We have added a new little system to the game, called Tips. Tips is essentially a database of notices about commands, resources and other useful things on or related to the game. Each hour, a random notice is broadcast to anyone who hasn’t turned off the system. The idea is that it will help players (especially new players) learn of these commands and resources since digging through all the helpfiles is perhaps less than fun.

See +HELP +TIPS for the helpfile, which explains how to turn tips on and off, and if you’d like to suggest any tips to be added, use ‘ex #2936/TIPS*’ to see what the existing tips are.

Players who create personal, named NPCs for regular or semi-regular usage need to submit these to the CDB. See +HELP CDB SUBMIT for how to do this. Note that tier for such characters will default to V unless the player asks for something else and provides a reason for why it should be higher. More than IV is very unlikely to be approved.

The search code has been tweaked to allow tier as one of the fields that can be searched. However, tier search will only return NPCs, not PCs. This is in line with our policy of not displaying the tier of a PC in the +cdb output. If any unexpected results are produced, let us know.

There is currently (at the time that this message is posted; for up-to-date information, see +cdb/quota) 1 slot for tier III characters available. As this is a slot that has just opened up, there will be a 5 day request period from the date of this announcement. Please see the quota helpfile for further information about how this works.

There are two types of characters that we would like suggestions for: Cameos and Extras.

Cameo characters are intended to be fully precreated and made available specifically for MUSH newbies. They are not generally intended as permanent roles, more as a way of trying out the game. ICly they are supposed to be more minor characters, suitable for getting your feet wet with. Ideally, they should be roles that have an easy time interacting with a lot of different people, rather than relying on for example the members of a single house.

Extras are basically named NPCs specifically intended as characters that can be emitted or referenced in roleplay when you need someone fairly generic but you’d like to have a name and some details to work with. They are not intended to ever become PCs, and that way they can be used more freely. For some more information, and some suggestions that we will be adding soon, see this forum topic.

If you have any suggestions for these types of characters, feel free to submit them via +help cdb submit. When it comes to the Cameo characters, we would also love some help with CGing the ones we decide to create, so do indicate in your submissions whether you are willing to do so as well.

Having a few logs added now and then to the logs page is a good way of showing that there’s roleplay going on and it is also a handy way of showcasing the kind of roleplay that goes on. We’re looking at implementing some sort of web form where log drafts can be submitted into a queue and then approved by us, but so far I haven’t been able to figure out how to do that in the CMS we use for the log storage.

This means that currently logs will have to be submitted via email and Balerion and I will have to add them. Given this, there’s a limit to the volume of logs we can handle, and delays will happen. However, now that we have caught up with the backlog of logs, we’ll try to stay as current as possible.

So, if you are sitting on any logs that you want to show off on the site for whatever reason, please consider preparing them according to the instructions on the log page and sending them in to us. If you log a lot and have hundreds of logs to select from, pick some favourites now and then. 

A new type of characters will be added: Cameo characters. These will be fully CGed characters, primarily of tier V, that prospective players (inexperienced and experienced alike) can use to sample the game with. We hope that this will provide a way of testing the game for players who don’t want to invest the time and effort in CGing a character before they know if they’ll like it.

In order to build up a small selection of Cameo characters, we will need some help, both with concept suggestions and CGing. If you are interested, let us know. Keep in mind that these concepts should be for characters that can interact with the majority of the playerbase (that is, with noble characters) and they should ideally be characters that are in King’s Landing more or less permanently so that players can easily slip in and out of these roles. The idea is that players should stay in these roles for a very limited time period, perhaps a month or two at most.

A new set of commands have been added, to allow players to vote for the NPCs they most want to see in play. Please make sure to make use of this and to point the command out to players looking for suggestions. For more details, see +HELP CDB WANTED.

We have decided to go ahead and allow alts with certain restrictions. Specifically, alts will be available to current players of Dornish hostages or to players of other characters who wish to play a Dornish hostage. Players will only be allowed one character with a tier higher than IV (to see if any such slots are currently available, see +cdb/quota) and to qualify for a Dornish hostage you need to either have 1 year of prior MU*ing experience or 3 months of regular activity here on Blood of Dragons. You also need to have read all the published books.

Players may start requesting these characters right off, though actually processing the requests may take us a little while since we need add in some more alt-checks in various place. Finally, we will note that the policy we have decided on is that alt information will be publicly available via +finger.

Since we have found that the unset tier (represented by the ?) is a source of complications and confusion, from now on all characters that we do not have a preconceived notion about will be set as IVs or Vs (primarily in the case of some personal NPCs and some others that we have intended as Vs). The relevant files have been updated to reflect this. If we have managed to miss any, please let us know.

While it is of course ideal if roleplay can run smoothly without the need for Staff intervention, at times it is better to consult Staff than to press ahead and perhaps cause lingering OOC resentment over a disagreement that was not properly resolved. We would like to encourage players to get in touch with Staff when disagreements of any kind arise. We do not want such actions to be seen as disruptive but rather as a way of maintaining good relations OOCly even when things get heated ICly.

In addition to the typical conflicts that can arise, some specific issues that have come up lately and which definitely should go through Staff (specifically, through Nymeria and/or Balerion) are questions and/or disagreements about thematic issues and questions and/or disagreements about general NPC opinions. What is and isn’t canon theme and what the NPCs at large feel about something can only be dictated by the Admin.

I have reduced the multiplier determining how easy it is to successfully pick up a rumor, from 4 times how widespread the rumor is to 2 times. After looking at the results, it currently seems like everyone eventually picks up every single rumor on their own, and that seems to mean it’s a bit too easy. We’ll see how the new multiplier works. Any feedback, please feel free to direct it my way. :)

We’d like to refer people to looking over the policy on NPC usage, as per the helpfile on NPCs.

A particular addendum should be made, namely that non-Open NPCs are particularly not to be used as emitted characters without expressed permission. Even in those cases where permission is granted, our preferred policy is that they are “seen and not heard”, rather than becoming major parts of a scene. In the future, we will attempt to make those cases where permission is granted clearer, either by setting up a puppeted object controlled by an approved player, or by creating a +job set at Player level which anyone could refer to.

When in doubt as to whether an NPC is being used with permission, please feel free to discuss it both with those using the character and with the staff.

+Rumors/view now takes the “all” argument, which should allow a person to get all rumors they have access to in one go rather than having to view them one by one.

Also updated, the rumors will indicate when a rumor is a targetted one by indicating whether it is of a positive or negative character, and whom it concerns.

An elementary bug crept into +rumors awhile back. Reports were initially spotty enough that I thought people were just not having luck finding rumors, or no one was inserting rumors, but it became clear that it was a broader issue. I’ve since corrected the bug. If there are any other bugs (for example, being unable to properly investigate or quash a rumor), please report it via +jobs. Note that success is not guaranteed whenever you try such activities—there are roles involved—but if you seem to just consistently not manage, there may really be an issue. Feel free to try and investigate and quash the present test rumors. I will try to remember to reset everyone’s influence at the end of this month, so you can use points with abandon.

On top of this, I’ve at least temporarily increased the odds of hearing a particular rumor. This should matter most for those rumors which are strong but a person has very little in the way of the arena-relevant skill (for example, Politics for the Court arena) to pick it up. It will have less effect on weak rumors, which would be difficult even for someone with the relevant skills to pick up on it. Let me know if it seems to help any with more regularly hearing rumors.