Writing Responses

Overview

The New Player team are charged with going through the backgrounds of new characters to check for consistency and to tag them possible plot links.

Permissions

Anyone who is a member of the plot team, god team or ref team can read backgrounds - but only the New Player team can write a response or tag a background. If you want the ability to tag backgrounds or write responses, then please talk to Clare Evans.

Searching Backgrounds

You can search the character backgrounds after logging in to the PD website.

You can search for backgrounds that have been are 'using the drop down box on the character search page. If you select a specific status then it will only return characters with a background with that current status.

Submitted

You can select a status of Submitted in the search options. The system will return every character that has submitted a background, regardless of whether it is Read, Response Sent, or Confirmed. This is how you search for characters who have outstanding backgrounds that nobody has looked at yet.

Background Status

The background status is the status of any response set by a member of the New Player team. The default status for all characters is "submitted".

You can set the background status to one of four entries:

No Response Required

You should only put this status for characters who are now dead.

Confirmed

This is the status you should put if the background is fine and you are happy to confirm the details.

Read

You have read the background but taken no action. This is the status to use when there are problems with a background but you are not ready to send a response to the player - perhaps because it is still being discussed.

Rejected - Response Sent

If there is a problem with the background then you can reject it. Set the status to rejected and then write a response for the player using the "create response" button. Please make sure you write a response, otherwise their background will be rejected with no explanation of why.

Background Responses

A background response is a special type of character note that is added to a character. Any background response you create using the "create response" button will be visible to the player (feature not yet active). The system automatically reads all the background responses and assumes that the most recent response is the current valid one. In effect it assumes that each new background response replaces the one that went before it. User notes created from the note page will never be visible to the player.

You can edit and delete any background response that you have created from the Note tab of their character record. Only you can edit your own notes, other members of the team cannot do so.

No Null Responses

Please don't create null background responses by entering a note like "No response needed" or "Background is fine". Just set the response to confirmed if that is the case. You only need to create a background response if you are rejecting a background.