M:Voice Report #5

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Greetings! Welcome to the final report brought to you by your friendly neighborhood Voice Magistrate. This is coming a little earlier than I planned, but we’ve still got some stuff to cover anyway. So, let’s get into it, shall we?

Updates

This was already sort of how things were handled but now more official: languages used on your character sheet can be anything found on Wookieepedia, rather than on our wiki. Our wiki was never meant to be a complete list to begin with, and it would just be one more thing to need to update over time.

The hybrid policy has been updated since my last post. It can only be two species, both must be from the list in the CS reference tool, and you still need to pick a primary species due to how things currently work. Cosmetic elements from the secondary species can be incorporated. The new part is that what can go together is governed by an updated Classification, which is part of the info found on the reference tool. You can only make a hybrid between two species within the same Classification. The only overlap is between the Human and Near-Human Classifications.

Speaking of that, the beta period has ended and the new version of the CS Reference has gone live! It’s got some additions to it that the wiki had and the previous version of the tool either didn’t or slowly got added to it. It looks nice, has some neat features, and is hopefully more user friendly than before.

Feats

Primed I-III has been updated to include Pyrokinesis to the list of abilities that can be with it.

Apex Stalker is a new feat for Stealth, allowing you to erode an opponent’s resolve and instill fear when stalking them while concealed and remaining unseen. This unlocks at the JM tier. The proposal for this came from Tarvitz.

Environmental Camouflage is a new feat that lets you use your Survival skill in place of your Stealth skill. The proposal for this came from Tarvitz.

Poor Man’s Poison is a new feat for the Ichor power that allows you to make potions that may help or harm someone, but cannot do both with one potion. This unlocks at the JM tier.

Mechu-deru I-III has been updated to include being able to use the ability on computer systems now, not just droids. This scales from simple systems, to more sophisticated ones, and finally to advanced systems.

Reverse Engineering is a new feat proposed by Bril. It gives a +1 to Investigation when examining damaged machinery, weapons, droids, and other electronics to determine how they were built, modified, or destroyed. This unlocks at the JM tier.

Force Dyad has been updated to bring it more in line with what we see in the sequel trilogy.

Species

Thisspiasian, Aqualish, Arcona, Bith, Diathim, Gen’Dai, S’kytri, Toydarian, Whiphid, and Theelin have been added as playable species.

A Quick Clarification

There’s always a lot of discussion about our characters, what skills and powers they have, what they’re like as people, all sorts of things. This often includes possessions. I’d like to take a moment to bring up the Loadout Description. This can be a fun thing to utilize if you so choose, but there’s a way to do this. Over at the SA, the Character Sheets 102: Possessions & Loadouts course explains it well, so I’ll borrow that wording:

This section can be used to explain details like how/where weapons are worn or designations required by certain character sheet skills/feats, such as your character’s preferred weapon, bonded creature, etc.

This field is not meant for you to explain the mechanics of how your selected feats or skills/powers work (except for select feats that specifically tell you to use the field, at which point just keep it simple and do what it asks). That gets handled by the tooltips on the sheet and can be found in the Reference Tool.

Back To Basics

I never expected to write any kind of report during my tenure on Voice Staff. But a little over two years into it, I had seen many remands for the same problems that kept cropping up. So I took it upon myself to put something together that would hopefully help people avoid that. Today, we make a return to those same issues.

Personal Details
One of the first fields that comes up is height and weight. Sometimes people will mix up their units of measurement for this. The wizard by default displays metric, but the sheet preview and approved sheet will display both systems. This should be somewhat alleviated due to a recent change where the field in the CS wizard is metric but will display a conversion below it. That said, you should still watch out for any missing or misplaced decimal points, as that has caused issues before. Errors here have comically led to some people with sheets stating their characters are 183 m/600 ft tall.

This is also where your physical description lives. We look for the following things:

• Skin tone, hair color, hair length/style, eye color, build/body type. Distinguishing features are not required anymore, but if your character has any, those should be included (piercings, tattoos, scars, etc).

This field is about what your character looks like and should be static, like looking at a picture. If your character has cybernetics, those should be detailed here. This field should not include details about clothing, armor, or weapons. Those are handled with the possessions system and loadouts. The exceptions to this are things that are cultural or necessary for the species to live (like decorations on a Twi’lek’s lekku, Miraluka blindfolds, Kel Dor breath masks). The only other thing I can think of here is to be careful that you don’t dictate anything that others may think, do, or how they could act/react. Don’t veer away from the physical looks too much. I’ve seen some things that are honestly better suited for an aspect that I had to remand for.

Specialize
Your lore, language, and knowledge slots go here. Lore and languages only pop up if you have points in Lore and Linguistics. Otherwise your choices are handled by the various unlockable knowledge slots, which can be used for either one. Lore/Knowledge slots are not meant to be a way to get around not having a skill. Skills dictate what you can actually do. If you’ve got some topic relating to medicine but no points in the skill itself, you’re not going to be able to do the thing. The same is true for anything that may be touched on by a feat, which. Generally speaking, we try to be open to these topics and you can be either pretty broad or specific with them. However, it becomes a problem when trying to incorporate multiple things under one topic that don’t really go together. Admittedly, this does not happen very often, and I can maybe count on one hand the number of instances where it’s been an issue. Just be careful. As for languages, I mentioned this at the beginning, but I’ll say it again - they need to be found on Wookieepedia. We’ve also determined that if it’s something from a DB planet, that would be allowed as well.

Also worth mentioning that one of the changes made a while back is that the “Lore and History of the Brotherhood” topic is now something that you can choose to utilize or not via a checkbox.

Aspects
Right off the bat, some key things to keep in mind here are that the names for custom aspects must be in title case, similar to a book - details are on the Aspects wiki page - and contain no special characters. The final rendered aspect must also be 150 words or less. These need to be about your character. If you’re giving some kind of benefit to your character, you’ll need some kind of offsetting drawback, or “balance”. The bigger the benefit, the bigger the benefit Voice Staff will look for. Similar to the physical description field, dictating language is not allowed here either. The difference can be between “People like the character” (bad) versus “Some people may like the character” (good). One allows for differing reactions, the other does not. Another example would be like "this makes people listen to him" or something, a tweak of "people often listen to him" or "may listen to him”.

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Keep in mind that Voice Staff is a team of people and they may have differing opinions on things. So if you’ve gotten a remand for something from one person but not another, or the other way around, things happen. Sheets often get discussed, especially when there’s uncertainty. There have been times where I’ve changed my opinion based on something another staff member has said, and there have been times where I’ve changed their mind. But we’re also people and can make mistakes. Sometimes things slip through despite our best efforts. And there can sometimes be different time zones or sleep schedules. If you submit a sheet, please try to be patient. It is likely being discussed or waiting for another set of eyes for a second opinion on something.

And as always, prior approval does not guarantee current or future approval.

Another important thing is that policies change over time, which can sometimes be especially true when there has been a changeover like Idris moving up to DGM and Wolfe becoming Voice. Please pay attention to any reports or news posts that come out or changes to the wiki.

If you want to look something up, the Character Sheet Reference is always your best bet. If you need help, aren’t sure of something, have questions, whatever, write it up and send it to the staff email ([Log in to view e-mail addresses]). It’s the best way to reach Voice Staff and not have things get lost in a chat, people won’t have to hunt down pings, and you’ll get an official answer on what you’re after. I know Wolfe has some great things in store for the future and I can’t wait to see them go live. I hope you’ll enjoy them.

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This Is My Goodbye

As I mentioned before, this is my final report. Writing this is bittersweet and I hope you’ll indulge me for a moment. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time in this position and wouldn’t trade that for anything, I’ve gotten to learn from and work alongside some great people over the years. That’s right, years. I can hardly believe it because sometimes it feels like only recently that Idris sent me a message about my application. It went from no open slots for me to maybe there was a chance, and then I was in, thanks to some administrative shuffling. I went from disappointed but okay to hopeful to full-on party mode. You see, it had been a dream of mine to be on Voice Staff ever since Wally was Voice. After the first time I applied, I kept applying at every opportunity. In the end, that dream became a reality, except instead of Wally, I got Idris as my boss, which was fine with me. It meant that I was once again his problem (he was my CON previously). I quickly got to work learning policies, how things worked, what to look out for on character sheets, and pushing the buttons.

And there have been lots of character sheets that came in. Just so many. I think there were somewhere north of 2000 that I’ve handled on my own and countless others I’ve helped review. There were at least like 27 species proposals reviewed (most of which were approved, by the way). About 20 or so Discipline feat proposals, including one insane batch of 9 in one email sent by Anubis. A bunch of other, regular feat proposals came in as well. Various reviews of policy and skills/powers/feats. I helped to review all of the club-level NPCs once our many changes broke sheets and rendered them invalid and made them valid again. Then again about a year later when I tackled it myself after more changes. And of course there have been a few reports like this one detailing things I felt people should know, and trying to stay on top of the linked feats on the skill and power wiki pages (RIP, that now fully lives on the Reference Tool, which is for the best). And a lot of other stuff as well.

Overall, it has been such an incredible journey to learn more and help others, which was always my goal from the start. And I truly hope that I have been a help to you all and that as I leave the Voice Staff, I have left things, and you all, in a better place than when I started. I hope the work I've done and how I've gone about it speaks for itself. I hope that I helped make it easier to understand what you need to do to get your sheet the green button (yes, the actual Approve button is green), understand the system, and clear up some issues that seem to come up again and again.

I’d like to thank Wally for first giving me confidence in writing for the club and getting me interested in Voice Staff. Idris for taking a chance on me and showing me the ropes with help from Atty. It was great getting to work with Zentru’la again (my former PCON). Tasha and Qormus, too. Appius came as a welcome addition after the ACC revamp was done and Idris turned over Combat Master to him. Then Tisto and Jenni. Wolfe, thank you for keeping me on as long as you did. Vincent, you had some big shoes to fill after Appy, but you're doing great. I have no doubt that you'll make the position your own and I can't wait to see where you take things. I’m so glad I got to work with you all, hear your thoughts on things, and learn a lot along the way. And thank you to everyone else for putting your trust in me over these last nearly 5 years when it comes to Voice Staff duties and character sheet information (and for giving me some of your time with this final section). This has been, without a doubt, my favorite job I’ve had in the club.

Now, I’m not going to just disappear. I may not be a Magistrate anymore after this month, but, to quote Kobe Bryant, the job’s not finished. I’ll still be around and willing to offer help to those that need it, whatever that may be. That part won’t change; it’s just who I am.

That’s all, folks. It’s been fun and I’ll see you around.

Your friendly neighborhood Voice Magistrate,

-- Reiden