AMA - Ask The Mods Anything

[ourearth]

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:

Rules | FAQ | New Player Guide
Locations | Soft facts & Gossip | British stuff | NPCs
Premise explained | Network explained | Echoes explained

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Comments

Re: CHARACTER QUESTIONS

[orbislife]

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?

[ourearth]

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.

[orbislife]

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!

[ourearth]

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.)