12 years of UV! But we obviously need a change.

[Gaeva Winged Unicorn]

So I made a poll, let me know what you would like best to happen next or have a suggestion of your own ^_^

[Luxon Cobrat]

Would erasing all the characters allow for submitting old characters for re-acceptance? That would at least get everybody operating on the same level.

[Gaeva Winged Unicorn]

Yes. Because that is totally what I will be doing with at least Gaeva. Though I may tweak her into a slightly different character... Slightly alternate universe mind concept, "what if", but not officially.

[Luxon Cobrat]

Alright, my vote's in, then.

Artistically, it seems like it would be best to finish the current plot before the reboot so that we could say we completed the story of Deep Forest, but I don't know if we have enough steam to do that or how long it would take. And there's the fact that almost everyone who was participating seems to be gone. Still, it would be nice to have a completed story under our belts, though the practical matter of getting things moving again sooner than later is probably more important.

[Gaeva Winged Unicorn]

The HVR forum will solve that ^_^

Majority so far are for a complete reboot.

[Melody wolf]

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[Gaeva Winged Unicorn]

I trying to think of a way where alternate dimensions would actually work in an unofficial way without making it another "thing" where new members may feel left out. It would allow some current characters to stay as they are with their history intact, but move to a Deep Forest with a different/unknown background.

[Melody wolf]

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[Luxon Cobrat]

Given the reality-warping of the last plot, this seems relevant to the current discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_on_Infinite_Earths

Basically, you could just have the Forest do one final planar magical Dr. Who thing to correct itself by removing all the events from its history that led to its recent instability, shunting all that history off onto an alternate reality. A few characters could be allowed to come through this event unaffected because of some kind of supernatural protection, but everyone and everything else gets changed over to a completely different timeline. That way, we can still keep people's old characters intact if their players want, but everything else starts fresh.

[Lanadyr]

I voted to delete the entire history of UV, including characters. This forum already understands the importance of jettisoning dead weight through the occasional use of the Reaper thread, and deleting the history would be the “Reaper Effect” writ large. Allowing a new batch of characters to write their own history, and giving their players the maximum ability to affect that history, seems like an ideal way to get players, both new and old, interested in (and invested in) actually, you know, role-playing in the role-playing forum.

Just imagine it: Gaeva lets all of the players know that the Big Reset is coming, which gives everyone a bit of time to prepare new characters (which might look just like old characters, whatever makes you happy), and then everyone hits the ground running at the Edge at the same time when the bottom drops out of reality, with everyone participating in everyone else’s starting threads to get all of these new characters into the Forest so they can establish themselves upon a blank slate. Personally, I think that sounds like a LOT of fun. The number of posts required in each specific character’s individual joining thread might need to be relaxed, though, just to make sure active characters that help to get other characters into the Forest don’t get stuck at the Edge if no one wants to reciprocate.

All that being said, I’ve never felt particularly hemmed in by the history as it exists right now. This is a role-playing forum, things don’t always go according to plan (assuming there’s even a plan to begin with), and no one can be expected to know everything about everything around here. A certain amount of flexibility with respect to existing continuity is necessary to keep things moving forward in such a context. For examples, my character Bottle has met Gaius’ character Devon for the very first time twice already, and my character Orb's joining thread involved a village that didn't look much like the established treetop village. At some point, you just have to shrug, offer “magic” as an explanation, and move on with the rest of your life.

In other words, even if the votes start to drift away from the “Big Reset” option, it might still be useful to offer a disclaimer in the How To Join thread that says something to the effect of: “So, we’ve got all of this stuff lying around like the Mithren wolf pack and the Adele Makani feline pride and the gryphon Wing and the treetop village and on and on and on, and if you want to make use of any or all of it, that would be awesome, but you don’t have to, because magic.”

[The_Vizir]

I'd have to second Lanadyr's reasoning here... but we've done so many little tweaks that hasn't changed anything that I'm a bit dubious that this alone will be enough.

If UV is going to keep on, we may need to do a full relaunch, with a new site(maybe just a new theme so it seems new), a relaunch event, etc. - enough that people who've never been here feel like it's brand new and they have a chance to make their own mark. The rules have been updated to be in line with what I'd say is a plurality of the sites out there (aside from the long-ish application for new characters, which might be a turnoff, given how many people never actually get out of the Edge... heck, reapplication threads die and even previous characters aren't allowed back in. How loco is that?)

Also, if this is going to happen, we should probably aim for a September launch time frame, because I believe the start of the school year is probably the second-best recruitment time (after the end of the school year).

[Norvilion]

I'm going to second the note about long intro times. Alas I feel that may be part of the reason I've never really been able to join in the main part of the site too much- having had some poor luck with joining threads. Sometimes it was due to slow response of others involved in topic, sometimes due to grasping at straws finding ways to continue current encounter past their natural wind down. By the time the character is accepted momentum has been lost (though that could also have been that last time I tried joining was in college so I had a general lack of time to just sit down and clear my mind enough to write the character well).

Not sure where those young whipper-snappers frequent these days to find out about new sites for writing, but having some kind of relaunch event would likely help to kick-start the community.

I also tend to agree with the proposed September relaunch. Even though I'm the personality type where I really needed some time on my own to be able to get into character (college for me involved a large amount of hanging out in the same area as friends), I know a lot of people are either not in the student center 24/7 practically or are able to write well anywhere anytime and need some distraction from classwork.

[Melody wolf]

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[nightwolf714]

Hey guys! I rediscovered this place and saw this thread! Rebooting could be kinda cool. It would be interesting to revisit Lep to bring her back.

Life has settled down for me a bit now that I'm out of college and in a stable job. Yay. So hoping to return here for good! I've missed you guys and I'm sure that's a lot of you I haven't met yet.

Like my character Ranger won't even exist if we remove all traces of the wolf packs, because he's from the litter that Melody had with Umber shortly before Val killed him. I am still bitter about that, Val!

Tell me about it! Cortina was incredibly torn up over it!

[Lanadyr]

I'm going to second the note about long intro times. Alas I feel that may be part of the reason I've never really been able to join in the main part of the site too much- having had some poor luck with joining threads. Sometimes it was due to slow response of others involved in topic, sometimes due to grasping at straws finding ways to continue current encounter past their natural wind down. By the time the character is accepted momentum has been lost (though that could also have been that last time I tried joining was in college so I had a general lack of time to just sit down and clear my mind enough to write the character well).

Hm…Perhaps part of the reboot/relaunch could be a “special introductory offer” with respect to joining threads? As in, only a couple of posts would be required to get a character past the Edge if said character’s thread were to be created between the two dates bracketing the reboot? It seems like that would be a pretty good incentive for players to get characters involved in the event.

[Gaeva Winged Unicorn]

Alright, I've been reading this and doing some brain storming and there's a way to give everybody what they want.

One thing first though, I'm not sure what you mean Melody, because there was never an option of deleting stuff, of course everything, all posts, will be archived! They just wouldn't be a part of the official IC history anymore, but the actual threads will always be there, in their own archive of UV 1.0.

So, here is my current suggestion, give me feedback on this version:

We reboot everything. Clean out all the forums, everything empty, including character profiles, everything is archived and locked away for your viewing pleasure only. We throw up a new look, new colors, no characters on the banner (for now). Only the name Unicorn's Visions stays the same, and the general concept of our RP: an area of land mostly uninhabited/unexplored where travelers somehow arrive at, and decide to stay for a while. Humans not welcome.

Here's the part that should satisfy most: this new place is Deep Forest in an alternate timeline/dimension, but unofficially because it'll never get mentioned. It's its own place with its own (non-specified) history and its own characters that obviously don't care about the what-ifs that happened somewhere else. But we'll know.

There are no hard rules on how it is different from the current timeline/dimension.

I'll give you the lands like I did when UV first started 12 years ago, maybe some vague "these are good and these are bad places to visit", and you bring the characters. These can be completely new, never seen before characters, they can be variations (big or small) of your current/past character, they can be younger/older versions of your current/past characters, they can be relatives of your current/past characters that never existed here, or, they can be the exact same characters that you have been roleplaying here. They will need to have a new character profile and start at the joining forum, because this will be a new place they have never been to before, with new places to visit and new people to get to know, but other than that, they will be the same character, with the same memories, the same history, no change. You can even link to the archived threads for your joining profile if you so wish.

How they wind up in that other dimension is up to you, though with the nexus mess currently screwing things up in Deep Forest it shouldn't take that much of the imagination to come up with a way They'll just be forced to start over and make a new home. They'll remember the old Deep Forest even though their new acquaintances are probably gonna care about as much as they do now about everyone's backstories: not much. So yeah, an unofficial carry-over for those who want it. Depending on the character it'll seem like just a new chapter to the story. To everybody else it'll just be some story, they don't care about the originals, because int heir own experience they are the originals.

As for the Edge, yes, the elephant in the room. That beast used to be so much easier to handle during the early year(s), but when our active count was somewhere in the 100s it just became impossible for the mods to properly process new arrivals without sticking to a strict joining process with hard rules, so that became the norm. We're not exactly in the 100s anymore, not even dozens! I propose we go back to the principle of if you show up and stick around, are literate enough to form understandable sentences, understand you can not just make up new abilities on the fly, then you're accepted.

The rules will stay the same, and respect each other and each other's characters will be stricter and more enforced. If someone makes someone else uncomfortable or whatever: a warning first with mediation to figure out how to solve the problem, second time gets a temp ban, third time permanent ban. Something like that. It'll allow people to do whatever they want as long as they cooperate and use common sense (uh oh).

Character limit...not sure about this one. Do we go back to a certain number character limit? Continue with the current set up of the character archive? I really don't want unlimited numbers, unless we do Reapers in a different way: instead of acknowledging you wish to continue with a character you have to be able to show recent activity within a certain timeframe when the Reaper shows up "Look! He's active [link]! Don't kill him!".

September launch sounds peachy!

What do you think?

[Melody wolf]

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[Gaeva Winged Unicorn]

The problem isn't when you're allowed to have a new character, it's what happens to the old ones when you do!


...


Er yes, I was so caught up in trying to write stuff down I seem to have skipped over the "omg is that actually Nightwolf??" bit, lol! Hi!!!! (Norvillion too!)

[Melody wolf]

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[The_Vizir]

To be fair, Gaeva, we never really got to use the archive, 'cause we've been locked in a plot since it was implemented, so....

Also, to be fair, some established folks have a a tendency to also create powers on the fly. Some people who were mods even. Some people with an unhealthy fascination with Tenacious D, even.

*cough*