NPC guides.

[ze_arteests]

General Rules.

✏ You may not lie about a game’s goals.

If characters are told to do ‘x’ to win, you must actually plan on rewarding x. To tell them to do ‘x’ to win and then actually reward actions ‘y’ and ‘z’ leaves team ‘x’ wondering why they put so much effort into following the rules when they’re not going to be rewarded for it, especially when rules are unpleasant. It also makes it harder on future game runners, so avoid this.

✏ No “loopholes”.

A game cannot be designed with the intention of having characters win by refusing to play.

✏ Games cannot ask, require, or encourage characters to harm or betray their own teammates or their partners in partnered games.

Characters need to be able to trust that they can always protect members of their own team. Betraying that trust can result in accelerated burnout and refusal to even participate in games (because why bother if they have to hurt not only other teams, but their closest comrades?) which is not conducive to the longevity of the game.

This rule extends to any game mechanic that may result in a team being in any way encouraged to harm other members of their team. Even if the portrait isn't outright asking for a team to harm teammates, if they could have an easier time winning the game by hurting each other that too is unacceptable. Teams must be able to trust each other.

✏ You are not allowed to reward characters for self-sacrifice or self-sabotage.

Decollage is a game based upon competition and being willing to do anything to achieve the wish or desire that brought a character here. Awarding them for what is essentially self-sabotage, however noble or well-intentioned the act is, goes against Decollage's setting. Similarly, a team actually attempting to sabotage themselves may not be rewarded. If Team Rainbow is trying to lose, then they lose. It's unfair for Team Snowflake who was trying super hard to win to miss out on getting memories and skills because Rainbow doesn't know how to lose right. :(

✏ You are not allowed to punish characters for winning.

Again, the game is based upon being willing to do anything to achieve one's wish or desire. It is against the spirit and setting of the game to punish characters for doing so.

✏ Warn ahead for games with maiming or death.

This allows players to try and plan ahead for them, to clear their schedule and try and join in on the fun, or if their character has hit critical trauma peak, to avoid it.

✏ Only competitively based games award memories.

Free-form creation games and other similar games are allowed, but instead reward things like food, weapons, or additional things for the dorms.

If a game could hypothetically be run even if just one team showed up, it is not competitive. So most creation games which give teams things and expect them to make something do not count, and neither do exploration games, which also don’t require the presence of other teams. Since the increased power and reacquisition of memories and skills in Decollage is powered by taking power from other team’s frustrated hopes, if the teams aren’t set up to compete, memories/skills cannot be distributed.

Locked room set-ups, with each team in their own private locked room should be reserved for games that require them, IE: War room games, Cry Wolf, ect. Games that do not require secrecy will be held in public.

No Game Healing Quests

Damage done by games cannot be quested to be removed. Which isn’t to say game damage must be permanent: revivals, characters healing/fixing each other, time limiting effects, ect. are all fair game. The only thing not allowed is for the painting in question to make the offer of doing a task, and undoing the game effect upon completion.

Rewarding Memories.

✏ How many can win?

Depending on the turnout for your game, anywhere from 2-6 teams can win. Winners shouldn't exceed more than half of the teams that were present for the game, though exceptions may be made if you are awarding partner wins and still need to select a final single team for a pity win.

✏ Pity Wins

For choosing winners, choose the top one-five winner(s) according to whatever scoring rubric you have in place. But once you are done with that, for the last winner look at the win record document and please choose a team that has gone a month or more without winning a game. If all teams have won recently, then choose whichever of the bottom tier teams performed the best. Bottom tier teams of the last five non-supply games will be highlighted. Additionalle, please label pity wins. We want to be sure people continue to remember to give these wins out, and keeping them visible in this manner will help avoid them being forgotten in the future.

✏ Loser Games

Loser games are games in which only the teams highlighted on the win record document may be awarded memories. Since this is in addition to the pity win system, memories may not be awarded to every eligible team. Aim for selecting roughly half of eligible teams as winners in a loser game.

✏ If someone has set a memory or ability to priority, give them it.

✏ Try and choose memories from whichever category they’ve received the fewest of so far!

If they’ve gotten a whole slew of trivials, give them a significant, if it’s nothing but neutrals and positives, go for a negative!

Supply Games and Quests.

✏ In supply games, as in memory/skill games, at least 2 teams must win supplies, and a maximum of six may win.

✏You may choose to either select rewards from the supply game requests or to choose your own items to give out.

✏ Items should match the difficulty of the quest. You can’t hand out a milk-producing immortal cow for the cost of tying your shoelaces.

✏ In general, avoid giving out any items that will make the setting easy to handwave. The goal of the setting is to give characters something to interact with and overcome, so if they all get things that render the setting a non-threat, that's defeating the purpose. If you are ever unsure on any item, feel free to ask a mod for an opinion.

✏ Quests should not break the game tone! Deco is a competition based game, so giving quests geared towards teams cooperating, such as help another team with their hunting, teach a skill, or hug three people on a team you want to get to know better are not good quests. Better quests might be play a prank, give a booby-trapped gift, or start a fist-fight.

✏ Keep in mind that Deco already has supply games, and quests should not supplant their role. As such, quests should typically be unfun ICly, though that doesn't necessarily mean unfun OOCly. Aside from the trouble-causing quests, environmental quests like fight a Kasian Leura or catch a live Siberia might be good ideas.

✏ Small amounts of specialty foodstuffs (for instance: one cake), cigarette packets, a special outfit, a book on how to ferment your own booze (or most books, really), and small blades all qualify as minor items. Environment-based quests and harassing other teams are perfectly acceptable for these kinds of quests.

✏ Larger furniture items like a piano, extra bed for a reapp teammate, more serious grade weapons all qualify as major quest items. For larger items, quests of this sort should be performed in the portrait. Quests of this kind cannot be done off-screen!

✏ Quests should be a team effort, and need at least two people but preferably more from the questing team.

✏ Ongoing quests: in general quests to get the same item over and over are frowned upon. However, in the case of medicine needed for a teammate with a chronic condition or cigarettes they are allowed. Ongoing food quests are not.

✏ Items are to be rewarded within reason. Characters should not be receiving libraries of books or entire racks of weapons. All of the following rules also apply to quests taken by teams in portraits out of games. As an additional note, rewards should be about equal to difficulty of quest or game.

✏ Regarding food, instead of rewarding with items that can be found in the environment (animals and raw animal products, fully matured plants, poisons/drugs found in Decollage's plantlife) keep to convenient or special food items like instant ramen, cookies, soda, instant rations, etc. Things that can't be acquired directly from the environment. Seeds to be grown into edible plants are also acceptable, however any seeds given out should only be natives to Decollage. A list of plants available for farming can be found here. We do ask that any rewards of this nature be infrequent to prevent teams from beginning to take them for granted.

Specific item rules.

✏ Modern luxuries such as appliances, entertainment systems, or magical equivalents to these items are not acceptable quest items, and are simply not available from any portrait.

✏ Alcohol, dairy, leather, cloth, sugar, candies and other sweets, yeast, salt, seasoning, soap and hygiene supplies, tea, coffee, wood and wood working tools, sterile bandages and basic medical supplies, tobacco and questionable drugs, and all types of books can only be handed out in supply games or via patronning to specific teams. Please don't accept any quests for these items!

✏ Trees cannot be given out. There's just not enough room for a tree to grow (no room for a root system to develop).

✏ Food: food that can be gotten from the environment cannot be quested for. Meat and vegetables in particular, are off the table.

✏ Chargers: as a few people have brought in small electronic devices as their personal items, Deco does have a charger that is available to quest for. The Charger counts as a minor quest item, and is what appears to be a modified hare, aluminum and copper mechanisms integrated into its organics. A port is half-hidden underneath the ears, and it generates enough charge to charge a cellphone or a gameboy, but not much more than that. It must be kept fed and taken care of as a regular pet would be.

✏ Ammunition must be rewarded in limited supply. No excessive amounts of ammo.

Patron Guide

Initial Agreement

✏ The full team is bound by the agreement, and the agreement is between the team and the portrait, not just the original individuals who made the pact. All members of the team, including new members who join later and any returning hobo slots, will be automatically bound by the terms and will receive the marks on arrival.

✏ The agreement must be mutual: A portrait can’t force a team into agreement, and the team can’t force the portrait. There can be no patronage due to duress from either side.

✏ The agreement must have benefits for both sides. Both team and portrait need to get something out of it, and it can’t be based only on friendship. A team and a portrait getting along well is not necessarily the best base for it; the motivation should be something like a goal they both agree with, or an offering that’s worth the price they must pay in return.

✏ Teams and Patrons should run their deals through the mods before threading it out, to make sure the agreement fits into the guidelines we expect for mutual benefits, without being too overpowered or frivolous.

General Mechanics:

✏ Team patronage and favoritism should not interfere with games. A game or the game's rewards cannot be rigged in favor of the NPC's own patronized team, tasks cannot be made easier for them, etc.

✏ These arrangements are not a deal to take lightly, and should be considered permanent. In the case of a broken contract, there must be some level of consequence, and although the specifics of the consequences will vary from NPC to NPC, teams should not get off lightly. There should be no patron-shuffling.

✏ If a team does break a patronage off, they will have great difficulty realigning with a new NPC. It will take time, and future contracts are likely to be offered to them on worse terms or higher stakes for what's expected of them, since they have not been shown to be trustworthy.

✏ However in the case of a team undergoing a major lineup change and the patronage no longer fitting near as well as it did at the start, contact the mods and an exception may be made for lighter consequences and allowing a switch, but generally we'd prefer if this happen rarely.

Patron Marks

✏ Physical marks appear on the patroned. What these marks are vary from portrait to portrait. They can take the form of actual markings, like a scar, tattoo, or brand, a physical change, or jewelry they are physically unable to remove. Patron marks are permanent.

Special Supplies

✏ A special area is unlocked when a team patrons in the patron portrait, granting free access to a rare item. This supply regenerates weekly, and can be traded and sold (but not freely given) by the patron team.

The reason is that due to the pre-anniversary clock event, portraits are now longer automatically reset when they spend their powers on popular types of supplies. However, when they patron some of that power is replenished by their new team. The team they patron to influences what type of goods is easiest for them to stock and freely supply, and along with the other services a team provides, this gives patron portraits more power!

All portraits are automatically aware of this, although they don’t necessarily have to tell the truth to anyone who questions them about it.

Alcohol of any kind: Cardinal.
Dairy (inc. yogurt, butter, milk): Celeste.
Leather and Cloth: Shell.
Sugar (inc. candy, fairy floss and other sweets) and Yeast: Lilac.
Salt and Seasonings: Canary.
Soap and hygiene supplies like toothbrushes: Fawn.
Tea and Coffee: Saffron.
Wood and Woodworking Tools: Byzantium.
Sterile bandages and basic medical supplies: Teal.
Tobacco and questionable drugs: Copper Rose.
Entertainment and informational books: Iris.
A fully functional kitchen: Sage.

Portraits:

✏ The portrait of the patron also appears in the dorms of their patronned. This does not mean their realm is necessarily always open to them, as they can keep the barrier solid, but it is now within easier contact.

✏ Main NPC Page.