Looking back at the past month and a July papacy

And with this, June is over.

Looking at the map as it is now, I should feel proud of everything that I, the vatican citizens and our allies, have accomplished.

The Vatican this month not only was able to join a major alliance and getting the Vatican City back, but it also managed to host quite a big successful battle on Italy's capital, and we all earned some nice vacation days to spend in Sardinia!

But all of that did not happen without some sacrifices.
I do have some regrets, a lot of unexpected situations didn't help with it either, a lot of ideas, plans and projects were thrown out of the window or postponed with no date in mind to avoid going in burnout, and priority was given to more urgent situations and to other plans (which was a hard decision, but we are where we are because of it!). And unfortunately a lot of those leftover plans were community related.

And that's what I want to focus on if I'll be elected to have a second term in the papacy.

June was the first month where not only I was for the first time in a government position, but I was even at the lead of it. That's why I went with the recommended route of having already experienced veteran players at my side in the government... which unfortunately backfired soon after. Not for maliciousness, Kingerlay was amazing and very helpful, but at one point he found himself too busy with irl stuff to engage with the game, and for a while I was without a VP and taking almost everything on my shoulders.

And that made me quickly realise that even with pouring hours and hours in this game (shoutout to those 4 sleepless nights people watched me go crazy with lol), you cannot fulfill every aspect of the country and bring every idea to reality on your own.

Ultimately, some areas will be left behind to favour other ones, and if you try to avoid that you end up in burnt out and too stressed to properly address emergency requests and unforeseeable events.

(fun times)

But things were still achieved! Even though the roleplay aspect of the Vatican overall decreased, especially internally and in large scopes with articles, I still tried to address every DM, personal request, roleplay within external groups and interviews!

Big shoutout here to https://app.warera.io/user/68e538c09c4aafa6f1a0bd5c for this article https://app.warera.io/article/6a390d1f433fefc505934dc7

And big shoutout to https://app.warera.io/user/698b7709852386695bda068a and the https://app.warera.io/party/698e55c4b8e3d16e70acc270 !

As I mentioned before, a lot of plans that didn't happen this month were community related, especially in regards with articles and with our Discord (and oh boy if I had dozens of articles ideas, some of which I even started writing a month and half ago but still haven't published).

But, as with roleplay, some things were achieved here too. I fixed a lot of the Discord issues with mismanaged perms, improved some channels, organised some categories in a better way (and if you're wondering why that is a big deal, it is a long story, starting with a player that's not in the game anymore, who set up a ton of our server, but left everything in the middle of it before I even joined the Vatican, and things were never finished and optimised). I planned community events with other countries, which hopefully will start taking place in July, and I'm still working in setting up possible movie nights, writing an archive with all the Vatican's history (From its creation, the Inquisition and the merc country, Crowley facing off the Inquisition and winning, etc.), possibly hosting game nights as well.

Talking about games, we have a small game section in our server now! It's open to everyone, citizens and foreigners as well, so come check it out!

Other important community plans I've started working on are related to improving the game experience for our citizens. To offer options to all sort of players, to those who want more roleplay, those who want more coordinated serious war events, to young citizens so they don't feel completely bored with the "stuck in eco" feeling.
Luckily we have some cards on the table on how to approach this without leaving players behind. But more info about this as things take place!

I started June with working on the Vatican's presence on external grounds, joining BEER, creating embassies in other servers, setting up solid defences so we can protect our core region, meeting new people and discovering new communities. And so far that was a major success!

But this time, I'd like to start July focusing on the internal presence instead. Work on what we already have, without leaving new possibilities behind, but giving priority to strengthening our own communities.

I'll start by creating a "to-do" board together with other members of the Vatican, to gauge issues we have (like our poor coordination, lack of new players and difficulty with player retention). To collect citizens suggestions and concerns, and to provide ideas on how to tackle these issues, and distributing the workload to multiple people so no one is overwhelmed.

I believe we can do great things this month, that we can set up the Vatican to be able to break the limits that the game mechanics pressure us with, and that we can have a flourishing and active community with time and efforts!