Good Morning Fine Folk of the World
Welcome to your weekly Monday Message which we hope finds you in fine form, fetlock and fettle and that you had the best week that you could wherever you were and whatever you were doing! As ever: Our continued thanks to all emergency services and key workers for everything that you have done and continue to do – When we kick off the online and live action games through May and June we will be allocating slots and free games to the people that have been out there through this pandemic helping us all to survive. More on that later.
Over at the OmniRoC we have continued to be busy in a behind the scenes kind of way getting ourselves geared up for phase two of the year and all the changes that our community is going through, and “Cor Blimey Guvna” is there a lot of them. We had our big quarterly Core Team Virtual Meet Up at the weekend followed up by the Patreon meeting and a lot came out of it:
Rising of Chaos
Heads up if you are Front Line Emergency Services, we will be offering free and priority participation in our games as frequently as we can. Every game will have two participation slots for Playing or DPCing that you can request for free. If you want to get involved, e-mail us at info@risingofchaos.com and let us know who you are and what you do we’ll add you to the list. Obviously with only two slots you will have to take turns and all that but it’s what we’ve got 🙂
In the next carriage we have news that we will be making the final updates to the rules based on the online playtest and I am sure everyone will be pleased to hear that we are stripping out even more unnecessary skills and streamlining the wound cards and backlash cards even further. Just to showcase what that means for those of you that are avid fans of the new Omnideck mechanics…
As your character grows they will suffer wounds and be exposed to unique magical events which are now properly reflected in your Wound and Backlash Cards. Specific, recurring injuries and powerful backlash that draws benefit and trepidation when you are casting your transcendental magics are all reflected in your deck. There is so much more story in these mechanics now that, as our Patreons commented, RoC probably is presenting a game very much unlike any other at this time and that made us all very happy to hear.
This week we will be releasing the last of the Key Royal Basin background onto the website and launching the new plot info and updates – There has been a lot of activity but we’ll leave those for exciting through the week updates.
Community
Where to start?
First off – The Discord Channel has been switched over to a proper community and we’ll be revamping that this week, it will be fully nitro’d and start to support a lot more projects than we have previously achieved. To that end at the start of May we will be asking for a pound donation per month via Patreon to be a part of the larger Discord community. Here’s a taster of where we are going with that:
Storytelling – We have one story teller already ensconced behind on the server and we’re looking for more to join in if people are looking for an already buys platform to throw their tales out there.
The Legends of LARP Series – A few months ago we decided to start recording the experiences of LARPers through the ages. With rising popularity a lot of the history of LARP is not hard recorded anywhere and we thought we’d start at the beginning. So we have assembled a team of first gen larpers from here in the UK for the first season of Legends of LARP and we’ll be running episodes with interviews, old stories and the like all the way through the eighties and early nineties.
These will be available live via the Discord and streamed on our Twitch channel and then on our Youtube channel and via podcast. All things being equal, the Legends will be available for a Season Finale live, at a venue somewhere with games and other activities and chance for everyone to be involved. We’ll be posting up dates and topics as soon as we have managed to successfully corral these old timers but just to be sure we know who we are talking about it’s: Mark Cordory, Mark Roberts, Alex Armstrong, Phil Gregory, Dave Oliver and Simon Medlock. There may be some extra special guests along with them but we’ll leave them as mysteries for the moment.
Armstrong Armouries – On that note the esteemed Alex Armstrong will be jumping into his own channel on the Server each week to review kit, offer advice and answer questions based on his long experience and many contacts throughout the industry. We’ll be ordering kit for unboxing and demonstrating first hand lead and delivery times, delivery fees and weapon prices as well as quality and aesthetic. Kit will also receive vigorous testing through the RoC system and be reviewed again after months in the field. Kit that fulfils quality check and isn’t taken on event will be sent out to randomly selected Patreons each quarter in a big thank you for taking part.
Games are still open to sign up for and all of the links for those sign ups can be found here; we’ll be streaming Cthulhu, Kids on Brooms, DnD and a few others in the weeks to come if folks are interested in doing a watch. Alongside that May will see the return of our Board Game League with top prize being something nice and board game related for around £20 – If you want to see what we did last time our Formula De league is here. A Mansions of Madness Campaign is on the cards and sign ups for those will be available next week through our Games officer.
From May we will also kick off our awareness panels and to start with we will be looking at the journeys of the Trans community in the system around us with an aim to look at the issues that faced them, how people can look for help, how people can support the community and a talk about, as I say, their journey. Beyond this we would want to be addressing racial and cultural issues as well as all other aspects of the LGBTQ+ community, sexism and basically everything! Dates for these will also be released in May through our Awareness officer.
Sustainability – Our sustainability project is something that we haven’t really touched on but definitely where we want to be as a system and as a community. We have talked a lot about the gaming side of things however day to day life is something that we can also affect and refers to people as much as the environment. To that end we will be bringing in channels on Discord that allow us to give things away for free and upcycling is also important and that could be anything and allow us to introduce programs that help everyone out.
These will range across basic goods (Chairs/Furniture/Cars) through Food with a portion of the Patreon money set aside for that and Garden Waste for folks that live near each other to exchange compostables for things like carrots and flowers. Upcycling is also a big thing for us; if you have anything that you don’t want: Bits of wood, polystyrene and other such bits that are difficult to recycle someone may want it and we can probably arrange movement of such things. Finally ecobricking is at its basis the best form of moving on stuff that you don’t need and getting it somewhere that it can be of use and we are on board with facilitating that.
Finally (yes finally) we are starting our reskilling program, initially directed at the people that are supporting this community as we get them into programs for things like First Aid and Mental Health First Aid but eventually we’ll try and spread what we can into the wider community and get people involved and onto the courses that they need to achieve what they want to do.
So Yeah
It was a busy weekend.
With all that said: The Discord offices are open all day so if you want to come in Monday to Friday just for company or to chat LARPing, board games and the like we’re in voice most of the time. The RPG’s, video games and so forth are on a lot: We are here to give you some level of company if you need it.
Remember if you want to get involved, tell stories, play games, run games or whatever we are continuing to build that community and you can find us here and that goes doubly for anything you need for the LARP or just for company on long locked in days. Equally If you want to join us on Patreon we are here.
As ever folks: If you need us, for any reason, let us know and if we can help in any way we will, whatever you are up against.
In the meantime have a Foxes and Crows week people, we look forward to seeing a whole bunch of you at the online game and bumping into even more of you, online, between now and then.
Take Care of Each Other
Much Love,
Stephen and the RoC Core Team x
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