Welcome to the Gaian Academy!

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Table of Contents

1. Mandatory Reading
2. Incarnations of the Academy
3. Activities

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Mandatory Reading

Table of Contents

Notice: The Academy is a place that one can come to as a means to legitimize character growth. One joins, picks some classes (3 at a time) and you can decide what rate your character learns it. If you're abusing the system, you will be kicked out. Simple.

Why? It is cumbersome sitting down and trying to teach someone something IC, through writing; tedious to play that out, whether teacher or student. Teachers are awesome to have but aren't necessary for students to learn. All teachers are now to be NPC'd. One example of an appropriate way to use this system would be to start a thread with your character's action and IC motivation being that the NPC teacher told them to practice this or that or to have two students in a class while the NPC teacher lectures on how to purify water.

Rules

1. 1. All students or staff should fill out a sheet and post it in the appropriate thread. After doing so send me a PM and I will invite you to the Gaian Academy group.
2. 2. After making a thread, you are encouraged to make an OOC discussion in the group so that all members can communicate with each other.
3. 3. Students are not allowed to have weapons of any kind while inside of Academy grounds.
4. 4. Violence is neither encouraged nor discouraged. While students are expected to behave civilly with one another, Gaian healing arts are so advanced that while in Academy grounds, there is no real fear of loss of death or serious damage so long as students response in a somewhat alert manner.

Teachers: Although we allow members to play teachers, we do not allow teacher "class threads". Field trips, internal missions, extra-credit and extracurricular assignments are the primary methods by which a member playing a teacher may actively teach a class. Threads in which a teacher is simply soliloquizing to a class has proven tedious to play in, and disastrous when considering the whole of forward progress is dependent on a single person (the teacher).

Teachers, even NPC teachers, will always be better than any student in their specific field of expertise.

Students: Students can take up to 3 classes a "year". When the Academy shifts into next year will vary and is decided upon solely by myself and Damon (desolate), and a headmaster whenever we choose one for the academy. Rather than attending classes and having those classes attended to by players, we've automated the process and made it passive rather than active. The system has the brunt of the actual learning happening behind the scenes, while the writing itself focuses more on what your student has learned and how they use that knowledge.

So as a student my 3 classes for my first year I choose Alchemy, Elemental Theory and Geomancy. I "earn rank" in these classes, that is legitimize my character gaining something from these classes, by a requisite amount of roleplay. That is to say you can't just make a character and expect them to get good by stewing in a corner.

There is an NPC list for the rest of the staff and one being worked on currently for the teachers. The majority of the staff and supporting characters for the school environment will be controlled by way of mutual NPC. A brief personality profile on each non-teaching NPC character can be found below, and the same model will be followed for teachers.

NPC Teachers

1. Choose 3 classes from the Class list. Add them to your character sheet. Students can be of any age, race or creed save for anything explicitly evil.
2. Pick a class and make a thread for it or demonstrate your involvement in studying for the class by utilizing information you would obtain from that class in any other thread.

Example: Sally takes Alchemy for her first year. She borrows an Alchemy tome from the Academy Library. She decides to go on a quest in Ignatz to find the cyclops. She uses spells from the Alchemy tome to solve her problems. She displays ingenuity in her success, enough to cause her instructors to give her a rank up when they read her lab report on the quest's events (filling out a Canonicity form).

Ranking: You can earn rank points in each class to determine how advanced your character is in that specific field of study. These ranks can be given out only by teachers, and then only in their specific class,and by staff members.

Beginner (1-3 ranks)
Intermediate (4-6)
Disciplined (7-9)
Advanced (9-12)

You get bonus ranks for questing with fellow students and for recruiting for the Academy by getting someone to join. Credits expire after 3 months of inactivity. You can get your credits back by becoming a tutor and DM'ing a quest and stuff like that.

Posting styles

Spoiler:

Strict order: Exactly what it sounds like. Threads follow a strict posting order. ABCD will always be ABCD. C cannot post until B does and B cannot post until A does. The customary wait time before skipping a person is three days.

Once per turn: The order is fluid, as in not fixed, but each person may only post once per turn/round. So, ABCD one turn could be ADCB the next turn and BCDA the third turn. The advantage of this pattern is that if A talks to D, D doesn't have to wait for B and C to post before D responds to A.

Nested: Even more fluid than the above post. A loose sense of order is still adhered to with the exception of character-to-character interaction. So, example using ABCDE. The five players are in a tavern. A approaches E and they engage in a dialogue and get to know one another. So BCD engage in customary post order to do whatever they're doing, and inside of this A and E are going back and forth at their own pace and internal order.

The advantage is obvious; no waiting just to talk. The disadvantage is that the nested pair or trio cannot really move the story forward without the remaining characters. It makes no sense for A and E to talk and have a 7 hour adventure in a thread where BCD are still engaging in a single hour's time.

No order: Self-explanatory. Chaos, but not always unproductive. Some internal or nested orders are bound to crop up, but they don't usually remain throughout the course of the thread.

DM styles

Spoiler:

Central DM: This is the traditional style and the one made popular by, and almost necessary for, the formal pen'n'paper RPG game. One person controls the flows of events, and hashes out details for the NPC's, the town and setting, the events of the quest and so on. This keeps threads interesting, as majority of the people find out information as their characters do.

Communal DM: The responsibilities of the DM are spread out to every participants of the thread. Fleshing out details for NPC's and the way they interact with the group, details of the quest as it develops including the final resolution and steps leading up to it, and spoils and such. The standard practice is that if a character is actively DM'ing a specific element, that they gain control of that element but this is not always so.The staff considers Communal DM this to be the best option.

Backup DM: This takes the bits and pieces of the above two styles and combining them into a unique gestalt. Namely the major theme is the communal dm, while one player of the group can act in the faculty of a central DM should the plot sag or reach a state of imbalance or drudgery.

Quest guidelines and practices

1. Always keep it fun.
2. There's no need to post every single time, or in order. As DM, you have supreme flexibility. Your task is to keep the story lively and interesting. Or rather, that's partially your task, because keeping things fresh is as much the task of the players as the DM.
3. Avoid the most obvious methods. Keep in mind that you are a writer writing with other writers, and so most people are familiar with the common plot devices. Keep things unique.

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Incarnations of the Academy

Table of Contents

Incarnations
1. Stationed in Marlboro Keep. First year the academy was exclusive in its use for the training and indoctrinating of the faithful into the clergy. This combined a sober, comprehensive analysis of the Gaian Bible as a staple of the education but involved a focus on magical theory, mathematics, and basic martial arts. Due to its focus as a school for the clergy, students were not restricted or grouped by age and included a wide variety of races.[*]Headmaster: Odin Haze

2. The academy expands its knowledge base and now begins accepting people from the surrounding area, accepting mostly from Biazo and Weland.
Headmaster: Julius Aldoid.

3. Relocated to Ponkapoag Lake. The academy has become something of a college, its esteem growing by the day and yet access freely granted to any and all who are deemed appropriate students. There is no fee to enroll or attend classes, save what is incurred by the cost of materials and clothing; food and dormitory also free of charge. The academy has begun accepting applications for teachers as well, to better handle the ever growing student body.
Headmaster: Samal Camiel.

4. No relocation. No central management. Classes mainly automated by communal NPCing.
Headmaster: Dr. Maxwell

Students: It is important for students to note that going through Quests and Field Trips for classes are meant for, aside from roleplay of course, marking progress through that specific class. Students are welcome, and encouraged, to roleplay throughout the entirety of the academy grounds for any reason.

Do some mischief, investigate the library and try to find some hidden tunnels, spy on some teachers, do crazy ill shit. Sparring and training, studying and schoolyard romance, oh my!

A final note: Students are not allowed to carry weapons of any kind on campus, save for what they are allowed in combat classes, and these are exclusively allowed only for the time those classes run. For any students that wish to use the Gaian Zodiac for their character's birthday, feel free:

http://www.valucre.com/showthread.php/5700-Zodiac

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Activities

Table of Contents

The Academy is free for students to roam around in. They'll be able to:

1. Sign up for dorm rooms. The ones closest to the cafeteria and the bathrooms go by the fastest.
2. Check out a class list*.
3. Familiarize themselves with the layout of the academy buildings, such as the boys and girls dormitory, the cafeteria, classrooms, etc.
4. Players are encouraged to interact with other players, even something as simple as student meeting student for the first time and establishing those bonds of friendship. Here's a good example!.

*If players are too busy for this, then abstractions are encouraged as well.

** Damon says: Players are encouraged to incorporate one another into their character histories, especially to those players that don't want to RP a lot. Even something small like "One time Ethan stole Donovan's girlfriend, and then Michael threw up on her and she melted because she was actually a witch and vomit is 95% water" will add an incredible layer of dimension for later interaction. It isn't something roleplayed out, but it establishes some type of historical crux that dictates how your characters interact.