Frequently Asked Questions

[qp_mod]

Who is the mod?
The mod is Jenna. You can contact her at quietpines.mod[at]gmail[dot]com, or by privately messaging the mod journal.

What is the game’s setting?
The game takes place in and around a desert town called Quiet Pines. The town is surrounded by tall, stone walls on three sides and a massive cliff face on the fourth. There are signs that people lived in Quiet Pines up until recently, but there’s nothing to suggest a struggle or some kind of disaster. It’s almost as if the townfolk just up and vanished right on the spot.

At first, only a small portion of the town will be accessible, but over time more of it will open up for discovery and exploring.

You can learn more about Quiet Pines and its surrounding area here.

What's up with town?
In short, it's a mystery.

For some reason, people from different times, worlds, and realities are brought to Quiet Pines. No one knows why or how they've been chosen or even what exactly it is they’ve been chosen for. Their packed bags and certain things they see around the town seem to suggest that, in some ways, this place was made to accommodate them. Was it? Is it all a strange coincidence, or is something else at work? This is what they will need to try and band together to try to figure out.

How does my character arrive?
One moment, your character is doing something completely normal to them. They’re cooking, or leaving for work, or driving home. Maybe they’re fighting crime, or running from mobsters, or maybe they go to sleep and suddenly wake-up in the desert. Whatever it is, that’s when they stumble upon the signal.

The signal can be anything. It could be a voice on the radio or a whisper heard on the wind. It can be a strange email from an unknown sender, a message written in code, or signs and billboards that show the same words over and over again. It can even be a familiar figure seen beckoning in the distance.

Unable to resist, your character follows it. They can walk, fly, or drive, but no matter what they choose, they all end up in the same place. The scenery quickly changes from city or farmland or forest to endless desert. Ahead of them, in the distance, is Quiet Pines, and behind them, wherever they came from, is gone and is desert instead.

What are these five items they get?
When your character gets to their room, they will find five things from their life waiting in their room for them. Think in terms of items they use often in canon, but you are also free to invent some items as well, things you think would be significant for your character. They should be things your character would have already, not a list of five things they would've liked to have. Clothing is grandfathered in and does not count as one of your five items, as does anything that would be on their person upon arrival to Quiet Pines.

How does my character get a room?
Upon entering the hotel, your character will find a room key waiting on the front desk for them. The key is bronze and skeleton key-looking with the room number etched into the stem.

What does my character's room look like?
All the rooms are uniform, their designs sleek and modern and varying only in how many people they can house. Rooms come in singles, doubles, and triples as well as rooms designed specifically with couples in mind. Depending on capacity, each room has: A bed, bureau, desk, and a shared closet. Rooms also have a single bathroom.

Oddly enough, the furniture and basic appliances (e.g. stoves, computers, televisions) found throughout seem to be of 21st century design.

Where can they go in the town?
Quiet Pines is an average sized town, but as of now not all of it is open to the characters. Throughout the town there are buildings that, for whatever reason, cannot be opened. The locks cannot be picked, the doors cannot be busted down, and the windows cannot be broken. It is unknown why and peering into the windows of the darkened rooms doesn’t seem to provide any answers.

To see what parts of Quiet Pines are accessible, please check the locations page.

What can my character watch on the TV?
In addition to DVDs, the televisions throughout the town can play TV shows. What is shown, however, is random and uncontrollable. One day there might be a marathon of a sitcom and the next day there might be an old, alien news program. One hour it might show the Home Shopping Channel and the next a game show or Spanish soap opera. It even plays reality TV shows. Sometimes it might even start a marathon and then never finish it. Try as our characters might they will find that these signals are untraceable--Where they come from and how is a frustrating mystery.

What kinds of reading material are in Quiet Pines?
The library contains all kinds of reading materials, including old textbooks, nonfiction, and fiction books in a wide variety of languages, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, as well as a collection of newspapers, also from all times and places in the universe(s).

Please be mindful and do your best not to canon puncture anyone accidentally. Assume that if your character reads the Harry Potter series, and then someone apps Harry, that your character would not make the connection and that the canon is no longer available for pop culture reference. There is some level of retconning involved.

How do they get supplies?
Characters can rummage around the area for supplies. Occasionally, mysterious packages will be left in the post office. These “drops” will be infrequent and unpredictable, and will be used to replenish supplies that may be difficult to find elsewhere (e.g. alcohol, drugs, female sanitation products).

You may also request up to 3 items per year from your character's personal life, which will appear as a drop. The item will be wrapped in a box and labeled with your character's name, and you may choose when the item would appear, so as to suit your plot.

What's the communication network? How does that work?
All characters have a desktop computer located in their room. This computer, which vaguely resembles a 21st century Mac, is used to access the town’s communication network.

The network is essentially a multi-format message board. Using their computer, characters can upload video, audio, or text posts to the communications network. These posts can be open to the community as a whole, to individuals of the user’s choosing, or private posts only they can see. As far as the characters can tell, this network is inter-town only and the computers have no internet access.

This character isn't working out for me. Can I drop? How would I do that?
Dropping is allowed at any time with a post to the OOC community announcing your intentions. The character's room will be emptied out as if they were never there, and their things will disappear.

What is your definition of godmodding?
Godmodding is dictating another character's thoughts, actions, or reactions. It also means that your character may not be “invincible”, ie they should not be able to do almost anything without any limits or boundaries.

If your character has their hands and feet tied and a gun to their head, they can't just pull a knife or suddenly break loose and fight back. You cannot say whether or not something like a punch has landed on another character without the approval of the other player. Your character can't know everything another character is thinking and can't react as if he or she knows. You can't assume how another character will react to what yours says, unless you've come to an agreement with the other player.

Communication between players is essential here.

What do you mean exactly by canon puncturing?
To canon puncture a character is to make them aware of their status as a fictional character, either by having them stumble across their respective canon (movie, TV show, book, etc.) or by having another character recognize them from their canon. This is not allowed in our game. If your character would be canonically aware of another, the town prevents their ability to recognize the characters from that canon. Meaning, if your character has been established as a fan of the X-Files, they would not be able to recognize any of the characters from the X-Files if they were on the ship.

However, in situations where the characters are aware of their canon material as existent, other characters may recognize them. For example, the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are written as if Watson himself is writing and publishing them. Holmes and Watson make reference to the stories, so a character would be able to recognize Holmes and Watson if they were in the game, and he or she would know Watson to be the author, not Conan Doyle.

What is retconning?
Dictionary.com defines retcon as:
retroactive continuity
The common situation in fiction where a new story "reveals" things about events in previous stories, usually leaving the "facts" the same (thus preserving continuity) while completely changing their interpretation.

Can I choose to have my character die?
Character death is a pretty serious and significant event for those characters being left behind. If you would like to have your character die, you have to first ask the mods and give some compelling reasons for why you'd like your character to leave the game in this way as well as demonstrate that you've given some thought to what will happen to the characters who will be most affected.

Please note, death does not guarantee that the character cannot be played again in the future. The deceased will be available for rebooting along with the other dropped characters.