The Staff team has a few things to update everyone on in celebration of the new year. We sincerely hope that everyone enjoyed the site-wide break and the downtime, and have been able to get back into the swing of things feeling refreshed and ready to take on 2023!

• We will be rotating our first pair of breed-only pelts, lilac and strawberry back into RDG and litter rolls. This means that plum and abyss pelts will be out of the rotation for the time being, starting officially on February 1.
• Some changes have been made to the audition templates when joining with a new character. Please make sure that you are using the proper, updated application for all new and returning accounts. Any applications that are posted prior to this do not need to be updated.
• To help with backlog, the Fight Club is being trained on how to tally fights. The Fight Club will only be handling fights that do not result in any wounded rolls (i.e. spars, dominance, claims, ranks, theft); we hope that this adjustment will help with limbo and get results posted faster. Big shout out to the FC for agreeing to take on these extra responsibilities!
• When a ticket is opened that involves a Fight Club member, a private discord thread will be made with the Sr Staff and the remaining Fight Club members to discuss and determine the outcome of the issue.
• Dice rolls for tie-breaking fights and the level 5 Paladin/Barbarian re-roll perk will now be done on-site in the fight thread. This is changing from these being rolled in Discord.
• Level 5 Paladin/Barbarian re-roll use, if two or more characters in a fight have a level 5 fight re-roll perk and one character uses theirs, the other(s) will be given 24 hours to request their own re-roll before the fight is tallied.
• Don't forget about our ongoing Posting Raffle!

We are nearly done with the first half of the guidebook review! Our Guidebook Team has been working very hard alongside the Sr. Staff team to make sure that things are getting done, and we are making improvements to the content, flow, and rules of the site.

We hope to have this first half out by the start of February, so keep your eyes peeled! The rest of the Guidebook will be revamped in the second cycle.

Following the completion of the complete Guidebook review, we are also considering a potential overhaul on the layout of the Guidebook — so, whereas we are currently focused on condensing and streamlining the content, this overhaul would include more visual aspects, such as design. This will only be looked at most closely after all the new Guidebook pages are in place, but we wanted to flag this to the community for future reference.

Next Steps and How the Update Will Work:

• When we announce the roll-out of the new Guidebook pages, the Guidebook will be updated on-site with the new information and any changes to the rules will be considered in place at that time.
• When the pages are announced, we will also be providing members with a tracker of the major things that have been changed. There will be a number of smaller updates as well, so we do hope that you take the time to look at all the pages in full.
• There will also be a Google Doc folder that has a copy of the old Guidebook pages to allow you to refer to those if needed.
• The thread that will be used to announce the publishing of the revamped Guidebook pages will be open for members to ask clarifying questions. We will only be answering questions about the Guidebook on-site, and this is being done so that all members will have access to questions and answers.
• If any small changes are made based on questions that we receive at this time, we will add a tracker to the main post to help members keep up.

Due to conflicting IRL things, the Admin team has been on opposite schedules for a while now — to help mitigate this and keep things running smoothly moving forwards, we are looking to add another Admin to the team sometime soon. We want the community to have a heads up with this, and also explain how we intend to prepare someone to move into this position.

Becoming an Admin is (not surprisingly!) a lot of work, and it comes with ownership of the site and lots of backend and forward-facing responsibilities. Since this is a very large commitment (in terms of time, energy, etc.) for someone to have, the current Admin Team will be creating a Co-Admin position to help ease individuals into the role and give them to chance to ‘feel things out’ before committing 100%.

Co-Admins will essentially be Admins-In-Training until they, and the other Admins, feel that they are ready to move up. The only differences between the Admin and the Co-Admin positions are site ownership and access to our PayPal. Co-Admins will be expected to handle all site-related matters and be treated the same as the other Admins. Co-Admins will also have to have been on the Staff team before moving up, in order to make sure that they understand the way that the site works and how to take care of all Staff duties.

We have come up with new absence guidelines to allow some flexibility for members while they are away. We want to stress that these adjustments are voluntary and up to the discretion of the person who is on absence. No one should be asking members who are on absence for posts, and everyone should still continue to respect each other’s boundaries.

Moving forward, if a member has a posted absence that lasts 5 days or more, they are permitted to make a maximum of 5 posts (per character) during that absence. Posting more than this will result in your absence being voided and removed.

• IE: Ice is away for 5 days. She can post on Amara 5 times, Elaine 5 times, Hanneth 5 times, or she can choose not post at all.

After the positive response that our holiday break garnered from the community, the Admin team is looking for input on whether the community would like/appreciate/value similar, periodic, Amaryllis down-time. We know that breaks can improve OOC dynamics, give everyone some breathing room, and act as a de-stressor — which is why we are interested in exploring this further.

When we say downtime, we want to emphasize that that does not mean that the site would be inaccessible or unusable for those that want it. The intent would be to follow a similar system for what we did during our holiday break, which included: no posting requirements (including leadership reqs), fight timer pauses, pride challenge freezes, pausing the inactivity bot, giving staff a temporary relief from maintenance duties, and so forth. Essentially, we minimize the stressors and workload while giving people the flexibility to post as desired, or not to post entirely if a break is needed.

We will be opening up a poll in the Discord sever, as well as a community discussion there to hear everyone’s thoughts and see what the preference is. If you are not in the server and would like to weigh in, please reach out to a Sr Staff member to cast your vote. Thank you in advance!

Pride challenges are a common part of life in Amaryllis and, in the past, they have always been open to the whole community (i.e. AW threads). While this was not a site rule, it was common practice and what most people have gotten used to and come to expect out of challenges.

We understand, however, that AW pride challenges can also be incredibly stressful or overwhelming due to the attention it garners and how big these threads usually become.

To balance these expectations, moving forwards, pride challenges can be marked as semi-private, but only if BOTH sides agree to it prior to the challenge being posted. A semi-private pride challenge must happen on the pride-lands and will be open to the supporters of the challenger, the pride members of the pride being challenged for, and prides that are marked as allies or friendly on the pride page. If both parties do not agree to a semi-private thread, then it must be tagged as an AW thread.

In addition to some adjustments to our current OOC games, over the next few months we will be introducing some new site games too! We hope that you all enjoy these changes and have fun with them; more information will come soon.

Current OOC Game Changes

• Pair of the Month will now be Group of the Month and nominations can include between 2 and 5 characters.
• Writing Frenzy will now be an open game for all, meaning that sign-ups will no longer be needed or required. This is possible due to the coding that Koi wrote for us, which our host now runs on a monthly basis. It works by pulling the numbers for all active accounts over the span of the month — please note that winners will still not be allowed to win the same ranking twice.

• RP Partner Roulette: After signing up, two members will be partnered up and rewards are given out based on the number of completed threads between them, with bonuses for longer threads.
• LIONS Bingo: A bingo card (that says lions) with some fun things to strive for — this game will go on for however long it takes for someone to get LIONS. After someone wins, a new card will be made.
• Word of the Month: The Staff team will pick a specific word each month, and rewards will be given out for properly using it in posts.

Amaryllis has officially been open for over two years now, and it has been awhile since we have done an Advertising Contest! Hopefully, this will be a fun and engaging way to bring some new people to the site — but please make sure to read all of the contest rules before participating and starting to post on other websites. You can learn more about the Advertising Drive here!

Thank you all for a wonderful year last year and we look forward to this coming year!

— The Staff Team