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)