As you guys might have noticed, I'm not able to be on as often these days. This has created a situation where I must avoid moderating or even RPing at all. In the interim between class and work and my social life, I have little time and I find it hard to commit to new threads.

Most of my interaction with Thorns (apart from my personal characters) is going to be through LIT threads for the time being. These lit threads will be directly related to the main plot; they will focus much less on the NPCs of note, but instead on the general happenings in the cities. This way, I can keep things going without having to slow the entire game down with my slow posting.

I have heard a lot of people expressing a desire to get more involved in the main plot, which I totally support; the issue with that is (of course) that mod time is limited and we can't handle this game as intimately as we used to, at least not until we hire some more mods. So the responsibility will fall to you, the player, to spearhead your own plotlines and rely on mod NPCs as little as possible.

When I post these plot-related LITs, you are welcome to create offshoot threads related to the action. I urge you all to use RP discussion and chat to organize stories related to the main plot, and confer with moderators to make these things happen. It might be that you only need a mod once and you can continue the story without NPCs afterward.

Example: if, for example, a ban on fruit was enacted in Vienda, you could ask a mod to play a fruit smuggler NPC who hires your character. After that one thread, you could work with other players to create an entire fruit story arc on your own, without ever seeing that NPC again. It could become important enough to earn a mention or even a story twist in another mod LIT; before you know it, the whole world is talking about your character's fruit empire.

If you want to be more involved, don't just ask mods to play famous NPCs in threads with you. BECOME important to the plot yourself and you'll have other players begging to RP with you. The plot isn't just "the resistance" or "the Vein", it's all the stories that make up the world, big and small. Everything can potentially affect the main story.

I'm going to be posting at least two major threads this weekend that will affect the world as a whole. Look out for them and feel free to start brainstorming how to handle the changes in Vita.

I know the general sentiment right now is frustration, and I totally understand and take full responsibility for that. I hope that the LITs will allow the game to move forward for everyone.

Does this mean that the active RP threads that are plot-related are finally going to wind down to a close? o: or are they going to be stuck in limbo, since you've only got time for lits? Some of those characters, mod and PC alike, have been out of action for ages. T_T I miss me some Fion!

Also, what about other mods? I know other people run plot, which is pretty awesome...their plots are still going to happen, right? This isn't going to drag them to a halt, or cut them out of continuing?

Honestly, I don't think anyone's upset because they're not in on your main plot...I think they all just want access to some kind of storyline for their characters. Maybe allowing the moderators a little free reign to come up with their own stuff would help in this respect?

Firstly, I will be continuing to RP in whatever free time I have, but I won't be taking on any new threads that I can't handle. My lits will just allow the timeline to move forward and hopefully inspire new plots. They will still happen.

Secondly, the moderators do have free reign to come up with their own plots and threads. In fact, they do, all the time. We have assigned moderators for each RP city. Tif, Aussie and Sharky (in charge of ORH, Brunnhold and Vienda) in particular have been very active in creating their own storylines. But every player has to take initiative to join open threads, start threads of their own, plan stories, communicate with each other and come up with their own plotlines. It's not feasible for the mods to simply create plotlines for everybody.