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FAQ
NAVIGATION> THE BASICS — game info, game cap and age requirements > META QUESTIONS — timezone, event structure and schedule > OOC QUESTIONS — activity, dropping, hiatusing and canon updating > APPLICATION QUESTIONS — appable characters, unappable characters, nerfing and humanization > GAME WORLD — setting, arrival and housing > GAME MECHANICS — character communication, regains and death |
What is We’re Still Here?
We’re Still Here is a Suburban Gothic themed psychological and survival horror game, in which characters awaken in an American town called Santa Rosita in what appears to be 1961. Treated by the residents of the town as if they have just moved here, they are given every indication that their memories and previous lives are fake and that this is reality. From there, characters have three general goals: figure out why they’ve come here, avoid drawing attention from the town’s leaders, and survive with their sanity and identity intact. Although there will be opportunities for rest and laidback activities meant to mimic the atmosphere of a small town, the game is primarily plot and investigation focused and will feature events meant to encourage teamwork and mystery solving, as well as themes of horror that include but are not limited to existential horror, body horror and graphic violence. There will be times where characters will have to work for their survival, and you can expect them to face stiff and occasionally bloody opposition. If plot-heavy horror/survival with consequences sounds too overwhelming, or you’re more interested in playing out the slice-of-life aspects, we urge you to take your time to consider if We’re Still Here is the right fit for you. Hey, isn’t this just like Mayfield, that old retro-themed horror game? Is this a spiritual sequel? Short answer: no. Long answer: We’re Still Here draws from the same pool of pop culture and horror homages that our dearly departed cousin Mayfield does, including but not limited to The Twilight Zone, The Stepford Wives, certain works by Stephen King and, of course, that old favorite Fallout 3 and its Tranquility Lane side quest. We are certainly aware of Mayfield’s existence and take some inspiration from them with regards to certain gameplay mechanics, but we are not affiliated with them or their mods. Are there any sensitive or potentially triggering themes we should be made aware of? This is a horror game, so naturally, events and mechanics are going to be geared around terrifying your character and threatening their mental and physical wellbeing. You can expect to see violence, death, existential horror involving unstable memories and identities, and gaslighting to play a prominent role. Torture and body horror may also come up. Event or NPC posts that feature these things will be clearly marked with CWs, but please be aware of what you’re getting into before applying to join us. Is this a capped game? Currently, We’re Still Here has a player cap of 50. This is something we may consider raising in the future pending mod availability and assistance. Is there an age limit for players? Yes! In order to ride this rollercoaster, you have to be 18 and up. Sorry, kids! Is We’re Still Here smut friendly? Yes and no. Yes in the sense that sex is not prohibited in the game, no in the sense that it’s not the main focus or even a side one. If you want to play out hook-ups with other characters, we certainly won’t stop you. However, we only allow smut between adult characters (characters who are 18 and older) or teenagers (characters between 16 and 18), never a blending of the two. Adult hook-ups with teenage characters or sexual content with characters under 16 years old is banned, as are rape plots. Don’t be gross or creepy, and always clearly label your threads with CWs. ↑ back to top ↑META QUESTIONS
How long is the game expected to run? How will the plot work?
As of right now, We’re Still Here is planned to run for one year, give or take factors like mod availability, player interest and the actions of characters. This can change, of course! Although we have an endgame in mind, the road to getting there isn’t set in stone, and neither is the endgame itself for that matter. We 150% encourage players to be creative with the setting. Commit crimes. Rebel. Try to help people who might not deserve to be helped. Betray your friends. When all’s said and done, your characters will shape the kind of ending they get and whether it’ll be a good one or a bad one, not us. How will events work and how often do they happen? We have three types of events planned. Plot-heavy events are events that have some element of storytelling or high stakes involved, usually horror-based. These generally include advancement of the game’s story or some sort of action or conflict that the players will have to combat directly. The effects of these plots will be felt game-wide, and participation in them will reward characters with one regain. For more about how regains work, check out the section HERE. We refer to these months as plot months. Applications are not open during these months. Relaxed events are events that are very low stakes and come directly after a plot-heavy event. They are meant to give characters time to breathe, players time to focus on catching up with any old threads, and for characters to investigate or otherwise kick back and relax until the next disaster. Characters will not receive any special rewards or regains for participating in them. We refer to these months as relaxed months. Applications will also be open and processed during these months, provided we have enough slots to open them. Random events are little mini-events that will usually (but not always) happen during relaxed months. These can include anything from the arrival of a new NPC, the unveiling of a new location, or a freak weather event that affects the whole town. Something interesting that shakes things up or gives characters something to ponder that may not necessarily deserve its own dedicated event. What’s the ratio of plot months to relaxed months? Relaxed months are every other month. For example, if October is a plot month (as there would be a plot-heavy event scheduled) then November would be a relaxed month with a relaxed event. Then December would be a plot month, January would be a relaxed month, and so on. What the IC day to OOC day ratio? We’re running in real time. So, one day IRL = one IC day. What timezone does the game run on? We’re Still Here runs on Eastern Standard Time (EST). ↑ back to top ↑OOC QUESTIONS
What are the activity requirements?
Activity Check opens on the 20th of every month and runs until the final day of the month at 11:59PM EST. Participation in Activity Check must happen within that timeframe. Late submissions will not be accepted. To pass AC, you must submit ten comments of activity. You can do this one of three ways:
Can I take a hiatus? What about a strike? If you know you will be too busy to make AC, you may take a hiatus at any point before that month’s AC goes up. While you’re on a hiatus, you will be exempt from that month’s AC. Consecutive hiatuses will not be permitted, and once the AC period begins, you are not permitted to apply for one. If you know you will be unable to make AC and you’re not on hiatus, you may apply to take a strike by commenting to the AC post, which will act as your Get Out of Jail Free card. However, you can’t take two strikes in a row. To remain in the game, you must make the following month’s AC. Note: you can not take a hiatus or strike and then immediately follow it up with its opposite counterpart to be exempt from making AC for two months in a row. So, if you take a strike for September’s AC to be excused from September’s AC, you can’t hiatus in October and be exempt from making October’s AC. Likewise, if you hiatus in September which would make you exempt from September’s AC, you can’t take a strike in October to get out of doing October’s AC. We understand that everyone’s RL circumstances are different and sometimes things happen without warning, so please contact us if you have extenuating circumstances before AC closes so we can discuss things on a case-by-case basis. Please don’t abuse the hiatus/strike system as a way to squat or get out of making AC. If the mod team has reason to believe this is happening, we reserve the right to approach you to discuss if remaining in We’re Still Here is right for you. How do canon updates work? If you would like to canon update your character, please follow the instructions on our Hiatus, Drops and Canon Updates page. Please note that you may only canon update your character to a future or new point in canon, not a past one. Also, canon updates for newly released canon material can only be applied for six weeks after the new material’s release. This is to give other canon familiar players a chance to digest the new material and to prevent premature circulation of spoilers. While undergoing a canon update, your character will disappear from Santa Rosita and return to their homeworld with no memories of their time in Santa Rosita. They may return to Santa Rosita at the player’s convenience, either within seconds or days. What happens if my character drops? Can I reapply for my dropped character or pick someone else’s dropped character up? When characters drop, their existence is wiped from Santa Rosita. Their belongings disappear from their house, including regains and everything else in their bedroom that implies they lived in it. Their name will disappear from all town directories, including the one on your wrist-radio, and you will be unable to message them. When asked about them, townspeople will react in confusion, questioning who the dropped character is and claiming there’s no one in town by that name, even if they’ve met them many times before. For regular drops, players can reapply for the same character they previously played and have them reenter the game with their We’re Still Here histories and regains intact. For characters who have died four times, this is considered a permanent drop. You can still reapply for them, but they won’t have any of their We’re Still Here memories or regains, and will enter the game as a blank slate. If you would like to drop, please use the drop post and don’t idle out. If you idle out, the mods reserve the right to kill your character for plot reasons at our discretion, after which they’ll go through the same process all dropped characters go through where all existence of their time in Santa Rosita will vanish. Idling out also means you will have to wait one application period before you can reapply for them. ↑ back to top ↑APPLICATION QUESTIONS
What kind of characters can I app?
At We’re Still Here, you can app any canon character, canon AU or original character. Heavily fictionalized versions of historical figures are allowed; for example, characters from canons such as the Fate/ series, Assassin’s Creed, Da Vinci’s Demons, etc. Malleable protagonists are allowed as long as they have some discernable personality that their canon allows the player to customize; examples being the Warden from Dragon Age, the Lone Wanderer from Fallout, any protagonists from interactive dramas and Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style video games, etc. Fandom OCs are also allowed, but only if they’re from open world canons such as tabletop games or MMORPGs. What characters can’t I app? The following characters can’t be applied for: Character doubles. Only one version of a character can exist in the game at a time. If someone apps the FFVII Remake version of Aerith, the original FFVII version or the one from Kingdom Hearts will not be appable. CRAUs. At this time, we are not accepting characters with memories, character development or abilities transplanted from other games. Biographical characters. Fictionalized versions of real people or characters from historical fiction are appable — this includes characters from the Fate/ series as just one of many examples. However, true to life versions of real people from dramatized but mostly historically accurate canons like The Crown or Hamilton are not. Characters with no real discernable personality or development. A good rule of thumb is that if over 50% of their personality section is headcanon, they likely aren’t appable. An example of a character of this type would be Matt from Death Note. Pregnant characters. Due to We’re Still Here’s recurrent themes and the dangerous conditions characters will be put through in Santa Rosita, all of which would almost certainly be hazardous to a pregnant character and their pregnancy, these types of characters are not appable. However, you can still app a pregnant character from a point in canon before they get pregnant or after they give birth. You said there’s a player cap. Can you explain how this works, how many characters we’re allowed to play, if casts are capped? As mentioned, We’re Still Here is capped at 50 players. Each player may play up to two characters. Since the game is intended to be small, there is also a cast cap of 5. When can I app? What happens when all character slots are taken? Applications are open all month every other month. Application months are also relaxed event months; this is so that characters don’t arrive in the middle of a hectic event and have some time to settle into the game. Applications will be processed every weekend during application months. Given the limited slots and how players don’t always commit to applying to games just because they put reserves down, our reserve system only reserves your character, not a slot in the game. We will process applications on a first come, first serve basis. Once all player slots are filled, applications and reserves will close and will only reopen in future months if we have at least five slots available. If you are a current player looking to app a second character, you may app them during an open app period; your application will not take up a slot, ensuring that all open slots are reserved for new/returning players. Openings for new slots will always be announced ahead of time on the mod plurk and the game’s calendar. Please refer to our application and taken pages for up-to-date lists of how many players we currently have in the game. Currently, we do not allow application or reserve challenges. Is there an age requirement for characters? Currently, characters 12 years old and older can be apped. We realize that there are many canons out there with underage characters who experience some pretty heavy stuff in their stories so we would like to give them the chance to try We’re Still Here out and see if it works for them. There will be a suitability section on the app that you can fill out to explain why your character would be a good fit for the game. Can I app from newly released canons? You may app from newly released canons six weeks after their release date, provided there is enough material you can use to write an app. Please be courteous to your fellow players and warn for spoilers whenever applicable, or put up a spoiler opt-out that players can refer to. Can I app a character who’s dead? Yes! We will accept characters taken from the moment of their death or from whatever afterlife they’re in (provided we see them there in canon), as well as undead characters like vampires, zombies, etc. My character has powers. What will happen to those? All superhuman powers will be nerfed upon arrival. No healing factors, no animal or superhuman senses, no telepathy, no shapeshifting, no flying, nothing that would be impossible for a baseline, ordinary human to attain. This includes magical weapons summoned from hammerspaces or that are tied to a character’s body or form, supernatural or inhuman auras, and abilities tied to aesthetic features like tattoos, gems, etc. While this may seem permanent, it actually isn’t! Characters will have a chance to regain their abilities one at a time following plot-heavy events and in other special, rare circumstances. Until that time comes, everyone will be on an even playing field. Can I bring any items from home or pets? What happened to all the stuff my character had on them? Your character can’t bring any items or pets with them into the game. Everything they had on their person before they awoke in Santa Rosita will be taken away from them upon arrival into the game. This includes animal companions, weapons and whatever clothing they were wearing before they woke up. Instead, your character will have a closet full of nice period appropriate clothes to choose from! How lucky! As is the case with powers, don’t worry— you’ll have a chance to regain these lost belongings along with any other item or animal companion you’d like from home. These are also rewards for participating in plot-heavy events. How does playing nonhuman characters work here? Will they be humanized? All nonhuman characters that app into the game (robots, vampires, werewolves, angels, demons, etc.) will be humanized upon arrival. Undead characters will regain their former living state and will no longer require whatever special sustenance they survived on when they were dead, like blood; android or robotic characters will be fully fleshy have all the cardiovascular, nervous and skeletal systems every ordinary human possesses; and otherworldly or alien characters will be take whatever humanoid form they likely possessed before their arrival, and if they didn’t have one, they’ll gain one now. Using a PB for nonhuman characters with radically altered appearances like humanized animals is encouraged, but not necessary. You’ll have a chance to write a description of their new appearance in a section on your application, and players can refer back to this if there is any uncertainty about what your character looks like. Also, just like lost abilities and belongings, characters can regain their original forms and physiology as rewards for participation in plot-heavy events and other special occasions! My character has a terminal illness or horrible injury. What happens there? Characters with any illnesses or injuries they suffered before arriving in We’re Still Here will find themselves completely healed of both when they wake up in Santa Rosita, completely healthy. My character has a disability. Can they receive accommodation for it? Of course! Characters with disabilities will be given appropriate accommodations, and they won’t need to go very far to find them. If you’re apping in one such character, please let us know in the Notes section in the application so we can tell you what accommodations are immediately available to them in their new house and the town itself. A minor exception is made in the form of characters with futuristic or magical prosthetics. These will be taken away from them upon arrival and be replaced with period appropriate but still functional versions. As always, you’ll have a chance to put in a request for them to be regained following plot-heavy events. What about pregnant characters? As mentioned, pregnant characters are not appable to We’re Still Here unless they’re being taken pre-pregnancy or from any other point in canon where they aren’t currently pregnant. On that note, it isn’t possible for characters to get pregnant in Santa Rosita, at all. ↑ back to top ↑GAME WORLD
What is Santa Rosita? WHERE is Santa Rosita?
Why, it’s the nicest little town in America, that’s what! Located somewhere within California, Santa Rosita is a small town with a population of around 10,000 people. More information on it and the many locations you can visit — and have a chance to discover — can be found on the Settings page. What year is it? Everyone knows it’s 1961, silly. Everything about Santa Rosita from the technology to the fashions to whatever current events, media the townsfolk reference as well as their behavior is, more or less, historically accurate to the early 1960s. Women’s clothing alternates between soft and feminine styles, elegant and formalwear, and pastel colors. Likewise, men dress conservatively with jackets and suits. People drive Ford Falcons, Impalas and Plymouth Valiants. Typewriters, rotary phones, vinyl records and radios are commonplace, and televisions are wooden paneled and most of them can only display in black and white — unless you’re willing to shell out the big bucks for a color TV, you big spender, you. There are a few outliers, though, namely the existence of Super 8MM film and handheld cameras that were commercially available a few years later in 1965, but the biggest one is your character’s wrist-radio network device (more on that HERE) which, though still looking very retro, is also a bit sci-fi. Townspeople who notice it will mildly remark that it looks strange and think that it’s some kind of toy, but won’t offer any great insight about where it’s from. If this is 1961 and the people of Santa Rosita have attitudes that reflect it, what does this mean about 1960s style sexism, racism and homophobia? Santa Rosita’s townspeople, for the most part, demonstrate the problematic values popular with the American 1960s. Men are the breadwinners, women are the homemakers who do all the cooking and cleaning, and children are meant to be seen and not heard. Being that this is also during the Cold War, there’s also period-appropriate paranoia about communism and xenophobia against Russians. That said, Santa Rosita NPCs won’t exhibit any racist, homophobic, or transphobic behavior to or against characters. From a meta standpoint, the people of Santa Rosita are not 100% accurate depictions of people from the early 1960s, nor are they meant to be. They are stereotypes who embody aspects of that time period of America that lend themselves well to fiction without any of the truly nasty, extreme, or too-real elements. What happens when I get here? How do I wake up? Your character can be taken at any time — whether they were on the verge of death, in the middle of battle, walking down the street, or even falling asleep. Whatever the case may be, their world will go black and they’ll hear the voice of a little girl whispering, “Help me. Please help me.” When they come to, they’ll be groggy as if they had just woken up after a long sleep, in a bed in a strange house they’ve never seen before, and completely depowered and humanized. (They’ll also be wearing a very nice pair of pajamas!) Their new house is a rather plain but still comfortable two-story home that includes all the amenities and rooms a family needs to be happy and healthy, including three bedrooms (a master bedroom for the parents and bedrooms for each child), two bathrooms (one for the master bedroom, one for the kids that doubles as a guest bathroom) a kitchen filled with all the newest appliances to hit the market in 1961, a spacious living room, a garage with a car, and an attic. They’ll also find their wrist-radio in the bedroom they woke up in. Speaking of families, go downstairs and meet yours! You are just one member of the newest family to move to Santa Rosita. Your new last name that’s going to be on your mailbox, your marriage certificate, your student ID and all your mail is the surname of whoever your new father is. How do families work? Each house can fit up to four characters, and all of them will be grouped like a traditional 1960s nuclear family. That is, one father, one mother and two children. Any adult characters over 20 years old are considered adults and will be sorted as parents; characters between 12 and 19 years old (or who have the physical appearance of being younger than they actually are) will be sorted as children/teenagers/young adults. Parent roles for adult characters are assigned by the gender the character canonically identifies as. For genderless or nonbinary characters, we’ll leave which role they’d like to assume up to the player. In cases like this, the rest of Redwood and its many colorful inhabitants will refer to the character as if they were their family’s mother/father but will still use that character’s preferred pronouns. Note that every house will have at least ONE adult. Underage characters are not permitted to live on their own. For more information on how Housing works, check out the page HERE. What proof is there that these people are my family and this is my home? Quite a lot, actually. In addition to the usual furniture and appliances, your character’s house will be filled with evidence of their lives here. You’ll find family photographs and snapshots featuring your character with their new family, mail addressed to you, marriage certificates, even memos in your character’s handwriting reminding them to go grocery shopping, or your character’s report card proudly displayed on the fridge. They will also find a very nice fruit basket filled to the brim with whatever fruit is in season left in their kitchen, personally addressed to them by the Happy Homes Association. As well, their rooms will be filled with mementos and personal belongings that don’t belong to them, and yet, clearly do. Their closets will be filled with period appropriate clothing, and all of it fits them perfectly. Children may find their rooms filled with baseball cards, comic books, dollhouses or fashion magazines. If adult characters share the same bedroom in a house, does this mean they also share the same bed? Nope, each master bedroom has two beds, one for each adult, I Love Lucy style. What happens when characters in my household drop, or if I gain a new member? Every belonging and proof of a dropped character’s existence will vanish along with them, unless they’ve returned to their world for a canon update; it’ll be as if they never existed. Likewise, new additions to the household will have their belongings instantaneously pop into existence overnight. All documentation and family photographs in the house will be changed to reflect this. Can I change households, or ask to be paired with a specific character? All houses will be assigned to characters after they are accepted and post to the housing page. From there, we will either assign characters randomly or per their player’s request if they would like to be in a specific house. Players can see what the housing situation looks like and can make an informed decision where they’d like to be placed ahead of time. If you would like to switch houses, you may do so once every two months, provided there is an opening in the house you're looking at or you can get another character to switch spots with yours. This is to prevent characters from constantly house-hopping and to encourage players to build CR with their assigned family. If for whatever reason you find yourself unable to share a house with another character, please contact the mods and we’ll figure something out. How do I survive in Santa Rosita? What will I do for money? Well, that’s up to you. Your character will wake up in Santa Rosita not having any sort of gainful employment — they did just move there, after all. Fortunately, it’s not difficult by any means to find a job in town. Every store and local business is hiring for almost any small town job you can think of, and getting employed by them requires little to no effort. Apparently, you already made the necessary arrangements through mail and phone correspondence just before you moved here, and if you haven’t, you’re just the person they’re looking for anyway! In addition, characters will not need to pay bills or make payments on their mortgage; apparently, they have a special arrangement with the HHA who is taking care of all of those things. However, they will need money if they wish to buy food, new clothes, or any other comforts. How you get these things is up to you (we’re not going to demand that you painstakingly keep track of your character’s finances or constantly play out them at their job) but you should have an idea of how they’re getting by and not have them living luxuriously if they don’t have a job or are working part time at the drug store, unless they’re relying on shady means to survive, like stealing. What are the people who live here like? Strange, offputtingly happy and creepy. Sometimes all at once. The people who live in Santa Rosita are certainly something. For the most part, most of them are pretty normal. They exhibit the full range of human emotions and can become angry and scared just like anyone else, but this isn’t as common as you’d think. (More on that in a moment.) Usually, they’re all upbeat and happy, greeting your character on the street as if they’re old friends and treating them as if they are as well. The neighborhood women might flock to your female character and try to pull her in for their weekly book club (it’s your turn to lead!) or gossip sesh. The men might invite your male character to poker night or remind them of the bowling tournament coming up, for which you and your league have been training for. The neighborhood teens might invite your teenage character to the movies or study dates, or try to get you to ask out one of their friends who they’re convinced you’ve been crushing on since you moved to town. Essentially, all of these garden variety NPCs will behave like normal albeit overly positive (and obnoxiously stereotypical) people from the late 1950s, early 1960s. All of them believe your character has just moved here not too long ago. All of them want to be your friend. And then there are the Robbies. Who are the Robbies? The Robbies are the other half of the town that are a little more… off. On the surface, Robbies look as normal as any other townsperson. However, the illusion breaks the moment you talk to them for longer than a few minutes. They’re unceasingly happy; in fact, it’s the only emotion they know. Nothing fazes them and getting a reaction out of them beyond cheerfulness or, very rarely, standoffish disapproval is impossible. Even physical violence doesn’t upset them. You could stab one of them and their only reaction would be to tut at you like you’ve done something rude and pull the knife out, then go about their business moments later as if nothing has happened. Their behavior is very robotic and bland. All the women are capable of talking about is cooking, cleaning and doting on their husbands. All the men talk about are sports, grilling and their jobs. And all the children range from precocious darlings to perfect members of their community. Their name comes from Robby the Robot of Forbidden Planet. Characters are free to come up with their own names for them, but this is how the mods will refer to them in posts. What happens if I try to convince the townspeople that I’m not from Santa Rosita? What if I have completely irrevocable proof that I’m not human or have magic powers? First off, the Robbies will never react to anything unusual about your characters no matter what they say or do, or how they look. Any claims that you’re from another world will fall on deaf ears, and they’ll dismiss your character as if they have an overactive imagination or are playing a practical joke. They really are just like robots. The regular townspeople are a little more flexible. Like the Robbies, any attempts to get them to believe you or help you find a way back home will be brushed off, but they will react to strange behavior, which will momentarily startle them and even get them anxious before they attempt to explain it away as a joke. However, the more extreme your character’s attempts to draw a reaction out of them are, the more intense that reaction will be. Appearing to them as an elf or a big furry monster may not get a rise out of them save for a nervous chuckle (“My, but Halloween costumes are getting more elaborate by the year, aren’t they?”) but shapeshifting in front of them or conjuring fireballs out of thin air certainly will. The same goes for needling away at their emotional defenses and incessantly pressuring them to react the way you want them to. When any of those extreme cases occur, the townsperson will react one of two ways: either by flagging down a law enforcement officer or by suffering a complete mental breakdown where they will try to flee from your character Any further attempts at communicating with them are impossible as they will be unresponsive, gripped by overwhelming terror as if something unimaginably awful has dawned on them. If you try to stop them, they may even lash out and try to hurt you or themselves just to get away. The next time you see them, they will treat your character as if nothing had happened — or turn up as a Robbie. Either way, you’ll very likely get punished if you do anything incredibly dramatic like turning into an animal or casting magic if there are witnesses around, so don’t do it. Can I kill the townspeople or the NPCs? Some of the NPCs are killable. Some of them aren’t. The only way to find out is if you try, but you should be absolutely, positively sure that you want to. Succeeding could have long term consequences for the story, and failing could mean a pretty steep punishment for your character. Tread carefully. For the townspeople, they can be killed, but make sure there aren’t witnesses around if you do it. If your character gets caught murdering or attempting to murder a townsperson, they will face punishment. What happens if I break the law or draw attention to myself? As far as we’re concerned, they’re the same thing. Whenever your character breaks the law or steps out of line, they’re visited by Santa Rosita’s police or the Happy Homes Association, also known as the HHA. Both are equally bad. Things that tend to draw the police’s attention are crime, theft, acts of rebellion against the town or its authority figures, breaking and entering, violence against the townspeople, murder, and so on. Things that the HHA looks out for are nonconformity to the community’s social standards, such as wandering out in broad daylight wearing overly modern garb or fantasy clothing instead of period appropriate outfits, and essentially not playing along with the role you’ve been given and doing anything blatant to shatter the image that this is nothing if not a normal, quaint little town in 1961. When this happens, your character could be reprimanded in a number of ways, but the most common punishment they’re likely to use is Tranquilizing. For more information on this very important game mechanic, check out its page HERE. Can I leave town? You can certainly try. The police patrol the main road out of town, which leads to a dark tunnel that presumably leads to the highway. If they catch your character attempting to escape, they will be confronted and asked to turn back. Refuse, and an appropriate punishment will be served. They will occasionally change their patrol patterns and be found in some of the alternate ways out of town, such as around the borders of the forests around Santa Rosita but they’ll usually be found outside the tunnel. Should you character manage to make it into the woods, they’ll find them to be a dangerous place and going forward — or getting out, for that matter — is more difficult than it looks. On the other hand, they may find that venturing off the beaten path can yield to some very interesting results… ↑ back to top ↑GAME MECHANICS
How do characters communicate with each other? Is there a network?
In a sense. Those other games out there have fancy smartphones and sci-fi gadgets. We have this thing. The devices don’t have an official name, but they function like walkie talkies and can be worn on the wrist like a very clunky watch. The front casing can be flipped up to reveal a small screen and keypad — this will be your texting feature. The texting interface is incredibly archaic, but it gets the job done and allows your character to send group messages (either to a select few characters or the entire game) or individual messages, and it has a directory of every character in the game so all you need to do is select a recipient and start typing. This also extends to the walkie-talkie feature. To broadcast a transmission, simply select which characters can hear it in the directory, flip the casing back down, and start speaking into the microphone. Beyond the wrist-radio, every house will have two rotary phones — one in the living room and one in the master bedroom — and a directory with every PC-inhabited house’s number. You have the option to call houses individually or all at once, essentially creating a party call between yourself and the entire game. What happens if I lose or break my wrist-radio? If something happens to your character’s wrist-radio that renders it completely unusable, or it gets thrown away or lost, intentionally or unintentionally, the next time they enter their house they’ll find a new one waiting for them on the kitchen table. Apparently, it’s a very stubborn little thing that doesn’t know when to quit. Is there a language barrier? There is no innate language barrier. By default, characters enter Santa Rosita able to immediately understand each other. Multilingual characters can switch to a different language if they choose, although other characters would also have to know that language to understand them. What are regains and how do they work? Regains are special items or abilities unique to your character from their canon that they don’t have access to in Santa Rosita. These include superhuman and supernatural abilities, magic powers, weapons, belongings, special physiology, clothing, pets and other creature companions (as long as they don’t count as a separate character in their own right and thus can’t be apped). You can also request your character to be completely healed of all injuries they’re currently sustaining in Santa Rosita, including damaged, maimed or lost limbs and organs, such as arms, legs, fingers, teeth, eyes and tongues. Make of that what you will. Participation in a plot-heavy event will entitle your character to one regain. At the end of every plot month, the mods will make a wrap-up post in the OOC community where players will be able to make requests for a regain and provide a small, informal write-up of what their character did during the event. Your character will then find their new regain in their house the next time they wake up, waiting for them in their living room. Regains can only be gained through participation in plot-heavy events, not during relaxed months. Can I ask for anything as a regain? Are there limits? For abilities, you can regain every ability you have listed on your character’s application and only their application. An exception can be made for canon-updated characters who gain new abilities during the update, so this will be handled on a case-by-case basis. Canonically immortal characters can regain their immortality, as well as characters with reasonable and canon mechanisms that can resurrect the dead. If your character is in possession of the latter, you need to ask for mod permission before attempting to revive any dead character, no exceptions. Certain destructive abilities may be scrutinized more closely than others, such as forms of reality manipulation, time control, and any incredibly powerful ability that could pose a detriment to the game’s setting. When that happens, the mods may ask you to make some alterations to the ability before officially granting it back to your character. The same goes for other regains like certain powerful items or animal companions. The maximum height for large regains including animals, vehicles and special forms and biology is 8 feet tall. The mods reserve the right to grant or deny regain requests at our discretion. What happens if my character dies? Is there permadeath? If your character dies, their body will remain in the spot they died in for a few hours before it disappears. One to three days later, they will revive in their house. They will also begin to change in very frightening and irreversible ways. They are allowed 3 deaths, and after their 4th, they will be permanently dead and will no longer be playable. For more information on how death works and what its consequences are, check out the page HERE. What the fuck is Mr. Yumee Treats’ problem? He’s an NPC in a DWRP horror game. Enough said. ↑ back to top ↑ |
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