City of Arabel WiP

Prof. Misclick

Greetings one and all!

Let me begin by saying sorry. It's been a tough year for our beloved City of Arabel. The DM team has been transitory and for a variety of reasons, we've been unable to maintain the setting, implement the new content, and have a steady presence IG.

We acknowledge that there have been some situations and decisions made that were controversial, and perhaps we'd have dealt with some differently in hindsight. What's done is done and we are looking to move forward. The strength of CoA has always been it's community, something this past year we've seen diminished. Some have moved on from gaming, some have moved elsewhere, some have been asked to leave. With this in mind, we have decided to give those who have been removed from that community a second chance with a Blanket Unbanning and a new clean slate for a New CoA Era. We hope that those who have left will give us a second chance as well.

To facilitate a CoA revival we are doing a few things.

We've created a new DM position called Storyteller. These Storytellers were drawn from the player base for their ability to, well, tell great stories with their PCs. We're empowering them now with DM tools to breath life and FUN into the server. They'll be running plots, spicing quests, helping players tell their story without having to worry about the admin/scripting/policy type stuff. Stay tuned for announcements from them.
We've also created an Admin DM position. These are the current DMs who will carry on with the overall running of the server and support the Storytellers with their efforts and bringing the Fun.
Over the coming week(s) Puffy and PuffHub are going through all the messed up scripts to see what can be salvaged/scraped/redone etc.
We want to make it fun for those times for when you find yourself alone by selectively modifying some quests to make them solo-able.
We've restarted the v6 discussion (Setting, Timeline, Stories, Areas, NPCs, Quests etc.) so please send any suggestions and ideas our way. If you've been thinking about a return or just popping by, come say hi.
And finally, with the announcement of our New Storyteller DMs will come the return of the ever beloved App-less Week. If you've had a concept in the back of your mind for a while, bring it to life now and let it loose in the stories our new DMs are going to spin.

The CoA DM Team

Prof. Misclick

Hello again,

So the elephant in the room: "What is going on with CoA?"

The short answer is a lot. The team has been working very hard behind the scenes and we can only do so much.

As many of you already know there is a v6 under construction. When EE first revealed there was great excitement from everyone. When the release date came up so quickly, we were not ready, simple as that. Some "Best decisions based on available information were made"

We rushed the launch and just jammed our 16 year old server into EE
We accepted that many of the functional quality of life things we love about CoA might not work and we'd be able to fix them
We implemented the new level range without having the time needed to thoroughly adjust many of the encounter and loot tables.
We overestimated our ability and/or underestimated the massive amount of work that would be needed to make the transition.

The reality going forward

We are working on a clean module for v6, a time consuming process as each script is being tested, revised, scrapped and/or rewritten
We are developing a whole new set of quests. Some of the old favorites may be reworked but expect a lot of new content.
v5 is in maintenance mode until V6 arrives. With limited (and volunteer) resources it's ~~hard~~ impossible to keep that many plates spinning in the air at once.
We will be dealing with major bug fixes, DM assistance, IG plots and limited quest tweaking but no sweeping changes as we concentrate on v6.
We've put out a call for any who would like to help us with Building or Storytelling but to add, if there is a specific way you think you could help with either v5, the transition or the new v6, please pm an Admin.

Lastly, we hope that you will continue to play during this transition. The struggles that we deal with in v5 will make v6 better. Thanks in advance for your continued support and patience.

Happy Gaming everyone!

The CoA DM Team