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Second Anniversary Event Planning

What kind of writing/drawing event would you be interested in?

  • Lightning-round exquisite corpse

    Votes: 8 50.0%
  • Mini prompt challenge

    Votes: 12 75.0%
  • Collaborative crossover

    Votes: 5 31.3%

  • Total voters
    16
  • Poll closed .

Negrek

Abscission Ascendant
Staff
potentially a movie night*? I was thinking the Giratina/Shaymin movie for the brand, but we could also do something less memetic

*potentially multiple nights/not at night given that timezones exist
Sounds like a fun idea to me! I'll also be trying to get an idea of what sort of Discord-based events we'll be able to run this weekend, so expect to hear from me about this soon!

Hmm, how about a once-a-month thing, over 12 months, to spread it out a bit? Where everyone who wants their characters to participate tosses their suggestion down, volunteer authors get together, hammer out a rough outline and a do and don'ts list, then the participating writers get paired and each author team takes a month to hammer out a section of the mother of all cross overs and it gets stitched together pre-new years or next anniversary as an overall tribute to the writing slant on the site?
I'm a little wary of once-a-month events because I think people can get tired of them pretty quickly, but if this sounds like a fun idea that people would like to try outside the context of the anniversary event, we could definitely look into bringing it back again, maybe on a repeating basis.

I haven't done anything RP related since high school, and Google is only giving me results for selling this... do we have an example of how this works somewhere?
It's a collaborative storytelling game. The basic premise is that each of the players is the member of a queen's retinue as they travel together to a distant land, and then people draw cards once at a time and answer the question on the card. Some example questions: "What do you do for the queen that no one else can do?" "What did you bring with you that endangers the queen?"

It's pretty cool, imo. Kind of magical how you start with nothing (except a picture of the queen) and then build up a coherent story together.

Here's a video that goes through a full game. Note that it does NOT take two hours to play this game, and there's a fair bit of futzing around with Roll20 at the beginning which won't be relevant. Last time we played it I believe it went about bang on half an hour, and you can adjust the game length pretty easily (so if people were really digging it and wanted to go two hours and OSJ was down for that, you could do that, but we'd probably be playing a faster game).

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvk1bDYt7GY
 
Partners
  1. skiddo-steplively
  2. skiddo-px2
  3. skiddo-px3
  4. skiddo-iametrine
  5. skiddo-coolshades
  6. skiddo-rudolph
  7. skiddo-sleepytime
  8. snowskiddo
  9. skiddotina
  10. skiddengo
  11. skiddoyena
  12. skiddo-obs
It remains to be seen whether I'll actually be able to do it, so no promises, but assuming the stars and my brain align I wouldn't mind running a Pokémon-themed version of Honey Heist over VC (or text, ig). It's an extremely simple one-page-rules tabletop roleplaying game that just uses D6 dice (simple enough to do with the Sidekick bot on Discord), and it's all about relentlessly silly heist movie fun.

Very simple premise and rules breakdown of the original:

  1. Everyone is a goddamn bear (or a honey badger). As a bear, you can't speak human and don't have opposable thumbs and are the size and shape of a goddamn bear, but nonetheless you and your bear friends want to pull off a movie-style heist to steal the honey motherlode.
  2. You choose (usually randomly) a bear type, which gives you a bear skill like "mauling" or "looking adorable", and a role in the heist, like the face or the driver or the hacker; these skills/roles can help you when performing tasks.
  3. You have two stats, Bear and Criminal, which can range from 1 to 6. When you want to do a thing, I decide whether it's a "bear" thing (like using your bear strength) or a "criminal" thing (like trying to bribe a guard), and you try to roll equal to or under the relevant stat. If you succeed, you do the thing! If you fail, you don't do the thing, and you move one point into the stat you failed from your other stat.
  4. If you ever max out either stat you abandon the heist and are out of the game (I may adjust this so that it simply causes a big complication), but you can lower the stats to stay calm. For example, you can remind yourself of your amazing criminal plan with a heist-movie–style flashback.
  5. That's pretty much it! There are no combat mechanics or complicated numbers or anything, and you don't have to create a character ahead of time. It's just roleplaying and storytelling back and forth as I present you with a situation and you folks decide what to do about it! As long as what you want to try in the game isn't completely infeasible—and given that this is a ridiculous game by design, that's a pretty high bar—just tell me what you're doing, explain how you want to do it, and depending on the result of your roll I give you a zany description of your success or failure. Cheesy heist movie nonsense ensues and everyone has a great time!
So yeah! That, but Pokémon-flavored. It's meant for two to six players plus the game master, but it can probably handle a few more, or maaaaybe I could do it more than once if there's enough interest. Or we could try another silly one-page game—Crash Pandas (raccoons entering a dangerous street race) is also pretty great and probably simple enough to Pokémonify, for example.

Hopefully I'll know in the next week or so whether I'm up for putting a scenario or two together. Even if I'm not, it's an extremely simple game to run and completely free, so anyone else who was feeling adventurous could easily give it a shot...
 
Last edited:

WildBoots

Don’t underestimate seeds.
Location
smol scream
Pronouns
She/Her
Partners
  1. moka-mark
  2. solrock
I haven't done anything RP related since high school, and Google is only giving me results for selling this... do we have an example of how this works somewhere?
It’s extremely simple and I’d talk you through it—short answer. Longer answer is this.
 

Negrek

Abscission Ascendant
Staff
Hopefully I'll know in the next week or so whether I'm up for putting a scenario or two together. Even if I'm not, it's an extremely simple game to run and completely free, so anyone else who was feeling adventurous could easily give it a shot...
This sounds like a lot of fun! Definitely let me know if you're feeling up to running a session or two.
 

Negrek

Abscission Ascendant
Staff
All right, it's time to start finalizing the schedule and events for the anniversary! I've added a poll to this thread with potential writing event ideas; vote for as many as you'd be excited to participate in. Here's more details about the options:

Lightning-Round Exquisite Corpse: a mini exquisite corpse (or two) run during the event period. Writers collaborate to create a story where all they can see are the last two sentences of the last writer's section. This is identical to a standard exquisite corpse, but it will run faster (probably only a day or two per writer) with a smaller word limit.

Mini Prompt Challenge: Sign up to get a mini bingo card of customized writing prompts. The goal is to earn a bingo by writing a series of short pieces or creating small pieces of art to fulfill a number of the prompts.

Collaborative Crossover: Two authors work together to write a brief crossover between two of their stories--alternating paragraphs all the way!

Look out for another poll in the Discord server's announcement channel shortly--that will be to schedule our voice chats, as well as gauge interest in a voice chat event! I'll also be reaching out to people who've mentioned other Discord-based events to see whether they'd still be able to host them, and if so, when. There won't be polls for these, since timing will be based on the organizer's own availability.

The celebrations are coming up fast. Get hype for this weekend!
 

Equitial

Ace Trainer
Pronouns
he/him
Partners
  1. espurr
  2. inkay
  3. woobat
  4. ralts
HYPE HYPE HYPE
 

IFBench

Rescue Team Member
Location
Pokemon Paradise
Partners
  1. chikorita-saltriv
  2. bench-gen
  3. charmander
  4. snivy
  5. treecko
  6. tropius
  7. arctozolt
  8. wartortle
  9. zorua
H Y P E
 

AbraPunk

Cosmic Guardian
Location
The Circle
Pronouns
he/him
Partners
  1. luxio
Just read through all of last year's Mafia game just to see what it was like. Wow, that was a rollercoaster and a half! Man, I would've loved to be able to take part in this year's (assuming there'll be one), I'm just not sure if I qualify (or whatever your process is for choosing the players). Ah, well, there's always next year. :quag:
 

Negrek

Abscission Ascendant
Staff
Just read through all of last year's Mafia game just to see what it was like. Wow, that was a rollercoaster and a half! Man, I would've loved to be able to take part in this year's (assuming there'll be one), I'm just not sure if I qualify (or whatever your process is for choosing the players). Ah, well, there's always next year. :quag:
DawningWinds is right! The mafia game will be open to anyone interested in joining. Look out for the signup thread this weekend!
 

AbraPunk

Cosmic Guardian
Location
The Circle
Pronouns
he/him
Partners
  1. luxio
DawningWinds is right! The mafia game will be open to anyone interested in joining. Look out for the signup thread this weekend!
Ah, that's great! Thank you for the info! 😁
 

Negrek

Abscission Ascendant
Staff
Okay, it's looking as though the preferred writing event is going to be a mini prompt challenge! I'm finalizing events now; look out for a full kick-off post and the opening of event signups within the next 24 hours!
 

IFBench

Rescue Team Member
Location
Pokemon Paradise
Partners
  1. chikorita-saltriv
  2. bench-gen
  3. charmander
  4. snivy
  5. treecko
  6. tropius
  7. arctozolt
  8. wartortle
  9. zorua
Wait, is it not possible to do multiple?
 

Negrek

Abscission Ascendant
Staff
I think we already have plenty of events lined up, and I don't want there to be so many it's overwhelming. So yes, there will be only one writing/drawing event. However, ideas that don't get used for the anniversary can always be used for later events, or even for the anniversary next year!
 

IFBench

Rescue Team Member
Location
Pokemon Paradise
Partners
  1. chikorita-saltriv
  2. bench-gen
  3. charmander
  4. snivy
  5. treecko
  6. tropius
  7. arctozolt
  8. wartortle
  9. zorua
Is it too late for me to reinscind my vote on the bingo one? I voted for that with the assumption that anything that crossed a certain threshold of votes would be done.
 

Negrek

Abscission Ascendant
Staff
You can rescind your vote if you like, but it's not a very close poll and the outcome is pretty solidly determined at this point.
 

IFBench

Rescue Team Member
Location
Pokemon Paradise
Partners
  1. chikorita-saltriv
  2. bench-gen
  3. charmander
  4. snivy
  5. treecko
  6. tropius
  7. arctozolt
  8. wartortle
  9. zorua
Alright. My apologies.
 
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