Welcome to my first report of 2019.

With some of the new site features taking affect, I’m going to consolidate my previous report / updates into just monthly reports. I feel like after all the hard work that’s gone into the past few years, the need for mid-month updates has decreased. If something super important comes up, or a major systems change, I will of course let all of you know.

Updates

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Atra resigns as Combat Master

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Atra has, sadly, decided it’s time to pass the mantle of Combat Master onto someone else. I have personally worked with Atra as a fellow Judge, Combat Master, and as Voice. He has been my rock over the past three years, a source of consistent competence, diligence, and efficiency in every task entrusted to him. Having him work alongside me has allowed me to achieve more than I ever imagined, and empowered me to focus on new challenges based on the trust that he could handle everything else that I had been trying to leave behind.

His shoes will be hard to fill, but I am looking forward to seeing who Mav and Vyr select as the next Combat Master. The role will certainly look different, but I am nonetheless looking forward to working with them to see how we can continue to grow the ACC platform.

Thank you again, Atra.

Combat Master Applications are currently open. See Mav’s newspost for more information here.

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RoS: Meridian has been completed!

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Congratulations to heroes: Qyreia, Alaris, and Bale on their efforts!

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The Deputy Grand Master has released the Epilogue for RoS: Meridian!

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Check it out here! Some cool features for the top scorers of the RoS, as well as a teaser for an upcoming new faction! Did you spot it?

(Please support the official release.)

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The next fictional arc is currently being developed by the Brotherhood Story Group™

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The group consists of the Voice, DGM, GM, Regent, Atra, and James (because he keeps us in check). We will update you when we have more information on the next arc!

RoS Results

RoS: Meridian featured 3 fiction competitions that garnered 41, 31, and 30 entries respectively. Please remember to fill out the RoS Survey if you haven’t already, as we’re still compiling feedback from that to be used towards future events.

Congratulations to everyone who placed in the top 10 of each event.

Fiction I

1. Kul’tak Drol
2. Bale Andros
3. Qyreia Arronen
4. Satsi Tameike Arconae
5. Alaris Jinn
6. Ka Tarvitz
7. Tali Sroka
8. Creon Saldean
9. Ronovi Tavisaen
10. Laren Uscot

Fiction II

1. Qyreia Arronen
2. Kul’tak Drol
3. Alaris Jinn
4. Reiden Palpatine Karr
5. Declan Roark
6. Satsi Tameike Arconae
7. Tali Sroka
8. Ka Tarvitz
9. Ronovi Tavisaen
10. Len Iode

Fiction III

1. Qyreia Arronen
2. Tali Sroka
3. Muz Ashen Keibatsu
4. Reiden Palpatine Karr
5. Kordath Bleu
6. Len Iode
7. Ka Tarvitz
8. Kojiro Keibatsu
9. Ronovi Tavisaen
10. Kairn’tel Stahoes

Great work from everyone who participated and got an entry in. I definitely saw some growth from some, some surprises from others, and a continued level of quality from others going back to the last Great Jedi War. There are both familiar and unfamiliar names on this chart, which hopefully encourages all of you to try your best (and do everything you can) and to keep writing and competing in future competitions.

Knowledge Is Power I/II

For the second time, the Headmaster and myself teamed up to bring you a multiple-choice reading-comprehension based trivia on the fiction updates relating to the event. We saw 57 entries and 46 respectively.

The goal with these competitions was to encourage and reward members that were paying attention to what was going on in the main storyline fictions. Did you feel that these competitions were helpful, or fun? Let me know, as I hope to continue to co-run these in future events.

Voice’s Fiction Selects

To start, I’m going to highlight Kul’s Fiction I entry from RoS: Meridian. I believe it is a great example of how quality is often better than quantity, as there were indeed longer word-count entries submitted. Kul’s storytelling was sharp, concise, and landed its punchline-like resolution with grace. Both Bubba and myself were impressed with the entry, and I think it’s a great example of things that I personally look for in Novae-level entries.

You can read his entry here.

Going forward, I will be keeping all Voice’s Fiction Selects here in this folder. You will be able to find this under the Fiction Resources article on the wiki.

Competitions

To start off 2019, I’m pleased to plug my first [Voice’s Workshop] Fiction Competition: Dialogue I. The goal of the competition is to give members a fun way of practicing how to write more engaging dialogue for their fiction entries, Run-On’s, or ACC matches. Each entry will receive personal feedback from myself as the grader, while also offering tips or suggestions of improvement. This is also a great opportunity to learn more about another character in the club!

• [Voice Workshop] Dialogue I

Projects

• I plan to continue to work with the rest of the DC to support the growth and expansion of the Dark Council faction page. This includes building and developing website and wikipedia pages with content to support the Dark Council’s fictional forces, as well as the Societies' fictional roles within the Brotherhood.

• The Voice Staff will continue to help me evaluate and revise Voice Office policies and assist with content growth for the Brotherhood.

• I will be focusing more on running and grading fiction competitions from the Voice level for members. I am comfortable with where the Character Sheet system currently rests, and will make updates only where we see a major need to address issues, or to add additional content like extra Feats or more pre-written Aspects.

• I still maintain hope for my concept of a leaderboard for the Fiction Society. This is still very much in the conceptual stage, and has not passed anything beyond a “Research and Development” tag. I won’t do anything without a full set of data to help inform my gut feelings. In the end, it will ultimately fall on the decision of the Grand Master if I get to go ahead with my ideas, so don’t worry if this is something that has you concerned. Nothing that I create is done on impulse or whim.

#Ask The Voice

Julie asks: Who does take care of the story then? GM? Multiple DC peeps?

This is something I’ve tried to clear up a few times, so I’ll share my answer here.

The GM dictates the story progression of the Dark Brotherhood's macro (club wide) storyline. Writing said macro storyline is up for the GM to decide. Previously it's been handled as a mixture between GM themselves (Sarin), DGM (Mav/Vyr) and Voice (Sarin-Mav-Ev-Wally) and Atra has helped as well.

So, it depends. Prior to the RoS, Mav gave me bullet points. I took those and spun up 3 fictions (with help from Evant). For the last GJW, Sarin gave direction, I wrote, waited for feedback, then rewrote, then eventually would get an approval.

To help with this process, we’ve created what we are calling the DB Story Group. This group is responsible for keeping consistent with our fictional timeline, updates, and strategies, and are the arbiters of what we consider Dark Brotherhood Canon. It also keeps Howie safe from our Krathy discussions.

Kelly asks: From a fiction perspective, what would you the state of the club is?(to clarify I mean fiction related stuff, not the state of the club as it pertains to macro and micro plots)

I don’t have as much data as I’d like, but I do have a good sense of where I feel we are at as a club in terms of fiction competitions. Because of the elongated period of time the Brotherhood had with what was often perceived as force-fed options, we let members carry the weight of non-Vendetta fiction competitions the last two years I’ve been in office.

What I found in observing these competitions was that members were often begging people to enter their competitions, often with the lines “free crescents up for grab.” This is not something I want to be the norm for fiction competitions. My approach to this will be to run consistent top-level (Voice) competitions month to month to provide opportunity for (I hope) higher participation numbers in competitions.

Looking closer, I also noticed that since we were not heavily policing competitions, some of the prompts were getting to be a bit...ridiculous. While I’m happy to have slice of life and some more fun-oriented prompts going forward, I’m going to have my staff be a bit more attentive to prompts.

To ask questions and talk more about your characters and the fictional universe of the Brotherhood, join us in [DB Fiction Chat on Telegram - Log in to view join link].

That’s all I have for now. I picked up the new(ish) Thrawn: Alliance book by Timothy Zahn. As with any of Zahn’s writing, I think he is still the best at worldbuilding within Star Wars, and now that he’s working for new canon material I’m confident more things from Legends will sneak their way back in. I try to keep as up to date with new material, but if you see something cool you’ve read in new canon material, don’t be afraid to reach out. My inbox is still the best way to reach me: [Log in to view e-mail addresses]

Thank you,