Welcome to my tenth report as your Voice. Please take the time to read Combat Master Mav's news post below concerning our character sheets. Mav/Shadow/Wally and the rest of the Combat Master and Voice team did an exceptional amount of work on this project. It is not often that a large group of members come together, develop a new system, see it through development, and release it to the club. We all owe a debt of gratitude to those who worked on the project and I encourage you to thank them if you have a chance to catch them on mIRC. I think we can all count on Muz and Raken rewarding them much more formally in the near future. I'd also be remiss if I did not mention Jam3z and Arion's outstanding work on both the ACC and Character Sheets. I can't ever remember a time in our history where the coders were outstripping the content developers on such a regular basis. Jam3z and Arion are beasts.

Alright, this week's report will be a scattering of Voice related topics. I plan on covering:

• Character Sheets
• The Dark Crusade Fiction Event
• The Dark Crusade Battle Plan
• The Dark Crusade Multimedia Event
• Fiction Update
• Nova Library Update
• Miscellaneous: Make your Gmail Background Awesome
• Miscellaneous: Suggested Star Wars Reading
• The Voice's Word (Stolen from Jac)

Character Sheets

1. The Character Sheets have been released! One of the new features on our character sheets is the ability to customize aspects that define your character. Several of you are going to take painstaking care to craft your entries and submit them, only to have them denied. Please be patient with this process. We are going to have a learning curve and you may be required to tweak something on your aspects to ensure they fit within our new system. I'd ask everyone to remain calm and work with the Combat Master and our Voice team to solve the problem. Mav, Wally, and myself will be approving and denying the initial waves of character sheets. We will work with you to get yours on the website and as awesome as possible. Use the Guide: Character Sheet Guide: Express Guide.

2. Mav has set up a google document for your feedback on the character sheets. This is your opportunity during the Beta phase to identify mistakes, suggest improvements, and help us clean the system up. Use the Feedback Form: Google Document of Character Sheet Awesomeness

3. The new character sheets should provide everyone with a slight glimpse at where we are headed concerning the ACC. Gone are the days of row after row of impersonal force powers. We have replaced the old systems in favor of one that focuses on why your character is unique and what your character's story is about. The ACC is shaping up nicely and hopefully we see it as a Dark Crusade event in the very near future.

lol....bad formatting from last report removed.

Dark Crusade: Fiction Event

1. Character sheets are not required for this round's fiction! I repeat, you do not have to incorporate your character sheet in any way, shape, or form.

2. Solari designed the event this round and will be grading it. Please talk to him if you have any major questions about the rules.

Dark Crusade: Battle Plan

1. Raken, Val, and I co-developed the battle plan for this round of the Dark Crusade. We liked the idea of tying it into the Official Fiction and the idea of shifting our focus from offense to defense. Yes, there are some mightily artificial restrictions on your forces. We have faith you can get after it.

2. The three of us will also be grading the event and I wanted to publish my perspective as 1/3 of your judge panel. The Battle Plan was published in a very real world military format as an easy way for us to deliver you the variables we felt you needed to craft your plan. I do not expect you to regurgitate that format and attempt to write a five paragraph operations order in accordance with US doctrine. Clans and Houses should focus on creative plans that are well displayed, easy to understand, and unique at solving the problem of defending with limited resources. Please avoid using terms, graphics, and ideas that are foreign to you and the Star Wars universe. Take a look at the Nova winners from past events and use them to help generate ideas (link below).

Dark Crusade: Multimedia

1. Shikyo and I developed this event and will be co-grading it. Please follow the rules and keep in mind that the winners have the very real chance of becoming a part of the official DB universe. Make your entries awesome.
   

Fiction Update

The Fiction Update was published below on the news page. Unfortunately, I'm a knucklehead and misinterpreted this round's launch date and submitted it a day late. Ugh. Major Ugh. Regardless, we have some hidden trinkets for the future in the fiction as well as the feature of several members who have been major players in the Dark Crusade. I'd like to give a special shout out to Jac and Halc who had their fiction incorporated into the official story. As always, if I'm going to use your work, I'll contact you before hand and let you know.

Nova Library

The Nova Library remains a great source of material for our writers to review. I have added a Battle Plan folder with three entries (Tal, CSP, and Arcona). We will continue to use the Nova library and fill it up with our winners.

Miscellaneous: Google Mail Background

This has absolutely nothing to do with my duties as the Voice, but as one of our resident geeks, I feel the need to share. The updated google mail allows for you to personalize your background image. You can do this by:

1. Go to settings and select Themes.
   
2. Go to Custom Themes and select light or dark (your preference).
   
3. Select change your background image (directly below the light and dark custom themes option).
4. Enter your new image (Star Wars, duh).
   

And bam, you get results that look like: Sweet Darth Pravus Email Background

Suggested Star Wars Reading

One of our awesome members recently suggested that we highlight several Star Wars Books that may be beneficial for members of the Dark Brotherhood. The following is my shortlist for you to become a better Sith Dork:

1. Book of the Sith: I have reviewed this one before and will continue to push it to our members. It is a neat little book with a lot of reference material within. Try to find a copy that doesn't come with the overly expensive and awkward Sith Holocron.

2. The Dark Side Sourcebook: This book is starting to become a little dated, but it still has plenty of information to help you and your character grow. We recently used it to help flesh out the Inquisitor Discipline on the character sheets.

3. Darth Plagueis: I found this to be one of the better "Darth" books. It provided an exceptional amount of information about the young Palpatine, the philosophies behind Plagueis, and the different viewpoints of the Dark Side. You can find a paperback for $7 US.

The Voice's Word (:p)

Jac used to finish off his GM reports with something called the word. As one of Jac's DJB proteges, I've always felt the need to steal from him liberally in the execution of how I do things here. One of those things was by ending my reports with a little observation of the trends going around in our club. The problem with commenting on the trends is when you get caught up in them or take them to the extreme. A few months ago I decided to drink about a gallon of whiskey and come on mIRC and pick a few fights with old friends. I was pretty stupid that night and spend the next several months apologizing and attempting to repair some bridges. Stupid right?

Part of that stupidity was falling into the trap of taking things in the DJB too seriously. You see it all the time here. A shining example is the rash of garbage we give the MAA whenever they deny a medal or promotion request. "OMG, you biased pieces of shit, how could you ever deny my carefully crafted and exceptional requestion!!!!1elevinty1!" Sometimes we even go after things that we had a chance to work on, but failed to take initiative "OMG, these character sheets are the worst thing ever, who are the idiots that came up with this idea!!!!" Other times we go after those people who are obviously out to get us. "OMG, my independent house was the greatest thing ever that only lasted three months, you are so biased!"

So, here is my biased piece of advice as an aging member of this club. Relax. This is a Star Wars club. I'm a pretend Dark Lord of the Sith. People are here to have fun. All of us need to step away from time to time and reevaluate our behavior and responses to issues that are not all that important. We also need to remember that when we step into the Thunder-Dome of Idiocy (TDoI) there are going to be consequences. Sarin gets booted from a channel for three months, Sarin's promotion requests might get a little extra scrutiny going forward, Sarin's character sheet might not get approved immediately, and Sarin might not get an opportunity to create something cool again.

Play nice friends or step away for a vacation. Don't come here and be a miserable human being. It sucks when you do.

Conclusion

Alright, that is it for this week (yeah, week, I'll try to report as much as humanly possible). I left out a few things (Slags and Arden are working on updating and cleaning up Okemi/Tiamat/Ferran) and the Military Update (Stalled until after this round of the Crusades), but we are moving in the right direction.

Thanks for letting me play fake Sith guy with you.

Prav