Improbable Island Message of the Day (MoTD)

New Monthly Memento, charitable giving, and the results of the first-ever proper vote!
Admin CavemanJoe – 2020-06-13 20:35:37 [Permalink]
Update 2020-06-13: This should really go in a new MotD, but the last one was important enough that I don't want it to disappear from the page just yet.

eBoy's Trading Station now supports multiple-buy and multiple-sell options! After buying or selling an item, you'll now have the ability to buy or sell up to sixteen more at a time.

Because the next most popular result in our poll was the "Bug Hunt" option, I spent the rest of the week fixing bugs:
Running away successfully on world map now correctly gives action experience.
Total monster kills now properly counts foebots, failboat fights and map creatures.
Added option to exclude self from Rookday celebrations (check Preferences menu).
Sunny Spot in Kittania's 2D Outpost system now correctly goes to the Sunny Spot, not the Rook's Nest.
Added checks to Memento Forge to prevent bold in memento names (they're already bolded anyway and it can mess up following colour codes) and give a live preview with colours and formatting.
Added mod-override ability to hide gross Mementos from bios, where they're not quite gross enough to delete outright.

Normally the original MotD would follow, but instead an update to the original MotD will follow. Have fun!

Update 2020-06-08: Please see a slight expansion to the avoidance-of-doubt section, and some more links. Original MotD follows.

Hey, folks! The Monthly Memento for this month is the Jar of Rainbow Fireflies, because it's Pride month and here in the good ol' USA we've got a lot to be proud aboooouuuuuOOOOOHHHFUCKING HELL THAT AGED LIKE THE AVERAGE SODDING BANANA DIDN'T IT. Jesus Christ.

A lot has been said about what's happening in America right now - hell, what's been happening, a rot left unchecked for far too long - and it's been said far more effectively than I could, by people speaking with far more expertise and experience than I have, so I'll spare you from my thoughts on the matter (they're too depressing anyway) and say instead that this month if you donate to a charity or group doing something about police brutality in the USA and email me the receipt, I'll sort you out with Supporter Points equal to your donation.

I spent this morning trying to figure out how to do an on-Island fundraiser where I'd say something like "everything we take in above server costs this month goes to X charity," but a few things got in the way - the number of charities whose work is both extremely important and extremely local in the context of an international game, the fact that everyone's gonna have an opinion on what particular charity is doing the most good, PayPal taking a cut of money intended to have a measurable impact, the immediate need of local groups contrasted with the logistics of tallying everything up at the end of the month, tax-related bollocks, stuff like that. So instead, donate to whoever you think's gonna do the most good in your community, get an email receipt, and forward it to me (along with your character name) at cavemanjoe@gmail.com.

Please note that the focus here is on reducing police brutality in the USA, with particular emphasis towards brutality motivated by racism. To get Supporter Points for your donation, the group you donate to has to work on combatting police brutality, combatting racism, supporting victims of police violence or wrongful arrest, or all of the above. Local bail and mutual aid funds qualify, as do groups like CLASP, Equal Justice Initiative and Southern Poverty Law Center. If you're thinking of donating to a specific charity and you're not sure whether it qualifies, email me (cavemanjoe@gmail.com) and I'll have a look. Please allow a day or so for manual Supporter Point processing.

Update 2020-06-08: Kew posted this excellent resource in chat while we were talking about this the other day: 115 Ways to Donate in Support of Black Lives and Communities of Color. I heartily recommend you give it a look, and if you know of other similar resources, feel free to email me and I'll add them to this MotD.

For the avoidance of doubt (updated 2020-06-08):
* Yes, you can get the Monthly Memento by donating to charity. It has to be over ten bucks as normal.
* No, we're not shutting down regular PayPal donations. They still cover the server and advertising costs, although if we have another good month I might just point some of that cash towards a good cause myself.
* Yes, players outside of the USA can get in on this too, Amnesty International qualifies just off the top of my head, and if you make a donation in a currency other than USD I'll figure out what your donation adds up to using a currency converter and err on the side of giving you more points. Please don't use anything related to ActBlue if you're outside the USA.
* If you're wondering whether your donation's tax-deductible, ask the group you're considering donating to.
* Donations you've made recently but before the date of this MotD can also get you Supporter Points. I'll consider anything more recent than the beginning of May, on a case-by-case basis.
* Supporter Points given as a result of these qualifying donations also trigger all the usual SP-related game mechanics, including incrementing the kitty bar and dropping supply crates on the map.
* When forwarding email receipts, please actually forward the email receipts using the "forward" option in your email client. Please do not, for example, screenshot the receipt, upload that screenshot somewhere and send me a link to an uploaded screenshot - just hit the Forward button instead. If you're not comfortable forwarding receipts through Google, and would prefer an end-to-end encrypted solution instead, my Protonmail address is the same username as my Gmail address, but @protonmail.com. (given how much I'm paying every month for a dedicated server I should probably just quit using gmail, huh)
* When forwarding your receipt and giving your character name, please also include your current title, and do me a favour and don't change it until I've given you your points. It helps keep things straight. :)

Anyway the Rainbow Fireflies fill you with optimism and strength, providing a buff to Stamina actions and combat if you use them after 9pm game time. The Stamina buff lasts for the rest of the night. The combat buff only lasts for a few rounds, but you can use the fireflies as many times as you like once it's dark.

In other news, here are the results of our first-ever proper ranked-choice poll!

Buy/Sell multiple at eBoy's - 1207 points
[0: 100] [1: 23] [2: 23] [3: 24] [4: 28] [5: 38] [6: 38] [7: 40] [8: 32]

Bug Hunt - 1105 points
[0: 106] [1: 28] [2: 22] [3: 34] [4: 39] [5: 23] [6: 29] [7: 34] [8: 31]

Story Stuff - 1100 points
[0: 117] [1: 23] [2: 28] [3: 31] [4: 19] [5: 27] [6: 27] [7: 37] [8: 37]

Outpost events - 1074 points
[0: 106] [1: 32] [2: 32] [3: 25] [4: 32] [5: 27] [6: 33] [7: 30] [8: 29]

Onslaught Returns - 1044 points
[0: 110] [1: 33] [2: 27] [3: 35] [4: 23] [5: 33] [6: 29] [7: 27] [8: 29]

Social Stuff - 974 points
[0: 126] [1: 26] [2: 35] [3: 26] [4: 27] [5: 24] [6: 32] [7: 20] [8: 30]

Re-open the Enquirer - 947 points
[0: 129] [1: 34] [2: 23] [3: 24] [4: 38] [5: 23] [6: 25] [7: 22] [8: 28]

New Outpost system - 926 points
[0: 127] [1: 32] [2: 33] [3: 34] [4: 23] [5: 23] [6: 23] [7: 27] [8: 24]

Improvements to Distractions - 911 points
[0: 129] [1: 27] [2: 35] [3: 25] [4: 29] [5: 40] [6: 22] [7: 21] [8: 18]

The overall winner is adding an option to buy/sell multiple things at a time at eBoy's, and then it seems like y'all want me to dive into the petitions and do a bug hunt. The numbers between square brackets show how many people voted for a given points value - you can see that Story Stuff had more first-choice votes than Multiple eBoy, but Multiple eBoy won more second- and third-choice votes than other options.

So this coming week I'll be trying to make that a reality. The reason it's tricky is that eBoy changes his prices every time someone buys something, so we're gonna have to do some looking ahead into the future.

(although to be honest we should probably all be doing a bit of that right now anyway)

Have fun,

~CMJ

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