Milestones

[schoolmods]

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MILESTONES

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IC Explanation

Upon their arrival, each student is given a phone loaded with an app that will generate a small set of "milestones" unique to them. This app is capable of developing an intuitive grasp of the phone owner, resulting in milestones that would—according to its programming—unlock their potential, assist in the pursuit of happiness, and help them grow. And, since the direction of one's life isn't always a constant, the app knows to add more milestones to a student's repertoire over time, while also altering/removing existing milestones, all with consideration of the student's ongoing development. The school encourages students to try and complete their milestones at their own pace until they graduate.

OOC Explanation

Players can assign their characters milestones based on what kind of things you want to play/explore/develop with your character (are you down to clown or are you here to make your character experience things?), which can consist of typical teen things, or stuff suited for developing your character. Players will be able to add, change, and remove their character's milestones at any time, even during threads—and doing so will cause the character's phone to receive both an audible and visual notification that their milestones list has been updated.

Milestones exist for players to have personalized gameplay alongside the events, school life, and games. It'd be encouraged to keep the list small, since it's not a race to complete them.

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What counts as a milestone in this game?

Milestones are things of some significance that are either meant to be completed once or encourage a change in one's life. After all, this game is built on character exploration and development. Once a milestone is completed, it's removed from the list.

Milestones may include:

✦ Anything the character never got the chance to do while they were alive in their old world
✦ Matters of the mind that the character could address, such as grief or their mommy issues
✦ Things to nudge characters on what they're oblivious to, like emotions or crushes
✦ Opportunities for growth, like challenges - ex: hosting a party if the character is anti-social
✦ Enrichment™
✦ And stuff you may just want to push characters to do or try, because why not

Some milestones may be broad ("make a friend") and some may be oddly specific ("make the kind of friend you can share a secret with".) Milestones may also be kind of… tactless. Or peculiar. "Talk about your daddy issues" is, indeed, a tactlessly worded milestone that can exist. "Get a boyfriend/girlfriend" is an odd thing for a school app to recommend to its students—but it, too, can come up.

However, since milestones are generated and assigned by a school app, it means milestones cannot be illegal, violent, or sexual in nature, because this school isn't going to encourage teenagers to drink, murder, or fuck. But, you can still play around this by being creative with your character's milestone completions. An "express your bottled emotions" milestone could be fulfilled by a character flipping their lid and beating the shit out of someone, if you so wished it.

"But Marie, if violence/etc can fulfill the completion of a milestone, doesn't that mean the school DOES condone it?" Well, the app's milestone completion monitor has some bugs—which means that, so long as the fulfillment is genuine, it may register in the app as a completion no matter the context. ♪

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How would one determine when a milestone's been completed?

First and foremost, the only real ruling is that a completion cannot be faked. In other words, a character can't go outside, call a stranger a friend, then check their phone and find their "make a friend" milestone completed—because it won't be. There has to be something genuine about what's going on here.

Some milestones will have clearer cut completion requirements than others; "try something new" is easy to deem completed, since the only thing they have to do is give something they've never tried a shot—but "make a friend" might be trickier to discern in some character's cases. In the end, it's ultimately the player's call—players decide themselves when their character's milestone has been completed, so long as what's fulfilling it is genuine.

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Would characters be rewarded for completing each milestone?

Upon completing a milestone, characters will receive a phone notification advising that they can stop by the school store during its open hours to pick up a reward—which players OOCly determine. The reward will correlate with the milestone's difficulty/emotional impact. If the milestone was difficult for the character, they can go for something of big emotional significance to them.

For more information on rewards available, please see the School Store post.

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What's an example of what milestones might be like in play?

Zwei's a good example—so let's say I think it'd be cute if she improved at socializing. Or being, like... not as much of an asshole. I might toss "apologize to someone" onto Zwei's milestones list, because this girl's the type who almost never apologizes for her own fuck-ups, let alone acknowledging that she's fucked up at all (that's a whole other problem,) so it'd be a big deal if she could one day offer a sincere apology of ANY kind. Definitely a milestone for her!

✦ She might take weeks to fulfill this milestone (and this is fine, since milestones can be long-term.)
✦ Alternatively, she might soften up so early that "apologizing" doesn't feel as grandiose a milestone as I thought, so I remove it
✦ I may wait to add the "apologize to someone" milestone until she's fucked up, to bring it to her attention that she SHOULD investigate this

TL;DR: so long as the milestones on your list are "milestone-like" in nature, and are completed genuinely, there's no wrong way to play with them. Add milestones! Remove milestones! Change an existing milestone! Remove a milestone then—hell, add it back later!

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