As I am logged in right now looking at the +jobs queue, I can confirm that there is a daily staff presence on this game and plans for staff to move game-plot forward once we're out of Beta. There is no hold on CG, nor is there anything stopping current players from going out and enjoying RP themselves. Staff simply had to make a choice between continuing to be the driving force behind all RP ever or take the time to actually finish getting the systems built while also juggling RL constraints.

Like was mentioned above, the other game exists if you want something smaller finished Right Now, but we are also not dead, just napping.

As I am logged in right now looking at the +jobs queue, I can confirm that there is a daily staff presence on this game and plans for staff to move game-plot forward once we're out of Beta. There is no hold on CG, nor is there anything stopping current players from going out and enjoying RP themselves. Staff simply had to make a choice between continuing to be the driving force behind all RP ever or take the time to actually finish getting the systems built while also juggling RL constraints.

Like was mentioned above, the other game exists if you want something smaller finished Right Now, but we are also not dead, just napping.

@Sunny It's not that they don't matter, it's that they don't matter more than an OC. We all do this to write characters we enjoy. Someone may really enjoy writing Isabela and there's no reason for me to say they can't. The entire plot isn't going to revolve around Isabela, but the entire plot isn't going to revolve around one single OC either, so what harm is there in giving people the choice in who they want to play?

@Kanye-Qwest That's a very fair question. At first we did look into an Inquisition-era setup (there's even a very lovely Haven built in a hidden niche on the grid) but when it came down to game mechanics, what worried me most was the scope of Inquisition. It's huge. It spans like five countries.

Now, a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away) I started M*ing on games that took place in Anne McCaffrey's Pern world. And when I first started there were enough players that the game(s) could sustain different 'areas' and spread out across a vast world while still giving everyone ample opportunities for RP. But as the years went on and playerbases dwindled, that spread-out nature is part of what contributed to the death of those games. I worried that Inquisition would be biting off more than a brand new game (with an uncertain level of interest) could chew.

Kirkwall was chosen because it's a single city that has enough going on in canon to support gameplay and still small enough that it can concentrate players in one place so that RP is never hard to find. This time-period was chosen because it's a good 'lynch-pin moment' in time - the Fifth Blight is over, the Mage-Templar war is a few years away, yet, nothing world-altering is happening in the early years of Kirkwall. DA2 may have been Hawke's story (which could vary wildly based on who each individual Hawke is and what he/she does so even that is a bit murky) but the Hawke in chargen hasn't been declared the Champion of Kirkwall, he hasn't gone to the Deep Roads, he's just a guy living in a shack with his family trying to get by - and the player knows and is fine with that. It's more fun to share the 'heroing' stuff around and they just really like writing their Hawke doing even everyday stuff. If there ever comes a day when we have the playerbase to move forward into an Inquisition-esque setting, where we can open up more areas to play, we would absolutely love to look into that.

But for now we are little and still getting our legs under us. From a game mechanics perspective, Kirkwall made the most sense.

@Roz If this was a setting like Mass Effect or Captain America, then sure. But none of the Dragon Age games have ever been the same hero or set of heroes - aside from some minor companion overlap. If I remember correctly it was David Gaider who talked at one point during a Q&A about the fact that all of the potential Inquisitor individuals exist in Thedas in every world state, it's just a matter of who was in the right place at the right time in an individual playthrough to step up and become the hero (or wrong place/wrong time, depending on your outlook XD)

That's the spirit of play we're aspiring for; that decisions are made by those who show up, not just those with fashionable streaks of blood over their noses.

To address the questions that don't relate to Thor

There are several key plot FCs (Meredith, for example) that are being kept back for use by Staff as plot mechanics, same as a few key plot OCs. Aside from them, we have an open process for FC application because from a broad plot perspective we're using the start of DA2 as a 'jumping off place' to move away from canon into different directions. There is a Hawke family, but they're not any more or less tied into the plot than anyone else.

That's where the Fate system comes in (not to be confused with FATE, which seems to have happened a few times, so that's my bad). The Fate system allows players to choose how involved in big game plots they want to be. To quote the helpfile:

"At its core, Fate is a measure of how deeply involved in plot you want your character to be. A Fate of 1 means that you are primarily here for social RP. Your character lives, works, makes friends, makes enemies - maybe even falls in love - but overall is personally unaffected by the big events that shape the world around them. A Fate of 5, on the other hand, is roughly equivalent to the video games' PCs and PC Companions. These characters are often at the center of trouble; they have the greatest potential for IC rank, wealth and power, but also the biggest targets on their back for Trouble, because Thedas is not a warm and fuzzy place.

This is accomplished through a dice system. Every time something - good or bad - is about to happen (in a scene or in a larger plot) the ST or staff responsible will perform a dice roll for all characters involved. Your Fate score determines the number of dice that are rolled to get your total score for that specific event. The character(s) with the highest score will be the one(s) affected by that event.

Some scenes, events and plotlines will have Fate restrictions or caps to facilitate the most fun for everyone involved. If there is to be a cap or restriction involved, information on the specifics will be made available when the event in question is announced."

The game is still in early beta. A lot of the combat functionality just isn't Thedas-compatible yet, so the way +sheets look is not very indicative of how things will work out once all the bugs are shaken out of the system. I understand that this is not everyone's cup of tea, but for those potentially interested, I hope this clears up some of the confusion.