saveournumbers | AMA - Ask The Mods Anything

It's getting closer and closer to opening time! On the 14th of April, the first reincarnation relationship plotting post will go up. On the 22nd of April, reserves will open, and on the first of May the first test drive meme will go up. On the 15th of May applications will open. On the 8th of June, a second test drive meme will go up along with a second relationship plotting post. And then on the 15th of June, the game will open! (As a note, we are still looking for mods, especially app mods who will help us judge applications.)

In the spirit of that, this post is here so you can Ask The Mods Anything!

More specifically, in this post we want to give prospective players the opportunity to ask any questions that they might have about the game or playing in it (you obviously can also use the FAQ or mod contact, but we hope that having this place will lower the threshold of "is this question too unimportant/dumb to bring it to the mods").

Please don't hesitate to ask your questions, no matter how dumb they feel - we want to use this post both to try and clear up all questions players might have and to see if there is anything that crops up often enough or otherwise strikes us as something to address on the game's info pages.

Please make sure to use the toplevel that seems the most appropriate to your question! That'll make it easier for other players to see what has already been asked and answered.

Information about the game can be found if you follow the links below:

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Questions along the lines of "Can I play X character in this game?" go here. Please don't assume that the mods know your character/canon and give us a brief description of what aspects of the character make you ask the questions.

Hello mods! I have a dumb, rambly, character specific question here. I'm really sorry you have to wade through my nonsense. orz

I'm considering Caramia from Ozmafia, which is an otome game where a bunch of fairy tale and storybook characters inhabit this town that is essentially run by rival mafia families. He's the boss of the Oz family and is actually the cowardly lion from that story.

This is post wizard visit so he, like the scarecrow and tinman, has received an item that represents the gift he got from the wizard. The traits they got from these gifts are literally represented in these items. In an 'if it's lost he will also lose the gift' kind of way. So when the scarecrow looses his, he becomes an idiot, the tinman becomes completely emotionless, and this lion here becomes a coward. As in like, scared of everything. ~~I promise you I am not making this up.~~

But I have been wanting to play him in either a memloss or au game with the idea of starting him out as a coward and then regaining his courage. I wanted to ask whether this was feasible in this setting. I know item regains are possible, but it would result in a major (and very abrupt) personality shift. I could certainly include with/without courage info in his personality section, but I also know the idea is kind of weird and is different from the kind of gradual change that is more typical in a setting like this.

Anyway, thanks for reading that mess and I really hope it made sense. I should not be doing this at 1am.

This sounds indeed perfectly doable!

We do indeed prefer gradual shifts, but the extent of just how gradual it is is mostly up to the player (as long as we don't spot a theme of constantly pushing the upper end), and a sudden shift in one personality trait would fall within the margin of what is possible. So if you wish for it to be a sudden shift, that would be possible.

You could still make it a gradual shift though, if you would prefer that: Items can be regained in stages, too (regain the item without the gift, then echo the gift at half-strength, and then echo it at full strength, or something like that).

We would definitely want to see something about the difference in him with and without his courage in his preincarnated personality, and also in the reincarnated personality a bit on how it affected his life that he never received the item granting him courage.

Thank you so much for the prompt response!

I appreciate all the options but I was hoping to play with the sudden shift here because what I really like about it is that those things they wished for that seemed like they should magically fix everything didn't. Suddenly gaining an overabundance of courage does not necessarily solve all your problems. Actually it just gives you different problems. Like being a lot more reckless. Taking too many chances.

And I can assure you it would just be that one trait that was sudden. Everything else would be gradual.

Thank you!

I've been considering Zenyatta from Overwatch for this game. The question/problem I have is the lack of canon history for him.

He has been a playable character since game release and has a distinct personality, but Blizzard has yet to give him any lore for his background. Most of his official hero bio talks about the Shambali (robot religious group) as a whole more than him specifically. Oddly enough his hero bio neglects to mention his student, Genji, but game voice lines and a one panel comic appearance show their connection.

The game itself is a first person shooter but is not considered canon in terms of the characters' stories. Personality can be taken from the game but not events. For example, Zenyatta working with Genji, Tracer, Reaper, Widowmaker, and Hanzo to deliver an EMP bomb to underground King's Row is something that could happen in the game but would absolutely not happen in the actual story. Zenyatta would never cause a mass murder of his robotic kind. However, the voice lines about being troubled by the suffering of his kind in the location and the fact that he misses his brother shed light on what kind of person Zenyatta is.

I can write a personality section for him easily, but a canon history section is only going to be a few sentences long without headcanons.

Can I app Zenyatta for the game, or does his lack of background material make him not a good fit at this time?

The way you describe him, Zenyatta would definitely be appable.

Our only hard rule on appability is that "characters with a canon base must have enough canon for the applicant to write a cohesive personality for them without having to rely on headcanon". There are no hard requirements on anything else, so a few sentences of canon when it comes to history will be sufficient! Just pad it out with headcanon that is in line with what canon supplies you with.

I saw that in the FAQ, but I still wanted to double check before I started working on an app. Thank you for the quick answer!

That's totally fair! It is a point that differs between games, and our stance is probably a bit unique. The reasoning behind it is that the history and the power section is fully subject to being echoed back (or not) and holes in it will therefore not affect the playing experience. A full understanding of the personality, on the other hand, is necessary - both because it needs to be present in its entirety from the start of the playing experience (=preincarnated personality section), and to be able to tell what differences a different upbringing would have made (=reincarnated personality section).

(Also: You probably saw that, but we ask that any headcanon is marked as such in the application, preferably by formatting those sections in cursive.)

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