On Characters Learning and Picking Up Abilities, and Proper Plotting Procedures
With all of the characters at fandomhigh running around with special powers and abilities, we wanted to clarify things for those with "normal" characters, who have wondered about what kinds of abilities they can learn from others within the game.

The basic answer is, it depends on your canon, and on the canon that the powers/abilities are coming from. Any ability that requires an innate skill, or that a person is born with, or that comes from a mutation is off limits in most cases. But this doesn't mean that learning all abilities is off limits. For example, Rory can certainly learn how to meditate - but she'll never be able to access the Force. (Woe!)

If your canon is highly reality-based, and there isn't much info on what kinds of special abilities your character could learn, keep the other canon involved in mind. For example, your character might not come from a canon where it's explicitly stated that they could learn how to block their thoughts from a telepath, but if the telepath comes from a canon where regular people can learn how to do that, then it's conceivable that your character could learn too.

The key here is the word learn. New skills shouldn't be something that the character can do automatically, and while the admins might not necessarily be watching for this sort of thing, it's something we want everyone to keep in mind. If you don't know whether or not your character could pick a skill up from someone else, ask them. OOC communication is love. If you want to do something that involves acquiring a new major skill or power for plotty reasons, but that might not necessarily be valid in your canon (for example, the recent plot of Cally temporarily picking up witchy powers), e-mail the admins with your plot idea, and we'll see if it works.

And with that segue in place, I'd also like to put out a reminder/official notice about how plots should be run past us. *g*

If you have a plot that you would like to play out in-game, you need to run it past the admins first, by sending an e-mail to administration [at] fandomhigh.net. We don't want to ruin anyone's fun, we just want to keep things at a manageable level. This also allows us to keep track of everything that's going on, and to make sure that your plot won't clash with another plot that you might not know about. Not everything that goes on in the game has to be run past us first, of course. The general rule of thumb is:

Plots that generally need approval:

- take a significant amount of time to play out
- affect or involve a significant number of people
- have a lasting effect on your character

Plots that generally don't need approval:

- only involve one or two people
- have no NPC characters coming in
- don't have a lasting effect
- don't last longer than a week
- minor off-island plottishness with NPCs from your fandom (visits home, phone calls, etc). You should run that past other players from your fandom though.
- anything involving normal pets (just make sure you clear it with your roommate first)

When in doubt, e-mail us, and we'll be sure to clear things up.


Thank you for reading all of that. Are there any questions?