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abraxasooc2021-06-20 04:08 pm
abraxasmods) wrote in abraxasooc2021-06-20 04:08 pm
Entry tags:
EVENT WRAP-UP AND DISCUSSION
A NOTE OF CLARIFICATION: This "wrap-up" post went up today because the event ICly ended yesterday and we're interested in feedback to we can start writing July's event in more detail. This does not mean that you have to stop playing in the event, or that we will stop responding to questions or replies to the various plot headers! Those are still open, and we've pushed the July event to the 8th to give everyone more time with this one!
This post contains some important details about the game going forward, so please read!
1. The Taken List has been updated! If you see any errors please let us know in a comment to the Taken post.
2. The Visit with the Representative vote is closed, but did not get as much engagement as we'd hoped. While the intention for this part of the event was to get some politically-minded characters out there and we thought it could be fun to have voting done based on (potentially mistaken) first impressions, in hindsight we understand that it was too early in the game's life cycle for an IC vote that does not otherwise have incentives to participate. We will consider this in the future when designing events.
We are interested in hearing from the five players affected about how we should resolve this part of the event. The options will be detailed below.
3. The event in general had some aspects that players engaged with very well but overall we got the impression that it was a bit of a struggle. Along with the representative vote, we especially heard some concerns about the group system, and agree that making players self-sort into groups was not really necessary and over-complicated this part of the event in a way that we did not intend. We'll be re-thinking group mechanics in future events (unless characters are going to different locations) and will be taking general event desires and feedback below.
On a more positive note, the honored guest/prisoner split is almost exactly 50/50, as was the split of people attending the festival vs. going on the crystal hunt. We're happy to see this as we really wanted to provide two different paths that would both get a decent amount of interest. We've seen that our players are also actively engaging with the regular setting outside of the event even though there hasn't been much more to do yet than what was on the TDM. We're glad that this setting continues to be exciting for you all. On that note, we've pushed back July's event a little so everyone can have time to play in the castle and the dungeons in between.
4. Regarding the state of the prisoners: There will be opportunities between now and the August event to have your prisoner character legally freed in order to join Thorne. However, characters that stay imprisoned until the August 13th event (which will start the shift towards more individual plot focus instead of game-wide events and also introduce the network) will get to be part of the prison break plot which can lead towards joining the other factions. If your welcomed character is feeling disillusioned with Thorne and/or has befriended a prisoner they wish to flee with, they can do that as well.
On that note, we have put up a header below for players of imprisoned characters to declare whether they are interested in having their character freed (by a welcomed character advocating for them or by good behavior in the last event or the July event) or whether they'd rather stay imprisoned until the August event. If you're undecided you don't need to post, we just have a few players interested in prisoner advocacy that would be interested in touching base with players who want their characters freed (and it gives us mods a good idea of approximately how many characters we can expect to stay in jail).
Edited to add: Whether your character remains imprisoned or is released is entirely up to each player. If you want your character to remain in prison even though they have people willing to advocate for them, we do have IC reasons ready to go to explain why Ambrose would still refuse their release! The best behaved prisoner withe all the friends in the world can still remain in prison.
Finally, we are still monitoring the event post for questions and plot updates, so this post doesn't mean that any of those venues are closed!
This post contains some important details about the game going forward, so please read!
1. The Taken List has been updated! If you see any errors please let us know in a comment to the Taken post.
2. The Visit with the Representative vote is closed, but did not get as much engagement as we'd hoped. While the intention for this part of the event was to get some politically-minded characters out there and we thought it could be fun to have voting done based on (potentially mistaken) first impressions, in hindsight we understand that it was too early in the game's life cycle for an IC vote that does not otherwise have incentives to participate. We will consider this in the future when designing events.
We are interested in hearing from the five players affected about how we should resolve this part of the event. The options will be detailed below.
3. The event in general had some aspects that players engaged with very well but overall we got the impression that it was a bit of a struggle. Along with the representative vote, we especially heard some concerns about the group system, and agree that making players self-sort into groups was not really necessary and over-complicated this part of the event in a way that we did not intend. We'll be re-thinking group mechanics in future events (unless characters are going to different locations) and will be taking general event desires and feedback below.
On a more positive note, the honored guest/prisoner split is almost exactly 50/50, as was the split of people attending the festival vs. going on the crystal hunt. We're happy to see this as we really wanted to provide two different paths that would both get a decent amount of interest. We've seen that our players are also actively engaging with the regular setting outside of the event even though there hasn't been much more to do yet than what was on the TDM. We're glad that this setting continues to be exciting for you all. On that note, we've pushed back July's event a little so everyone can have time to play in the castle and the dungeons in between.
4. Regarding the state of the prisoners: There will be opportunities between now and the August event to have your prisoner character legally freed in order to join Thorne. However, characters that stay imprisoned until the August 13th event (which will start the shift towards more individual plot focus instead of game-wide events and also introduce the network) will get to be part of the prison break plot which can lead towards joining the other factions. If your welcomed character is feeling disillusioned with Thorne and/or has befriended a prisoner they wish to flee with, they can do that as well.
On that note, we have put up a header below for players of imprisoned characters to declare whether they are interested in having their character freed (by a welcomed character advocating for them or by good behavior in the last event or the July event) or whether they'd rather stay imprisoned until the August event. If you're undecided you don't need to post, we just have a few players interested in prisoner advocacy that would be interested in touching base with players who want their characters freed (and it gives us mods a good idea of approximately how many characters we can expect to stay in jail).
Edited to add: Whether your character remains imprisoned or is released is entirely up to each player. If you want your character to remain in prison even though they have people willing to advocate for them, we do have IC reasons ready to go to explain why Ambrose would still refuse their release! The best behaved prisoner withe all the friends in the world can still remain in prison.
Finally, we are still monitoring the event post for questions and plot updates, so this post doesn't mean that any of those venues are closed!
no subject
Agreeing with the sentiment that a lot of the mechanical options you had available—the black market, the consequences in the caverns, the magic demonstration, etc—are VERY cool options and I'm glad that they exist, but that the implementation of them in a fairly short event makes it hard to implement those features as a player (and I imagine it was difficult to sort through as mods, what with having a bunch of other game setup stuff to wrangle behind the scenes). I'm +1ing the suggestion to have some time between the ooc announcement and the IC log so folks have time to gets their ducks in a row before the IC logs go up.
I also think having clearly marked deadlines for things (such as when the voting for representatives closed) established from the get-go would be nice, but I appreciate that this is the first outing in a brand new game and that there are bound to be things that fall through the cracks. Particularly when the event has as many moving parts as this one did.
In general, I know I took a little longer to get my feet under me than usual because the setting is so new/I kind of wanted to see what other people would do and having interest in before I started over committing myself anywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if others felt the same, but I suspect that will be less of a factor in play going forward as we all get our bearings.
But really: Fun first event! Thank you so much for organizing everything.
no subject
Having the OOC post go up in advance is something we are definitely planning on doing in the future. Deadlines for sign-ups in the top-level comments was something we realized we overlooked a few days in and will also do in the future.
The festival event especially did end up overloaded with moving parts (from a mod perspective) because we were trying to make it just as eventful as the Frostwurm business and not just another DWRP festival event, but looking back there were a few different ways we could have gone about that that probably would have worked better, for players and mods.
We are very glad that you enjoyed it, though, and thank you to all our players for helping us get our footing.