Hello everyone!

It is my pleasure to announce that we have two new boards for you to post on: the OOC Lesson Board and a brand-spankin’-new MRP Board . These boards are now open for all sections. They are fairly self explanatory; the OOC LB is for lesson announcements and updates, questions, requests, etc. (Though if you have a message, question, or request for just one person or your teacher, we recommend email.) The MRP Board is for your major role-plays (bet you didn’t see that one coming!), as we feel they are similar to raisings in the sense that they deserve their own space to unfold. Site navigation has been updated to accommodate our new boards too, and has been updated in a nice new order to suit my OCD fashions. ;)

Happy posting everyone!

—Joni & the WoT RP Officers

Hi everyone!

A little birdie told me that some of you novices have been doing very well in your lessons—so well, in fact, that it sounds like there will be a few raisings shortly. As such, we’ve created two new boards: the Accepted Lesson Board and the Raising Board. They’re up and open for posting.

A few things to remember about who can use these boards:

• The Accepted Lesson Board: Accepted attending classes or pursuing independent studies, and Aes Sedai who are teaching lessons. Other full rank characters (namely Gaidin and Asha’man) do of course on occasion teach lessons, and will also be able to post on this board once the lesson has been authorized by the Mistress of Novices.
• The Raising Board: This board is for all sections and ranks—novices, Accepted, and Trainees gaining merit badges. However, an Officer will always post a “starter” post for your raising (except in certain cases, where you will receive permission to start without one of us), so please wait for us before beginning your raising string. Please note that post title formatting on this board should be kept to an absolute minimum; we understand that your raising is important, but if you use too much bold & italics, it means that someone else’s raising doesn’t look as important, which sucks for them. Officers will remove excess formatting without notice.

I look forward to announcing some raisings soon!

—Joni
Creator & Keeper of the Chronicles

Hello WoT RP members, and members-to-be,

It is my pleasure to announce that our message boards are now fully functional, and all exist! I was waiting off on creating the rest of the boards due to some debugging issues, which have now been fixed. So, everything should be fully operational and just waiting for you to post on them! A huge, huge, huge shout out to my partner Luke who has been working on them this whole time. He’s truly worked some magic.

It’s pretty exciting getting the site going again. Things have been buzzing with join forms, writer pages, and of course the boards. Here are a few highlights:

• The string announcing the new Amyrlin Seat, Keeper of the Chronicles, and Mistress of Novices is almost done! Be sure to check it out on the White Tower Board, because it has a lot of back history for where the site is ‘re’starting from.
• Keep your eyes on the How to Use Our Boards page for some tips and tricks and essential know-hows.
• Add yourself to our Google Map of writers!

Last but not least, the Officers have discussed our policy on returning old characters, with a few notes. We’re only accepting characters back who were active and listed at the old site at the time of its closing. If you stopped writing with your character before the site closed, sorry, you’ll have to start afresh! Remember too that you can start a new character at the old rank you had (as in, if you had an Accepted you don’t have to start with a novice again unless you want to). Making a new character is totally the way to go, though, because then you don’t run into any weird storyline conflicts between the old and new sites. We have also put a deadline on reinstating old characters: June 30, 2010. So be sure to apply for them before then!

It’s so good to see all the posting that’s going on on the boards. Keep it up! :)

—Joni

Well!

What an exciting week it’s been. I’m very pleased to announce that our boards are almost ready for posting on—in less than a week, we’ll be fully back in business with boards that work and act much like our old ones did. I loved those boards so, so much, but I think I’m going to love these ones even more. Once the boards are fully operational, we’ll have a “grand opening” of sorts to announce to the world that the WoT RP is back.

But, since I know so many of you are just raring to go… you can now start submitting those join forms! And if you’re even more raring to go, start working on that extended biography and intro post—you’ll be needing them before too long. :)

Cheers,

Joni

Phew. It may not look it from the front end, but lots has been going on behind the scenes here at the WoT RP. Certain essential pages are getting set up and finished off, the Officers have a truly magnificent RP planned to introduce our characters and get the site rolling, and every day our boards are getting closer to being finished. You should see how far they’ve come already.

I also keep hearing from members, past and future, who’re getting excited about creating new characters and getting back into writing. I get pretty excited when I hear about this, because the process of character creation is incredibly fun. I’ve created two new Aes Sedai of my own to write for, and despite a bit more agonizing over names that has to go on, I’m raring to go on writing things for them. Actually, Jeremy (the new Mistress of Novices) and I have already been emailing some posts back and forth to each other—and ten posts and about 15,000 words later, it’s safe to say we’re back in the game. I just wonder where that word count was when I was trying to write essays in university.

It’s also past time that I answer some questions that I keep getting about characters, and whether or not they can be brought back. The long and short of it? Absolutely! If you had beloved characters at the site before it closed in ’07, you are very welcome to reinstate them. Here’s the deal:

– Characters can be brought back by their previous writer, provided that they submit an up-to-date biography with that character for inclusion on the member pages. The character can be brought back at the rank and relative progress that they were before; we have the old lesson progress pages, so if you were halfway being done Acceptedhood, we can transfer that over. Credits are assigned on a case-by-case basis.

– If you were a previous member and wish to create a new character instead of starting again with an old one, we encourage you to start that new character at first rank, so as to benefit from developing that character naturally. But in an effort to get a little more variety in the site, you can also apply for a character at the same rank which you previously left off. For example, if you had a full Aes Sedai last time, you may create another Aes Sedai (but only one). If you had a mid-rank Gaidin in Training (what used to be a Sei’Tar, now a Gaidin in Training with two merit badges), you can create another mid-rank GiT. So on and so forth. This is also subject to approval on a case-by-case basis.

– This invitation does not apply to male channelers in the White Tower, however. This is due to a new back story surrounding how men become a part of the White Tower, which happened only very recently on our timeline. Sorry!

– When you rejoin the site, your relative ‘rank’ is carried over, in terms of numbers of characters and the like. For example, if you had a newly raised Accepted last time and you want to begin with just one novice, you may still have up to three characters, even though other newly joined novices may only create two characters.

– Questions, concerns, requests, suggestions? Email me, we’ll hopefully figure something out. Reinstating old characters will remain on a case-by-case basis, and once the site gets more established again, we probably won’t accept transfers as easily. Better to do it sooner rather than later!

The Join page is finished (though the form itself is secreted away), and despite a bit of drama with it at 2:30 am (namely, the whole thing disappeared on me! grr), it’s a thing of beauty. I’ve always been weirdly proud of my join forms. ;) Ta!

Joni

So far in considering how to remake the site, it’s been an interesting balance between that something old and that something new. In many ways, there’s no point in trying to reinvent the wheel. You might notice in our Rules that a lot has carried over from the last version of the WoT RP (though with some major edits). But, I’ve also had three years to contemplate what we could have done better last time, and The Gathering Storm was a wonderful book for exploring more within the White Tower. Since that’s where the site is starting, it’s shed light on a few facets that will be rather new for the site.

To keep this short and sweet, here are the top points for ‘something new’:

– Increased faithfulness to the books. Kind of. In rereading the Wheel of Time, a lot of things have stuck out to me in ways that seem like they’d make for better role-playing. Maybe they’re just details, but ones that seem kind of important in the long run. One such realization? That the Training Grounds—where men (and the occasional woman)—come to study under Aes Sedai’s Warders, are actually studying under Warders. Gaidin are Warders, and aren’t some rank unto themselves. Those who study under the Warders are expecting to become Warders themselves. Which brings us to the next point.

– Sections that are more integrated together. In a few ways, I hope that characters from each section get to know each other better; novices and Accepted and Trainees have requirements that ask them to write together, for example. While this had better not result in more cheesy romance strings, I hope that this will result in more PC Aes Sedai and Warders who are bonded. If you haven’t noticed already, one of the requirements to become full rank in the Training Grounds is to actually become bonded. Being bonded is great IC and OOC; it gives you someone to write with all the time, and once you’re done developing your character on their own during training, you then get someone dependable to write with once raised.

– A more flexible administration. In some form or another, my hope is that we’ll have more people involved in helping to run the site beyond the traditional IC roles. This includes expanding the IC roles so that Sitters, Ajah Heads, and Blademasters have increased responsibility and visibility. We’ll see how this works over time, but there are so many people so far who’ve indicated interest in various roles at the site that I truly want to find a way to include everyone. It’ll happen, one way or another!

– One website, not five. We used to have a lot of different “section” sites (such as the Amyrlin’s Study, the Gates of the Black Tower, etc.), but with the new fandangled web technologies, it’s now far easier for us to maintain one site all together instead of each section leader taking care of their own part. I hope that this will result in better integrated information and resources for everyone, not just one section or another.

Of course, there’s more to come, but I just wanted to point out those top four things so far. Also, I’ve been getting emails from folks asking about characters and stuff, and keep those coming! I can’t wait for when we can have a grand opening of sorts and the join forms start slewing in. Woohoo!

Joni