Hello everyone and welcome to another Voice Report. Having been inspired by the BeardedOne’s recent Herald Report. Zen and I have gone over the majority of Voice-related policies for a refresh on all of them. There have been a lot of patchwork edits over the years on these, and they were definitely in need of some TLC to bring them up to the mark.

While the majority of these changes are clean-up and standardization there are a handful of key edits I will highlight and explain below.

Cluster of Ice Policies

The bulk of the edits on the Cluster of Ice Policies have had to deal with the addition of the RP system, and how it in turn changed the “run-on” type of competitions. None of these would be “new” policy, merely ensuring consistency in how these are now rewarded compared to the older system.

That is to say, like all things awarding CI, it comes down to 1 per 500 words.

Voice Competition Policies

There are several changes within the Voice Competition Policies to be aware of.

First up is the clear prompt section. This is mainly pulling out the “prohibited” open-ended prompt line and giving it the proactive focus it needs. Functionally nothing has changed here as we’ve been remanding comps for not having a clear prompt for a long while now.

Clear Prompt - All fiction competitions need a specific prompt for members to work off of. This ensures a similar base from which all submissions can be compared. The prompt should be clear and well-defined. You are also allowed to have a selection of prompts in a competition for the participants to pick which they would most like to pursue and write. You should not have an ''open prompt'' of “just write whatever you want”.

Next is some additional clarification in assuring that a piece of the Cluster of Ice policy is remembered in fiction-type competitions as well. All Clusters of Ice should be awarded for things that relate to the club, the SW universe, and our CS system.

Club Related Prompt - For a fiction competition to award Clusters of Ice, they must have an obvious and valid connection to the Club’s universe and characters or the greater Star Wars universe. This means that if you want a competition that is set in an “alternative universe” it still should be clear that participants write as ''their'' DJB Characters (For example “Write your character on present-day earth” or “Write your character but a different club order”). Prompts that are completely unrelated to the club, Star Wars, and our characters should not be used (For example “Write about being Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon”).

Beyond these, we have removed the prohibited item of not being allowed to specify formatting, fonts, and sizes. This doesn’t mean you get free reign to come up with crazy requirements. We have decided to allow specifying formats for those members who might have issues reading in specific fonts or sizes or colors. You can specify on the competitions you run that all submissions be in an easier-to-read form, however, that may be defined for you. Excessive restrictions however may still be kicked back by the Voice Staff, so in general, only do this if you have a good reason to, and don’t be a dick.

NPC Policies

Language within the NPC Character Sheet Policies has been updated to better reflect that character NPCs are in general Alternative characters.

The most important change in these policies is relevant to all unit leaders specifically. We have removed many of the requirements for requesting Clan NPCs. They now are:

Include the Name, Order, Rank, and Gender of the character.

These components are set in the Voice admin side of creating a clan NPC for your use.

Relevance to the Clan plot and what role they will play in competitions and interactions with members.

New Species Policies

The majority of changes in the New Species Policies had to deal with ensuring all references to the outdated “Grandfather” clause were removed. This can most largely be seen in the “Extinct Species” section. Now should a currently available species be killed off in canon, it will remain a selectable option for all members to pick from. Species marked as extinct that are not in our system however remain as unallowed.

We have also removed the requirement of supplying the names of 2+ members interested in the species as part of the submission process. In general, these tend to just be close friends of the submitting party anyway, and interest in a character rarely ever translates into those using the new species.

Character Sheet Policies

Many changes in the Character Sheet Policies deal with adding clarification on frequent issues that pop up. These include including species specific gear (such as a Kel Dor’s mask) and how cybernetics can be used to explain skills on the CS. Other changes include updates based on other CS changes such as removing the Primary/Secondary Skills.

The biggest policy change here comes in the form of Distinguishing Marks in the Physical Description. These have been a hot point for many many years now, and we are changing how we view these.

Distinguishing Marks are one of the six core required components we look for in a PD. However, going forward not including distinguishing marks will be viewed as implicitly stating that the character has none. This means no more enforcing “X has no distinguishing marks” sentences within the PD, should you not wish to include it.

Yes, you read that right, you do not have to specify your character not having distinguishing marks anymore. That said, should your character have them, they absolutely should be included, and any character without them should consider the depth and uniqueness that these marks bring to a character.

Anyway, by and large, the majority of this was either clarification or a clean up of old language that was no longer relevant. I hope the simplification of some of these help increase your enjoyment and ease of using our awesome systems. Feel free to poke me with any questions you may have.

Important Links

• C-D4WG
• Fiction Archive
  
• Fiction Resources
  
• Fiction Center
  
• Fiction Rubric 3.0
  
• Character Notes Template
• Voice Feedback Form
  
• [Log in to view e-mail addresses]
  

Thank you for reading. As always if you have any Fiction related questions, concerns, comments, or snide remarks, feel free to message me on Discord or send me an email [Log in to view e-mail addresses].