The Dealer had a knife and the dog had a gun and the cat had a shot of Rye.
I am guessing that, by now, most of you have seen and/or used the Timeline field or browsed the Timeline page via the top navigation menu link.
Site Timeline
Please set an absolute date when you start new threads.
I will be removing the older years from our timeline list once I go through Flashbacks and the like and put the date into the Description field.
After talking to the Developer about enabling the timeline randomizer, we decided to wait for Vesta 2 for us to move onto it.
However, I do want to utilize the Timeline feature.
Using the Timeline
Current Site Time Period: July - September 1876
Do your best to set an absolute date using the Timeline field when you start a new thread. You can see dates that have been used by clicking on Timeline, choosing the month/year from the sidebar and looking at the timeline list.
If the thread's timeline is outside the list of available years, leave that field blank and put the thread date in the Description field or at the top of the post. It would still be best to give it a starting Month, Day, Year - but at least use the Early, Mid, Late option.
If the thread will span a period of days or months...
- Best: Start new threads as the date changes.
- Optional: Put the new date at the top of the post when it changes.
After Completing this Time Frame
Once we are ready to end this time frame (July - September), we will keep September, and add on October and November.
After the Winter Time Jump
And here we'll go to a new system. My goal is to narrow down our in-game time frame so we're moving the stories in a more linear fashion.
In game time frame will be one month (i.e., March 1877). As the faster posters finish their March threads and are ready for April, we will add April to March. The goal being that everyone is in April by the time we add May and cut off posting in March. The hope is that we can move forward fluidly and not overly inconvenience anyone.
Time Jumping
Y'all have no idea how bad I hate time jumps. However, due to both how slow in-game time runs and the era we've chosen to post in, they are somewhat necessary evils. My goal is to minimize the jumps as much as possible. If someone wants to play out an event that would have happened in the time period we jumped over, that can be arranged.
So, like last time, we will probably jump the worst of the winter months (December - February).
When we'll jump has yet to be determined.
Feedback welcome!
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." - Groucho Marx
I'm okay with the time jump during the winter and with the other suggestions.
Might I suggest that some threads now need their dates changed in order to fit better now that we have a timeline...so if you can please do.
The Dealer had a knife and the dog had a gun and the cat had a shot of Rye.
JulieS Sure, I can update those threads, but need a link to them and what date to change them to. I confess, lots of the archived dates are hit and miss because of having nothing to go on in the thread itself.
List, Link, and what date to set them to!
Re this:
My suggestion is that we select our in-game month and set a time period that we'll post for that month. Something like 3 months of real time for one month of game time.
Example: October 1876 = February, March, April real time. At the end of April, threads need to be concluded or can be moved to Flashbacks for completion and we start on November of 1876.
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My take on it: I have been in other rpgs where the owners did this. I never ever saw it work. Threads with slow posters never finished on time. The players (myself included) would often complain - month is over already? And then there would be the occasional fast poster who was done with that month's threads but not enough time left to start a new one or be able to jump to a future one.
That was my personal experience anyhow in games that employed this.
The Dealer had a knife and the dog had a gun and the cat had a shot of Rye.
Good point and I had decided up in the night to change the plan. I always appreciate hearing from you though! I have edited and revised my opening post with new suggestions for us to try.
Totally fine with time jumping winter. And if there's an important thread that we decide needs to happen then, it shouldn't be too hard to do that.
As far as in-game time vs. real-life time, I'm not the biggest fan of having the set months, but also have experienced how fluid time can get crazy and leave people behind. So that's my two cents worth.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." - Groucho Marx
While I have been transferring threads, I have notice some things that are out of whack and happening at a different time compared to what had already taken place. So if everyone remembers to date their threads and check the timeline we should be okay with not having a set time period for months in the game.
The Dealer had a knife and the dog had a gun and the cat had a shot of Rye.
Regarding the fluid time vs. a set time span, we can continue with our fluid time for now. The Timeline randomizer has been shut off because it doesn't work correctly without a set "range" of dates to use. Which would be fine if the ACP controls for it were also working because the GMs could update as needed.
So, for now, we'll continue as we have been with a 3 month range of dates to choose from.
However, you do need to put a month, day, and year in the timeline unless writing a memoir or flashback.
When you get ready to create a post, do the following...
Determine your thread's date range, then check the Timeline to make sure the characters you want are not somewhere else on that day.
Create your thread.
Use Character = the character you want to use.
Title = your thread's title
Description = Where: Exact location or anything that gives us info on the post (short).
Timeline = Month from the dropdown, Day = input the date number, Year = choose from the dropdown.
Write your post.
If you want to tag a Player, you can mention them by @[Player Name].
If it includes NSFW content, flip the Mature Content toggle to on. This hides the thread from those that have not enabled Mature Content in their profile.
This Post is = Tagged!*
The only time you use Open is if the thread is truly open to anyone and everyone to tag into! In other words, you made no set plans with anyone to tag into the thread. It is truly an open thread. The Open thread feature is to encourage random Player pairings and to give additional threading opportunities. Open threads show up in their own tab in the Menu at the top of the page so that Players can scan for open threads they might want to join. Once the thread is replied to, it drops off the Open list and becomes a tagged post.
The Dealer had a knife and the dog had a gun and the cat had a shot of Rye.
Hey Folks,
I know we're still posting in August and September - no plans on ending that anytime soon. This is just a note for planning purposes.
Next time frame will be October 1876 (Do not start posting in October yet), however, it will not start until we're done with September.
We'll likely skip November, but I have seen a couple of people mention Christmas threads so - if you guys want to - when the time comes, I'll set up a forum for just December 1876 threads.
Starting with October, we are going to try doing one month at a time, open-ended (i.e., we will not mandate when we end the month, we'll end it when people have mostly completed all the threads they want to do in October).
Thanks y'all.