May Updates

A brief rundown of what's been up the last month:

TA Election -- another election came and went, with Zelknolf running uncontested and being confirmed for the next six months.

DMA Rule Changes -- some words on how our DM team will be handling some things posted here: http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=51468

After refinement and community discussion, we have three big changes to be aware of:

• A DM Team does not have to ask for a PC biography for that biography to be worth experience, but the team still has to accept it.
• Players may have more than one "Exceptional" PC (such as genasi, drow, favored soul, etc) as long as they get approval from the HDMs where they play.
• ALFA no longer holds a community-wide policy for "Red Lighting" DMs; HDMs remain responsible for the content of their servers and the behavior of their teams, and any problems with DM team members are either simply discussed with that DM or escalated to the HDM.

DM Sessions -- Mick's haunting in the Elfsong tavern reached a conclusion this month, but we still have events running on all of our servers.
Xanthea has a high-level event currently being scheduled for use on Moonshaes: http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=193&t=51412
AnalogKid has regular DMed sessions on Moonshaes:
http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=193&t=51422
Adanu has regular DMed sessions on Western Heartlands:
http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=354&t=49631
Wynna is running a university-themed event on The Silver Marches:
http://www.alandfaraway.info/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=292&t=51467
shad0wfax has recently come out of hibernation on Baldur's Gate, and the salmon will have a hard swim upstream, though he's posted no events yet. Mick's banshee plot is recently concluded on Baldur's Gate, with no extra event yet announced.

ACR Update -- with all of the new activity we've been seeing on our servers, the tech office has been focused primarily on performance fixes. But that's not all we've done-- in addition to the servers being faster...

• The visuals on our traps are upgraded, with rays, lightning bolts, shooting darts, and magical explosions added to give the proper impact to our more-spectacular traps.
• We've made good on our promise to reward D&D-sized parties, and combat XP is now the most per character with groups of four to six players.
• Persistent hit points and offline resting now cooperate with magic items that change your constitution score.