General FAQ

[marvelousco]

••••• General FAQ

• What is this? Project Marvelous is a panfandom text-based role-playing game in the horror genre. Characters are brought to the Marvelous City, an ideal smart city designed to provide an ideal quality of life. According to Marvelous Corporation, characters are there to test the amenities and provide feedback to make the city even better. Unfortunately, life in the city isn’t quite as advertised. Frequent attacks by an enemy referred to as the Notoria result in outbreaks of monsters and mysterious maladies. Horrors both physical and mental frequently interrupt the city’s idyllic daily life, resulting in frequent injuries, death, and experiences of body horror and mental corruption -- but it’s fine. This place is marvelous, isn’t it? • Is there an age limit? As this is a game with mature content, we don’t accept players under 18 or characters under 13. You may not age up your character. Players who lie about their age will be banned, as will those who knowingly facilitated it. There are two exceptions to the character age limit: characters whose bodies are under 13 but who have actually lived much longer are allowed, as are characters such as androids who might be technically under 13, but have an adult's mentality. If you're not sure if your character counts, we'll be happy to check it out in advance if you ask! • Are there IC restrictions for underage characters? Mostly no. There is a drinking/smoking age of 20 in the city, but it isn't strictly enforced. Underage characters can't buy alcohol in NPC-run establishments, but there's no punishment if an adult buys it for them or if a PC-run business sells to them. As the city lacks a police force, the drinking age is more of an honor system thing than a law with consequences. NPCs might ask teen characters if they have parental permission if they're asking for something dangerous (ex. getting a tattoo or entering an auto race), but given a "no" they'll not pursue the issue. NPC children mostly won't participate in that kind of risky behavior themselves, though. • Can I post mature content? You sure can! As we’re a horror game with occasional sexual elements, there are almost no limits on the type of content you’re allowed to post. Sex, violence, and whatever else you want to play is welcome, and we don’t allow shaming of other players’ kinks, ships, or plots. The only rules are: don’t break the game, and don’t post sexual content involving characters under 16. However, if you’re posting something particularly objectionable (rape, domestic violence, etc) please warn for it and put it under a cut. While we want everyone to play what’s fun for them, we also want everyone to be able to avoid content that’s personally upsetting. • Is this a sex game? Nope, it’s a horror game. But we will include sexy prompts from times to time, and we are sex-friendly. There is absolutely no requirement to play sexual things, and sex isn’t part of the plot, but you can always play it if and how you like. • What is the time ratio? Project Marvelous plays in 1:1 time, with all official times in CST. It’s always the same date/time in game as it is in the real world. In fact, the network and other IC time-telling devices will always show Earth days/months -- but they never show a year. • What is the setting? For details about the city and the major landmarks that can be found there, housing information, or to register a player business, please check out the setting page! • What kind of events will there be? There will be one major event and two setting prompts every month. Major events are announced on the 1st and start on the 7th. Setting prompts are announced on the 1st and last all month. Major events will almost always be horror-themed and will involve things like monster invasions, environment changes, transformations or other spooky and/or terrible stuff. Many of them will be fairly free-form with multiple prompts giving players different ways to engage with the goings-on, but some will be more linear and have a bigger impact in moving the overarcing plot along. We’ll try to avoid doing these kinds of heavily structured events back to back, so you’ll get plenty of breathing room, but there won’t be whole months without a major event of some sort. Setting prompts are minor changes/things of note that last the whole month and give players something to do during their downtime. These will be things like a shortage of a particular supply, a project that needs working on, or some NPC activity to get involved in. They’re not mandatory and are instead just extra flavor to keep things moving and provide options. We’ll try to include opt-outs for potentially triggering prompts, but you won’t be able to opt out of big events entirely, so please consider that before applying. • What kind of horror can I expect? While the city is "perfect" and has v little limits outside of events, during events the tone will do a complete shift. There will be blackouts and loss of certain amenities depending on the event. Sometimes there will be monsters, more often there will be mental effects like hallucinations and compulsions to act out terrible violence on other PCs, or body horror and transformations. There will be a lot of gore, death, and emotional trauma, and the corporation will generally go silent until the event is over due to the interference of the Notoria. The mods will do our best to make sure events are balanced and aren't just about combat/survival, so everyone gets their chance to shine. We'll have events where people are separated from eachother, temporary power nerfs, or things that can only be solved via a puzzle or figuring out a weakness to otherwise invulnerable enemies, etc. Every event will be a little different but they'll almost all be intensely horrific. • Can I do a player plot? Absolutely! We highly encourage players to come up with prompts and plots that they’d like to play. If you want to do something that’ll affect more than a handful of people, let the mods know on the player plots page. Players are left to run their own plots, and if your plot is a large one, it may be the monthly major event! On the other hand, if you have an idea but don’t want to run it yourself, we’ll be happy to make a mod plot of it instead. • What is AC like? Activity Requirements for Project Marvelous are twenty comments across at least two and no more than four threads. Two 10-comment threads, four 5-comment threads, one 18-comment and one 2-comment thread, or any other combination are OK. Network, Log, and IC Inbox threads all count, but TDM threads do not. You can use backtags on a thread started in the previous month, but you can't anything older, and you can't use the same thread for AC twice. Activity Check will always be posted on the 1st, and AC will be processed and idles announced on the 5th. There will be no warning list. Players who idle out will be barred from re-apping for one round. Players who idle out three times will be barred from re-apping entirely. If at any point you need to take a hiatus, please comment to the hiatus/drop post. Your hiatus must be two weeks long for an AC exemption. If you didn't hiatus but can't make AC, you may take a strike. However, you'll need to make double AC the next month to avoid idling. You cannot take two strikes/hiatuses in a row. In other words, you'll need to pass AC at least every other month. Players who are taking excessive exemptions will be contacted by the mods and may have exemption privileges temporarily revoked. • What happens when I hiatus? You have two options for hiatused characters: they can continue on autopilot without you, or they can be lost in the woods. Even if they wouldn’t go into the woods on their own, they’ll just end up there without remembering why. When characters return from the woods, they’ll have the deep seated idea that they’ve seen something truly horrific. They’ll also have gotten some corruption -- but in the case of the woods, it’ll wear off after a day or few. Players can use this mechanic to test out corruption effects they don’t want to commit to long term. If you’d like to hiatus, please post to the hiatus/drop page. Hiatuses that aren’t posted there do not count towards AC exemption. • What happens when I drop? Dropped characters disappear overnight, along with their personal belongings. Their houses go empty and their network profiles are marked as deactivated. If they’re apped again by a different player, they’ll have a different address and a new profile, as if they’re a new character entirely. They also won’t have any memories of their previous stay, or any alterations they might have received. If you’d like to drop, please post to the hiatus/drop page. Only drops posted to the page count as official drops. All other drops will be counted as idling out and idle penalties will be applied. • Can I canon update? Yes you can! Canon updating characters will disappear into the woods for 1 full day, and come out updated. Please shoot us a note on the mod contact page letting us know you’re updating and any major changes your character will undergo in the process. • Can my character get lost in the woods without a hiatus/drop? Sure! They’ll have to be gone ICly for at least 1 full day, but you’re welcome to use the woods for whatever character plotting you feel like doing. • Is there a network? What’s the device like? Yes! On arrival, characters receive a device called a "Dewdrop". It’s a compact in the flower shape of the Marvelous Corporation logo which contains a small touchscreen and keyboard inside. If you want more space, it has the option to project a fully interactive screen and keyboard into the air. There’s also a hole for phone straps, which by default comes with your housekey on it. The Dewdrop starts out with just the network, calculator, calendar, a weather schedule, and a map, but characters can download games and whatever other apps you like. The network, called M-Net, contains a generic version of anything that might be found on the internet (or its equivalent) in any canon. There is nothing directly referencing events of your canons, but there’s as many cat videos and memes as you could want. The network itself is a built-in community app, which is your typical journal RP network with voice, video, and text options. Everything posted to the network is public, and it doesn’t allow for filtered posts. However, there is a private option! Characters are prompted to create a username when they first access their device on arrival. This gives them a community account with which to access both the network and the direct message system. We require all characters to have an IC inbox post on their journal, which serves as a way to have private threads as well as an IC user profile. Characters can access other profiles in order to send voice/video/text direct messages or share credits. If someone annoys them, they also have the option to block, but this means they ICly won't see any of the blocked character's posts or comments. IC inbox threads count the same as network threads for AC, so make full use of them! • Can I hack the network? No. • What happens if I lose my Dewdrop or keys? The morning after being lost or thrown away, lost dewdrops and keys will reappear in the exact same spot they were originally found on arrival, Even if you dumped them in the ocean or set them on fire they’ll appear unharmed, including any stickers, engravings, or other cosmetic alterations you may have made. • Can I use the same m-net username as another character? We ask that everyone use different usernames for their characters. If you choose one that’s already been used, we’ll let you know so it can be changed before play. This includes usernames of dropped characters, to avoid any clash if the character is reapped. For reference, there is a gdoc list of taken names here. • How does my character get to the city? What is arrival like? Characters are brought to the game without any warning or invitation. They wake up in a small house in whatever district you choose, which is decorated to their taste and includes anything they’d expect/want to see in a home, including items from their home world. Any injuries they had prior to arriving are healed, and damaged clothes have been repaired. Sitting on a nearby surface is their Dewdrop lying open, with a projected screen floating above it. On the screen is a message welcoming them to the Marvelous City. Immediately following is a tutorial, which explains the basics: why they’re here, the functions of the Dewdrop, and how to use their housekey. They’re then prompted to enter a username for M-Net, before finally being let loose on the network and the city. • Is there a language barrier? Sort of! All characters are given the ability to speak, read, and write in English upon entry. Doing so will feel natural, and may even become the "default" language that character thinks and speaks in. However, they can still use any other languages they already knew. If your character is mute/illiterate in canon, it’s up to you whether to change that or not. Pick what you’d rather play, but keep in mind you can’t change it later. You’ll either gain the skills on entry or you’ll have to learn the normal way. • Can I fourthwall other characters? By fourthwalling, we’re referring to telling another character that they’re fictional in your character’s world. This isn't expressly disallowed in PM, but since it tends to affect more than the immediate characters involved in a thread, we ask everyone to be extra considerate when playing out fourthwalling. Please only break the fourth wall if it is absolutely canon that your character knows the other canon in question, and only if you've asked permission of the cast involved. While we know fourthwalling is integral to some characters (such as Deadpool or Sakata Gintoki), unless you're playing this kind of character it's best to avoid it as much as possible. • What are the consequences for villainous behavior? There are none, officially. Villains have to contend with other player characters, but there will be no response from Marvelous Corporation. Of course, if you go around killing NPCs they won't trust you, but there are no police and there is no jail. The mods fully encourage PVP and villainy! We do however ask that everyone keep aware of each others preferences. Don’t spring plots on other people. If you play a villain, don’t expect to be totally exempt from consequences. If you play a hero, give villain players room to have fun. It’s important to us that everyone get a chance to play what they enjoy, so we request that players communicate and remain flexible when it comes to PVP and negative CR. • Can we destroy the city? You can destroy almost anything you want! It’ll restore itself overnight, but always when no one’s looking. You’ll never actually see it being fixed, it’s just suddenly put together between one glance and the next. The Tower and the city walls are the only things that can’t be destroyed, and are completely immune to anything you attempt to do to them. Please ask the players in question before blowing up anyone’s property, though. • What happens if my character gets injured or dies? Injured characters can get treated at the hospital in Oleander district. Characters admitted to the hospital will be asked to strip and climb into one of many "health tanks" -- containers resembling float pods and filled with a slightly viscous red liquid. Once the lid is closed, they’ll black out until it’s opened. The more serious the injury, the longer the healing will take, up to a day, but the injuries will be totally gone when they wake. Healing causes a small amount of corruption (a small scar, a temporary bad mood), but the more severe the injury is and the more often a character gets healed, the worse the corruption will be. If someone dies, they can be revived at the hospital as well. If no one takes the dead to the hospital, an ambulance will arrive after an hour or so and spirit the corpse away. Rather than the tanks, dead characters will be taken to a locked wing of the hospital and will be missing ICly for three days. After revival, characters won’t remember what happened in the hospital, and will have undergone some corruption. This may be missing memories, a "birthmark" where the fatal injury had been, or a cybernetic implant. Death causes a greater amount of corruption than an injury, and each subsequent death will either advance the previous corruption or add something new! • What do you mean by "corruption"? Whenever a character is treated at the hospital, dies, or gets lost in the woods, they undergo a slight physical or mental change. The nature of this change is entirely up to the player but may include things such as eye colour change, cybernetic body parts, altered memories, or mood changes. This starts very small, and can advance more or less quickly depending on player preference. If you want to play your character completely true to canon you can stick to lesser changes like tattoos and different hairstyles. If you like body horror, you can have your character undergo a gradual monster transformation. If you are into mental corruption, you can have your character’s morals slowly erode. You can mix and match corruptions, too: you don’t need to just progress one thing. Basically, you can do whatever you want as long as there’s some kind of change. This mechanic is not meant to punish death and injury. In fact, we highly encourage everyone to go as wild as they like. Over time, the corruption of characters’ bodies and personalities will be an important game mechanic. Have fun with it! • What is Marvelous Corporation, really? Who knows? Marvelous Co staff never show their faces, and their headquarters is inaccessible by player characters. What is known is the corporation is the owner and engineer of the Marvelous City the characters are living in. Messages from the corporation are signed "Mauve", but there will rarely be replies to character comments on "official" network posts. • What are the Notoria? The Notoria are the force behind all major events in the Marvelous City. According to the corporation, they’re an evil outside entity attempting to destroy the city, but you’ll never see them. The truth of the Notoria will be revealed as the plot advances, so please look forward to it! • I have questions about apps! Info on the app process, acceptable characters, and powers/items are on the app faq. If you're interested in applying, check it out!

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