Grant the Powers to Adjust Canonicity in Ody - Multiple Suggestions

[Fyni]

This comes after lengthy discussions with multiple people, and I believe now it's best to draw on the wider community.

Currently, canonicity in Ody works as follows:

• Maps are screened by the lore team. Any which contain elements which may be none canonical (the cyro section of cyro outpost, or the ICBM bunker of artic valley) will always be none canon.
• Ody is voted in round.
• A map is selected at random. If it is not one which is forced to be none canon, it is randomized if it is canon or not with a 50/50 coinflip. Note this heavily favours none canon from an RNG stand point, as it needs to both roll the few maps with canon chance then roll canon on that map too.
• The round plays out based on that, with guidelines in place on the wiki to ensure canon Odys do not go "overboard

Ody is still fairly new, and Aurora is, I'm sure we have all noticed, dying, helped along by the DDoS. We've not had a glut of STs (it's intimidating), and the majority of Ody rounds (every single one?) over the past month have been run by me or Sadkermit. These rounds very often happen to be the high pop rounds, as it were, and this is due to the fact we drum up intrest in Discord as best we can before a round. People are excited for Ody rounds.

ST can be hard. You need to think of ideas ideally in advance - and I know a lot of people do, I have DMs of people comign to me with their ideas - but this can easily be scuppered by canon RNG, map RNG, pop and crew dsitributions not been as you hope or a lack or overabundance of actors. We can't control all of these (though we can help on the actor front by adding an actor to ready ratio and a ghost role actor spawn that STs can use, but that's a story for another time) but we can on canonicity.

I have had this happen to me. I have managed to DM Mel in the past to give a round a nod. "Oh yeah, this is canon." These rounds have often come out wonderfully - a highlight been our lost G2s round. The canonicity of the round provided more reason to engage with it, and allowed for it's fun to continue even into other rounds and onto the relay.

I believe there should be power invested somewhere to allow a choice to be made. These are my preferred solutions:

• The Complicated Solution: Remove Ody from the game mode vote. Add instead "canon ody", "none-canon ody" and "random ody". This allows the whole server to decide - and since Ody is often voted for because a ST speaks up in advance, they can ask for their preference.
• The Double Vote Solution: Add a canonicity voting round after Ody is voted for. Simpler, but may annoy people who will play one but not the other (do they exsist? I'm not convinced but eh)
• The Nuclear Solution: Allow STs to flick a switch to decide canon/none canon.
• The Slightly Less Nuclear Solution: Allow STs to flick a switch only if the map is approved for canonicity.
• The Sensible Solution: Power should be invested in someone like Kermit, who is active on the server and a member of the lore team, to make the call based on their knowledge of the ST, their plans and the map. (her activity makes it far easier instead of explaining at length what a round is to Mel or similiar), perhaps with restriction in place.

My preference is for the complicated solution, or the sensible solution.

Of course, there may be a reason for canonicity been as it is. Matt has commented on the past about it, but the reasoning is spread out and I feel having it in one place will be helpful as reference.

[NerdyVampire]

I think canonicity is something that needs to be planned ahead to work well, I don't think it is something the pop should vote for each time. I prefer having the storyteller tell me if it is canon or not.

I think it is indeed a sensible solution you are proposing, so why not? If we can get more canon rounds this way, which are usually great for engagement, I am all for it.