Greetings, from Valucre

Here we stand again, fellow members of Valucre, and all those who have yet to resister among us.

It would appear that while my ambitious nature tells me I show post here weekly, I am finding that keeping to that schedule is harder than it would first appear. However, I am proudly putting up a third update in the month of July, and that is doing well for myself. While I have yet to get myself down to a solid update every seven days, getting them in with less than two weeks in between updates is still a vast improvement. Just throwing it out there, not that I want to divert your attention from Valucre to little old me. ;)

Nevertheless, I will continue to work on getting more regular with these posts!

So, What's Happening Valucre?

Supernal is taking a vacation: Hey, everyone needs a little R&R, and the top brass of Valucre is no exception. He plans being gone for a week in the first part of August, and so the board will have to continue without him. Fortunately, Valucre is an environment of highly driven and self sufficient individuals, with lots of go to people who can help in the interim. Let the man have his vacation, and we'll promise to return his site to him in the same way he left it... not saying we are going to have a huge block party or anything, right??? ;)

Shine City is experiencing growing pains: Shades of Grey, who took over control of Shrine City through Genesaris' rulers and activity offers (see last update), is fleshing out a great deal of lore and potential NPCs. They are seeking active and productive members to help fill some of the roles within the city, so a collaborative effort can get underway. If you've followed Orisa Isle's Masquerade, you can see there is a potential for activity take off for those investing in their cities. Give a hand, get involved, and perhaps you may be a key player in the next big plot. Check it out in the water cooler. :)

Amassing an army to take the cold mountains: The IC thread The Looming Omen of the Ice Dragon has started out a little slow, but the promise in this water cooler thread is quite large. Many are interested in participating in the carving of the Cold Mountains within Genesaris, a massive range expanding across the continent. Much peril awaits, and there is a lot of potentially good role-play waiting to happen. 

Dragonmerge: A while back Morgan put some work into a long-term plot idea called Dragonmerge, where characters would seek out an artifact that would eventually tie them to a Dragon. A lot of work went into it, and many of the initial people backed up, so now version two has come about, seeking new players. A lot of potential character development here, awaiting your interest in the water cooler. 

Other Highlights?

As always, I like to toss out some other random tidbits of information for all of you out there- new members and old, to remember is available to you!

Nominations: Under forms and requests, you find a plethora of different forms and requests we use for the site, and at the top of this are three nomination forms: Player Highlight, Role-play Highlight, and Award Nomination. The first two pertain to our about monthly newsletter, in which you the members can nominate a particular person or thread for getting a mention during the newsletter. The last is a drop down of awards that you might nominate for someone- the one most likely to be put through at any given time is an activity award- just make sure you nominate someone who is VERY active. Otherwise, if you are unsure- get them highlighted in the newsletter!

Bounty Lists: Hey, did you see someone do something IC that you think should earn them some negative notoriety? Well, nominate them for the bounty list. Link the character profile and the thread, and explain why you think, canonically speaking, that person should have a bounty on them. Done correctly, this can add some real flavor to the role-plays- if someone murders multiple people in a city, it's only natural that someone will send bounty hunters after them!

Closing Thoughts?

As always, this is my section where I wrap up with a bit of RP advice. You can be sure that all of these will *eventually* end up in that RP guide I am always promising (and must continue to promise as this is not ready!). Today, I want to address Meta Gaming- Deus ex Machina.

Look, it can get tempting at times to use knowledge outside of an RP within an RP, but this is perhaps one of the most looked down practices in all of online role-playing. Use of information that a character could not possibly have is unfair and frustrating to those who have worked hard to maintain integrity within their role-play. Further, using it to gain advantage over others is just wrong on many different levels, especially when you use this outside knowledge, or other forms of outside help, to write yourself out of a situation that you wrote yourself into in the first place.

Dues ex machina literally translates to ‘God out of the Machine’, and used to refer to plot interference during a play by means of stage hands lowering a ‘God’ onto the stage via a crane, during Greek Tragedies. Today, we use the term to describe finding a solution to an impossible situation through means that are contrived and quite difficult to justify. There are different ways this problem may manifest- you just happen to have the right power manifest, you luckily have a character happen to be in the area when you need them most, you get ‘lucky’ and happen to step out of the way of a powerful T-1 attack by sheer coincidence.

These are highly frowned upon- if your extra character is not written to be following allow for some plot related purposes- then they need to stay out of the rp. If your character has no way of knowing the weakness of another character, they should not be having a sudden revelation that tells them what they need to do. And by no means, should you ever get out of a T-1 attack because you got ‘lucky’ (short of maybe your character having some extraordinary luck power, on their sheet before hand- that would be a rare, and odd, exception).

The use of these Deus ex machina make people rather upset, and they truly aren’t fair. If you write yourself into a bad spot, it is important that you find a graceful way to write your way back out, or considering it a lost cause. Generally speaking, it is better to admit defeat, than to create poorly written material, especially when your employed ‘interventions’ are unfair to the others you write with.

And that is my take away this week.

Until next time, you great member base.

-          Acies

“...This type of ending is a special instance of deus ex machina, known as the folie adieu, which is French for "Are you FUCKING kidding me?” 
― Howard Mittelmark, How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them--A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide