Letters from Wizard God

From now on, all important messages sent out by the admins of the site will be documented here so that you can come back and see what they said at any time. These messages may include information on how certain things work, changes to the rules, etc. Everyone is responsible for following rules documented here even if they have not been added to the official site rules yet.

Welcome Message: (Wizard God, automatic when account is verified)

Quote :

Hello and Welcome to Hogwarts Novitas!

It is good to have you. Some of you are new to RPGs and some of you are not, but I still ask that everyone read this message because it will help you figure out how things work here.

Usernames:

All usernames should follow the format First Last. You may include a middle name if you wish, but I would prefer that you just use first and last (Note: this is the name of your character, not you).

Acceptable Names: Harry Potter, Corbin Snowfoot, Linda Harbunkle, Bellatrix Lestrange

Not Acceptable Names: MrsFredWeasley, harrylver8374, Diddy, severus snape (however Severus Snape would be acceptable)

Who am I and Who are the Staff?

First of all, my name is Wizard God and I am the main Admin of the site. I do not RP, I am mostly here to solve problems, settle any arguments that may arise, and keep the site running smoothly in general.

Staff members are the professors of Hogwarts. A list of who these people are can be found in the "Starting Out" board under "Who to Contact".

Getting Started

A good place for new and old RPers to start is the "Starting Out" board. I highly suggest that you read "The Rules" (since they are the rules, obviously) and "Background Information" (because this is where you're going to find out about the actual game. If you intend to use the Chatbox (located at the bottom of the main page), then you should also read the "Chatbox Rules" or risk losing your chatbox privileges.

Setting up your Character

Once you've read up on how the game works, you can get started with your character. You will need to claim a celebrity model in the "Celebrity Claim" in the "Starting Out" board. Sorry if your celeb is taken, but the list is done on a first-come first-serve basis, so whoever claims the celeb first gets it.

Then, you must go to the "Sorting Hat" (accessible from the main page) and fill out a Student Profile. Post the profile as a new topic in the Sorting Hat and then myself or another staff member will approve it and move it to the appropriate section under "Profiles". If there is an issue with the profile, you will receive an Owl from myself or a staff member asking you to fix it.

RP-ing

From there, you can go to Diagon Alley and purchase supplies. Do not worry about not having money. Everyone starts off with 100 Galleons. You earn three galleons per day that you are registered, one galleon per post and galleons are given as rewards in classes and such. Do not worry if you go into the negatives.

Other

A lot of our members are wonderful artists and would be happy to make a signature for your character. If you would like one of these signatures, you can request one in the "OOC Chat" board under "Requests for Signatures".

Questions/Comments/Concerns?

If you have one of the above mentioned things that you wish to voice, please visit the thread of the same name in the "Starting Out" board.

Thank you, and happy RPing,
Wizard God

Jan 16, 2011 (Wizard God)

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Hello everyone,

Myself and staff members have noticed that many posts are lacking in quality and content. This is a reminder to you that the rules are at the top of every board. You should read them again. Offenses including God-Modeling are given one warning, then the offender starts to lose galleons.

Additionally, from this point on, there is a minimum of 50 words required per post. Fifty. 5-0. Five-Zero. I cannot stress enough that posts MAY NOT be shorter than FIFTY words each. This may seem like a lot, but it's really not. In fact, have a look at my first paragraph again. That is fifty words. It took me a matter of minutes to write.

-Wizard God

Jan 16, 2011 (Wizard God)

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Hello again everyone, this is a continuance of my last message concerning the quality and content of posts.

About casting spells, magic takes skill, energy, and experience. You are FIRST YEARS. You will not get a spell right on the first try, no matter how "smart" your character is or how much "practice" he or she got at home before coming to school. True role-playing should be played realistically; there are no "super-heroes" here.

On that note, professors, please remember that you are also not perfect. If your character is frustrated or distracted or angry, he or she might not be able to perform spells to the best of their ability.

Additionally, we are having problems with students knowing more than they should. It is encouraging a lot of Mary-Sue behavior and it stops now. We are now putting in place a system for learning spells. First of all, if you have not learned it in class, you cannot do it yet. However, if you would like to learn a spell, you can learn it early by doing the following.

To learn a new spell ahead of time, you must write a one-shot of you in a lesson learning the spell. This will gain you access to the spell (once a staff member has approved it and added it to your profile). There will be a list of spells posted soon that you will be able to choose from to learn, in addition to the requirements for the one-shots.

-Wizard God

Jan 18, 2011 (Erika Cooper)

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Also letting you guys know that class sign ups do not close. If you decide one day that you want to take oh, I don't know, Herbology, let's say, but you didn't buy the book for it, just send an owl order to Flourish and Blott's ((post in the Flourish and Blott's order thread as if you have written them an owl requesting the book, just remember to send 8 galleons with it Wink)) and then head on over to the greenhouses to sign up. You can jump into classes whenever you like, but if you are not signed up and you try to participate, the professor has the right to take away galleons.

~Professor Cooper

Feb 11, 2011 (Wizard God)

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Members-

A maximum signature size has been set in place. You can find more information here.

You have until Friday, Feb. 18th to make appropriate changes or an administrator will do it for you and you will be docked galleons.

-Wizard God

Feb 27, 2011 (Erika Cooper)

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Hey everyone!

We’ve got a new feature thing and I want to explain it to you all so you know how to use it and how not to use it. We now have a post voting thing!

Most/all of you are probably like “What is this? What do I do with it?” Well, chill, I’m going to tell you. Most of the time, you do nothing! HOWEVER, if you see a post that is breaking a rule (someone is GMing, posts with less that 50 words, etc), you will click the little “-“ button. This will affect the reputation number of the user who made the post. The reputation number is a number only viewable to moderators and administrators. This is so that we (the staff) can see that someone has done something against the rules and we can go back in their posts to find it. The reason that this feature is up now is because we cannot read absolutely everything, but as a site, we can work together to promote good posting habits.

That being said, we cannot get rid of the “+” button that comes with the “-“ button. DO NOT TOUCH THE “+” BUTTON! You will only annoy the moderators and administrators by doing that.

In case some of you are still confused, here is a series of pictures to explain it to you!

I have written an example post:



The +/- buttons are located here:



However, I have broken a rule with this post, because it is only 38 words long. So, someone clicks on the “-“ button to basically report it. After clicking that button, you should see a screen like this:



Once it is reported, there will be a little red bar by it, like this:



This means that the post has been voted down and the staff will read it over for rule-breaking. From there, appropriate actions can be taken.

If something already has a red bar, DO NOT REPORT IT AGAIN! Once is enough.

Thank you in advance for helping the staff out to improve the site and improve the role-playing experience for all of our members.

Erika Cooper

Hello members,

Sorry to give such late notice but we're going to have our next graduation on Friday, April 29th. This time, we are going to have an actual "break", which will last for somewhere between a few days and a week (this is still undecided). During the break, everything at Hogwarts is going to be closed down and all threads will be retired, so you should be sure to finish up everything that you have there.

In case you're curious how many posts you're going to need to move up, here's the scale again:

First to Second: 50 posts
Second to Third: 125 posts
Third to Fourth: 225 posts
Fourth to Fifth: 375 posts

If you have any questions about moving up or about break, please contact Tai or Erika Cooper or leave a note in the Questions/Comments/Concerns thread.

Wizard God

Hello everyone,

We now have a new way to report posts to the admins. Here's how it works:





When you are done, you will see this:



I'm sure this seems a little unnecessary to some of you but unfortunately we still have some people who can't seem to follow the rules. Thank you all for your cooperation and help.

Wizard God

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Hi hi everyone! I have some information for you about our break.

As WG's scrolling message at the top says, Hogwarts is closed right now and it's going to stay closed for another week while the staff gets everything together. In the mean time, you can post in Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade, the homes, etc. Hogwarts will re-open on Sunday, May 15th for the start of the new "year".

Also, we really need everyone to get recruiting because if we want to keep the site up and running, we need members who actually post.

For those of you who have multiple characters, please get to using them or they will be deleted.

Finally, we know that for a lot of you, school is winding down and it's getting close to the end of the year. Because of this, we're going to be making this "year" a bit longer than the ones before, just to account for people having to study for tests and things like that. Please PM me back with the date that school is done for you so that we can try to find an end date for this year that works for everyone.

Thanks!
Erika and the Admins

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I almost forgot. Prefect selection is coming up, so I suggest that you be on your best behavior if you're interested in becoming a prefect.

~Erika