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FAQ
FAQ Okay, so what is this? Welcome to Azume! This is a short-term roleplaying game based around adventure, exploration, forming emotional bonds with your fellow castmates and a bunch of magical creatures under your collective care, and also maybe saving the world while you're at it. The game is based off the Pokémon video game franchise, set in an alternate-universe version of Sinnoh in which things...didn't quite work out in the world's favor. It's run by Dal and Redd, and the game itself is set to run for six months, give or take. Sounds great! How do I play? Azume is a comm-based game, meaning that logs will go up in the main community for everyone to interact with one another in. There will be one mod-posted log per week to cover daily threading and activities, and there will be a mod-run event every Friday and/or Saturday, depending on where the week falls over the course of the month. Occasionally, the mods may prepare a special event log for the group as well, but these will be fewer and farther between and will be announced on the modplurk beforehand! Otherwise, players are permitted and encouraged to put up their own logs for special events that happen ICly! You do not need mod permission to put a log up; player-run logs can be things like meetings and general gatherings, scheduled playtime with your Pokémon, and even larger player-run events like contests if you choose to organize them! Sky's the limit, guys. How many characters can I play? Is there a character cap? You can only apply for and play one character in the game. There's an upper total character cap of 25 slots, but we'll run with as few as 15; furthermore, there's a hard limit of two characters per canon! Who can I app? Almost all canons are acceptable, as long as they're verifiably a work of fiction! All characters being applied for must have a demonstrable level of personality in the canon they originated from, possess human-level intelligence and sentience, be at least sixteen years of age, and be able to communicate in some way. Furthermore, there is a size limit imposed – while characters do not have to be expressly human-sized, we ask that they be approximately human-sized enough that they can navigate the game on their own and without assistance. This includes potential utilization of technology, as well as utilization of basic things like doors. Please note that we do not accept the following: OCs (fandom or otherwise), online personas (i.e., Nostalgia Critic), CRAUs and game transplants, characters based demonstrably on religious figures, and most customizable protagonists (i.e., Dragon Age, Fable). In the specific case of customizable protagonists, we will allow a case to be made for the character in question, but we reserve the right to ultimately decide whether the character will be accepted to the game or to ask you to pick another character if necessary. Canon characters from the Pokémon franchise will not be accepted. My character is dead in canon, though! Feel free to bring them in anyway! Their bodies can be restored by way of the process used to bring them here, and god knows they probably need the fuzz therapy. My character has something weird going on with their physiology... This game does have total power loss, meaning that all powers and abilities your characters possess will have been removed entirely. If there's something else that's truly bizarre going on with their bodies that makes them difficult to work with in-game, talk to us about it and we'll see if we can work with you and/or come to an acceptable compromise; if not, the mods reserve the right to ask you to app another character. So how do I app? Apps will only be accepted after a reserve has been put in and processed! Please submit your app with the same journal you used to put the reserve in; no apps without a prior reserve will be accepted. When do reserves/apps open? Reserves will open on Friday, May 25th; applications will open on Saturday, May 26th. Both will close on Friday, June 1st; the game will officially open on Sunday, June 3rd! What happens if more than two people try to reserve from the same canon? Reserves are handled on a "first come, first served" basis - the first two people to get their reserves in will get that canon's slots. However, you will not lose your reserve slot if this happens! In the event of multiple reserves for the same canon, those that did not get in within the first two will be tapped by the mods and asked if they would like to change their reserve; the only way you will lose your slot is if you choose to withdraw your reserve at that time. Is the game open to everyone? For the time being, it's preferred that all reserves come from people either on Dal or Redd's plurklists, or as a direct invitation from someone on said plurklists. If we have difficulty filling slots beyond that, we'll open them up to the public. What...happened here, anyway? Five years ago, there was a conflict – a winner-takes-all battle for the fate of the world, fought in the depths of the Distortion World itself. Cyrus, the leader of Team Galactic, sought to end all suffering and strife by eliminating a fundamental aspect of all living creatures; believing emotions to be the root cause of all pain and devastation, he aimed to use Legendary Pokémon to destroy the world and recreate it anew. A world without spirit – without negativity or strife, true, but also without emotion or free will. Standing in his way was a child, one that had fought their way up from nothing to become one of the most powerful trainers in the region, one that was trusted by the Lake Guardians to stop Cyrus and free the world from the threat of his rule. That child, the intended champion of all living things, failed in their task. What became of them is difficult to say; their story has been largely lost to time, even in these past few short years. What remains, however, is the region: what was once brimming with life now seems dead and unnatural, the people and the creatures that reside here are curiously and alarmingly blank-slated, with no apparent will or desires of their own. They aren't hostile, but they aren't friendly, either; they simply are, living in a world of cold cooperation without caring. There's no hatred, but there's likewise no love; the peace that lasts here is an empty one. But now you're here. You are an anomaly, a person from another world that's still, at their core, a person - not a blank slate, but rather a being with spirit. And maybe, just maybe, you're here to save the world. How did we end up here? That's a good question, isn't it. The simple answer is that you were brought here; exactly how and by whom...well, that's a story that you'll have to solve by embarking on a journey. Will you choose to go? What happened to Cyrus and the rest of Team Galactic? Team Galactic is definitely still around, though they're a bit...different than they were before; they've been "purified" by their leader, made perfect according to his plans for a world free of strife. To put it a little less nicely, they've all been forcibly punched in the brain, more or less. Of course, there are rumors that this treatment may not have extended to all of them – there are a few, they say, that still remember what the world was like before their master and leader cleansed it of strife. They remember so the rest of the world doesn't have to; they remember so they can eliminate any threats to their lasting peace that may arise. Granted, it's possible that these are only rumors... As for Cyrus...well, the story goes that Cyrus resides on top of the world, ruling from on high as a god within the Hall of Origin. Either way, the fact of the matter is that he doesn't grant audiences with people easily; however, you can rest assured that he's aware of your presence, and he's not pleased with it... Where's everyone else? Most of the people populating Sinnoh are still present, going about their daily lives. They will do pretty much anything you tell them to do without complaint, unless it brings harm to themselves or others; you can't tell them to murder someone and expect them to do it, but they will do things like play games with you, pet your Pokémon if you allow it, cook for you, let you sleep in their homes, blatantly hand over their wallets... Try not to take too much advantage of them; they literally can't help it. Notably, however, the Gym Leaders and Elite Four who supposedly helped to protect the region are all completely absent; furthermore, the League Champion hasn't been seen since the end of that fateful battle five years ago. What's the environment like here? Sinnoh's climate hasn't changed much; thankfully, a lack of emotions doesn't seem to have contributed vastly to global warming or something. It's very cold over much of the region, and the parts that aren't blanketed in snow are temperate at the warmest. The area is overall rather hilly and mountainous, with a large range separating the eastern and western portions of the region; Mt. Coronet, the region's tallest peak, can be seen from most places in the area. Well, all of that sounds horrendously creepy. Let's talk about the Pokémon instead. Let's. The Pokémon here seem to be just as lacking in spirit and emotion as the humans; however, the more you bond with your Pokémon and set an example for the others, the more the world will change around you. Pokémon are, by their nature, curious about humans with an intrinsic desire to help them out; if that means spreading feeling to the world and helping them remember the spirit they've forgotten, then that's what they're going to do. Help the Pokémon, help the rest of the world. All is connected, you see. Do I get a starter? You do! Unfortunately, due to the way you were brought here, there isn't going to be much of a ceremony; your first partner will be with you every step of your journey, however. In practice, the mods will assign your starter to you; as far as an IC reason for this...well, you'll see. How many Pokémon can I have? At the start of the game, and for a while going forward, you're going to be limited to a primary team of six; this will open up later into the game, but that's what you'll have at the start. You want to develop a close bond with your Pokémon, after all, and it's difficult to do that if you have too many of them. We won't mandate how and when you capture Pokémon; that's up to you to decide, and you don't need mod permission. If you've caught a Pokémon on the route you're on, good for you! It's yours now, take good care of it. How do levels work? The game isn't based around a leveling system! All battles are completely optional; there are ways to solve the game and any puzzles you're given without battling, though you obviously are welcome to do so if it pleases you. Levels don't matter as much as the strength of your emotional bonds; that said, you're free to evolve your Pokémon at any time, as long as you don't go completely wild with it – use common sense and discretion to decide if it's been long enough to warrant an evolution. How is this game going to be run, timeline-wise? Azume works on a weekly system – every Sunday, a log will be posted for you to use for weekly threading. Anything can happen on these logs – exploration and investigating your surroundings is encouraged as you travel on your way, and the mods will be there to guide you if you find something you want to check out. This is also where you build CR and work on increasing your bonds with your Pokémon, as best you're able. On the first and third Fridays of the month, write-ups will be due; these can be as simple or as elaborate as you want, and will also serve as your AC check-in. All we ask for in these write-ups is a description of what you've done that week to bond with either your Pokémon or your fellow castmates. Bonds can be either positive or negative – we will accept "got in a fight with Tatsuo and punched him in the face" just as readily as we will "made a new friend" or "sang a song to calm my Pokémon when it was upset" – but bear in mind that anything you submit will have impact on the world either way. The following day, you will receive something as a reward for the work you put in – perhaps a new location to explore, or maybe physical items intended to help you along your journey. On the second Friday of the month, you'll be given an encounter with an NPC that may or may not be important to the plot. Some NPCs will be friendly; others...not so much. How you resolve the encounter will decide what happens from then on, with regards to the situation being posed; your results will be given to you the next day. On the fourth Friday of the month...well, that's when the real fun begins. Come prepared for the fourth weekend of the month to be long, guys. What happens if we tank the encounters/accidentally kill the NPC/otherwise completely screw up? Well, we...wouldn't recommend knocking the NPCs off a cliff or anything? But otherwise we're here to see you guys succeed – we're not going to make encounters unwinnable, and the individuals you're having them with are surprisingly good at taking care of themselves. If an encounter ends up completely tanked it will make things much harder for you down the line, but we won't go out of our way to soft-lock you out of a good ending and we'll allow for a learning curve to let people get used to playing the game. If you somehow manage to completely bork the game, or if you bad end it...well, we suppose you tried. There's a bad end? Yep. What happens if I need to hiatus or drop the game halfway through? That's okay! We would prefer to not see you go, but we understand that six months is a long time and life happens. In the event that you need to drop, just let us know, because we have a way to ICly write you out; if it's just a hiatus and you'll be back, we have a way to work that out as well! In the event that several people need to drop, such that the game isn't sustainable, we do have a way to write in new players. Should this happen, we'll open apps up for a brief window of time while the game progresses as normal; once those apps have been received and processed, we'll introduce the new characters to the game so the journey can continue. I have a question that wasn't answered here! Feel free to leave a comment here, or alternatively PP or PM us! Dal can be reached at InstantEternity @ plurk, and Redd can be reached at pokerap @ plurk! We also have a public mod plurk at azume @ plurk! |
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Would I be able to keep his inability to get drunk even if the rest of it doesn't happen anymore, because that would be hilarious.
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this is briefly implied in the faq, but to clarify, would non-human/non-humanoid characters be allowed, so long as they could still communicate and get around properly[Ex: a character like rocket raccoon, who can easily do most or all things a human can]? Theres a few characters I'm considering who fit that criteria, though if non-humans arent allowed thats fine, i have other options
less important, will pokemon non-native to Sinnoh be obtainable or findable? either as wild encounters, starters, maybe even future events if you're planning to have gift pokemon
ill admit part of why i ask is because of sinnoh's lack of fire types
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1. That is correct! As long as they adhere to reasonable size constraints, can communicate effectively, and won't be completely stymied by things such as doors, that should be fine. Characters such as Rocket Raccoon, as given in your example, would be totally acceptable as he fits all of the above criteria.
2. They will be obtainable, yes.
Just as a reminder (given because we don't recognize you, not intended as a slight in the least), Azume is not open to the public, nor do we know if it will be in future - if you've got an invite you're good, but for the most part, it's a private game as outlined in the FAQ. Thank you for your interest, however!
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The nature of my character, Gwen Poole, is that she's a Marvel Comics fangirl from the "real world" (our's) who's transplanted within the Marvel Universe itself. Due to this, she showcases awareness of the fourth wall, but never actually "breaks" it in the way one would expect. She never does things like directly interact with the writer or audience (beyond just assuming they're there), but is able to both correctly deduce she's in another comic series that's not her own, and later on recognizes and has to come to terms with the cancellation of her own comic series.
Thus, it boils down to two questions.
1. In canon, Gwen is a fanfic author, and it's heavily implied in a few throwaway lines that she herself is a roleplayer. Would she be able to come to the realization that she's probably been transplanted into a fanwork/roleplay (or at least compare the situation to one), as long as she's not using that hunch in a gamebreaking way or bringing that up to other players or NPC's? She recognizes this information would probably make her sound like a lunatic.
2. In that same sense, would she (or anyone else I guess) have some vague familiarity with what Pokemon are/what the world is supposed to be be "like" prior to entering the game?
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Generally speaking, we would prefer that the fourth wall not be leaned on in such a way; comparisons to a roleplay are fine, directly realizing or talking about how she's literally in one should be avoided. Likewise, we'd prefer no former knowledge of the world, either.
Again, thank you for your interest!
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