I'm etching out a horror RPG myself. In addition to straight-up banning certain types of content, I have plans to include a modified version of this as part of a character sheet:

This way, Storytellers know which plots & NPCs your character should be kept away from. If you have a trigger for certain types of abuse, I won't be letting abuse survivor NPCs get close to your character.

I'm planning around limited visibility for PCs as well, as a way of checking OOCly if you're planning on taking a scene down a certain route. I don't want full transparency access for PCs, as that can lead to abuse.

This way, even if something is horrifying, the only way a scene can happen is if everyone in the scene is comfortable and has given their OOC enthusiastic consent to be horrified.

The constant need to come up with IC reasons for the unexpected disappearance of characters, because their players stopped showing up. And reasons for why your character isn't checking up on that person.

Brigid: "I think that's everyone safe and accounted for. Thank heavens nobody was killed in that meteor storm."

Abelard: "I haven't seen your husband. Is he alright?"

Brigid: "Oh, I completely forgot about him. I'm sure he's fine."

That moment when you identify that a character you're RPing with is played by a player you had a great experience with on a different game, and you know you can immediately trust them.

Today I'm going to talk about a system that was one of my favorite to make — whispers in the wind.

---

WHISPERS IN THE WIND

It's difficult to share a secret in Silent Heaven, because whispers move on the town's mysterious air currents. The quieter your get, the more likely it'll be heard by other people. If you're familiar with the TV show LOST, whispers tend to work the same way.

To send your whispers into the air, type WHISPER (message). For example, to whisper hello, type:

WHISPER Hello.

The shortcut for whispering is a tilde (~).

~Hello.

Assuming your character name is Jeff, your whisper will propagate across town and everyone will hear:

Every character's real name is known over the wind because of echoes. To hear the echoes, type WHO:

WHO

You will listen closely to the repeated echoes of the town:

Some people don't want to be found, but you can still hear them breathing:

To add or change the echo tied to your name, type ECHO (message). For example, if you want other residents to know you're new and looking for people to meet, you could type:

To stop sending your echo message, type ECHO by itself. This will clear it and leave only your breath in the wind.

ECHO

---

HIDING YOUR IDENTITY

Sometimes, you want to send a whisper, but you want to do it anonymously. To hide the identity of your voice, type ANON (message). For example, if you want to give some anonymous advice, you could type:

ANON I would advise against doing that.

However, this isn't completely anonymous. People will know the direction the whisper came from. For example:

---

HISSING: DIRECT MESSAGING

You can use the air currents to send a message directly to a single recipient using HISS (name) (message). For example, if you want to talk to someone privately, you could type:

HISS Jane We need to talk.

Jane would hear:

In the same way that anonymous whispers aren't entirely anonymous, private whispers aren't entirely private. Everyone else would hear:

Keep this in mind if you're trying to have a discreet conversation.

---

IGNORING THE VOICES IN THE WIND

While the wind helps you to find RP and connect with other characters, sometimes it can be annoying and you just want to ignore it. Here are ways you can tune it out:

• WHISPER by itself will let you stop hearing whispers, both named and anonymous.
• HISS by itself will let you stop hearing hisses addressed to other people. You'll still hear hisses addressed to you.
• HISS (Name) without a message will let you stop hearing hisses addressed to you from the named person.

Typing any of these a second time will let you hear that type of wind again.

Lastly, typing HISS ALL will reset all your hiss preferences to hearing everything.

---

WHAT IF THERE'S NO WIND?

There are some places where you won't find wind. It'll be made abundantly clear in the room description:

Be very careful when exploring these areas, because if you try to whisper for help...

Your echo is silenced, too, meaning nobody will even know you're around.

---

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Let's suppose Bonnie and Clyde are friends. Bonnie is worried that someone is stalking her, so she reaches out to Clyde:

Clyde hears:

Everyone else hears:

Clyde is a couple rooms away, so he replies to Bonnie through a HISS, asking, "Yeah? Who?"

Jonas decides to make himself known, teasing the couple by WHISPERing publicly:

From Jonas's perspective, all he hears is hissing:

Back to Bonnie, she's rightly spooked:

Jonas is a creep who doesn't know how to keep his distance. And he's tired of being ignored, so he decides to use an ANON whisper to reveal his location — dangerously close to Bonnie!

Bonnie hears a voice from nearby, which means Jonas is in the same general location as Bonnie:

That's enough to get Bonnie and Clyde to spring into action:

---

Here's the full conversation from all 3 perspectives.

Jonas:

Bonnie:

Clyde:

---

TL;DR

• Whispers are an IC channel of communication that can be used publicly, semi-anonymously, or semi-privately.
• ICly, whispers travel along the town's wind currents. Be careful in places the wind doesn't reach.
• The wind also hooks into commands like WHO, WHERE, and LFRP, which are typically OOC commands in other games, but have IC equivalents in Silent Heaven.
• You can block individuals who attempt to contact you via private whispers, or block the wind altogether.

Me: Hey, I have to do X within an hour.

Also me: But I want to do Y.

Me: Fine, do Y, and then panic and do X at the last minute possible.

Also me: Deal.

5 Hours Later...

Me: Okay I finished 30 other unrelated things instead. Time for bed.

Also me: Crap, I forgot to do X!

Me: And I forgot to do Y!

'
 The fog feels heavy. Cool air grazes your exposed arms.
Fixed before you is a rustic green road sign with the text:

               [ 'Welcome to Silent Heaven' ]

 How did you get here? Memories are as hazy as the weather.
Ahead lies a semi-maintained stone archway amidst dirt and
vegetation, with a stairway leading down into the unknown.
The path back is a long, quiet county road vanishing into fog.

 You’ve come too far to turn back now.

---

OVERVIEW

Silent Heaven is a small-town roleplaying game focused on personal demons amidst a backdrop of supernatural horror. The only characters who find their way to the town of Silent Heaven are those who have repressed traumatic experiences, or deny the terrible things they've done. Your character is scarred, a scarmaker, or both. Residents might act normal, but nobody healthy lives here. Those that recover can find their way out of Silent Heaven and back to their lives.

Be bad. Be vulnerable. Embrace your sorrow. Will you face your darkest times and recover? Or will you succumb to the town and be lost forever?

---

THE NEW NORMAL

As an unexpected resident of a town called Silent Heaven, you will explore the streets, meet strange people, and struggle against the sins that brought you to this personal hell. Use your skills to survive, to aid those around you, or to take advantage of others. Face difficult topics like abuse, depression, sorrow, trauma, helplessness, and fear.

The worst thing that can happen is getting comfortable with living here.

---

FEATURES

Silent Heaven is a unique world set in an unspecified location. It draws inspiration from many sources, including Silent Hill, LOST, American Horror Story, Omori, and much more.

Silent Heaven is made using the Evennia codebase with a custom gameplay system.

Gameplay Overview:

• RPI-lite: MUSH-style RP + coded support for supplementary skills.

• No Alts: You may have only one character at any given time.

• No Grinding: XP is earned through logging in each day + bonus XP for roleplaying.

• Simple Crafting: Craft a unique description and custom name for any item, giving it a bonus to its effect.

• Simple Combat: Simplified locational combat allows you to spend more time RPing during and after conflicts.

• Traditional Grid: Movement directions are only North, South, East, West, Up, and Down. Room sizes and shapes vary.

• Character-driven storylines: Rewards for doing what would tell a good story rather than gaming the system or developing insular cliques.

• End of the road: If your character survives to max XP, a special Storyteller-run plot will help to determine the ultimate fate of your character.

Unique-ish Features:

• Whispers: The quietest voices spread around town via mysterious wind currents, making it difficult to keep secrets.

• Shelter: Retreat to your safe space when you need downtime. Public locations become less safe as more characters gather in one spot. Don't stay outside too long, either. There are monsters out there. Some of them even look like monsters.

• Panic: Suffer emotional damage that can't be healed through conventional means.

• In-depth NPCs: Each NPC is a complete character with a history, goals, and fears. Though you may befriend some of them, NPCs almost always have an ulterior motive. They wouldn't have found their way to Silent Heaven otherwise.

• Intersectional-LGBTQIA+: Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. are unwelcome. Pronouns aren't tied to your character's biological sex, gender or outward appearance. You can even randomize your character's pronouns.

• Drugs & Toxins: Provide beneficial drugs to those who need help, or poison your enemies. Lace your creations into food, or even create chemical weapons.

• Blood Tests & Forensics: Diagnose patients with mysterious ailments. Collect DNA samples and other metadata from locations to find out who's been up to what.

---

YOUR SAFETY IS PARAMOUNT

Silent Heaven is not for everyone, and those that pose intentional or persistent harm to the OOC community will be removed, regardless of their contribution level.

You will never be forced to RP something you don't want to RP.

A community Discord chat server provides a clear delineation of the IC-OOC divide.

---

EVERYONE HAS PROBLEMS

The town of Silent Heaven draws in characters who have repressed problems or memories. Your character has dissociated from their terrible or traumatic backstory and will typically behave as if it never happened.

But all untreated wounds bleed, as do emotions behind locked memories.

Silent Heaven is a place where your character will have to confront their past in order to live a better future — or be swallowed by the town in self-damnation.

---

ROLEPLAYING IN SILENT HEAVEN

Roleplay is character-focused. Your character will make friends, allies, and enemies, exploring your character's story and influencing others' stories. Players may take advantage of local hangouts, hidden locations, their character's skills and in-character whispers to find and write effective scenes. You'll experience collaborative storytelling in both cooperative and character-versus-character scenarios.

There are many different groups to join in Silent Heaven, each with their own different tenets, playstyle, goals, and supporting NPCs.

We strongly encourage you to explore Silent Heaven and find a group that matches your character and your preferred playstyle. Groups come in many styles: social, intrigue, creative, combat, antagonistic, pacifistic, religious, newbie-welcoming, theme-enforcement, and more.

Groups have allies and enemies, places they may go freely and others they can't, characters they can openly interact with and others they'll need to maintain secrecy with, and so on. Finding your way into RP is a lot easier when your character joins a group.

Don't worry if a group has very few or very many PCs in it. Staff will focus their support towards the styles our players want to play. That means providing Storyteller support for players that find themselves excluded, or Builder support for splitting a large group into two groups. Some groups may have no PCs, in which case, the NPCs are there to provide for that group until PCs join.

---

ETIQUETTE

In roleplay, there are typically three styles of scenes: Live, Distracted, and Asynchronous.

Live: Everyone is actively paying attention and writing.

Distracted: Players may be slow to react, due to work, family, or other distractions.

Asynchronous: Players may take up to 24 hours to respond.

Scenes in public locations are always Live. We ask that you spend no longer than 5 minutes per pose. At that point, it's time to hit enter and just send it in. If someone takes longer than 5 minutes, it's fair game to assume the character doesn't react, or is paralyzed with fear, or has zoned out. You may continue with the scene if you wish, but please be mindful that we all have unexpected emergencies from time to time.

At almost any time, you are able to pause your game, which puts your character in a metaphorical protective bubble that prevents anything from happening to your character.

Scenes in private locations may be Live or Distracted. You're welcome to take your time and write at your own pace, as long as that pace is comfortable for everyone.

After 35 minutes of inactivity, your character automatically zones out and isn't aware of their surroundings. Silent Heaven will be less-than-ideal for players who prefer Asynchronous scenes. For asynchronous play, you may want to consider alternative means of interaction, such as writing letters to your sleeping pals (or enemies) for when they wake.

Storytellers will look for players who are willing to play well with others, who enjoy taking risks and losses, and who don't "game the system" to give themselves every advantage imaginable. The nicer you play with others, the more likely Storytellers are to trust you with roles that give your character greater permission.

---

HEAVY THEMES

Silent Heaven is a place where terrible things will happen to your character. However, we take it seriously to respect limits and only invoke terribleness that you're comfortable with experiencing. We provide a customizable consent checklist, along with a list of always-forbidden topics that will never be allowed in Silent Heaven.

The consent checklist will help Storytellers know which plots & NPCs your character should be kept away from. If you have a trigger for certain types of abuse, Storytellers won't be letting abuse survivor NPCs get close to your character. Other players will have limited visibility as a way of checking OOCly in advance of taking a scene down a certain route. Players will not have full access to other characters' checklists, as that can lead to abuse.

By respecting the consent checklist, the only way a horror scene can happen is if everyone in the scene is comfortable and has given their OOC enthusiastic consent to be horrified.

Some topics are entirely forbidden on Silent Heaven. To summarize, these include all non-consensual sexual acts, the myriad of 'dubious' consent mechanisms for sexual purposes, any underage characters, any bigotry, and a handful of topics related to these categories.

---

CONFLICT

While roleplay is the focus of Silent Heaven, in order to maintain a sense of vulnerability, you may find your path blocked by someone who wants to have a word with you. This is a chance for both parties to talk things out in an effort to avoid a violent conflict. Reserve fighting only for when talks have broken down.

Death is too easily an escape, so the town itself prevents characters from dying. No matter what happens during combat, your character will still be breathing in the end.

---

LORE AND WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Lore? There's plenty. But you don't need to know anything ahead of time. As a fresh resident to a mysterious town, discovering it all in-character is part of the excitement. Want to learn more about that church? You could ask someone about it, or find and read some literature about it, or even go there yourself to soak in some history.

It's perfectly acceptable for your character to ask someone, "What the f—k is going on in this town?" In fact, it's encouraged. It's an excellent way to spur roleplay and delve into how your character reacts to the unknown.

---

BEYOND HEAVEN

While Silent Heaven is played out in modern day real-time, please keep real-world events out of Silent Heaven. For all intents and purposes, assume the Silent Heaven timeline diverged in 2010. We never learned if Obama fixed the economy, Covid-19 never quarantined us, and any world events that happened beyond 2010 are irrelevant. While your character has a backstory, your character's involvement in-game will focus on your character's experiences in Silent Heaven.

So, what did happen in this alternate timeline? It doesn't matter, because your character's storylines will center around being in a town isolated from the rest of the world. Humans still exist. Scientific and technological advancements continue as normal. This alternate world history is intentionally an amorphous blob. When thinking about your character's backstory, consider generic terms over real-world ones. For example, use "worked for an oppressive corporation paying slave wages" instead of "worked for Amazon," or you could use "stationed overseas" in place of fighting in any specific war.

---

LIMITATIONS TO WHAT YOU CAN ROLEPLAY

The following should be OOCly assumed to be true:

Your character enters Silent Heaven as a modern-day human with no supernatural powers.

There is no way to 'fix' the town of Silent Heaven. While your character may have influence on the future of in-game groups or even drive an NPC to death, the backdrop of a hidden town full of cursed characters will not change.

Silent Heaven isn't in any set location. Outside contact within Silent Heaven will never happen. For what it's worth, consider the town to be on an entirely different plane of existence.

Nobody who successfully leaves Silent Heaven can ever find their way back in. There are no 'return visits.'

---

LAUNCH DATE?

I have no idea. We're a two-person team at the moment: myself and a musician.

Pre-planning is 100% complete.
Documentation is 75% complete.
Coding is 75% complete.
Building is 20% complete.

We have a community Discord server where I post regular updates and a ton of policy documents. This is the first I've ever posted a link for the Discord server, so there aren't many people there yet.

Any questions? Feedback welcomed!

---

This was a long post! I'm going to sleep.

QUIT

Let's talk basic roleplaying!

---

BASIC COMMANDS

Your standard commands for roleplaying are all here. (I hope.) The easiest of which is say:

SAY Hello.

You say, "Hello."

The shortcut for this is a quotation mark ("). So another way of saying hello is by typing:

"Hello."

You don't need to include the closing quotation mark if you don't want to. It'll be added automatically.

You want to do more than just say words, right? It's time to put some action with those words with EMOTE (message)

EMOTE waves to Jane and says, "Nice to meet you."

The shortcut for emote is a colon :

:waves to Jane and says, "Nice to meet you."

Assuming everyone in the room knows you're Jeff and that Jane is Jane, everyone in the room sees:

Jeff waves to Jane and says, "Nice to meet you."

Some eavesdroppers might overhear your dialogue. Others may see your actions.

There are other flavors of emote, such as starting with an ' (apostrophe) will let you start emotes with 's, and starting with a . (period) will let you pose freeform. This lets you type things like:

's head turns red as he works up a heavy sweat.

.The smell of fresh sweat fills the room as Jeff works out.

There are plenty more ways to emote, but I don't want to bore you. Instead, I'll go over a few special features.

---

LONG-TERM EMOTES

Sometimes, in the middle of the action, someone new will enter the room, and you'll want to make a pose that'll set the scene. In Silent Heaven, you can set a long-term DOING message that is visible to everyone who enters the room or LOOKs.

DOING dancing on the stage

With this set, anyone arriving will immediately know what your character's doing. They'll see that Jeff is dancing on the stage.

DOING lasts until you move to another room, or you clear your doing message, or you do something else.

For a longer-lasting DOING message, use ALWAYS. This will be your standard message when you have no DOING message set.

ALWAYS playing it cool

This gives Jeff the default appearance message of: Jeff is playing it cool.

Handy for setting a character vibe!

---

GREETING OTHER CHARACTERS

Your character doesn't magically know someone's name. Other characters don't know your character's name either.

Initially, you'll see a two-word shortdesc that will give you a general idea of the character. A shortdesc is one of many ways to customize your character. You can change your shortdesc at any time.

To share your character's name, simply type GREET. You'll see other characters' names once they GREET you. You can also introduce other characters to people you know.

GREET - Clearly identify yourself to everyone in the room.

GREET JANE - Clearly identify Jane to everyone in the room.

It's advised that you roleplay this introduction before using GREET. Additionally, please practice common courtesy with GREET. If you say a character's real name in their presence, use GREET afterward to ensure everyone in the room has that name. Likewise, if someone's forgotten to GREET, you're welcome to send a polite OOC message to the room as a reminder. Of course, if that's not the character's real name (or approximate nickname), then you can send an OOC response to say that you can't GREET in this situation.

Using GREET is always truthful. If you want to convincingly lie about your identity, you'll need to invest XP in Deception, which will allow you to craft disguises, write new personas, and have an entirely different name when GREETing. I'll cover that in another post.

Let's see some GREETing in action!

---

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Let's suppose we have a first meeting of Jonas and Clyde. This is going to be a minimal scene in order to demonstrate GREET works.

Jonas's shortdesc is "mangy wastrel."

Clyde's shortdesc is "kempt smoker."

Jonas is a new face in town, and Clyde wants to know who Jonas is.

Clyde types :peers at the wastrel. "Who are you?"

Jonas types :looks around before pointing at himself. "Who, me?"

Clyde responds with "Yes. You."

Jonas types "Name's Jonas.

So far, Jonas sees:

Jonas now types GREET.

Now Clyde will see Jonas's name instead of mangy wastrel.

Suppose Clyde's partner Bonnie walks in and wants to know what's going on.

Bonnie types :steps in, pausing at the sight of the wastrel. Glancing over to Clyde, Bonnie asks, "Who's the new guy?"

Jonas sees:

Did you notice how Bonnie typed her own name, but Jonas only saw Bonnie's shortdesc? Emotes are smart like that. You can type your character's name without worrying about who does or doesn't know it. Keep in mind, though, that if your name appears in dialogue, it won't get replaced.

(Dev note: I still need to code in support to replace other character names in emotes; Jonas shouldn't have seen Clyde's name in Bonnie's post.)

(Edit: Added! This created a meta-exploit where you could guess someone's name and get confirmation of someone's name if you saw that a name changed to a shortdesc, so I fixed that and now the message doesn't change on your end.)

Wrapping up our mini-scene, Clyde identifies Jonas and types GREET JONAS.

Now Bonnie knows who Jonas is.

---

That's all for now!

Today I hit 500 hours working on Silent Heaven. It's been an unexpected journey in learning how to code, as well as understanding every little detail that goes on under the hood of a MU*. Things that are simple on paper could be incredibly complex to code.

For example, I just finished coding basic movement. I figured it would take maybe 2 hours to do, but after all the pre-planning that needed to be accounted for, it took me about 5 evenings just to make sure I got everything right.

Are there any questions or topics you'd like me to discuss so far? Or are you all content with me just posting about whatever I'm in the mood to talk about?

I think next time I'd like to talk about the XP system & skills, but I'm happy to go into detail about something else, too.

Jumpscare#0476

MUSHing, Evennia, horror games, depression, accessibility in gaming, women's rights, ADHD, going to bed on time.

I'm still actively working on Silent Heaven, and realistically it'll be live by the end of the year. Thanks to everyone who helped me with advice and support.

Stay safe, take your meds, and sleep well.

@il-volpe said in Meshing Groups:

Abelard's walking stick of +2 bashing people on the head, Brigid's wonderful length of string that ties itself 'round what she wants in other people's pockets, Camille's pointy rock of making people you stab with a pointy rock bleed to death, Darius's gem of really good vision, put them together and they magically turn into the greatbow Bloodhoney, the only thing that can kill Ohmygodzerka

Just make sure Darius can't use them all by himself or else he'll no doubt campaign to convince everyone else to give him their stuff so he can run off to be the hero.

@rucket said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

Well a more recent show taht could be a cool MU idea, or maybe a seasonal type thing on HorrorMU if that was still going would be that show From.

@jennkryst said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

@derp 'TV show From' works, but I barely glaced at what it pulls up. At that glance, it is 'trapped in town, cannot get out!'

This is exciting. I looked up From, and it's being made by some of the people who made LOST. The premise is almost spot-on with the horror game I'm working on, Silent Heaven, which also takes inspiration from LOST. So, good news there, and I'll definitely be watching From.

Speaking of, I need to do another update post about Silent Heaven. It's getting close to being feature-complete.

There's a lot of good input and advice in these recent pages.

I don't TS and I've no interest in it, so anyone trying to get with my NPCs is in for a realm of disappointment.

@tirit Have you joined the Evennia Discord yet? A lot of us there are happy to help with any coding questions. Also, if you haven't yet, I'd recommend taking a look at the RP Contrib. It provides a solid foundation to build upon for any MUSH game.

I fully feel it when you say "there is a lot to do."

@saturna Thank you. That means a lot to me.

It's important to me to think critically about how game systems are designed and presented. I'm appreciative of anyone who points out issues or improvements I hadn't thought of. Especially in a game that allows IC conflict between PCs, it's crucial to me to keep the community safe. That means not only encouraging healthy OOC interactions, but also removing abusive players, keeping an eye on suspicious OOC behaviors, and using code to minimize avenues of abuse.

It's been a while since I've provided an update here! I know I said I'd tackle Conflicts. I even set a personal goal of getting Writing done, too.

As it goes when you have ADHD, what I intended to code is not what got coded. So here's what's new!

---

TAILORING

Seat yourself in front of a tailoring bench and you're on your way to making custom clothing for characters.

By typing CRAFT CLOTHING you'll get a menu where you can choose what you want to make.

I'm no tailor, but I did spend a good week learning much of what there is to know about tailoring and jewelry making. The result is that the game does all the hard work for you. You just pick out an item and it's ready to be customized as you please.

Here's a selection of what you can choose from in "Coats & Outerwear," for example:

If you chose a Cloak, for instance, you'd see this:

This isn't a complete piece of wearable clothing yet. This is a design.

Crafting a cloak will allow you to set its name, unworn description, worn description, wear emote, remove emote, social emote, and main color. I spent a lot of time coming up with flavorful names for colors and researching color names on the internet. If you're curious, the official internet names for colors are very boring.

The list includes standard clothing colors, gemstone names, and many others that fit the flavor of the game.

Are you someone who loves gradients? I'm very sorry. Boundless gradient colors hurt my eyes and make it very difficult for me to read things, so this is a purely stylistic choice on my part. I may allow gradients or other color options at higher tailoring levels, but for now, I'm keeping things to a single "most noticeable color" of clothing. You can write additional colors in your clothing's description. They just won't appear in that color.

Let's take a look at our cloak now.

I've changed the line that says "It looks like it'll work just fine" to something more appropriate for clothing. Durability and Repairing are on the to-do list.

Character descriptions are dynamic, and clothing will hide the description of body parts it covers. Accessories are special in that they don't cover any body parts, they just add to your character's description.

Fully obscuring your character's description will not make your character unidentifiable. It's a small town, so assume that other characters who know your character can typically pick up on who your character is through social clues. To hide your character's identity, level up Deception and wear a Disguise.

What does a tailoring system have to do with horror? Well, the answer to that is a spoiler! For now, just enjoy making and wearing clothes. You'll find out more as time goes on.

---

EVENTS

Early on in your adventure in Silent Heaven, you'll come across an event board.

Can you tell I was up way too late coding this?

The event board is a place where any character can ICly write an event for all other players to see. Events can be any sort of RP event you want to run. A show, a meet-and-greet, a sparring match, a (not so) secret meeting, a wedding, an attack on the Bobbins Emporium, you name it. Storytellers will try to accommodate NPC support, but you'll want to talk to NPCs directly if you absolutely want them to join in.

---

JOURNALS

Your character has a personal journal for you to log your character's adventures. This allows you to refer back to past events as desired, and it keeps Storytellers updated on your character's experiences in Silent Heaven. Writing in your character's journal also earns you +1 XP per day that you write an entry.

This example title was supposed to be plotting with Clyde. Whoops. If you make a mistake and want to correct it, just add another note. No worries.

Your very first entry could be what happened when your character entered Silent Heaven, along with your character's reaction and feelings about it.

Why have a private journal like this instead of just posting logs? Because Silent Heaven is a town full of secrets. I want everyone to be able to explore IC and discover its mysteries without being spoiled.

The only ones who can view your character's journal are yourself and Storytellers. No other characters, players, or staff may read another's journal entries. If a Storyteller has a regular character they play, the journal system will automatically block them from viewing any entries that mention their character or any group their character is a part of.

You can write a journal entry from anywhere, at any time. However, the information within the journal is OOC and it may not be used IC. Consider it a private thing that your character does subconsciously. They have no recollection of anything written, and they never look back at it. To make publicly-available journal entries or other writings, you'll use the IC Writing system.

For now, type JOURNAL to get started.

Adding a new entry consists of 5 steps:

• Choose storyline
• Add characters
• Add a title
• Describe what happened
• Add any final thoughts (Optional)

Storylines are a way of organizing your character's journal by grouping entries into similar activities or plots. Suppose, for example, you began a rivalry with another character and wanted to organize all your character's journal entries about that rivalry into a separate category. That's what storylines are for.

You'll start with 4 basic storyline options, and you can add more as you wish.

In the example above, the SEQUINS storyline is one created by Bonnie's player. You may remove or re-add storylines as you wish. They're for your personal organization.

From there, you add characters, describe what happened, and optionally give any final OOC thoughts.

Lastly, you're given a chance to review your entry and either save it, cancel, or start over. You'll receive your +1 XP at the end of the day for writing a journal entry.

Happy journaling!

For anyone who's confused, the above entry is an Omori joke.

One last thing!

Storytellers can add entries to your journal.

This can happen when your character was in a scene that involved an NPC, or to deliver information to your character (e.g. the equivalent of +job results). On very rare occasion, your character may get a spooky or cryptic entry to their journal as a way of helping to guide you towards potential RP.

Also, underlined words are clickable / tappable so you don't have to type the thing the game is telling you to type.

---

BUG & TYPO REPORTING

This is something small, but I still think it's cool. You can report bugs and typos...

...and the appropriate staff will receive a notification...

...and best of all, it'll go to a staff channel on Discord for pinning and handling.

---

KNOCKING ON DOORS

This is a funny story. When I was coding doors, I forgot to code the ability to knock on a door.

Someone challenged me to see how fast I could code it.

It took me 17 minutes.

---

That's it for this update!

As always, any comments, questions, or criticism are welcome.

If waiting 2 months for the next update is too long for you, I've begun posting regular updates on the Silent Heaven Discord Community now that it's getting a bit of activity. It's small, but cozy.

I also added a bunch of cute emojis. The town of Silent Heaven may be scary, but the OOC Community isn't. We'd love to have you!

@tinuviel said in Decriminalise Pretty:

we're all pretty

On one game, I created an unattractive character. Based on my sheet alone, I was accused of being a troll. I just didn't want people hitting on my character.

I think the culture a game sets is just as relevant as a character's looks.

@derp I enjoyed Alan Wake for a couple hours, but then it lost me.

***Just some gripes***

Somehow, despite my love for horror novels, I don't think I was the targeted demographic for that game. And that saddens me.