Breeding Guideline Revisions

Hey WOLFers! In our Guidebook Revisions announcement earlier this year, we mentioned that we plan to revisit our breeding guidelines. After much consideration, we are ready to announce the changes coming for Breeding Season 2022!

After observing this year's breeding season, we noticed two recurring issues that contributed to this season feeling less fun and inclusive than usual:

• Breeding requirements hampering players' ability to play out certain plotlines.
  
• Too many steps leading to confusion for both staff and players at every stage.
  

Like our previous Guidebook updates, the goal of these breeding changes is simplification and encouraging player agency. They are also intended to break down the convoluted system that breeding has become and move toward breeding being just another chapter in the story of a wolf's life.

Breeding Changes

There are no changes to the expanded breeding season. Conception can still occur from January 1st to June 30th.

Minimum Eligibility Requirements are being removed. While these were valuable in theory, in practice, they were mostly punishing to players who had a rough patch and fell inactive despite months of consistent activity beforehand. WOLF is targeted at an adult demographic and is meant to be simple, casual, and fun. Players should be free to jump in and out of the game with minimal disruption. We do not feel MERs tick any of these boxes.

Players no longer require OOC permission from PMs or CMs to breed. This means PMs no longer need to keep pup rosters or approve pup slots and players no longer need to post their litters in the Contact The Staff forum. Please keep in mind that pack leaders can still dole out IC consequences, such as exile, if characters breed without seeking their IC permission.

Loners no longer require special permission to breed. We hope this will open up new doors for your plotting pleasure!

Loner puppies are no longer required to die if they do not join a pack within a week. CMs are not comfortable enforcing this rule, so it is being removed. The rule that no one can kill your character except you should be universally applicable.

All these changes together mean the only OOC requirement for successful breeding is a completed conception thread between the two parents.

In addition, we are making the following tweaks:

• Gendered language has been removed from the pregnancy timeline.
  
• There is no longer a maximum breeding age.
  
• Characters must be at least 22 months old to breed, applicable to all Canis species.
  
• Players must now include a link to the conception and birth threads in their profile prompts when submitting puppy accounts for approval.
  

NPC Puppy Changes

Currently, if a pup falls inactive, they can only become NPCs with their player's explicit permission. This often puts parent players in a bind if a puppy falls inactive and the player cannot be contacted, as it rarely makes IC sense for watchful parents to misplace a young child.

Going forward, puppies under 6 months of age that fall inactive will automatically become NPCs until they are 6 months old or until the account is reactivated, unless the puppy's player requests otherwise. Player agency and preference always take precedence, so if a player prefers that their puppy go missing, that should be respected. However, we hope this change will help to mitigate some of the IC impact of puppies falling inactive without guidance from their players.

We will be updating the Guidebook to reflect these changes very soon. We hope you all are as excited about these revisions as we are, and as always, we welcome your questions and feedback as replies to this thread!

Dec 31 2021: Changed "must be at least 24 months old to breed" to "must be at least 22 months old to breed" to avoid staggering litters year by year — Chelsie