[Story Update] - Magic Progression & Oversight

[squakhawk 14043]

  

 

Hello meows.

I wanted to give you guys an update on something management and I have been ruminating on for a while. Explanation is below, if you'd like to skip straight to the changes, see the section titled "No More Oversight".

 

Magic Progression

 

Self teach and learning times have always been a point of contention - can't make everybody happy with any system. There's a careful balance between character development, weight in a magic, a player's willingness, and the burden of effort both on player and ST that may be involved for it.

 

Back in 2020, magic was indeed on the up and coming - but far from widespread, or even mainstream. It was a day where you could say "air evocation is gatekept" and only half the people in the room would look at you like you were insane.  It was a problem, particularly a personal pain point for me, that magic was such a fun system and lore was such a sideplot to the server, that it felt like it had been mistreated for every year I hadn't been on the server and somehow that was acceptable (even though nobody was happy about it in any stance - it just was that way by the years of mistreatment and neglect.). I made it a sort of personal mission of mine to make magic more accessible and widespread. A noble goal, but one that would take a while.

 

I pitched the idea of Self Teach Altars, Teaching Guides, Lore Guides, OOC Oversight, Book Teaching, True Self Teaching, and TA-Without-MA Teaching back in 2020 with minimal success. After the admin at the time was obliterated for being capital w Weird, Rift (blessings be upon him) gave a lot more leniency to me and the other managers at the time, so I was able to implement the above (although TA-Without-MA wouldn't come until 2022, if I recall correctly). 

 

Self Teach Altars were kind of a disaster. It was frustrating because it became a way to spam dungeon crawl event requests that we'd have to answer and wasn't very fun for ET (or specialized LT) to do. Book Teaching was extremely limited in scope, and with the release of Housemagic, it worked for that specific instance which has only seen spread to Bardmancy since. True Self Teaching was shot down due to (in relation to self teach altar students being a complete failure) disasterous understanding rates and the extremely high incidence of lorebreaking, and a double-edged-sword effect where new players flocked straight to these methods in comparison to the traditional method and often quit the server due to just noob-y-ness, even with the help of lore guides. Magic progression was shortened more and more until it landed where its at now, at about sixteen weeks. 

 

Lore Guides were decent initially but often loathed, and often became a subject of just copy pasting a lorepiece but slapping on emote counts. This kind of defeated their purpose of actually giving examples and teaching the magic, but it seems most writers and people on LT just disagreed that this was necessary to establish a magic standard of expectations- and was removed last year. 

 

OOC Oversight however, was a remarkable success. Unprecedented did we see the amount of apps we'd ever seen prior since the release of OOC Oversight. While it was initially intended to be more of an ease of scheduling, it often turned into a way to just obfuscate (maliciously or not) lessons and learning, and was seen as a faster track to the top with the active enforcement of spell learning in relation to magic tier timing.

 

While with mixed results, I'd say alongside the extremely hard work of the LT between its very reformative years of 2020-2023, the server changed for the better when lore became a common, every-day-every-player type thing that regardless of proficiency, is utilized. It's increased the immersion substantially, and is something both achievable and attainable by everyone on the server fairly and frequently. 

 

However since then, I feel like I have noticed a trend. A drop in quality is expected when the pool of "total people who know a magic" on the server expands from a half dozen or so to a hundred, but there has been an attitude that has troubled me a lot. From my view, while there are standard cases of OOC Oversight, a lot of the cases I/The LT looked into were entirely just noncompliant with the requirements - no lessons, no screenshots, often no communication with the teacher past the connection (which, while required, is often skipped). This is entirely anecdotal, but it bothered me quite a bit to see the lore being used in such a way. Of course, bad actors over a system, but I feel it festered a bit further than that.

 

Right now, although it is far from a new mindset, I find it prevalent that magic is seen as a sort of toolset or object to a character, and it is frustrating that while it is fun to think about and fantasize a secret personal minmax or interaction, annoying that people often blitz through as many shortcuts to learn a magic and disconnect from any tethering to a community (such as a teacher) as quickly as possible. Even as short as they are now people call for shorter and shorter learning timers, the most prevalent argument I hear for so being 'It will make people less attached to their characters' - be honest with yourself and ask how many characters you or any other person on the server goes through in one year. If the person isn't open to letting go of something to begin with, how is shaving off a couple weeks of a magic going to make it any easier? Conversely, where is the brevity in becoming a master, top-of-the-line mage in a few weeks? Even considering that the bulk of spells used or utilized in CRP are all in tiers 2-3 - which are attained incredibly quick. 

 

 

 

 

Teaching is an important part of not only learning a magic and understanding it, but for roleplay and interaction with people. Be creative, have fun, have whimsy, be courteous and be kind. The theoretical and fictional crps are just that - do things by and for your character, for your group or community. Take your time and have fun. The point of the server, and of lore especially, is to stop and smell the roses. Take your time and accept not being so hyper-optimized, and enjoy the imperfect nature of roleplay. Enjoy yourself. 

 

 

 

 

While dated, I'll link the Teaching guide I wrote with @Malaise a long while back. It is a bit rough around the edges in modern expectations, but it's still a worthy three-minute read for those who have it to spare. 

 

 

 

No More Oversight

 

After careful consideration on the potential rammifications, we are modifying self teaching as below. The lorepiece has been changed to reflect this (and updated on other spots as well.). 

 

-Teacher Guidance (OOC Oversight) teaching has been removed for all magics.

-Future alternatives for Self Teaching are being considered and thought about, but are just very low priority at this time. 

-Apps posted on or before 5/2/26 with OOC Oversight are still valid until lessons are completed, a student is dropped, or up to 15 weeks from posting (8/16/26)

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

also in light of the forums no longer being indexed or something and now you cant find LITERALLY ANYTHING on this website i'll remind everyone that the Accepted Stuff loresheet exists and is probably the most practical way of finding lore now (though im gonna talk to kowa to see if theres anything we can do to make the forums searchable again on google) 

 

[Spoopy_Duck 3219]

[NightOfTheWind 3226]

forgive me sensei, ill have to use the forbidden technique u taught me on discord, just this once 

 

[winterblood 11181]

scp?

[PolarLoLs 993]

Every voidal mage just got shot

[Wolfy-D 483]

Yo so like, can my tfig student who put the MA in like an hour ago keep the OOC oversight?

 

Also I still do the lessons even tho is OOC oversight for all of my students, there is only one that I actually do over discord and whatnot because we rarely RP in the same areas, and they have a very different time zone

[_AzureLexi 774]

Why not just deny TAs of people who do OOC oversight incorrectly? One of the main appeals of OOC oversight, at least for me, is that it lets me focus on actually roleplaying with my teacher players, as opposed to having to schedule countless boring lessons for magics I am entirely capable of reading and comprehending on my own.

 

Removing OOC oversight won't fix powergaming. My first magic wasn't OOC oversight (though it was over a year ago now, it's been far too long to submit a report for getting the TA denied) where I was quite literally taught to break redlines. And I've seen time and time again, teachers outright instructing students to do things that go against redlines.

 

The problem is not OOC Oversight, it's the lax nature of TA enforcement.

[BonesOfTheEarth 2252]

9 minutes ago, squakhawk said:

although TA-Without-MA wouldn't come until 2022, if I recall correctly

Ta without MA were always a thing! It used to be you could only have ONE teacher only app though

 

Baller post though

[sam33497 7360]

Void saved

 

Another thing to note is that lazy lessons that constitute the bare minimum of teaching rp necessary are also part of the problem, your students will end up useless chuds if there isn't cool rp associated with learning their magic

[kuebiko 686]

Put the whimsy into the magic lessons! I highly recommend any teachers to have fun making it character centric, throw fireballs at your students, make them do creative things rather than just combative ones. Even if they're experienced players, memorable roleplay is always nice. (looks at my current voidal student.. bats my eyes)

[xo31 4012]

I'm genuinely curious - why not just. . . enforce good faith rules heavier rather than punishing the entire server? Some people are busy, in school, or are in much more insane time-zones. It's already a big problem for how ridiculously long it takes to progress through a magic, and especially since other methods are "a very low priority" right now. I find more and more LOTCers are the busiest they've been in their lives as we all collectively grow older, and yet now it will be even harder to progress through things like this.

Of course, I share the opinions stated regarding magic's relevance to the character, but it's currently - for most magics - 16 weeks to progress, which is three and a half months. That is a very long time, and again while I do agree that magic shouldn't be picked up and thrown around randomly to characters who've not earned it, this is still meant to be a game which we have fun in, and we're treating magics like they are certifications for working in real life trades.

I agree that OOC oversight was heavily misused for a lot of OOC friend-trading and by lazy teachers with a lack of lessons, but it certainly was not everyone. I am seeing this philosophy heavily with the lore team these days of trying to make something more prosecutable despite it already being a rule break. It's already against the rules to be bad faith, OOC trade magics, or misuse one's TA. . . why not just punish the people who are misusing self-teaching?

Furthermore, the true problem is hardly addressed. Lazy lessons are still going to happen. Crack down on the people abusing the mechanic! Not the mechanic!

[Suzzie 866]

its jover void bros, pack it up....

in all seriousness I understand the intent of the decision, it just sucks for timezones sometimes. 
 

[Nectorist 12871]

This is fine to me as someone who doesn’t do self-TA magics or whatever, but it feels like this falls into the same trap that staff do of seeing a system that’s prone to abuse and trying to resolve it by scrapping it entirely instead of trying to bolster it with stricter rule enforcement first

[SimonItorp 124]

I cherish being able to teach IRP, I also see the appeal of needing to do OOC oversight here and there though simply because of really poor timing due to IRL complications. People being swarmed with work... People getting sick... People going through changes that warrant some time away from the game... It all applies to literally every single person who plays student or teacher. Anything can happen, and when it does? Your progression shouldn't be punished, at least that's how I view it.

 

W post regardless, people who have TAs and don't treat them with the respect that they should (getting to teach is a privilege) will definitely lose their ability to continue doing so. However- I would say that it is also important that magic learners, new or experienced, actually speak up when they notice that their teacher is actively instructing you how to powergame. The requirement for intervening with a student who's powergaming as a teacher, applies also to the student needing to intervene with a teacher who's powergaming. 

[squakhawk 14043]

an issue with the heavier enforcement argument is that to begin with these issues aren't reported, which means we have to go digging into them - digging into them already has the perception of people being 'targetted' or 'singled out', not to mention with the mass of what we'd already found being so extensive a lot of people with ooc ov probably thought or accepted it as norm. There was a path to keep it in which we dish out a mountain of infractions, ta/ma revokes, and have to deal with the huge backlog of this abuse (which would probably require some kind of statute of limitations, or getting rid of a system which borderline encourages the behavior. This doesn't take into account we'd be requiring discord searches for lessons which I dont think people, at large, would want or trust another to do (not to mention how easy they'd be to fabricate or misrepresent)

 

More than just the actual abuse there's the cultural issue I think it's helped fester which I talk about in the paragraph above which already would've been enough in my eyes to can it past its point of necessity. It could always be reintroduced in the future but I think requiring some kind of trackable quality control would be utterly necessary. 

 

If it takes an extra week or two (or more even) to learn a magic with your teacher, so be it - i hardly find 16 weeks a difficult challenge to meet up for, at minimum, four separate meets for your tier progression. If you spend a bit more time, your character isn't hyper optimized - that's fine. Journey before destination, roleplaying a bit longer as not being a master of your art is something completely acceptable.