aather_ooc | Idea Post!

Hello Aather! In the interests of making Aather the best game it can be, we'd like to toss around some potential ideas for what you'd really like to see in the near future!

Since the game has been running incredibly strong for over 3.5 years now (///), we want to make sure we're keeping things bright and engaging, while still staying true to the game as it is and what's made it what it is.

We've had more open slots recently largely due to a lot of characters moving to Happy End or Legacy after being played for several years, and game turnout is a little lower lately (probably also because some of us have been doing this game thing for longer than we've lived in any one place in real life, I don't know about you); and we've also dropped down to a bit of a quieter pace that's a better fit for the playerbase at the moment—but some of these are fairly big changes functionally! so we want to make sure we can continue adjusting and growing the game to fit that.

The mods have some ideas for things we want to do in the future (and I'll make note of some of them in this post!), but we'd also like to hear:

❥ Game or event ideas you'd like to see! Games that we ran two years ago you really liked, or just "a secrets game" or "a costume game" or anything like that. Things we haven't done in a while you wanna see again, or things we've never done that you have a good idea for.
❥ Plot hooks or directions you'd like to go in. "I want to find out more about why there's always a tree in the Ring" or "I want more helping Personae break roles" etc.
❥ Elements that would help you or your characters be more engaged!
❥ Other things that would be cool—quests? Abilities? Themes? Laser beams for Burupya?

At least for this post, we would really just like to hear ideas and suggestions—nothing will be definitely going to happen and someone might have an idea that you don't think would work for you, but that's okay! We are also not looking at making any changes to activity/game structure & functions at the moment—just gameplay, please!

For now—please help us with suggestions about what you'd like to see and we will do our best to make some things happen! If you have multiple ideas, please feel free to leave them as separate comments if they're about fully different things.

Thank you as always for being such a stellar playerbase, and please do always feel free to come to the mods in private if you have questions or concerns or suggestions or pictures of kitten paws.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Um, game ideas that I have, but I am not married to running . . .

+ I would like a game much like Sea Witch's where people are forced in close circumstances with each other to decide something very difficult. However, I would like the twist to be with unfamiliar or distant characters rather than with close CR. I think it would work best if you do a survey before hand to find people at opposite ends of thought to put together. They don't even necessarily have to be two on two (though that would be best for timezone purposes ... ), if you can balance out the views represented, like Good-Neutral-Evil. Ideally, there would be a Big Moral Discussion or a Big Moral Task, but it does not necessarily have to be maim or murder each other. It could be for something like deciding what to do with a Personae or about a situation in Aather, or about hypothetical situation that may not be completely hypothetical . . .

+ I would like to see a game that plays with the lack of team members and knights. In my mind, it would blank everyone's keys, so that they have protection but they can't access their cabins. People can wander off and sleep solo, or stay in the provided big area with the group as a whole. The idea would be to question why to stay with your team. Are you indoctrinated to wanting to be with these people? Would you like to be on another team? Do you want to be a knight? Why? Obviously, doing a huge shuffle may be unreasonable, but it could be interesting in allowing characters to, perhaps, be given access to another team like knights, or have the ability to give out quests but only for other teams, or let teams connect with Personae . . . Knights could forge stronger bonds with teams that could be represented to. Maybe, they win with a particular team? Or they can serve as a Personae-team-patron medium? Mainly, I came up with the idea in order to explain team shrink, but it could be put to any number of ends.

We do have an IC reason for team shrink—basically, due to the progress everyone has made in Aather, the Darkness is focusing more on Aather itself and less on other worlds, so there's less people that Beauty needs to rescue and drag here to be safe! But I'm still kind of digging the possibilities of that second idea so I might play with that for suuure.

It's been a long time since the start of Aather, so characters might be bogged down with what was established before. I'd like to encourage them to have ownership of what a team is, of what they do in Aather, and so on. Also, some crazy stars can maybe change their name to Diamond. Heliodor could work it.