Hey folks,
This time last year, we announced the difficult decision that 2025 would only have 2 events, due to decreased event team capacity. At the time, we very much hoped that it would be a once off, and we’d be able to return to running 3 games this year.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case. In fact, we intend to run at most 1 event this year, in the Autumn.
Last year’s events pushed the team to and, honestly, beyond our limits. Unforeseen events in our lives outside the game, and the badly timed cases of covid meant that we weren’t able to gain the advantage of the reduced workload and, in practice, the workload last year increased for parts of the team. Running Five Oaths takes an enormous amount of work, and like any unpaid volunteering, putting that time in requires passion. Right now, most of the team are struggling with one or both of time or energy.
Over the months since the last game we’ve been working to alleviate that by growing the team, but also by working to rebuild that energy. We have some wonderful candidates lined-up to join us on the team but, unfortunately as we stare down the barrel of the new year, we’ve reflected on where we are, and it’s still not where we need to be.
So we’re going to be taking an actual break – we’ll finish the beta process for Rules 2.0, and then close up shop until May. When we come back, we’ll decide if we’re going to run a Season of Delving this Autumn, or if we need to extend that break through the rest of the year and begin again in Spring 2027.
Hopefully however, the first half of this year won’t be completely devoid of Five Oaths in the field, as we are currently discussing a player-run field event and hope that details of that can be announced soon.
Questions we think might arise:
Will there be unpaid, offscreen work like last Spring?
Unlike last year, we don’t intend to do any sort of IC explanation – the next event will take place in IC Spring, regardless of the OC month, and we’ll sort the calendar out later.
What does this mean for Insurance?
Anyone who’s paid us for insurance last year is covered until late May, which will hopefully cover the planned player event but unfortunately won’t have any core Five Oaths games in it. We’ll share further information about the insurance needs for the Autumn game once we decide if it’s going ahead.
Haven’t you all just had a few months off, will this really help?
We don’t typically take the winter off from Five Oaths, barring a few weeks right after the last game – instead we use this time to work on other parts of the game – stuff like fleshing out setting documents, updating hardware, searching out new sites, and of course, rules updates.
Why did you do so much work on rewriting the rules if you’re struggling so much?
Rules 2.0 has been a positive for the health of the team, rather than a cost. Being able to make the necessary “capital investment” to fix long running problems, resolve issues that both we and the players have been having, and apply what we’ve learned over the years (as well as allowing the event team members who inherited rather than built the system to have more of a hand in it), has increased capacity rather than diminished it.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to leave finalising the rules till you come back?
We’ve discussed this, and while it would give a lot of additional time for testing and feedback, it would ultimately mean that our “break” wouldn’t happen and if it did, we’d lose a lot of momentum and context. We want to be able to draw a line under it before we step away.
Can we do anything to help?
Participate in the beta test of the rules changes. The feedback form closes at the end of the month and we should be running a big playtest in St Anne’s Park sometime in the coming weeks, we’d love to see as many of you there as possible. Your feedback is most helpful when it’s specific and focuses on the changes we have proposed rather than parts of the system we’re not planning to change at this time, aren’t player facing, or haven’t fully defined yet. We understand that it can be frustrating when there’s variables you can’t see at the moment, but for now, try to assume that any element that we haven’t made public yet will be implemented in a reasonable way, and you’ll have another opportunity to offer feedback on it at a later date.