How SA Works

This attempts to shed some light to the inner workings of SA, to better help our members, too, understand the inner structure and behind the scenes.

You can meet the staff here!

## Moderating Team

Our moderators help keep the group running by handling the art and literature submissions and shop notes. Mods do **not** have access to group notes or any of the decision or planning process on admin side. Mods help with art and other content assets as requested, but don’t have free reign on what kind of content gets added. All our mods are equal, and share the same rights.

## Admin Team

Our admin team consists of 6 admins, and all have their own main faction. Each admin is **fully** responsible of their own faction - this means we all individually plan lore and events. We share with each other and let each other know bigger plans for events, and any inter-faction plannings always include all admins of said factions. This does still mean that only the admin in responsibility of their faction fully knows the plans - especially when it comes to events like chapters and chapter plots. We all hold full control of our own gods much as if they were PCs, and another admin will not use someone else’s god without explicit permission. All admins are equal in all matters.

As it is currently, SA does not have a set ending. We’re constantly building and adjusting the story as we best see fit, and events can and will change the course of our plans as time goes on.

### How do things get done?

Whenever a question or a suggestion arises, we vote and discuss it among the admin team. Anything needs 4 votes to be either accepted or rejected. On major game changes and other highly important decisions we wait for all six admins to weigh in.

No matter which way a concern, complaint, critique or anything that generally touches upon SA, its structure or well-being on a more "official" level is brought to us (discord, notes, dms), we bring it to the team to keep up full transparency. This does **not,** however, mean we share personal discussions, plottings or the like with the entire team! We have our own personal characters, lives and friends just the same as all the member base does. <3

### How do staff changes get handled?

When an admin steps down, a new admin inherits the herd. Because the Gods are as much personal characters as they are owned by the group, they typically change in appearance. The new admin keeps the core elements of the god, but can choose to emphasize different values of the god. Where possible we try to implement these changes in-character to avoid rough and drastic changes.

Leader characters are each admin’s personal characters, and cannot be held by members long term. The herd admin needs to have control of their faction’s leader, which would not be possible if a member had full control of said character simultaneously. Where possible we can move characters to NPC positions or phase them out slowly, but do often have to quite quickly replace the old character with a new one as fitting to the position as possible.

The new admin is then free to keep to original plans or make new ones, to build new lore or retcon pieces that don’t make sense in their plans. While we understand changes can feel drastic or sudden, we do our best to keep SA growing and moving forward. Sometimes change is a necessary part in that.

## Chapters and Plot Developments

SA’s chapters and plot developments are a combination of player and admin efforts. Although SA does not have a set end, it *does* have a plot and chapters generally have specific goals that need to be achieved for that plot to advance.

This means that while we always seek to provide our members with ways to interact with plot elements and affect the specific way things go, some things must come to pass, regardless of what the characters do. This doesn’t mean the characters have to like it or agree with it! Just that some plot elements are unavoidable. Such things could include things like leader changes, major plot elements (such as wars, natural catastrophes etc) or some key lore reveals we need to build our story further.

Some plots are more open-ended, and some may even be completely up to members - usually meaning there are 2-3 alternative endings and member actions will determine how that particular branch of the story develops. These choices are always made by the whole plot/event party, not just one individual character.

### How are the chapters planned?

Generally speaking, admins have a fairly fluid plan of events they want to see come to fruition during a chapter. However, the exact plots and developments are heavily dependent on the characters that sign up - we can’t really fully plan out our chapters until we see what we have available. These adjustments are made around the initial plan, allowing us to be flexible and make plots that make sense for as many characters as possible.

### How are characters sorted into plots?

The biggest determining factor is your character’s faction, and the second is their rank. This does not necessarily mean that all characters of a certain rank will be together - just that the characters rank is a major determining factor in where they get sorted. We generally can not take into account personal details, like characters wanting to be with a specific group of friends, or a character traveling to another herd (outside official plot developments). In general, you should expect your character to be in the same general area as most of their faction.