#derryadmin

We know this is long but please read the whole thing

First and foremost, we would like to say thank you to everyone who has provided input when we asked for it.  We firmly believe that this group works best when everyone feels like their opinions and voices are heard so that we can make Derry an enjoyable place for everyone.

Starting today, we have ultimately decided that this will be a CLOSED GROUP with the exception being if you, a current and reliable member, invite someone in.  In the past we have had very unreliable and quite frankly very mean members, and as two admins who are also people will feelings, it really sucks.  We have put a lot of time and effort into making Derry a welcoming and fun environment, and we feel that if we only let in people by recommendation, that environment can thrive.

We have, however, taken into consideration your opinions on character count; we will be reducing it back down to five and will NO LONGER BE MOVING THIS NUMBER UP.  We have come to the conclusion that with shutting our doors to the public, any less could still result in bubbling or the appearance of bubbling so we want to be able to give people creative freedom while imploring you all to only write characters that actually have muse.  Please understand that this does not mean you NEED to have five muses if you only have the muse for three.  This also does NOT mean you should be in the mindset that you need five ships.  We rebooted Derry to try to angle focus elsewhere, and we know we’ve failed to keep that standard.  We want you to know that we are not saying that you can’t have ships - we know it will happen and we don’t want to discourage it by any means.  We just want to reiterate that platonic connections are just as important and we WILL be keeping a more strict eye on who is writing what.  If you focus more on ships and not other connections, we will reach out to you and if we notice no change has been made, we can and will ask you to drop a character so you can focus more efforts onto other things.  The reasoning for this is twofold - first of all, we rebooted this RP specifically to strengthen and write other connections, and the number of people - ourselves as creators included - have felt excluded as platonic connections are pushed aside in favor of romantic ones.  Now, don’t get us wrong - we know we’re also guilty of this, so this isn’t us pointing fingers at anyone, and we will be holding ourselves to these standards as well, and we would be happy to explain more in depth to anyone who feels that this is unfair or has more questions because we don’t want to limit ANY writer - but we do want to make sure everyone is included.

We would really like to encourage more open starters, however we know that these are not always easy to do and not everyone enjoys writing them, so we also encourage more plotting among members for closed starters as well.   We are a small group and there is honestly no reason every one here doesn’t have at least one connection with everyone else.

This week I will be forgoing the usual Monday in depth activity check since one of our rules is if you are only writing with one person on a muse, that doesn’t count as activity, and we want to give everyone a chance to make new connections and start new threads in case they’ve just been feeling like no one else wants to write with them and we really want to encourage EVERYONE to start plotting more once you’ve seen this post.

We want everyone here to feel welcome - and the fact that many people (ourselves included) haven’t in these last months has been eye opening.  We will be reinforcing the rules moving forward because we see now that any time we let one little thing slide, it creates a domino effect and we start hearing that people feel left out or unhappy, and that’s the last thing we want to create here in Derry.  If you have more than five characters, we are expecting a message from you by no later than Friday telling us who you are dropping because we want to start moving forward as soon as possible and the sooner you decide on your character counts, the sooner you can start making new plots or working on old ones.

@beckettfinch​ @chandlerkeene​ @celestialcamper​ @jadenlapointe​ @jessedeyes​ @mararichardscn​ @saintezrajames​ @charlottejackman​ @clementine-dabrowski​

PLEASE LIKE THIS ONCE YOU HAVE READ IT WE KNOW HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE IN THIS RP AND HOW MANY LIKES WE NEED TO HAVE ON THIS POST.

Hey guys,

My coadmin and I have been talking over the last few days about the direction Derry is headed, and where we want Derry to head.  Of course we want to encourage everyone to be creative and have a wide range of connections and plot lines, we’ve realized lately we may have allowed a little too much freedom.

We have noticed that the vast majority of members here have significantly less characters than others - and for this reason, we’ve decided we made an error in upping the limit and are going to be dropping the character limit back down to six.  This isn’t meant to be an attack on those writers who do have over six muses - but since it’s so few, we’ve made the decision to drop it back down to a more manageable number.

We have decided to give everyone until Wednesday, April 1st (yes, for real) to decide who they want to drop, as that is when activity check will be picked back up.

Along with this, we also want to start limiting face claim changes to the same rules as when you can pick up a new character, however we will be forgoing that rule on the first of April as well so that if writers want to shift faces around in the wake, they can.

Please like this post once you have read it; we will be making sure to reblog this so that everyone sees it in time for the changes to take place.

Please don’t hesitate to ask us any questions you have, and as always, keep writing and having fun!

Greetings Derry.

As the day starts to dawn on our first official week after re-opening and we anticipate some apps since it’s acceptance day, we wanted to let you guys know how we are going to deal with acceptances moving forward.

Once a writer has three muses, them being able to pick up a fourth or fifth entirely depends on their activity.  Please remember that audio, photo, and ooc posts do not count as activity.  If we notice that they’re not on or only writes with one person, we’re going to have to tell you that we need to see more activity and inclusivity from you/your muses before letting you have more.  We restructured this RP so everyone could be more active as well as open doors to write and plot with everyone, and if we see that that is being ignored, we’re less inclined to let you have another muse until you can follow the rules.

Please like this post once you have read it so we know you understand acceptances going forward.

As per usual, I head back to work tonight, which means I won’t really be around to update the main or do replies for two days, but I wanted to take the time to hop online really quick before my shift and kind of lay out Admin M and I’s game plan for the near future. We’ve been debating something for a very long time, and think it might be time to actually implement it. 

Hopefully you’ve all heard of the closed group aspect, but in case you haven’t, it is when a roleplay closes it’s doors to new members, and consists of the ones it already has. Our group is quite small, but very close knit, and we believe that this might be a good idea for us. As admins, we would continue to come up with new plot ideas and events, and nothing would change on the dashboard. The main reason for this idea is the lackluster in new members we’ve received. I know we have collected a handful of wonderful writers along the way, and every now and then we get somebody amazing to join us, but over-all, I know how tiring it can be to plot with new people only for them to leave or go inactive, or from an admin -perspective, go through the acceptance process and update multiple pages on the main only for somebody to never even make one post. We think this group is strong enough, and close enough, that we can survive, and even thrive with the amazing community we already have in Derry. 

While nothing is set in stone, we did want to make this fact known, and ask for your opinions.

In the wake of such a change, and in an effort to encourage writers to truly focus on development and character growth, we are also considering dropping the character count, to four or five. Personally, I think four characters is plenty, to allow different storylines and connections, as well as focus on actual growth. We always want you guys to feel as though you have freedom here, and I know new characters are very exciting, but I’ve been very bad at putting my foot down on this issue and just saying no when it needs to be said. Having too many characters steals attention that could be distributed more evenly among a lesser number, allowing writers to interact with more people as well as focus on specific plots and create actual timelines. It becomes a much more in-depth experience, and I will always encourage expansion in a roleplayer’s skills. 

We are also asking your opinions on this, as well. For both issues, we are asking that you message the main, rather than privately message us. And, if you don’t want your name tied to your opinions or ideas, you have the option to send it on anon. That being said, these decisions were discussed with the group as a whole in mind, not any one particular person or for any singular reason other than wanting to make Derry the best possible writing experience we can for all of you. 

Please like this post when you have read it, and please let us know your thoughts.

Over-all as a group, you’ve all done a wonderful job, especially as of late, of being inclusive and making new members as well as old feel welcome, and I love that. But, I have noticed a few players that only seem to write with a specific one or two others, as well as some members that only get online to do one reply here or there within the activity limits. We wanted to remind you all that these things do not count as activity. Doing one reply every three days or just enough to stay “active” isn’t activity. Just as writing with only one person isn’t activity. We do not tolerate bubble roleplaying here, and this is the only warning we’ll be posting before we have to reach out to players specifically via the activity check. We will be doing a check tomorrow, and if your character is on it, chances are, these may be the reasons. 

We have a group of wonderful writers, most of which have open starters posted in the STARTER TAG. We encourage members to utilize this tag, by not only posting your own starters, but replying to the ones that already exist as well. Starters are there to create new connections and writing experiences, which is the goal of this group. Derry is a small town, based on the idea that everyone kind of knows everyone. So, starters are fair game to all, and help make this easier for those of you who may not be brave enough to plot through messages or however your preferred method is. 

This being said, I do encourage members to plot with everyone, if possible. Especially if somebody reaches out to you. I know I have heard from multiple members in the past that they have messaged somebody only to get no response, or a lack of interest. And I wanted to take the time right now to say, if you aren’t willing to plot with others and make friends here, this isn’t the group for you. I have worked so hard, with my co-admin at my side, to create a group where friendship OOC is the most important thing here. We are a writing family, and want all of our members to feel as though they are a part of it. 

Keeping that in mind, if you are having a particular issue with any of the above mentioned problems, please come to us, here on the main. We want to help, and we’re more than willing to try our best with any situation. But, you need to remember: We’re just writers, too. A solution starts with YOU. Branch out. Make an effort. Commit. Be friendly. It’s not that hard, you guys, and I can assure you, as somebody who had made the effort to get close to our members, we have a great group here. I’d like to see that pattern continue.

Please like this post once you’ve read the entire thing. We will be keeping track of who has, and has not.

Are people interested in a relationships page, be it familiar or romatnic?

Comment here to let us know!

Please read this entire post as it goes over activity rules as well

Since becoming a closed group, we’ve been thinking about how most of you said you didn’t want the limit to be lowered, and how in closed groups, especially small ones, the character limit is usually very high.  Taking that into consideration, and what some of you have said when we asked for input, we’ve decided that the baseline for all muses is six and if you want any more, you will be granted more muses IF your activity is up to par as well as seeing you write your muses with both romantic and platonic threads.  We want Derry to thrive, and we know sometimes more muses will be inevitable, but please only write as many as you can handle, and please understand that if we tell you you can’t have more than six muses, you can always be allowed to have another one later if we see you are writing sufficiently with all of your muses. We need everyone to be aware of their own personal schedules and availability when considering how many characters to play, and to know what you are able to handle writing. It’s important to keep these things in mind, because your partners will be waiting on replies if you have too much to balance. 

Taking this in mind, some activity rules are changing as well.  There will be one activity check a week, on Fridays, and now you’re allowed to go 7 days without being put on it - however, if you want more than six characters, you shouldn’t be going an entire week without posting something substantial (hiatus’ not-withstanding).  We know people have lives; we know you guys have things you like to do IRL other than write here all the time, and we encourage a healthy balance, but we don’t feel that it’s unfair to ask for high activity for high character count.

Having said all this, regular acceptance rules still apply - you can get one muse a week, the acceptances are still only taking place on Wednesdays and Sundays, and we will never punish you for dropping muses you aren’t inspired by, but if we see a trend we might have you wait a little longer before accepting your next muse.

We hope this all makes sense to you, and if you have any questions or concerns, please send them to us, anon or otherwise.  The only way we can thrive is if we all work together and find happy mediums while still understanding rules need to be in place.

Please like this post once you have read it.

We now have two set acceptance days, which are Wednesdays at 12 pm EST and Sundays at 8 pm EST.

Derry is a place that does not exist to the real world.  That means current events, such as the entire COVID-19 pandemic, do not effect Derry or it’s inhabitants.  We’ve decided to make this change since a lot of us depends on writing as a way to escape what’s going on in real life, and it will make interactions easier moving forward.

Please like this post once you have read it, as we want to make sure everyone keeps these in mind going forward