![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rubycitymods) wrote2012-01-12 12:42 pm
FAQ
Welcome to Ruby City
It's quite simple, really. They will arrive on a train around twilight. Your character will be the only one on the train, but they will sense a certain presence they can feel but not see.
Your character may or may not remember the train ride; it's up to them. It could merely feel like a dream to them if you wish. But if you do want them to remember, all they will know is that they woke up one moment and they were all alone on a train, outside the windows vast plains as far as the eye can see. The plains would have eventually faded into a thick fog which only cleared once they were at the train station. They are then compelled to leave the train by an unseen force.
It's not needed to describe their arrival, though you are allowed to use it for your third person sample in the application if you wish.They will fail. How they fail and the consequences depend on how they try to leave.
If a character tries to follow the train out of the city, they'll eventually find themselves at the sea. Following the tracks out across the shallow islands will lead to a portal giving off a low energy signature and walking through it will turn the character around to the direction that they came from. Repeated attempts will have more violent results, until the character is forcibly spat out into the ocean or far out along the tracks.
Now that the wall is long gone, characters have further to roam, but they are still penned in in different ways; the city rests on an island surrounded by water.
Characters with the ability of flight can venture out over the ocean and those who can build boats may try to sail it, but the further they go the more forces will conspire to try and drive them back. The more often a character tries, the more aggressively the city will punish them for the transgression. If a character presses through the currents and strong winds trying to turn them around, they will find themselves in a familiar place -- the black void that once surrounded the land. After being lost in this place for some time they will finally feel ground beneath their feet and emerge, bruised and battered, not far inside one of the catacomb entrances.
If you wish, you may kill off a character. However, temporary character death is not a free-for-all and will need to be approved. Please comment on this post after working out the details with relevant CR! Further details on death mechanics within the game can also be found there.
However, if your character possesses a canon ability that allows them to resurrect (themselves or others), they will be allowed to use it in Ruby City without having to submit a request beforehand.
It looks that way. But, age is relative and characters who leave for any period of time (or spend some quality time in the catacombs for canon updates or what have you) may find themselves older or younger than they'd otherwise expect.
And it's just as possible that when they're returned home they find themselves whatever age they were when they left. All a mystery!
Character deaths are up to the player of that character. If you work something out with another player, then that is allowed.
There are, as a rule, no general NPCs in Ruby City. If a plot requires a death for some reason, please speak to a moderator. We have made exceptions in the past and allowed a non-played NPC to kick the bucket for the sake of plot and action. But this must be cleared with moderators first.
In order to canon update, you may have your character "disappear" for a short period of time (a few days to a week) and reappear (often emerging from the catacombs) with their canon update in place. They are sent home for the duration of the canon update and then brought back to Ruby City -- though obviously the passage of time is quite different in the two places.
If the canon update will alter your character very little there is no formal process that you need to go through - simply inform other players using the OOC community if you wish, and go ahead! However, if the update will cause significant changes (particularly in terms of abilities/powers and drastic personality shifts), please notify the mods using this post!
As such, they might witness events that have or will happen but will be unable to interfere with or change them in any way. Localised use of this ability (ie, time manipulation to make the character move faster between one place and another) is permitted, but only as it affects the individual.
Ruby City is a large city, whose original residents were either driven out or abandoned the city of their own volition. There are many empty buildings, the remnants of shops, inns, eateries, residences and so on. Specific locations continue to be uncovered by characters as time goes on.
For a list of some of the major relevant locations in Ruby City at current, check out the locations page and the residences page. If you or your character is looking to open up a shop, we recommend you contact the mods or else claim one of the empty house buildings to convert!
The Watches
The pocketwatches received by each resident on arrival are communication devices and are capable of the following:
- Text (including various colours)
- Audio
- Video
- Private communication
- Taking/Sending images
- Recording video/audio
- Providing an anon function
- Transfering data from devices not connected to the network (ie phones, music players, laptops)
- Playing music (unless recorded onto the watch itself)
- Providing games
- Any kind of internal self-aware VI function
- Allowing the user to pretend to be someone else
- Automatic archiving (though conversations can be manually saved)
The Technology
The plumbing and heating in the city is fairly modern, with flushing toilets and running water fed from a water tower situated towards the city outskirts. Waste feeds down into a sewer system under the city which is explorable, but... why would you want to? Individual boilers are attached to each house and also work via gas - don't let your pilot light go out! The lighting is also fairly modern in appearance, but on close inspection no wires or power generators are able to be found. Fireplaces are wood-burning (or coal, if you can get it).
Kitchen appliances are fairly basic. The stoves run on gas, with canisters available in the general store to be changed when it runs out. There are no electric kettles, microwaves or electric coffee-makers. Refrigerators are very early models with each unit set on top of an ice box for freezing purposes. Of course, in the winter, you can always store things outside.
There are no electrical outlets, so we're afraid to say that if your character brings a laptop/phone/ipod shuffle in with them, it will work until the battery dies and then there is no way to recharge it. Exceptions to this would be if said technology runs using magic, can be modified to run using magic (granted that there is someone around who can do this), or if some bright spark manages to cobble together a generator and you don't mind risking frying your equipment. Though the apartment blocks are four or five floors in height, there are no elevators. Enjoy the stairs!
The Stores
The stores do not stock anything that runs on electricity and the food provided is mostly fresh produce and raw materials. Hardware and tools provided will be rudimentary and the only modern convenience that is frequently resupplied is batteries.
Older technologies such as antique analogue radios are available for scavenging purposes - maybe someone can make use of them?
Beyond this the land simply ends and disappears into blackness that stretches to meet the sky on the horizon.
Yes. In particular teleportation is limited; while character with teleporting abilities can teleport about the city freely, once they are beyond its limits their teleporting is limited to distances no greater than 100 yards.
Characters can explore as long as they wish, but if they stay away from the City for too long they will feel a compulsion to return to it, the same sort of compulsion that propelled them from the train if they hesitated on disembarking.
Characters with the ability of flight can venture out over the ocean and those who can build boats may try to sail it, but the further they go the more forces will conspire to try and drive them back. If a character presses through the currents and strong winds trying to turn them around, they will find themselves in a familiar place -- the black void that once surrounded the land, still populated by the strange winged creatures that inhabited it previously
After being lost in this place for some time they will finally feel ground beneath their feet and emerge, bruised and battered, not far inside one of the catacomb entrances.The obelisk itself has no notable power. There is nothing to be sensed from it in terms of magic or intent, but looking into it will find the very centre strangely dark. From time to time the overseers of the city will appear near to it but whether they have an actual connection to the construct or simply want to perpetuate the idea that they do is something that is still up for debate.
The color of the watch is up to the player's discretion -- but generally they are made out of metals so will be gold, bronze or silver. The size of the communicator is determined by the size of the character.
HOWEVER. There is no user manual for the communicators. None of the buttons are labeled, so any function must be figured out by trial, error and ingenuity. That is to say, characters who have been in the city longer and/or possess some technological know-how have a much better chance of having learned how to access these extra functions. Please be realistic. At a minimum, the audio and video functions are easily accessible and figured out even by new arrivals. It is not possible to pretend to be someone else using the watches, but an anon function can be enabled.
One final point on the communicators. They cannot be taken apart or broken. It's physically impossible. Additionally, throwing a communicator away will be a temporary solution at best; communicators always find their way back to their proper owners.
More information on the watch functions can be found here.
However, several other individuals arrived some years ago, introducing themselves at first as guests of the Watcher and the Interloper. They became a more and more vocal presence, having shown themselves not above playing with the populace of Ruby City for their own ends. Not long after their integration into the city, they disposed of the two brothers and subsequently took over. These individuals were numbered at seven: Temper, Tim, Chassie, Gene, Atien, Chari and Dil.
More information about all NPCs can be found here and in copies of notes found here and here, written by the departed Vash Zwingli and maintained by Phoenix Wright, with details on their captors and other small tidbits of information which can be easily located in the library or by contacting Phoenix directly.
If you would like to have your character speak to an NPC specifically, they can be contacted on the network, and a post linking to each NPC's individual contact page can be found here. Comments are screened.
In person encounters with the NPCs are a bit rarer, but also happen. Hitting up the moderators is the best way to coordinate anything of this nature.
There are monsters, however, large and dangerous creatures in the deeper reaches of the park that may be assumed in action/combat as players wish.
Any sexually themed interaction (beyond kissing/over clothes) played out on the boards must be restricted to 18+ characters only. For 16 to 18 year olds, sexual scenes must be fade to black and may be implied in later posts. Any sexual interaction between characters under the age of 16 is strictly prohibited.
However, please remember that these situations should have some cause in character. We aren't encouraging random, pointless sex that is completely OOC.
In general the OOC board is a place to talk to your fellow players for fun and for plotting alike.
Additionally, posts announcing hiatuses, new characters and dropped characters should be made to the OOC community.
For new characters: Dreamwidth sometimes does not display tags in the drop down list until they have been used to tag at least one entry. This means that your character tag will have to be typed in manually the first time it is used. However, if you do not type it in exactly as it was entered by the moderators, it will not allow you to add it. The general rule is that tags will be your character's full name. There are a few exceptions. Notably, Hetalia characters have their country name as their tag and super heroes generally have their human identity as their tag, not their super hero name.
If you are having trouble tagging an entry or figuring out your character's tag, please contact a moderator.![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
rubycity_rp community is primarily for communicator posts -- audio, video and/or text. However, action bracket type posts are allowed. Threads that begin as video, audio or text may become action bracket posts.
The rubycity_logs community is for prose-form logs of in person encounters.
rubycitymods) The moderators may also be contacted individually. Their contact information can be found at the top of the contacts post (members only) or on the main community profile page.
Additionally, the moderators also have a plurk account: rubycitymods. The best way to ensure that your plurk is seen and responded to by the mods is to make it a private plurk to the moderator plurk.
We will get back to you about your event and will discuss with you when it best fits into the schedule.
An applicant may be refused if they have displayed tendencies towards serial app/drops, as this issue upsets ongoing CR and causes annoyance to other players.
Additionally, canons with silent protagonists and ones where player actions can differ based on a moral compass -- for example the Persona series, the Fallout series, Mass Effect and Dragon Age -- would be included under this umbrella. However, these characters can be applied for using the Canon OC form.
We do expect more detail in applications for these characters, in order to fully understand their motives and development.
If you are applying for a character in a canon from which you already play a character, you must fill in the section at the top of your application form to tell us how those characters may interact and how you will handle it as a player.
Page 1 of 2