September 2018 Announcements

Polaris

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Staff Account
May 30, 2014
2,002
September 2018 Announcements


News in Brief

  • [Contest] Character Creation Month is here, rewarding players for making new characters
  • [Milestone] The new school year is starting, and we're updating claims for all students
  • [Staff Change] @PixelatedGlory has moved up to mod
  • [Community Assignments] We have a new system for small in-character tasks
  • [Event] Student Council Elections (September 12th-18th)
  • [Character Hubs] We're replacing Plot with Me pages with Character Hubs
  • [Donators] People who have donated are now eligible for a small banner under their name
  • [Newspaper] The latest Manta Carlos Print is out now
  • [Spotlights] Congratulations to our Spotlight Member @Zora, and our Spotlight Character Godfrey Broen
Character Creation Month
Every September, Starlight Academy celebrates Character Creation Month, encouraging players to dust off those work-in-progress applications and get around to putting their thoughts to the page. Character Creation Month rewards players for completing character applications, and also encourages players to role play with all these newly created characters.

This years CCM has a special reward for fulfilling want ads for other people. You can find all the details here.

New School Year
September 3rd marks the start of the 2018-2019 school year for Starlight Academy. While the academy accepts students year round, September is the traditional point at which students move up a grade.

Players with students should post in this thread to indicate if their characters are moving up. Characters do not have to move up a grade if you don't want them to. Characters in remedial are free to stay in remedial if they need more time, or to join the normal grades as you please.

Community Assignments
Do you have an idea for a short plot but need more characters to thread with? Does your character need help completing a task or creating a situation for power upgrades? Maybe you have characters who just like helping out.

The new Community Assignments system is here to help with all that and more! It's a way for you to suggest or take part in small tasks or outings that might not merit longer-term plots. Think of it like placing requests for odd jobs or agreeing to fulfill one. The best part is that by running or participating in assignments members can earn bonus Upgrade Vouchers.

Student Council Elections
It's time once again for Student Council Elections. So dust off those fliers, get the soap boxes out, and get to campaigning! The elections run from the twelfth of September to the eighteenth. Signups are up now, and posting begins later this month. You can find them here.

Character Hubs
After some internal discussion, we've come to the conclusion that plot pages (also known as plotters, plot with me pages, etc) aren't quite serving their purpose. While originally intended to be a place for people to explain the plots they were looking for, we've found that the Want Ad forum has started filling this purpose more and more. The Plot with Me forum tends to be out of date more often than not, and it sees minimal use as a place to actually find plots. We're going to be retiring the Plot with Me forum entirely, and rolling out Character Hubs in their place.

Character Hubs are a place for you to put summaries of your characters. If someone asks 'who do you play?', you link them to your character hub. It's a quick and easy overview. You can use that page to give an idea of what kind of plots you're looking for with a character, but the purpose is to list out your own characters, not to directly plot with others.

You can find the new forum here. If you need help finding your old plot page, please don't hesitate to ask!

Donator Banner
If you've donated to Starlight Academy before, either through Paypal or our Patreon, you're eligible for the new 'Donator' banner! Send @Kyros or @Romi a message to have it added to your profile. We've also updated our Donations page to reflect this.

Manta Carlos Print
The latest edition of the in-character newspaper is here! You can check out all the details on island happenings inside.

Have a plot or idea you'd like to get mentioned in the newspaper? Just send a message to @Kait, including links to any threads, and mentioning any other players who might be involved in the plot.

Spotlights
Spotlight Member: @Zora

I don't think anyone will be all that surprised to find Zora up here. Despite being new to the site (having only joined in April), Zora has done a phenomenal job of integrating themselves into the site. With more than a thousand posts and more plots than I can count, Zora's a great part of SA, and we're happy to have her!

Spotlight Character: Godfrey Broen

To say that Broen's gone through character development is to massively understate things. Originally arriving as a mid-range hotshot, he worked with several players to restore his powers to their full glory. He made friends, made a lot of enemies, and then crashed and burned spectacularly due to his involvement in the Black Wings plot. Broen's now left with emotions he didn't know he had, no powers, and has to pick up the pieces left behind. It's great to see this level of character development on a single character, and we're excited to see where they'll go from now on!

You can find next months nominations over here.​
 

Polaris

For official threads only. Do not PM.
Staff Account
May 30, 2014
2,002
September 2018 Mid-Month Announcements


News in Brief

  • [Discord] We've moved from cbox to discord for our general chatting
  • [Events] Student Council Elections are ongoing until the 18th
  • [Events] Mystery Event Signups run 20th to 23rd
  • [Lore] We've clarified some lore about welfare, financial aid, and schooling
  • [Odds and Ends] ICC Forms should be in [brackets]. CCM is ongoing
  • [Spotlights] Spotlight Voting is up now
Discord
As I'm sure most people have noticed, we've moved to discord! With our cbox about to expire, we made the choice to unify, rather than having two half-conversations going on between the two. We're making some changes moving forward, in particular related to user privacy. With the cbox, messages expired out after a set period of time, accessible only to staff. With Discord, all that information is still there and easily searchable. We're looking into some options to handle this, and we'll be sure to announce things on the discord when we finish testing out some options.

The ICC Cbox remains how it was, and you shouldn't see any changes there for the foreseeable future.

Student Council Elections
Student council elections are ongoing, and it's not too late to join in! You can find all the details here. The election will wrap up on the 18th.

Mystery Event Signups
We've got a new mystery event, tied to the Year of the Gods megaevent. Signups start on the 20th, and run through Sunday the 23rd. The event itself will run from the 24th to 30th. What exactly is this event? Well, you'll see. This event will require you to sign up.

Lore Updates
We've updated some lore in order to clarify things. We've clarified that schooling is mandatory on the Manta Carlos Islands up to the age of 16. We've also clarified the existence of private schools on the island for those who want to be new to SA, but not the island itself.

We've also written out some lore explaining how Welfare and Financial Aid are handled on the island.

Odds and Ends
Some odds and ends. After noticing some potential confusion we've decided that if a character's current form is indicated in their ICC profile name it should be written in one of two ways. The current form can be indicated using [square brackets] after the character name, or by noting it alongside the player name. For example "Guinevere Haze [Demon]" or "Guinevere (Demon/Kyros)".

Character Creation Month is also ongoing. Remember to update your points before month end!

Spotlights
Spotlight voting is up now, so get your votes in!​
 
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