August News and Notices 2016

Hello and welcome to PMD-RP News of August 2016!

The guild system has recently gone through some changes in its rank system. In short, if you are part of a team that has ANY exploration points. You have likely received a boost in your current rank.

Rank requirements have been lowered, and mission page requirements along to match it. Feel free to visit the update post directly by clicking --> HERE <--

The guild has had many request of which have or is about to expire very soon. It would be a shame that so many requests are going unanswered. On that note, the guild is always recruiting new members!


As you may or may not be aware, the current site wide event "The Wake of Destruction" is still ongoing. The main thread is located ->here<-)

Arceus and Giratina still both have one out of three recruits, whereas Zygarde has none.
How can you participate in this event? Now that's a good question! Here's how!:

• The battle for Mewtwo, Arceus's second recruit still rages on in Serene Cave and you can participate by rolling a Mewtwo encounter in that particular dungeon!
  
• Zygarde's first recruit, Shaymin has been located in Misty Mire, but requires rescuing! In order to participate in freeing Shaymin, you must work to defeat any Muk, Gourgeist, Malamar and Reuniclus that you encounter in Misty Mire.
  
• The clue for Giratina's second recruit can be found in the event thread. If you can work out what it is you need to do, you may just be rewarded...
  

Note that any who participate in dealing damage to Mewtwo, or defeating even a single opponent to help free Shaymin will be eligible to require the rewards offered for completing each section of the event! Similar is true for any other parts of the event; each user who actively participates and results in progression of the event will receive rewards.

If you happen to roll Mewtwo in Serene Cave, or defeat one of the above mentioned opponents in Misty Mire, please notify myself or another administrator so that we can update the event thread!

As a quick reminder, the escort rule can be utilized in any event related threads as long as said thread is specifically marked as an Event Thread by the user posting it. The escort rule allows a character with higher energy to escort up to two extra characters to a dungeon that they would not normally be able to access due to the constraints of the energy system. It costs 5 extra energy per pokemon being escorted for the higher energy character to enter that dungeon, and any character that is being escorted will have 0 energy upon entering the dungeon and will have to replenish their energy with berries or other items.

It is wise to confirm with a staff member before using the escort rule, just to be safe. But the rule was always intended to help us be inclusive of newer members of the site who might want to explore the areas linked to site events but who have characters with low energy.


Just a reminder to all members that we have four Independent Organizations (IOs) on the site currently, and characters can apply for membership in any of these whilst their character is still being looked over for approval by Character Moderators. Some IOs have their own conditions for joining though, so you may have to wait until after your character is approved to finalize your IO signup for various reasons!

The list of current IOs on the site is located ->here<- and includes Steamrise Inn, The Tribe of Renewed Life, Blacktooth Kingdom and the Windrose Scouts.

This section will be used to report on various news in IOs and generate interest in the IOs on the site, and so if any IO founders have any news they would like me to include in this section, feel free to send an admin a message and we will fit it into the news!



As per, here's your monthly reminder to keep yourself up to date with all of the site's rules! The rules board is located ->here<- and though we will usually notify when large rule changes take place, we do still make smaller edits without a big notice so it's worth re-reading them every now and then.

Finally I'd also like to remind everyone that in order to help staff and moderators do their jobs more easily, we encourage you to report any post in a thread that you see is breaking the site's rules by using the report button located on each post.

This little icon is located by the Quote, Edit and Delete buttons of each post; upon clicking, you can select a reason for the report and write why you are reporting that particular post.

By doing this, we can more quickly and easily deal with posts that are breaking the rules as staff are notified of posts that are reported!

	Kureko
ThePoke3nder97		Dracorexion
NursePhantump	SpeedFox	CharmanderAndShupit2002
Uletheeevee31	DeusProtivogas	Sakura
TraceNoil	Monokumo Pikachu (GAMER)	BlueKat12 (Kat)

Although it is late in the month and some user's may have had their birthday already. We still wish you all a happy birthday! ^[?]


Last but not least, I'll conclude the news part of this month's news thread by wishing a very happy birthday to the following users, whose birthdays are all this month!


This month's news thread topic is going to start off with the police and outlaw system. Although there has been an update on it before, we would like to discuss with the community on your ideas for it. For example, how do you think it should be implemented and governed? (There was an announcement for implementing some of it already, but some felt it wasn't complete yet.)

In the middle of August. Nice. I guess I can't complain though since there really isn't much new with the site. Happy birthday to everyone, let's talk about police vs outlaws.

I have no thoughts on how it could possibly improve, but I love the idea that police would be rewarded for catching criminals and criminals would be rewarded for doing criminal things. I think there should be some kind of grander system, though I'm not really sure what I mean by that nor how it could be done.

I've been in full support of the police/outlaw system and pushing for it to be implemented for a long time now. I have more outlaws than most people have characters in the first place, so I would love to be able to get some form of reward for that. This system's got full support from me.

I'm eager to make a police officer character, so I'd love to have the police/outlaw system implemented!

I've already created a character with aspirations to become a police officer and have an outlaw character planned, so I hope that the police and outlaw systems are polished a bit and re-released soon!

The police system didn't look like it needed much work. The concept of recruits starting as apprentices to full-fledged officers (NPCs or PCs) is pretty cool. It sounds to me like you guys will need some more NPC RPers to make it work, though (unless if the current staff is willing to fill in). The same thing applies to the detective-style missions that were suggested for higher ranking officers. The whole system is going to rely heavily on the activity level of the staff.

The outlaw system, however, looked pretty barebones and didn't make much sense to me. It's a bit strange for criminals to get randomly rewarded for their actions with no explanation whatsoever, don't you think? I personally think that a mafia-style organization would be a better way to go about it.

If you want to talk about things that could be done with the outlaw system, I'd say it would be easier to just say the "rewards" are items stolen by the character, and you're simply limited on how many "rewards" they can steal from an out-of-character perspective.  Or perhaps in some cases, the items could be rewards from other outlaw-types for doing something, such as a hitman would receive.  I suppose that second one would be relatively close to "mafia style," though.

I think some kind of ranking system would be neat, too.  After all, there's a ranking system for guilds and there will presumably be one for police, so why not have kind of an "underground reputation" system?  Your character does more bad things and thus is more well-known in the world.  So where guilds and police have "ranks," outlaws could have "reputation."  Although I think some of the people with existing outlaw characters on the site would need to be accommodated for any prior crimes before the implementation of this system.  For instance, despite being reformed, I feel like Mirage the Zoroark would probably deserve to start off with some rep.  I don't see why that would be a problem, though, since it would just generate some hype for the system if anything.

If there already was a ranking system for outlaws planned then I didn't get the memo.

Outlaw ranking system has my support: a measurement of infamous renown.

However, I personally am against making a Union for Outlaws. I think outlaw organisations should be left to the IO system.

Lord E V wrote:

If you want to talk about things that could be done with the outlaw system, I'd say it would be easier to just say the "rewards" are items stolen by the character, and you're simply limited on how many "rewards" they can steal from an out-of-character perspective.  Or perhaps in some cases, the items could be rewards from other outlaw-types for doing something, such as a hitman would receive.  I suppose that second one would be relatively close to "mafia style," though.

I think some kind of ranking system would be neat, too.  After all, there's a ranking system for guilds and there will presumably be one for police, so why not have kind of an "underground reputation" system?  Your character does more bad things and thus is more well-known in the world.  So where guilds and police have "ranks," outlaws could have "reputation."  Although I think some of the people with existing outlaw characters on the site would need to be accommodated for any prior crimes before the implementation of this system.  For instance, despite being reformed, I feel like Mirage the Zoroark would probably deserve to start off with some rep.  I don't see why that would be a problem, though, since it would just generate some hype for the system if anything.

If there already was a ranking system for outlaws planned then I didn't get the memo.

I support this, especially the part about Mirage, but I feel like a bounty would be more fitting. Like the higher your bounty the more 'infamous' you are. I have no idea how you would configure the rep/bounty for current characters seeing as characters like Mirage, Coaster's Spiritomb who's name escapes me, and Zera, have done destructive things, but I do agree it would be a bit unfair to just suddenly have them be a low rating outlaw because the system was JUST put into place.

You aren't the first person to give the suggestion of bounties in response to me. I had a chat with someone about it and they gave the same suggestion. Honestly, I love the idea of that. It fits in perfectly with my original suggestion while also making more sense from an in-character perspective.

Once a system is created for managing how the points are given out, the admins would probably figure out what all current outlaws on the site have done and decide what kind of rating they should have based on that.

Just gonna drop my opinions right here. They may not be very strong considering I'm not very good at considering outlaw characters and prefer either the benevolent or the neutral types of characters, but I still think they should provide some sort of feedback.

1. Outlaw Reputation

This is one of my favorite ideas brought up. Not only does it fit in nicely with the setting and nature of the underground, but it also works efficiently by giving a sense of realistic sense to it. Think of it like the opposite of how people look up to heroes. If people see another as respectable due to their good acts, wouldn't it make sense for the opposite to be true for outlaws?

Also, it could have negative side effects like the bounty idea. For example, the higher reputation an outlaw has, the more likely that Pokémon are to spot, recognize, and deal with them. This might be a bad idea, but what if reputation slowly decreased over time? For example, if an outlaw hasn't done any criminal acts for a month or so, their reputation would go down? I understand if this idea would make the system a lot harder to account for considering then the person in charge would have to ask the RPer to show proof, but this is just an idea. I'm open to any constructive criticism!

2. Mafia

Like Badger said, I think a type of mafia would be under the jurisdiction of an IO. They would need to be a group of Pokémon trying to achieve the same or similar goals yet still trusting enough of each other as to not accuse one another of trying to achieve their own ideals alone. I suppose it would be up to whoever creates the IO to decide what the requirements are, but that's just my opinion. Making a mafia IO would have to have similar (if not stricter) standards compared to the police force.

3. Police System

The police system seems to work. Recruits being rookies before becoming fully-fledged officers would make sense, I like the idea of detective-style missions being designed, and it seems like fun! I personally don't know if I'm assigning one of my planned characters to the police station, but I'm confident that the current system would work out smoothly.

...Yup, that's pretty much it. Sorry if it doesn't provide much critique, I don't generally see much wrong. ^_^