Eden Underground

Hello everyone!

As we're sure you noticed, we implemented an impromptu hiatus over the last couple of months due to general holiday chaos and illness. (Aeryn ended up being sick for the majority of December, on top of dealing with her retail job.) We hope that because of this, you were able to enjoy your holidays and had fun with friends and family. However, now that the holidays are wrapping up, we'd like to get back into the swing of things! Before we do that, we feel that there are some concerns to address as a group so that we can progress and make the most of the game. We apologize in advance, this is probably going to get TL;DR-y.

A lot of what we're going to say all bleeds into one another, but something that we noticed a lot of in 2018 was the amount of hiatuses that were requested. Not only were there a lot of hiatuses, but there were quite a few long hiatuses and a lot of hiatuses that were asked simply at the last minute. Since RP is a collaborative process, it's difficult to progress storylines when the collaboration slows down or becomes stagnant.

This stagnation we feel, however, isn't entirely due to the amount of hiatuses that happened in 2018. We get that hiatuses are needed — Real life is always more important, especially when it comes to work and spending time with your family. As Mods, we've tried to do our best to anticipate the needs of everyone by posting activity checks as close to the beginning of the month so that everyone has the chance to check-in with their activity. That said, we would genuinely like to know if there is anything else we can do to help make the check-in process easier, if that is something that's hampering your RP experience within the group. We'd also like to hear any feedback you have regarding activity checks and the handling of hiatuses. Some of the ideas we've tossed around regarding this issue are:

• Quarterly check-ins
• Monthly soft check-in - to see who's home, so to speak
• Characters you'd like to focus on instead of monthly activity check for all your characters
• Personal reminders (do you want us to personally remind you?)

Numerous hiatuses weren't the only aspect that we believe lead to reduced activity. It has been over two years since we instituted delayed time and set the in-game time as July 2016. While we value the group being able to explore stories and develop characters at the leisure of our writers, we agree that this is entirely too long to limit play on one month. Overall, we kind of feel that we've lost active engagement as a group, which has lead to the slow-down of thread progression. Our concern here is the issue of in-game time: How can we can keep the casual pace we need, but still progress toward the next month and not stagnate things? How can we engage you to be more active?

• Would you like to see the occasional town-wide plots, mini-plots, or events?
• Should we try short-form group event RPs? That is, responses which are much shorter in length, in order to keep the pace moving?
• Would you like to try group RPing on the Discord server?
• Would you like to see more interactive things such as polls or prompts/memes, etc?

We are currently in the process of revamping our comms and the mod journal, and would love to inject new energy into the game in this new year. To that end, we hope that you all will give us your feedback and ideas, as well as your personal thoughts on what you want from this game. What are the aspects you enjoy? What would you like to focus on? What do you want that you don't currently feel that you're getting from the game?

We will take everything you say into consideration, and are willing to make changes we think would be suitable for the group as a whole. We love the world we've created here, and that includes all of your amazing writing and characters! They make Willow Creek the magical place that it is!

Thank you so much for your feedback and thoughts and we hope you have a great new year!

Aeryn & Lana

I've cleaned and updated my CDJ (affictitious) and posted an activity tracker for my WC kids. In that post I've linked to my overall thread trackers, so if I owe you something and it doesn't reflect that, please let me know so I can get on it when I return tonight. Also linked in that post is a running list of plot ideas so if you'd like to do one with me, let me know by commenting on the list so I can add the basic idea and discuss details in a custom or other preferred method (just let me know which you prefer).

TTYL!

Aeryn

Hello all!

Well, the holiday season is upon us. December 12th will mark the one year anniversary of the first log being posted to willowcreek! Over the last year, we've gained some members and we've lost some members. We've made new friends and come up with some tantalizing stories. We look forward to even more in the coming year!

However, we'd also like to take this opportunity to discuss something we've noticed. When Willow Creek opened, we ran it in real time. Lately, we've noticed that the bulk of the action going on is occurring on a delayed schedule. Due to the pace of the game, this is kind of inevitable.

We also realize because of the nature of building plots, trying to keep up with characters in real time may be difficult. Therefore, we're asking for you all to offer your opinions and suggestions on the matter.

1. Do you have trouble keeping up with current (real time) updates for your characters because their stories are still developing in backdated scenes?


2. Would you prefer to keep the game in real time and continue playing out backdated scenes, or would you prefer to be on some kind of delayed time schedule?


3. Do you have any suggestions or ideas regarding how to handle the issue of time in the game?

Once we've received everyone's ideas and questions, we'll decide how to proceed in a way that would best suit the game.

Thanks for being a part of Willow Creek! And for those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, Happy Thanksgiving Eve!


- Aeryn & Lana

I can't seem to get away from the idea of Liam being a werewolf in some form. Before I proceed with his history, I'd like to know if anyone would have a problem if he were a hybrid of two species (werewolf/gifted)?