Backstory review and flag system

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Rias
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Joined: Sun Sep 03, 2017 4:06 pm
Location: Wandering Temicotli

Backstory review and flag system

Post by Rias »

The GM team now has an official backstory review and flag system! We'll be dedicating some time to going over backstories for a while which should be fun and informative, but will take some time get through.

As of now there are two flags: YELLOW, which is a matter of potential concern, and RED, which is an issue that does not fit with the game lore/policy and must be fixed. A flagged character's player will be notified when the flag is set (if they are online at the time) as well as whenever they log into that character. The BACKSTORY command will also notify the player of any current flags.

Players can use the BACKSTORY FLAGS command to see that character's pending backstory flags (if any), and BACKSTORY FLAGS RESOLVE to notify staff when updates have been made to address a particular flag's issue. The latter allows the player to give a summary of what they changed in order to fix the issue, or in the case of yellow flags, communicate understanding or give an agreement to abide by any guidelines that staff might have given along with the yellow flag.

I hope there won't be any offense taken with any flags given. I realize a lot of the background lore is hazy, and players have done what they could to fill in some of the gaps. Sometimes things stray off a bit too far into the weeds to the point it starts defying important lore or making too many assumptions, and we feel some cases need to be reigned in a little. I'm happy to see people come up with their own ideas, but on the other hand I'm not comfortable with players inventing their own major pieces of lore. It would be uncomfortable for everyone if there was a moment in-game where a PC got challenged on some claim from their backstory for being impossible or unrealistic, so I thought a system like this could help get things on the right path in a more OOC manner.

Overall, I'm hoping this will be a useful tool for GMs to be more aware of backstories and their statuses and which have yet to be reviewed and so forth, and helpful to players who might not be sure about their backstory and are hoping for some feedback on the matter. I think it will be particularly useful for players to know when their backstory has been reviewed and approved, which will show up when using the BACKSTORY command when that's the case.
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
<Fellborn> NO
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