Nuclear Weasels

One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do as a writer is take someone elses character and start writing with them, within the RPG world its usually frowned up on to do things like that however at times its necessary.

One such necessity is to write for one Alexander Stark the new president of Futility’s End.

The character was created by a friend of mine who sadly is taking some time away from writing, unfortunately the position of the character in question means that someone has to take over writing or the back story of the affiliate won’t be able to move along. With the Civil War arc now in its closing stages it is necessary for me to start moving the back story along, I hope to release the first fiction featuring Stark in the next day or two.

However before I do that I have to find his voice.

Hello President Stark, are you out there?

~Dan

Today I stand, at least metaphorically, on the edge of a new dawn for Futility’s End. The product of 5 years planning and plotting finally pays off as Futility’s End goes to war against the corrupt master of its destiny Samuel George Kirok.

Throughout the plot we have struggled to keep his identity a secret whilst at the same time leaving enough clues laying around for people to guess who he is. For those who haven’t been keeping up with the FE I’ll clue you in on the secret.

Sam Kirok is Emperor Tiberius AKA Mirror Kirk.

The arch nemesis of one Admiral Bryan Cash a man who’s lived through several life times and enough crap to kill your average gentleman. By now though that man is dead, finally laid to rest within Futility’s End never to grace the forum for your viewing pleasure again. Albert bless his soul has played a blinder for the FE on this one, not only has he picked up his brothers mantle he’s managed to surpass all expectations of what he could achieve, single handledly writing where needed over the past 6 months has quite obviously left him feeling a little drained.

He is now taking a well deserved break from Futility’s End, before he goes though I’d like to ensure he knows one thing.

Damn dude, you write some cool stuffs!

Anyway back to the edge I mentioned earlier.

As I take the reigns of command again it falls to me to steer this group towards something better than it currently is, in my mind I can see a plan crystalising which to some extent relies on the efforts of those people already in Futility’s End. It relies on them because our main priority has to be attracting new blood to our games, we’ve felt the pinch of real life this year with a good chunk of our players having to scale back their activities a fair bit. The big question is how do we get these new people?

Answer. Ambassadors!

The best way of recruiting for Futility’s End has always been word of mouth and the way that people get fired up over what they write, its electrifying to realise you’re writing something thats uniquely part of a greater whole. I feel that a few of our current players could be trained to grab people’s attention this way, not to out and out recruit them just to be prepared on how to sell what we’re doing.

The only problem with this plan is a little thing called arrogance. Over the past year I’ve heard several critisims about how people in FE are holier than thou in their attitude - that really ought to stop, if it doesn’t then its sad to say that the group doesn’t need you in it. Yes FE is cool, it rocks and all that but its not automatically better than everything else. We have to make it that way and we do that through our writing not through waxing lyrical about the affiliate. I’ve said it before to people if we write well then Futility’s End will sell itself.

Another item on my to do list is figuring out some way of better disseminating the information about what Futility’s End is, our InfoBase works wonderfully well for players immersed in our lore, however it remains almost impenetrable by those who have yet to join us. The website will be the vehicle for this task, whilst there may be some apprehension I plan to replace the current forum and InfoBase systems with a custom written application designed to link directly in to the main site. I want all FE information to be available from one central site not spread out across disparate offerings.

Thirdly there is something else we ought to concentrate on and that is the rigor with which we deal with things, another complaint I’ve heard banded about is how things have been sent to GM’s or the Quad and have never been dealt with. Obviously given how we work the Quad doesn’t want to be micromanaging how everyone does things but we do need to put something in place to ensure that people don’t drop through the cracks.

Well, as much as I would like to write some more on the future of FE I think I ought to leave it there. At least until the site comes out of maintenance

~Dan

Well its happened much sooner than I expected, Albert and I discussed the possibility of me taking over Futility’s End again in the new year. Obviously things have changed in the past few days as Albert chose to pass the reigns over to me far earlier than expected which means that I’m officially in charge of FE.

To say I’m a little excited is an understatement.

I’m stupidly excited to be given a chance to lord over the fifth age of FE, as you may or may not be aware the fourth age of FE is drawing to a close 5 years of planning is finally bearing fruit as we head toward the end of Kirok’s reign and on to something different.

The next 5 years of Futility’s End will be different, we’re finally heading towards a better life with several of the old issues finally laid to rest.

The question is, will this fledgling Federation manage to deal with the new issues Kirok’s reign has brought to the fore.

Only time will tell.

~Dan