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faq.
premise ⬥ taken ⬥ faq ⬥ navigation
basic info ⬥ applications ⬥ arrival ⬥ setting details
deaths, drops, hiatus ⬥ activity and regains ⬥ game mechanics
got a question?
→ WHAT IS CETANA?
Cetana is a short-run, panfandom, dungeon-crawler game inspired by Persona Q.
Characters are spirited away to a rural town that are guarded by mythological creatures called Tengus. Every night, the town’s residents disappear and the world is engulfed in darkness, with the only source of light coming from the moon overhead. Characters are guided towards dungeons scattered throughout the town, with each new dungeon unlocked every other month as characters progress through the previous dungeon and defeat the boss within.
→ WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF EVENTS?
Cetana is a team-based game with a focus on dungeon crawling every other month, CR-building on non-dungeon months, and player plots and world exploration integrated into the main plot.
→ WHAT IS THE TIME RATIO?
Cetana follows a 1 OOC day to 1 IC day ratio and the in-game calendar will follow the real life calendar.
→ HOW LONG WILL THE GAME RUN?
Cetana is expected to run for approximately for ten months. It may change to become more or less, depending on the course of the game, but we aim to have a running period of ten months.
→ IS CETANA OPEN TO THE PUBLIC?
Partially. Cetana is currently a player-invite-only game. Players within the game may extend a single invitation to a newcomer. When the newly invited player submits their application, they must specify who they were invited by. The player who extended the invitation must then comment to the newcomer's application to confirm that they did invite them.
→ WHEN ARE APPLICATIONS OPEN? WHAT DO THEY INCLUDE?
Applications are always open and include player information, a very brief personality section, Persona information, and stats.
More details about the applications can be found on the Applications page.
→ ARE APPLICATION CHALLENGES ACCEPTED?
They are not.
→ WHAT TYPES OF CHARACTERS ARE APPABLE?
We accept canon, canon AU, CRAU, and original characters. Silent and customizable protagonists are also accepted should canon provide a basis for their personality through extra content, dialogue choices, or various other canon materials.
→ DO CHARACTERS HAVE TO BE HUMANIZED?
This is up to the player's choice. However, if the character is too large for the game setting, we will ask to at least shrink the character size to an average human height.
→ ARE POWERS NERFED?
At the beginning, yes. Characters will be stripped of their abilities and will solely have to rely on their Persona. However, players may regain back their characters’ powers by providing bonus activity later down the line.
→ WHAT HAPPENS TO CHARACTERS WHO WERE DEAD OR INJURED BEFORE THEIR ARRIVAL?
Characters who were dead prior to their arrival will be revived, but in regards to any injuries that they might have received while they were either alive or dead, it will be left up to the player’s discretion. Players may choose to have their characters completely healed or still suffering from their wounds. Any fatal injuries will be mostly healed to the point that they are no longer serious, but they will still be extremely painful and may potentially restrict movement.
→ HOW ARE CANON UPDATES HANDLED?
Characters will become violently ill and will be out of commission for an entire day, suffering from a fever dream. They will mysteriously feel better the next morning and will be canon updated. For any canon updates that include physical changes, however, please contact the mod team for options.
→ IS THERE A CANON CAP?
There is a franchise cap of five characters. This means series such as Persona 3 and 4, or Final Fantasy VII and XIV, will share the same cap between each game in the series. Original characters will not follow under these rules and there will be no cap for them.
→ IS THERE A CHARACTER CAP?
There is a cap of two characters per player. Players may apply for two characters at once.
→ IS THERE A PLAYER CAP?
There is a cap of 30 players.
→ WHAT HAPPENS UPON ARRIVAL?
Prior to arriving in the game, characters will experience a dream-like out-of-body experience. They will watch themselves play the Persona game with three other blank figures, who all stand in the corners of an equally blank room. With no control over their bodies, they will see themselves mutter, “Persona, Persona, please come here”, then walk down to the first figure and touch their shoulder. The figure will repeat the phrase then walk to the second. The second and third will do the same. After a long silence, the dream fades away.
Characters will then awaken in a broken down castle out in the woods and find themselves with an omamori.
→ WHAT CAN CHARACTERS BRING INTO THE GAME?
Characters will be able to bring whatever items they had on their person prior to their arrival. However, the item must be less than a foot tall. If it is over, then characters will not be able to bring it along and it must be regained through the player’s bonus activity. In addition, if an item is powered by a specific object, entity, or concept from their canon world, they will not function in the game. Players must regain the ability to use that item through bonus activity as well.
→ CAN CHARACTERS BRING PETS OR CREATURES?
Characters may bring in one pet or creature with their arrival, but there is also a size restriction on it. It must not be bigger than a medium-sized dog or else it must be regained at a later date. If the pet or creature comes with any special powers, these will be nerfed on arrival and must be regained through bonus activity.
→ WHERE DOES CETANA TAKE PLACE?
The game takes place in a rural town called Hirajiro. Set within the boundaries of a lake at the center and a forest encompassing the town, it is encircled once more by an expansive mountain range. This world is an enclosed loop, preventing characters from escaping as if you walk far enough in one direction, you will eventually appear right back where you started from.
More information about the settings in the game can be found on Locations page.
→ WHAT ARE THE NPCS LIKE?
The NPCs are regular townspeople who are just going about their daily lives. They can be interacted with and they will respond normally, but they will not notice anything strange about the new arrivals or their town. Furthermore, they will not understand the characters should they begin talking about the world looping around their town, Personas, Shadows, the Lockdown, or the dungeons. They will simply assume that the characters have an overactive imagination and any of the weapons that they’re carrying are for elaborate cosplays.
→ WHERE CAN CHARACTERS STAY?
At the game start, characters may take shelter in the castle ruins where they arrive. As they move into the town and get jobs, they have the option of renting rooms, sleeping on the streets, breaking into abandoned buildings... however they choose to live.
→ ARE THERE LANGUAGE BARRIERS?
Upon arrival, characters will automatically know how to speak, read, and write in Japanese. If they knew any other languages beforehand, they will be able to retain it.
→ IS THERE A NETWORK?
No, but characters may obtain cellphones from various stores once they begin to earn money. They will be able to text each other and IC inboxes can be created on character journals for network threads, but there is no overall shared network within the game.
→ IS THERE INTERNET?
Strangely enough, there is not. Although characters may text or call each other, they cannot access the internet on their phones or any of the local computers.
→ CAN CHARACTERS OBTAIN JOBS?
Yes, they can. Should characters decide that earning money by exchanging their findings from the dungeons is not profitable enough, they can apply for jobs like any regular person.
→ HOW IS DEATH HANDLED?
Prior to December 2019, characters cannot die within the game, but they will experience all the pain and trauma that would come from receiving any fatal injuries. They will also have to experience the grueling and painful healing process of recovering from their wounds. As a result, characters will not be able to use their Persona from a time span of a day to a week. As of December 2019, there is a possibility that characters who die remain permanently dead, with player discretion, and will not be revived.
→ WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A CHARACTER IS DROPPED?
When a character is dropped, their Persona is damaged and the character fall into a state of ego death, in which they lose their sense of self and become unresponsive with little to no will to live or take care of themselves. They remain in the town, but in a semi-responsive vegetative state, akin to the Apathy Syndrome in Persona 3. As of December 2019, there is an option for characters to be permanently dead, barring the character from being reapped.
→ WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A PLAYER GOES ON A HIATUS?
When a player goes on hiatus, they have the option of either having their character be on auto-pilot for the duration of the hiatus, or have their Persona be damaged and temporarily go into an ego death vegetative state.
→ WHAT ARE THE ACTIVITY REQUIREMENTS?
Upon their acceptance into the game, players must comment to the permanent AC page for their character. Underneath that comment, players must submit their activity each month with a new comment. There will be no reminders or warnings for the Activity Check, so players must be diligent at submitting their AC on their own. Players may submit their AC whenever they like, whether it’s at the beginning of the month or at the end, as long as they do it before the last day of the month at 11:59pm EST.
Players must submit the following for each of their characters to pass AC:⬥ Ten comments from your character in a single thread.
More details about the AC requirements can be found on the permanent AC page.
⬥ An additional five comments from your character in a single thread participating in a dungeon.
⬥ A brief summary of what your character is doing, developing, and/or contributing in the game.
→ WHAT IS BONUS ACTIVITY?
For players who achieve more than the basic AC requirements, they may submit their additional threads for in-game rewards. They may use their bonus activity to increase their character’s Persona skills, gain new Persona skills, regain canon abilities or items, gather plot clues, gain a status effect, or various non-canon items.
More details about the bonus activity can be found on the Regains page.
→ WHEN MUST THE BONUS ACTIVITY BE SUBMITTED FOR REGAINS?
Players must submit their bonus activity threads started from the previous or current month to apply towards a regain. For example: if it is October, players may only use threads which started from September or October for their bonus activity. Threads from August will not count and will be considered lost.
→ IS THERE A LIMIT ON HOW MANY REGAINS CAN BE OBTAINED IN A MONTH?
No, there are no limits.
→ LOCKDOWN
Every night at midnight, the town enters a Lockdown period for one hour: the NPC residents of the town disappear, along with all sources of light, from electricity to the stars in the sky— all except the moon that continues shining overhead. During this time, characters are guided by the cold winds towards open dungeons from which violent Shadows emerge.
→ DUNGEONS
A new dungeon appears every other month, with its entrance located somewhere in the town or the surrounding areas. Trails of cold wind blow along the town, guiding characters towards these dungeon, which can only be accessed during Lockdown at midnight. Each dungeon is headed by a boss that must be defeated before the next dungeon appears.
→ WHAT IS A PERSONA?
A Persona is the manifestation of an individual's personality and inner self. They are the mask that someone wears in the face of hardship and in Cetana, they are the summonable creatures that the characters can use to defeat Shadows. Characters in the game are granted the power to use Personas upon playing the "Persona" game and character are granted one Persona each, linked to an omamori as the summoning medium.
More details about Personas can be found on the Persona Information page.
→ CAN PLAYERS CREATE THEIR OWN PERSONA?
Each character has one Persona and players may either choose a Persona from canon or they may create and customize their own Persona.
There is a Persona Workshop that players may utilize to discuss customized Personas with other players and more information about customizing a Persona can be found on the Persona Information page.
→ DO CHARACTERS HAVE TO FACE THEIR SHADOWS TO GAIN A PERSONA?
No. Due to the nature of the Persona Game played before their arrival in the town, characters awaken with their Personas. If the player wishes, their character may face their Shadows through player plots as the game progresses.
→ WHAT ARE SHADOWS?
Shadows are manifestations of negative human thought, emotions, and desires which have been repressed to the point that they lose control, break free of their hosts, and are given physical form. These Shadows appear only during the Lockdown hour at midnight.
→ WHAT ARE EFFECTIVE AGAINST SHADOWS?
As Shadows and Personas both stem from repressed human thought and emotions, they are most effective against each other in combat. Characters who have awakened to their Persona are more resistant to attacks dealt by Shadows and Shadows are more resistant to attacks dealt by a character's canon powers.
→ WHAT ARE ARCANAS?
Based on the Major Arcanas from tarot cards, they represent a set of personality traits, a certain aspect of an individual's life, or a struggle that they are going through. Each character and their Persona will be aligned with an Arcana and the player must choose one for their character prior to their acceptance.
For more information on Arcanas and their characteristics, they can be found on the Persona Information page.
If you have a question that is not answered above, please comment with your question below in this entry or contact a mod. Someone will be with you shortly.
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