World of Darkness World of Darkness: Attrition - Status Update

[Vivi OOC]

First, I would like to welcome one of RPG-Post’s most prolific writers, known here in Attrition-land as “Owns-The-Night,” to our Moderation team. You may send him your condolences- err, congratulations, via PM. Preferably with some flowers, and a nice bottle of rum for those long, lonely nights of experience auditing.

I would also like to welcome Dave back as our self-proclaimed “Over-Mod.” (That’s what he wanted to call himself, so we’re humoring him, ) As one of the founders of the WoD:A forum, he’s been one of the biggest contributors of resources and Storyteller expertise, and we’re glad to have him back with us.

Last night, the four of us (Dave, OTN, Jess, and I) sat down to have a little virtual get-together and hash out the details of how we’re going to re-work and revive the forum, and what follows is an explanation of some of the decisions we made.

The first order of business was to determine, frankly and openly, whether or not we intended to continue keeping Attrition open. With several players backing out, it wasn’t clear if even a complete overhaul of the structure and a concerted recruiting effort would be enough to make maintaining the forum viable. Since none of us really wanted to see everyone’s work and creativity wasted, we decided to give it our best shot.

The next issue was, admittedly, the thorniest. We all wanted Attrition to be active and engaging again, but finding a consensus on precisely how to achieve that goal was not easy. We discussed the merits and flaws of the original proposal, a partial reboot which would involve using the characters’ current XP totals to recreate them, and rewriting the canon history as a group. We also considered the “fast- forward” method suggested in the poll thread, as well as a complete reboot of the forum. We were obviously very reluctant to erase all the work and effort everyone had put into their characters and stories over the past couple of years, but it was apparent the current setup and minimal playerbase would not be sustainable over the long-term.

In the end, we had a majority vote, and the consensus was to reboot Attrition completely, and start from scratch, while all of the previous contributions would be preserved in an Archives section for reference and reminiscence. It eliminates the potential confusion of whether or not certain things happened, allows for new players to easily get involved without being required to read thousands of posts to know what was going on, and gives players the chance to make any adjustments they desired to a given character’s mechanics or backstory, or just create something completely different altogether. Nothing has to be re-hashed, and everyone will start on relatively equal footing.

Following that, the other topics moved relatively quickly.

We decided on a couple of rules changes, both of which are fairly minor. New characters will start with 50 bonus XP, rather than 20, which is roughly half of the average total of the previous generation of characters. Simple merits are being modified slightly, so that a player must purchase the first tier of multiple tier merits before being allowed to purchase the next, e.g. buying Striking Looks ll before Striking Looks llll. This is still less expensive than the standard costs for merits, but prevents skipping over to the highest rating. We also decided to institute an “official” format for the XP logs in player profiles, to prevent any confusion in rewards or allocation, and general guidelines for time-limits will be included with ST plots to keep them from stagnating.

Additionally, we agreed that overall, we need to be more committed to keeping at least one or two plot threads active on a more regular basis, and be more active as Storytellers. The Rules will be revised and made into a more streamlined document, and character submissions will be a single PM sent to all four of the current Moderators.

Some of these changes are very big, and some fairly minor, but we’re going to be very busy getting everything organized before we start actively recruiting from outside sources. We will, of course, be more than happy to answer any questions you have about these changes, character submissions, what’s up next on our agenda, or anything else WoD:A related while we take care of all the details.

Thank you all for being so patient with us, and for helping make this forum such a huge part of our lives for the past two years… and hopefully for several more!

[Vivi OOC]

As of this moment, the Character forum has been completely cleared out to make way for new submissions. All of the old character profiles have been sent back to their respective owners, copied and returned as accurately as possible. (Those using HTML markups will find their tags and associated code left intact.)

We hope to see many of these resubmitted!

Next on the agenda is an official revision of the rules, to get them out of "first draft" mode and compile them into something a little more unified. Once that's finished, it will be posted up and World of Darkness: Attrition will be officially open for character submissions.

Depending on schedules, that should happen over the weekend, so if you've got a character concept rattling around in the back of your mind, you don't have long to wait!

[Vivi OOC]

The Rules have been officially posted in the Resources thread, which can be found here.

Character submissions are now officially being accepted, and those already submitted are being reviewed! If you would like to submit a character for approval, please send your background writeup, sheet, and creation summary (with XP and BP expenditures) to all of the current moderators in a single PM. Please use this pattern in the subject line of your PM, to help us keep things organized: [Attrition] Vaughn, the Ventrue Viscount (or whatever your PC's name is.)

Thanks, and we look forward to seeing your submissions!