Story Team Oversight

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Story Team Oversight

 

How We Upkeep Lore - Lore Surgery (“Injections”)

Lore Surgery is a concept made in 2020, but codified in May 2021 on a full descriptor of when, how, why, and what lore surgery is. Lore Surgery is a codex upkept by upper and middle management of story team to keep tabs on lore and to ensure it remains well spread, ungatekept, and active. While the exact details of lore surgery will remain in management's hands, we can detail that it covers the process of shelving, spreading lore, and story team enforced amendments. This allows us to keep lore roleplay friendly while it changes, and to prevent any players from locking down a magic and ruining it for others. This process has been successful on all but one mark, which was eventually fixed via the same lore surgery process.

 

“Injections” - Teaching or granting a magic, feat, ca, or other form of knowledge to players who otherwise wouldn’t have access to so.
Past Example: Arcane Displacement had a lack of new students not being taught by players with the magic. Thus, a few short eventlines were performed which taught a couple of players Arcane Displacement. 

 

Amendments - Fixes to the lore which change the piece, often in a way that removes a harmful part of that piece.

Past Example: Golemancy had an issue where it required Thanhium to make all types of golem. This made it extremely difficult to make Golems and hindered the feat’s roleplay. Thus, the requirement for Thanhium was greatly relaxed, later removed.

 

Shelving - Removing a lorepiece from the server, and dismissing it through roleplay means after repeated failures by players to ensure the lore was spread, or the lore had an active part in harming player retention and enjoyment of the server.

Past Example: Striga was a lorepiece which frequently made users quit after taking it. After months of inactivity, despite injections and warnings, the piece was shelved without issue, and all characters were given resolution to how this would make sense in roleplay.

 

 

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Activity Trials, Checks, and Shelving

Activity trials sound scary, like a looming threat that you have to run a magic, feat, or creature the same way you run a nation. Simply put, it is not like that at all. An activity trial is a 3-6 month period in which Story Management keeps notes on how active a new lorepiece is and how well spread it is. How diverse it’s players are in background, how many players actively use it. Our activity trial is simple, with the expectation that within months of release, that a magic or creature produces a second generation capable of producing a third. This ensures that lore is continuously cycling and going through players and groups, and that it does not stay stagnant and dry. When activity trials are not met, the lore isn’t just shelved or apps are removed- but the lore is given injections via Lore Surgery to ensure it continues to spread and people continue to pick up and push forward the burden of the last generation’s failure.

 

Activity Checks are what occur past those six months. These are significantly more lax, and don’t hold any numerical value since attribution to so would be overall negative to the experience. Activity checks are just ensuring people are still actively utilizing and roleplaying with a lorepiece, and that it continues to spread to new people and makes its rounds through the server and its various playerbases fairly and evenly.

 

Shelving is a long process which goes through multiple checks and balanced. Summarized, the upper and middle management of Story Team, alongside the designated admin, elect unanimously to put up a vote to the entire story team on whether a piece should be shelved or not. This vote stays up until at least 66% of the Story Team vote on it, with all arguments to keep or shelf the magic, and how it would be done in proposal. If votes to shelf pass with an 80/100% margin, then the poll returns to upper and middle management to unanimously agree on shelving the piece. Afterwards, this goes to Administration, who also have to unanimously agree on shelving a piece. It isn’t an easy process, and certainly can take longer than two weeks to do, but it is to ensure that we are looking at the piece objectively, and fairly.  

 

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“Lore Holder” and The ST

A “Lore Holder” is an archaic term for someone who wrote a current piece of accepted lore. While this has been policy for nearly half a decade, it is written here for transparency. A lore holder holds no sway or control of their lore, who uses it, and how it is utilized anywhere unless in roleplay, and with roleplay reasoning for so. A lore holder may not request their own piece shelved. They may request changes in amendment or addition, but a Loreholder is ultimately a credit given to the writer with no power over a piece or how it is used. As soon as the lore is passed, the lore holder no longer has control or say over that lorepiece.

 

 

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The Amendment Project

The Amendment Project is where volunteer Story Team members may change, adjust, and hotfix lores as necessary and as critically needed. Like when guides and lores say different things, mechanics are unclear or vague, redlines contradict the lore, etc. The Amendment Project is the team which gets it done and solves those issues in an extremely quick and efficient manner. All amendment project changes are submitted to the ST-Audit-Log in The Story Team Discord. If you find any critical issues in a piece related to this, contact The Story Team or send a message in The Story Team Discord immediately. 

 

 

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ST Enforcement, Infractions, Revocations, and Blacklists

Story Team Enforcement is a group of opt-in and vetted ST who may omni (Search) roleplay and investigate for issues related to lore such as powergaming, metagaming, and so on. These ST will receive a report or make one of their own in suspected-issues, where they will post all involved players, relevancy, screenshots, and the issues. To prevent bias, ST Enforcers are disallowed from participating in any issues they are related to in any shape or form. While they may contribute to discussion, they have no sway over verdict nor may they collect evidence unless being involved in the report directly. Enforcement Team will ultimately decide on a verdict.

 

Always is a lore infraction given. An infraction is just a warning and to service that an issue has been had. These are the ‘warnings’, which are simply marked for consistency and to assure we do not let too many warnings slide past repeatedly problematic players to see if more advanced interaction is needed. 

 

In specific circumstances is a revocation or blacklist given to a player. These always relate to the issue at hand, and are almost always temporary. These can be blocks from certain magics, CAs, enchantments and nodes, or even those concepts as a whole. Revocations and blacklists are only given when severe negligence, ignorance, and continued abuse of lore warrant so, and require an ST Trainer, Manager, or Admin to both decide on and administer. 

 

In cases of metagaming or other rule abuse, Moderation is involved and will administer punishment on their own accord.