Possible Rule Changes and Activity Ideas!

[Estelle]

Hi Triad Weyrs!

You're probably aware that the club has got a lot quieter over the last year, with not many posts or activity here on the forum. Recently, some of the council have been talking about possible ideas for becoming more active again and making the club more appealing to new members. We also understand that a lot of us don't have as much time as we used to and it would be good to adapt so people can participate as much or as little as they feel comfortable with.

We wanted to share those ideas here and get some feedback from the members - as some are quite big changes, we would really like to give everyone the chance to share what they think, ask questions, or make other suggestions.

It would also be good to know who is still interested in writing (no matter how often) or might be in the future - or even if not, we would love to hear from you just to know that everyone is OK!

If you want to reply, please do that here in this thread on the forum (as not everyone has access to Discord) - if you want to chat on Discord about this then that's fine, but if you can also post any ideas/responses to the forum it would be really appreciated!

If we agree on some/all of these changes, I (Estelle) can go ahead and update the website over the holiday period so it's ready for any recruiting people want to do!

Thank you!

Open Up Impression / Dragonrider Sexuality

When Triad Weyrs was first opened in the early 2000s, all Pern roleplaying groups had to follow a set of "canon rules", which are summarised on our website in the FAQ. This is no longer the case, and while we are proud of sticking closely to the Pern of the novels and respecting Anne McCaffrey's vision for her world, we are considering making some adjustments so we're more open and welcoming to a range of characters. In particular, we want to make sure we're not restricting queer, trans and characters with disabilities from certain roles.

The suggestion is to:

• Update rule 4, so that a dragonrider's sexuality is no longer a factor in the colour of the dragon they Impress. However, any kind of serious difficulty arising from a mating flight would need to be approved by the writers of the Weyrleaders or the Council.
• Update rule 8, so that a dragon can Impress to a disabled Candidate with approval from the Weyrleaders or the Council.

"Difficulties with mating flights" could include not ending up with your preferred gender, but would also include inexperienced riders, large gaps in age or rank or even a strong personal dislike for the other rider - anything that would cause a rider (and their dragon) serious distress. The approval would ensure that these issues are written about thoughtfully and not over-used. Any mark requirements based on dragonrider sexuality would no longer apply.

If a majority of people wouldn't be comfortable with completely dropping rule 4, we could also consider relaxation of chromatic dragons, and having it only apply to metallic (gold and bronze) dragons.

As we're in a Pass, it's likely that the Weyrleaders would restrict Candidacy to those who are physically capable of fighting Thread. However, that does leave some options, such as Impression from the Stands or hidden disabilities - and ultimately, it would always be preferred that a hatchling Impresses, even if the rider might not be able to fight, rather than dies for lack of a lifemate. The approval is required here to make sure the story is realistic for the Weyr and not over used.

Relax Posting Requirements

This would remove the range of different posting requirements for ranking characters. The idea is to make it easier on people who have busy lives, need to take time off to deal with life situations or are finding it difficult to post for other reasons. It also means we don't need to track posting and enforce these rules, which saves on admin.

However, we do want to make sure that if the writer becomes inactive, a ranking position can be opened up for someone else to take over. Therefore, if a character is not posted about for a fixed time (6 months, say), the council may contact them and ask if they want to continue with the character, move them to a non-ranking position or retire them/write them out. If there isn't a response then, the council would decide what to do to open up the position. We would always want to keep our much-loved characters in place if we can and offer help and post inspiration!

This would remove the need for any mark rewards related to reqs-free months or characters. Also, posting outside the current "Pern month" would no longer be a problem (as we aren't counting posts) - although we encourage keeping up-to-date, backdated posts are always preferable to no posts!

Ideas to get active

We have some suggestions to get people excited about writing again which are listed below - if you are interested in any of them let us know! But would definitely like to hear if anyone has any additional ideas!

• Hold a PC Hatching
• Club wide plots - crop disease in ACH, tensions between EFH and the Weyr, etc.
• Themed posting challenges for a month/season
• Advertising for new members! Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr, anywhere else?

[aaron]

I am very excited about these changes, and I'm on board for all of them!

In particular, I would love it if Blue could Impress before he's completely discovered and kicked out of the Candidacy for being (mostly) deaf.

I am still here and ready and willing to write with all of you.

[Curious]

I would love to get writing again, and removing sexuality impression and allowing disabled characters to impress gets a massive HELL YEAH from me!

I think that having a hatching, doing events, and having a big plot could all help get the game active! But I'll be real, it's a massive move, but for attracting new people, I think the best thing we could do is switch to being a forum game. Email roleplay is dying out and most people don't even know how to do it anymore. I don't see us attracting many new members sticking to this format.

Also, in terms of advertising, I would suggest avoiding Pern Connect. It is currently the big Pern advertising hub, but it has historically been used to launch harassment campaigns, including by the site owner, who has been known to livestream interrogations of other fandom members to enforce mass bannings and cancelation. If we step too far into that space, we will likely face massive pressure to remove gender impression as well (as in gis men on gold and cis women on bronze) and be accused of being transphobes if we do not capitulate, as recently happened to another game.

[Heather]

Rule 8, I think being deaf is about the only disability that would still allow a dragon to Impress to a Candidate, because physically you're still fit for fighting Thread, especially since dragonriders tend to communicate via their dragons and hand signals anyway while fighting Thread. However, I think vision or other physical impairments that would keep one from fighting Thread would prevent a person from Impressing.

Since we're still fighting Thread in our timeline, I think dragons would ultimately still only Impress to people able to physically participate in Threadfall.


All of that being said, nothing is a deal breaker for me, I'm just happy to write


P.S. I think it is true that most role-play have gone to forums, but I've tried several different forums and never liked it. Everything seems to become centered on graphics, and font colors, and yada yada yada. With the play-by-email format, everything is centered on the quality of the writing. Not that there isn't quality writing on some forums, but all of the other stuff becomes a pain in the butt. The other thing I have noticed about RPing on forums is that people joining and leaving is a constant revolving door.

[halyonix]

real quick from me, i'm down for the relaxation the impression rules on the chromatic dragons. nearly every club has gone that route over the years and it helps open up doors for writers. also fine with having disabled characters impress so long as their disability doesn't hamper their ability to be a fighting team, which i think pretty much just excludes a blind character.

most clubs that i've written in have also relaxed the posting requirements and gone the route the council is proposing, which i personally like because i am also busy with things but do like to write.

advertising on tumblr, reddit seem to be good ideas.

on the suggestion of moving to forum format, i have written in both email and forum formats and personally like email between because of the narrative flow of the story.

but, for all of the changes, down for whatever the majority decides.

[Curious]

Posting again because I forgot to mention this in my initial post.

To clarify, I support removing sexuality restrictions for all colors. I already supported allowing bisexual male green and brownriders, but if we're going to completely do away with sexuality for chromatics, we should for metallics as well. I don't really know how to explain it, but removing them for chromatics and not metallics makes me feel kinda... Icky? Like, having some sort of guidelines for all of them is following canon, but just making it so that just golds and bronzes are heterosexual only feels like it comes dangerously close to having something to say about queer people's ability to lead, especially with rank being so tied to color on triad. So this might just be me, but loosening restrictions is one thing, but for total removal, I feel like it should be all or nothing.

[aaron]

There is a strong possibility that I would need someone to constantly harass me to keep up with things if we were forum-based. I'm awful at it.

[Devin]

I'm all for getting the club more active and trying to recruit new members!

Dragons can and do evolve beyond their design. 9th Pass dragons were much bigger than what Kitty Ping designed them for, so 10th Pass dragons could change to lose their strict ties to rider sexuality.

I agree with disabled people Impressing too, with approval.

The idea of relaxing posting requirements is nice too. I know I haven't been as active as I'd like but I do want to keep my rankers.

[Francesca]

I really like everything proposed here, and especially the fact that opening up Impression would need approval to make sure any storylines are thought through. Relaxing posting requirements makes a lot of sense too.

I tried out a forum-based group and found it disconcerting to have a bunch of unfinished posts everywhere, but I know a lot of people like that format.

I'd find themed posting challenges really helpful to get back into the swing of writing. I also always find PC Hatchings fun.

[halyonix]

Posting again because I forgot to mention this in my initial post.

To clarify, I support removing sexuality restrictions for all colors. I already supported allowing bisexual male green and brownriders, but if we're going to completely do away with sexuality for chromatics, we should for metallics as well. I don't really know how to explain it, but removing them for chromatics and not metallics makes me feel kinda... Icky? Like, having some sort of guidelines for all of them is following canon, but just making it so that just golds and bronzes are heterosexual only feels like it comes dangerously close to having something to say about queer people's ability to lead, especially with rank being so tied to color on triad. So this might just be me, but loosening restrictions is one thing, but for total removal, I feel like it should be all or nothing.

ah you bring up a good thing that i should clarify in my initial post: i'm fine with the sexuality of riders no longer being tied to impression. a lesbian goldrider is fine but i still support the metallics being tied to the gender restrictions. chromatics can do whatever they want. but again, totally going with whatever is decided. it won't stop me from playing 

[Devin]

What about female brownriders? Maybe as a higher-tier reward like HAD? I'm not after this personally, I just like the idea of women being able to potentially, even as a longshot, Impress anything but bronze the way men can Impress anything but gold.

[Curious]

I also definitely want metallics to stay gender locked! I'd be fine with female brownriders as a very rare thing though - it could be a fun plot and something to work toward. But I'm also fine with us not getting that, since they never appeared in the books.

(I will note, however, that it may allow us to more easily recruit MUSH-style roleplayers, as they're used to no sexuality restrictions and woman being able to impress anything but bronze. Triads restrictions probably seem, well, super restrictive. But there's also an appeal to there being one last game that does stick to book canon in terms of female brownriders! Sexuality restrictions are definitely doing us more harm than good by this point though.)

It was mentioned in the discord, but I second sexuality restrictions lifting in-story as a dragonkin development, with some wiggle-room for more recently impressed riders whose players didn't want them to be strictly one sexuality, but were forced by Triad's restrictions. Dragonkin changing, even in this subtle way, could be really fun to play out as a plotline! I'm loving the female blueriders plotline and definitely want to keep following that and this could be a similar thing, but without the mark or rarity restrictions.

[Estelle]

Thank you for all of the responses so far and the great ideas! I'm really glad that people are excited about the possibilities of these changes and keen to get posting again.

I have summarised the ideas for the rest of the council and we will hopefully have some updates soon (but feel free to keep discussing, I will add any new ideas as they come in!)

[Corrin]

I'm a new member still working on my first character, so take all this with a grain of salt, but here's my two cents:

The rule updates sound great, 4 especially. Like halyonix, lesbian goldrider is fine in my book, but I do like colors being tied to gender though. I always figured that flightlust generally temporarily overrode preference anyway.

Relaxing post requirements is also nice. I plan to be active, but over the years the post requirements (and mentor post vetting) are things that intimidated me about Triad.

The Activity Promotion ideas all look fun!

Other suggestions:

Upping Allowed Candidate Ages?
The upper limit at least. 25? I saw one club that went up to 28, which was tempting. Thread is actively falling. Getting capable adults on fighting dragons seems like it would have it's draws. I'll be honest. I've been writing in the Pern fandom for over a decade. I've played a lot of teen candidates. I'd be excited for something different and new— Also in my previous clubs, eventually all the PC hatchings tend to make the rider population skew very young.

Have Some Way to Publicly Show In-Progress Post activity?
One thing that made Triad seem dead to me when I first looked at it is that there's no real way to tell if members are currently working on Joint-Posts? And as far as I can tell, finished joint posts are all that get posted to the mailing list I signed up for. Seeing replies fly back and forth, either on a forum or on a mailing list, is what tells me a game is hopping and inspires me to post more too. (I DO like the practice of posting whole JP to the site later though. I love the little summaries at the top).

[Francesca]

One random thought about relaxing posting requirements that the council might already be figuring out. As someone who doesn't currently have any ranking personas but is eyeing a few, I'd find it helpful to have some guidance to help me figure out when to reach out to someone about creating a new ranking persona, or how long to wait between getting new ranking personas. I assume some of this will be determined on a case-by-case basis, but I'm imagining a cool down period (of a few months? or more?) after getting a new ranking persona before you can create another. And then being a member in good standing (whether that means a minimal posting requirement or something else) for some amount of time before being "eligible" for a ranking persona.

Regarding Corrin's comment about candidate ages, doesn't the human brain develop until your mid-late twenties? That would align with increasing the age of Impression. I don't feel strongly either way, but appreciate the question being raised. It wasn't something I'd thought about before.