What do you want out of features/events?

[Luned]

I've been here for a few features events now –– the Adventurer's Crown, the Lornius Corporate Challenge, and now the Cell –– and those are all pretty cool concepts. I'm curious, though, what else people have been hoping to see in events. I know there are quite a few still around who have seen many more tournaments than those, but as I'm one of the newer people who don't know what has been done in the past, I figured it might be good to open up some discussion. Some things to consider:

Do you prefer focus on battles or quest/adventure-based competitions, instead?

Do you like team events? What about team size and whether they're assigned or your choose your own?

Are there aspects of Althanas' canon you think would make for a cool event, such as settings that might be fun to use, or lore you'd like to see explored?

There's potential to attempt an event which would spread across forums, ours and one of our affiliate's. Would you actually be interested in participating in something like that? Would you be willing to make an account on another forum and RP there a bit to try to entice new people, as well as engage with their characters who come over here? (We'd figure out rewards for that sort of thing, too, to make it worth it for your character. No specifics have been decided yet, I'm just asking in a general sense if it'd be something people would actually do.)



This discussion is only to concern the concept of the features themselves. If you have complaints on how past features have been run, this is not the place to air them. If people start going off on that sort of tangent, I'll delete those posts.

And this all being said, I'm not features staff, so don't take anything I say as "official" in any capacity. I'm simply curious what people think would be fun, as well as what you think would engage new people better.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I think quest/adventure-based competitions would be a nice change of pace from the steady stream of battle competitions this site seems to hold.

[The Inventor]

How about a supernatural event, Ghosts invade all of Althanas and everyone who takes part in the event has to help figure out what's going on?

[Breaker]

I think quest/adventure-based competitions would be a nice change of pace from the steady stream of battle competitions this site seems to hold.

+1. What I'd really like to see is a quest-based competition that encourages the expansion and modification of canonical icons, and the addition of some new ones. If such an event encouraged all manner of questing (groups, partnerships, and solos) so much the better.

[Luned]

I'm glad to hear that, I prefer quest-based events as well (or at least am interested in more balance between that and the battle-oriented ones).

Any particular examples of expanding and modifying canonical icons? I only know what the wiki has to say and it doesn't cover everything, so I'm curious if there are bits and pieces of lore I've missed that are worth considering.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

Well, I know Cyd's just made a character native to Haidia, but I can find very little information on it in the wiki.

I want to expand on the region, either myself, or in collaboration with others, and think a quest-based event might be the ideal way to go about that. A realm of vampires, demons and pure, raw magic is much ideally suited to an event, I'd say.

Just an idea, but let me know what you all think.

[Luned]

Definitely possible, but I really would want to see more details on it. Hard to even start considering something with what little information we know. We really need an oldbie who's been around for Haidia stuff to do a writeup for the wiki on it. : (

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

Well, if that's not possible, why not take what we already know and do an overhaul of the Region?

Breathe some life into what is, as far as I can tell, a more or less dead region of Althanas.

[Breaker]

There's a lot of info missing from the wiki... I remember reading about locales in Radasanth and Akashima back when we just had stickies containing the forum info. And Radasanth and Concorida have been heavily featured in recent events.

But I don't think that I've read much about Gisela, Jadet, the baronies other than Radasanthia, or Lornius etc. There's a large part of Corone that rarely appears in the public eye. I imagine other regions are the same... for example, Knife's Edge and Sulgoran's Axe are the only two canonical places in Salvar I can name off the top of my head.

Whether the parameters of the quests are specific or open, I'd like to see a part of the "reward" for being a "winner" be that something you described or did gets added to canon. It'd also be neat if there were different ways to win, like by scoring highest in a specific area of the rubric, or writing with the most people, exploring the most different places, best individual effort etc... like, a version of the Althies specifically related to the event. Something that would encourage us all to read each others' work.

[Breaker]

Sorry for the double, but I got ninja'd by about five posts, haha.the

To the fullest of my recollection (meaning some of this may be my imagination), the true Haidian Underworld was only accessible by portal. It may be connected by tunnels to the surface, but those would be a three dimensional unmapped labyrinthine filled with all sorts of lesser demons (in my writing, it's mostly vampires, but I spell it vampyre to be cool). I remember around the time I joined there was a big clan event of some kind where a portal to Haida that had opened in Concordia got destroyed, but that might have been on the IW forum.

There was lore on Haidia, perhaps not a lot, but I agree with Aure in that we should just take whatever we have and run with it. The premise for the event could start with something like "A portal opens in the middle of Gisela and demons keep dropping by unannounced. Who can venture through, find the source of the portal in the Underworld, and shut it off?" That'd leave two clear options: rediscover a part of Corone amidst the demony havoc, or venture through the portal and discover a new area up to you to describe.

Obviously it wouldn't have to start in Corone, or be limited to any one region. Or be that idea. But I think that's the kind of thing I mean.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

Aye, that's more or less the sort of thing I had in mind too Numbers.

So, safe to say this is a relatively common idea. That means it should see some support if we can get a more solid idea put together.

I'll try and have something put together in the coming days, and keep everyone posted. I might start a new thread with the ideas, so everyone can chime in.

[Mordelain]

I envision it as Oblivion, or rather, the Daedra plane from the Elder Scrolls.

What I understand, a war long ago destroyed the continent, leaving it in a permanent state of planar fusion between Althanas and 'there', i.e - hell.

It's not a pretty place, to say the least.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

So, The Warp for the more 40k minded of us here?

[Luned]

Something I'd like to see is more mid-sized features –– things less intense than a full-on tournament, but more substantial/inclusive than guided quests. Having an event like a portal to Haidia opening could spur both opportunities for people to participate in guided threads (such as a party sent through the portal to investigate) but also act simply as a prompt for those who want to run with the idea on their own. The details determined through the course of something like that could lend to a new wiki page, too.

If this is something people really want to see done, I'd just like to politely request that you make a new thread for it if you want to discuss any nitty gritty. I'd prefer to keep the floor here open for more general discussion.

[Christoph]

I wonder if something like a questing "league" would work. Something not as demanding of constant player attention as the AC was, and more ongoing. Players could form their teams and complete a quest AC style every month or two, getting rankings based on score, with special rewards/perks for the top team(s).

[Roc]

For our current memberbase, I'd favor events that are either short and intense or long-term and relaxed.

I like your choice of the Cell as an example of the former. It works as an intense event that wraps up in less than a month. The Vignette tournament early last year got a solid turnout, though I think I'd condense each of the rounds down into a few days rather than an entire week - it's a good, quick event.

For the latter, an FQ makes sense and would be my favorite option - just don't overdo it and ditch it like To Rule All Flesh. Christoph's adventure league might be worth looking into. The Theater of War might be possible as a battle-oriented option, assuming I have the gist of the rules (they were a bit before my time).

In general, I'd stay away from the more traditional tournaments for a bit. They're too time-intensive for too long, both for the writers and the judges. Been a while since I've seen one run smoothly. There's a reason for that.

[Zook Murnig]

For the reintroduction of Haidia, we could hold another FQ. I know that the last one left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths, but you can't deny that it was effective in bringing out focused activity.

[Rayse Valentino]

I like my interpretation of 'Haidia' as a planar multiverse akin to the dungeons and dragons planescape realms. Planes are really cool and provide physical access from virtually any point on Althanas. The few 'ground rules' for how they work are pretty reasonable. We don't need to use the alignment and elemental stuff that DnD uses, just keep it open with custom planes.

There are plenty of ways to justify the previous incarnation of Haidia under these terms. People used 'portals' to get there, matches up with planes, apparently it was a dangerous place with its own rules and laws, again seems to work with planes.

If people want to use the name for something else that's fine, I'll still have the planes and just call them something else. If you want realms of vampires and demons here you go, if you want different laws of physics, or laws of reality that apply to a particular setting, and create and destroy entire civilizations without it significantly affecting the rest of Althanas, there you go.

A couple threads I'm already using planes is The Bitter King (it takes place entirely within a plane)

and Shards of Suravani, where (spoilers)Rayse is trying to prevent a spell from going off that opens up Althanas to a plane filled with creatures/people that are extremely powerful and seek to conquer Althanas for themselves.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

Well, as someone heavily influenced by Planescape, I use planes in my stories anyway.

I have Aur follow the general rules for using portals (physical location, keys, etc), and have plans to use them more later. Which is why I'd prefer the Nexus to have normal EXP rewards, as opposed to Nexus Points.

But, having Haidia tucked away behind portals does enforce the whole "vision of Hell" theme, so I approve.

This is actually something I want out of features though; more activity, and better rewards, in the Nexus. I know Dirks already brought this discussion up in the mod forums (or Core Member forum, can't remember which), but it;s something that seems to be a fairly popular idea.

It gives people the chance to explore any kind of environment, with only their imagination as the limit. And it doesn;t have to be a one-way thing. Don't want to go into the Nexus? Fine, why not have a story where you and a party of fellow adventurers have to combat something that came out of the Nexus to terrorise Althanas?