New Versailles

It's been an interesting year. While I never expected to heavily invest in a community again, you proved to me when I reopened the Furcadia map on a whim that people do still care about NV and its world building. I've spent the past year focusing on my IRL life, and I'm finally in a place where I have the energy to devote to trying to grow this once vibrant community once more.

With that in mind, the future of NV is not with Furcadia, but with the RPR. So many of you already roleplay in private on RPR or Discord that I wanted to cater to that predominant style of play. I put serious thought this past month into how to translate the instant gratification of Furcadia roleplay to the RPR, and I think I've come up with a feasible solution. You can review the new Open RP rules on this group's page already, and they make use of the forums and the popout chat feature for the same realtime roleplay we're all used to with Furcadia.

The biggest difference is the lack of graphics, of course, but beyond that, Open RP is now self-logging. There's no more need to dig out and format logs for the forums. No need to count posts and write down names at the top. All you need to do is post your prompt on Discord, title your thread, and have fun. There is some minor book keeping in the form of marking threads full or closed accordingly, but otherwise Open RP is now in the hands of the users.

We've placed more power in the hands of the community -- gone are the days of needing staff to emit your prompts on your behalf. No matter what the hour, day or night, all you need to do is set things up and go. While you still need to have a minimum of two spots open, getting just one person to join for three rounds gets you points. The hope is that this new approach makes things easier for people in odd time zones to receive the same benefits as our members who are stateside. For those worried about slow-paced forum RP, never fear; Open RP is meant to be conducted in realtime, and you need only wait half an hour tops between posts before moving on with the roleplay if someone is slow.

Starting September 1st, points will once more be tracked daily and numbered for raffle tickets as they used to be (though you'll have to bear with us, they may not be counted immediately). Under our new system, users will enjoy greater anonymity, as there's no longer a need to consolidate points under known alts. Review the rules for further information on how that will be handled. We're doing our best to keep things safe and fair for everyone.



Raffle tiers are determined by the total number of points earned by the community through Open RP.

Because this is still a heavy work in progress, we're doing a soft launch for September to test the system and see how it holds up. The RPR is also under heavy construction still, as we work to make location descriptions and images more accessible to RPR users who may not have used the Furcadia map. Beyond that, we're working out systems to make player factions and businesses listed as canon on the group RPR page as long as they're active in Open RP. We're not just revamping how roleplay is done, we're also trying to give people more of a stake in the community.

New Versailles may be my brain baby, but ultimately this group belongs to all of us. Let's all do what we can to make it flourish. Our official relaunch will be in October, accompanied by contests, participation events, and giveaways, as well as the first official monthly raffle. If you're not there already, be sure to join the Discord for access to Open RP prompts, giveaways, and generally good company.

xoxo
Auberon