The Road Ahead for Fandom High

[weirderthanthou]

Hey guys!

We’ve been looking at the game these past few years, and we’ve noticed the amount of students has been steadily dwindling for a long time. We’ve already taken some steps to make up for the obvious gap that leaves us with in the game ecosystem (fewer students means less play in class posts means it’s less fun for teachers) - such as letting adults into the workshops over the summer. But it’s been clear to us for a while now that all these measures are just a stopgap.

This is happening for a bunch of reasons, many of which have something to do with our aging player population, the age of the game, dwindling players, and a general drift toward playing more adult characters. That’s not a problem we, as an admin team, see going away naturally. And that leaves us to ponder the future of the game, especially because the amount of townie apps has been rising over the years.

To be specific: where 7 years ago, we had 39 students, we now have 18. At the same time, we had 59 adults in 2015 - a number that has since risen to 76.



So what next?
The idea of turning the high school into a college (with an age range either 16 and up or 18 and up) has been raised several times over our history. It never felt like the right time. Now, however, it’s beginning to look not just feasible but necessary.

Why a university or college setting? Because it allows us to keep the structure of a school year, and all its attached traditions and day-to-day fun with classes, while permitting people to app and play characters in a much wider age range. It seems like the least disruptive change we can make that still keeps the game close to its original spirit.

We also have a few small alternative ideas that are more disruptive: we could turn the school into an elementary school for NPC kids. That would give people space to play teachers, without needing a steady flow of PC students. We can also chuck out the idea of Fandom as a school completely and go off into the wild yonder– for instance, by turning it into a hub for adventurers trying to stop multiversal disasters.

But we don’t want to get into the weeds of figuring out what any of those scenarios might look like until we’re sure we’re working on something a majority of our players actually wants. So today, we’re polling you all about what you want the future of the game to look like. Should we turn the school into a college, or should it stay the same? Or should we do something completely different?

Please note that whatever way this vote lands, we are not changing the game completely overnight. We’ll take whatever the outcome of this poll is, and if most of you agree that a change is needed, we’ll develop a few possible scenarios. Those scenarios would go up for a vote again later, before we actually consider implementing any of them. And if we do come to an alternate version of the game we can all agree on, it won’t be something we implement out of the blue, or without discussing it at length with players who have student characters, so we can tailor the changes to their needs.

Without further ado:

Poll #26950

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 18

What should we do with Fandom High?

We should keep the school.
0 (0.0%)

We should turn the school into a college.
5 (27.8%)

We should keep the high school, but also add a college.
8 (44.4%)

We should turn the school into an elementary school for Fandom’s and the mainland’s NPC kids.
0 (0.0%)

Do away with the school concept completely and choose an alternative purpose, such as a multiversal „Rescue Rangers”.
0 (0.0%)

Another idea (elaborate in the comments):
5 (27.8%)

SUMMER 2022 (SESSON 1) WORKSHOP SIGN-UPS

[heroic_jawline]

Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone! It's time to sign up for your First Session Summer 2022 Workshops! These sign-ups are for both NEW and RETURNING students, and in our new tradition for the summer, the workshops are open to EVERYONE: students, teachers, and townies. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY. Please read the following before you start signing up:

1) Teacher and Student Class Expectations! The all important guideline for what is expected of the players in Fandom High. Please give it a once-over even if you've seen it in some form or other before - consider it a good thing to click and read while I put up the OCD!

2) Japanese characters, please sign up in the Western style - given name, then family name - to make our alphabetical OCDing easier.

The Important Stuff About Signing Up For Classes

1) Since we've removed the cap on characters, we have also removed the cap on the number of classes your characters can sign up for, but please consider your RL ability to keep up before chucking a character at every class we're offering.

2) If you're a TA for a class, you need to sign up for that class. It will count towards your minimum 2. (Not you, recent grads.) Please note TA-ship in the sign-up for easy of making the class lists accurate. Teachers: please refrain from having your own character act as the TA as it defeats the purpose of having a back-up player to post for you!

3) If it's OOC for your character to take a class but you really want to take it anyway, just sign them up and we'll pretend it was an IG paperwork mishap.

4) If you sign up, please, please try to show up. It lets the mods judge if you're still in the game and it makes the work the teachers are putting into coming up with something fun to interact with so worth it.

5) Class descriptions are subject to change at the teacher's discretion.

6) To be fair to people in all time-zones, sign-ups are not first-come, first-serve.

And now we get to what you really want to see: Summer Workshops! (Session 1)!!!!

FH class sign-ups will close at 11:59pm Eastern on Friday, May 6th, 2022, and are IG knowledge at the Welcome Picnic.

General FYI: Feel free to make changes to your class choices as long as you do it before the deadline. We use the final pings in each thread to make the class lists, not the email notifs. Questions or difficulties, please email us - fandomhighadmins (@) iambicnut.com - or drop a question in the Questions thread down below.

PLEASE HOLD WHILE I OCD, ESPECIALLY YOU, BRIDGEY. CARRY ON.