Putting out an open challenge

[Letho]

Does anybody remember that one tournament we held where people wrote quests instead of battles? What was it called? Advernturers...Shit? Or something, I can't recall. But I think I remember it being rather cool because people actually did quests as a group, their quest was judged as quests usually are on Althanas and then the top scorers progressed. At least I think that's how it went.

[Visla Eraclaire]

The only problem I see with an "actual storyline" is that unless its excessively generic, while it does add an extra hook for people who want to be in the tournament, it might push some people away who were on the fence.

Essentially, those who want a tournament are going to make it fit in their story, but those who might be willing but not fully enthusiastic about a tournament are going to question whether their character fits.

You've got a balancing act. The more detailed the story, the more powerful the hook is for FEWER people. The more generic it is, the less reason there is to even have it.

I think, in the end, it's probably best to have some story because the people you drive off by having one are the sorts that are likely to drop out anyway. The problem is in crafting one that appeals to the most people and allows the greatest variety of competitors. It needs to be something more interesting than "Great Power X has Item Y and offers it to the winner of Tournament Z."

I think a tournament that at least offers something other than direct combat has been a long time coming. Competing to accomplish a mission would be one good option, already mentioned. The participants could choose whether to simply tell two different stories of how their characters attempted to accomplish the task or have their characters run into eachother some during the event, or have a direct confrontation.

The more freedom you give people the more people are going to participate and the more people are going to stay, because they're doing something they'd want to do anyway.

[Aiko]

What about, as one of my standard off the wall ideas, a dungeon crawl. Not a simple go to room A to find a way to room b and win the prize, maybe fight monster C along the way. No no no.

This would be a dungeon unique in that it would be one derived from the characters own minds. Yes we write the characters, but are we our characters? I mean, how well do our characters really know each other?

Letho is famous ICly. Probably has a few close friends that know the real Letho. But how well does even the closest of his IC friends really know the hero of Corone? Could they find their way through a dungeon derived from the man's own thoughts? Not a dungeon he'd ideally build, but one created from his every thought and emotion, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

For a tournament, one with a storyline, it'd be a mix of everything. Continuing on with my Letho example. Someone else, like, say Visla, just cause Visla posted last, finds herself in this dungeon, and has to escape before losing her own mind permanently, and becoming little more than a drooling vegetable. In this, its a quest. Yet Letho also has to write against Visla, because its his character's mind. In this, its a battle.

IF you escape, you get a bonus, and aren't a temporary vegetable, so there's a mini-reward along the way. The thread is judged and whomever scores higher, continues to the next round, either as the dungeon writer, or the dungeon crawler.

For this to be a storyline, we'd need an NPC capable of causing all this, and though I haven't used him often, I have used him before. Destrudo's father, the lord of Shadows. His tagline has always been "He knows your own mind better than you do, and won't hesitate to use it against you as a weapon."

This brings me to how to end this tournament. Play progresses until only one strong minded individual remains. At this, they've already won the tourny from one standpoint, and deserve a significant IC bonus. But what about the storyline? Well, by this point, they've broken free of Shadowlord's power, and face him. If they can beat him, they get an even bigger bonus, something that could attract just about anyone. Something, Adamantine...

As for why Shadowlord's doing this in the first place, well, I've always planned on bringing him over to the primary regions looking for his son. That's why he'd be here, as for why he'd put everyone under his power like this, he'd do so to ferret his son out from wherever he's hiding, to kill him and prevent his son from taking his rightful place as Emperor of Chronus.

Well, that's my idea.

[Slavegirl]

What would you think of a Scavenger Hunt? I haven't worked out the details but it is something I've played with and discussed. (Don't yell at me Task or Max for not bringing it up in the mod forums first please!!)

Basically at first it would be a rare but not unique item that the teams are looking for (a special type of crystal from Dheathain or something like that), these items would be in different regions for each leg of the hunt. When you finish that thread, the judges decide if you actually got the item or not by how well you scored (maybe you lost it, it was stolen by bandits, it broke, it was a fake!) - that's not set in stone. Thing is, time is of the essence, but so is quality if you do it that way. Here's why - you have to finish that leg of the hunt before you find out the next item to be found, and that is pm'ed to you so others don't find out. In the end, the top three (or some arbitrary number) teams get to compete for the grand prize of the scavenger hunt. Perhaps the runners up get prizes as well.

Like I said there are details to be worked out, and it may not happen at all. If it does it won't be till this summer either way, because I want the staff to have plenty of time to work out the kinks so it runs smoothly and has the most benefits for the players involved. I just think the fact that it will have a storyline that is driven by the players, time will be more important than usual, and quality will hopefully be as well, should generate more interest. Especially if there are really nifty prizes in the end.

So, any interest?

[Thoracis]

For a short time Dirks and I were running a different RP board where we attempted a tournament somewhat like what's being mentioned here. It was years and years ago now, so I don't remember all the details all exact-like, but there was an overall storyline which was essentially broken down in to different missions. Each thread in each round was broken down to a small chunk of the overall storyline and had some sort of mission or goal assigned to it. 4-5 people were in each thread, the setting was provided for them, and off they went.

There was certainly interest in it, but it never really got past the first round because I moved, as I was so prone to doing at the time, and lost internet for like two months.

As far as "vanilla" battles go, I think what separates most tournament winners is the ability to incorporate a story. Over the course of the various tournaments here I think one thing that was clearly established was that developing a story in a tournament was a sure way to go far, simply because there was some continuity and it wasn't just one pointless battle after another.

[Ataraxis]

Incorporating a story is a good way to win a battle tournament, but just looking at the last tournament, only a portion of the participants managed to do it (the rest having either gone AWOL or simply dropping out halfway through out of disinterest). Those stories are rarely a joint effort, and usually ideas one of the participants comes up with while the other forcefully fits into it. Sometimes they find a good way to do it, but that's rarely the case, and one side eventually stops writing, or at least stops writing seriously.

Another problem with battle tournaments is that once you're pitted against someone you know is clearly the better writer, you're more likely not to even try - why waste hours writing in a battle you know you will lose and for which you will only get one fifth of the winner's rewards when you're probably already trying to make time in a busy schedule for the tournament? If Battle Tourney loser XP was boosted to something actually worth their while, that would be ONE better incentive to stop people from dropping out.

That was my two cents on battle tournies, but as I said before, a Mission Board Tournament has the potential to solve most of the problems we have with battle tournaments.

To solve Visla's problem of a detailed storyline making the tournament more desirable but for fewer participants, a Mission Board Tournament would provide a large set of different storylines, and whether or not they'd be related to one another in the grand scheme of things is something that can be discussed later. Just looking at Althanas, the number of quests clearly trumps the number of battles, meaning that a variety of factors such as general interest, ease of inserting a character into a storyline not necessarily your own and writing preferences for the former make it more likely for a quest to completed. If anything, we'd naturally get a better turnout for this type of tournament, and a lower drop rate.

Having a choice of missions once the the pair-ups are done allows for them to actually choose a story together, and ahead of time. They'll be able to actually discuss it and make it work for both of them, increasing the average quality of these quests in comparison to past events which were rather 'lather-rinse-repeat'. Surprising people with settings that they have 50% chances of hating the very day their round starts is NOT a good way of keeping interest, even if it fits the habitual definition of tournament better. But since this is a writing tournament, and good planning plays such a huge part in our process, I think that evaluating one's ability to plan in advance is preferable than one's ability to adapt on the spot.

Coming up with the Missions doesn't necessarily have to be extra work, either: take actual, existing regional mission boards. Continent Writers could even come up with mini-FQ plotlines and let the participants plan a free-form quest depending on it. Whatever you choose to do, you'll breathe in life to mission boards that have been sitting around, you're giving people extra incentive to complete them by making it a tournament, AND participants will directly affect the regions ICly and leave their mark (I'm aware that people can already do that, but either the story is rejected from canon or has so few viewers it might as well have been retconned two weeks later). Things are likelier to stick ICly in something this huge, mostly because the extra readers you probably wouldn't get outside the tournament will remember what happened in your quest. The high-profile event itself makes stories more likely to be made into canon material (if it isn't done so automatically).

tl;dr:

Battle Tournaments

• Depending on good, player-made storylines for a battle to buffet activity here is like putting your money on a statistical aberration. Those who are good at it will go to the finals, 75% of the others will lose out or drop out. Any question where the interest went?
• In a battle, once Roger McNealy is pitted against Gordon Freeman, McNealy is less likely to use his little free time to write a losing battle that will give him the low rewards that losers get in a battle. If you want a battle tournament, normalizing loser rewards into something actually worthwhile would be a good place to start.

Mission Board Tournaments

• Rather than a single over-arching storyline (which can REALLY interest a select few, but drive out another portion of the player-base that just can't get into it ICly), use a variety of quest prompts or actual mission board missions that may or may not be related to one another. It's basically 'do what everyone here is already doing everyday, but with more interest and more reasons to go the whole nine yards'.
• Instead of assigning a quest to a pair-up the very day the round starts, reveal the pair-ups in advance and let them choose what type of quest they want to do: specific mission board quests, mission board free-form, Mini-FQ free-form, etc. Value their ability to plan something they both like rather than adapt to something one or both might hate (Which the Magus Cup partly did, but instead of being assigned a plot by those in charge of the tournament, one participant comes up with it and the opponent begrudgingly goes along with it).
• Increase regional involvement and the impact that threads have on the regions. Basically, improved influence of the world by the character base, and improved knowledge of these events from players who did not participate in them specifically.

[Visla Eraclaire]

I have no complaints or corrections about the bullet points presented by Ataraxis (shocking). If something like what he suggests for a mission-based tournament actually happened, you stand a decent chance of breaking the failure streak of tournaments.

The key is just adding a structure and added incentives to what people do anyway. People like writing and I think they're happy to take a few suggestions and adventure hooks and run with them. Just give them enough freedom to make it fit with their story. Don't name everyone or give them locked down characters and locations. Don't over-detail things like the FQ occasionally did. Give characters a trope or a theme to work with, perhaps somewhere more specific than the Vignette contests but less constrained than an FQ mission.

The only problem I foresee is in match-ups and choice. If you just let everyone choose their mission, it loses the kind of constrained nature that is an element of a tournament. Seeing how someone functions within some time and theme constraints is, I think, somewhat essential to the competition. Balancing that concern with the desire to let writers do things that suit their characters is going to be a big issue. Perhaps let people choose more in early rounds and constrain later... or fit subsequent rounds to the prior choices made by those who advanced. The latter opens up a lot of room for judge manipulation and extra work though.

Other thoughts on this issue?

[Ataraxis]

That was one of my concerns, yeah. I wanted to see if I wasn't the only one first, but basically, this was my idea: more freedom at the beginning, since there would hopefully be about 16-32 players. Anything specific would be too hard to manage either way, so start off the tournament like 'Everyday on Althanas, but better'. As the rounds advance, though, there are fewer players to manage and you can increase the 'competitive constraints' gradually, just enough to increase challenge without people dropping out (streamlining the mission board, adapting to threads that happened in the previous round, increasing the general canonical importance of these quests, etc). Higher-profile quest prompts near the finals would be an incentive in and of itself while matching the higher constraints without losing much of the flexibility that got these players there in the first place.

It's a concept that interests me, but I'm aware it has a lot of kinks to work out, most of which I hope will eventually be worked out here.

[Visla Eraclaire]

I think it's a fantastic plan and the only real problem is staff involvement. There's going to be a significant lag between rounds judging the threads and making the next round's prompts.

I think the best thing to do is come up with Round 1 and Round 2 prompts at the same time. The round 2 prompts are essentially a sequel to the round 1 ones which is general enough to incorporate most solutions to the first prompt. Some changes might be needed but they should be minor. Have judges assigned to and aware of the prompts and the people they will be judging from the word go. Try to have them read as the round progresses so that they can get out judgments quickly.

After Round 2, the numbers should be manageable enough that tailored prompts for the 3rd and subsequent rounds are feasible. Depending on the numbers you're looking at, you may want to limit entries at the beginning to one character per player, and then if you're lacking, fill in with alts on a first-come-first-served basis. I think 16 people would be pretty reasonable to get, but you might be a few short. Whereas if you allowed alts, I think you'd end up with 32 pretty easily, but... then one person drops and you easily have 5 different competitions ruined.

[Saxon]

And what do you think would be a stronger incentive for participation from start to finish? EXP and GP benefits have, for the most part, proven insufficient. IC benefits maybe? The last Gisela - I think it was the last one, anyway, I've been away for awhile - offered a Powergroup HQ as the grand prize if I recall correctly, and it was also a success.

How about money? I know I'd have kept myself as a region writer if I was being paid to do it (That and a contract with rights of ownership. =P). That's about as 'incentive' as you can get. Actually, in reality, I'm not sure there's an IC incentive big enough to cover complete participation within the tournament, which is the problem. People won't write novella length work repeatedly without some sort of sizeable gain from it.. unless you're from the minor percentage on the site here who can write novels of threads for fun.

I agree with you, though, that a tournament needs to be administered properly from start to finish in order for it to work. We've seen at least two or three examples in the last couple years of what happens when the person running the show just steps off the plate mid-swing.

As for the Gisela, at least from my participation of it, it has never worked out well. It runs on the same model all tournaments seem to. Long, round-based challenges with two people facing off on the top. It takes months or perhaps even a year for the tournament to reach full cycle and I don't know of anyone here who has the attention span to make that death march. A better idea for more popularity around tournaments is to run it off a simple idea, keep it running and make sure it reaches its cycle in perhaps a third of the time it takes regular tournaments to complete. It could contain the interest people desire with IC incentives and allow for the site to generate more than one tournament within the busy season without stepping on everyone's toes.

Does anybody remember that one tournament we held where people wrote quests instead of battles? What was it called? Advernturers...Shit? Or something, I can't recall. But I think I remember it being rather cool because people actually did quests as a group, their quest was judged as quests usually are on Althanas and then the top scorers progressed. At least I think that's how it went.

Adventurer's Crown. It was a disaster. Unique idea, but from what I remember there really wasn't enough manpower to keep the thing running long enough for people who were interested in it to finish. My opinion of it aside, it really boiled down to a very, very complex idea being carried out in tournament form. I'm a big supporter of K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid.), and I think instead of trying to go for grandeur here, the tournaments should focus on minor events or concepts that everybody can get their head around. We all like the idea of over arching plots, but from what something like the FQ has shown us, it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to tailor that together and I don't even think in our busy season that the site has the member base to endorse it.

To the globe-trotters out there;

After running the last chapter for the FQ, especially how hard it was to even get the fucking thing started again, I am completely anti-global event anything. The last thing this site needs is another event that'll sit on the board rotting for years until its periodically revived only to fall into hibernation again. If you want success, I suggest moving expectations down a couple notches to more manageable levels.

Mission Board Tournaments

• Rather than a single over-arching storyline (which can REALLY interest a select few, but drive out another portion of the player-base that just can't get into it ICly), use a variety of quest prompts or actual mission board missions that may or may not be related to one another. It's basically 'do what everyone here is already doing everyday, but with more interest and more reasons to go the whole nine yards'.
• Instead of assigning a quest to a pair-up the very day the round starts, reveal the pair-ups in advance and let them choose what type of quest they want to do: specific mission board quests, mission board free-form, Mini-FQ free-form, etc. Value their ability to plan something they both like rather than adapt to something one or both might hate (Which the Magus Cup partly did, but instead of being assigned a plot by those in charge of the tournament, one participant comes up with it and the opponent begrudgingly goes along with it).
• Increase regional involvement and the impact that threads have on the regions. Basically, improved influence of the world by the character base, and improved knowledge of these events from players who did not participate in them specifically.

This could be done with regions and their writers specifically, no features or tournaments involved. I'm not kidding. If this were micro-managed properly, mission board.. uhhh.. 'micro-events' could be a good measure of keeping activity up while also progressively working with the regions in their own storylines. Just a thought.