SC OOC Community

Hi there, Soul Campaign! Ami here.

In the last mod post, folks who were interested in answering the 'Call To Arms' and helping to run the game were invited to send an email to the mod account. The response was massive, and while I couldn't pick all of you, I'd like to instead thank each and every one of you for dropping a line and showing your support! Thank you. You guys are awesome.

Without further ado, I'd like to formally introduce our new members of modstaff: Orange Crates, Picaro and Sun!

Alongside, we have our new App Mods: VG, Belmont and Ri!

The Mod Contact post has been updated accordingly. Thanks, guys.

Stay tuned for a second mod post regarding the plot later today!

Hello, everyone!

We know you've been waiting eagerly, and we're happy to present the new and improved application for Soul Campaign. Along with the new application, we have some additions to the FAQ that we hope will clarify some issues that have been brought up in the past. You can view them below the cut, and also in the FAQ itself.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about these additions/changes, please let us know on the input thread on this entry so we can get back to you as soon as possible!


You can find the new application form over here on the application page.


( FAQ Additions )

Attention, Soul Campaign!

Please be reminded that the last day of using the Livejournal Soul Campaign communities was set to the end of this month. We are importing the communities to Dreamwidth in the first week of May, so please wrap up your threads in the LJ communities or transfer them to DW.

The communities:
soul_logs will be imported to soul_logs.
soul_ooc will be imported to soul_ooc.
soul_skirmish will be imported to soul_skirmish.
soul_campaign will be imported to demise_archive.

The combo breaking SC to DA importing is because of the different tagging system we had in the Livejournal community (name tags + c: name tags) compared to the one we have here in Dreamwidth (name tags only).

You do not have to join the demise_archive account with your character accounts, and the community will be linked in both the current soul_campaign community and in the sidebar of the mod account.

If you have questions, please comment here or email us at soulcampaign@gmail.com.

Calling for beta-readers!

The February Application cycle is a month away, and we'll be assigning beta-readers to the applicants in two weeks on February 1. We need volunteers for the activity; if you'd like to volunteer, please comment below.

We've made some changes to the rules for beta-reading after the test run last cycle. This time, applicants can only ask for beta-readers from the mods until February 1 -- this means that while they can still ask for a beta-reader after February 1, we will no longer be assigning the betas to them from the volunteer pool. Willing players will have to approach the applicants themselves at their discretion. This will hopefully give the beta-reader pool enough time to contact their assigned applicants and communicate with them without the added stress of more assignments closer to the application cut off.

We're also asking the volunteers for some information regarding their preferred contact details and canons. Hopefully, this will also make communication and coordination with the applicant easier, and will also give the mods some leeway when it comes to assigning appers to the beta-reader.

If you're volunteering, please fill up this template below:
<b>Name:</b> <b>Preferred means of contact + contact detail:</b> <b>Canon preferences:</b> <b>Are you all right with beta-reading applications of canons not in your preferred list?:</b> Yes/No

Thank you very much! We appreciate your help!

If you'd like to beta-read but can't comment on LJ, you can also email us at soulcampaign@gmail.com.

Attention, Soul Campaign! Dreamwidth Updates!

We are OPENING the DW Soul Logs community and accepting accounts into the Dreamwidth communities.

Opening Soul Logs

Similar to how our players can still play in Soul Logs at LJ after the move, we are also allowing players to play in the Soul Logs community at Dreamwidth earlier to let our players who have difficulty using Livejournal be able to play while waiting for the full move. We've already opened posting access to it, as well as carried over the tags in the LJ community.

Short Guidelines for Soul Logs at Dreamwidth:
1. The logs need to be closed between the characters involved.
2. The DW community will follow the same in-game dates as the rest of the game in LJ. When we import the communities later, these logs in DW should slot in with the rest without problems.

We realize that this isn't a full solution, but we hope that it helps. Please inform the players you know who can't access this post -- we'll also be emailing those who have left us emails about their Livejournal problems.


Accepting accounts into the communities

This also means that we are going to be accepting your player accounts to the Dreamwidth communities.

Please comment in the Taken Page with the following information. We will only accept the accounts of those who do.

Player Name: Character Name: DW account: <textarea> <user name=youraccounthere> ^ The extra textarea code in the middle is there so that it's easier for the list mod to copy-paste the code for your DW journals. Just close it with a /textarea for multiple characters. Thank you!

The Taken page is still in the old style and in Livejournal here, but as soon as Activity Check is done (in the next couple of days), we will be changing over to the Dreamwidth one for it. We are now using the DW Taken Page. The change on the Taken Page is reflected in the navigation pages. Players are free to come in with their new accounts and join the communities until the move on January 30 and the succeeding Activity Check. Please remember that one character can only have one Dreamwidth account.


As for other updates: We've managed to change the layouts of the communities and the mod journal, and revised half the game-related pages and accounts in Dreamwidth (reserves, application post and app-related pages, some of the FAQ, employment page, locations page, etc; all the mod-related accounts). None of these are yet linked in the navigation page so they're not live yet, but so far so good. To see some of our changes, please see here. We are currently doing revisions on the lists, profile, navigation page coding, and the rest of the FAQ.


If you have questions, please comment here or email us at soulcampaign@gmail.com. Thank you for your patience and we'll have other updates next week.

Attention, Soul Campaign!

The poll on the timeline for moving Soul Campaign to Dreamwidth is officially closed.

Total Players in Soul Campaign as of January 3, 2012: 176 (based on Player Tracking)
Number of Players Voted: 134 (poll numbers + 2 votes from email)
Voted for Option One: 91 (poll numbers + 2 from email and -1 doubled vote)
Voted for Option Two: 36 (poll numbers - 3 from doubled votes and -1 for account not in the communities)
Abstained or Missing: 42

Please read this entire post in full.

Timeline
Majority of the game has opted to move to Dreamwidth on January 30, 2012. We will be following this timeline:

January 4th: Soul Skirmish opens for players to play around in and get a hang of Dreamwidth functionality. The Test Drive meme is already open there, but players are free to join the Skirmish community and make their own posts.

January 4th-25th: Testing, bug-fixing, adapting. The lists get fixed with all who are staying with the game and their Dreamwidth names. The communities are adjusted to suit the game’s needs in DW. Players accepted into communities.

January 26-27th: Final survey taken to make sure that we have everyone who wishes to move.

January 28-29th: Grace period for last-minute things that have a habit of cropping up.

January 30th onward: Game moves and all new posts to the communities will be done in Dreamwidth. This way, people have time to get used to playing on Dreamwidth before new applicants arrive.
Feb app cycle carries on as usual.


Changes to Soul Campaign and Migration Updates

The mods and app mods are busy preparing the lists and communities at the moment and getting the hang of Dreamwidth functionalities.

* Soul Campaign DEMISE NETWORK: soul_campaign
* Soul Campaign LOGS: soul_logs
* Soul Campaign OOC: soul_ooc
* Soul Campaign Memes: soul_skirmish
* Soul Campaign Moderators: soul_mods

So far, the things we are certain will change are the tagging system and the community layouts.

The current tag system we use in soul_campaign has everyone using character name and c: character name tags. Because of Dreamwidth’s tag number limitations, we will be reducing the tags to character name tags only, which will be used to tag posts that characters have commented on. Players may use the ?poster=username url add on to look for entries their characters have made instead. There will be no changes to the tag system used in soul_logs. Please see the section on community imports about what happens to the current tags we have.

The community layouts will have to change since the layout we have now is not entirely compatible with Dreamwidth. We’ll be coming up with something in the next month, but if you have ideas on how to fix the navigation page in particular or have codes more suited to it, we’d appreciate it!

We will be keeping you guys updated with the communities’ progress through the following month. We thank you in advance for your patience and cooperation. For now, please don’t join the s_c, logs, and ooc communities yet since we are still fixing things! We’ll announce when they are more ready.


Migrating lists, game-related pages, etc.

We’re trying to fix the lists and other mod-related pages now to suit Dreamwidth. Once they are done (regardless of if it’s before the move or not), we will be using the Dreamwidth pages as the single source of truth for the game and all the LJ lists will be retired and turned private. This is to keep consistency and to minimize maintenance tasks.

Even if you don’t have an account yet, you should be able to comment on the pages using openID, so we hope that it won’t be a problem. We’ll be importing the mission board and character businesses last, as these require character accounts more than the other lists.

The Reserves Page will continue to be in LJ until the February application cycle cut-off date, after which it will be transferred to Dreamwidth. This is so beta-readers (volunteered or assigned) have an easier time contacting the applicants.

The navigation page in both sites will reflect which lists are currently in use.


Back tags, Activity Check, and using Soul Logs after the move

Starting January 30, 2012, all new posts in the communities will be made on Dreamwidth. We’ll put up a last post in the soul_campaign community that should not be followed by anything else. However, everyone is free to backtag in the LJ communities even after the move, and LJ threads will continue to be accepted in the Activity Checks for as long as they fulfill the Activity Check requirements.

For the February 1 - 7 Activity Check, we won’t be requiring full AC proofs from you. You only need to comment on the AC in Dreamwidth with your new character accounts for us to mark you as still in the game. Like the Christmas Pass, we hope this lessens the stress of the move for our players.

Please note that people applying for a new character in the February app cycle will still need to pass by submitting the usual two proofs of AC.

The soul_logs community in Livejournal will remain open to new logs until April 30, 2012 even after we move to Dreamwidth. While we encourage everyone to keep new logs in the Dreamwidth account, this option will allow players with extra paid time in LJ to be able to get more use of their paid accounts. We require the new logs in the LJ community to be closed only to the characters involved in the log. Please note that all game-wide events will be played out in the Dreamwidth logs community after January 30.


Community Imports

We will be importing the soul_campaign community to a different community (still to be made) in Dreamwidth because of the different tag system that we will be using as soon as we move to the new communities.

The soul_logs, soul_ooc, and soul_skirmish communities will be imported to their mirrors in Dreamwidth.

We will not be importing the communities until May 2012 to avoid clashing with the importing or migration schedule of other games, as well as to make sure that we have all comments (from back tags) in the new archive and communities. But just to make sure, we’ll be doing a re-import at the end of 2012 to catch anything we missed beforehand. We will be freezing the Livejournal communities at the end of 2012.


What we need you to do

We need you to start making the Dreamwidth equivalent of your accounts. The usernames do not need to match the ones you have now in Livejournal, so feel free to create new unique usernames to use in DW. As always, we will only accept one account per character and no extra accounts will be accepted into the communities.

At the moment, Dreamwidth is allowing accounts to be created without the use of an invite code. Later on, we’ll get a community code that we can all use for Soul Campaign.

When we’re done fixing the Taken Page on Dreamwidth, we’ll ask you to comment there with your new DW account names. This will be open until we move, so it should be enough time to get everyone set up. We are permanently keeping both the LJ and DW account names in the Taken List for characters already in the game for future reference.


Contribution post/paid account assistance and Paypal payments assistance

One of our players, Devon, posted here to gather people willing to contribute to players that need help getting paid accounts in DW. If you feel that you will be having trouble funding your paid time in Dreamwidth to replace the paid time you are losing in LJ, please mention this in the contribution post so you can be added to the list for the DW points collection.

The same contribution post also tackles the problem of Dreamwidth not accepting Paypal payments. Some of our players have offered to take Paypal payments in exchange for DW points to assist those who only pay online via Paypal, so if you need their assistance, please feel free to contact them either privately or in the post.

If you wish to contribute DW points or offer Paypal-to-DW assistance, please comment in that post. We appreciate your assistance and the kindness you show your fellow players.


References and Links:

We’ve gathered some references and resources that you guys might find useful in importing your accounts to DW or customizing your settings. We’ll add to this through the next few weeks if we find more.

A Guide to DW for LJ Users
A Guide to RP-Specific features on LJ vs DW
A Comprehensive Guide to DW for LJRPers
A Guide to settling down in DW
Adding LJ Layouts to DW
Making DW have the blue LJ-esque site skin
Profile codes and other coding resources for DW
A Guide to settling down in DW
DW and IJ Resource List
A Guide on how to Import Journal Content to DW
How to fix tables in DW

The Mods United resource page is a bit more comprehensive if you also need LJ workarounds and such. If you have other guides you’d like to share with us, please comment here and we’ll add it to the post! Thank you very much.


Lastly, we would also appreciate any help from our players, especially in coding and whatnot (the navigation page is a disaster). If you have ideas or suggestions that you think can help us, please comment here or email us at soulcampaign@gmail.com.


For questions, please comment here or email us at soulcampaign@gmail.com.

It's come to our attention that several players are unable to post or comment at all because of the new changes. If this is true for you, please email us at soulcampaign@gmail.com

If you know someone this is happening to, ask them to email us.

Just putting a heads up that the automatic pass missions are already available in the mission board. The rules for the automatic pass missions are available in the systems and rules page.

The mission boards have a number of automatic pass missions that partners can take. These missions do not require any dice roll, do not have a difficulty rating, and can be taken an unlimited number of times by partners, as long as at least one person in the partnership has accumulated less than a +3 modifier (not more than 30+ kishin egg souls or meister points). This means, for example, that a pair where one is at a +3 can still use the mission to buff up their +1 partner.

* If the meister is at +3, they can no longer gain points from the autopass mission. Their expertise is already too great to gain any benefit from an easy mission.
* If the weapon is at +3, they can no longer gain souls from the autopass mission. They no longer benefit from the kishin egg souls and are asked to donate it to the Shibusen bank for weaker students (as padding for multiple participants in large-scale operations).

Attention, Soul Campaign

First of all, we apologize for this late release; all the mods were unexpectedly busy in November.

We've put up a short guideline for beta-readers on how to handle proofreading for the applicants coming in. This guideline is meant to be read alongside the application form, which also provides information on the content that we want to see in the apps.

We'd like to request for our players to please go through the list of reserves and see if there is anyone they would like to beta for among the applicants. We'll start assigning our volunteers to the reserves that aren't taken yet by next weekend.

We also added a bit more meat to the beta-reading section of the reserves page. Since the process is still experimental, you can expect us to revisit and revise it after the December apps!

If you'd like to volunteer for the assigned pool of beta-readers, please comment here. Thank you!

Attention, Soul Campaign!

We’d like to announce that we’ve updated the mission board with a new set of missions, in time for the new in-game year! Apart from that, we also made some changes to the mission system, added a new mission group, and broadened what used to be Watch-only missions to include other agents in the city.

Separating the Mission Board from the Mission Rules page.

One of the changes we’ve done is to separate the rules from the mission listing to keep both pages cleaner. You can find the new Mission System and Rules page here.

We’re changing the mission system so that mission results can both succeed or fail.

For one and two-star missions, we’ve put up a new system in place (as can be seen in the Mission Systems and Rules page -- the second section; all the other sections are the same) that will make the missions more realistic for the characters we have in Soul Campaign. You can read the details in the systems and rules page, but the basic rundown is that characters will have a chance to fail or succeed missions based on their IC record in the game so far, and this chance will be determined by simple modifiers and a randomizer (dice roll).

You will not be required to do anything for this new system, but the page lists down how the mods will be doing this in the future for your reference. The mods are currently working on a database of characters’ mission results in the past to more accurately count the characters’ soul count and mission successes.

New mission category: Investigation Missions.

We included a new mission category for this update, which will include investigation missions for characters with a preference for those activities. Please read about them in the Mission Board page. The guidelines and rules are in the Rules page.

As an additional note, we will be adding another kind of mission set in the future!

New missions!

The result of the missions may be used in the future for game plot or world-related events and news. You will also notice that the new missions have modifiers that may make them easier or more challenging for characters. We hope that this will add flavor to the missions and plots that we have in the game.

EDIT!

Revised mission system page on November 21, 2011, 8:48pm +8GMT.

Meisters receive a modifier (aka bonus points) according to the number of missions they have succeeded in, depending on the mission's level. One and two-star missions give one (1) point each, while three-star missions give two (2) points each. Not all Nevada missions will give points to meisters, but those that do will have it indicated in the mission board.

For the purpose of the meister database we are making, we will only count the previous Watch-only missions towards the meister points if they had kishin eggs involved.

The new Nevada missions may or may not give meister points depending on difficulty level -- in general, all Nevada missions that involve kishin eggs will give meister points, while only the more difficult non-kishin Nevada missions will yield the same. We've updated the mission board to reflect the changes in the Nevada missions.Again, the mods will be the ones counting these, so no need to worry about the maths!


If you have mission suggestions or requests, you can leave them here.

For questions about this mod post, please comment here or email us at soulcampaign@gmail.com. Thank you!