Adrognik appears out of nowhere.
AdamBlue9000 says, "Sup."
Hivemind edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
batko edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Terrible_the_duck walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
The Cayley K-450x Aerodyne twinkles momentarily before its pixelated and blown away by the a breeze.
Hivemind says, "Waow."
Quest appears out of nowhere.
Knyghtskye appears out of nowhere.
Beepboop walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Nymphali appears out of nowhere.
Nymphali edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
84Winston appears out of nowhere.
Majere_Draven asks, "No graffiti? why did I even bring solvent?"
Knyghtskye edges into the fifth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Mikael edges into the fifth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
BubbleKangaroo walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Batko screams.
Cowbell edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Emily appears out of nowhere.
Vanashis appears out of nowhere.
Nymphali says, "I thought this started in 20 minutes oops."
Quest edges into the fifth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Lena edges into the fifth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
AdamBlue9000 says, "No it starts in 20 minutes."
adrognik edges into the fifth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Nymphali exclaims, "Phew!"
AdamBlue9000 says, "We're just early."
Enven says, "It does, but herding cats in advance is always a good."
Majere_Draven sits cross-legged on the floor.
BubbleKangaroo says, "It starts in 20. We're just here early."
Fengshui OOCly shouts, "The playlist for the town hall can be found here: http://sindo.me/rkyJpYLL3 we'll start the first song in about 3 min, I'll do a shout. Listen if you want!"
Terrible_the_duck says, "The heck did that Cayley come from."
Majere_Draven stands up from the floor.
Zxq appears out of nowhere.
0x1mm appears out of nowhere.
Your mouth suddenly feels dry.
No posing while OOC.
AdamBlue9000 [to Terrible_the_duck]: It flew here, obviously.
84Winston edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Majere_Draven shouts loudly, "MARCO!"
Fengshui appears out of nowhere.
Mono appears out of nowhere.
Knyghtskye shouts loudly, "POLO!"
zxq edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Terrible_the_duck [to AdamBlue9000]: Wow. So much angst.
Emily edges into the second row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Sivartas appears out of nowhere.
Coconut says, "how do i sit like a pro "
Logic vanishes from the meeting.
Veleth appears out of nowhere.
Johnny walks across the stage and sits upon one of the large leather chairs.
84Winston says, "sit sixth row"
0x1mm walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
[OOC: Terrible_the_duck says, "Sit First. second third row." ]
Villa appears out of nowhere.
SmokePotion appears out of nowhere.
coconut edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Emily says, "Oh em gee it's the famous Johnny"
Lena burps loudly.
Enven says, "The man, the myth, the legend has appeared."
Bonsai appears out of nowhere.
Majere_Draven edges into the third row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Baewulf says, "aw heck yeah can't wait for my first town hall ever"
Logic appears out of nowhere.
Johnny says, "*speaking english, in a brash, overbearing voice* figured I'd show up without my car."
Lena cheekily sticks out her tongue and makes a *phhbbt* noise.
villa walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Logic walks across the stage and sits upon one of the large leather chairs.
Thrillimanjaro says, "Same."
Veleth edges into the third row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
AdamBlue9000 says, "Johnny walked to the Town Hall."
Lena [to Baewulf]: woot!
Duck appears out of nowhere.
Majere_Draven says, "oh I can say it here"
Baewulf [to Lena]: Woot woot!
SmokePotion edges into the second row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Terrible_the_duck [to Duck]: The false prophet.
duck edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Majere_Draven shouts loudly, "DUCK"
Enven says, "Majere, I've never had anything good come after 'Oh, I can say that here?'. Ever. xD"
Majere_Draven shouts loudly, "DUCK"
Mench appears out of nowhere.
Enven exclaims, "MECHIE POO!"
Mench walks across the stage and sits upon one of the large leather chairs.
SmokePotion exclaims, "I come with a six pack of Yuengling, and a desire for the game to be better!"
Enven holds his chest and coughs subtly.
Emily says, "Goose."
Enven says, "MENCHIE"
Duck shouts loudly, "WHAT?"
Cowbell raises zir eyebrow curiously.
Baewulf says, "I come with a..."
Mono says, "*speaking english* Mench is now a mech. It's canon."
Baewulf says, "uh, some vee."
Veleth looks tired and yawns boredly.
Mench says loudly, "*speaking english, in a generic mixer type voice* I'm not real."
SmokePotion chuckles softly.
Enven says, "Ye."
Sivartas edges into the fourth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Fengshui OOCly shouts, "http://sindo.me/rkyJpYLL3 if you want to listen along. Hit play on the first song (Metal) now!"
Emily says, "I'm Johnny's favorite."
Majere_Draven says, "I bet you can't hold on to your pants, your filled with.. antici...."
EnRet appears out of nowhere.
EnRet edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Logic goes to pat Mench. he isn't there. Gasp.
Crashdown appears out of nowhere.
84Winston waves absently.
Mono says loudly, "Hah, joke's on you. I can't hold onto my pants no matter what."
Enven asks, "Where's the play button, Feng?"
JMo appears out of nowhere.
Majere_Draven crashfrowns
Emily says, "I don't think the music thing is working"
Aera appears out of nowhere.
crashdown edges into the second row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
JMo sits cross-legged on the floor.
Fengshui says, "*speaking spanish, in a fucker fuck voice* It's on Spotify.... it's a spotify playlist heh"
84Winston exclaims, "This is very coool!"
Thrillimanjaro says, "Love some Poppy"
Emily [to Fengshui]: The link doesn't go to the playlist for me!
AdamBlue9000 [to Emily]: Samesies...
Aera edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Enven says, "Same, Em."
Terrible_the_duck says, "Use the link in the room desc."
Emily says, "Ooh"
Terrible_the_duck says, "The one fengs shouting is borker."
Baewulf [to Mono]: Lewd and Lasvicious conduct will get you fined, Citizen.
Fengshui says, "This one? http://sindo.me/BJ~qHtDqye"
Majere_Draven exclaims, "remember to set lethals!"
Leudo edges into the second row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Terrible_the_duck exclaims, "That worked nw!"
Majere_Draven asks, "where are the grenades!?"
Fengshui says, "The current song will always show in that second link in the room description. It's tied to my spotify, if you wanna know where i'm at in the playlist."
Baguette appears out of nowhere.
Baguette walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Emily says, "I bought a Poppy vinyl and it's sick."
Majere_Draven shouts loudly, "BAGUETTE!"
Baguette says, "sorry im late i was making ramen"
Terrible_the_duck says, "Valid reason."
Vanashis sits cross-legged on the floor.
Majere_Draven [to Fengshui]: Hey, is this when y'all finally announce Ecks brand condoms?
Fengshui chuckles softly.
Baguette says, "Call them 'S. Ecks-y' or some shit."
Logic nudges Fengshui. "I heard those only come in Fuller size."
Majere_Draven says, "Put the most famous snake on your snake."
Lena cackles madly, her eyes lighting up with glee.
Terrible_the_duck cackles madly, her eyes lighting up with glee.
Nymphali says, "Not sure I'd trust them."
Cowbell says, "Ecks goes raw. It's a known fact."
Baewulf says, "We're having Sinnful thoughts tonight."
Enven says, "Given that Ecks is responsible for the birth of a whole lot of Snakes? Them shits less effective than 'Nah babe, I'll just pull out.'"
Necronex666 appears out of nowhere.
SmokePotion says, "Condoms are for practice, and Ecks don't need no practicin'."
Fengshui asks loudly, "What was Seven doing when he walked into the badlands for no apparent reason?"
Fengshui says loudly, "Ecksploring."
Terrible_the_duck says, "Hate it."
Majere_Draven laughs loudly.
Nymphali says, "Groooaaaaaan."
Lena giggles playfully.
Baewulf says, "Zero out of ten."
Nymphali laughs softly.
Baewulf snickers softly.
Fengshui asks loudly, "What's Seven's AI assistant called?"
Necronex666 walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Fengshui says loudly, "Alecksa."
Thrillimanjaro says, "Ba dum tish"
Majere_Draven asks, "Poppet?"
Terrible_the_duck says, "Fuck."
Enven asks, "What does Seven Ecks call getting laid?"
Enven says, "Secksy time."
Nymphali exclaims, "make it stop!"
AdamBlue9000 asks loudly, "Y'all hear Seven had like, twenty jobs 'fore they finally settled on their career?"
Bonsai cries.
AdamBlue9000 says loudly, "They wanted the Ecksperience."
JMo asks, "Oh god....Seven Ecks puns? Has it really come to this?"
Lena says, "puns is love"
Nymphali says, "It always comes to this."
BubbleKangaroo says, "This is why Withmore is hell."
Majere_Draven says, "You are welcome "
Logic points at Jmo. "Ecksactly."
JMo says, "Not like this....not like this..."
Terrible_the_duck says, "Fuck sakeee"
Svetlana appears out of nowhere.
Fengshui says loudly, "Secksy time, I dig it."
AdamBlue9000 waves nonchalantly.
Majere_Draven says, "I always bring up Ecks brand condoms when I can make it to a town hall."
Svetlana waves nonchalantly.
Nymphali exclaims, "SVET!!!"
Svetlana exclaims, "HI!"
Fengshui asks loudly, "What did they call it when seven and juicy made love?"
Nymphali says, "Oh god."
AdamBlue9000 [to Fengshui]: LnL.
Bix says, "oh no."
Enven says, "You know, it's Seven Ecks, but it's really only times Six. You know. Seckstupled."
Logic asks loudly, "Ecksplicit?"
svetlana walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Aera says, "Downside of being on the newer side is I have no clue who you're talking to. I do appreciate the puns though."
Fengshui says loudly, "Moosecks."
Villa says, "imagine if seven's middle name was butts."
Nymphali says, "Hah."
Logic snickers sarcastically.
Majere_Draven laughs loudly.
Terrible_the_duck says, "Oh maaan."
Enven says, "I love that tag so much."
Terrible_the_duck sniffles and starts crying woefully as tears roll off her cheeks.
AdamBlue9000 says loudly, "Somewhere out there I have that Juicy Vee soyjack point image I wish I could use right now"
Emily asks, "If Seven was Canadian would he be Moose Ecks?"
Terrible_the_duck says, "Seven buttsecks."
JMo vanishes from the meeting.
Fengshui says loudly, "haha"
Svetlana says, "Moosex, hah"
Fengshui asks loudly, "How does Seven leave a room?"
Logic points at Emily discreetly.
Majere_Draven says, "Juicy Vee is the source of one of my characters lowest moments."
Enven asks, "He Ecksits?"
Baphomei appears out of nowhere.
Aera asks, "Ecksit?"
Fengshui points at Enven, "You get it."
Baphomei edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Baphomei stands from their seat in the sixth row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Nymphali says, "We need more Juicy cameos."
Kalii appears out of nowhere.
AdamBlue9000 asks loudly, "If Juicy Vee charged for the company of his presence, would it be a Juicy Fee?"
Enven says, "I still can't see Juicy Vee as anyone other than that one character from the Fifth Element."
Veleth says, "You all made JMo leave, lol."
Baphomei edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Fengshui asks loudly, "What did they used to call it when Seven would lead his gang onto enemy territory?"
Enven asks, "If Juicy had two siblings, would it be the Juicy Three?"
Thrillimanjaro asks, "Eckspedition?"
SketchyZo appears out of nowhere.
AdamBlue9000 asks loudly, "Juicy Vee planted a small garden, would there be Juicy Trees?"
Batko says, "Eckscursion..."
Fengshui says loudly, "You get it."
Quotient appears out of nowhere.
Enven says, "Does Juicy like coffee? No, no. He drinks Juicy Tea."
Quotient edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Majere_Draven giggles playfully.
AdamBlue9000 [to Enven]: He can't drink too much, or else he'll have to Juicy... Y'know.
Fengshui OOCly shouts, "we'll be starting the town hall in 5 minutes. Please join now! No RP is allowed during the town hall."
Enven cackles madly, his eyes lighting up with glee.
Butako appears out of nowhere.
Kalii says, "HOW DO I SIT"
Enven edges into the third row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
SketchyZo sits cross-legged on the floor.
SketchyZo stands up from the floor.
Majere_Draven shouts loudly, "TYPE SIT!"
84Winston says, "sit sixth row"
Emily [to Kalii]: WITH YOUR BUTT
Sivartas says, "All these bad puns to the pocahontas theme in the background...this is going to be a long night."
Nymphali exclaims, "BUTAKOOOOOOO!"
Enven says, "SIT ON THIRD/FOURTH"
SketchyZo edges into the fourth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Kalii edges into the fourth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
SmokePotion says, "sit second row"
AdamBlue9000 opens his arms and waits for a hug.
Butako oinks!
Kasumstreak appears out of nowhere.
Kalii says, "THANK YOU LMAO"
Logic asks silvartas. "What's wrong with pocahontas?"
Nymphali says, "Best pig."
Wh1ppet appears out of nowhere.
SmokePotion exclaims, "it's butako!"
AdamBlue9000 [to Butako]: Best Pig!!!
Lena says, "I heard gossip that anyone left standing when the town hall starts goes into the $void for a month."
Kasumstreak sits cross-legged on the floor.
Emily oinks.
Majere_Draven says, "Best piggie"
Jawbox01 appears out of nowhere.
Enven says, "Does Juicy have a code lock on his door? No, no. He's got a Juicy Key."
Thrillimanjaro says, "Oh man I was just listening to this Chemical Brothers track earlier."
Kasumstreak stands up from the floor.
Mono says loudly, "No hugs. You are all FILTHY with awful diseases."
Terrible_the_duck [to Butako]: Grats on the first weapon!
wh1ppet sits cross-legged on the floor.
Majere_Draven says, "Pocahontas was 12 in that movie "
AdamBlue9000 [to Enven]: I heard when he fell, he hurt his leg. Scraped his Juicy Knee.
Jawbox01 edges into the third row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Emily [to Mono]: Can I poke Johnny?
Kasumstreak edges into the third row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Butako exclaims, "*speaking english, in a piggie-sounding voice* Thanks!"
wh1ppet stands up from the floor.
wh1ppet edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
SmokePotion says, "i made the misatake of not making snacks."
Enven [to AdamBlue9000]: Did you know he's an apiarist? He keeps Juicy Bees.
Nymphali says, "The link for the playlist didn't work for me but I might just be stupid."
Mono [to Emily]: No, Citizen. Poking a Justice is a violation of the LAW!
Svetlana buzzes ominously.
Emily [to Nymphali]: Try the link in the room desc
Baphomei exclaims, "THE LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWW!!!!"
Veleth says, "No bees please."
Baewulf shudders.
Veleth eyes her surroundings suspiciously.
AdamBlue9000 [to Enven]: And when he needs to figure out where they went, he does a Juicy See.
Baewulf says, "Hall turf."
Nymphali [to Emily]: Thank you! That worked.
Mono exclaims loudly, "And just for that. BEEEEEEEEEES!!!"
Veleth says, "No."
Emily wiggles.
Risikio appears out of nowhere.
AdamBlue9000 says loudly, "Buzz buzz."
Bubbles appears out of nowhere.
Risikio sits cross-legged on the floor.
Emily bubbles.
AdamBlue9000 says loudly, "Wait.."
BubbleKangaroo says, "How do I share a log of the Town Hall when this is done? First time trying that."
Majere_Draven says, "Haha member."
Risikio asks, "which row has seats?"
Enven says, "Did you know he's an international superstar, and has copycats in other countries? In China, it's Juicy Lee."
Bubbles walks across the stage and sits upon one of the large leather chairs.
Jawbox01 shouts loudly, "FUCK THE LAW! FREE ANARCHY!"
Emily [to Bubbles]: Usually staff shares it.
Emily says, "Wait wrong person"
Emily exclaims, "Too many bubbles!"
BubbleKangaroo says, "too many bubbles."
Enven says, "All the bubbles."
Fengshui says loudly, "We'll be starting in a minute."
Manywaters appears out of nowhere.
Risikio stands up from the floor.
Manywaters edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Fengshui toggles the room moderation to ON, allowing only admin and the current speaker to speak
Risikio sits cross-legged on the floor.
Fengshui approachs the podium leaving a vapor trail of pixelated light as he moves. he places his hands on either side of the podium, greeting the crowd with a warm smile before he says "Welcome to the Winter 2025 Town Hall Meeting! The first of two Town Hall meetings this year."
Fengshui motions to himself and says, "My name is Slither and I've been a player on Sindome since early 2003. The first character I played that actually stuck longer than 1 day turned 20 last week, and is now older than I was when I started playing. Over the years, I've had the privilege of serving in various roles such as admin, GM, builder, and coder."
Fengshui motions out over the crowd with his left hand, causing rainbow confetti to begin falling inches above the heads of each participant, "Since 2003, we've been holding Town Hall meetings intermittently, but it wasn't until 2015 that we made them a regular occurrence."
Fengshui motions to the speaking queue, "The speaking queue is an effective tool that helps us stay on topic and keep track of who's turn it is to speak. To participate in the conversation on a specific topic, you can simply 'join speaking' to join the queue."
Fengshui pats the speaking queue onna head, "If the queue is open, you will be able to join."
Fengshui lies a hand on the speaking queue, causing it to vibrate and purr like a kitten, "Once it's your turn to speak, the queue will notify you, and you can stand up and address the group. When you've finished speaking, you can sit down to indicate that you're done. If you're asking a question, you can remain standing until you receive an answer, in case you have any follow-up comments to add."
Fengshui flicks a glance over the crowd, "To avoid any confusion, please be sure to sit down after you've finished speaking, as this is the only indicator that you're done. I will then move on to the next person in the queue. In situations where we're running short on time for a particular topic, I may close the speaking queue to ensure that we can cover everything that needs to be discussed. Once we've finished hearing from everyone in the current queue, we'll move on to the next topic."
Fengshui jerks a thumb over at the queue again as he says, "The queue has some additional features that let us manage the Town Hall with a minimum of hassle. If you 'look queue' or 'look speaking' you'll see some nifty information such as the current topic and if the queue is open or closed. Hopefully this makes keeping track of things a bit easier for everyone. When we switch topics, the queue will announce the new topic."
Fengshui nods and says, Speaking of topics, hopefully everyone has reviewed the Agenda and pre-read items so we can jump right into the discussion. If you have not, it is here: http://sindo.me/r1HyZOPqkg.
Fengshui continues speaking, "To keep things running smoothly, we kindly ask that you pre-type your comments. The agenda already includes all the topics we'll be discussing, so you can write your initial statements ahead of time. By doing so, you can stand up, speak your piece, and we can immediately jump into discussing your topic without any awkward silence while you type."
[OOC: The game has been saved and backed up successfully to disk. 'help cp']
Fengshui motions around the room again, "To help minimize crosstalk and ensure that we can cover as much ground as possible, Staff members have the ability to enable or disable moderation. When moderation is on, only Staff and the person who is currently speaking will be able to communicate. This means that we can get through more feedback and questions in a shorter amount of time. When moderation is enabled or disabled, you'll see a notification like this..."
Fengshui toggles the room moderation to OFF, allowing anyone to speak.
Svetlana starts applauding excitedly.
Fengshui toggles the room moderation to ON, allowing only admin and the current speaker to speak
Fengshui ticks a few things off on his fingers as he speaks, "We want to make sure that everyone feels comfortable and respected during this Town Hall meeting. Please keep this in mind when making your comments and be respectful of others. Additionally, we ask that you do not reveal any in-character information in your statements. If you're unsure whether what you're about to say is IC info or not, we encourage you to err on the side of caution and refrain from mentioning it."
Fengshui smiles and says, "We're going to cover a lot of stuff today. We will start with speeches, like this one, from the Staff and then we will move on to the rest of the agenda."
Bonsai walks across the stage and sits upon one of the large leather chairs.
Fengshui drums his fingers against the podium, "We have a limited time, and I want to keep us mostly on track to hit all the topics in the agenda. Any topics we have to close before the discussion is fully finished can be moved to the BGBB for continued discussion, or we can set time aside to have a future Guided Discussion on the topic."
Macabre appears out of nowhere.
Fengshui leans forward on the podium, looking excited, "I want to thank you all of you for being here today. These Town Hall meetings provide us with a chance to come together as a community, celebrate our successes, and discuss our goals for the future. Your input and feedback are invaluable in helping us identify areas where we need to improve and make important changes. Most importantly, these meetings are a celebration of our community and the hard work that each and every member puts into making Sindome the best game possible."
Fengshui steps back from the podium, "Without further ado, our fearless leader, Johnny!"
Fengshui snaps his fingers and gigantic glowing neon signs appear in the air in front of the stage reading [APPLAUSE] [APPLAUSE] [APPLAUSE].
Fengshui toggles the room moderation to OFF, allowing anyone to speak.
Johnny rises from the plush leather seat that rests on the stage.
Fengshui starts applauding politely.
Macabre walks across the stage and sits upon one of the large leather chairs.
Your toes tingle gently, almost numb, almost pins-and-needle.
No posing while OOC.
Knyghtskye starts applauding politely.
Majere_Draven starts applauding politely.
Lena starts applauding politely.
Thrillimanjaro starts applauding politely.
EnRet starts applauding politely.
Svetlana starts applauding politely.
SketchyZo starts applauding politely.
Quotient starts applauding politely.
Cowbell starts applauding courteously.
Fengshui toggles the room moderation to ON, allowing only admin and the current speaker to speak
Johnny steps up to the podium and adjusts the micropohone.
Johnny exclaims loudly, "Welcome to the Winter 2025 Town Hall!"
Johnny says loudly, "Its been almost a whole year since we got together and talked about the state of things. "
Johnny says loudly, "For me personally, it's been a terribly busy time. My workload has tripled since we last spoke. I work most weekends. In fact, I'm working today. "
The Speaking Queue topic has switched to Chief Justice - State of the Corp.
Johnny says loudly, "I'm really sorry I'm so oversubscribed I don't have time to dedicate like I used to. I'm sure the staff wishes I did as much if not more than you."
Johnny says loudly, "I'm hoping things will simmer down in the next year and I can reclaim at least my weekends. Then I could spare some time to help out around here again."
Butako disappears.
Butako appears out of nowhere.
Butako walks across the stage and sits upon one of the large leather chairs.
Huntresskai sits cross-legged on the floor.
Johnny says loudly, "I'd like to start with the votes held since the last town hall."
Johnny says loudly, "We had 25 votes since March of last year. "
Johnny says loudly, "In the 3rd week of April, we voted to suspend a player for 6 months for breaking rule 5.B. (zero tolerance policy on discussing various sex topics, even as a fabricated insult or joke amongst consenting parties) and being verbally combative when we were trying to counsel them about their inappropriate behavior."
Johnny says loudly, "In the 3rd week of April, we voted to suspend a player for 3 months for playing multiple characters (rule 2.G.)"
Johnny says loudly, "Near the end of April, we voted to interview a potential candidate for Builder / Coder role."
Johnny says loudly, "At the end of April, we voted to bring the potential candidate on as an SGM with the goal of them transitioning to a Builder / Coder role."
Johnny says loudly, "At the beginning of May, we voted to change "bit rent" terms to 6 month intervals."
Johnny says loudly, "At the beginning of June, we voted to make Mono the Head GM."
Johnny says loudly, "In the middle of June, we voted to promote the potential candidate previously mentioned to Builder / Coder."
Fengshui smacks Mono on the back!
Johnny says loudly, "say In the second week of July, we voted to suspend a player for 3 months for breaking rules 2.B. (arguing and baiting over xhelp), 2.C. (causing the community harm by repeatedly logging out when about to lose in combat, lying about staff in local OOC to spread discontent, having to be repeatedly talked to about various behaviors) and 5.B. (several concerning sexual incidents including one where they accused a player of molesting them over public SIC)."
Johnny says loudly, "In the third week of July, we voted to bring on a new SGM."
Johnny says loudly, "At the end of July, we voted to suspend a player for 2 months for repeatedly violating the guidelines around committing crimes (help crime) as well as continually showing staff a bad attitude. "
Johnny says loudly, "In the second week of August, we voted to promote Bubbles from SGM to a $Watcher."
Fengshui smacks Bubbles on the back!
Johnny says loudly, "At the beginning of September, we voted to require candidates for SGM to have played the game for at least a year before being eligible, extended from the 6 months it was before."
Mono ferociously gives Bubbles a warm hug.
Rillem sits cross-legged on the floor.
Johnny says loudly, "At the beginning of September, we voted to grant $Publisher staff access to the Bit-Chat channel."
Rillem stands up from the floor.
Johnny says loudly, "Towards the end of September, we voted to halt new cargo licenses and reduce the number of them over time."
Johnny says loudly, "At the end of September, we voted to bring on a new SGM."
Johnny says loudly, "Near the beginning of October, we voted to suspend a player for 1 week for a pattern of farming NPCs, looking NPCs in protected areas and not respecting the game world."
Johnny says loudly, "looting"
Johnny says loudly, "Near the end of October, we voted to suspend 2 players for 2 weeks and 3 weeks respectively for violating rule 3.A. (metagaming / sharing IC info), 3.H. (sharing contact info that identifies who you play) 3.I. (not reporting conflict of interest violations while OOC Chatting). "
Johnny says loudly, "At the end of October, we voted against suspending a player for violating rule 2.C. (negatively impacting the game) and 5.C. (making unwanted sexual advances despite being asked to stop). Instead, they were given a 1 week OOC Chat block."
Johnny says loudly, "At the beginning of November, we voted to ban a player indefinitely for violating rule 1.B. (do not abuse bugs or gaps in code) after having been warned multiple times to cease their actions and being suspended for 3 months prior."
Johnny says loudly, "At the beginning of December, we voted to start a pilot program allowing TERRA and CGH security personnel to apply for firearm permits."
Johnny says loudly, "At the end of December, we voted to indefinitely suspend a player for community harm (rule 2.C.) after a pattern of signs pointed to them being the player we banned in November and they trolling on the BGBB and OOC-Chat."
Johnny says loudly, "At the beginning of January, we voted against allowing a banned staff member to come back to the game in a player capacity."
Johnny says loudly, "In the second week of January, we voted to promote Bonsai from SGM to $Creator (Builder)."
Johnny says loudly, "In the second half of January, we voted to promote Bubbles from $Watcher to $Creator."
Fengshui slaps Bonsai on the back!
Mono reaches behind Bonsai and furiously gooses Bonsai on the rear-end, causing Bonsai to jump out of surprise.
Rillem sits cross-legged on the floor.
Johnny says loudly, "At the end of January, we voted to suspend a group of players for multiple rules around OOC contact and communication of IC information as well as causing Community Harm. Six players were involved, one being banned indefinitely (due to previous infractions over the years), the others receiving suspensions between 5 months and 1 week."
Johnny bows his head slightly and frowns sadly.
Johnny says loudly, "We really try to be fair and even handed. It makes me sad when we have to say goodbye to folks even for a little while. "
Johnny says loudly, "Now, with the Law & Order portion out of the way, let's talk about Sindome's Finances."
Johnny says loudly, "Since we last spoke, Amazon's new IP policy started and has been kicking our butts to the tune of nearly $50 extra a month. "
Johnny says loudly, "Here's the breakdown of Amazon's costs. You can see the "VPC" cost portion, that's the IP policy. https://i.imgur.com/eQ07LFF.png"
Johnny says loudly, "It's a penalty we have to pay for each public IP address since the world is running out of them. We are working on finding various solutions to this problem. We might end up hosting some smaller services together on the same server, we might switch some to IPv6 addresses, but it's a process to do this."
Johnny says loudly, "Between this and our Amazon "Reserved Instances" expiring, our monthly costs have gone up around $100. "
Johnny says loudly, "Here's the chart for all of 2024s expenses. https://i.imgur.com/vihPV5N.png"
Johnny says loudly, "Just like last town hall, our hosting costs represent 96% of all expenses. The other 4% is automation and source code tools."
Johnny says loudly, "Once we get back on Reserved Instances (which requires us to prepay for them) and get a handle on the IP situation, we should be able to reduce our monthly costs by about $80."
Johnny says loudly, "Ok, lets move onto Withmore Hope and all the good your donations have been doing."
Johnny says loudly, "Since the last town hall almost a year ago, donations totaled $3,521.39. Only one refund was given out."
Johnny says loudly, "Your donations to Withmore Hope are supporting Sindome, Toast Stunt Development, the Grapevine MUD Network, the development of the TinTin++ MUD Client, Mudlet, and Mudstats.com."
Johnny says loudly, "When we combine the donations into Withmore Hope, the contributions Withmore Hope makes to projects beside Sindome, then Sindome's expenses, we end up with a comprehensive display of donations and where those donations are going over time."
Johnny says loudly, "Here's the way that looks for all of 2024. https://i.imgur.com/i6JdKnp.png"
Johnny says loudly, "Withmore Hope overall funding is shown in red, blue lines going up show donations and blue lines going down show expenses. The faint yellow line shows the trend of Withmore Hope's available funds."
Johnny says loudly, "If we continue to have costs around $300/mo, we have enough money on hand (w/o further donations) for a little less than 3 years."
Johnny says loudly, "If we reduce costs to around $200/mo, we'll have enough for a little more than 4 years."
Johnny says loudly, "Obviously, our goal is to reduce the costs and increase our "runway"."
Johnny says loudly, "You can check out http://withmorehope.org to get more information on how Withmore Hope is supporting accessible text-based gaming through donations of time and money for running games, technology development, game services, and finding new games."
Johnny exclaims loudly, "Thanks for supporting accessible text gaming!"
Fengshui nods casually.
Johnny says loudly, "Next, lets look at in-game activity . . ."
Johnny says loudly, "At the last town hall, I shared this chart showing connections by players across various timeframes. https://i.imgur.com/txpYxA8.png"
Johnny says loudly, "This is that same chart from yesterday. https://i.imgur.com/vwnm5tS.png"
Johnny says loudly, "If we look at the 4 weeks row, we can see that last townhall, we had 175 players that had connected within the last 4 weeks or sooner. Today that number is at 155. That's about a 12% reduction."
Johnny says loudly, "Looking at the 6 days row, we previously had 124 connecting in the last 6 days and are now at 117. That's only a 5.6% reduction."
Johnny says loudly, "So, we still have at least 140 players visiting us every 2 weeks, with more than 2/3rd of them visiting every day or so."
Johnny says loudly, "Of those who connected in the last 6 months, you've sent over 53,000 xhelps, over 7,200 puppet requests, over 2,000 service requests and left over 36,000 notes."
Johnny says loudly, "All these metrics are higher than last town hall. 8% more xhelps, 10% more puppet requests, 17% more service requests and 20% more notes! Keep in mind, that's from fewer players."
Johnny says loudly, "Of those connected in the last 6 months, you've killed over 4,700 others and died almost 3,900 times. You've collectively gotten laid over 6,900 times and received fines totalling 2.44 million chyen."
Johnny says loudly, "Again, all these metrics are higher than last town hall. 17.5% more kills, 21% more deaths, 9.5% more boom-boom and 39% more money paid for fines. "
Johnny says loudly, "More action from fewer players."
Johnny says loudly, "You also improved the numbers on clothing cleanup (53,400 - up 27%!) and game help karma (3,900 - up 39%) impressively."
Johnny exclaims loudly, "For the last 6 months, you've played Sindome for over 599,411 hours or over 63 years! This number is also up an amazing 38%!"
Johnny says loudly, "Looking at the overall picture, we can see an increase in staff interactions, an increase in social touch points and an increase in OOC contributions. With slightly fewer players, this is further amplifying the notion that you're well engaged with the community."
Johnny says loudly, "Memberships have continued to slip somewhat, with 6 month memberships down 15% and 12 month memberships down 4.2% in 2024 compared to 2023. https://i.imgur.com/cvK4pma.png"
Johnny says loudly, "Our numbers are healthy and inline with our pre-pandemic numbers. I definitely think we've leveled off."
Johnny says loudly, "Now I'd like to give some of the highlights of all the bugs we've addressed since the last town hall."
Johnny says loudly, "For several years now, we've been on the world's biggest bug hunt. A lot of features were rolled out at a very rapid pace during a fairly short period of time. This resulted in a lot of bugs. We continue to focus on fixing these bugs and shoring up our codebase, as unexpected bugs have a severe impact on immersion and roleplay."
Johnny says loudly, "Slither has easily addressed over 500 bugs since the last town hall. "
Johnny says loudly, "I have a 43 page document outlining them. One needs only look at the monthly BGBB threads documenting each month's improvements."
Johnny says loudly, "I'm not going to list out all of them, but here are the highlights I found."
Johnny says loudly, "You can no longer eject people from the back of vehicles that are currently being grappled. This prevents a weird grapple invisibility / duplicate bug."
Johnny says loudly, "You could interact (secure, ascend, descend, unsecure) hooks without breaking stealth. This has been fixed so interacting with them now breaks stealth."
Johnny says loudly, "Glance no longer works when you are wearing thermos or have active thermo cyberware."
Johnny says loudly, "There are posting boards in the game where characters can leave notes. These let you set the author name, but for the past 25 years, if you set anything other than your character name, you wouldn't be able to delete your note because deleting a note required the author name to match your character name. This has been switched over use character numbers, so it will now let you delete your new notes. Old notes are not deletable."
Johnny says loudly, "The spatial matrix ID was set incorrectly in the San Mara bar, preventing gridphones from working there after we changed how phones work. This has been fixed, and the bar now has service."
Johnny says loudly, "The way appearance modifiers are calculated has been updated such that if you are wearing a see-thru article of clothing over various parts of your body it will not impact your appearance score the same way it would if you were wearing say, a helmet that covers your pretty/ugly face."
Johnny says loudly, "The work messages at the PRI factory on Red have been updated to have messages pointing people towards different jobs and towards the gangs for better money. Should be good reinforcement for new players to seek out better opportunities."
Johnny says loudly, "If you have a non extended baton you won't attack with it and will just... not attack. NPCs didn't auto extend non-extended batons that were handed to them. Now, when they take out a baton, they will extend it."
Johnny says loudly, "You can no longer spoof while hidden. The reason for this is that while a spoof is generally an ambient action, it still needs to involve your character name, and if your character is hidden, it may be confusing or reveal meta info accidentally. Also, those with names that are more common words (like Seven) could technically hide behind this even unintentionally with a spoof like !Seven rats scurry across the street."
Johnny says loudly, "A while back we shifted to using a sub matrix id for some rooms that occupy the same space as other rooms, this generally works fine but has caused some problems. One was that anywhere that directly used the .matrix_id property and not :matrix_id verb was getting the wrong results. We've updated this, which should change how space between a landing room and a rooftop is calculated when one of the rooms was using a sub matrix id, and also properly report the distance between roofs in those cases where you 'look up' and see surrounding rooftops."
Johnny says loudly, "There were some issues with the submatrix tooling that was only partially converted to maps when we moved to ToastStunt. We've resolved these issues. We've also fixed a ton of places where we were still calling the matrix_id prop directly and not the calculated one which accounts for the submatrix_id."
Johnny says loudly, "This means that the distances between some rooftops / the ground have been adjusted and will show correctly, and the jumps will work / not work accordingly. We recommend checking edges you may be familiar with to make sure things haven't changed."
Your toes tingle gently, almost numb, almost pins-and-needle.
This room is currently being moderated. Please wait until moderation is turned off or join a speaking queue if one is present and open.
Johnny says loudly, "There was no verification that a room in the submatrix id cache was actually still a room, and this was causing TBs when entering rooms that the system thought had rooms below them or around them, when those surrounding rooms had been recycled without submatrix cleanup (which didn't exist)."
Johnny says loudly, "We've added in a catch to validate the submatrix rooms and an alert that an invalid room exists in the cache so it can be cleared. This should clear up the TBs and also let us clear up the cache as needed."
Johnny says loudly, "We have made a code change to fix a bug in how subspace rooms hear noises from above them. Examples of the bug were people in their apartments hearing those walking around on catwalks outside the apartment above them, because the apartments have the same submatrix id as the catwalk. Subspace rooms will no longer be included in these messages. It's not a perfect fix but it should prevent some of the wonkiness people have been reporting."
Johnny says loudly, "Xo8 has been determined to be broken, and has been removed from the game. If you had some, it has been confiscated and chyen was dropped in its place. The store that was selling it on Freesky is no longer selling it."
Napoleon edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Johnny says loudly, "After feedback on BGBB and from staff, and several annoying bugs, we have disabled the ChatGPT integration for Where's the Party questions to bartenders. It was a good experiment. It will now fallback to the tried and true code that we were using previously, which is more repetitive and has less personality, but is less likely to give weird results."
Ociex walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Johnny says loudly, "There was a TB when a phone tried to get a balance and someone didn't have an account. It shows the error on the phone but then continues trying to run the rest of the code, resulting in a TB. We've added a return statement to prevent continued execution, thus fixing the issue."
Johnny says loudly, "There was a bug in the revocation of temporary perks when you had the real perk. The issue cropped up mostly with crates, where getting a crate gives you a temporary version of the commuter perk. For those that already had the commuter perk, if you got a crate, got the temp perk, delivered the crate, went back, got another crate within 30 minutes, it would grant you the perk a 3rd time."
Johnny says loudly, "Then when next we check what perks you have--it only does this when you try to use it or you type @stats-- if both temporary perks were expired, it would loop through and call the code to revoke the perk 2 times. The problem is the code to revoke perks revokes all expired version of the perk including the real perk. This has been fixed."
Johnny says loudly, "You can no longer hide in booths like quick kleen and suicide."
Johnny says loudly, "Originally, we intended for sniping to be possible through windows. However, that was at a time where there were very few actual windows in the game and they definitely weren't in the majority of apartments. With many apartments having windows now, we have decided that sniping out of these windows, from behind a locked door that is essentially impenetrable, is a negative. Moving forward you can AIM through windows with a rifle, but you can't shoot anything. You'll need to find a rooftop to snipe, which means you can be tracked down and attacked for your crimes."
Johnny says loudly, "Those 2 make me sad."
Johnny says loudly, "This was a long standing bug -- perhaps 20 years old. If you had weekly profits owed at your shop but no actual money in the register, the code wouldn't work and you'd need to deposit 1 chyen into the register to withdraw your profits. We've fixed this so you can withdraw profits from an otherwise empty register."
Johnny says loudly, "If you looked at these, because they are rooms, they were showing exits and other shit. We've made it act more like a normal item and show only the title and description of the object."
Johnny says loudly, "That one is about pushable vehicles, missed getting that into the sentence."
Johnny exclaims loudly, "There was a problem where the WCS dumpsters were only accepting one corpse at a time, but now Withmore City Services has upgraded their dumpsters to the deluxe size so those rotting, rejected sleeves can be tucked away tidily until WCS can get to them! GO WCS!"
Johnny says loudly, "There was a weird bug in how we were handling knocking on doors that meant people in a nearby room might hear the knocking but the 'softly knocking' part would be garbled if the person was speaking a language you didn't know. We've fixed this. This bug probably exists in other parts of the game but may be rarely seen as people mostly speak english, so please @bug if you see weirdness elsewhere."
Johnny says loudly, "Certain NPCs will ask for a variety of items (Dashiro, Stev) and they were not taking into account if the item was purchased at the market, so if they paid you out for an item you recently bought at the market the entire amount went against your earnings cap. We've resolved this. Now only the profit you make goes against it."
Johnny says loudly, "If you advertise on your apartment door, it shows your SIC id or whatever. Because we store obj# on apartments and not charnum, if you died while advertising the apartment would show your new character. We've made it so perma-death clears the .ad prop on the door so it won't show SIC. Really, we should be using charnum, but that's a larger refactor, so this is a good stop gap."
Johnny says loudly, "Lev stations were set to have no ambient population, leading to nothing in lev stations ever being ambiently reported correctly. We have bumped this number up to just above the line to report, which should result in ambient things happening in lev stations correctly(WJF reporting, ambient SIC when someone dies, etc)."
Johnny says loudly, "The missed call app was created in such a way that it tracks the OBJ# of the phone that was called from and not the phone number. This means that if a call is made and then the phone is recycled, we were getting tracebacks trying to access the .number property on the phone in the missed calls app when a phone was recycled. We've resolved this and it will now show the call coming from 'Destroyed Phone'."
Johnny says loudly, "Adding a note as a player was showing up on screens when someone with cyber eyes attached to a transcoder hub did this. We've resolved it."
Johnny says loudly, "Drug Production Rigs allow production of items based on the parentage. So if you say it can produce all children of Generic Smokable Drug, any child of that will be producible. This can sometimes be bad, as there may be items under that parentage you don't want to be produced. We have added a new prop to drug rigs -> .excluded_from_production which can be set to items that should be excluded from production. In this case, the recently created tobacco pipe will be excluded and thus not producible from a drug rig."
Johnny says loudly, "We believe the PRI security NPCs that were spawning and saying things right away that were unrelated to PRI should be fixed now. Likely an issue with the memento they were created from."
Johnny says loudly, "We think that we have resolved almost all of the issues where @voice was getting added to things like knocks, gunshots, etc. Had to do some open heart surgery on $you:say_action and a bunch of other verbs to make it happen."
Johnny says loudly, "With help from a player and several hours of debugging, we've made some significant changes to how shotguns work. There were bugs with how ammo was processed when consumed, how loading/unloading worked, and how combat reloading worked as well as inconsistencies between using 'unload' and 'pump', which can both eject a shell. There were several other issues, the code was kinda messy because we revamped how shotguns worked several years ago and made them auto pump in some cases, and also added drums/magazines to reload them from and this added a lot of complexity. They could use a refactor overall, but for now, hopefully they are working better and are consistent."
Johnny says loudly, "You can now light letters on fire to destroy them, instead of just trashing them."
Johnny says loudly, "Biological samples can now be collected in a Biological Containment Thermos. You then load these into the Chemical Processing and Production Machine at VS, letting you generate an amount of raw chemicals. There are a variety of chemicals, quite a number of combinations of these chemicals. The eventual goal is to let these be used in the production of hyper experimental drugs based on these chemicals that can potentially have awesome effects."
Johnny says loudly, "A bug where you could only order regular grilled cheese sandwiches in the Meltdown no matter what you said to the shopkeeper has been fixed. Happy sandwiching. :P"
Johnny says loudly, "You can no longer attempt to load battox power cells into people, which was not possible and causing a traceback. We also refactored the code from spaghetti if statements into guard clauses, making it much easier to understand what was going on."
Johnny says loudly, "A big thanks to Slither, Kard, Mench, Macabre, Butako and Mono for addressing all these things."
Johnny says loudly, "I'm really proud of the hard work all our staff put into making the game run and I'm looking forward to hearing what the Builders and GMs have to say about the past year."
Johnny says loudly, "I hope all of you are still enjoying what we've created and nurture for you every day."
Johnny exclaims loudly, "Thank you all for continuing to be a part of this amazing place. Here's to a fun, dark and cyber 2025 and beyond!"
Fengshui starts applauding politely.
Fengshui toggles the room moderation to OFF, allowing anyone to speak.
Johnny steps away from the podium.
Lena says, "now I want grilled cheese sandwiches."
Knyghtskye starts applauding politely.
Jawbox01 shouts loudly, "WOOOOO!"
Lena starts applauding politely.
Svetlana starts applauding politely.
Jawbox01 starts applauding politely.
AdamBlue9000 says loudly, "YIPPEEE"
Thrillimanjaro starts applauding politely.
Adrognik starts applauding politely.
Nymphali starts applauding loudly.
Bonsai starts applauding politely.
Emily wiggles.
Enven exclaims, "WICKS TURF!"
Nymphali exclaims, "Wooo!"
Terrible_the_duck shouts loudly, "WOOOOOO! GO TEAM!"
Butako chuckles softly.
EnRet starts applauding politely.
Fengshui toggles the room moderation to ON, allowing only admin and the current speaker to speak
Johnny motions to the seated staff.
Butako rises from the plush leather seat that rests on the stage.
Fengshui exclaims loudly, "Butako is now going to say some words!"
Johnny walks across the stage and sits upon one of the large leather chairs.
The Speaking Queue topic has switched to Head Builder Speech.
Butako steps up to the podium and adjusts the micropohone.
Butako exclaims loudly, "*speaking english, in a piggie-sounding voice* OINK!"
Butako says loudly, "Ill keep this brief, as a lot of what the build team does is behind the scenesfixing typos, redecorating, setting up items for plots, shuffling people around various pads, and handling all the little fixes that keep things running smoothly."
Butako says loudly, "That said, we've been pretty busy! Since the last town hall we have created 1,145 objects, dug 81 rooms, and set 3,021 props"
Butako says loudly, "We've released jewelry crafting, and added nail polish to the game."
Butako says loudly, "We added several new items including lipsticks, new masks and hoodies to the halloween store."
Butako says loudly, "We opened the Sanhehui cultural center."
Butako says loudly, "We put several businesses up for lease, with more on the way."
Butako says loudly, "We opened two new stores in Bansupuro Park, two new stores in Gold Sector, and a new restaurant in Red Sector."
Butako says loudly, "We released a new blade weapon."
Butako says loudly, "We added piercings to Skin Deep."
Butako says loudly, "We introduced a sidecar motorcycle for Chex."
Butako says loudly, "We updated a number of NPC descriptions, and as always, we have worked on a ton of behind the scenes improvements."
Butako says loudly, "Some things that we are working on in the future are... more junkyard style weapons."
Butako says loudly, "Harvesting dune dragon leather for crafting."
Butako says loudly, "Finishing off the Rustungshund II robot, and improving Eisenhowers."
Butako says loudly, "Unique Corporate armor, and enhancing the theme of corporate colors within corporate buildings."
Butako says loudly, "Updated the SCF prison."
Butako exclaims loudly, "We have a new addition to the build team - Bonsai! If youve had a chance to visit Donahues Odds and Ends, you can see his handiwork firsthand!"
Butako says loudly, "Now Id like to talk about something that not everyone knows about! Did you know that you can get new items created for the game, simply by going to an NPC that has something to do with the item or a store that makes sense to find a particular item in, and see if it can be imported or found by some means? "
Butako says loudly, "Thats right, special things can be yours for the price of a puppet request and some chyen or a favor! This is how weve gotten things like milk-wrestling pits for KMB, a new type of wine for a party, and even a Christmas ham. "
Butako exclaims loudly, "Of course, we ask that this is something that is done sparingly, as quite a good deal of work can go into the creation of a new item but it doesnt hurt to ask ic if something can be found!"
Butako exclaims loudly, "If youre interested in joining the build team to help with the many projects in our backlog, it all starts with an SGM application, which you can find on the BGBB. If you love the idea of adding your own creative mark to the game, I encourage you to apply!"
Johnny says loudly, "mmm, ham."
Butako exclaims loudly, "The last thing I would like to do, is I would like to give a huge shoutout to Mench who has helped me figure out how to complete a few things that Ive been working on for a long time. Hes certainly helped me figure out a number of things that I found very tricksy. He has been an invaluable asset to not just the build team, but staff as a whole!"
Butako exclaims loudly, "Thank you everyone for your time! I look forward to helping expand our world over the next year!"
Fengshui toggles the room moderation to OFF, allowing anyone to speak.
Fengshui starts applauding politely.
Terrible_the_duck exclaims, "Dune dragon crafting! Sick! JUNKYARD WEAPONS YESSS! Hell yeah Bonsai. Donahues is fucking badass! WOOO!"
Butako steps away from the podium.
Bix shouts loudly, "TEARGGHHHH!!!"
Knyghtskye starts applauding politely.
Quotient exclaims loudly, "You gave the Bonsai Buddy write permissions?! Anor save us all... It's embedded itself in the system, now!"
SketchyZo starts applauding politely.
Hivemind starts applauding politely.
Adrognik starts applauding politely.
Nymphali starts applauding loudly.
Thrillimanjaro starts applauding politely.
Veleth starts applauding excitedly.
Svetlana exclaims, "We love you Butako!!"
Knyghtskye exclaims, "WOOOOO!"
Logic claps with ferocity of a quantum processor. Feel the wave.
Nymphali exclaims, "Amazing stuff!"
Lena starts applauding politely.
Jawbox01 shouts loudly, "WOOOO HAM!"
Enven says, "Dune dragon leather? Fuuuck yes."
Huntresskai exclaims, "WOOO!"
Emily exclaims, "Ham!"
Quest starts applauding politely.
Sivartas starts applauding politely.
BubbleKangaroo starts applauding politely.
Bonsai grins mischievously.
EnRet starts applauding politely.
Bix starts applauding politely.
Terrible_the_duck shouts loudly, "HAM!"
Butako oinks!
Risikio shouts loudly, "THERE IS A GOD! BRING ON THE ROBO-PUPPERS!"
Enven says, "Also, corporate specific armor is *huge*."
Wh1ppet shouts loudly, "WOOOO-HOOOO! GO, PIGGY!"
Fengshui toggles the room moderation to ON, allowing only admin and the current speaker to speak
Butako walks across the stage and sits upon one of the large leather chairs.
Fengshui says loudly, "Next up, we'll hear from the Head GM, Mono."
Mono rises from the plush leather seat that rests on the stage.
Mono steps up to the podium and adjusts the micropohone.
Mono says loudly, "*speaking english* Hi, Domekin! It's me, Mono, voted most evil staff member by, like, 2 people on OOC-Chat! I'm also our Head GM by some other vote that happened on a different channel."
Mono says loudly, "So that means whatever may have happened to you IC, yes, it was my fault, but no, I contractually can't say I'm sorry."
Mono says loudly, "Normally this is where I would do the numbers, but Johnny already covered those, so I get to skip them. Instead, I will honor our most productive puppeteer, Bubbles, who in less than a year has managed to leave all of us in the dust by a heavy margin. I'd also like to (for once), thank Mench for answering your xhelps, as he responded to more of them than the rest of us."
Eve walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Mono says loudly, "So with that out of the way, we'll get into the meat of this discussion: what to expect out of GM attention in your plots."
Mono exclaims loudly, "Say you have a plan. You're going to blow up a corporate HQ because you hate the moon, think they own it, and also think that this will somehow destroy it, too. You write @notes about your scheme, you wrangle up players, you plan things out. But wait, on the day you go up, a UN dignitary is there? Along with a full security retinue?!"
Mono says loudly, "Well, that's kind of what we're here to do. Part of our charge as GMs is to complicate your plans in unexpected ways, to make you think on your feet, to keep you guessing. But there will always be a path to success, even if you'll have to make some fast or bold moves to get there."
Mono says loudly, "This reflects one of our philosophies of administering the game. Avoid the hard no."
Mono says loudly, "In an interaction with us, you may come across something unexpected, a denial, or stumbling block that looks more like a boulder. But this is when we want you to be your most flexible. Find a way to cheat our plans. Use your creativity to get around it."
Johnny thinks . o O ( Can't stop my intrusive thoughts! )
You feel a mild headache as the serum takes effect.
Mono says loudly, "Beat us at our own stupid game because that's cyberpunk as fuck."
Mono says loudly, "Or alternatively, just dive right into it. Sindome isn't always about making it out alive. Sometimes it's about doing the dumbest, most desperate thing possible to try to tell the acest story. Playing to lose."
Mono says loudly, "But whatever way you pick, don't let us stop you. We want you to act, not surrender. We are not trying to defeat you. That is the last thing we want. We're not playing this game against you."
Mono says loudly, "I say this from the heart, and I think I speak for everyone on staff when I say it."
Mono says loudly, "We're rooting for you. All of you. We want you to build the best story for yourselves and the world of Withmore."
Mono says loudly, "This game isn't about us admin. It's about you, as players, the stories you make. We're just here to make the road a little more bumpy so victory is that much sweeter or defeat that much more epic."
Mono says loudly, "We love all of you guys, gals, and nonbinary pals. Thanks so much for coming here to play. Keep making Withmore awesome."
Fengshui toggles the room moderation to OFF, allowing anyone to speak.
Fengshui starts applauding politely.
Thrillimanjaro starts applauding politely.
SketchyZo starts applauding politely.
Knyghtskye starts applauding politely.
Veleth starts applauding excitedly.
Emily smiles softly.
Quotient starts applauding politely.
Adrognik starts applauding politely.
Logic claps with ferocity of a quantum processor. Feel the wave.
Knyghtskye exclaims, "WOOOOO!"
Svetlana starts applauding politely.
Hivemind starts applauding politely.
Batko starts applauding politely.
Majere_Draven waves nonchalantly.
Terrible_the_duck shouts loudly, "WOOOO!"
Enven starts applauding politely.
EnRet shouts loudly, "AAAAAAH!"
Huntresskai exclaims, "Thank you mono!"
Bonsai starts applauding politely.
Risikio starts applauding politely.
Jawbox01 starts applauding politely.
Huntresskai exclaims, "and team!"
Veleth exclaims, "Thanks for the intrusive thoughts!!"
Fengshui toggles the room moderation to ON, allowing only admin and the current speaker to speak
The Speaking Queue topic has switched to Game Master Speech.
Mono steps away from the podium.
The Speaking Queue topic has switched to Current State of the Staff and what players can do to help keep the game growing.
Mono walks across the stage and sits upon one of the large leather chairs.
Fengshui says loudly, "Okay, so, the first topic in the open discussion part is going to start off with a bit of a speech from me before I open the speaking queue. I wanted to cover some things."
Fengshui says loudly, "I'm going to briefly talk about the current active staff. "
Fengshui says loudly, "We currently do not have any Support GMs, though we have a few interviews planned to potentially bring one or two on."
Fengshui says loudly, "We currently have 5 GMs. Mono, Coral, Ares, Macabre, Bubbles. Three have been on staff between 2 to 6 years. One has been on staff for a year. Two of these GMs have been less active as of late."
Fengshui says loudly, "We currently have 3 builders. Butako, Macabre, Bonsai. One is new! On staff less than 6 months. One has been on staff 2 years. One (Our Head Builder) has been on Staff for over 7 years. They are all active."
Fengshui says loudly, "We have one active coder, me, on staff for just under 19 years. Kard, who has been on staff over 6 years and contributes as his time allows but that is rare. And Mench, on staff almost 8 years, who has been picking up some MOO code over time and looking at ways to contribute."
Fengshui says loudly, "We have 4 Justices. 1 is quite active (Mench). 1 is semi-active (Slither/Fengshui). 2 are around as needed (Johnny, Glitch). Justices tend to act as the glue, filling gaps where needed. For instance, Mench will fix the occasional bug or add a new admin facing tool."
Fengshui says loudly, "Staff has been fairly stable for the past few years. We have had a rotation of Support GMs come through, and some have been invited to join the staff in a full-time capacity."
Fengshui says loudly, "As everyone hopefully knows, the staff consists entirely of volunteers who contribute their time to the game as a labor of love. It can, however, start feeling like a job or a grind at times. That's one of the reasons we have the Support GM position. It helps keep a fresh perspective on the staff, and allows the more tenured Staff to hand off certain tasks to fresh faces that haven't already done it dozens if not hundreds of times."
Fengshui says loudly, "We're going to talk about burnout on the staff and player side more in the next section, so I won't get into it deeply here. Instead I want to mention several ways that players can contribute to the game."
Fengshui says loudly, "First off, help files! We have commands for anyone to submit a new or edited help file to the staff for review. If you think we are missing a help file, or there is something outdated or in new of updating, check out 'help @new-help' which runs you through the use of the command. You can also run '@missing-help' to see help files people request, that we do not currently have. It's a good way to identify what help files we may be missing."
Fengshui says loudly, "Second, is lore editing. We have commands in the MOO for anyone authorized to submit new or edited lore content for review. I'd say roughly 50% of the lore on the website comes from player submissions. To be a lore editor you need to have been playing for a while, and have a strong understanding of the lore. If you're interested in contributing in this way, please check out this BGBB thread http://sindo.me/SJ5iVOGss and 'help lore' for the requirements and how to request access."
Fengshui says loudly, "Third, joining the FixIt team. The Build Team needs help brainstorming and writing messaging for objects, rooms and more. Anyone can join, all you need to do is put in a service request to be added to the channel. There isn't always something that needs doing, but having a pool of players ready to help if the builders need it, is great. Many projects have been sped along by player support in this manner. If you're already on the channel you can type '@xstatus fix' to see if there are any current projects in need of help."
Fengshui says loudly, "Fourth, submitting bugs. Taking the time to submit a detailed bug report when you encounter an issue is an excellent way to help the game improve. You can read more about what a good bug report looks like here: http://sindo.me/H1B5XF5zK and how our bug system works by checking out 'help @bug'"
Fengshui says loudly, "@missing-help is available to players now, just fixed it. Whoops."
Fengshui exclaims loudly, "Fifth, reviewing and adding context to bugs others have submitted! Someone on the BGBB had asked how the players could help with QA. We have two types of bugs. Public and private. If a bug is private, only admin and the submitter can see it. If a bug is public, anyone can view it. Some of you already take advantage of this to leave comments on bugs with additional information or context, steps to reproduce, or to clarify that something isn't a bug, which saves me time!"
Fengshui says loudly, "For example '@vb 1319' has comments that helped me close this bug that were left not by the original submitter, but by another player. There are several examples of this in @bugs and it is truly helpful. If more people do this, I will be able to fix more bugs more quickly."
Fengshui says loudly, "Sixth, We have a very large codebase, and as some of you can attest, I often have to reach out to players to understand how a system is working so I can understand how to fix it. Being supportive and available to help me or someone else when they need an actual player to test fixes or understand why an issue is happening is really helpful. Especially when that player is likely more of an expert in the specific systems usage than I may be."
Fengshui says loudly, "Seventh, being kind and patient on Game-Help, and doing your best to answer questions. Before we had game-help all these questions were being asked on xhelp, and it was very time-consuming for the staff. Crowdsourcing these responses has led to faster answers for players and less drag on staff. Thank you. Keep it up."
Fengshui says loudly, "Eighth: @review-cloth. This helps us reduce bloat while also keeping cool player made items. We used to have to do this manually, as a staff. It saves us a ton of time to have players help. Check out 'help @review-cloth' for more information."
Fengshui says loudly, "Ninth, being a good citizen on the BGBB. You can read this BGBB thread to understand our BGBB policies and expectations: http://sindo.me/BJllTNKD9yl"
Fengshui says loudly, "But suffice to say, being a constructive contributor on the BGBB, answering questions, looking at things from multiple perspectives, recognizing that staff are volunteers, time is limited, and we have good intentions, is important. Staff try to respond to BGBB threads where possible, but it can take a lot of time and the conversation moves quickly, and most of the time we spend on the game is usually on the MOO, doing puppets and writing code and building. The more that the BGBB can be a place for discussion without being a distraction that requires moderation, the better. The same goes for the Discord server."
Fengshui says loudly, "Tenth, there is contributing BabbleON scripts. This section of the BGBB has lots of info and a guide for how to write these scripts: http://sindo.me/BklpVFDqkx "
svetlana walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Fengshui says loudly, "We don't always need new scripts, but there is nothing stopping anyone from submitting ones we didn't ask for. If you're really interested in rewriting an existing script, for instance, you could start a discussion in that Forum, and eventually reach out to the staff to see if there is interest for that. "
Fengshui says loudly, "Eleventh, there is OOC Chat moderation and BGBB moderation. It isn't just admin that can (and are) moderators in both these areas. If someone has shown an even temperament, measured responses to difficult questions or situations, and is interested, we can provide them with OOC Chat Moderation tools or BGBB moderation tools. There are some strict requirements and expectations for being allowed these tools. You can find out more in 'help moderator'. And if you feel you are a good fit for one of these roles, you can put in a service request to talk to a $justice about it."
Fengshui says loudly, "And finally, if you're doing some or all of these things, still find yourself with time to spare, and have been playing for at least a year, you could consider submitting an application for Support GM."
Fengshui says loudly, "We maintain strict standards for who can join the staff. And we review a person carefully before we even set up an interview. This is because a staff member has access to tons of information and the ability to misuse the commands available to them. We've had staff members betray the community's trust in the past. We're wary of allowing it to happen again. Staff cohesion is also important. It only takes one hostile person on staff to drive everyone else away. And of course, availability and commitment are important. Numerous times we've spent a long time training someone as an SGM, only to have them stop signing in. That's not a good use of anyone's time. It's a careful balancing act, and it requires due attention and care when we seek to bring someone new into the fold."
Fengshui exclaims loudly, "With all that being said, I'll open the speaking queue, if you have questions, suggestions, etc. Please feel free to join. Please, try to have your comments prepared ahead of time for this topic and future ones!"
Fengshui has opened the Speaking Queue for this topic. 'join queue' to get in line to speak.
Emily has joined the Speaking Queue.

Emily stands from their seat in the second row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Emily says loudly, "I was wondering if more things can be done to get more people helping out on a staff level. We've got things like support GMs, but maybe we can have support coders and support builders? Or maybe certain parts of the coding and building process can be made more publicly available without sensitive info being exposed? Also some extra info about all of the responsibilities involved with being staff and what's expected of you would be cool I think."
Emily says loudly, "Maybe some knowledge about like how much time people are expected to put in for staff stuff."
SmokePotion has joined the Speaking Queue.
Svetlana has joined the Speaking Queue.
Fengshui says loudly, "I wrote up a big long post about the coder process, some of which applies to building as well."
Adea edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Fengshui says loudly, "Essentially, there is no option for a support coder. We onboard everyone as an SGM first and foremost. We've tried it other ways and it isn't successful."
Emily nods casually.
Fengshui says loudly, "In terms of time, it depends. Some people are on 40+ hours a week. Some are on much less, like me. Most it's a couple hours a day minimum."
Fengshui says loudly, "We're also all constantly talking even when we aren't on the MOO, on our Slack. Helping each other out, answering questions, etc."
Emily exclaims loudly, "Gotcha, thanks for the response!"
Mono says loudly, "Speaking for our expectations of a SGM, that's about the most we expect. A lot of the tasks we ask for SGMs to help with are clerical in nature, so processing gridmails, helping with basic puppets, that sort of stuff, so a few hours a week can really help out if they're focused."
Emily walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Fengshui says loudly, "If anyone wants to learn how to code in MOO, this documentation which I am one of the authors on is a great place to start: http://sindo.me/B1vn9iNgu :)"
Fengshui says loudly, "Going to be keeping us moving as we are already behind schedule :)"
The Speaking Queue has switched to SmokePotion.
SmokePotion stands from their seat in the second row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
SmokePotion says, "What all is involved with a support GM position?/ What if I had an idea for a few stoories, but I don't want to be exposed to the majority of the gm stuff, so it all stays a mystery to me? "
Fengshui says loudly, "Support GMs are there to help with the tasks that Mono mentioned."
Fengshui says loudly, "It's not a position that creates and drives large scale plots."
Fengshui says loudly, "It's a training position that, if done well, can lead to larger plots as part of a transition to Full GM."
Mono says loudly, "We try to keep as much of the curtain down for our SGMs as we can, also, so there isn't a worry that they'll be exposed overly much to plot. But at the same time, SGMs do have access to that information, it just isn't fed to them."
SmokePotion says, "Fair enough. "
SmokePotion edges into the second row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
The Speaking Queue has switched to svetlana.
svetlana stands from their seat in the first row and easily moves away from it.
Svetlana says loudly, "Sometimes there seems to be a lack of active Withmore Globe journalists. It seems like recently GMs have been great about publishing articles about newsworthy events, but I was wondering if there could potentially be an option for players to help write up articles for newsworthy things that might otherwise get skipped over due to lack of active PCs in the role? Maybe a @channel or something. I know that this would require a lot of OOC trust that the players would not be biased, of course."
Fengshui has closed the Speaking Queue for this topic.
Mono says loudly, "We've definitely been making a push to try to populate the Globe more, but I don't know if we're quite ready to open it up to the players in general."
Svetlana nods casually.
Mono says loudly, "It's something we can definitely discuss among ourselves, but for now, there are still ways to affect that change ICly."
Svetlana exclaims loudly, "Thank you!"
The Speaking Queue flashes to notify everyone that the queue is clear.
svetlana walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
The Speaking Queue topic has switched to Burnout: We frequently see burnout from the game's biggest staff and player contributors. Why do you think that is and what should be done to avoid it?.
Fengshui says loudly, "Okay, next topic is burn out! "
Fengshui has opened the Speaking Queue for this topic. 'join queue' to get in line to speak.
Napoleon has joined the Speaking Queue.

Napoleon stands from their seat in the sixth row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Enven has joined the Speaking Queue.
The Speaking Queue buzzes and the current speaker flashes: Napoleon.
Napoleon says, "Hi! My name is Napoleon and I've had a history of being a heavy content creator for many, many years. I burn out LIKE HELL and I get MAD because I feel like we lack consideration to players who write hundreds and hundreds of things in various avenues and don't do enough to preserve and share that freely with the playerbase. I'd love to see staff make a better effort to help keep player culture alive from our past and present generations."
Napoleon says, "Bring back the lore pages and letting prolific plots, characters, and etc be added to that as a collective part of Sindome history we deserve to be able to see and refer back to, even if it's twisted and little more than kernels of hints to pursue in game."
Fengshui says loudly, "The grid forums is a good place to capture historical things, as it is basically not editable."
[OOC: The game has been saved and backed up successfully to disk. 'help cp']
Fengshui says loudly, "I don't know how I feel about diluting the lore pages with too much player stuff. When we reviewed them as part of the migration out of the wiki, there was like... a ton of stuff that really didn't belong in there."
Fengshui says loudly, "It was a lot of self aggrandizing things that didn't belong in an objective lore file"
Fengshui says loudly, "I speak from personal experience, having written some self aggrandizing things heh"
Johnny says loudly, "*speaking english, in a brash, overbearing voice* ego stroking with no value for the next generation."
Napoleon says, "Except that a lot of players don't actively use the grid. I challenge you guys to instead bring back the website lore pages. It goes a long way into helping players be jacked into the collective world, have references to things that happened in the past, and find things to pursue and talk about. I get that feel protective of your past information, but you're doing an incredible disservice to not allowing new player things to be added into it."
ZedBanger has joined the Speaking Queue.
Svetlana has joined the Speaking Queue.
Napoleon says, "It's our culture. We should have a write to use it."
Napoleon sits cross-legged on the floor.
This room is currently being moderated. Please wait until moderation is turned off or join a speaking queue if one is present and open.
Fengshui says loudly, "The website lore pages are right here: https://sindome.org/lore/Withmore_City/"
Fengshui says loudly, "We also have data vaults and other means of passing down more tribal knowledge within the game."
Fengshui says loudly, "The Lore pages are an OOC tool, mostly for new players to familiarize themselves with the game world and the -well known- history."
Fengshui says loudly, "IC histories should be done IC."
Fengshui says loudly, "I've long wanted there to be a job at NLM or somewhere else that was responsible for collecting the stories/histories of the game and making them available ICly."
Napoleon exclaims, "They're locked and scarcely accessible to the general public! They should BE on the lore pages! If it's well known enough to be remembered for years, then it's well enough to go on that ooc page that is being used as a foundation of game knowledge and culture!"
Fengshui says loudly, "I'm not sure how they are scarcely available to the public? They are on the website and available from within the MOO."
Fengshui says loudly, "The lore pages are not a wiki for anyone to edit. They are an objectively true history of the world and major world events"
Fengshui says loudly, "What you seem to want is an IC wiki, and I think the grid can do that, or you could write an IC book with the stories. Several players have created and published books that are available in game. You can too."
Huntresskai has joined the Speaking Queue.
The Speaking Queue has switched to Enven.
Enven stands from their seat in the third row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Enven says, "Hey there, all. Props and all to those who create and really deliver on content, from both the Staff and Player side. But, keeping on topic here... I think one of the most common topics brought up, at least in xooc discussions on the subject, is this oddly pervasive feeling of 'Well, what's the point'. I don't think I'm surprising anyone by saying that it takes a *tremendous* amount of effort to generate plot, even with GM resources, and doubly so from the player end. But, things like smallworlding, people dropping off the face of the earth, lack of play/staff engagement with it, etc. have a way of breeding this feeling that trying to generate quality, immersive plot is a bit of a waste. An artist wants their art appreciated."
Enven says, "Why have this large, immersive, cloak-and-dagger plot, when someone will just off the cuff hit with "It was John, in the Library, with the Candlestick." and undermine the whole thing, you know? As far as smallworlding contributing the burnout."
Enven says, "To burnout, rather."
Burgerwolf edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Mono says loudly, "You will find no one more sympathetic to that than the GM staff, as we get to see these kinds of wrecking balls in action on our stories all the time. Sadly, we aren't able to effectively police smallworlding well enough to generate results, so we ask you all to do so."
Fengshui has closed the Speaking Queue for this topic.
Mono says loudly, "I've mentioned it in previous speeches at townhalls, don't be afraid to be wrong about something."
Enven says, "I definitely believe it, mono. If it's frustrating for us, it has to be twice as much for you."
Enven edges into the third row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Johnny says loudly, "confidently wrong is the best kind of wrong."
Mono says loudly, "Or to live with the mystery. It can be frustrating, we know, but at the same time, you have to remember that your character is living in a dome with 90 million other assholes who may or may not hate you."
Mono says loudly, "As for worrying that things matter, everything matters. Even if you catch IC hate for something you do, that doesn't mean the players behind the screen hate you."
Mono says loudly, "We're here to compete cooperatively. That means that we should all be on the same side, the one that makes the game fun and keeps people coming back for more."
Enven nods casually.
Enven says, "That's all, from me."
Bubbles says loudly, "*speaking english* For me as staff, personally burnout is caused by excessive bleeding and passive aggressive conversations done ICly by PCs that are masked OOC complaints. Whether calls, thinks, SIC. Talking about the powers that be, who the city favors, etc. "
Bubbles says loudly, "We get bleeding happens. But when people bleed for weeks to months on end in a feedback loop to themselves about the same stuff even after multiple xhelp talks to try to help, it wears some of us down. "
Johnny says loudly, "I will say on the topic of lore, I really like the idea of IC lore - it gives the ability to conceal the truth, value to knowledge, in a way that the OOC lore stuff can not. Books, the grid, please use these methods."
Macabre says, "*speaking english* C"
Enven edges into the third row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Fengshui says loudly, "Mac has a comment, just waiting for them to type it out."
Macabre says, "Piggybacking off of what Bubbles said, I want to emphatically remind people to please ask yourselves whether you're logging in every day to tell a story collaboratively even in the PVP field or if you're here to try and win the game. I've said this before on ooc-chat, but I often see a lot of players get bogged down in trying to win and win and win but never stop to really enjoy the stories of the losses and what that can mean for them in the moment. Also, please stop small worlding. Please."
The Speaking Queue has switched to ZedBanger.
ZedBanger stands from their seat in the third row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
ZedBanger says loudly, "Pre-wrote, so apologies for any redundancy. I'm curiouos how others will feel about this idea, but I believe a big part of burnout is Sindome's exceptionally high reliance on the work of specific individuals with the time, the know-how, and the willingness to drive long-running conflicts and plots which can draw in many other players and give them things to do in-game. Johnny's presentation on the game's metrics exemplify this quite well, I think. When we have key people involved, the game thrives. It really shows how much story we can generate, even on an individual level."
ZedBanger says loudly, "However, this coupled with a very sparse and often highly obfuscated built-in game loop (or small list of loops) leaves us vulnerable to the issues we see where a staffer or notable RP-driving player takes a break from the game due to any number of RL reasons (which are of course 100% valid), inadvertantly causing multiple plotlines to come to a screeching halt. Sindome is an RP game and RP is the goal, but the whole point of doing it in a GAME is to have a backdrop of game mechanics which can be used to facilitate RP. "
ZedBanger says loudly, "I'm simply of the opinion that we do not provide a lot of easy vehicles for less-experienced players to drive their own RP in a fun, unfettered way, and thusly we see this issue continue with new players and veterans alike. We ride waves of cool that inevitably crash down into bar-RP and NPC fetch quests for extended periods, which destroys our momentum and leaves a lot of players scratching their heads as to why they bothered to log in."
Logic says loudly, "*speaking english, in a wave of ones and zeroes that converge into a hollow, digitized voice* Someone leaving for time is a perfect opportunity for someone with gumption to step up and try to fill their shoes."
Logic says loudly, "It's an opportunity to show you can handle what the person above you is doing. That you're better than them. That whoever they're working for needs you more than them. "
ZedBanger says loudly, "Completely valid point, but to be frank we've been saying that for years and the issue persists. I just feel the need to point it out. I guess I'd also clarify my vague sort of solution is giving people more fun things to do without needing to plot it out in advance and get staff approval and so on and so forth."
Macabre says, "One of the things most often discussed is ways to try and help bring the spotlight onto players who might have challenges getting their player plots off the ground. Part of the things we as a staff have done to handle that is following along closely to player notes, making ourselves available to help players do things they want to do by trying to stay within 'No, but' or Yes, and' decisions."
Mono says loudly, "Something we've been working on at the GM level is interoperability. One of my larger pushes since I was voted to head GM has been to insist on documentation for even smaller plots, which is now a meme among us. But what this allows us to do is slide in if someone gets sick, burnt out, or overwhelmed with RL for a while."
Mono says loudly, "This doesn't quite translate to the player side, sadly, but it is a known issue on our side, and one we're working to address."
The Speaking Queue has switched to svetlana.
svetlana stands from their seat in the first row and easily moves away from it.
ZedBanger edges into the third row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Svetlana says loudly, "I planned what I was going to say beforehand and some previous speakers have already touched on this topic briefly. This kind of also goes along with the 'Making an impact on the game world' topic. In any case, something that causes some burnout for myself is the fact that Withmore has such a short memory. Let's say (not a real example) someone assassinates a super powerful NPC and gets a whole bunch of PCs engaged in that plot. It's talked about all over the city. One or two years later, a new crop of immies has come into the game and some oldbies have retired out. At this point, only a few people remember plot events from a couple years ago - or, really, a couple months ago. It's almost as if it never happened, unless one or two PCs make an effort to keep it in the public conversation. It just feels like engaging in big plots that should supposedly have a big impact on the world, be it PC-led plots or NPC-led plots, just gets buried by the passage of time all too quickly. Almost like these kinds of events are an anomaly in the timeline. "
Fengshui asks loudly, "How come players don't continue talking about these things? telling their war stories? things like that? Is there something preventing that?"
Mono says loudly, "Honestly, the public attention span of Withmore is supposed to be hyper-accelerated. It's one of the means of control that certain corporations has. In this case, it's super fucking punk to remember what happened last year, let alone ten years ago."
Svetlana nods casually.
Mono says loudly, "Again, though, this is something with IC solutions, like writing books, making posts on the Grid, or trying to make other IC touchstones for important events."
Svetlana nods casually.
Svetlana says loudly, "Good ideas."
Fengshui says loudly, "A 'This Month in Withmore City' thread in the Metro Chat, for instance."
Svetlana nods casually.
Macabre says, "Agreed. It's well within theme, but also something that's in-grained within our own psychologies. In RL, as time moves away from a massive event like 9/11 and other major things, you notice that it's talked about less and less and less as time moves on. It's accelerated in the game, too, as the people who were originally impacted die off or stop talking about it. The grid is one of the best ways we have to preserve against that."
Johnny says loudly, "Being a Journo was always my favorite role in a cyberpunk world. You literally write the history."
Svetlana asks loudly, "That's a good point, thank you. I guess this could also be for the 'making an impact in the game world' topic but what about sic chatter?"
Svetlana says loudly, "Some of the random sic chatter mentions old names and events. I know there were some names added a few years ago too"
Fengshui says loudly, "Adding names and events is just something that needs to be kept up with. We do a big catch up every now and then."
Svetlana nods casually.
Svetlana says loudly, "Thank you."
Fengshui says loudly, "Any admin can add new sic quotes"
Mono says loudly, "Mench has been pretty on-top of adding to those names and events, recently."
Bubbles says loudly, "We've been trying to make small adjustments for immediate impact results, currently there's several NPCs in my bithome as a result of showing the impact of events. And we've been trying to create more news articles and chatter. But players also need to help remember each other's stories. Through art, grid forum, grid nodes, newspapers, etc."
The Speaking Queue has switched to Huntresskai.
svetlana walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Huntresskai stands up from the floor.
Logic says loudly, "I think of this in a few ways. First, none of are -really- all that exceptional in the greater SD world. We're a cut above the rabble, but even among that cloth, few of us have stories that last. Withmore -does- forget. It doesn't have time to remember 90% of us. I've seen characters do fantastic things over years of playing. Shift and change. Go from one thing to another. Be involved. Make some kind of reputation for themselves. Then they quiet down or leave. People forget. People use the opportunity to sell a different narrative of past characters in some cases. It's all...it's all in the RP I think. There are names floating around that people remember after years. If your actions are that memorable, your's will be too."
Huntresskai says, "Maybe the solution to having lore more available in game is to have more things like Odds and Ends, IC locales that are for 'museum' type purposes on topics. 'Chatter' NPCs, there's already mementos like Tater and Conlin etc. that stand there and 'talk' regularly who maybe could give teasers for group-relevant lore to give new people hints to chase down if that history is something they're interested in. Gives people reasons to explore and IC ways of learning the history of things relevant to their character. Regarding smallworlding, more 'ambient noise' would obviously help with that, but also obviously takes coding, and given the concern of keeping size down, not sure that would be desirable... would it be desirable or would it be considered undesirable clutter? If desirable, maybe that's something players could help write scripts for to include or get some help working out how to move forward on making an appropriate place for it."
Fengshui says loudly, "Maybe we need a storyteller NPC, and players can submit stories through OOC means and they get added to the stories the NPC is willing to tell."
Huntresskai says, "Yeh, basically. "
Fengshui says loudly, "That way when the stories are crazy and self aggrandizing, it makes IC sense, because it makes a good story."
Mono [to Fengshui]: I think you mean 'sell' not 'tell.'
Fengshui says loudly, "Heh."
Fengshui says loudly, "Someone post in the ideas section about a storytelling NPC and a way for players to submit stories, and I'll try to do that at some point."
The Speaking Queue flashes to notify everyone that the queue is clear.
Huntresskai sits cross-legged on the floor.
Woeful sits cross-legged on the floor.
Woeful stands up from the floor.
The Speaking Queue topic has switched to Bleed: How can we address issues with bleed?.
[++] New post to topic 'Storytelling NPC' in Ideas

Fengshui has opened the Speaking Queue for this topic. 'join queue' to get in line to speak.
Johnny says loudly, "love that idea."
Batko has joined the Speaking Queue.

Fengshui says loudly, "Danke."
batko stands from their seat in the sixth row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Woeful edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Fengshui says loudly, "Let's talk about bleeeeeed."
Batko says loudly, "Hi. This is a thank-you to Bubbles and an expansion to what Bubbles said about passive aggressive IC commentary that is meant to act as an OOC complaint. I know it has to be even worse for staff since they see everything everyone is saying, but it also affects players to a lesser extent. When trying to pursue IC conflict, pseudo-IC comments and arguments can completely destroy immersion once you realize what's really being said, and it can cause a lot of bleed, which is what this topic is about. Bleed begets bleed and when you choose to take your OOC frustration out on other players, you are making things significantly worse, as it can only spiral downwards, and not in a fun IC way. It ends up shaping a narrative about players that often paints them as outright malicious, with very little way for those players to effectively defend themselves, not IC from IC attacks, but OOC from OOC attacks."
batko edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Veleth has joined the Speaking Queue.
[++] New post to topic 'Storytelling NPC' in Ideas

Majere_Draven has joined the Speaking Queue.
This room is currently being moderated. Please wait until moderation is turned off or join a speaking queue if one is present and open.
nope nope nope
Fengshui nods casually.
[++] New post to topic 'Storytelling NPC' in Ideas

SketchyZo edges into the second row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Bubbles says loudly, "For player bleed - please try to remember most of your fellow players are good people. They aren't here to grief you."
Bubbles says loudly, "So much bleed is happening these days and I see it going on. and it's creating so much resentment because of how some people perceive stuff is unfolding. I mentioned before, but there's a lot of feedback loop."
Bubbles says loudly, "Talk to more characters. Characters outside your PC's circle. People that just won't parrot back your own OOC complaints and perspective."
Bubbles says loudly, "Maybe not everything your character is told is true. And being wrong is part of the game. But if you're a player experiencing a lot of bleed, I ask you to please consider this."
Bubbles says loudly, "People are convincing themselves they're so right IC and OOC that they've closed themselves off to the possibility that they're wrong both ICly and OOCly. "
Bubbles says loudly, "And it's making yourselves hate the playing experience and your fellow players."
Butako nods her head in agreement.
[++] New post to topic 'Storytelling NPC' in Ideas

Batko says loudly, "I'd hug you but I am surely ridden with many diseases."
Mono says loudly, "To add my voice to Bubbles, we're all a community. We shouldn't be here to make each other feel bad about play decisions. We're the only ones who can make this game great for each other, and we can do that by celebrating our losses as much as our triumphs. It's not about winning. It's about playing."
[++] New post to topic 'Storytelling NPC' in Ideas

Fengshui has closed the Speaking Queue for this topic.
The Speaking Queue has switched to Veleth.
Veleth stands from their seat in the third row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Veleth exclaims, "Prewritten and a bit long, sorry for that! This might be a bit personal and I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way, but it kinda both plays into burnout and occasional bleed for me. I lose motivation immensely when after getting bored of a character and retiring them - after having worked on a new character concept I really like - when characters compare the person IC in a way that sounds more like masked OOC comments on 'wow, you're just a copy of your previous character'. Especially when I spent so much time writing a character and detailing all its flaws, trying to make it interesting and something I enjoy playing. It ruins my motivation and my immersion and makes me want to make something new, take a break or quit entirely - it also makes it hard for me to roleplay them the way I planned, it REALLY gets in my head as it feels incredibly OOC. I'm aware this is partially my own fault for having a preference to play certain characters that may seem similar on the surface. But still, when I get this sort of response, I feel like I'm clearly doing something wrong when people have decided who I am before I even had the chance of showing them. I think maybe many of us have a bad habit of acting on our OOC thoughts IC in a way that nearly breaks the fourth wall, I am not sure why this happens but it feels more like OOC bullying/meme-ing than IC joking/criticism. Sometimes, people push back against this sort of thing IC, and that's appreciated, though it would be good if it happened less in the first place. This has happened to me countless times, especially in the past when I rerolled a lot more. The thing is, I can not react to this at all IC as none of it makes sense to my character, which adds to my motivation failing. I am not sure if people are just annoyed or if they obliviously do not realize that their 'jokes' makes it hard to want to give the game another shot. Anyway, thanks for hearing me out. Sorry again for the wall!"
[++] New post to topic 'Storytelling NPC' in Ideas

Mono says loudly, "We will absolutely yell at people for doing this. So don't do it."
Fengshui says loudly, "No one should be making any IC comment like that. If you have a concern, bring it to xhelp."
Veleth says, "Thank you for hearing me. I never really thought about xhelping it, though I think I'd done it in the past, it's been a few years."
Veleth edges into the third row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Fengshui says loudly, "When I said xhelp, I meant if people are concerned someone is playing a copy of their character, but it is also true that if you feel you're being targeted with comments like that, that you should also xhelp and let us know. veiled OOC comments do not belong in the IC world any more than memes do."
The Speaking Queue has switched to Majere_Draven.
Majere_Draven says, "I'll have more to say about this, but for right now, I just think that some bleed is because there isn't a pressure release valve for people to use. a way to communicate about recent events and see what worked, didn't work, what felt bad and what was nice. even just a debrief with an sgm that was involved or watching, with the involved characters of it was a particularly big event. Veleth you should xhelp that. do it. that's not fun for anyone. anyone, i hate to speaking for staff, but if something really dog shit crazy happens with the iic/ic divide, xhelp."
Majere_Draven stands from their seat in the third row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Mono says loudly, "Meta commentary like that falls under that purview of rule 3.A, also. So if you feel compelled to make that kind of commentary, just keep in mind that it's against the @rules."
Mono says loudly, "We don't generally do debriefs with people about plots as a rule because, at least if it's a GM-run plot, there are tons of moving pieces that you might not see."
Fengshui says loudly, "I think in a perfect world, we'd have lots of office hours and workshops and discussions, time seems to be the biggest constraint with regards to that."
Majere_Draven says, "right, I don't want more gm time being used, but some kind of way to express about recent events without beating around the bush and trying to skirt saying anything specific might help a lot ."
Mono says loudly, "@note about it."
Mono says loudly, "We read all of your @notes."
Fengshui says loudly, "I'd be interested in hearing some brainstorming on the BGBB about what some other escape valves for pressure might look like. I could code one of those rooms where you go in and just break shit for 30 minutes, like they have in real life heh. Might not be as cathartic though"
Fengshui says loudly, "Or we could do a rampagemoo and people can just lose their shit against zombies for a day"
Macabre exclaims, "Rampagemoo!!"
Mono says loudly, "Murder rooms, instead. Just push a button, spawn an NPC, kill the NPC."
Majere_Draven sits cross-legged on the floor.
The Speaking Queue flashes to notify everyone that the queue is clear.
The Speaking Queue topic has switched to Smallworlding: What it is, and what can we do about it?.
Fengshui says loudly, "Okay, Small worlding. We've talked about it a bit so far."
Fengshui has opened the Speaking Queue for this topic. 'join queue' to get in line to speak.
Batko has joined the Speaking Queue.

Necronex666 has joined the Speaking Queue.
Svetlana has joined the Speaking Queue.
batko stands from their seat in the sixth row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Cowbell has joined the Speaking Queue.
Majere_Draven has joined the Speaking Queue.
Quotient has joined the Speaking Queue.
Batko says loudly, "Even going on five years of steady play and a few more years previous to that in on and off fooling around, I still find myself making simple smallworld snap decisions and assumptions. What I appreciate the most is when player characters close or at least friendly to my character chip in IC and gently nudge things away from smallworld assumptions. It's easy to just say the first thing that comes to mind when investigating issues. Smallworlding isn't just for staff to police, it's for all of us to crack down on. If you see/hear something, say something. People with good intentions can make bad decisions, even on accident."
batko edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Bubbles says loudly, "Thank you, it's important for players to police. 100%. "
Bubbles says loudly, "Smallworlding takes away stories and experiences. "
Bubbles says loudly, "We can't and won't police everything. But we are watching, we do talk to people, and I'm sure you've heard my shouts across the game."
Bubbles says loudly, "We've seen experienced players talk about how one unique vehicle type must be one of two people because only one or two people have that type. Please do better."
Bubbles says loudly, "We've seen a small group of PCs actively talk themselves out of participating/joining in a long plot because they saw someone wearing a certain type of armor with a certain type of weapon, assumed it was a PC and a group there to attack them. Reality? One of us was puppeting and it was an NPC."
Bubbles says loudly, "We've seen people shoot, attack, identify someone in a type of hoodie or shroud as their only identifier because they saw them in one area of Red and then saw them clear across the map. Doesn't matter if they've moved 10-30 rooms. Please do better."
Bubbles says loudly, "Camera networks on streets, Red moreso than anywhere else, are watching hugely packed streets. Think about whether your character is really hearing and seeing everything when one PC walks through what should have hundreds of ambient population. Thank you."
Mono says loudly, "Also a note, if you find yourself make a judgement like batko mentioned, try to listen to others who might be steering you back away from smallworlding."
Mono says loudly, "One part is being that voice, the other is hearing that voice."
Emily has joined the Speaking Queue.
Batko says loudly, "None of us are perfect, check yourselves and especially your friends."
The Speaking Queue has switched to Necronex666.
Necronex666 stands from their seat in the first row and easily moves away from it.
Necronex666 says, "Hi. I've been a victim of smallworlding more times than I can count on my current character and it gets to be a bit much. It's frustrating because I've always tried to give people the benefit of the doubt and even misdirect to other possibilities when something happens even if I OOCly know better. After all the game world is small and there's always only a limited number of people who could've been capable of something. Figuring it out isn't the hard part, it's knowing if you should immediately apply that knowledge ICly without actually having any evidence to back it up. Losing time, energy and progress on a plot over someone immediately acting on a guess is never a pleasant experience and the thing about the current system is that whoever has the most strength behind them can afford to make the wildest guesses, as they suffer the least if they're wrong. Shoot the wrong person? You're covered, because you're on top and nobody can get at you for it. How do we combat this when everyone has a different interpretation of what the rule means if it's not being actively policed? Especially when the one who may be smallworlding is perceived as untouchable? It seems like it'd continue till both sides engaged are doing it to each other, as has been happening lately."
Necronex666 walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Risikio has joined the Speaking Queue.
[++] New post to topic 'Storytelling NPC' in Ideas

[++] New post to topic 'Randomly generated shrouds on cameras' in Ideas

Bubbles says loudly, "You should always treat other PCs and players how you want to be treated and within the rules. If you think someone's smallworlding, going and smallworlding yourself only makes it worse and sets a trend for current and future players. If you think there's a major issue, please note. We do watch stuff, we do talk to people. But please also be open that an assumption of smallworlding may turn out to be wrong."
Fengshui says loudly, "Be the change you wanna see."
[++] New post to topic 'Storytelling NPC' in Ideas

Fengshui says loudly, "Yeah, that's the other side of this. Sometimes people ask us to look into small worlding, and we do, and the person has multiple legit reasons for thinking or saying or assuming backed by evidence the person making the accusation isn't aware of and we can't tell them about without revealing something."
Fengshui says loudly, "It's almost 50/50 if it's legit happening, or if it's assumed."
Fengshui asks loudly, "We can't exactly tell the person who thinks it's small worlding that their choombata is private SICing their enemy their locaiton and what they are wearing so they can be targetted, ya know?"
Fengshui says loudly, "That's not a current example, to be clear, just something that I dealt with like 15 years ago heh"
Fengshui says loudly, "It also takes us 2-10 hours to investigate this kinda thing at times. Which is why we rely on all of you to be cool and not do this. Because otherwise, you're bogging us down in the minutia of boring tedium we don't want to deal with, which in turn leads to burn out."
The Speaking Queue has switched to svetlana.
svetlana stands from their seat in the first row and easily moves away from it.
Svetlana asks loudly, "I have two things to say related to smallworlding. I've noticed that when newer characters do something antagonistic, it's almost like all the PCs dogpile against them just because it's something new that they can react to. Even higher-level PCs who don't seem to have a reason to get involved in some lowbie drama. How can this kind of behavior be discouraged?"
Svetlana asks loudly, "In addition, there's sometimes an unfortunate trend of people assuming that a sic alias they've never seen before talking smack about them is a 'hopper', then discounting whatever that alias says or blaming their IC nemesis for it. Unless the person was sloppy with it of course. Related question here - GM-generated 'ambient' SIC comments should be given the same amount of importance as a comment from someone you know to be a specific PC/NPC, right?"
Fengshui says loudly, "I think that depends on your character and how they would react? I am going to put more weight on something someone I know says than someone random, for instance."
Svetlana nods casually.
Macabre says loudly, "My personal suggestion is to sometimes not act immediately on your gut instincts about thinking it was Player A. Instead, be the character and immerse in your world and think about intentionally going after someone else with an accusation who might fit that bill for the roleplay of just being wrong for interesting conflict. Or, on the other hand, taking more time to arrive at the conclusion of it being player A. Your player biases are hurting yourselves, others, and etc. Sometimes you're right, other times you can be wrong. You can also just choose to not act on things for a while too. Stew on things. Don't always rush to jump into things, etc."
The Speaking Queue has switched to Cowbell.
svetlana walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Cowbell stands from their seat in the sixth row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Fengshui has closed the Speaking Queue for this topic.
Cowbell says, "Smallworlding kills PVP. I've seen so much of 'this shrouded person had a flashboost and used this specific weapon class, so it must have been X' or such accusations being thrown around and spread ICly to paint people as targets and get them in trouble - whether they actually did something or not. We all collectively are trying to stop relying so much on shrouds and anonymous vats as well, yet I've noticed sometimes people will instinctively smallworld, especially in PVP, to pick you out through your disguise out of the thousands on the streets. This doesn't really encourage anyone to stop with shrouds or try to go against the shroud meta. Cooperative competition is the spirit of Sindome and yet from my experience it's been problematic between players to the point smallworlding is now a constant thing seen daily, where players point fingers at someone they dislike/have been in conflict with before. While I understand that Staff don't police smallworlding or shroud meta anymore, at least we as players can police ourselves to make it a better experience for everyone involved - or at least recognize when we've done it once and try to be better. Thanks."
Cowbell edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
[++] New post to topic 'Storytelling NPC' in Ideas

Fengshui nods casually.
The Speaking Queue has switched to Majere_Draven.
Majere_Draven says, "Losing can lead to winning! "
Majere_Draven stands up from the floor.
Majere_Draven says, "With 90 million people and everyone of them supposedly on the sic network, of you're being talked to by a hopper, assume it's nobody you know, every shroud should be a total stranger to your character, your character is not psychic, so do your absolute best to remember how many people are in the dome. It is fun to be stupid, it is fun to be very wrong! it creates conflict to assume the wrong person and pursue it and start acting against a former friend. Make waves and they have the potential to become tsunamis. One of the main factors of small worlding is forgetting. *gets mouth right on the mic to add a lot of gain* 90 million people""
Mono says loudly, "Please do not fellate the microphone. There's enough of that going around the past 4 months."
Majere_Draven sits cross-legged on the floor.
The Speaking Queue has switched to Quotient.
Quotient stands from their seat in the sixth row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Quotient says loudly, "I have, what I expect is going to be a different take in the course of pre-writing this. While there is definitely smallworlding, I think this is a topic that comes up a lot in the same way disguises were back in the day. That is to say that I think 'smallworlding' OCCASIONALLY becomes an excuse for victim mentality. The fact of the matter is that sometimes it makes sense for some players, or entities to be focused on certain individuals' activities in a way that would immediately lead them to focus first on them as a possibility. This can also lead to misunderstandings, which can ultimately create more RP if you make the effort to exploit it. Ultimately what I'm trying to say is don't be so quick to call foul. There can be very obvious smallworlding examples, and then there are those that simply make sense to move a story along. If everyone just assumed every action was the result of some random individuals' hidden motives, and there is never any evidence to the contrary, we would never get anywhere. I am personally REALLY bad about notes, but generally when I take a major action, I try to include all of the details related to what led me to my conclusion in a @note to provide staff with an opportunity to smack me upside the head and let me know whether I got a bit ahead of myself. I also make an effort to @note any significant action taken either in public, or even insignificant actions in a private space that would warrant observation. I'll leave it up to staff to encourage or discourage this particular behavior."
[++] New post to topic 'Storytelling NPC' in Ideas

Quotient says loudly, "P.S. accusing random aliases of "hopping" has resulted in some pretty significant callouts. I was reading an old log recently where someone accused a very powerful NPC of alias hopping and was visited with very unfortunate results."
Quotient sits cross-legged on the floor.
Quotient stands up from the floor.
Quotient edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Fengshui says loudly, "Yeah, that's the fuck around and find out mentality i like to see"
The Speaking Queue has switched to Emily.
Emily stands from their seat in the first row and easily moves away from it.
Mono says loudly, "Please definitely @note whenever you kill or try to kill someone."
Emily says loudly, "I'm gonna keep it quick. One thing I've been focusing on doing better about is not just magically knowing people's names even though I do OOCly. Most characters aren't wearing name tags, so I try to remember that the person who just walked in could be literally anyone, I don't know them, even though OOC I know it's that person. Also it gives you more chances to pose and act cool."
Emily nods casually.
Emily walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Fengshui nods casually.
Mono says loudly, "Along with that point, also remember that just because you see the same name, that doesn't mean you'll recognize the person, either. They might have changed appearance, since that's something that can be done IC."
Fengshui says loudly, "*speaking spanish, in a fucker fuck voice* Don't use characters names if you don't know them, for sure. Anyone who has ever used the NPC 'Josh's full name is guilty of this as that NPC has never ever introduced himself as Josh to anyone, ever."
[OOC: The game has been saved and backed up successfully to disk. 'help cp']
The Speaking Queue has switched to Risikio.
Risikio stands up from the floor.
Risikio asks, "In regards to small worlding and PVP dipping, how exactly does one fight against it? Like, do we just assume that we have just lost our wallet to the sea of pickpockets and thieves and suspecting anyone of actually stealing without a coded failure of catching their hand in the proverbial cookie jar being small worlding? It is frustrating feeling like you're being targeted by another player and even if you have reason to believe that a certain shroud took your wallet, if you see said shroud two rooms over, you're not allowed to guess they're the same person who took your wallet. Any suggestions to help combat this frustration?"
Fengshui says loudly, "*speaking spanish, in a mixer accented voice* Yes."
Fengshui says loudly, "That's what the perception stat is for."
Risikio says, "Well, that sucks but alright. Thank you."
Risikio sits cross-legged on the floor.
Fengshui says loudly, "if a well known pickpocket has just been talking to you and your wallet is gone, then yeah, maybe make an assumption. But if you didn't see it, your character didn't see it, so you need to react accordingly."
Fengshui asks loudly, "Also, I mean, if you didn't see the pickpocket, why are you OOCly assuming you would have seen the stealthed person that did the pick pocket?"
Mono says loudly, "Or, alternatively, lash out. Just kick everyone's ass until you find your stuff."
Fengshui nods casually.
The Speaking Queue flashes to notify everyone that the queue is clear.
The Speaking Queue topic has switched to The Corporate-Mixer divide, and how to create more opportunities for collaboration and interaction between these segregated communities..
Risikio sits cross-legged on the floor.
Fengshui says loudly, "Corpie / Mixer divide."
Macabre says loudly, "It's a running joke behind the scenes how many times a certain dip NPC gets blamed for stuff that they were never around for. I love you guys."
Fengshui has opened the Speaking Queue for this topic. 'join queue' to get in line to speak.
Svetlana has joined the Speaking Queue.

svetlana stands from their seat in the first row and easily moves away from it.
Svetlana says loudly, "Just a reminder that we should allow room for grey areas in the Divide. Sometimes the most status-conscious corpie might have to collaborate with a mixer to get what they want. Sometimes the most anti-corp mixer might have to collaborate with a corpie (gasp!) to take action against that person's rival corp. Assume that pretty much every single entity or faction in the Mix is taking or benefitting from corpie money."
Majere_Draven has joined the Speaking Queue.
Mono says loudly, "*speaking english* I'm going to be real honest, we're seeing a whole ton of fluidity across the Divide at the moment, from the admin side."
Svetlana asks loudly, "What do you mean by fluidity?"
Mono says loudly, "RP flowing back and forth."
Svetlana nods casually.
Macabre says loudly, "He means that there's a lot of interactions between corporate players and Mixer players. CIs, operators, etc."
Mono says loudly, "Goods, info, sometimes even just casual conversation."
Emily has joined the Speaking Queue.
Necronex666 has joined the Speaking Queue.
Mono says loudly, "Which is as it honestly should be. You shouldn't know if the doughboy in the bar next to you is selling you out to a corpo scum sucker for a fat paycheck."
svetlana walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
The Speaking Queue has switched to Majere_Draven.
Majere_Draven stands up from the floor.
Baguette has joined the Speaking Queue.
Fengshui says loudly, "As an aside, as we are running behind, we're cutting the final topic from the agenda."
Majere_Draven says, "I just want more Mr Johnsons. Corporate people you can order stuff for silly reasons and hire a mixer to go do that silly thing. that's a thing you can do."
Fengshui says loudly, "So as to continue these discussions."
Majere_Draven sits cross-legged on the floor.
Fengshui nods casually.
The Speaking Queue has switched to Emily.
Emily stands from their seat in the first row and easily moves away from it.
Logic says loudly, "*speaking english, in a wave of ones and zeroes that converge into a hollow, digitized voice* To that point, Majere, Svetlana's and Quotient's comments earlier about alias hoppers feel somehow in the same vein as the phenomenon that causes people to shy away from taking job offers from unknown aliases. Not sure how, but it feels the same in my gut. Take a risk now and then."
0x1mm has joined the Speaking Queue.
Emily says loudly, "From my perspective, I'm seeing tons of interaction across the divide, but I'm seeing mostly like, non-conflict related stuff there. It'd be cool if there was some stuff where like, some random corporate player gets a task from their boss to find a mixer to do some sketchy job, or maybe info resources for corporate players on what mixers are good for what jobs? That sort of stuff."
Quotient has joined the Speaking Queue.
Mono says loudly, "There's conflict stuff, too. There's DEFINITELY conflict stuff."
Fengshui has closed the Speaking Queue for this topic.
Emily says loudly, "Yeah there definitely is, though I'm not really in a position to see that, heh."
Macabre says loudly, "I'd challenge you instead to create those opportunities yourself, Emily. Are you putting yourself into a situation to see these opportunities first hand? Are you working to create ways to make use of them? We can seed stuff like that, and sometimes do, but it's always best if you, the player, also make the effort."
Emily nods casually.
Emily exclaims loudly, "Gotcha, that's a good point. Thanks!"
Emily walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Fengshui says loudly, "Yeah, make the decision that having a rolodex of useful mixers would be worth money, hire someone in the mix to compile it, then sell it to your corpie friends"
Fengshui says loudly, "Even if you don't make money off it, you'll have fun."
Fengshui says loudly, "And so will others."
Emily nods casually.
Macabre says loudly, "*speaking english* Then snitch on your corpie friends -- ENEMIES -- to HR for talking to mixers."
Bubbles says loudly, "*speaking english* Overall for the topic I'd just encourage - mixers, take those jobs that corporates are offering. All the kind of jobs. And corporates, please go out and spend that money on stirring some stuff up. If you aren't saving for specific stuff, try to plot with your funds rather than let them just sit and grow, grow, grow, grow. This helps encourage interaction between the lines and divide."
Butako says loudly, "*speaking english, in a piggie-sounding voice* There is absolutely no reason to have 3 million chyen."
Logic says loudly, "Flash is RP lube. Spend it. "
Fengshui says loudly, "There's about 10 million chyen in the bank accounts of the combined people online right now. Plenty of juice to squeeze."
The Speaking Queue has switched to Necronex666.
Necronex666 stands from their seat in the first row and easily moves away from it.
Necronex666 says, "There's been a lot of good work done on this topic lately with events on Gold that always lead to mingling between corporate citizens and mixers. I'd personally like to see more corpsec/mix teams getting togther for operations as that kind of exposure would provide more opportunity for people to be screwed over whether it be just for personal gain or because one of the mixers on your super secret black ops mission is being blackmailed by a rival megacorp. Think corporate handler making appearances to ensure the mixers don't mess up becoming slightly more common, though maybe not frequent. Don't even have to be a combat PC, but probably bring some bodyguards. "
Necronex666 sits cross-legged on the floor.
Necronex666 stands up from the floor.
Necronex666 walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Fengshui nods casually.
The Speaking Queue has switched to Baguette.
Baguette stands from their seat in the first row and easily moves away from it.
Baguette asks loudly, "This might be a short one, and it's pre-written, so sorry if someone's already gone over this. Given how certain, very public rooms in the Mix have descriptions that involve obvious corporate employees huddled in booths and/or consorting with Mixers, it seems strange that there's a kind of OOC attitude that Corpies Never Ever Ever Never Go To The Mix without being heavily disguised. Are these descriptions outdated, or are people being too strict on the attitudes regarding visiting the Mix?"
Fengshui says loudly, "I think many of those do include mention of bodyguards and such."
Fengshui says loudly, "Or the perhaps implied 'we paid the gangers on this street off to leave us alone'"
Baguette says loudly, "Right, but even then, I don't think I've heard of a corporate PC going Mixside in years, even with a security detail."
Butako says loudly, "It has happened."
Devi sits cross-legged on the floor.
Mono says loudly, "It has definitely happened."
Fengshui says loudly, "Go ahead and say that Bubbles"
Baguette walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Bubbles says loudly, "I've been called out. Terrifying. Once we get an SGM or two on I'll try to do some of these plot types of sending corporates down to Red with bodyguards or hired help. But we've definitely had PCs down in Red pretty publicly in the last eight months."
Macabre says loudly, "Less than a year ago, there was a contingency of PCs and NPCs who went into the mix and made a big mess. It stirred RP, got money into people's hands, etc. Corporate players can go into the mix, but it's at great consequences if they're caught. All rules are meant to be subverted, but be prepared for the risk of there being drawbacks."
0x1mm has left the Speaking Queue.
Fengshui asks loudly, "We do want it to be scary to go down to the mix as a corpie, it's dangerous. but it isn't an immediate death sentence. and even if ya do die, you had fun, hopefully yeah?"
Baguette stands from their seat in the first row and easily moves away from it.
Fengshui says loudly, "Greese some palms, pay off the gangs for protection, etc"
Macabre says loudly, "Agreed Feng. if you're told something as a corporate character, it's because it is a rule. However, we as GMs expect people to absolutely go do those things anyway."
Mono says loudly, "The IC rules are made to be broken."
Fengshui says loudly, "The only rules you all have to follow are the @rules"
Macabre exclaims loudly, "Break them, please God! Please!"
Baguette says loudly, "The 'consequences if you're caught' part is sort of my point. The corpies in these descriptions don't appear to be making any effort to disguise themselves."
Fengshui says loudly, "Anything else is a narrative within the game."
Fengshui says loudly, "Judges will tell you not to kill people -- you gunna not kill people? "
Bubbles says loudly, "We've also tried to limit the harshness of fall taxes so that corporate characters aren't so scared of getting fired/leaving topside and falling into the Mix. And that can help the divide too. Some of them had gotten pretty outrageous."
Fengshui says loudly, "Nah. So if your boss tells you not to go to the Mix, don't listen to that either. Just be willing to accept the IC consequences, same as you would for killing someone in the game."
Mono says loudly, "Right. What we're saying is that there are avenues available that of the millions of corpcits in the game, some of them might be in the Mix at any given time."
Fengshui nods casually.
The Speaking Queue has switched to Quotient.
Baguette walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Quotient stands from their seat in the sixth row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Quotient says, "I'm going to echo the experience that there is a lot of communication going back and forth from my perspective, and add that in tune with Emily's suggestion... I would like to see more staff using puppets to drive less conflict based PCs topside out of their shell to rely on less tasteful individuals for a solution to problems that may not even be violent in nature. Give them the opportunity to exceed expectations or fall, just as combat based PCs often do."
Quotient says, "I am going to add to this, however in a somewhat off-topic manner, based on staff responses so far. The playerbase has repeatedly been told over the years that staff will attempt to "nudge" a player back into theme, and more severe consequences arise if that gentle nudging goes unacknowledged. If this isn't a thing already, maybe an xhelp to the player in question when they are veering too far off the rails is warranted so they don't get confused."
Quotient edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Mono says loudly, "We absolutely do nudge people back into theme if we feel they're out of it."
Quotient says, "I am pointing out the potential for misinterpretation between being told by an NPC that you're doing something wrong, and actually going off theme."
Macabre says loudly, "We have had a ton of conversations with people in the past year about that exact thing to try and help them as best we can when we see their struggling."
Quotient says, "I expect a lot of people here back off their actions when an NPC tells them something, because they perceive it as a hard line."
Fengshui says loudly, "I think we're saying the same thing. We'll nudge people OOCly if we see a problem or need to help course course correct someone."
Quotient nods casually.
Bubbles says loudly, "We monitor theme and give nudges. PCs get denied opportunities and advancements for having trouble with theme, with explanations about how to fix that. We don't always go to severe consequences or violence (sometimes), but that's more because of prioritizing where we spend our staff time right now being that we're pretty short-staffed."
Logic says loudly, "Remember NPCs have goals too. They are as able to mislead or restrict you with rules for their benefit as for some standard that exists ICly. Breaking rules might just fuck up their plans too. "
Fengshui nods casually.
The Speaking Queue flashes to notify everyone that the queue is clear.
The Speaking Queue topic has switched to The cost of recovery and its contribution to risk-averse aversion..
Fengshui exclaims loudly, "Recovery from death and risk aversion!"
Fengshui has opened the Speaking Queue for this topic. 'join queue' to get in line to speak.
Majere_Draven has joined the Speaking Queue.

Nymphali has joined the Speaking Queue.
Huntresskai has joined the Speaking Queue.
Veleth has joined the Speaking Queue.
Majere_Draven says, "I personally think that A year to max UI would mitigate a lot of risk.. mitigation."
Majere_Draven sits cross-legged on the floor.
EnRet has joined the Speaking Queue.
SmokePotion has joined the Speaking Queue.
Rillem sits cross-legged on the floor.
0x1mm has joined the Speaking Queue.
Slyter edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Quotient has joined the Speaking Queue.
Fengshui says loudly, "I dunno, this seems to be more related to money than UE"
Batko has joined the Speaking Queue.
Mono says loudly, "You can still play pretty effectively without a full compliment of UE, also."
Fengshui says loudly, "People look fondly back on times when there was more risk taking, but we also had less shit for people to lose back then. Barely any cyber, limited armor, limited weapons that cost a lot less."
Majere_Draven says, "people don't think that though "
Fengshui says loudly, "I think we should just get rid of the UE cap personally. "
Majere_Draven says, "it's the mentality."
Logic says loudly, "Very effectively. In fact, I would say not having max UE is the only way to learn how to be effective in more...fun ways. "
Fengshui says loudly, "Seems like it has contributed to this risk averse thing."
Johnny eyes Fengshui warily.
Logic snickers sarcastically at Fengshui.
Fengshui shrugs, "Never been a fan of it."
Macabre says loudly, "I'm hesitant to believe that people who don't take conflict risks are going to be more comfortable doing so when they're at max UE levels, regardless of how we shorten them. A few might, but those who don't take big risks if they don't feel like they have a 80% chance of coming out as a winner, won't do it anyway."
Majere_Draven says, "yeah it sucks."
Fengshui says loudly, "I think people at max UE tend to be more risk averse than those that aren't, but that's probably dated personal experience that may have changed."
Logic says loudly, "Mac said it. Risk aversion plays into the play to win mentality imo and wanting max UE as quickly as possible does too."
Macabre says loudly, "Honestly, it'd probably be helpful if max UE combat characters kept themselves out of conflicts they don't really need to be in, even if their lowbie friends are crying for them to come."
Logic points at Macabre discreetly.
Logic nods casually.
Risikio has joined the Speaking Queue.
Villa has joined the Speaking Queue.
The Speaking Queue has switched to Nymphali.
Fengshui has closed the Speaking Queue for this topic.
Nymphali stands from their seat in the sixth row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Reganza sits cross-legged on the floor.
Reganza stands up from the floor.
Reganza edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Nymphali says loudly, "This is pre-written so excuse any redundant points, and also thank you guys for including this topic on the agenda! I really wanted to hear other people's input on it. I'm just going to start by stating the obvious; dying in this game sucks. Drawing from personal experience with my own PC it can be so incredibly distressing that sleep is lost over it, and even in the best or most thematically cool circumstances around it roleplay suffers because it's so much harder to put your all into the IC when you're shaken and upset, whether because it just happened or you know it's coming and inevitable. A major factor in this is the cost of bouncing back, especially if you play a particular role or archetype that demands not only expensive but oftentimes difficult to source equipment to continue on as you were within a reasonable amount of time. Ultimately I agree with the sentiment of playing to lose and that losing can be more interesting from a storytelling perspective, but no game meant to be played for fun should involve that level of dread over a poor outcome and it's difficult at times to stay in that mindset when the reality of it hits. Add in that it's usually the same PCs taking those bigger risks, the bigger Ls that can come with them, and you end up inching dangerously close to burnout and stagnation as nobody wants to jump in and take over for a bit while those PCs recover, both financially and mentally."
Nymphali says loudly, "I feel, too, like this contributes a lot to all the previously mentioned issues brought up here; bleed, burnout, OOC resentment, a sense of inequality on the playing field for those who take risks vs those who don't. To some extent yes it can be blamed on a 'play to win' mentality and I do my best to be open to losses as far as my own IC decisions go, but at a certain point you have to acknowledge that there are very real losses involved regarding time and effort, that can make losses hard to swallow and even more difficult to willfully chase."
Nymphali edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Fengshui nods casually.
Rillem stands up from the floor.
Rillem edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Mono says loudly, "The main question to ask is 'can I play this game with my character in a less-than optimal state?' Because ultimately, that's what an expensive death does to you. It sets you back.."
Butako says loudly, "You can."
Risikio has left the Speaking Queue.
Mono asks loudly, "But it doesn't end the character. Death shouldn't just be die, respawn, back to killing. Ask yourself hard questions IC. Is this the life I want? How long until I can't cure DCD?"
Macabre asks loudly, "It's natural to have that level of dread and apprehension about losing your characters. Even the most death-happy people (me) can attest to having that gut-wrenching feeling of seeing that big red death splash onscreen. I don't know what the right answer is to helping people bounceback from death looks like though. Does that mean your enemies being kind and drawing back from you when they fuck you over? Being a bro behind the screen and helping people get some of their shit back?"
Nymphali says loudly, "If there were more meaningful roleplay around setbacks I could absolutely be on board with that, but it's rarely the case in my experience and from witnessing others take hard losses."
Fengshui says loudly, "Another thing to consider is if you feel like you're playing a character or archetype that doesn't match your play style and risk/reward ratio, should you play a different character? I dunno. I don't want people losing sleep over a death though. I mean, we've all woken up in the middle of the night stressing that we didn't shut our cube door-- but beyond that, that's too much stress."
Mono says loudly, "Be a dynamic character. Get scared about losing IC, but don't be afraid of loss OOC. We're not just one character in this game, but a host of them across the years."
Rillem stands from their seat in the sixth row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Rillem edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Nymphali asks loudly, "But should losses be that crippling to begin with?"
Nymphali says loudly, "I think there is a happy middle ground between a setback and feeling as though you've lost actual months' worth of investment."
Fengshui asks loudly, "It seems like they are crippling, in part, because you have decided they are?"
Macabre asks loudly, "Is it crippling because you might be risking the loss of massively expensive gear like xo3, rare weapons, etc like that?"
Fengshui asks loudly, "Like, aside from us making things cheaper, how do we solve this?"
Mono says loudly, "I'd point you to Feng's comment. Nothing is stopping your character from having an existential crisis. It can actually help to externalize the feelings and insulate yourself, the player from them."
Nymphali says loudly, "We have people in prime condition with all the financial backing they need still doing everything they can to avoid even a single death, if not making things cheaper and more accessible there should perhaps be more support in some way for the ones who are out there getting killed to push plot."
Fengshui says loudly, "We've lowered prices like 20-40% on weapons and armor and cyber over the past couple years."
Nymphali says loudly, "I know, I'm just drawing off of my own experiences and pointing out that there is still a very real issue of players avoiding death like if you die in the game you die for real."
Fengshui nods casually.
Fengshui says loudly, "Point taken."
The Speaking Queue has switched to Huntresskai.
Fengshui says loudly, "Gotta keep us moving as we're very behind."
Johnny says loudly, "*speaking english, in a brash, overbearing voice* we've considered so called Insurance policies before. The problem there is they can be gamed by you and your friends."
Huntresskai says, "Just to briefly note... sometimes it's a characters nature to be 'risk averse'. Not every character has the same capacity or stomach for risky behaviour. And that being so can have its own consequences in missed opportunities and it has nothing to do with current or 'max' UE or necessarily gear/cash. "
Huntresskai sits cross-legged on the floor.
The Speaking Queue has switched to Veleth.
Veleth stands from their seat in the third row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Veleth says, "I hope this is relevant to the topic, sorry if it isn't, I tried to put it in the right place - I guess this sorta fits with risk aversion or at least, wanting to do things with inherent risk or not. Anyway! I have many times wanted to cause some chaos topside without it being strictly killing or things like that, though I'm often impeded by the fact I'd need to xhelp about it because of 'help crime'. Sometimes this is super efficient and I get a nod and an approval right away. I understand that staff time is limited, though sometimes there are jobs I've declined despite them being little more than mischief, not because of the risk - I'm trying to take more risks! - but because sometimes I've had to wait until way too late for my timezone or even days to hear back from staff about it. Is it possible that crime reactions topside could be more automated to remove the pressure on staff and to give players more opportunities to fuck around and find out? At least for stuff that's less serious, or maybe less kill-y. It's something I've thought about a lot lately, though I realize it's probably hard to make those changes in ways that won't be abused."
Villa has left the Speaking Queue.
Veleth says, "Also- to add to what Nymphali said, there's certain pieces of chrome I've wanted since I started playing this game some years back that I never got out of fear of dying and losing it, so I kinda get the sentiment though not on that grand a scale. The chrome cost reduction has helped a LOT I think, though. And, Fengshui, I definitely dislike the UE cap as well.. I kinda dislike the idea that without it, some people will be unstoppable. But I also dislike that I have to avoid learning certain things or I'll never master a favorite thing."
Fengshui nods casually.
The Speaking Queue has switched to EnRet.
Mono says loudly, "If we're not available to respond to your criminal intent, adjust it so that you don't need us."
Veleth edges into the third row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
EnRet stands from their seat in the sixth row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Fengshui says loudly, "Also it's annoying for sure, but we want to make sure the IC world reacts to things. And if we aren't around to do that, it can get a bit...weird."
Macabre says loudly, "Quickly to answer Veleth, for your topside crime, if you're not getting a response in the time you like, we'll ask you to put in a puppet request and then xhelp to tell you when we're available so we can give the best response."
Macabre says loudly, "We're extremely limited sometimes and can't be everywhere at once, especially if we're cooling off for a day or two, so we apologize to all the players who are impacted by that."
The Speaking Queue buzzes and the current speaker flashes: EnRet.
EnRet asks, "Hey there. As someone still relatively new, I find that a lot of the risk aversion on my end is related more to RP consequences and time. Sometimes the 'play to win' is at heart of it, and like what was said before - high speed characters are able to roll up into a lowbie conflict and clear house. One misstep doesn't always lead to just one death - it can lead to multiple. Ironically, I see this less so from the higher end, where it -feels- like this loss is understood and placed as a goalpost before being finished. It feels like some people will dial in for extended periods and pull every resource, and that's where the risk is. Is there anything to be said about people who seem to 'never be satisfied' and drag further and further?"
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Mono says loudly, "I would say to the highbies chain vatting and steamrolling newbies: Stop it. You're being a dick and unimaginative."
Logic says loudly, "Mono is working on a response, but my quick and dirty is find common enemies or make friends willing to help push back. "
EnRet nods curtly.
Logic casually nods at Mono.
Fengshui nods casually.
Logic says loudly, "That too."
Macabre says loudly, "As I said before, highbies you've been lowbies before. Sometimes you don't need to be in every conflict, especially if it's beneath you and between younger characters."
The Speaking Queue has switched to SmokePotion.
SmokePotion stands from their seat in the second row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Mono says loudly, "As for what you can do as the victim in that circumstance, you'll need to work with what you have, like Logic said. Whether that's money, friends, or lies."
Fengshui asks loudly, "When did we start saying highbies instead of oldbies?"
SmokePotion says, "Pre-wrote, so sorry if this echoes others. The problem i see with risk aversion is that it takes so long to get the stuff to take that risk. You may have lowered cost in past years, but last year money has been nerfed a few times. And a lot of it was stuff low to middies use. Which feels like it's going to reduce the amount of conflict in the game, because people can't afford to hire solos, hoppers, medics, so on. And solos's/ fighters cant afford to replace weapons and armor. I can understand staffs thought process of cutting things down so people fight over rackets. But some rackets have been cut down so much, that fighting over them seems kinda pointless. IE: Shitbergs. Not only do they not produce the money they would need to to generate conflict anymore. With newer items being added, not only do they produce less money, they arent producing some things other underground markets need. Which seems like it's hurting other parts of roleplay. But that's my two chy. "
EnRet edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Macabre says loudly, "Not all oldbies are highbies."
Mono says loudly, "And somehow, not all highbies are oldbies."
Fengshui incredulously rolls his eyes.
Fengshui says loudly, "The eye roll was at the admin not Smoke. "
Logic comforts Fengshui.
Macabre says loudly, "You rich as hell characters should pay the lowbies more. If you're sending people on jobs, insure their losses to a percentage you're feeling comfortable with."
SmokePotion says, "I appreciate the clarification"
Fengshui says loudly, "Like I said, 10 mil in the bank with the people online right now. That's a lot of flash."
Mono says loudly, "Again, it becomes a question of approaching a situation optimally."
Bubbles says loudly, "*speaking english* When automated income like shitbergs becomes a circle that people constantly refer to as getting loot, selling loot, etc, it's so immersion breaking. If you're struggling for chyen because shitbergs have been nerfed, go and take chy from those you know have it rather than the shitberg."
Mono asks loudly, "Are you willing to engage in a situation within your own means, or are you trying to get in one big burst of effort that may or may not succeed?"
DiamondNine edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Mono asks loudly, "Is it a strategy, or is it a gamble?"
[++] New post to topic '[Jan '25] Improvements Feedback' in New Game Features & Bug Fixes

Macabre says loudly, "I'd love to see our wealthy people who know good well who they are trickling down more often when they can. But at the same time, cash-hungry people should maybe also be more willing to throw themselves at the random jobs from the suspicious aliases because it's often likely an easy way to get cash to."
SmokePotion says, "Wait wait wait. You are mad that people are refering to shitberg stuff as loot? It's common parlance. Yes, people are getting and selling it. but that 'loot' is being dioiverted. meds to docs, items useful to crafters to them, so on and so fourth. That's the opposite of immersion breaking, in my opinion."
Johnny says loudly, "I definitely referred to it as loot in the code. :-D"
Bubbles says loudly, "There is a lot of immersion breaking with how people refer to automated income. People talk about it being lootbergs, go and mine for loot, go and flip the loot, give me your loot to flip. We see people talking about item turnins and saying to go to a certain number and then turn in your big, most expensive selling item last."
SmokePotion exclaims, "See! But loot has uses! It's not immersion breaking, it's immersion helping!"
SmokePotion sits cross-legged on the floor.
SmokePotion says, "Thats all i had."
The Speaking Queue has switched to 0x1mm.
0x1mm stands from their seat in the first row and easily moves away from it.
Logic says loudly, "Part of the issue with shitbergs is that it had become conflict free flash and far more than what can be grabbed via a dayjob's paycheck."
0x1mm says loudly, "I do understand the guardedness of characters who have 300,000c sleeves and I would never tell those players to 'play to die', I very much understand threading the needle in those situations and they are the perfect characters to do something a little more involved when the story allows for it... but really a lot of players with very little to lose almost fear death more than the theme even suggests their characters might."
Fengshui says loudly, "I remember when automated income was either SHI or Acme, or Stev."
0x1mm says loudly, "Death is not the enemy. Death is very clean. It can be a the full stop at the end of a sentence that lets the story go in a new direction. Players can absolutely twist themselves into knots over days or weeks or even months avoiding a death that would be the best thing for their story, and take about an hour of their time."
0x1mm says loudly, "Death is not that scary, I promise! (Kill your neighbours!)"
Johnny says loudly, "sounds like we need to make NPCs start fighting people over the shitbergs :)"
0x1mm has left the Speaking Queue.
0x1mm walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
Fengshui says loudly, "You don't need to leave the queue. Just sit."
The Speaking Queue has switched to batko.
batko stands from their seat in the sixth row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Batko says loudly, "I want to mention on the topic of UE brought up earlier. The least risk averse conflict I have ever seen has been low UE conflict, primarily in gangs. People start clamming up when they have something to lose. On the topic of gear prices, I say this a lot but I believe it every time. Gear is too expensive for people to want to risk death. Killing someone doesn't usually net you that much money, the gear you stand to gain is a potential asset that is not necessarily liquid. Everything needs to be considered in a risk to reward ratio, and as it stands, you can put upwards of 400-500kc on the line as a high UE combatant if you are trying to stay competitive and earn a victory in combat. A death in that state is devastating even for characters who have faction reimbursements to back them up. Automated income boosts were not the answer, as per macguffins and cargo, as sad as I am to see them go. The answer is, I believe, slashing prices. Increasing the amount of money someone has, even doubling it, can only go so far when the gear in question is insanely expensive either way. It's a matter of weeks or months to save for things unless you consistently get plot hooks that pay you. Income doesn't need to be tweaked if the underlying costs of gearing up are cheaper. Death should be cheap and living should be expensive, not the other way around. I'd like to mention that I don't really speak for myself here, I am moreso worried about players who must make do with less time, knowledge, and IC fortune. It can be next to impossible for midbies up-and-coming combat characters to survive without a wealthy sponsor, and while that is themely and cool, there's not enough of those to go around right now. If slashing prices isn't possible, I don't know the solution, but I do think there is a lot to be said when the game demands blood but one death is too punishing to bear for those who aren't already rich or have rich friends."
Fengshui says loudly, "Shit, I think I skipped someone because of that -- xhelp if I skipped you."
Mono [to Johnny]: Sentient shitbergs. No more passive clearing.
Batko says loudly, "Finally, on the note of making more chy to pay the bills, I think players need to have their expectations set better on how the actual chyen gets made: getting paid by players, not terminals. I see a lot of immies end up floating through their life without pursuing much player plot. Immigrant greeters should probably be telling these immies that there are wealthy people out there who need help getting shit done, and finding out what they can offer to those characters that can get them paid without it being spelled out for them can be a plot in and of itself."
batko edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Johnny [to Mono]: only from the VS pipes
Mono [to Johnny]: No roboturdmountains from SK?
Johnny [to Mono]: rusted out APC war bots please.
Bubbles says loudly, "For the topic overall I need to repeat please to open yourselves up that you might be wrong about something. There are people that others think are impossible to touch that do make themselves possible to touch. But we shouldn't expect someone to go out there, sit down to get killed on your schedule, your whim, and your plan. "
Bubbles says loudly, "Losses are hard. You might not get it all back. You might have to be angry and poor, need to get violent and scrap to get some of it back."
Bubbles says loudly, "Extortion, robbing people, all that kind of stuff is a way to get back your losses. If losses are made so easy to recoup then losses have no impact and other venues of conflict close up."
Fengshui says loudly, "Personally, I think gear costs too much. I'd slash the prices in half right now if I could get buy in on it."
Fengshui says loudly, "Jinx, bless his soul, decided 10 years ago that everything needed to be balanced based on damage"
Fengshui says loudly, "and brass kunckles went from 300c to 30,000c"
Fengshui says loudly, "a katana went from 15k to like 70k"
Macabre says loudly, "I wouldn't mind slashing prices on a lot more stuff too."
Fengshui says loudly, "and we've been adding higher income for the last 10 years as a result"
Fengshui says loudly, "A seburo used to cost 6k"
Fengshui says loudly, "I'd prefer it all be cheap. I think there would still be a problem, but then people would focus on a different solution."
The Speaking Queue flashes to notify everyone that the queue is clear.
batko edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Mono says loudly, "Next weapon: mall ninja sword."
Fengshui says loudly, "Annnnnnd with that rant over, that brings us to the end of the town hall."
Fengshui steps back up to the podium for one final time, "Thank you all for your participation in this Town Hall meeting. Your feedback and insights are valuable to us, and we appreciate your time and effort in making Sindome a better community for everyone. Please check the BGBB for a log of this event and feel free to continue the conversation on any topics we discussed today by creating a new BGBB topic. Our next Town Hall meeting will take place in Summer 2025. Thank you again!"
Fengshui claps his hands together and says, "This Town Hall Meeting is officially ended HOWEVER, the RP awards are up next. Stick around! After the RP awards the admin are going to stick around if you want to continue chatting with us, but this room is so spammy that we're going to break off into a few different rooms. Feel free to stay here and jabber, head back to game, or follow us into one of these rooms to continue conversing after the RP awards."
Fengshui says loudly, "Anyone who wants to leave can use the @town-hall command to leave"
Fengshui toggles the room moderation to OFF, allowing anyone to speak.
Svetlana exclaims, "Thank you!"
Villa shouts loudly, "DO IT! LOWER ALL PRICES!"
Vanashis starts applauding politely.
Rillem shouts loudly, "WOOOO!"
AdamBlue9000 says loudly, "LETS GO FIXIT CREW WOOOOOOOOOO"
SmokePotion exclaims, "Wooo!"
Nymphali exclaims loudly, "Thank you all for being here to hear us out!"
Burgerwolf exclaims, "Weeeeee!"
EnRet shouts loudly, "WOO! HALLTOWNS!"
Zxq starts applauding happily.
Hivemind starts applauding politely.
Batko starts applauding politely.
Thrillimanjaro starts applauding politely.
Ociex starts applauding politely.
Baguette shouts loudly, "CHEAPER CHROME, WOOO!"
Nymphali starts applauding loudly.
Emily exclaims, "No one knows I've been in VR this entire time. Thank you staff!"
Terrible_the_duck shouts loudly, "WOOOO!"
Jawbox01 starts applauding politely.
Beepboop shouts loudly, "LOWER ALL PRICES, GET RID OF DCD!"
Huntresskai exclaims, "Thank you!"
Leudo says, "Gimmie vehicle weapons for AVs."
Butako exclaims loudly, "Thank you, fix-it people!"
Cyberpunker vanishes from the meeting.
Terrible_the_duck shouts loudly, "SLASH THE PRICES!"
Quest starts applauding politely.
Nymphali shouts loudly, "AGREED ON DCD AND PRICE CUTS!"
Villa shouts loudly, "LOWER PRICES AND MAKE SHIT LESS RARE."
Eve says, "oink"
Bix starts applauding politely.
Rillem shouts loudly, "PRICES MUST DIE!"
Emily says, "Oink."
Nymphali laughs softly.
wh1ppet stands from their seat in the sixth row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
Baewulf starts applauding politely.
Logic exclaims loudly, "Lower gear cost and more DCD chance? Got it!"
SmokePotion says, "I honestly thin that adjusting the item pools for the shitbergs is the answer. I probably ashoulda mentioned my answer in my post"
Terrible_the_duck shouts loudly, "OINK! WE LOVE THE BUILD TEAM!"
Quest stands from their seat in the fifth row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
baewulf stands from their seat in the first row and easily moves away from it.
Bix stands from their seat in the fourth row, and edges their way out of it into the aisle.
SmokePotion says, "Sorr,y I drank a whole 6 pack"
Emily starts applauding politely.
Mindhunter says, "Attack high prices posture kamikaze"
Leudo says, "Give me AV vehicle weapons or give me clone death."
Eve stands from their seat in the first row and easily moves away from it.
Mono exclaims loudly, "And up clone prices? You got it!"
AdamBlue9000 says loudly, "ROLL OUT THE NEW GENERATION OF CHROME AS AN EXCUSE TO CUT PRICES ON THE OLDER MODELS! MAKE THE NEW MODELS COST INSANE AMOUNTS THAT NOBODY CAN POSSIBLY AFFORD LETS GOOOOOOOOOOO"
Enven says, "For real, bring down gear prices, and you'll see more shit go down. "
[OOC: The game has been saved and backed up successfully to disk. 'help cp']
BubbleKangaroo says, "That explains why brass knuckles cost so much. I've always wondered."
Enven says, "Remove the gear fear."
Baewulf exclaims, "Give me freedom, give me fire, give me less gear costs or I retire!"
Baguette shouts loudly, "OH YEAH MORE CHROME THAT'S MORE JUST FOR STYLE WOULD BE COOL TOO"
Aera asks, "Sorry, I might have missed, but can someone tell me what 'DCD' is?"
Quest edges into the fifth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
SmokePotion shouts loudly, "YOU HEARD IT PEOPLE, 2025 IS THE YEAR OF DCD!"
Kalii sighs quietly.
AdamBlue9000 exclaims loudly, "'HELP DCD' IS A GREAT FILE!!"
Eve says, "FOIC blud"
Nymphali says loudly, "Less PDS so we can have more chrome too! Pls and thx."
Terrible_the_duck [to Aera]: Ask iCly
Bubbles toggles the room moderation to ON, allowing only admin and the current speaker to speak
Eve walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
baewulf walks around the front of the rows of seats and picks one out to sit in, and lowers theirself into it.
wh1ppet edges into the sixth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Bubbles says loudly, "Hi. Mench isn't here to do roleplay rewards, he's celebrating."
Bubbles says loudly, "So I'm doing them."
Bubbles rises from the plush leather seat that rests on the stage.
Bubbles says loudly, "I'm Mench's spokeperson, using his pre-written script."
Butako says loudly, "I didn't realize he wasn't here... and I was all nice and thanked him."
Mono asks loudly, "Do we have a Mench mask for Bubbles to wear?"
Bubbles says loudly, "But because I'm not him, I can't give fancy colors. So sorry."
Bubbles is gently lifted from her seat by a swarm of holographic bubbles that sparkle with neon colors, before being deposited at the podium.
Bix sits cross-legged on the floor.
Fengshui says loudly, "Before we start, I skipped someone in the queue accidentally so I'm going to say the thing they were going to say."
Fengshui says loudly, "Player: I think there have been a number of efforts over the years to encourage more conflict and loss, but they have ultimately been diminished by other changes. For example... The cost of armor and weapons was universally adjusted, but the availability of said armor is questionable. Armor damage, the current perception of repairs ultimately resulting in less protection. Cybernetic damage and repairs. We've ultimately lowered costs for things and introduced a system of upkeep to replace it, so the impact of the changes intended to encourage more activity are diminished as a result.""
Fengshui says loudly, "Player: That said, I'm going to touch on resources. While resources are theoretically infinite, I can at least personally attest to a feeling of 'just getting by' (which may be entirely imaginative), but contributes to burnout, a previous topic, but also risk aversion. Increasingly placing a character in more and more dire situations, the perception that when that metaphorical train stops, that I'm going to find myself at the end of the line with no baggage and only the clothes on my back remains. Maybe that is to theme. Maybe it isn't, but I certainly would not blame any other player here for not wanting to voluntarily trash all of their efforts, and effectively start from scratch. I say all of this as someone who knows just how effectively one can get by without optimal gear. Sometimes it just sucks to start that grind all over or wait for some kind of windfall. Especially if it's in the middle of a major conflict.""
Fengshui says loudly, "Player: I am going to add that if I, as a player, see another character deliberately exhibiting behavior of 'dressing down' to soften an expected loss from a mechanical or financial perspective, I'm going to be less inclined to engage in conflict with that character.""
Fengshui says loudly, "As an afterthought, directed at the players here. If you create mundane, repetitive circumstances that only serve your interests, expect a natural response that the intended target is unreceptive to just going off to die and make you happy. Create a setting that makes people want to die.""
[OOC: Fengshui exclaims, "okay, that's that. Sorry for missing you!" ]
Bubbles adjusts her cloud and taps the microphone twice with a gentle smile.
Bubbles clears her throat and announces to the gathered crowd "Now that we've wrapped up our Town Hall, it's time for what you've all been waiting for! The RP Awards!" as her voice echoes through the amphitheater.
Bubbles says loudly, "From Mench - The roleplay in this place never ceases to amaze me. Each and every one of you brings something special to our cyberpunk world. We'd give awards to everyone if we could, but unfortunately, the corps have been hoarding all the precious metals again, so we had to be selective"
Cyberpunker edges into the second row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Bubbles says loudly, "Before we begin, I want to extend my deepest thanks to everyone who took the time to cast their votes. Your participation makes these awards possible."
Bubbles explains "For each category, we'll be awarding Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals. When we have ties, multiple recipients may receive the same tier of award. Some awards will only have a Silver and Gold award due to the large amount of Bronze's with 1 vote each."
Bubbles waves her hand dramatically, causing a shimmering holographic trophy to materialize above the crowd, with -Best Pose'r- etched in glowing neon.
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "First up, we're celebrating those whose poses paint vivid pictures in our minds, leaving us eagerly anticipating their next move!"
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Bronze goes to... Revel and Tamar! Your prose keeps us coming back for more!"
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "For Silver, we have... Stroud! Your descriptive talents shine through!"
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "And taking home the Gold... Owens! Congratulations on setting the bar for excellence in posing!"
Bubbles toggles the room moderation to OFF, allowing anyone to speak.
AdamBlue9000 says loudly, "The GOATS."
Lena starts applauding politely.
Svetlana starts applauding excitedly.
Bix starts applauding politely.
Ociex starts applauding politely.
Batko starts applauding politely.
SketchyZo starts applauding politely.
Thrillimanjaro starts applauding politely.
Adrognik starts applauding politely.
Beepboop starts applauding politely.
Necronex666 starts applauding politely.
Risikio starts applauding politely.
Huntresskai exclaims, "WOO!"
Nymphali starts applauding loudly.
Hivemind starts applauding politely.
Zxq starts applauding happily.
Nymphali shouts loudly, "WOOOOO!"
Majere_Draven shouts loudly, "THE GOAT!"
Logic claps with ferocity of a quantum processor. Feel the wave.
Batko exclaims loudly, "WOOO!"
Emily starts applauding happily.
Jawbox01 starts applauding politely.
Bubbles toggles the room moderation to ON, allowing only admin and the current speaker to speak
Quotient starts applauding politely.
Bubbles snaps her fingers, causing the trophy to dissolve into sparkles before reforming with "Best Accent" displayed.
Bubbles asks loudly, "Now for those who make our ears perk up with their distinctive ways of speaking! Ya feel me, chummer?"
Fengshui says loudly, "I obviously win this."
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Bronze is a bunch of people! So many ones!!"
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Silver is shared by Carnage and Kase! Your distinctive dialects make our conversations pop!"
Mono says loudly, "In a fucked fuck voice."
Fengshui says loudly, "*speaking spanish, in a fucking fucker fuck voice* Yes."
Bubbles says loudly, "And our Gold medalist, with an overwhelming show of support..."
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Bilbert! Nobody makes us check our translation software quite like you!"
Bubbles toggles the room moderation to OFF, allowing anyone to speak.
Bix starts applauding politely.
Emily chuckles softly.
Veleth starts applauding excitedly.
Ociex starts applauding politely.
Fengshui starts applauding politely.
Adrognik starts applauding politely.
Vanashis starts applauding politely.
Lena starts applauding politely.
Thrillimanjaro starts applauding politely.
Burgerwolf starts applauding politely.
Hivemind starts applauding politely.
EnRet shouts loudly, "YEEEEE!"
Zxq starts applauding happily.
Terrible_the_duck shouts loudly, "WOOO!"
Beepboop says loudly, "RIP Bilbert."
Risikio starts applauding politely.
Batko exclaims loudly, "WE MISS YOU!!!!!!!"
Napoleon exclaims, "WOO!!"
Fengshui starts applauding aggressively.
Jawbox01 starts applauding politely.
SmokePotion shouts loudly, "WHOOO!"
Baguette says loudly, "Of course it's Bilbert. What a guy."
Svetlana exclaims, "RIP BILBERT!"
Baguette shouts loudly, "WOO!"
SmokePotion says, "Kinda wisdh we knew the brozies though"
Huntresskai starts applauding politely.
Veleth says, "Same."
EnRet says, "Same."
Nymphali shouts loudly, "LONG LIVE BILBERT!"
[OOC: Fengshui says, "everyone knows you can add something after the social to change it right? like 'clap enthusiastically' " ]
Baewulf shouts loudly, "LONG LIVE BILERTT!"
Veleth exclaims, "Bil-bo!"
Svetlana starts applauding enthusiastically.
[OOC: Eve says, "effort" ]
Batko starts applauding shittily.
[OOC: Necronex666 says, "lazy" ]
[OOC: Veleth says, "I changed most of mine" ]
Bubbles toggles the room moderation to ON, allowing only admin and the current speaker to speak
Bix starts applauding lavishly.
Butako starts applauding piggishly.
Mono starts applauding churlishly.
Bonsai starts applauding politly.
[OOC: Logic says, "you could also use macros to make a pose instead" ]
Logic claps with ferocity of a quantum processor. Feel the wave.
Bubbles waves her hand, transforming the display to show "Most Themely".
Macabre starts applauding haterifically.
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Next up, we're recognizing those who embody the essence of cyberpunk in everything they do!"
[OOC: Logic says, "my favorite way to use macros" ]
Mono [to Logic]: Don't bring your lame skript-kidde shit in here.
Mono reaches behind Logic and furiously gooses Logic on the rear-end, causing Logic to jump out of surprise.
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "So many of you again got one vote only! You're listed in our hearts!"
Fengshui [to Logic]: Yeah! Learn to code and write a verb to do it!
Logic gawks at the nerve and harumphs away from Mono.
Bubbles says loudly, "But...."
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Silver is shared by Lindsey, Owens, and Zukhov! You all make the streets feel real!"
Bubbles says loudly, "And to our most goldest of goldest as I do my best Mench impression.."
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "And our Gold winner... Kase! You're cyberpunk incarnate!"
Wulf sits cross-legged on the floor.
Bubbles toggles the room moderation to OFF, allowing anyone to speak.
Bix starts applauding aggressively.
Lena starts applauding politely.
Burgerwolf starts applauding politely.
Jawbox01 starts applauding politely.
Zxq starts applauding happily.
Majere_Draven starts applauding fengshuishly.
Mindhunter starts applauding politely.
Ociex starts applauding politely.
Beepboop starts applauding politely.
Baguette starts applauding politely.
Vanashis starts applauding politely.
Butako claps like a motherfucker.
Veleth starts applauding excitedly.
EnRet starts applauding politely.
Batko starts applauding politely.
Fengshui cheers!
SmokePotion starts applauding politely.
Macabre starts applauding HATERIFICALLY.
Svetlana starts applauding ecstatically.
EnRet shouts loudly, "WOOO! KASE!"
Risikio starts applauding experimentally.
Quotient starts applauding obnoxiously.
Thrillimanjaro starts applauding loudly.
Rillem shouts loudly, "I LOVE TO HATE KASE!"
Adrognik starts applauding politely.
Baguette starts applauding annoyingly.
Veleth exclaims, "I also use macros for poses!"
SmokePotion says, "So that's applauds. huh. only took me a year to learn to type clap"
Mono hoots'n'hollers and starts a hoedown.
Bix shouts loudly, "WOOT."
Mikael starts applauding politely.
Emily [to Mono]: Yeehaw
Veleth says, "Knew Kase would get this."
Logic points at Veleth. "The world needs people like you."
Rillem says, "Macros for poses are honestly the best for us slow typers."
Terrible_the_duck starts applauding Kaseishly.
Baewulf starts applauding politely.
Necronex666 smiles innocently.
Veleth smiles happily.
Baguette says loudly, "I type them out by hand every time like a CHUMP"
Bubbles toggles the room moderation to ON, allowing only admin and the current speaker to speak
Bubbles says loudly, "Moving on from that country display by Mono..."
Bubbles causes the holographic display to shimmer and reform.
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Time for our Quickest Wit category! These runners can slice through tension with a single sharp comment!"
Mono tips his Stetson to Bubbles. "Ma'am."
Logic snickers sarcastically at Mono.
Macabre stands up to try and get the microphone from Bubbles in a Kanye moment.
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Got some PTSD from that one right there. But.. we had a lot of one votes only for bronze again.. and then!"
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Silver is shared by Owens and Stu! Your rapid-fire responses keep us on our toes!"
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "And taking Gold with a commanding lead of 15 or more votes... Benjiro! Your wit is legendary!"
Bubbles toggles the room moderation to OFF, allowing anyone to speak.
Beepboop says loudly, "Of course, Ben."
Svetlana exclaims, "WOOO! BENSULTS!"
Bix starts applauding medically.
Svetlana starts applauding impolitely.
Baewulf starts applauding politely.
Jawbox01 starts applauding politely.
Majere_Draven exclaims, "Not me!!!"
Emily chuckles softly.
Majere_Draven sniffles and starts crying woefully as tears roll off her cheeks.
Thrillimanjaro starts applauding politely.
Butako does a golf clap.
Necronex666 starts applauding politely.
Zxq starts applauding sadly.
Bix shouts loudly, "POTATO!"
Terrible_the_duck shouts loudly, "BENSULTS!"
EnRet shouts loudly, "LOVE TO HATE TO LOVE BEN!"
Baguette says loudly, "I am surprised more people didn't vote for Sid."
Ociex starts applauding politely.
Baewulf shouts loudly, "CRAZY BURNS!"
AdamBlue9000 says loudly, "Waow."
Adrognik starts applauding loudly.
Baguette starts applauding politely.
Quotient starts applauding corporately.
Veleth starts applauding excitedly.
Vanashis starts applauding politely.
Terrible_the_duck shouts loudly, "YOU AMORPHOUS LIZHARD!"
Mono hoots'n'hollers and starts a hootenany.
Mindhunter starts applauding politely.
Burgerwolf starts applauding politely.
Gragulon appears out of nowhere.
SmokePotion starts applauding politely.
Sivartas appears out of nowhere.
Baewulf cackles madly, his eyes lighting up with glee.
Quest starts applauding politely.
Mono says loudly, "I'm totally macroing this pose."
Bubbles toggles the room moderation to ON, allowing only admin and the current speaker to speak
Sivartas edges into the fourth row, and picks a seat and lowers theirself into it.
Bubbles adjusts her cloud and continues with a grin, "I don't know why he had me grin, he doesn't know em at all."
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "For Best Described, we're celebrating those who paint the most vivid pictures of themselves!"
Bubbles says loudly, "So many votes for only one person in our bronze category! So much love spread around.. but...."
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Silver is shared by Carnage, Kunai, Kuro, and Milana! Your descriptions bring your characters to life!"
Bubbles says loudly, "And our Gold medalist..."
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Santana! Your descriptions are works of art!"
I don't understand that. [try 'examine me', 'examine here' or 'examine <whatever>' for more help]









Bubbles toggles the room moderation to OFF, allowing anyone to speak.
Jawbox01 starts applauding politely.
Emily nods casually.
Burgerwolf starts applauding politely.
Vanashis starts applauding politely.
Ociex starts applauding politely.
Quest starts applauding politely.
Zxq starts applauding happily.
Thrillimanjaro starts applauding politely.
Beepboop starts applauding politely.
Bix starts applauding beautifully.
Rillem shouts loudly, "WOOOO!"
Baewulf starts applauding politely.
EnRet starts applauding politely.
Svetlana starts applauding excitedly.
Terrible_the_duck says, "Who.."
Adrognik starts applauding rapidly.
Sivartas starts applauding politely.
Butako oinks!
SmokePotion starts applauding politely.
Gragulon sits cross-legged on the floor.
Quotient starts applauding hispanicly.
Hivemind starts applauding politely.
Mono hoots'n'hollers and starts a holy war.
Baguette starts applauding politely.
Veleth says, "Woo."
Veleth starts applauding excitedly.
Rillem says, "I'm with mono on this one."
Gragulon stands up from the floor.
Gragulon vanishes from the meeting.
Rillem shouts loudly, "HOLY WAR!"
Bubbles toggles the room moderation to ON, allowing only admin and the current speaker to speak
Bubbles says loudly, "Mono showing us why moonshine is awful.."
Bubbles creates a shower of digital sparkles above the crowd.
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Now for our Cooperative Competition category - those unsung heroes who make our community stronger!"
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Bronze goes to Mench! Thank you for your help!"
This room is currently being moderated. Please wait until moderation is turned off or join a speaking queue if one is present and open.
Mono says loudly, "The longer this goes on, the emptier the bottle gets."
Fengshui says loudly, "I have this one in the bag, obviously"
Bubbles says loudly, "Just thanking himself in here before we get to silver.."
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Silver is shared by Emily and AdamBlue9000! Your support makes a difference!"
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "And our Gold winner... Crashdown! Your dedication to helping others shines through!"
Bubbles toggles the room moderation to OFF, allowing anyone to speak.
Fengshui shouts loudly, "I DEMAND A RECOUNT"
Emily exclaims, "Woo!"
Batko starts applauding politely.
Beepboop starts applauding politely.
Zxq starts applauding happily.
Bix starts applauding politely.
Lena starts applauding politely.
Jawbox01 starts applauding politely.
Butako starts applauding oinktasticly.
Thrillimanjaro starts applauding politely.
Vanashis starts applauding holy-warfully.
Terrible_the_duck exclaims, "WOOOO!"
Risikio starts applauding politely.
Quest starts applauding politely.
Adrognik starts applauding politely.
Logic says loudly, "*speaking english, in a stream of 1's and 0's that coalesce into a voice* Leetest of helpers."
Rillem laughs loudly.
Risikio loudly whistles a nice little tune.
EnRet shouts loudly, "WOOO!"
Sivartas starts applauding politely.
Quotient starts applauding politely.
Svetlana starts applauding helpfile-ly.
Emily [to AdamBlue9000]: We won!
Macabre exclaims loudly, "I FEEL CHEATED!"
Nymphali blinks zir eyes repeatedly.
Hivemind starts applauding politely.
Mono starts applauding holywarishly.
Baguette starts applauding politely.
AdamBlue9000 says loudly, "Yiiipeeee."
Terrible_the_duck says, "Next year. It'll be me."
Macabre runs off the stage, crying like a bad Jerry Springer episode.
Logic comforts Macabre.
Veleth starts applauding excitedly.
Bubbles toggles the room moderation to ON, allowing only admin and the current speaker to speak
Bubbles manifests a holographic skull that grins at the audience.
Fengshui says loudly, "I've never fucking won it."
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Time for our Most Intimidating category! They scare Macabre more than not knowing how to use a paraglider. These are the runners who make others think twice!"
Logic shrugs toward Fengshui. "I've never won an award. Do we kill the winners out of jealousy?"
Macabre makes visible plans to burn down Bubbles'' life.
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "To the man who has the coffins ready.. bronze goes to Graves! Your reputation precedes you!"
Mono steeples his fingers and mutters, "Hooooooooooly waaaaaaar....."
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Silver goes to everybody's favorite mam - Kase! The streets whisper your name!"
Bubbles says loudly, "And..."
Bubbles says loudly, "Oh and.. the ice man cometh.."
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "And our Gold medalist... Zukhov! You put the 'punk' in cyberpunk!"
Bubbles toggles the room moderation to OFF, allowing anyone to speak.
Zxq starts applauding happily.
Bix starts applauding shudderingly.
Baewulf starts applauding politely.
Lena starts applauding politely.
Jawbox01 starts applauding politely.
Beepboop starts applauding politely.
SmokePotion shouts loudly, "I WILL WIN NEXT YEAR!"
Thrillimanjaro starts applauding politely.
Svetlana starts applauding fearfully.
Baguette starts applauding politely.
Baewulf shouts loudly, "WOOOOOO!"
Risikio starts applauding politely.
Vanashis starts applauding politely.
AdamBlue9000 says loudly, "This award Zuks..."
Mikael starts applauding politely.
Mindhunter starts applauding politely.
Mono starts applauding intimidatingly.
Terrible_the_duck says, "He scawy. But He cool."
Butako oinks!
Batko starts applauding politely.
Mindhunter says, "Well deserved."
Burgerwolf starts applauding politely.
Adrognik starts applauding loudly.
Kalii shouts loudly, "OBEY!"
Sivartas starts applauding politely.
Svetlana exclaims, "Get Zukh'd!"
AdamBlue9000 says loudly, "O B E Y."
Rillem shouts loudly, "DON'T FUCK WITH THE ZUHK."
Baewulf cackles madly, his eyes lighting up with glee.
Hivemind says, "Could viddy that from a mile away....."
Quest starts applauding politely.
[++] New post to topic '2025 Memes' in Anything Really

Bubbles toggles the room moderation to ON, allowing only admin and the current speaker to speak
Bubbles raises her voice and declares "And now, for our final and most prestigious award of the evening - the Best In MOO!"
Fengshui cheers.
Macabre exclaims loudly, "That's easy. It's me! I am best in Moo!"
Butako does jumping jacks at everyone!
Logic prepares to comfort Macabre again.
Bubbles says loudly, "So many of you are beloved and got yourself one vote! Keep impacting those in your circles! Macabre is best in getting shanked, but we love you bronzers too.. and now.."
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Silver is shared by Benjiro and Colt! Your contributions make this place special!"
Bubbles says loudly, "And in a final countdown, we didn't only have a tie for silver.."
Bubbles says loudly, "No, no, these two grumpy gusses will spit fire at you all day long and are gearing up to tag team you because..."
Bubbles says loudly, "And now, our Gold medalist for Best in MOO goes to..."
Bubbles exclaims loudly, "Kase and Revel! Congratulations on exemplifying what makes Sindome great!"
Bubbles toggles the room moderation to OFF, allowing anyone to speak.
Veleth exclaims, "The susPENSE!"
Bix starts applauding loudly.
Batko starts applauding politely.
Mindhunter starts applauding politely.
Emily chuckles softly.
Jawbox01 starts applauding politely.
Fengshui applauds aggressively.
Thrillimanjaro starts applauding politely.
Logic claps with ferocity of a quantum processor. Feel the wave.
Lena starts applauding politely.
Beepboop starts applauding politely.
Macabre says loudly, "I have 10 timebombs I am going to set off in your house after this."
EnRet starts applauding politely.
SmokePotion starts applauding politely.
Enven says, "Just want to point out: Best compliment I've ever been given was someone saying a character of mine reminded them of Zukh."
Terrible_the_duck shouts loudly, "WOOOO!"
Svetlana starts applauding politely.
Baguette starts applauding politely.
Mikael starts applauding politely.
Burgerwolf starts applauding politely.
Adrognik shouts loudly, "WOOO!"
Baphomei nods slowly.
Mono shouts loudly, "HOOOOOOOLY WAAAAAAR!"
AdamBlue9000 says loudly, "500 Cigarettes."
Zxq starts applauding enthusiastically.
Nymphali shouts loudly, "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Cowbell starts applauding courteously.
Butako oinks!
Mindhunter says, "Heck ya."
Necronex666 starts applauding politely.
Quest starts applauding politely.
Macabre exclaims loudly, "WOO!!"
Adea starts applauding enthusiastically.
Veleth starts applauding excitedly.
Rillem starts applauding politely.
Reganza says, "Better than be compared to Mark Vandal I guess."