Errrr why are the profile icons jumping? 
I don’t like it it’s so creepy 
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Just out of interest are there certain friendly rivalries between certain guilds? Or will I come to discover this in time? 
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I’m not sure if there are designated rivalries but I have had two of you Thornmouths call us Gossmere geese…
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There are some friendly inter guild rivalries and some personal rivalries such as that between myself and the Kiwi @Skylad!
I don’t believe that there is a current rivalry going on currently but we could always just started one with the Gossmere!
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I had a thought in between sleeping sessions. If I’m a polyguild where do I live? With the Gossmere or Thornmouths?
Although if you read through the Gossmere are also knowledge seekers (it says teachers but what are you going to teach if you don’t know anything) so I might just be Gossmere. Though my first guild was Thornmouth and I’d like to keep it as a sort of homage. Gossmouth Iggy…
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I might be 5 hours late to this conversation but you just remember I’m part Thornmouth but also a Gossmere so… I’m you but can shape shift and do other gossy stuff
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You can chose where to live but generally it’s with your dominant guild
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Yes please!!!
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Hi all, Bean here,
I’ve just finished reading TMP 1 and 2 (And WOW, what a ride…) and I’m wondering what to do next? I see things about the search for magiq, but also secret societies, and I’m not exactly sure where I need to go next to catch up in the narrative. Can someone give me a timeline, or point me in the right direction please?
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Waiting on the answer to Bean’s question
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If you’re looking to go in order, the Secret Society stuff started before Search for Magiq! The Secret Society threads can be foundhere, and the first one should be this one!
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I found a summary of the Secret Society on the Wiki
Found it a lot easier than trying to understand historic posts.
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@Sapphire thanks a ton! Trawling the archives was gonna be a lot of work but I think you’ve saved me some extra time! I’ll probably end up reading this and then going through ant particularly interesting part of the forums too. 
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Good strategy @SabineBean. There’s LOTS of loreshadow (lore + foreshadow, I just made that up!), narrative, and interaction that’s too complex to make it into the wiki (or seems inconsequential at the time, and not worth wiki-ing, but becomes important later), and you’ll miss out on learning how immersion and interactivity works here if you don’t see the veterans doing it. 
Also, also, catching up on forum posts is one of the major ways to help increase your trust level.
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Yea! I’d trawl through the forums in their entirety if I could, but time is not particularly on my side! After all, what if the next big thing happened while I was struggling to catch up? That would be bad! Not that I’d provide much insight (I’m no puzzle master, just a soft lil illustrator) but I wouldn’t want to miss out on at least getting to see it in live time!
You’ve all made this big fantastic world! I wouldn’t want to be studying the bottom of the iceberg while fireworks were going off at the tip
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Haaaaaaa why not both? 
and 
!!
Regarding puzzles though:
One thing you’ll notice is that while traditional puzzles were a big part of The Monarch Papers they’ve become less and less a focus in subsequent “episodes” like The Secret Society and The Search For Magiq, because:
A) I’m not a puzzle maker and I found that I wasn’t able to create puzzles that hundreds of people working together couldn’t solve.
B) While the puzzles were fun, most readers remember the characters and the narrative more than how a bunch of arbitrary pieces fit together.
C) If you have puzzles in your story, then you also need someone or some thing in the world creating them. I don’t want every narrative to have some cryptic puzzle master testing the readers and characters.
D) I don’t think “puzzles” are as fun as unraveling mysteries, getting to know characters, and fighting dark forces.
E) When I do create something that borders on “puzzle” I now call them “complications” just so I don’t give readers the wrong impression. This is way less an ARG and more an immersive ARB (Alternate Reality Book.)
All that to say, I’m no puzzle master either, and you certainly don’t need to be to fit in here. 
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Time is the main constraint, I’m a sequential folk, but don’t worry, I won’t let that stop me!
And saying you’re no puzzle master? Don’t let yourself down! The puzzles I read in the books were complex and thrilling, it takes a master to work it like that, even if there’s whole groups working on them too! Puzzles are made to be solved.
It is a little relieving to me that it’s not so puzzle heavy from thereon out though, just for my own scatterbrained sake haha! As fantastic as TMP are, I couldn’t see myself providing much use and insight to such grand-scale doings. This is much more my thing!
You’ve got something fantastic in the works here, I’m excited to see how it all pans out!
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To add to this, I generally try to add references to the wiki pages so you can see the context…But it’s definitely difficult to add the full context to things while keeping articles concise. And it’s also difficult to fully express the weight of some interactions in a summary of events. So if you want to focus on the most critical interaction points, checking out the references can help.
Also, there is the summarize button at the top of every thread can be helpful in condensing threads. It’s a good way to cut out less essential posts.
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