Well, March is almost gone and I have not yet found the will to actually write my usual ranting update on how things are going. To be honest, I’ve been generally pretty absent and so I’m not 100% sure what is even going on on the boards. Stuff, I imagine, lots and lots of stuff. Okay, let’s see what I do recall happening. I don’t think I’ve posted anything of substance in a few weeks yet.

This months stats are: 8690 Posts in 1054 Topics by 266 Members. Which is pretty much insane, given there are about ten different people here in total with about thirty characters a piece. But, whatever, funtimes. You’re all pretty much insane.

Aha, our second Quidditch match is finished. It lasted an entire month. Seriously, check the dates on that thing. But finally Slytherin emerged victorious. I have absolutely no idea what our next match up will be suffice to say that if it is Gryffindor I will proceed to beat my face on the desk until I bleed out violently all over everything in my path. Go, Gryffindor indeed! Everything in my vicinity shall be my house colours. Speaking of house colours, make sure if you haven’t already you get in on your house Quidditch Team. Captains are constantly looking for new players, and people with multiple players on different teams are always looking to drop one. So, join, it’s quite amusing and pretty competitive. And of course, should you not want to play feel free to submit some bets to the Betting Book. Certainly makes for some excellent times on the board.

Next, I’d like to continue on the site promotion vein because I have nothing better to do really. Please remember to keep voting for us, and I’ll keep whoring out link out. Major thanks to Carmen who put our link all over the interwebs, I still have a few to put up but they will go up when my life is a bit less crazy. Keep telling your friends, neighbours and groupies to join and keep voting for us from our front page. Even if we aren’t on top the more places our link shows up the better — it gives us a higher ranking in Google. (Speaking of which, if you google ‘HP RPG’ we show up on the first page through cos forums… woot!)

Also, please note that the RULES HAVE CHANGED. (Oh, the humanity) due to some drama going around the forums and especially the chat. For lack of a better way to put it admin would like you guys to chill out a bit with each other. While we are more than happy to help out with problems you are having the thing we are trying to underline with the new rules is that we would greatly appreciate it if you tried to work our your conflicts with each other before you fly off the handle. Everyone here is perfectly reasonable, so if you can try to get along before you go postal you’d be doing us a huge favour. And, yeah, that’s about it on that, let us know if you have any questions/comments on the new rules.

Prefects are doing… stuff for Easter… I think… listen to them… Can’t be arsed to find out what’s going on but I assume it will be awesome.

Erm, I’d also… like to… ah! Take the time to welcome Jojo back from the education system, keep fighting the good fight.

… least involved update ever. Yay!

Welcome everyone, to the February Update. I assume this will be pretty short based largely on my current “hiatus” yes, in quotes, because despite everything I am still constantly lurking and creeping and see everything. I am just that freaky. Anyways, to all our old members welcome back, and to all our new ones welcome. We hope you stick around, because all the current members are getting a bit tired of posting with each other a million times hahahahah.

First off, speaking of new members, February has so far been the month of promotion! All the admins, and tons of the non-admins have been plugging our site whenever possible (and for good reason, as we are pretty awesome). So, if you can think of ways and places to plug BSW just let us know, or just… do it… but let us know, especially if a link back is required. So far I’ve been running into problems with people not getting back to me about links, so hopefully people will start getting back to me soon. Thanks to everyone who has gotten back to us.

We’ve also joined a number of topsites (though, as above only one has accepted us) so if you have a minute mosey on over to the thread entitled ‘Vote’ and give us a vote. The site isn’t particularly active, so if we top it (or come close) we won’t be doing too badly… it ranks high in google, whatever.

We also have groups on The Leaky Cauldron and Facebook, so, members should feel free to join them should they be so inclined.

Now for some more at home stuff. We had our first prefect run forum events, and let’s face it, they were amazing! With Hufflepuff decorating the Great Hall (something I believe people can still get in on if they like), the Gryffindor Match-Making service which should be pretty dramatic, and of course, the highly celebrated Slytherin auctions. Everywhere you look on the forums there has been new stuff going on.

Speaking of new stuff, due to retirement of our Slytherin Male prefect positions have been switched around, with Carmen’s Hare Leri leaving his service with Ravenclaw to make room for Eva’s Daggett Prox, and Carmen’s Karin Takeshii taking over for the Snakes. Make sure you know your prefects so you can bug them and not the admins >D

Continuing, we didn’t pick up any new canons this month, though Filius Flitwick and Narcissa Malfoy both dropped if you’ve ever wanted to play either of them now would be the time to apply. Just a reminder to all special positions, keep active, or you can lose them, so as to free up space for people who actually might. Also, rules may be going up as to a maximum number of these positions you can occupy, not to be mean or anything, but we want new people to have a chance at these spots. We’ve decided as an admin team that we want there to be a lot of focus here on welcoming new people and giving them a chance to be a real part of our community, that being said, it’s no fun if every cool job is taken. Sue us =P.

We did however, finally get us an active Avatar Maker, welcome to the machine AM#2! For those of you who remember Pyrolila Opaleye from TWF this would be her new incarnation over here on BSW. She promises to make an actual character soon, which I can’t wait for. Anyways, she is our AM#2 so give her some AMing to do, I’m sure she’ll be most pleased. Also, speaking of the Avatar Shop, a bit huge reminder to all members, you must have permission to use any image you want to use as an avatar, or it must be the official illustration of something or it’s a no. This is to protect the rights of artists which the admin team had decided is very important to us. So, suck it up.

We have had some other special positions picked up, but I’m having trouble remembering what they are. I think Sunni got one of the metamorphagi, and people got animagi? Probably? Whatever. We’ve mostly filled up everything, at any rate, though being the admin team that we are we’d probably bend for someone who had no special characters at all and wanted something. We’re good like that.

Quidditch has been going well with the first game going to Gryffindor. (yey). The next game is going to be starting soon between Ravenclaw and Slytherin. People who have never played Quidditch – try joining your house team, your captain will thank you.

Next, Kitty is starting up the Daily Prophet proving yet again how much more useful than me she is. And she is looking for writers, so if you’ve ever dreamed of being a reporter (on a Harry Potter forum that is) send her off a PM. It will start as soon as she gets enough interested people. So go, go I say!

Finally (I think) just as a notice, the rules are going to be totally revamped. All of the stuff we take as no brainers will be iterated, and it will be formatted so it looks all pretty and easy to read. Any suggestions? Let one of the admins know.

Well, that’s it for February, I’m sure I’ll remember stuff just as soon as I post this, but there you go.

I left this month’s update a little bit longer than intended, mostly because I really do have little news to actually contribute this month. I guess that makes everyone happy because there is less of a gigantic update that they will read (though I suspect very few people actually read my updates).

I guess, as usual I will start with stats, on writing this update we had 188 members registered, and there were 5439 posts in 680 topics. Which I have to say is pretty impressive. Keeping in mind we still aren’t really linked much out in the great wide universe. I do have a bit of a question for the users though — how crazy would you like us to go with promo? Meaning, do you like the ’small town feel’ of the forum, or do you want the variety provided by a bigger user base? That will sort of be the deciding factor on where we advertise and how much we do. As usual, while we are the evil commanders of the forum, we welcome input from everywhere.

Next, we have our Head Boy finally about 80% picked. We just want to double check the profile and everything. (Not that it matters too much given current prefect selection, but let’s go with this). Once Head Boy is assigned I will be sending out the prefect PM about all the mean stuff we’re going to make you do so that Becca, Miki, and I never have to work again, and so we can retire off somewhere in the Bahamas. Aaaaaanyways. Prefects, be prepared for a PM, and if you haven’t already posted in the Roll-Call thread in the Prefect’s Bathroom (That would be Nate and Desi…) then please do so or I’ll have you killed. <3.

Newly created canons this month were very few, only Nymphadora Tonks, Narcissa Malfoy and Ginny Weasley being added to the board repertoire, however, canon activity took a leap with the enaction of the new “secret” plot. Remember, we love new canon characters, so feel free to try applying for one should you feel the itch. Characters we would especially like to see show up are Hagrid, Cho Chang, The Weasley Twins Mr. Ollivanders, Mundungus Fletcher and… hell… Aberforth Dumbledore for shits and giggles. As an added reminder, we are only accepting canon Adult Characters, Order of the Phoenix Members and Death Eaters (and we have a waiting list for original characters of these positions) right now so if you’re feeling like taking on an adult keep this in mind (besides, Death Eaters like Yaxley you are more than capable of making almost completely original because he hardly gets filled out in the books). Also, after this plot with the baby, Filius Flitwick will be dropped by me, so if you ever wanted Flitwick he will be ripe for the taking.

As for taking the adult positions of shop keepers a few new things to note are in place. First of all, we are now only accepting people for canon shops (that is to say the character can be original, but the shop must already exist), even if the shop isn’t already on the boards (like Zonkos Joke Shop, or the Owl Emporium) you can apply for a shop keeper there, but The Paper Cup is the last non-canon store we will be taking. Also, students who want a part time job, like Michael Crane at Flourish and Blotts, Liana Sinn at Gringotts, and Kelsey Donovan at Madame Puddifoot’s are more than welcome to apply for the jobs. For your student to work part-time you should contact the owner of the shop (should one exist), for example to work at Quality Quidditch Supplies you should first contact John Easton, if the owner gives you the okay then they should contact one of us and we will give you mod status in the shop (we do this so that we know the shop keeper is aware that you will be joining the staff), for shops without a keeper, such as The Three Broomsticks PM us and we will make your character a mod there. We’re good like that.

Next, on a more amusing note, beware admins in chat, they will plot evil against you and then implement as inescapable plot. Just ask JL, who is about to be the forum’s youngest babydaddy. As a question to the audience, (and we know JL’s response) how much do you like ‘random plot interferences’ if perhaps admin was to cause more mishaps like this in the near future?

And, how does everyone currently feel about the current house points? In character? Out of Character? Or would you like two point systems, one for in character and one for out of character?

Go to chat, (like I need to tell you all that)

Happy January, Happy New Year, and good times to come in February.

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday and a splendid new year! We’re happy to say that we are officially back online for your RPGing pleasure and that we are sorry for the downtime we’ve had for the past week. We assure you that it is all for the better, and BSW is back for good. Welcome back lovely stoners!

Due to some conflict with our hosts we will be down for a few days (I know it sucks given it’s the Christmas Hols and you all actually have time to post). Have a Happy Christmas, and see you when we work this out. We are doing everything we can to get the forums back up as quickly as possible!

<3 Hawk, Kitty, and Dragon

Because I write my best updates when I should be doing something else, and right now I should be studying for my exams, I give you, the December Update. Filled with all of the miscellany of the month. As well as admin misdeeds (and I’m not talking about Miki’s risqué posting either), and plans for the future of the forums. The usual, so, without further ado…

I’ll start with stats, because I like to see how we grow with each update. (loser) At the time of writing we are officially at 152 members, with 3838 Posts in 512 topics. Which is bleeding amazing. We’ve climbed 30 members since December and while I know we won’t keep this momentum (given it’s mostly people making alts) it’s really nice to see the numbers moving at an exponential rate.

The second order of business is Quidditch, because I happen to like Quidditch from time to time. (Except when it’s going on, my turn to post and I have a million other things I should be doing). Quidditch here on Beyond Stone Walls will be working much the same as it does on The White Ferret (I wrote the rules for it there, so if I want to shamelessly steal it I can) XD. So far, with the exception of Gryffindor (as usual), all the teams are short players, and Hufflepuff remains captainless. Quidditch Coach is trying to make it so that people don’t have multiple characters on the same team, so, people who have never played Quidditch should give it a try… when you don’t have thirty trillion characters in one game it can be kind of fun, and kind of competitive. (Okay, really competitive). Li wants to get things rolling sometime in the new year, so take a chance on Quidditch.

In addition to that point on Quidditch, my software engineering brain has flicked on again (it’s solar powered, and since I never go outside it takes awhile to charge up)… and I have been looking at the possibility of developing a small text-based game to power our Quidditch instead of posting powered. It might make it a bit less redundant… it would have some similarity to the classic webgame B.O.T.S. (http://www.bots2.net/) which I was addicted to in third year XD. Anyways, I’m still kind of tooling around with a game engine and factoring in my lazy, this probably wouldn’t hit BSW until version 2, or later, depending. What I want to know is if something like this is preferred to the way we’ve been playing Quidditch up to now. Either way I’ll probably end up writing something similar to this up for school, so I won’t be hurt if people aren’t into it XD. Oh yes, and and coding geeks (and I mean people who can write code right now, right this very second, not people who want to learn XD…) can PM me if they want to help out. Blargh. This is distant future stuff. Thought I’d poll the audience on it though.

Next I guess I should talk about out prefects. We’ve picked them all with the exception of the school Head Boy who is mostly in the works. We kind of know who we want for it, but can’t decide which of their characters we want. Prefect duties (evil type smile here) we haven’t hammered out all of the details of prefect duties out yet mostly because it is tough to catch lovely Dragon online more often than not. So far there are a few things they will be responsible for, so, listen up, you’ll be getting a PM about it soon. However, for the general public consumption, prefects are almost as important as administrators and should be respected as such, they tell you to do something, and you should do it. Prefects will be getting mod status in their respective common rooms, sleeping quarters and tables, the Head Boy and Girl will have mod status in the General Common Room, and the Great Hall. Prefects will also be in charge of special events, the prefects lounge will be given an OOC sub board eventually where you lot can make stuff happen. Please wait until I PM all of you before you rain down your hate upon me. Prefects are permitted to resign, and inactive prefects (the rules say six months, but if we’re pretty sure you’re dead it might be earlier) will be replaced with more active players. With great power comes great responsibility, after all.

Thanks to hassling by Kiki you all have house points threads now… I wanted to do it differently, but I couldn’t take the nagging any more, so there you go. House Point threads. Only professors, prefects, and admins are allowed to add or subtract house points.

Next, I suppose I should announce some canons being placed (very fun to see them around). With James finally posting for the first time as Umbridge, and Tita scooping up the coveted professor Trelawney. There are still tons of canons available, so why not give one a try, they are risk free, and you can always retire if you don’t like playing them. Current canons we’d really like to see around are Hagrid (still!) and Fred and George Weasley.

Speaking of canons, keeping in mind that this is Harry’s fifth year, the DA has been started by our lovely Rola. Any non-Slytherin is allowed to join, I guess with the exception of Aston(?) or not? Whatever, and Harry wants to see people like Cho Chang, Luna Lovegood, and Neville Longbottom created. Also, people more into Umbridge’s evil regime are more than welcome to talk to… someone… probably Draco/Kitty or Umbridge/James about the inquisitorial squad. I dunno, bug Kitty about it, I’m too busy with the Order of the Phoenix.

Speaking of which… the Order of the Phoenix, the Death Eaters, and Random Adult Character positions (We even have a character on the waiting list <3 Leigh) as well as werewolves are all completely full until we get more members. You might be able to sell us on a shop keeper or a canon Death Eater/Order Member (the person who makes Molly Weasley gets a cookie XD), but no more room for original characters in these places. Please don’t hassle us in chat about it, mostly because it seems like when Miki and I are in chat we are usually relatively intoxicated. We might say yes one night and yell at you the next morning (hungover). Also, Becca is having life-stress right now, so please send annoying PMs to Miki and I for the time being. (God, I never thought I’d type that…) or you can send them all to Miki. There are still Animagus and Metamorphagus positions open though. Look at the main site for info on special positions and their availability, please. Please note, special postions are not permanent, and if you are inactive we reserve the right to ‘clean you out’.

As I’m sure the vast majority of you are aware, I have finally finished chat. (http://beyondstonewalls.com/rpg/chat) please stop in and join us, there’s generally quite a few people lurking in there, talking about god-only-knows-what. So, even if you’re new, pop in and say hello, you’ll catch on to the drift of things soon enough.

Next, I figure I should talk about publicity. We’ve been meaning to, we really have, but we mostly haven’t, except for submitting our link to mugglenet. Eventually we’ll publicize, but, keep telling all your friends to join. Seriously, it will be awesome XD In all honesty, admin team (as we oft admit in chat) is very very lazy. Feel free to submit our link places though (XD I kid…) Basically, yes we plan on going public one day, just, when we’re all less busy.

I will fix topic descriptions one day, it’s this stupid crazy layout that’s stopping me. 

The BSW book that has been mentioned in another thread, that’s Becca’s project, but I assume she’ll have a deadline for threads soon. — love her.

Version 2 is coming along slowly. I’ve been sort of meandering while I try to choose between SMF2 or PHPbb3 =)

I think I’m almost done? Oh wait, one more thing.

Should you be so inclined/so rich. Please donate. Becca is a saint for putting up the cash for us to live here. Thanks muchly to the Donaters we’ve had already, we really couldn’t do this without you. <3

Until the New Year! (Possibly)

Join us in ‘Stoner Chat’ (as the locals seem to be calling it) and talk about all the behind the scenes of BSW

http://beyondstonewalls.com/rpg/chat/

Hello everyone and welcome to Mike’s November Update of what’s going on on BSW.

First of all, can I say ‘Wow!’ we have now jumped past the 100 member mark, all the way to just over 120 members at the time of writing this — which is bleeding incredible! Got to admit, I’m feeling very optimistic about this forum. Not only that but the activity– almost 3000 posts! With BSW only officially being open for about six months (ish) I’d say this is quite the achievement — good job guys! Hopefully by the December update we’ll be up around 200 members (which would be completely amazing!)

Any ways, what has been going on in the admin lounge that everyone should know about — not really that much to be honest. We’ve approved good ol’ Rola for Harry Potter (so she can attempt suicide again if she likes), our lovely Kitty for Draco, Norikins for Ron Weasley, aaaaaaaaand Vayy for Hermione. We are always on the hunt for more canons and shop keepers — we love having them! So don’t be shy about sending us an application (We’d really like a Hagrid right now, I think — and who can blame us) I’m also on the lookout for a few more Order of the Phoenix members if you’ve ever had an itch. Oh yes, and all three admins will be sharing the Albus Dumbledore account (the other two just don’t know it yet) so, you never know when everyone’s favourite headmaster may stumble into your thread.

We’ve also finally got an avatar maker floating around in the avatar shop! So, you can get your avatars made and approved without waiting for me to notice you have an approval request (good times had by all — I dare say) We also have sign up sheets in the Quidditch Pitch (if you have the itch) we have three Slytherins signed up, five Gryffindors, one Ravenclaw, and one Hufflepuff — games will begin as soon as the Quidditch Coach says so.

Hopefully by the end of the week we will have picked your prefects! There’s a thread where we kind of decided, then we abandoned it to talk about killing someone (none of you you’ll be happy to know) prefects will have mod status in some of the forums, and pretty much just be allowed to smack some rule breakers around. Not that we have many yet, but, you know how it is… prefects are fun. In that ‘verbal smackdown’ kind of way.

In the technical side of things, a few of you were swift to notice we had a slight spam problem here a few days ago — according to the SMF Staff (that would be what we used to build our forum) it happened to a number of their forums. I installed a few small security measures, but they appear to have been enough to stop whatever was trying to eat our brains for tea. If anyone notices any more spam chuck me off a PM and I’ll see what else we can do. Also, if you want to see real carnivorous spam, I can pass you a really good link for that. Scaaaaaaary shit.

Beyond that is of course my ’slight’ difficulty involving the topic descriptions. I should have that fully fixed sometime soon (the template Miki picked is doing strange things when I try to edit it) As for other visual aspects of the forum — let our lovely lady know how awesome you think the new layout is before I ruin her life with our next version.

Speaking of which — yes! I do have the next version of Beyond Stone Walls in the works! My vision for the forum was very different from what I eventually pulled out of my arse when TWF went down those many moons ago. (And who else things another down-going is coming right up?) Because there’s a lot of blather I could use right now to talk about the new build I won’t for sake of space but if you read The Mike Files over the next few months (years) you’ll occasionally get a peek at what I’m doing. Of course, all of this is happening in the far and extreme distant future, but I thought I’d let you know that I never sleep when it comes to building us the most awesome forum ever. However because of this there will be some polls in the near future with regards to how you want our 2.0 to look. Also, you can include things you’d like in our next version on the suggestion box.

As to the suggestion box… I will look into the stuff brought up there… to be honest, I’m not 100% sure exactly what is being asked for sometimes… but I’ll reread the suggestions and try and come up with some solutions.

We’re almost done here folks, bear with me –

Chat, I actually almost finished ages ago, and then something shiny distracted me, and that was all she wrote for awhile. I do plan on finishing it eventually… I just need a few nudges every so often.

Finally, I have exams coming up (early December until the 19th, sadly) which may just mean setbacks and such, but perhaps we can have a BSW Holiday thread to enjoy when I finally do get a break.

Dear everyone — The time has come for me to finally get off my lazy rear and create our chat. I am a good person and will not delay it’s building any longer.

However (you all LOVE my howevers, don’t lie)

Because of the way I am building it (using a script that should hopefully let us see the ‘Users in Chat:’ down below ‘Users online:’) this is a potentially destructive modification if I don’t do it right (highly likely)

Obviously I will back up because I love you guys, but recall last time I backed up I had some issues recovering from my back up. (I later learned this was a forum version compatibility issue which will not be a problem this time, but it is an example of something that could go wrong without my intense brain picking up on it — har har)

This is your warning — backup important posts. The chat modification will be implimented between tomorrow and the weekend. So I cannot stress enough back-it-up.

All donations for the site will go towards keeping Beyond Stone Walls active and AD free! Anything at all is appreciated! Thank you guys in advance for any donations you may make – you’re all awesome.