just wanted to make a quick post to say with so much happiness that today makes one year since we opened aurora bay!!!!
us admins could have never dreamt that we'd be around for this long (honestly we were shocked when we even managed to get enough people to join that we could open, and then we just hoped to be around for a month or two) but we have been and it's all thanks to our muns, some of whom have been around since the very beginning
it's been such a joy logging on and spending every day with you all! we've all truly become such a tightknit group of writers and friends and us admins are so excited for the future of our group (and we're still always welcoming and accepting of new muns! so if you're looking for a place to grow and develop your muses, come check us out!!)
so again, thank you thank you thank you to everyone who's made aurora bay truly come alive! and here's to many more months of us writing together.
We announced in our discord that we will be working on a little newspaper for Aurora Bay called the Aurora Bay Times, and here is more information about it:
Firstly, this is not a gossip blog. From our experiences, gossip blogs can sometimes be hurtful and even cause ooc drama, which is something we never want here. We strive to make Aurora Bay a group that allows our muns to feel safe and a place where they can have fun-- especially since for a lot of us, roleplaying is an escape from our busy (and crazy) lives.
Here's how this will work!
Every few weeks, we will make a post written like it's a newspaper, sharing things about what the town is doing, discussing hype for upcoming events, and most importantly, it will have little pieces from our muns!
We want you guys to get join us with it and get creative! If business owners want an "Ad" in the paper, submit it to the AB Times blog. You can write something as simple as, "I want an ad for X business", and you can leave it at that or you can give us more info if you'd like! You can even write a whole paragraph on it if you want!
If your character wants to leave a review for an establishment, submit it to the AB Times submission box. Or even to drum up a little ic drama, if your character gets into a fight with someone outside of the Four Leaf Pub and want a little news blurb about it, submit that to the submission box!
Anything pertaining to specific characters or locations will need to be off anon and sent only to the submission box. That way we can easily discuss with the muns it involves to make sure they're totally okay with it!
There will also be a gossip column for our paper, so if you want to add something about your character (like a fight mentioned above, a nasty breakup, or someone just running amok in town) or if you've plotted for one muse to have wide-known tension with another and there's some juicy gossip there, submit it to the submission box! Again, please make sure there is nothing mean or malicious about someone else without explicit consent, and anything submitted specifically for the articles, especially if it's involving specific muses, must be off anon!
To keep the page going, we will have a character "running" the AB Times. Alejandra Gutierrez (Salma Hayek). She will be well-known around town, but she won't be on the dash anywhere other than the AB Times' blog. So assume "articles" are written by her.
Of course, if you have written an "article" yourself, we will tag you to share that it was written by you!
The only thing that will be allowed to be sent anonymously will be advice questions. You may send anons to Alejandra to ask her for her wonderful (or sometimes not-so wonderful) advice, and some will be answered right on the spot while others will be posted in the paper along with everything else!
Articles, reviews, interviews, updates from Aurora Bay police, the weather, what's going on in town, etc, are just a few things that will be going on in the newspaper. So again, get creative! We'll even ask around for stories for each article we do!
There will a short list of guidelines for the Aurora Bay Times ask and submission boxes, but it's just to ensure everyone has fun with this and no one gets their feelings hurt!
We're so excited for this and we hope you guys are too!
After listening to concerns of our muns and us admins discussing, we’ve decided to change some of our activity rules!
Currently the rules are to post at least 3 Ic posts within 5 days for each character, and considering how large this group is, it’s causing us admins to need to post activity checks more often to be fair, but it’s also hindering a lot of our muns from enjoying themselves on the dash because we are all adults with busy lives.
The activity rules have been upsetting to several muns (even we can barely keep up with activity), and we think it’s for the best to change things. Instead of doing actual activity checks, we’ve decided we will be doing interest checks instead as well as reaching out to muns before making any decisions about unfollowing.
Basically, as long as there’s communication, we won’t be doing unfollows! Those who have lost characters due to inactivity can reapply whenever. There is still no limit to how many characters you can have as long as every third is a person of color.
Once again, we are sorry for how harsh things have been with the rules. The guidelines will be updated later tonight! We really love this group and everyone here! We don’t want anyone to have a bad experience here!
popping on real quick to say we've added a few new locations to our ever-growing town!
aurora bay library
cooldown ice rink
the movie house theater
pinball wizard arcade
titanium gym
tejas cantina
the sunset drive-in
most of these places have been added to our occupations page as well, so we've got a bunch of new jobs to choose from! and as always, if any of our current members have a suggestion for a new place in aurora bay, please shoot us a message here on the main and we'll absolutely discuss it
please see the list below for the randomized groups of muns who will be trapped in the safe zones during the storm!
remember, while these are safe (no structural damage), the power will still be out while the storm rages on outside. everyone will be trapped in these places with no way of contacting anyone else until the next morning when the storm finally clears.
for your threads, please be sure to use the accompanied tags for all your replies so everyone can keep track of who's where!
us admins have been discussing it for days now, and with agreement already seen in the discord, we've officially decided to have everyone move to using the beta editor.
we're new to it too and it's going to be a learning curve, but there's a few tutorials already pinned in the chat, and so many of our players have already offered to help show how to use it! so again, from here on our, we are requiring all of our players to only use beta for their dash posts.
if there's any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to us
happy sunday everyone! we have an announcement to make!
yesterday officially made it two months since we've opened this group and us admins are still blown away every day by how much we've grown. in the beginning we were hoping for just 10 muns so we could even get to open, and now we have over 40 muns and almost 100 characters which is just completely mind-blowing to us and beyond our wildest imaginations for the group
but with the group being so (wonderfully) big, kell and i have also realized that it's a lot of work to keep it maintained and updated all day and leaves us little time to actually write on our own characters some days.
so with that said, we'd like to officially announce that we've added a third member into our admin team: bex! (whose mascot will now be zazie beetz)
we love this group and all of our members so so much and we genuinely believe having a third on our team will help alleviate some of the admin duties off our shoulders and let us plot and write even more with you all as we enter our third month of being open
so whether on here or in the discord, everyone show our newest admin some love!
WOW! Your Diverse FCS are ABYSMAL. You should really be ashamed as a group that boast of having '100 characters'. Your rp is a joke and I can't believe people want to join your bs rp.
Abysmal? Wow, that’s a big word there. You know what’s really abysmal? Forcing muns to play incredible poc fcs only for them to half ass it because, well, they’re forced to. Oh! Or maybe the fact that if muns half ass writes a poc character because they’re forced to, they won’t care to look into the cultures of these poc characters.
Our rules are set in place for a reason, and I’ve answered this question so many times in our faq, so if you’re not going to read the main, I’m not sure I want you in our completely heinous rp that cares so much about diversity and people of color that we think they deserve to be written with a mun’s heart put into them, rather than fulfilling some invisible quota. Our 41 other members and I are so sorry to hear you won’t be joining us.
