Excited about Player Run Quests and events.

I went to a Tea Party last Sunday at @Lily Byrd 's cottage in Jade Valley. To say I had a good time would be an understatement. More accurate to say I had a "great experience". Lady Lily surprised us all by slowly and subtly turning a tea party into a really great quest! Several hours later we were all still very much engaged and running around like crazy people looking for clues and ready to fight unseen evil and magic practitioners of dark arts when we decided to continue the quest this coming Sunday. That tea party counts as some of the most precious and enjoyable moments I have had to date in SOTA. Many thanks Lady Lily, I am looking forward to next Sunday!

@Jaesun aka "Anpu"recently ran A Worn Page event which was so creative and really a great example of thinking outside the box. The event reached it's conclusion when one lucky player found the missing page and collected a handsome reward for returning it. I can only imagine the excitement and joy that winner felt upon finding the page, and likewise the fun all participants had searching Novia for it. Thank you so much Anpu for the research and testing you are doing!

@Tailz hosted a dance party recently at his spectacular nightclub, "Club Zero" at Britt Mart. The DJ, Justyn was really great and the club itself is a masterpiece of design and creative thinking. The dance party was lots of fun and grew as more and more people arrived and got out on the dance-floor. I'm really impressed at the level of detail and the insightful design and hard work Tailz put into this club, and also want to thank him for giving my girlfriend and I a tour of it the other day. Tailz also runs a Fishing Derby at Britt Mart. I'll be checking that out when he does another one.

_________________________________________________________________

I know there must be a lot of other player run quests and events going on but I am not readily seeing them listed as such. Maybe I just don't know where to look though, I'm still pretty new here. I can say with confidence that if more knew players new about some of these things we would definitely keep more of them in the game. I'd like to find ways to help player event promoters reach more players, and specifically NEW players.

I'm playing with the idea of launching a website and a support group/club/alliance of some sort that quest and event hosts/sponsors could use to share ideas, promote their events to players more effectively and offer help and support to each other by contributing prizes or even manpower in the form of their own time. I would be happy to volunteer my time to assist in events in any capacity a promoter feels I could serve. Please feel free to contact me directly.

An example might be Lily Byrd's Tea party. Some of the clues could be given by real people who volunteer to participate rather than just clue pages strategically placed at different locations. Same goes for Anpu's quest.... real players might have information for quest participants, thus advancing our social engagement even further. Bill the Bartender might be a real player behind the bar rather than a vendor. Imagine an old wizard who live sin a hollow log out in the woods getting visits from players seeking answers. The possibilities for player run events are literally limited only by our own imaginations. Some positive collaborating might go a long way toward advancing our quests and events to new levels of awesomeness!

I'd love to get some feedback and ideas from the community at large here on this thread.

Ciao for now!

 

I had one in Veritas Sanctuary, but I was trying to set it up to work without having to do anything once it's in place, and the tools for that are limited at the moment. At the very least, some sort of door and key system for dungeons is needed. Preferable would be "programmable" NPCs. All of this is supposedly coming, but there hasn't been much talk of it lately. (Which is a huge shame; player tools to create content seem like a cheap way to get a ton of content in the game quickly when you have a limited staff.) If I get it off the ground again, I might steal @Jaesun's idea to tip people off to it.

 

Hey @Cora Cuz'avich ! Yes Yes Yes.... you just wrote a line we all need to be repeating daily, and saying to the dev team every chance we get.....
"Player tools to create content seem like a cheap way to get a ton of content in the game quickly when you have a limited staff."
Brilliant, and so true.

Thank you Cora

 

Feel free to use my example! It's currently one of the most efficient ways to start a quest, because when someone purchases the item from a Public Vendor, you will then get a receipt of the exact players name who found the item.

The next iteration of a quest I will be doing will be:

1. Place note on Public Vendor somewhere. The note will specify to message me for a "special item".
2. Mail "special item" to player. The message will state something that with this special item you can now open a magically locked chest on my property. This special item for the player doesn't do anything, BUT it will give me time to:
3. On a specific chest on my property, give access to that specific chest for that player.

This is just another experiment I will be doing next release. Still working out the "story" part of it, as I try to keep these RP friendly. Instead of LOL YOU WIN PRIZE! GRATZ!!!!111

 

I was thinking more the mass "mailing" of quest starters by selling fliers to merchants. But this idea solves some other issues; you could have a lot/house specifically for the quest, and use item permissions to allow anybody who responded to the quest message to access items in the house. It'd be really great if doors with keys ever become a thing; you could actually mail the key needed to open a wing of a dungeon or something. Or, in the meantime, send the "magical incantation" needed to open a magically locked door by giving them a phrase to say, when in reality you've just added them to the permissions list.

Actually, I think I might have a way to make that work for my own quest; I wanted the players to have to go on a bit of a treasure hunt to gain access to a dungeon; the final clue of the hunt could direct the player to message an alt character "scholar" who then replies with needed information; behind the scenes I'd add them to a permissions list giving them access to the dungeon.

 

Also occurred to me the ability to allow players to move deco could make for some interesting puzzly things. Still no ability set "take item" permissions to public, though. You can put them in a chest, and set that to public, but no leaving a book on a table for a player to take, which sorta sucks.

Anyway. I'll stop hijacking the thread. Maybe I'll even start one for people to include the mechanics for player quests that they've devised, if I get ambitious.