Newsletter 4/6/15

Thank you everyone for your patience and my apologies again for the inactivity. I have had some more personal life issues that continue to
crop up every time I start to get a handle on things. As the title suggests, the first round of changes are finally made and I will attempt
to outline them here as well as preview more of the things that are to come in greater detail.

OUTLINE FOR CHANGES TO RULES:

* Black and White Rules (no wiggle room)
* Fewer votes for approval on OCs
* More votes required for Canons
* No Original Character (OC) limit
* Revisions to characters now have a cost
* Disputes Board for easier post resolution

* Outskirts and Fog of War

* Staff Reorganization

Firstly, the old rules have been revised to make them a little easier to follow and hopefully a little more black and white. Ultimately, I
wish to make this site work a little more like the Cowboy Bebop site that I had created. There will be a lot less wiggle room and a lot less
deliberation when it comes to character sheets and staff decisions. One of the problems we admittedly have had over previous generations of
the site is that character submissions have taken forever to be approved or being picked apart with little regard for the effort that went
into the submission.

It is therefore, with this in mind, that the first change that I have made to the rules is the amount of approvals required for submission.
I am allowing organization leaders to approve or deny characters on their own. In the event that an organization's leader is not present,
the sheet may approved with two staff member votes rather than the usual three. Canon Characters however, will now require a full 4
approvals before they will be accepted to ensure that they continue to be accurate. For the moment, I have also removed the OC limit for all
members. We ask that you please do not abuse this privilege and make sure to keep all members informed when you plan to discontinue a
character.

We also now have a Revisions board which can be used whenever you want to make a change to a character that is not related to ranking up.
Any change that you wish to make to your character will now cost 1 Slaughter Point or Story Point (described in next section) per section to
be revised. If you have no points, your revision will not be accepted.

As far as other changes that have been made to existing systems, we come to the subject of information gathering and meta-game knowledge. To
combat some of the problems that have occurred, we now are introducing a new section called 'Outskirts'. These sections are specifically to
be used whenever a character wishes to have their actions hidden from public view using a mechanic formally known as Fog of War. If a player
makes a post in any other section or major city, it is considered to be in full public view and can be considered public knowledge to any
character who wishes to know your location. They need only acknowledge a news post stating that you were in a public location.

Finally, we have a Disputes Board which can be used any time you have a problem with a member's post. The process for disputing a post has
been outlined in an Announcement in this section. To dispute a post, you need only copy and paste the template and allow time for the staff
to review the request. Submissions that do not use the provided template will not be accepted and as mention in the outlines, posts that are
longer than a week old or that have went through an entire posting order can not be disputed.

The Staff has now finally been reorganized with these revisions in mind. Our Moderators will be solely handling disputes, making
announcements and handling mission requests. Please contact them first for any requests regarding these categories. Global Moderators will
be responsible for everything related to character sheet submissions, revisions and point buy systems and assist the Moderators with
Disputes when appropriate. Our Admins will provide overflow support for any absences in these positions and assist in all other related
forum activities including forum maintenance and coding. We ask that all members please follow this process to ensure accountability.

NEW RULES AND FEATURES:

* Story Points (STP)
* Story Point Missions

* Information Broker

* Advertising Rewards System

So now that all of the formalities are now out of the way, lets get on to more exciting features. We are excited to introduce a new point
buy system to coincide with the popular Slaughter Point system. We call these new points Story Points. Basically, you now have an option to
have a story driven character and gain rewards based on your interactions with other characters. Characters will earn one Story Point (STP)
per thread they interact with for a minimum of 5 posts. The story driven characters also have different ranks assigned to how they gain new
abilities and while they can engage in combat, they gain no points for killing another character just as a Combative Character will not gain
Slaughter Points for participating in social threads. To participate in this program, you need only inform the Staff of your desire to make
this change within one month of this point or at the time of character creation. Players who have not made a selection within the month time
frame will be set to combative by default. To switch between the two, you must not have made a switch within the previous month and will
lose all of the points and abilities you accumulated and have to start all over again so this is not something to be attempted lightly.

With the introduction of the new Story driven characters, you also have the opportunity to undergo Story driven mission such as espionage
and information gathering at your organization's behest. These missions will put your storytelling skills to the test as it is solely up to
the discretion of the Dungeon Master and organization leaders as to whether or not you have fulfilled the requirements to attain the rewards
for these missions.

As for the next new feature, we have also introduced a new Information Broker system. Normally, organizations are tight lipped about all of
their secrets and rightly so. It is an upstanding tradition that all armies have secrets that they don't wish to be made public. It is
therefore up to private individuals to attain this knowledge through careful subterfuge and surveillance. The Information Broker system will
allow one player to gain knowledge of all information listed on another character's character sheet for the cost of 5 Slaughter or Story
Points. Canon Characters however tend to be the exception to this rule as a lot of the mechanics of a lot of their abilities are the subject
of mystery and therefore, can not be targeted. Without the use of this new mechanic, players will now be completely in the dark about their
opponents. They will not be permitted to gain any information, even from their own organization about other individuals.

Finally, we get on to a new reward system. As we well know, the forum has started to become inactive; dead even. It is because of that that
we wish to introduce a new rewards system. For every active roleplaying community that you advertise to with one of our forum banners or
videos, we will award you with three Slaughter Points or Story Points per submission. Please note that all submissions must be active and
easily viewable for at least one month to be considered. To be defined as active, a forum must have at least 10 active members or more. To
redeem a reward, you must provide screenshots of eligible posts to a staff member and they must confirm that the redemption is valid. To
receive a copy of our adverising banner and video, please message a Staff member.

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As is previously mentioned, these are the first round of changes only. Our new high powered, Javascript version of the site will not be
introduced until there are enough members to warrant a full release. As always, we're happy to have everyone around and hope that we can
make this site an enjoyable one.

Respectfully,

~Phil/Artycard