[EVENT] Taela's Bewitched Bag

[josephoenix]

The premise:

Originally from the synopsis sent to all RMs
A female Enkidukai (Taela Soroli) is found sobbing near the top of the plaza. When asked what\'s wrong, she explains that she has lost some important items. She never used to lose things before and thinks it has to do with the new bag she bought from a street peddler. She is missing a small green potion that cures minor coughs and colds, a big red perfume bottle, a book she borrowed from Jayose titled Yliakum Geography, and a valuable amulet. She explains where she\'s been all day and asks them to help her find her items and figure out if something is wrong with her bag.

The event was loads of fun.. even though the organizer finked out after a short while and the person playing Taela didn\'t feel well enough to stay...

• The group shed members until there were only four, and only 3 were present at the collecting of the final missing item.
• The Gobble that stole the amulet got lost on the way to his own hoard, and had to quickly set up an impromptu hoard using the items from his inventory.
• Seperot stole a kiss from Taela :O (That rogue!).

If you participated and you\'d like to comment on something that could have been done better, or have an idea of how to make it better somehow... or just would like to comment on what you thought went particularly well, post below.

Screenshots will be uploaded soonish
As always, future events will be announced in IRC, #planeshift-events on freenode!

josePhoenix

[seperot]

Yea, I rock....

I was flogged by everyone... Jose asking about everything, where are you? are you coming? why are you there!


and then i had to deal with a group who\'s first instincts where to all talk at once and split up at the first sign of more then one thing.

then both of them merged forming a \"i need to follow the group but jose is harrasing me\"


other then that it was a blast \\o/  

[josephoenix]

Pffft, that wasn\'t harassing! That was me relying on you as the liason for your group!

If Cyl hadn\'t wanted to go widdershins everywhere, it would have been easier

josePhoenix

[Karyuu]

That madness out of the way, I\'m sorry I couldn\'t participate through the entire thing, and a big big BIG thanks to Jose for taking over. You rock, you :) A thing I\'ve noticed and other RMs commented upon was a tiny lack of patience on the part of the players during speeches, not just in this event but in general, particularly in the beginning/introduction. I\'ve made a note to myself to use shortcuts for long text next time, and cut down on lengthy sentences - but it interferes with style a little. Not really a complaint or suggestion, but more of a comment - there was a bit of a \"Right right, so what do we DO?\" feeling ;) Glad to hear that things went well though!

I think on our part, the RMs need to be better prepared for future events. We definitely want to run things spontaneously and numerous times in a day once things really kick off, but I think striving for such a thing right now is just unrealistic. We need test runs, perhaps several of them. Make sure everyone is familiar with commands, and not just half an hour before the actual event ;) Prepare several backup plans for as many scenarios as we can think of.

I would still like to inform players a bit in advance when events will take place, too, to make sure a decently sized group gathers and no one lags behind screaming \"WAIT FOR ME! I\'M STILL LOGGING IN!\" I think making events as spontaneous as this one seemed is better left for sometime in the (near) future, until we\'re able to coordinate with more efficiency. But otherwise, this was lots of fun and I can\'t wait to start planning the next one ;) Except I already have.

Cheers! Thank you guys for participating!

[Cha0s]

Yes, many thanks to josePhoenix, Karyuu, Drey, and Lordbug, the RMs responsible for this event. I apologize profusely to all of them and to you the players for having to depart mid-event. Sadly, RL issues left me no choice.

That aside, how did the event go? Did you all have fun? What would have made it better? Anything at all, from technical to issue to, \"Your RP sucks,\" we want to hear it, so don\'t be shy, speak up!

[Bodacher]

This event ( and the others ), sounds like a lot of fun, but less so, because I am only hearing of it after the fact.

Originally posted by Karyuu
I would still like to inform players a bit in advance when events will take place, too, to make sure a decently sized group gathers and no one lags behind screaming \"WAIT FOR ME! I\'M STILL LOGGING IN!\" I think making events as spontaneous as this one seemed is better left for sometime in the (near) future, until we\'re able to coordinate with more efficiency. But otherwise, this was lots of fun and I can\'t wait to start planning the next one Except I already have.

Originally posted by JosePhoenix
As always, future events will be announced in IRC, #planeshift-events on freenode!

I am not a frequenter of IRC chat ( or any other for that matter ), nor do I plan to be in the future, and I am certain I am not alone in this.  Downloading and installing a piece of software for the sole purpose of using it to check once in a while for announcements of something I would like to participate in, is not what I would call a fruitful use of my time and resources.   I was under the impression that PS was trying to shed itself of the image of a \"3D chat room\", and yet we must log into a chat room to find out about events that will be happening in-game.  Of course these aren\'t directly related, but to a non-chat user, it seems strange.

For me ( and I\'m sure many other users ), it would be better to augment the IRC announcement with one in the forums.  To ensure \"a decently sized group gathers\" it seems strange that the announcement would come only in one place, and ( to me at least ) an obscure one.  ( Not being an IRC user, I had no idea this events chatroom/channel, whatever, even existed.)

Now I don\'t spend all my waking hours perusing the forums for upcoming events either, but I do try to scan through them every day, and at least then ( given enough notice of the event, of course ) I would have a chance of participating in one of these events.  I realize the planning and organizing of such things is not an easy feat, but I also think it\'s not too much to ask that an announcement to more than a certain group of people, and with enough time beforehand is too much to ask for.

[/My two cents]

[Cha0s]

Yes, we are aware of the problems that the current system has. Eventually, though, there will be no announcement (except for large events), and for the players, events will occur spontaneously in-game. If you want to be part of an event, I suggest you travel in a group with others... When there are a lot of people around, things tend to happen...

[karakth]

Right, some comments:

First off I\'d like to say how great it is to see people taking an interest and organising events for us. Really rocks. This was my first RP and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I\'ll tackle some of the issues encountered in the game now.

Inititialising the RP

To start it off, we had to stay running around looking for a Damsel in Distress. We got lost a bit but finally gathered into one group. Ideally, the GMs come to the players. That is, Taera would have wandered into the Tavern, where we were, and begin to cry. We\'d ask her what\'s wrong, etc. The players should have gathered 1 hour before the event and RPed a bit together to get to know each other (e.g. they meet each other in the Tavern). In future, GMs will have to see a group of large people and start a pre-planned RP with them.

The problem of Scattering

Jose was running to keep up with us and Sep had to mediate for the entire group. This caused some frustration on both sides. There are several ways in which this could be tackled. One is for everyone to just take it more easy. This is a big problem in online RPGs. The characters never really take a break to find out about each other, etc, usually to avoid making the GM impatient. This is somewhat understandable, since the event was 4 hours long, and we were just doinf things, RPing only with the NPCs. Ideally it would be like a film, where the protagonists would get a chance to ask each other questions and RP together. This has to come as much from the players as from the design of the RP to allow for such filler RP. As for the problem of scattering, which I should be writing about What could have been done is a little cheesy, but: A member of the party would possess \"special powers\" for example, a contact with the gods or blue way spells to forsee things, etc. The GMs would then use the person to comunicate with the players. The group would, in turn, consult the mediator every few steps in the plot or so to be sure they\'re not going off track.

Plot Design

I\'d like to say a few words about the Plot itself now. The difference between NPC-given quests and GM-given quests is that with one you\'ve got humans in charge. The great thing about humans is that we have imagination and creativity. This last RP I felt was a little \"rail-roaded\" meaning that it had one track, designed by the GMs, which had to be followed. This can be frustrating to both players (not being able to use their creativity and innovate solutions to puzzles) and to the GMs (the players deviating from the plot line). The fact that the GMs are people gives the RPs an opportunity to be flexible and free-flowing. I\'ll give an example:

The Gobble

One of the things we had to do in this RP was to chase a Gobble (good ole\' Rjj) through the sewers to its hoard, where we would interact with it to make it give us an Amulet. This was alright, but at one point I gave a suggestion that perhaps we should try to lure it out of the sewers at night and catch it unawares. When I design adventures for DnD I usually do it the following way: The players are given a problem. They discuss how they\'re going to work it out. Then I accomodate myself to their plan. Gives the players a sense of involvment. That said, it\'s still good to have a solution thought up yourself which you can then mediate to your group should they be unable to solve the puzzle.

Those are a few of my thoughts on the whole RP thing. I\'d like to keep working at it until we have the dynamic RPing we all dream of in PS

EDIT: Oh yeah, one more thing. The size of the group involved in the RP. I think taking it beyond 6 people will get confusing for both GMs and players. 6 is usually the legal number of people allowed to gather in the street. Anything more is a crowd and must have permission. For this reason I suggest a feature be implemented in PS involving groups and GMs. GMs should be able to \"watch\" a group (i.e. listen in on their group chat, see the position of the members, teleport members, etc). Those would be very useful features to implement into the game, IMO.

[Karyuu]

Excellent, Karakth! Just the stuff we need to hear from players right now :) Thank you so much for taking the time to write that all out. You have a great point in the plot design section - and I think we\'re going to aim for events of a lot more dynamic nature in the future. I\'d reply further, but it\'s 4am here. Just wanted to say thank you!

[seperot]

I love the mediator idea kara, and the idea of taking it slower and not bounding at 1000 mph would make the whole thing better imo

[Drey]

Originally posted by seperot
I love the mediator idea kara, and the idea of taking it slower and not bounding at 1000 mph would make the whole thing better imo

you took at least 3 hours last night >.>

[karakth]

Yup, that is a point to keep in mind. Last night took four hours and we were just doing the essentials. GMs might want to analyse why it took so long:

-> Too many items to collect?
-> Too far in between?
-> Technical difficulties?
-> Players wasting time?
-> Players not catching on fast enough to plot?

These are just a few of the questions that will have to be asked if we want to shorten RP time.

Also I might suggest that someone keep time during the next RP, to get average estimates of how long players are spending doing what. From these results both players and GMs will be able to change style accordingly to maximise both efficiency and fun.

All hail the scientific method and all that.

[Cha0s]

Originally posted by karakth
Inititialising the RP

Yup, that\'s the plan. Currently roleplayers don\'t group enough to do that, though. Role-play awareness needs to increased and players need to interact and travel together more often.

The problem of Scattering

I disagree with this. The mediator character is very close to being out-of-character; the justification is sort of flimsy. I would be in favor of some sort of communication amulets that players can buy. These would basically legitimize group-chat (after everyone met and synchronized amulets). As for other issues, I think the RMs are going to leave the plan to the players more. Until amulets like these are implemented, you guys decide if you want to separate or group and you guys decide when you meet (you can use Yliakum time ) and where.

Plot Design

Yup. I am painfully aware of this issue. Events will probably be more open-ended in the future. It makes things easier and more fun for both players and RMs.

Re: Group size... this just takes coordination of the players. We plan to run major events that could get to around 50 players (not for quite a while, though ). Small events will probably cap around 10-20. We\'ll try to help out with organization and try to provide more time for you to get organized, but the players need to do the organizing.

[karakth]

Hmm, amulets. Dunno. A little too magicky for me (I prefer to keep magic as a sort of elite thing which is used for special purposes). I think we should try to RP without group chat. Makes it more medieval-style sort of thing. If amulets are introduced, they should be pretty expensive.

As for group size, it\'s all about what you guys can handle.

[Cha0s]

Well, yes, mages usually charge a high price for their wares. They would probably be used in large events where a select few would carry them and act as liaisons between larger groups. I really hope you guys (the players ) start using PS times and places to arrange meetings though. It would make things easier for you and for us.