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It's that time (beginning of Quarter 2), which means it is appropriate to write another state of events. These are quarterly statements meant to add transparency to what's happening behind the scenes.
Campaign
The campaign is in full swing. We had two main events in February, followed by a dozen or so mini-events. One of the most relevant criticisms from the first Bastion was that it was not inclusive enough. We designed the next phase of the campaign, "Altera Alive", to try to tailor to individual RP needs. In essence, it is an attempt to DM the entire map. It's met with reasonable success; we've heard positive reviews from the mini-events.
The goal of Altera Alive is to find the other Bastions. We wanted to remove the "Mary Sue" aspect of the campaign by letting the players control the speed of the campagn. Our only restriction is that the Bastions must be completed in the proper order. This has both IC and OOC reasons, the OOC being that staff need to have time to prepare the dungeons. The IC reasons are part of the story line, which will be revealed in due course.
Staff involvement in the campaign is high. Staff members involved are assigned to specific teams and then asked to do jobs. They range from DMing to acting to building. For example, while most of the community assumes that I alone play Clain, the reality is that several staff members are trained to do so and a lot of work goes into making sure we're all on the same page. Playing Clain is harder than it looks; he's not invincible like most events characters have been in the past. Our actors thus try to be cautious with him. It certainly adds another level of how our playerbase can interact with the plotline.
Moving forward with the campaign, we expect the correct Bastion to be found within the next two weeks. Yes, it puts us a couple weeks off our original goal of one Bastion per month, but we thought it would be appropriate to let the players decide the pace of the campaign, including when and whether the Bastions are completed at all.
A campaign is not exclusively about big, flashy, high attendance events. It's more an understanding that there is a story line, a progression, and that players have the opportunity to determine the outcome via participation. To say that it's been "X" number of days since the last Bastion is thus not really relevant. Even then, Altera Alive is part of the campaign, and those occur frequently.
Some of you know that my activity has been declining thanks to IRL responsibilities. It will continue to be low for quite some time. I've organized staff roles and we're moving along such that I don't believe my relative inactivity will be an issue. That being said, if it /does/ become an issue, I am willing and prepared to have someone else finish the campaign. There's quite a lot of documentation about this campaign, including bits about each of the Bastions, a rough timeline, the plot (including the ending), instructions on playing certain things you folks might find, character sheets, and quite a bit more. Needless to say, I'm confident that another staff member could read these documents and be fully prepared to finish the campaign. What this means is that it is NOT in any danger of folding or collapsing.
As for the story itself, I won't give away spoilers. You'll just have to wait and see...
Player Events
Player events have taken a slight downturn by my observation, though I don't think it's necessarily because of the campaign. I've seen a fair few postponed or canceled, and one of our more reliable hosts had computer problems.
The event ideas thread was posted and never took off, but at least we tried.
We still want to provide as many resources as we can to help player events, and that includes providing DMs and actors. As such, we are indeed planning acting tryouts and exploring other options to make player events easier to hold.
We haven't started on loot tracking yet, but that's also still on the radar.
One thing that's heating up is IC conflict. This has also, I think, caused some other player events to take a back seat. I look forward to seeing how the conflict evolves going forward.
Events Calendar
In its current form, the Events Calendar is a lot of maintenance. I've been away and so I haven't gotten to April yet. I'm planning on asking around to see if somebody can aid or help cover this task in the future, at least until we can get a proper events calendar.
Goals for Quarter 2
I'm hoping to see the campaign progress, maybe even to its completion (though I expect it to conclude in July). As Altera Alive fades, I think we'll see another uptick in player events, and I fully expect to see war rules out in this quarter.
I hope to see some acting tryouts and maybe even some council DM training. The loot repository would be nice, too.
Ultimately, my goal is for the player base to be happy with our hard work. Most have no idea how much effort is being put into this, nor the cooperation going on behind the scenes, and it's easy to offer less than constructive criticism when one is uninformed. I hope this document helps inform people, and I hope that the direction events is taking is a reason for rejoice.
Campaign
The campaign is in full swing. We had two main events in February, followed by a dozen or so mini-events. One of the most relevant criticisms from the first Bastion was that it was not inclusive enough. We designed the next phase of the campaign, "Altera Alive", to try to tailor to individual RP needs. In essence, it is an attempt to DM the entire map. It's met with reasonable success; we've heard positive reviews from the mini-events.
The goal of Altera Alive is to find the other Bastions. We wanted to remove the "Mary Sue" aspect of the campaign by letting the players control the speed of the campagn. Our only restriction is that the Bastions must be completed in the proper order. This has both IC and OOC reasons, the OOC being that staff need to have time to prepare the dungeons. The IC reasons are part of the story line, which will be revealed in due course.
Staff involvement in the campaign is high. Staff members involved are assigned to specific teams and then asked to do jobs. They range from DMing to acting to building. For example, while most of the community assumes that I alone play Clain, the reality is that several staff members are trained to do so and a lot of work goes into making sure we're all on the same page. Playing Clain is harder than it looks; he's not invincible like most events characters have been in the past. Our actors thus try to be cautious with him. It certainly adds another level of how our playerbase can interact with the plotline.
Moving forward with the campaign, we expect the correct Bastion to be found within the next two weeks. Yes, it puts us a couple weeks off our original goal of one Bastion per month, but we thought it would be appropriate to let the players decide the pace of the campaign, including when and whether the Bastions are completed at all.
A campaign is not exclusively about big, flashy, high attendance events. It's more an understanding that there is a story line, a progression, and that players have the opportunity to determine the outcome via participation. To say that it's been "X" number of days since the last Bastion is thus not really relevant. Even then, Altera Alive is part of the campaign, and those occur frequently.
Some of you know that my activity has been declining thanks to IRL responsibilities. It will continue to be low for quite some time. I've organized staff roles and we're moving along such that I don't believe my relative inactivity will be an issue. That being said, if it /does/ become an issue, I am willing and prepared to have someone else finish the campaign. There's quite a lot of documentation about this campaign, including bits about each of the Bastions, a rough timeline, the plot (including the ending), instructions on playing certain things you folks might find, character sheets, and quite a bit more. Needless to say, I'm confident that another staff member could read these documents and be fully prepared to finish the campaign. What this means is that it is NOT in any danger of folding or collapsing.
As for the story itself, I won't give away spoilers. You'll just have to wait and see...
Player Events
Player events have taken a slight downturn by my observation, though I don't think it's necessarily because of the campaign. I've seen a fair few postponed or canceled, and one of our more reliable hosts had computer problems.
The event ideas thread was posted and never took off, but at least we tried.
We still want to provide as many resources as we can to help player events, and that includes providing DMs and actors. As such, we are indeed planning acting tryouts and exploring other options to make player events easier to hold.
We haven't started on loot tracking yet, but that's also still on the radar.
One thing that's heating up is IC conflict. This has also, I think, caused some other player events to take a back seat. I look forward to seeing how the conflict evolves going forward.
Events Calendar
In its current form, the Events Calendar is a lot of maintenance. I've been away and so I haven't gotten to April yet. I'm planning on asking around to see if somebody can aid or help cover this task in the future, at least until we can get a proper events calendar.
Goals for Quarter 2
I'm hoping to see the campaign progress, maybe even to its completion (though I expect it to conclude in July). As Altera Alive fades, I think we'll see another uptick in player events, and I fully expect to see war rules out in this quarter.
I hope to see some acting tryouts and maybe even some council DM training. The loot repository would be nice, too.
Ultimately, my goal is for the player base to be happy with our hard work. Most have no idea how much effort is being put into this, nor the cooperation going on behind the scenes, and it's easy to offer less than constructive criticism when one is uninformed. I hope this document helps inform people, and I hope that the direction events is taking is a reason for rejoice.