announcements.

[vivariummods]

Hello, test subjects! Welcome to our first week of Vivarium, and thank you for joining! We have a few announcements for today, so please give this post a quick read.

✖ You may begin posting to the vivarium community. We have created tags for every character in the game, so please make sure that you tag your posts, whenever you create one or comment.

✖ We will be holding one AB Game every week, with our first one starting this Friday at 6PM EST. It will contain both the puzzle room and voting sections, and will be spanned over three OOC days and one IC day.

✖ We have decided that all characters will be given a "starter pack". This pack will be a simple drawstring bag, containing one water bottle, one loaf of bread, one can of baked beans (with an easy open end, so no need for a can opener), and a small pair of sewing scissors. This starter pack will be given after Calhoun finishes explaining the rules in this thread.
✖ This is a one-time, non-replaceable gift, so the food is suppose to last the character until they reach 9 BP to gain access to the cafeteria. As for the water bottles, they are easily refillable with the water fountain next to the cafeteria door. However, as of this time, the door leading to the cafeteria and water fountain is closed, and will open after our first AB Game. As for the sewing scissors? It's a little extra that Calhoun has thrown in, if anyone wants to start threatening/stabbing others for whatever reason. He thought people might appreciate it.

✖ Finally, we would like to hear your thoughts on how our first "puzzle room" has turned out, aka the Elevator. What did you think? Did you enjoy it? Were there some flaws you've noticed? What should we change for future puzzle rooms? Please let us know any thoughts you've had, whether positive or negative, so we know if it went in the right direction or not. Anonymous commenting has been enabled, so please do not be afraid to leave some negative feedback!

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please use our mod contact page and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Thank you for reading!

Comments

[skyentificmethod]

I too enjoyed the puzzle room. I thought the difficulty was appropriate for game introduction and I liked that it wasn't stolen completely from ZE (so I couldn't inadvertently cheat!) The gdoc helped a lot for visualizing the room without having to text dump or keep asking a bunch of runner questions. I also enjoyed having time to thread with my partner-- I imagine that as a solo it would've been a very different experience, which I find one of the appealing things of the game.

This was the first time I'd done a game with such a long time limit so that was a little different for me. For situations like this where people are playing fairly asynchronously, it might be easier in some ways to go on and get the rules or set-up text posted in just one or two comments instead of needing to thread out explanation? Just in case someone has only a small amount of time they can dedicate to playing and it doesn't overlap when the runner/partner can play. Alternately, if there's like a 'recommended time' to play, that could also be useful to know. ...I used to be a moontimer so I am always worried about scheduling stuff which I realise is probably a personal problem but... /o/

Anyway, enjoying things so far!!

[vivariummods]

Thank you for letting us know! It's good to hear that you have enjoyed it, and we hope that you will also enjoy our future puzzle rooms.

We also thank you for your suggestion, and we will make use of it for next week's AB Round. Unfortunately, we could not implement it for today's, but we will certainly set up all the information/explanation in one comment or two for next week's. We will then gain feedback from everyone, comparing the old way of sharing information with the new way, and see things from there.

As for the 'recommended time' to play, we unfortunately do not have a set time at this moment. Our schedules varies day-by-day, so we cannot give one now. Once we do have one, however, we will notify you and everyone else as soon as possible. We apologize for this!

[skyentificmethod]

Ah, maybe I was confusing about the game explanation thing; for example, today's game doesn't have any explanation, it's just jump in and play--which is great. I was more suggesting with relation to games or events that require more exposition, it could be useful to get that info necessary for playing up in a short number of comments in cases where folks don't have the time to thread it out in a timely manner, or in cases where the players don't have any reasonable reactions they can make (say, they're listening to a recording, they're locked up, etc). ...If that makes sense!! D: Sorry I am poor at descriptions, I don't think there needs to be a change to how things went today!

And yeah, gosh I am not trying to sound like timing nazi and it may totally be a non-issue! I just brought up the 'recommended time' (aka 'sup this is a time the runner will definitely be on) as a suggestion in case folks are having trouble synching up, but if that doesn't prove to be a problem then please don't sweat it!