Jigoku-cho OOC Community

To start; an apology While this is a feedback on issues that have existed prior to it, we definitely feel most of this falls on us for how the mini event/"get to work" log was handled. Enthusiasm got the best of us and we threw out way too much with too little time for players (especially the large amount of new players) to really adjust to what we were doing or what was going in.

People who've been in the game for awhile know this was not a usual thing. Yes, the mini-event will usually have some major plot elements, but certainly nothing on the level of what we put in this most recent one and it was a mistake on our part to do so. It overwhelmed too many people, and pushed things too far and too fast, narrative-wise.

We don't intend to retcon what happened (it's honestly too late for that) but we do apologize for letting out enthusiasm get the best of us and assure we will be much more mindful of pace going forward. In fact, the crux of this feedback is about that: pace. Well, that and transparency.


Breathing Room This is going to be implemented in a few ways.

The most important is that we will not be having an app cycle in October. Applications will be essentially frozen until January 2023. A cap is also being considered, but we will see where the game is at the time we open apps again before revisiting that conversation, but for now, no new apps will be accepted for the next four months.

The Wasteland/Iron Bear/Haniyasu plot, the main plot, is going to be re-evaluated and made to be paced out over a longer period of time. Right now, we're looking at not closing it until November, and Toraguma's initial "we move out in 2 weeks" declaration will not turn out to be true, for IC reasons we can honestly pretty easily cook up.

We hope these two things give the game way more room to flex and for folks to actually find their legs beneath them in the game again.


Plot Info Dissemination We will start this by stating that while we have often played our cards close to our chest, it has never been the intention of the mod team to make the plot deliberately obtuse or impossible to decipher. Usually we only hold onto things if the reveal of said information is planned as part of another post. The most recent example of this is the bomb's nature being revealed by Toraguma in an IC post shortly after the mini-event.

That being said, this isn't a very tenable system sometimes, and this is one of those times where people were becoming understandably frustrated at the lack of ability to do anything besides reactive play, which is not what everyone is here for.

As far as character investigations and OOC questions go, know this: we will always tell you if you're going down a dead end. If you are on a cold path, we will let you know so that you don't feel like your time was wasted. That being said, not every question we're given is going to produce the most interesting answers. There is a certain level of player creativity that needs to be expressed to get to things, and this is a factor that is always going to be more impactful than character rank or their established CR in determining if the answer given will lead them somewhere interesting.

We are treading a fine line between allowing players to Find the Fun and guiding players where we want them to be, and it's hard to get this balance right. We like to think we've mostly done well with it, but sometimes things fall short of ideal. We never want people to feel like they're being railroaded, but we also don't want them to feel like they're completely lost.

We want to emphasize two things that genuinely help here, on the player end. First The Story So Far tag, and being sure to read up on what's happened before. These summaries cover the major beats. We also recommend reading other players' questions as they come in, to avoid retreading ground but also sometimes another set of eyes can find something others might have missed. Make the questions a collaborative effort. These are the tools players already have, but we are also want to provide more to that end.

We are open to suggestions on how to help with this process. Again, know that it is not our intention to lock plot information behind obtuse logic or NPC interaction or character rank or anything. None of those factors should be impacting folks ability to engage with the game's plot. We feel we're falling short of our own ideal here, so help would be appreciated.


Plot Transparency. This is less about game-wide plot and more about how things like player plots and smaller mod-run things are handled.

First, we want to put eyes on our brand new Player Submission post for substories and player plots. Previously, these were done through the mod contact page, mostly for the sake of convenience. Unfortunately, the comment screening in that post has caused big gaps in player awareness of what's going on, so instead we're moving all stuff related to player plot submission and subwtories to THIS page, so that everyone can see, and participate, in what's being planned.

You can also use this page to pitch ideas for your characters that you'd like mod help with. We used to do these through the mod contact page or DMs, but we want to move these to an open, public space so the process becomes more transparent and no one feels like anyone else is receiving special treatment.

If you have world-building, IC game history, or other similar types of IC questions, please ask them on the FAQ rather than on the Mod Contact page. This allows for all plot and setting related questions to be visible to all players. We have updated the Mod Contact page to reflect these changes.

We would like to emphasize that we cannot control, and have no intention to control, how players disseminate information on their own plots. However, if either the player with the plot or we as mods feel the plot in question could impact anything outside a small circle of people, we will strongly encourage players to actually make use of our OOC comm for plotting purposes, or at least for a heads up. We do hope this helps with the transparency issue.

On our part, small side plots run by the mods themselves will now be a matter of public accord as well; we will make use of this post to host them and will make the OOC process more transparent than it has been before.

Our hope is this increased transparency will lead to less feelings of FOMO or other anxieties associated with seeing plot things pass one by without feeling like one had a chance to impact anything.


Use of the OOC Comm/Discord issues. This is two fold because it kind of relates back to the same thing, even if they don't seem attached at first.

Namely, we'd like to see players making more use of our OOC comm for plotting purposes. On our part, this means throwing up an OOC plotting post for every major IC log now, mingle/mini-event/main event/etc. On players part, while we certainly can't make anyone do anything, we would like to see more player plots fleshed out on the OOC comm (and the previously linked Player Submissions post) vs doing so on the game discord or plurk.

Furthermore, it should be understood that our helpful Discord Mods (Eski, Dany, Fii, Min, and Caitie) are not game mods. The job they volunteered for is to help run and organize the Discord, and should not be approached about game issues, including about where and when people engage in plotting.


Future Issues Another thing we want to emphasize is we can only act upon what has been presented to us via official contact methods. Unless the issues are brought to our attention via these methods, we may not be aware of them at all.

We are grateful for the folks that came forward with feedback about the issue, but the scope of the issue wasn't realized until we were informed about player sentiments in other places. Even if it's something seemingly as little as feeling as if your question wasn't answered well, just please let us know via official contact methods. We want this game to be a fun and engaging experience for everyone.


Please feel free to discuss things below. We mentioned we're open to suggestions about better means of handling player investigations/questions, but we're also just open to discussion about all of this in general. We want people to feel like they can have these discussions without it boiling over into frustration.

As per our plurk announcement;

"Hey guys! Just popping in real quick to let everyone know we've gotten some important feedback lately on how plot/event stuff is currently being handled in the game.

We're going to take some time to address this and come back later with a response, and it's gonna be a public post, so everyone can see it

what this means in the meantime is the next IC NPC post is gonna be delayed for a bit, but that's fine. a pause is better while we figure this out, especially since it's likely to impact the immediate event future

just know we're workin' on stuff and we'll get back to y'all when we can!"

Just wanted to put this in the OOC comm so everyone could see it. Also to further clarify; this is just a pause on mod-posted plot stuff (and honestly shouldn't be more than a few days), players are still free to make posts and such for now.

Our Modding Philosophy We're gonna start by re-iterating the most important thing; our approach to modding this game (mostly c/p'd from the last feedback post). This is the core philosophy we approach running this game from. While this is not carved in stone, it IS what we generally check what we want to do and what we can do against.

Our modding philosophy is to let our players guide the game. We give you the basic plot and direction, but ultimately, the power is in the hands of the players. We want you to have as much fun with this setting as possible. Outcomes change based on the actions of players and that’s what we want. We want players to feel like they’re a part of the plot.

For example, the entire Iron Bear plot has come about because PCs were taking actions that drew his attention. Sai no Kawara, the complex Underground, was built because of motions taken by PCs to forge a truce in the turf war. So on and so forth. We have plans for possible outcomes, but what outcome the game winds up with (even if it's something we didn't plan for), is entirely on the players involved to come to. This will continue to factor into the game's plot.

In that same vein, we also want to give you guys as much freedom as possible. This means not micromanaging everything and leaving it up to you to decide what’s appropriate for your character. This is why we don’t outline exact money numbers for raises and the like. We trust you guys. Everyone having fun is more important to us than exact figures. If you can come up with a reasonable enough explanation as to why your character can obtain something in the game, we're not going to fuss over the details.

Like, make it make sense, but you don't actually have to try very hard to make it make sense. A recent example, Billy's player asked if there were horses in game. We said "what would be funnier"? They then submitted three horse related businesses to the location page. That kind of thing is what we mean.

Another thing is that we’re not trying to run a unified storyline with all players in perfect alignment. There will be times when a common goal arises for players, but it's not really the point of the game. You’re welcome to branch off in any direction you find interesting to develop. Everything doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be collaborative and with a good spirit behind it. You can’t ‘win’ this game, you can only enjoy it.

We should note that, with regards to the game's plot, we do not intentionally "bury" anything. A lot of things that come up in the question and response process with players would not come up at all were those questions not ask, and likely would not have become relevant. We do have basic outlines for plots, but a lot of the meat of them are improvised based on what the players themselves feel is worth inquiring about. Basically, a lot of it is serendipity at work, but we definitely know that it's important to link especially important plot developments where everyone can read them.

That being said, there are definitely dead-ends, and we will always be upfront with you if your character is heading down one. We don't want anyone to feel like they wasted their time.

We do not consider answering plot questions busy work. In fact, we kind of love it. We love what you guys come up with to ask about. At no point should you worry about being a nuisance, this stuff is fun for us.

What's more, no one should feel rushed to participate in this game at any pace but the one they're personally most comfortable with. This is a big part of why we do a 2 month cycle, and ultimately only one substory, and the event, actually drive the plot in those 2 months (sometimes it's more, if we're feeling indulgent, but never in huge measures). Everything else is choosing one's own adventure, and the pace they wish to explore that adventure.

Our ultimate goal is to create a game where our players feel liberty to just try things out and not let their dreams be memes, so to speak. If you've got a wild idea, let us or other players know, and we'll all work together to make it fun!

Okay on to the rest;

Activity update: So at the suggestion of a few players, we've decided to make our AC at least a little more backtag friendly. As a note, rewards threads are not held to the time constraints of AC threads. You could always use backdated threads for rewards. But now, for AC, we've eased up a bit and made some changes. We've already updated the Activity Check page to reflect this, but to summarize; you may now use a thread that was started in the previous month for one of your proofs. You can't use a backdated thread AND an inbox thread, because we still want our AC to be about being present in the current state of the game, but we hope this is at least a little nicer for everyone.

Question pages: So you've already seen this one, but in order to cut down on clutter on event posts, we're moving the OOC questions thread to their own post. Right now the mingle questions are on the substory post, and for the mini-event towards the end of the month (and the main event next month), those will have a separate, dedicated page. We also hope this helps people feel more encouraged to read over previous questions, to avoid repeating things.

Roster page: We have a Roster page now for the factions! It also holds functionality as being a place to post faction specific plotting opportunities. It's a good quick reference of who's who, who's what rank, etc. And speaking of rank...

Officer duties: Just like with IC jobs, we really don't police this kind of thing. Even if your reward prompt offers some structural suggestion from the faction leader, your character doesn't HAVE to follow it. For example, recently promoted Tamamo officer Robin was given an office in the Palace of Sai, but ICly he wants to stay working in Hemlock, and as mods we are perfectly okay with that. All we ask of players with ranked characters is to keep in mind that their character has responsibilities and expectations of them that don't apply to the unranked. At the utmost, these responsibilities are to their fellow Lost Souls.

The FOUR STAR rank that we're still hammering out will be a little different, though, but we'll talk about that when we get to it.

PVP Plot Elements: There was some concern over the game falling into a Big Bad problem, where the premise of the factions being undermined by them consistently uniting against a common threat. Like we mentioned in the philosophy spiel, this will sometimes happen, but we want to assure everyone that is not always the case. To be frank and a bit spoilery; the current plot will 100% have PVP elements to it, as the factions are going to compete for the bounty. That's part of why it's such an absurd amount of money, tbh. BUT YES, understand, we are definitely conscious and aware of losing the thread on the factions in this game and will never let them be completely united.

Player faction choice: We want to emphasize that while we do take care to listen to player preference on factions and encourage you to be frank about which factions you're for sure do not work for your character on your app, we cannot allow players to choose their own faction. This is mostly for a ton of logistical reasons, but also just for the integrity of the premise. Changing one's faction after being accepted is also not possible for these same reasons.

We strongly encourage players putting together apps for the game to focus on the faction suitability section as it really is one of the most important parts of the app. We will be adding some clarifying language to the app page at some point to assure there is less uncertainty here, as well.

Event plotting posts: It was mostly an accident that the plotting post went up after the event post in April, but we've found that format actually worked out very well for our players, since it allowed us to keep the major plot twists as such, without feeling a need to spoil them for the sake of a plotting post. We're going to keep doing this for now, but we're open to changing it in the future.

HELPER MODS: But! Growing pains are indeed a thing and many of you definitely took note of how much work is put into this game. At over 180 characters, we're starting to really feel that, Mr. Crabs. We've got options on the table on how to manage all of this, but the big one we want to clear first is asking for some help.

We are requesting helper mods for AC, for Applications, for Discord. If you're at all interested in helping us out, either comment here, send us a PM, shoot us a message on the Mod Contact page, however you want to approach it, and let us know!

Final Thoughts: SIX MONTHS. WE'VE BEEN AROUND FOR OVER SIX MONTHS. That's crazy, game! We didn't think this concept would catch on, and while we had a promising first app cycle, we had no idea we'd wind up becoming one of the most popular games on Dreamwidth. It is actually crazy to us that this game has had the success it's had, and we cannot thank you all enough for making it special and an honest joy to run. Genuinely, you guys are great.

We're gonna keep growing as a mod team as this game continues to truck on, and we're incredibly grateful both for your participation in this game and also for your patience with us, and understanding that we're all kind of learning together what the shape of Jigokucho is, even six months later.

Ganbatte, Jigokucho!

It's been almost six months of Jigokucho, and with this current app period setting up to be our biggest since launch, we're doing another player feedback post to help shape the game moving forward!

For an idea of the kind of things we'd like feedback on;

Story, events, and how the plot has been handled.

Structure, when events, tdm, and substories are posted. Posting flow and the like.

Rewards, AC, and housekeeping stuff

Player ideas for substories or events! (we also take suggestions for these year round on the mod contact page, but hey, post'em here too)

You are by no means required to offer feedback, of course, and compliments are appreciated as well, either way, we're open to ideas on how to polish things!

Issues we're aware of; Reserves haven't been "processed" the way we traditionally do them, and we're probably going to change them to something less involved moving forward. We also know that a lot of rank updates got lost in the shuffle, and that's part of why we made the Rank Update header on the Taken page, which should hopefully fix that.

AS A REMINDER this is a normal AC month, so if you haven't done your AC yet, please do so!. We will not be posting any warning posts or anything of that sort, so please be sure to get it in before the end of the month!

July and August were called on to be more chill than the early summer event cycle, so not a huge amount happened, but there's stuff worth pointing out!

At the end of June, The Enma announced that the source of the curse was a being called Haniyasu. Several clever folk, and also just anyone with a passing familiarity with Japanese creation myth, figured out that this is one of the primordial gods, specifically of the earth itself. Considering their primary means of transmitting their cursed energy was via haniwa, this makes sense!

Not much about the Haniyasu has come out since then, but there IS something important that we'll touch on in a bit.

Another development in late June was negotiation of a truce between Shuten and Tamamo over the Underground. The conclusion Ryouma Sakamoto, on behalf of Sutoku, was able to negotiate was that the Shuten and Tamamo clans would "share" the territory while Sutoku tied up the breakdowns in the supply chain in the black market. This shapes a big part of the rest of the next two months!

Stardust! A magical substance caused by a stellar phenomenon started showing up in the city. The magical substance turns out to be a hot commodity and is quickly gathered up by several parties. The factions had their Lost Souls collect it, and it's been used for parties, for trade, and for recreational purposes throughout.

July's Mingle was built around the Daitengu announcing the truce Sakamoto had managed to negotiate. Some within the Sutoku Alliance didn't take to their necks being put on the line without their say, so some conflict broke out, but the Daitengu managed to smooth things over, for the most part.

As the month rolled on, Stardust became rarer, as everyone was hoovering up as much as they could and it was no longer manifesting freely. But some black market negotiations turned out some interesting facts about trade in Jigokucho; other realms are in open trade with Jigokucho, and some group of bandits/pirates/whathaveyou were the cause of the breaks in the supply chain.

Tanabata! happens, with the gathered stardust being used to create a connection to the stars underground and give everyone's wishes some boosted power! This all coincided with the opening of Sai no Kawara, an underground casino and pleasure palace run jointly, for now, by Tamamo and Shuten. The party goes well, with a lot of interesting gossip spreading around...

That is, of course, until the Iron Bear makes their presence known. The daughter of a wealthy power broker is kidnapped, an attempted assassination is thwarted, and the Department of the Enma kick into overdrive. What's more, the assassin has an interesting tattoo of Jomon-era line work around an unknown character. Lots of stuff covered here as well.

What does this all come to mean? A few things.

The Iron Bear is Kaneguma, a former disciple of Shuten Douji and blood brother of Toraguma

They've kidnapped someone, and dad wants his daughter back, despite him pissing off Iron Bear is what caused this in the first place

Iron Bear's gang is connected with Haniyasu in a yet unknown way

Iron Bear's gang operate out of the Wasteland, but evidence suggests there is at least somewhere out there that's hospitable to life...

Questions if you have questions, feel free to ask!

The following characters have been removed from the game as a result of not completing AC for the month of July;

Kokichi Oma (violetlies)

Toji Fushiguro (heavenchained)

Minako Arisato (missleading)

If your account appears on here in genuine error, let us know ASAP and we'll get things fixed

TAKEN PAGE New players! If you haven't completed your onboarding stuff and responded to the Taken Page, you will be swept with the AC results, so please do so!

Big Opening! As noted on our stats plurk, this was a big cycle for us compared to last time, and a ton of things happened at once, but we want something to be clear; you don't have to rush! The mini-event won't be going up for another week and a half, at least, so there's no pressure to do everything at once!

Mingles and Orientations! But there is plenty to tag! The Opening mingle is live, as well as IC orientation posts for Enma, Sutoku, Tamamo, and Shuten!

Substories! The substories for July/August are also live! These can be done in catch-all logs, network posts, even integrated into your mingle threads if you're creative. And of course all Substory threads of qualifying length can be turned in for points. Speaking of...

Rewards! You can turn in threads for points at any time! As a reminder, regular substory and event threads are worth One (1) point and Plot Relevant substory and event threads are worth Two (2) points. We will clearly label which mod-posted stuff is worth what points, and there are tags y'all can use to mark your own posts! Gen threads of qualifying length can be combined 2 at a time to equal 1 point, as well!

Fun stuff! Kim's player posted an Appearance Meme if you love setting out the details of your character's visual presence!

Future Stuff! The Mini-Event will be coming in a week and a half? Ish? At least, and August will be starting off with the Main Event. There may be some NPC posts littered between, as well. With Tanabata and resolution of the Turf War plot as the focus this cycle, things will generally be more relaxed than they were last cycle. Take it easy!

Faction Work! You don't need us to get you started, as you can have your character start doing faction related activity at any time! If you're uncertain about what that entails, by all means ask us, but we're not in the business of policing that kind of thing. Knock yourselves out!

And as always if you have questions, feel free to ask!