Good n'you? Oh not so bad.

See the Envoy Corps mission log here.

Exarch Report 09

Welcome to my 9th report as Exarch. It’s been a while since my last one, but there was this whole “War” thing and honestly, I’ve been a bit busy planning my wedding that happens in 13 days apparently. No pressure.

I will try to get back into a monthly cadence with these reports, but I will let everyone know that I’m going to be not hyper-available in the month of November. But come December, I hope to hunker down and get a lot of things done as we head into the long winter.

Table of Contents

• Development
• Helpful Resources
• Monthly Statistics
• Closing

Development

For this section, I wanted to highlight some of the data tracking I’ll be doing as Exarch to monitor the progression of RP activity in the DB. It’s not much, as I’m doing most of this manually and by hand, but it should give us insight into health and progression as time passes.

Voice/Live RP

Yes, there is a proposal and a plan. We are now just working on logistics, and the ability to make it work. This includes figuring out how to record, submit, and review “logs” of a live/voice session, what additional tools are required to be added to our discord, and how to de-couple word count from Voice RP activities. The Envoy Mark does represent this, but it’s going to take time to figure out how to do it right.

We know this is a potential recruiting vector for new members, as well as exciting for existing members. If you believe in this initiative, make sure to let me know in the comments that you’re excited for the possibility.

Wally’s Guide to Running an RP

The name is a work in progress, but I’m currently working on a Shadow Academy exam that will be a general guide to running a Brotherhood RP activity. This should not be seen in any way as a definitive “this is what you must do” and like the Pirate Code is more of a guideline based on what I’ve seen work and create fun, successful RP experiences. It’s a work in progress, and I’ll be sharing what I end up doing with a few DMs I’ve seen step up and get their hands into the possibilities. This is something I work on in my spare time which is getting more limited these days.

Statistics

Thanks to Erinyes for building a database reporting/export tool for me the RP society, I no longer have to compile data manually from email alerts. Hooray! Thanks to this report, I have made some charts and have some fun numbers to share. If you don’t care about pretty data visualization, you can keep scrolling and read the summary. If you do, keep reading below!

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Summary:

• 1.436,667 words of RP fiction (since launch)
• 120 Completed RP Activities
• 125 members have participated in at least 1 RP (Unique Participants)
• 35 members have run at least 1 RP

The big take away here is that the bulk of our members are falling in the columns in red: Ranks 2-4. My hope is that, in a few months from now, we'll see more of that "heard" of members making progress towards ranks 5-7. That means more RPs are being run, and members are taking part in more of them. Other than that, these numbers are fantastic, as this data set is tracked from the launch of the RP society to the time of this report.

Exarch Commentary

I’m liking everything that I’m seeing. We’ve gone far beyond even my most optimistic hopes. We have an active community with daily communication threads. We are getting to know our cadre’s of characters with different series of character questions (thank you Jenni for knocking this out of the park). We are seeing more people trying out RP for the first time,

Let’s keep it going.

The Exarch and by extension their Staff is doing our best to lead that charge. TuQ and Atty are both running large social RPs that are scoped DB-wide. Hector is heading up his second Envoy Corps small-team adventure that pulled members DB-wide. And Appius is running the second part of his Immortal Sith series. I also had fun running the semi-serious Sceptre of Tu’torial campaign I spun up to show the old guard (Sarin and Muz) an example of how small-team adventure RPs could work.

All of these RPs are meant to be examples of how members can run unique and fun RPs. In reality, our goal is to get more members to become confident and encouraged to run their own RPs. We have a very distinct divide in “Players” vs “Organizers”, which is not new for the DB, but something I’m hoping we’ll keep getting better and better at!

Don’t be afraid to experiment. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Myself, my team, and the RP community are here to help. We’ve built the framework, and now it’s going to be up to all of you, leaders and regular members alike, to keep the momentum going.

Thank you to everyone who’s bought in, stepped out of their comfort zone, and given RP a shot. It means a lot to me, and I know that it will continue to empower our club's activity and drive more engagement between our members.

Helpful Resources

You can find everything you need in Roleplaying Handbook Wiki. This page hosts links to Exarch Resources such as maps, rulesets, system types, and information about Role Playing activities the Brotherhood.

Some useful pages to bookmark:

• Exarch Resources Google Drive Folder
• Envoy Corps Wiki
• Envoy Corps Trophy Rank Rewards Table
• Envoy Corps Items
• Envoy Corps CS Feats
• Character Sheet Reference Tool
• Roleplaying Handbook

Closing

That’s all for now.

-W