we plan on utilizing the tags system in the ic community to help keep track of important things. we'll also be using our plot calendars to round up and summarize all of the important and interesting things that happened the month prior.

new arrivals are also new to the island so your character will be learning things about the plot for the first time as well.

yep. this is a gpsl, meaning ⛔ to most people!

if you're already a member, reach out to the mods via email!

let us know who you're feeling and we'll give you the green light when it's cool to do so. in order to avoid any asshole puckering, prob don't ask them until we give the say so 👍. more than likely your friend will be allowed, but you never know. we intend to have a soft player cap and don't want to bite off more than we can chew, so a temporary 'no' may not be a permanent one.

additionally, if a player is swept due to inactivity or dropping from the game, they will not be allowed to rehold until they have officially been reinvited and reapproved.

4/12: invites will expire two weeks after a mod has approved them. if your friend hasn't held within that time, we'll assume they're not interested and they'll need to be reinvited again.

This game will run for six months. If there is enough interest and enough people pushing the metagame plot that it is not all on the mods, we may extend to nine months.

Our overall aim is to set up for something that encourages people who are unfamiliar with one another coming together to beat the odds and make something really neato off of a magical island. We hope our setting encourages exploration and inspires players to create and run their own plots.

We don't plan on getting grimdark or anything, but we do intend on having lowkey spooky folklore vibes in Stardew cottagecore setting, wrapped up in a mystery for characters to explore. Think like, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark that we read when we were kids. Player character death isn't a threat and won't be an option, so don't worry about it.

The year is 2022 and we're just gonna pretend all the bullshit of the world doesn't exist, ok, ty. Real World bad, roleplay good, let's just not. 👍

Lots of different ways, depending on your love language, babbyyyy. You can dropbox us. You can e-mail us. We'll also have a little channel up in discord if you want something less formal where you can shout your wants out into the void to see if anyone is keen on helping you run an event.

Basically, as long as your event does not overlap with something already on the plot calendar +/- a day or two, and so as long as it's not like... super tonally off if something serious just happened, chances are you'll be good to go.

We also encourage any plotting posts or ic/oocs to go up a couple of days before an event goes live to give people time to set themselves up for success so they're not scrambling to figure out what their character is up to on the day of.

no. the only thing you should reach out or double check about is what version of the story they have decided to use for in game purposes.

you may also want to check to see if there has been any headcanon established for things that were decided as having happened 'off the pages,' or things that might have happened in your character's tale that was not mentioned in the book. like, for example, what happened with beauty and beast after he got all unbeastly?

we also touch on this very briefly below to some extent re: electicity being available on the island. however! getting into the specifics about journals: the island has a local area network that operates much faster than the island's regular internet. the local area network is available to Tales only, and your journal screenname will be your character's Tale name. they're given their login info and the how-to on a piece of paper in their inn room when they arrive at the inn on their first night. (handwavehandwave.)

since the journals are online, gifs, emojis, and embedded images are all a-okay. icons and strikeouts aren't visible and are just for Added Flavor.

activity checks will be posted at the start of every month and it will be your responsibility to drop off your activity prior to the end of the activity check. we will require two pieces a month, and you can read about what we count as activity on our rules page.

after your character is first added, one of your pieces of activity will need to be done and submitted within the first week of their acceptance. this can be a traditional first post, or comments, or whatever. As long as it counts as activity and you've submitted it to the AC page, you're good!

each activity period will run form the 1st to the 28th. the last handful of days will be used by the mods to do housekeeping without needing to worry about who is going to make activity.

additionally, and this is mentioned above, if players are removed due to inactivity they will need to be reinvited after mod reapproval.

three! thirds opened in april and this'll be our limit. however, please realistically consider your own activity levels before maxing out your roster. can you juggle three or is it just FOMO?

yeah, idgaf, just use common sense about it.

no.

we want this game to be largely organic in the connections that are built. because of that, your character may only have one pre-existing connection with another character. pre-existing is as loose or solid as you'd like to make it: maybe they've only run into someone else's character once, but they had a memorable night together. maybe you want a family connection. either way, ya get one!

no.

no. they'll have to leave them behind unless they're also a playable tale. children under 18 aren't allowed on the island even if they're tales, so they have to stay behind too. we don't want our game's metaplot to even come close to touching on child endangerment so we're saying they're not allowed on the island and never were. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

you may apply for any character whose work was published before 1905, as anything after that does not work in the timeline of our game.

we will be allowing legends, folklore, fairy tales, children's literature, and nursery rhymes. additionally, characters should come from their stories published before 1905 and not from their movies or modern spinoffs. (it's okay to pull inspo from them, it's just not the story they came from or remember being part of.)

we are not accepting holds for literary characters from adult fiction (Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, Pride and Prejudice, etc), mythological gods/figures, other religious figures, or historical figures.

for stories like Cinderella where there might be ten slightly different versions, we'll only be accepting one actual cinderella. additionally, whoever holds a character from whatever story first gets to decide which version y'all are going with. be chill.

You can make your character as like or as unlike your Tale as you want. If you want someone who feels at odds knowing that they're a Disney Princess, do it! If you want to play a tale who was villainous but make them sweet, do it! You're welcome to have their history echo their Tale, but it's nor required. Basically, you have creative liberty to do as you like as long as it keeps to our rule about staying away from sexual abuse.

Yes, characters remember the story that they are from, completely with whatever happened 'off the pages,' so to speak. Be sure to speak with your fellow Talemates before establishing anything as game canon.

No, characters do not remember any previous lives they have lived outside of their Tale. There may be a plot later on that will give people hints and easter eggs about their past lives, but it will not be a plot that's necessary to take part in and it will just be for flavor.

We're going to give players the freedom to decide when they would like their characters to realize that they are Tales and how they come into it, within reason. If you'd like to say that they have always known, that's fine! If you want to say they realized it after a crazy bender, that's fine! If you want to say it happened after a crazy weird coincidental event in which they stayed at a party until after midnight, that's fine! However, if your character is not awake by the time they receive their scroll from the goose, receiving the invitation to the island will trigger their awakening so all characters will be awake once the game starts.

Insofar as how your characters will feel when they awaken: it's not a particularly dramatic event. They'll feel like something has clicked, and suddenly the world will make a little bit more sense. Similarly, because we want to give people the freedom to interact with other characters as they want, there will be no particular pull or desire for characters to be close to their talemates. Any relationship they forge will be personal choices.

We're also leaving this up to y'all as players! However!!! Powers are not intuitive and they do not come with an instruction manual. There is no particular 'feeling' that your character is going to get when their powers kick in, and there's no real way to know except for trial and error or accident. If your character has an incredibly passive power, it could be that they're still totally unaware that they have it. If they have a power that they couldn't safely practice without being noticed by lots and lots of normal folk, chances are they haven't really been able to practice.

the only limitations we plan on putting on powers are as follows:

Your powers need to relate to your tale and the story that their from. For example, we don't need to have any flying big bad wolves, but it makes perfect sense for Tinkerbell to be able to fly!

Secondly, we are not going to allow tales with any precognitive abilities or other such things that might enable characters to noclip gg ez the plot and mystery of the game.

Lastly, they cannot be powers listed on the unwanted list or loopholes of capped powers with different wording. (i.e., promises and favors are capped so my character's power deals in LOANS.) You can check the unwanted list out on the holds page. If you're not sure, just ask!

Yes. Your character will know the Tale of anyone they see in person. If you would like to work something out with your one allowed connection in game, a Tale who is awake can see the Tales who are asleep, but a Tale who is asleep is in the dark about everything.

There is no particular feeling or sensation that comes with being near other Tales unless your character has powers that allow otherwise; there is just a knowing and acknowledgement.

Yeah! So. One connection aside, if you choose to do so, chances are good that your character has had extraordinarily limited run-ins with other Tales. There is about one Tale for every two million regular folk, making tales very rare. Because there is no pull or other sensation to draw tales to one another, there is no intuitive or emotional way of finding one another. If you have other questions, feel free to ask! But please be gentle when asking math questions because you don't wanna know the walk to mordor we had over figuring out the 1:2 mil ratio. fuck.

Your character will receive a letter that's delivered by a goose, like some kinda knock off Harry Potter event. It's up to you where and when your character receives this letter-- if you want them to be at home, or at work, or out and about. Either way, goose! Everyone will be receiving this letter at approximately the same time with more or less the same information attached.

Yes, including a cellphone tower and access to the internet. It's really shitty and slow, and gets shittier and slower the farther away you are from the town, but that can be improved upon if there are any characters who are willing to take care of that through either their powers or through their big brain know how, please feel free to spearhead that!

no.

if your character's powers involve some sort of swimming boost or if they are able to fly, they'll have it easier than others and can peace off pretty much whenever.

Otherwise, there's a ferry on the south shore that leaves for the mainland at 6 AM and leaves from the mainland, back to the island at 6 PM. (For clarity, this means they arrive in Miami at ~7:30AM and arrive back at Destiny around ~7:30PM.) If you miss the ferry for the day going either way, you're shit out of luck. The ferry will take you to Miami, Florida, and it takes about an hour and a half to get there.

We have a handful of living arrangements in mind for everyone!

First, there is a designated town. Most characters will live here. We will have an area where you can claim houses off of a map so that you know who your neighbors or roommates are.

We also have a spattering of isolated homes located around the island. We are limiting any homes that are not in the town to one home per player to make sure that everyone has the option of having a Special House, if they so choose. This doesn't count for roommates; your character can move in to another character's map home with them even if you already have a map home.

Characters will find that their character's Tale Names are on a plaque outside of whatever home you pick, and these homes will magically be catered to your characters' preferences and specifications. They don't have to choose a home with their name plaque, though, and can choose not to move into their home or choose a home with a different plaque. (For example, the Sea Witch is currently living in the home that used to belong to Baba Yaga.)

If we end up running out of room and there are more characters than there are housing options, we'll figure something out when we get there, easy.

The idea is that by and large, people will move here to the island to create new lives for themselves where they can be open about who they are and use their powers without worry about what normal folk might do or think or say.

Because this is an island that has not been in use for a while, at first, it's likely they will be pretty reliant on the mainland for their things. Our hope is that together, characters will come together to open businesses and work out a system and society that works out for them!

Inside of these buildings, small, golden wisps float around. Could these wisps be the reason why none of these buildings appear to be in disarray? The wisps appear to work collectively, if silently, and will operate any store that does not otherwise have a shopkeep to run it. However, when the right person decides that they'd like to take over a shop, the wisps will leave them in peace and allow them to take over.

On the day we open, there will be a series of plotting tools and events. Whoever has been added at game start will canonically be the first people in game to take the ferry over. Otherwise, people can trickle in as they're added or some variation thereof.

The island itself, unlike the rest of the islands off of the coast of Miami, has four distinct seasons. It cannot be found unless it wants to be found, but resides inside of the Bermuda Triangle which means that usually, regular people cannot find it. The island is approximately 60 miles running east to west and approximately 25 miles running north to south.

there are no cars or motorcycles on the island. if you try to bring one, the ferry captain will laugh at you and turn your vehicle away.

for a while, people will need to walk, or fly if they're lucky and have that power. otherwise, there are horses people can domesticate and ride on. time to get inventive! 4/12: there is a bike shop opened on the island.