COVID-19 and Spring 2020

I’m writing this post with great sadness, but this is what we all believe is the right thing to do. With quarantines increasing throughout the globe, Port Katherine staff has concluded that we will be unable to run our normal event in April this year.

  • All Between Game Skills for Spring will be answered and results will be view-able to their players via the website. The BGS deadline remains 6:00 a.m. on Monday, April 6.
  • Registration fees for Spring may be refunded, applied to a future event, or donated for 3 Character Points (CP). We’ll provide instructions soon on how to inform us of your choice. Regardless of your choice, you will still receive your Spring BGS as above.
  • Unlike Witchwood (who will be holding online events during their normal game time), we don’t currently plan to have any online alternatives to game. We feel like - with the deluge of information we’ve given you since Winter - we’d potentially run into a situation where the plot was moving faster than your ability to wrap your hands around it at game.
  • For the moment, we are planning to run Summer in-person as scheduled. If you registered for and submit BGS for Spring, you will receive one free Focus to use before the Summer event (at the normal Summer BGS deadline) You do not receive any of your other normal BGS for Summer. This free Focus does not include and cannot be used for Lessons (sorry). If you did not register for Spring but plan to attend Summer, just submit your full BGS for Summer as normal.

Thank you for working with us during this situation. We know it’s hard, and we’re looking forward to seeing you all again as soon as we feel it’s safe. We have so much story to tell this year, and now we have to fit it into three events!

Brian Misamore
Game Director, Port Katherine

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This is 100% the right call. But as someone with ONLY BGS skills I feel like my summer event will be incredibly heavily affected.

No wait, derp. And thank you for the extra Focus!

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Thanks Brian. We appreciate you looking out for everyone’s safety. Quick question: do we need public works maintainers between Spring and Summer?

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So I understand correctly, if we’re registered for spring and summer, we will effectively have 3 focus between now and summer, correct?

Also, how does this interact with taking lessons for the summer event?

Oh, I interpreted this as only a Focus before summer. Hmm.

Ok, thought I was clear, guess I wasn’t.

If you registered for both events, here’s what your BGS look like:
Spring: Normal, including one focus (like, your normal focus, no bonus focus)
Summer: Only a focus, no lessons, no other BGS, no nothing. You get a focus.

If you only registered for Summer, here’s what your BGS look like:
Spring: No BGS
Summer: Normal, including one focus (like, your normal focus, no bonus focus)

So you should only have your normal two focuses.
You do not need public works maintainers for Summer.

Brian

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You’ll have exactly what you’d normally have at Spring…

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How’s this gonna work for unplayed characters?

Oh right, I get it; it’s not like info we receive in spring BGS won’t be applicable in summer; SPring is just gonna be “missing” as if we had a 3 events a year model this year?

Your first game will be Summer.

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Right

Alright. Follow up then, since that will be that character’s first game, can I use this BGS cycle for Tashif?

To make sure I understand correctly, the way this would work, if I research a stock with my bgs for spring, the result will give expected performance for the post summer period, rather than the post spring, because I wouldn’t have a chance to act on it between spring and summer?

Correct.

You would not normally, so no.

If registered for both, could we choose to hold off on our BGS until Summer? E.g. If I want my Spring focus to be able to influence the research I chose to do before Summer, can I wait on it?

Unfortunately, no. Our objective is to keep things as close to what they’d normally be, so we’re really just cancelling a single event and a single BGS cycle, then giving out a free focus to be nice.

So you’d need to submit for the Spring event as normal, to keep things fair.

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Since there would be two focuses between now and the next physical event, can I just chain them together? I’ve chained focus in the past, the issue here is I wouldn’t get a response for the first one before submitting the second.

You can, and we’ll give you a response to your Spring focus on the website, at the same time the Spring event would normally be held.

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Since we’re just getting a focus for Summer, can we say we went back to Drevnia for Spring?

To make sure I’m getting this right:
Spring: I use my lessons as per usual and my point of PI from Winter. I get no Focus because I went to Drevnia between Winter and New Years.

Summer: I get no lessons or PI (because we’re not there), but I do get a Focus. And, like between Winter and New Years, I would like to spend it on “Travel and Assistance to Drevnia,” assuming that is okay with staff.