excluding the summer semester.

3. Each Freshman is required to take Appreciating Paranormal Diversity, either their first or second semester. If your character is not a Freshman, we can assume that they already took this course.

I will be making a list of the supernatural classes each student is taking along with the teachers for those courses. You may decide which teacher teaches your student's class if more than one teacher is teaching the course.

I will also be making a list of majors, so that people know which classes their characters might have in common with other people taking the same type of classes.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please let us know!

Hey guys!

We have four new characters to the game! Please update your friends list here. Dori is bringing us a new faculty member, Meda, a kitsune. Jenni is bringing us a new student, Takeshi, another kitsune. I have a new character, Micah, a werewolf. And Mark has a new character, Dano, a werelion.

We would like to announce that we are lifting the limit of characters to 5. Not many of you are even close to that, so it's probably not that big of a deal, but Mark and I are happy!

We also have a concern about OTA threads that are going unanswered. I have a thread that has been up since July 15th that hasn't been answered. This is not a "poor me" rant. There have been others who have had OTAs go unanswered so long that they've taken them down. We are happy with the level of activity from most of you, but what concerns us about the unanswered threads is that if it were a new player and their thread went unanswered for over a week, that would be a very poor reflection upon us as a whole. I understand that your characters might not fit into every scenario put up under an OTA, but this is a game that is meant to be played, and not just with the people you are friends with. We are by no means trying to get on anyone's case about this, we just wanted to bring it to your attention in case you were unaware.

We really appreciate you all!

♥
Ally

Okay, so after reviewing everyone's answers to our question about the chat, it looks like Tuesdays and Fridays work best for everyone. We're also split about equally between PST and EST. So here's what I propose:

1. Friday June 18th @ 6pm PST/9pm EST.
2. Tuesday June 22nd @ 6pm PST/9pm EST.

Do either of these days work for any of you?

If we had an AIM room that was constantly open and available for anyone to chat, or if I opened a chat every once in a while and invited the people I saw on my BL would that work or would it just get annoying?

Keep in mind, this chat isn't important or for anything more specific than getting to know each other and possibly discussing things and plot points you might want to accomplish with your characters. If you have growth or development points in mind, this is a good way to figure out who can help you out with them.

Let us know!
♥
Ally & Mark

Geez, sorry for all the mod spamz! This is the last one for today, I promise. Even if I have another one, I'll wait til tomorrow.

We have a good group of players here. Everyone seems to have a good quality to their writing, and everyone seems to be working their way into threads well enough. BUT we also realize that we have two groups here. People who have played in games with Ally and Mark before, and people who haven't. All the people who have played in games with us before sort of know each other, but we don't know any of you newbs!

For this reason, we would like to have a group chat. We would like to get to know everyone a little better and we would also like to take the opportunity for everyone to toss out plot points that might pertain to their character so that threads might be easier to come by. It's always a bummer to throw up an OTA that no one answers, so to avoid things like this, we want to make sure that storylines happen and that everyone gets a chance to play with everyone else.

Please let us know when you would be able to chat with us by listing the following:
1. Best Day of the Week
2. Best Time of Day
3. Your Time Zone

In the interest of keeping f-lists clean, we would like to request that any OOC posts made in personal journals either be put under a cut or backdated so that they don't clutter up our friends lists.

This also pertains to any applications/profiles you may have posted in your character's journal.

This does not apply to IC posts in the character journals, just OOC posts.

Thanks for your understanding!

♥
Ally & Mark

Hey guys, just wanted to let you know that since we now have enough players to warrant it, I've created an AIM adding feature to the friend add link. It's an AIM list you can download and then load into AIM. It keeps you from having to add each person one by one. It's handy, mostly for newcomers, but everyone's been added to it along with nicknames, email and the characters played.

You can find it here.

Hey guys! I think most of you who have ever played with us have played in games where cell phones and computers were obsolete or not in use. With this game, our characters have access to the internet, email, cell phones, and all sorts of other technology.

Being that we haven't really run a game where all that stuff was used, I probably didn't explain how it works all that well within the context of the game and the journals. Allow me to do that now:

Personal journals, meaning the journals you use to post your characters, are to be used for any network/internet, texting, phone calls, announcements, journal entries, etc. that you want your character to send to another or multiple other characters. For example, if I were to have Britta text Alissa, I would post a thread in Britta's personal journal with the following (and the format is up to you, but there is no need for headers), probably behind a cut: [Text to Alissa] Hey Alissa, how's it going?

From there, Alissa would be able to respond to Britta's text. Characters are also welcome to post their thoughts about certain things, the weather, the elections, etc. wherein other characters would comment unless it was marked private.

Please make sure that your personal threads like this are marked clearly so that someone doesn't mistake a texting conversation with one being done over the network that anyone would be able to read. If anyone is still confused about how this works, please feel free to IM or email me and I'll try to further clarify! Thanks!

♥
Ally

We have two new players and three new characters to the game! Yay!

First is Jenni with Davan. Second is Matt's second character Gemma, and third, but not least is Noah with Septimus!

Give them all a warm welcome when they introduce themselves or their characters and go update your friends list.

♥
Mark & Ally

Hey guys!

Okay, so on the pages that list the characters, there are two links. One to the character's journal and one to their profile. Problem is, not everyone has their bio in their profile. If you need an example of where your profile should be, check this out: http://her-own-skin.insanejournal.com/profile If you could all move your bios to the profile section of your journals, I'd appreciate it! Also, if you don't want it to be public knowledge, please remove your personal information. All that's required there is the bio, no writing examples or anything else.

I think I fudged up on the application. While we do want to know what house each character is in, we also want to know their living arrangements. On the Housing Arrangements/Roomate(s) question, we need you to put if they live on campus or off and with whom (if they do have a roommate or two), and how many bedrooms there are. (See the housing page here for floor plans.) List their House as well. In a while I'll be putting everyone's living arrangements on the housing link on the website, so it's important that you list it in the profile. I have fixed the applications to be more clear as well!

If any of you have questions, feel free to let me know! Thanks!
♥ Ally

If you're ready, by all means begin playing! Some of us *glares at Ally*, still haven't finished our chracters completely.

Do us a favor, though, and introduce yourself because some of us don't know everyone. Put those up as a separate post in the OOC Journal.

We're so excited to get this game started! Thanks for all your support, guys!

♥ Mark and Ally

ETA: Also, because we're currently in the summer months of the school year, you may have to come up with a reason your character is still around. i.e. they're going to summer school, they have a job they can't abandon, etc. This will also give people a good reason to be coming on as we begin because a lot of new students arrive during the summer to check out their school, etc.

And because I'm not that bright, I forgot to add the OOC journal and RPG journal to the friend add. If you haven't done it, you'll need to friend them before you can see them on your flist. I've added them now if you want to do a quick update, otherwise you'll need to do it manually. Sorry! :/