FAQ.
Game premise
Yogen is a short run panfandom psychological thriller horror game in a high school setting, where characters come into awareness as students of the school and work to learn why they are here and how they can leave.
The primary focus of this game is character development. It also touches on themes such as the exploration of life and death, the effect of memory on personality and identity, perception versus reality, morals and ethics, and freedom. Inspiration is drawn from the previous DWRP games
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adsum is the mod account, and is run by Ori, Alice, and Bunny.yogen is the main community, where logs will be posted. desum is the OOC community, where monthly updates, plotting posts and memes can be posted.Timeline and schedule
Starting with the graduation ceremony at the end of March, events follow the Japanese school calendar running 1:1 according to the real world calendar, and include school events such as cultural festivals, class trips, and finals.
The game is projected to run for about two years. The first year was dedicated to uncovering the circumstances of the school, and ended in March 2022. The second year will be dedicated to devising and implementing a plan to leave, destroying the school, or changing the school according to the characters' own visions, and the ending of the game will be determined by character action and decisions. The ending of the game may occur sooner or later depending on player choices.
The monthly OOC plotting post will be posted on the first day of the month. The monthly event log will be posted on the first Saturday of the month.
Events
Occasionally, there will be non-time sensitive murdergame elements such as investigating and solving murders, but participation is not integral to the game plot. Both murderers and victims are by volunteer basis, and there may be threats, possession, circumstance, or other incentives involved in spurring murders, and both consequences and rewards for those who participate.
Overall, the game involves psychological and at times survival horror, with a focus on CR and character development. Death is a common theme, and other possible triggers that may pop up include homicide, suicide, self-harm, drug use, gore, body horror, immolation, child harm/death, and animal harm/death, all of which will be properly warned for in the subject line. Events of this nature are all opt-in.
More information about the discovered game lore can be found on the game lore page.
Applications
Applications are open on a rolling basis until the player cap is reached, after which applications will be queued until a slot is open. Reserves are not required to app, and reserves only the character, not a player slot. The player cap is currently set at 30, and the character cap is 2 per player.
Reserves last two weeks, and after expiring, cannot be renewed by the same player for one month. Players may reserve up to one character at a time, but can apply up to two characters at a time for new players. Applications include a general history and personality section, a questionnaire, and a writing sample. A permissions post in the character journal is required, and a list of any triggers to warn for is recommended.
Canon, original characters (both canon and original setting), and silent/customizable protagonists are currently appable, while duplicates currently are not. New canons must be out for at least 1 month to be apped from. There is no age limit, but characters below the age of 10 must justify their independence in their app. Older characters will be regarded by npcs as students, but will have the option of joining the faculty and becoming a teacher. Please check the taken page prior to reserving or apping due to possible restrictions on certain characters who have recently died in-game.
Activity requirement
AC is hosted on the permanent AC post and is due at the end of the month, to be checked whenever the mod wakes up the next day. There will be no warning lists or plurk reminders for AC. Players will be contacted via PM to their character account if AC is missing at the end of the month, and failure to respond within 48 hours of the PM will result in a drop from the game.
Full AC includes one open post/toplevel plus a thread of 5+ comments from a different post, or 10+ comments across 2 threads, and a summary of what they've been up to during the month. Due to rolling apps, characters accepted in the last two weeks of the month are exempt from thread AC, but must still include a brief summary.
The permanent AC post also doubles as an IC point of contact for effects or notices specific to your character, from either npcs or player characters.
Hiatus and drops
A hiatus can be taken for 2-4 weeks, and should be linked under the character's permanent AC toplevel. It cannot be taken for two consecutive months, and must be requested more than 5 days before AC is due to qualify for that month's AC. Characters on hiatus will ICly be on autopilot and go about as usual.
Dropped characters will either go on autopilot (new starting April 2022) or involve an IC death which, with player permission, may be integrated into the larger game plot. All dropped characters may not be re-applied for at least two months following the drop, and will be listed on the taken page as characters with restrictions to app.
Arrival
Once a character is apped, the character will "open their eyes" aka come into full awareness within the school, regaining their canon memories with extra details specified upon app acceptance. Almost as if coming out of a dream, they vaguely recall high school life in Yogen— the faces of npc students and staff feel familiar, the school is easily navigated without much thinking, and even the lessons are easy to follow as if they've been diligently studying throughout the year— but if they stop and really consider things, those memories cannot coincide with their canon memories. Overall, it's an uncanny and persistent feeling of déjà vu.
Between their awakening and the last thing they remember in canon, all characters can recall is a deep and overwhelming drowsiness, a comfortable warmth, a piercing shriek, and a soft whisper but not the words. As they will soon learn, arrival in Yogen follows the character's death in canon: the character will remember their death if it had occurred before or during their chosen canonpoint, otherwise they will not remember any details of their death.
Appearance and powers
Characters will find themselves appearing exactly how they are as they last remember, although they are dressed in the school's uniform and any injuries will have been healed. There is no forced humanization, although extreme sizes may be asked to be adjusted. Humanization of non-human characters is by player discretion. Characters without a corporeal form will need to have a corporeal form in the game, and will not be subjected to basic human needs if they did not require it in canon. On the inside of their left wrist (right wrist if their left is missing) are a variable number of tally marks, specified upon app acceptance, that are raw and red as if recently scratched into the skin, and do not become any less sore as time passes.
Characters who require sustenance other than food retain that requirement, and those who require no sustenance at all still do not require it. Immortal characters can still be killed in specific circumstances, but all deaths will always be with player permission or due to a drop.
All powers are nerfed upon arrival, but can be regained bonus activity after one month in the game. There may also be opportunities to learn magic from npcs or player characters. If magic in the character's canon can be learned by any ordinary person without restriction, then it can be taught to other player characters; if the magic requires an innate magical ability/affinity or anything canon specific, it may not be.
Initial inventory
Upon arrival, all clothing and belongings the character had on them are gone, replaced with the standard high school uniform consisting of a white button up shirt, a red cross bow tie, a black jacket, and either pants or a skirt (lengths varying from knee to ankle) depending on which the character is most comfortable with.
In their assigned locker, characters will find one extra uniform, two casual outfits of your OOC choosing, a single small bag of their favorite snack, and a blank notebook with pages filled with faint indentions, as if somebody had tried scratching notes with their fingernail due to not having a pen on hand. Incidentally, there is no pen provided.
Communication
Logs in the game can be in person and/or network based. Each character is given a PDA-like device that is unlocked by thumbprint, and displays their student ID number, locker number and combination, class assignment and schedule, current grades, and current "merit points" (see below). It is capable of text and however well you can draw on a 2x2 inch touch screen using your finger, but is not capable of voice, photo, or video. Text color can be changed to any color. Messages are posted to a public school-wide forum with the option to ping a specific person, and private messaging is currently not available.
There is no internet capability.
The default username assigned to each character is their firstinitial.lastname and cannot be changed. If a character has only one canon name, a first initial is made up for them. If a character has no canon name, or multiple canon names (eg manga, anime, stage play, etc), the player may choose one and keep it consistent according to their app.
Character who regain cell phones will be able to privately call and text one another, take videos and photos, and use apps that do not require but internet.
Setting
Refer to the locations page for floor plans and detailed descriptions of different areas. The high school building is located in the middle of a depression in a forest and consists of four stories, a basement, a clocktower, a central courtyard, sports facilities, a dormitory, and a forest surrounding campus. The left wings of each upper floor consists of classrooms, while the right wings consist of clubrooms. The clocktower bell tolls every 6th hour, and all sound disappears from midnight until 6AM the next morning.
When fresh blood touches the school, it transforms into a dilapidated version of itself. In this version of the school, npcs become shadow figures, parts of the school are replaced by a "void," and characters must break a mirror in order to return to the normal school, finding themselves in the exact same time and place as when the blood first hit the ground. More detail about the "void" version of the school can be found on the locations page.
Students and faculty
The student body is held at around 300 students, with new students "transferring" in to replace students who have died or otherwise left. The NPC students and faculty around the school are largely forgettable, in that there are little distinct features that make them stand out unless an effort is made to get to know any one in particular. On the surface, the NPCs all look vaguely Japanese, only sort of, as if there's something foreign about them that can't be easily placed.
They all behave normally, with NPC students tending to hang out with each other, and while they are aware of and will reply with your character's name if asked, background NPCs may refer to pc characters as "transfer student" until they have gotten to know a character better. Students diligently go to school and clubs, teachers diligently teach and hold office hours, and at the end of the day, they diligently go home, passing straight through the front gates of the school, their bodies turning into intangible shadow and disappearing without a trace. When school starts the next morning, shadowy figures of students and staff can be seen passing through the front gates and becoming solid once more the moment they step past the threshold into the school.
Two cats that can be found around campus: a fluffy white cat and a skinny black cat. Although teachers keep them out of the classrooms during class time, they roam freely around the main school building. The white cat is very friendly, enjoys being petted and sitting on people's laps. The black cat is more wary, avoids being touched and is content people watching. These cats can be freely mentioned in threads.
School life
Each character is sorted into one of 15 homerooms, 1-3 and A-E. Classes are an hour long each, starts at 8 AM and runs until 4PM with an hour break at noon for lunch. Core subjects include math, language, history, biology, economics, physical education, etc; and electives include art, music, computer science, theater, etc. A list of player character taught classes can be found here.
There is no cafeteria and meals are not provided, although snacks can be purchased from the vending machines, and the kitchens in both the home ec room and the dormitory may be used. Clubs run from 4PM until 6PM, and currently include art, music, home economics (cooking, sewing, and workshop), and a number of new clubs established by player characters. Occasionally, there may be opportunity to join the student council, which will be announced on the monthly OOC plotting post or directly messaged by a mod.
Merit points
Merit points are given for a full day's class attendance, active participation in class, helping faculty around the school, keeping the school tidy, participating in school events, etc. Essentially, it's a reward for being a good student. Occasionally, merit points can be earned with interactions between students involving strong emotion, whether positive or negative.
OOCly, earning merit points is handwaved as reasonable, but acts as an IC incentive for unwilling students to go to class and/or participate in high school life. They can be used in the student store, as well as the vending machines, which can be reported once a month for potentially something extra. Some school events may involve merit points.
Language
Written words around the school seems to be reminiscent of jindai moji, an ancient Japanese script, and this is the language the npcs all write with. The npc's spoken language sounds Japanese in intonation, but is not recognizable as such when individual words are focused on. Characters speak and write in their own native languages. All written and spoken words are universally but not fluently understood, like the point in learning a foreign language where you passively understand meaning despite struggling with generating vocabulary and grammar on your own. Essentially it's universal translation in which it seems like everybody has very thick accents and very bad handwriting, but you can guess well enough what's going on.
Living
While npcs leave the school at 6PM, characters are confined within the school campus and surrounding forest, and must learn to live with what resources are available. Food and drinks can be purchased at the vending machines or made during home economics, and there are water fountains next to each bathroom on every floor, although the water is tinged faintly pink. The clothing provided includes the two sets of school uniforms and the two OOCly chosen outfits found in the characters' lockers, can be created during home economics, and purchased from the student store. Characters may choose to sleep in the dormitory, the adjacent cabin, within the school, in the single cot inside the nurse's office, or outside in the courtyard or surrounding forest.
The school does not have central heating or air conditioning. The lights dim at 6PM, shut off completely at midnight, and turn on again at 6AM.
Dying
Is very easy! There will be opportunities throughout the game for character death, including dangerous events and intentional murder, but please note that there is no quick and easy revival mechanism in place. Characters who choose to die in-game, along with characters who are dropped or idle out of the game, will not be able to re-app into the game for at least two months following the drop, and upon their return will have special considerations as discussed with the mod prior to re-apping.
Please comment below for any questions, and the mod will get back to you as soon as they can! Non canon/character-specific questions will be integrated into the FAQ as they are answered.
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