mods of the vestige. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
vestigemods) wrote2020-06-21 10:33 pm
vestigemods) wrote2020-06-21 10:33 pm
FAQ + INFO
FAQ + INFO
► BASICS
- monster horror
- psychological horror
- environmental horror
- body horror (note: body horror will usually occur as an extra step to some other form of horror, able to be opted into)
- YIKES - Basically Vine/Tiktok meets Snapchat. You can make 30-second videos of whatever stupid ass shit sounds good to you at the time. You can overlay it with songs, filters that make you pretty or change your face, voice-changers, etc. You can re-film your video as many times as you want, but it automatically posts to the network or a pre-specified recipient when you click 'done', so. Godspeed, you crazy filter-loving bastards. (To utilize OOCly, feel free to just.... make a regular network post or inbox tag-in and specify somehow that it's a Yikes app pic/video.)
- CHICKCHUCK - A mindless phone game where you throw cute animated baby chickens at things, Angry Birds style.
- SAUSAGEFREE - A ladies-only gacha with plot, character-leveling, weapons, accessories, and very strong (often overt) lesbian overtones, but not in a creepy male-gaze kind of way. Blame Luusi. (If you end up bullshitting any of the story elements, please let Trace know so she can cobble together whatever stupid ass adventure story y'all make up for this.)
- NEF (NOT ENOUGH FISH) - Because 'Plenty Of Fish' is taken, religious, and also a straight-up lie. This is basically Tinder except the Technicians wrote your page for you. (To utilize OOCly, we actually have a Not Enough Fish page for everyone to link their bios, complete with instructions.)
WHAT IS VESTIGE?
- Vestige is a musebox-game horror jamjar based on Cabin In The Woods, in which characters are pulled into this containment zone run by the Technicians working from a lab underground with the goal of creating Good Quality Suffering™️ to appease the elder gods who hover on the verge of creating a worldwide apocalypse. But of course, suffering is pointless if everyone is too numb to properly suffer, so there are plenty of morale boosts provided in between bouts of fear and misery.
The current arc of the game (July 2020 - present) is essentially stress-testing, in which the Technicians started with a tiny containment zone and a super limited captive pool and have begun to work their way larger to see if their resources could withstand it. In essence, it was the beta-test of this particular containment zone... But testing is rapidly coming to a close, and that's no doubt going to lead to quite a few changes that the containment zone's captive residents won't be happy about.
Vestige is a narrative successor to The Box (yeah, the one that died like five years ago), but no knowledge of or experience in The Box is needed to play here!
MUSEBOX-GAME?
- This basically means that it's a lot less structured and more 'fuck it' than would be expected from a typical DWRP. Fewer hoops for players to jump through, less effort into intensive worldbuilding, and more relaxed concepts of what can/can't be done. Applications are hilariously easy and we're probably canonblind to most of them anyway.
In general, you can be as intense or as lax about Vestige as you want to be. Between the bi-monthly events, you're pretty much left to your own devices to do as much or as little as you want. Player-plots are encouraged, just drop a line with your mod first.
INVITE-ONLY.
- In order to keep the game as relatively low-maintenance and drama-free as possible, it has been invite-only since it opened. However! We're setting up to lift the invite-only rule on a trial basis sometime in the near future. (April 2021 Update: The no-invite period will begin in mid-April! When it ends kind of just depends on how it goes. This space will be updated as things unfold.)
ACTIVITY CHECK?
- Vestige has no activity check! However, as of March 2021, we do have a bi-monthly check-in on even-numbered months, requiring nothing more intensive than commenting to say 'hey, I still want to play here!' That said, please drop by commenting on the taken list if you're done playing here and/or done with that particular character so that we don't have to do that kind of detective work.
IS VESTIGE RIGHT FOR ME?
- From the feedback we've gotten so far, Vestige works best as a secondary game (or a main game for someone with an extremely busy schedule). Everything is very at-your-own-pace, with a post going up and top-levels trickling in over the next 2-3 weeks and tag-ins doing the same. We have a fairly active Discord server that a lot of chatting/plotting goes down in. The playerbase is currently small but generally pretty dedicated, and even LCWs from obscure canons seem to get CR pretty easily. The log activity fluctuates depending on generally how everyone's feeling that month, but the network gets regular updates even when log stuff slows down.
APPLICATIONS + APPABILITY
APPLICATION PROCESS.
- Apps are always open and will be processed pretty much whenever I get to them. Currently, we have few enough incoming characters that there is no official introduction log, and folks are welcome to make their own intro log/network post at their leisure. Same goes for OOC intro posts.
If you feel the need to 'reserve' your character to be safe, toss up a placeholder comment on the application post - just make sure you have it filled in within a week and you're good to go.
( ! ) This process is subject to change as the game grows. If we're getting enough new characters to call for it, my current plan is to either swap to an app round cycle (monthly) or keep them open but only process them during one week that month. In that case, I'll start to toss up intro logs and ooc intro posts each app round.
WHO CAN BE APPLIED FOR?
- Right now I'm going to say 'literally any fictional character' because invite-only probably weeds out the sketch ones, please don't make me regret this.
CRAU?
- Go for it. All CRAU powers/abilities + inventory are retained. Note that CR AU means you actually have to write something on your application, RIP.
DOUBLES?
- Canon doubles are fine if they're different. Characters from different versions of the same media are fine if they're legit different in some way. Otherwise nah.
POWERS?
- No depowering/nerfing, but expect a number of critical game features (e.g. the containment zone barrier) to be fully immune to powers/abilities + many of the horrors to be partially immune.
As a general rule, the goal is: Make your character struggle. Assume horrors are strong enough to make your character specifically struggle. You're pretty much always welcome to choose whether they struggle but overcome the horrors or straight-up get murdered. You can also choose to have your character escape/evade the horror entirely using their powers/abilities, whether for opt-out purposes or for CR/IC purposes, but please use discretion and avoid doing so enough to turn 'this is a horrifying place at times' into 'wow they keep sending lame ass shit that can't bother or hurt my character'.
INVENTORY?
- They can bring anything on their person at the time - or on their person within the same day or so of time, I'm not going to be picky about it (and the app doesn't even ask for an inventory so like fuck it). Further items from canon can be requested and/or will be offered throughout the game.
PETS?
- Pets from home and/or from CRAU can come along. They can be with them when they arrive or be found wandering later. For the peace of mind of basically everyone: No pets and/or cute and cuddly wild animals will be harmed by the mod in Vestige. Folks can (with sufficient content warning!!) kill such things themselves if they really want to, but it's never going to come from above (or... below, as the case may be).
MAX CHARACTERS PER PLAYER?
- ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
CHARACTER/PLAYER CAP?
- Nada.
CAST CAP?
- Technically nah, but we try not to make any one cast exceed 20% of the game, so right now we have a general embargo on any further MDZS/Untamed characters until that ratio levels out a bit.
GAMEPLAY + ENVIRONMENT
OVERALL AMBIANCE.
- Vestige is of course going to be grim + horrifying a lot of the time (most prominently during events) - but it's not all misery all the time. Characters who are able to get used to the less-than-ideal living conditions will find that in-between horrors, they have a decent amount of calm downtime in which to physically/emotionally heal and to even establish a sense of unconventional domesticity. Morale boosts will be provided at times to contribute to characters' mental-emotional well-being during that downtime.
Just like the original Box, Vestige does not take itself seriously at all, so you can also expect some (mildly horrifying) absurdity. Box veterans might recall the time everyone was randomly gifted an item hand-picked from the Cards Against Humanity deck. Would you rather have like a million alligators or an erection lasting longer than four hours? Asking for a friend.
METAPLOT?
- While the original Box had an ongoing thread of 'can we beat the Technicians' followed by 'are the Technicians the real enemy?', there is no overarching metaplot to interact within Vestige currently. Quite honestly, we're here for the horror and the CR-building and anything beyond that just muddies it up. I'll definitely be providing enough metaplot information to give characters some context for their situation, but actual interaction with it in an overarching way isn't currently in the cards.
It is currently undecided on whether or not we'll have consistent NPC presence in Vestige. My initial thought was 'no' apart from things like the super chill Merry Shitscram post, since I'm trying to make this as low-maintenance as possible, but two of our original Boxmods are/were in Vestige and have expressed interest in the continued survival of their NPCs, so it's very possible that we'll see some NPCs pop up as time goes on.
I definitely plan to keep an eye out for a prevailing in-character sense of futility (no metaplot means they're no closer to going home.... ever) just in case, and will figure out ways to combat that if and when the time comes.
EVENTS.
- Events will occur once per month, and will probably have a brief OOC write-up posted in advance for ease of plotting. Events will almost always be at least partly horror in nature, ranging from:
Due to the nature of the source material (Cabin In The Woods), an event will occasionally touch on romance/sex-based topics (I think original Box had full-on sex pollen one February?), but these will always be opt-in and warned appropriately + will always be something a character can personally opt out of/resist the effects of if desired because consent is fucking key. No shady dubcon shit in my house.
THE TECHNICIANS.
- Very little is known ICly about The Technicians at current. From what can be gathered, they oversee the containment zone, inflicting horrors (sometimes deliberately against an individual or group, sometimes just ambiently against everyone in the containment zone) in order to extract death and physical/emotional pain and suffering. It seems as though they can see most of what occurs within the containment zone, though in actuality their surveillance isn't nearly as thorough as Technicians past have had the luxury of.
CONTAINMENT ZONE.
- See the Locations page for info about the containment zone! The briefing at the top gives a pretty good overview.
HOUSING.
- At current, housing primarily consists of a cluster of cabins surrounding a lake + an apartment building in town. However, characters can claim basically any unoccupied building as a residence, so go nuts.
See the Housing page for more detailed info!
RESOURCES.
- Welcome to Foodland! Sitting at the southwestern edge of town, this grocery store is generally pretty well-stocked with most of what folks might need and a lot of things they don't need. Monthly bulletins include some updates to the monthly resource stocks. The gas station south of the cabins was also once a (much smaller) wealth of resources, but it has been boarded up for a number of months now.
NETWORK.
- Upon arrival, characters find a smartphone in their possession. In a pocket, in their hand, laying on their chest - it's fairly obvious that it's meant for them. This gives them access to the network!
The network has text, voice, and video capabilities. It can do private/filtered messages. It can record messages to send later, or save messages from the network onto one's personal device. A character's network posts and replies all include a username of the character's choice. If a character fails to specify, feel free to assume it's firstname.lastname (or lastname.firstname if culturally appropriate). If you fail to specify a username, all posts/replies literally have your full name on them, so heads up about that.
( ! ) ALL CHARACTERS, FOR THEIR FIRST WEEK IN VESTIGE, find that their 'default network ID' is something mildly-to-moderately insulting about them (or a sore spot of theirs, or a reveal of their secret identity, or just generally something they don't necessarily want). It's entirely up to you how severe the damage is, or whether it's even properly insulting as opposed to kind of amusing in a laughing-at-themself kind of way. Any attempt to change it will be met with a notice that new users are unable to change their network ID for seven more days (or however many are left), and to please in the meantime utilize the randomly-generated network IDs they have been provided. After the week is complete, it defaults to the regular username protocols as described above.
PHONE APPS.
- As of Christmas 2020, the phones now have app capability. Currently, four apps are available:
LANGUAGES.
- There is no language barrier here - everyone functionally speaks English now because fuck it, that's how it be. Characters can actively choose to speak/write in another language, and if it's their native tongue then it will still feel very familiar to speak/write in regardless of the 'default' language here in the containment zone.
DEATH.
- All dead characters respawn in five days. Most of the time, a dead character's body is reclaimed by the Technicians when no one is looking - but sometimes, if a body is either too well-protected or too mutilated, the Technicians may say 'fuck it' and spawn a new one instead. If you didn't want to see your badly-mutilated previous body, you shouldn't have gotten so mutilated!
Characters can wake up from death in a variety of places. In their bed is possibly the kindest, or in the gas station, or off in the woods. Some unfortunate souls, meanwhile, wake up on a bit of driftwood out on the lake, or perhaps even up a tree. The Technicians are not nearly as sorry as one might hope.
CANON UPDATES.
- A character can canon-update anytime they die. (You're welcome to handwave the death somewhere offscreen if you don't want to fuck with that.) It's entirely up to you if your character's body changes to reflect the canon-update, and also whether or not they retain Vestige-inflicted scars from before the update.
WHAT IF MY CHARACTER IS...
... DEAD IN CANON?
- That's totally fine, you can bring them post-death. Death is a construct these days.
...TERMINALLY ILL IN CANON?
- Up to you! You can have them healed on arrival, or if it sounds more fun, they can still be ill and attempt to bargain with the Technicians for a cure. Nearly anything can be purchased, with enough pain and suffering. :')
... A SUPERNATURAL CREATURE?
- Generally they will remain a supernatural creature, but you're welcome to humanize them if that seems more fun to play with.
...TURNED INTO A SUPERNATURAL CREATURE HERE IN VESTIGE?
- Up to you, really! You can choose to have them revert upon their next death or you can choose to have them retain their supernatural form even after death and respawn.
...A NON-SUPERNATURAL NON-HUMAN?
- The humanization of such characters as talking animals, aliens, etc. is left entirely up to you. As a general rule, the Technicians lean toward keeping characters in their original form (thus Simba would still be a lion, Garrus Vakarian would still be a turian), but if humanization seems more fun to you, fuck it.
...INORGANIC (A ROBOT, AN ANDROID)?
- Inorganics come in just as they were in canon, with the exception that AI programs with no body (or similar situations) are now in some sort of a body or shell. If they manifest in canon as a humanoid hologram, they'll typically just get a body that matches that hologram - but it's all flexible and you're welcome to play around with it.
It's worth noting that since the IC goal of bringing characters here is, in fact, suffering/death, an inorganic with absolutely zero capacity to suffer in any form (emotionally or physically) will find that they slowly begin to feel the capacity for emotional pain during their time in Vestige. Up to you whether their programming was adjusted by the Technicians or they had that untapped capacity all along.
...PREGNANT?
- They aren't anymore. In the interest of possibly avoiding inflicting that specific kind of trauma on characters, it might be a good idea to consider a different canonpoint for your character if at all possible.
...A CHILD?
- There is no age minimum for characters within Vestige, but I'm going to use my discretion as a mod if the character seems too mentally/emotionally immature for the content of the game. Some younger characters - Clementine from the first season of The Walking Dead Game (at age 8), for example - would be much more suitable than others in a horror environment due to the nature of their own canon. Generally, any character under about eleven years old is going to have their suitability appraised, just for the sake of not having the rapid traumatization of a child here in our game.
...JUST FUCKING HUGE?
- Characters over ten feet tall will be sized down to ten feet tall, because your mod is not going to spend one more game tearing her hair out about adapting horror events for giant fucking robots.
MISCELLANEOUS
COMMS.
- We have three.
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vestigenet + vestigelogs are fairly self-explanatory, as the network and logs comms. vestigechat is for all OOC activity - all introduction posts + mod posts + memes.MEMES?
- I don't really have a set schedule. I'll toss up a test drive meme every once in a while if it seems like there's a need, and will try to kick out a CR meme once every couple of months. Y'all are very welcome to post your own memes.
PROVIDING CONTENT WARNINGS.
- Modposts will provide content warnings for excessive gore, any form of self-harm, and anything sex-related (e.g. if we did something like the aforementioned original-Box sex pollen February event). I'll also warn for any especially disturbing gifs or visual aids and will link them rather than paste them directly into the post.
It's requested that players provide the same content warnings (as well as any others that seem appropriate) when relevant!
HOW DO I DROP?
- Just toss up a comment on the taken list saying you're dropping that character! Super simple.
WHERE TO FIND ANNOUNCEMENTS, MODPOSTS, ETC?
- Vestige has a Discord server and I'll toss all mod announcements up on there. I'll probably set up a Plurk at some point and edit that in here. You're also welcome to track the !modpost tag on
vestigechat, that should catch most everything.
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Curious if they would actually see anyone, nothing or get duped by the techs some how? Good, bad and everything in between is cool.
Thanks!
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"Setting up watch" how? Just like, sitting there in shifts? Are they doing it obviously, or covertly? What's the game plan, etc.
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If that doesn't seem to work, they'll switch to inside hunkered down hiding trying to spot anyone. Please picture then hiding behind the registers, peeking out to catch sight of anything. They are pros.
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Once they're hunkered down inside, how many days/nights would they stick around? 👀
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pretend this is mod journal
One row of shelving begins to lower into the floor, the linolium closing flat over top of it. Then, less than five seconds later, it emerges again from the floor fully-stocked. Then the next aisle does, and the one after that. This continues until every row of shelves has restocked.
clearly this is vestigemods replying, I see nothing otherwise
I laughed reading this, the Techs just SIGH fucking fine we guess. Watch this losers.
Okay but, not that I'm saying they will, but what if they tried to go down with one of the shelves? I'm assuming it wouldn't work or the Techs would stop it before they could go down?
Re: pretend this is mod journal
EVIL to tease them so!
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It honestly depends on what he'd do with it. It would be entirely possible for the Technicians to underestimate him at first, if that'd be fun for you.