wheee

Greetings to the fine Ladies and Gents of FR,

Well, we've got a bit of news for ya. The GM Team has gotten together and, through various considerations of both player and staff concerns, we are planning to implement a tone-shift in our fair RP.

If you weren't aware, FR has been drifting towards a very realistic and almost Grimdark tone for quite awhile now. This just causes a lot of headaches with people arguing over something being realistic, and it really is not even slightly fun for GMs to play. We'd prefer not to have to GM something we actively dislike, especially because it's something we've loved for so long. As a result we have decided to try and work our way back to the FR we knew and loved.
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So, wait, what does this entail exactly?
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This means that realism will take a back-seat to some more goofy, magical, or unexplainable things. Things that wouldn't happen at a real site, may happen here. Likewise something that might not happen here, would happen elsewhere. In addition, it means that details that would mean quite a bit in real life will not be considered here.

For example, guns. Starting from... now, actually, we aren't really going to be considering different guns all that much in deciding rolls, beyond the result of the roll itself. Of course you're still allowed to have a specific gun if your heart desires it, and do soft rp with it, but rolls will be decided only by the roll. Guns are probably going to be heavily simplified in the coming month or so.

In addition, this will help ease some of the dissonance coming from our GMing style. This is supposed to be a realistic world, but command makes decisions that're not really competent or sometimes even sensical. This, ooc, is because we aren't the commanders of a top secret paramilitary organization. We don't have any experience on that front. So we want to bring the tone of the RP to a place where stuff like that won't matter, because we aren't trying to shoot for realism.

Does this mean Characters need to change?
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Not at all! This means that your characters will have more opportunity to react to strange things that you could expect at a site that spits out random dimensions in a Foundation where strange things are perfectly fine. If you have a character who reflects your knowledge and experience irl, we will respect that. However, the laws of the real life are not always what works in the game, so please try to understand situations where your characters expertise doesn't help them IC, even if it would IRL.

Does this Mean Realism is bad?
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Nope! Things are still going to be generally grounded in reality, we aren't looking to make FR back to lolclownfarts. Instead we are looking at significantly lightening the tone. Bringing back some well-missed things (faceless monkeys, Augs, etc). If there is anything you want to see, let us the GMs know!

---A note---

One of the immediate changes is that the security director is gonna get an infusion of wackiness. It isn't going to make her an ott clown, and it isn't affecting the other directors. We just think it'd be lulzy.