We gamers have a chance to help sick kids on Saturday, November 7, by doing what we do best: playing games! Extra Life is a 24-hour video game marathon to raise money to help kids at Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. All the money raised for Extra Life will go directly to the Children's Miracle Network Hospital of your choice. I am playing for the Dell Children's Medical Center, located in Austin Texas (the home of our SotA devs). This year, I will be streaming Shroud of the Avatar live for 24-hours over on my Twitch.tv channel. My plan is to create a new character, play through all of the outskirts, set up the free row home, do some introductory crafting, then try get into some of the most interesting areas of the game to show off to new players what can be done in our game. If you are not content to just help me and want to start raising money for your local Children's Miracle Network hospital, you can! I've created a Team page on Extra Life for anyone in the community to join. Team Reno Zephyr takes its name from the Words of Power and means "Healing Wind". And that is our goal, to bring health, life, and support to sick children like a breath of fresh air! You can help! You can support me financially on My page. You don't need to create an account or login to pledge, just click the Donate button, select a donation amount, and fill in your information. To award prizes (which I hope to announce soon), you MUST include your in-game character's name in the message, but you can mark the message and donation as private if you only want me to see it. Once the pledge is confirmed, you will receive a tax receipt via email. Make sure you use a valid character name, so I can send your rewards via the in-game mail! I'm also hoping to get some players who want to show off what can be done in the game by grouping up and taking the lead on finding adventuring spots. Once I'm out of the Outskirts, I'm planning to use the LFG tool, but having folks willing to step up will save some time. Additionally, if anyone else is having an event on the 7th or 8th, I'll try to schedule attending those to spotlight the community. Thank you all for helping me heal sick kids, show off Shroud of the Avatar, and do great things! @Elgarion @Chris
Events TBD. I'll be coming up with a schedule over the next week or so. If you have any community events you'd like me to attend, please let me know! Prizes Anyone who donates $15 or more, any time before 8am Central (NBT) on November 8th, will be eligible for a community cloak. The Extra Life 2020 cloak is currently being designed by Damon, and I'll send it to you via in-game mail after the event. To receive your cloak, make sure to include your avatar's name in your pledge message! I'll also be giving away random in-game prizes throughout the event. I've got several things of my own (Obsidian potion bags, random prizes, etc), but also some donations from others. These will be randomly drawn from everyone who has donated (and provided their avatar's name). For an extra chance, send me a PM on the forum or a whisper in-game and tell me you voted! Remember, voting day is November 3, the Tuesday before this event! Additional information will be added as we get closer!
Greetings Browncoat Jayson Count me in! I may not be a streamer but I can defiantly donate to such a good cause. If I do decide to stream in the off hours (I am 9 hours ahead of Austin time) can I prerecord it and get it right and use that as my stream? Or does it need to be live?
Awesome, I'll start putting this in the update soon, especially as we get closer to the event. Thanks Jayson! Looks like a good cause
Great! Welcome aboard! The idea behind Extra Life is that you play 24-hours straight to raise money, which is what I'll be doing (8:00am Austin time on the 7th until 8:00am on the 8th). You can start at any time, or even play on another day if it works better for you. Its mostly for fundraising. If you don't want to play for that long, which is understandable, I welcome all assistance. Since you are earlier than Austin, you could probably be online during the morning hours leading up to the end, which I've found is really the hardest part of staying awake and active. So if you have something for us to do during that time, I'd be happy to play with you. Its too early now to know what, if any, community events will be happening during these days, but if you wanted to set something up there that's another option. Or even just make a donation to the fundraiser! Everything helps. I'll have a schedule and more information when we get closer.
I did it a number of years ago with the Port Teams. Happy to help will let you know if I'm going to stream a bit. In any case, I will be around to help one way or another. Great event!!
Hello, all! I know this is still a couple months off, but I wanted to post an update! For August, Extra Life is doing Tabletop Games. Since I already have an active D&D game running (online, via Discord and Roll20), I figure its worth noting here that you can play any game (not just computer games) for Extra Life! During this month, if you raise a certain amount, they are even giving out some very cool looking dice. I'm still waiting to hear about getting participation prizes in SotA to award, but if anyone who donates $10 or more for me anytime (not just in November) will be eligible for them. Just include your in-game character's name in the message and I'll send a thank you package via in-game mail once everything is ready. If you want to contribute to my campaign this month, we can roll some critical hits together! Click here: https://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=411896
@Browncoat Jayson I am glad I could contribute, but would it have been better to contribute the day of the event? If I can contribute more, then I will try and do so, but want to know if it benefits you more then than now.
Greetings Browncoat Jayson To update you. I have tried streaming and although my computer will handle it my network overseas is ..... Bad. Even at 480p it chokes so I will not be able to help with that. There is a chance I may be back in the states in November and will let you know if that is the case. If there is anything else I can help with let me know. BTW My idea to stream was this. There are a lot of new POT owners and a lot of experienced POT owners. Some one should stream setting up a new POT or just a section of an existing one and give some shortcuts to doing it. Like starting with all your items in the bank and having in inventory a village lot marker, a village deed, and a Remote Bank Device. Made it so much easier for me. Anyway good luck and know I am a supporter.
There is no difference in when the contributions come in, they take funds year round. We just use one day a year to actually do the 24-hour play challenge. I'm tracking donations up until that point so I can try to give away some prizes and offer rewards. That is a good idea. I don't have a POT myself, but I was considering going through the outskirts and getting a home, setting that up in a POT, and showing off home ownership. But if you are able to share POT ownership, I'd love to be able to see it. My computer isn't the best, but I'm going to make a couple upgrades before November. I'm increasing my RAM a bit and putting in a SSD this month. Hopefully that will make it smooth. Currently, the loading times are annoying, but it streams fairly well once I'm in a scene.
Greetings Browncoat Jayson My computer is ok. It is a 2017 i7 Macbook Pro with 16gigram and a s1t ssd but has an intergrated on-board GPU. My problem is an 8Mbs ADSL internet in another country. I am a computer tech but can't get what they don't have (fast internet). At home in the states I have 100 Mbs. It should be much better for streaming. If I may ask you what do you use the stream? I have looked at the Twitch Studio (Beta) and OBS but having trouble figuring out how to get my game window to show. Also trying OBS for the Mac. All this is new to me. Would love to hear what people are using (Please PM me so as not to derail this post) and how they are setup. Anyway will keep you informed. If you want to play around with POT management I can make you a steward and let you design a section of my island.
I use OBS. You need to add a "scene" and then specify what you want to appear there. For the stream, I'll be creating a new character and showing off from the start. I've never done anything in POTs before, but I don't mind trying it out while I'm streaming. New things all around.
I just wanted to thank @Elgarion for putting this in the Avatar's Update as a reminder. We've also been in contact about a cloak for the event, which is currently being developed. I've added prize information to the second post above. Thanks for helping me raise $300 for the Dell Children's Medical Center so far, and we've still got three weeks until the event! This is a great event, and I'm excited to show off the world of New Britannia to more players.
Happy to donate! I've also put up an article about Extra Life and a link to your fundraising page in the Avatar Express https://theavatar.express/home/support-sota-players-raising-money-for-extra-life
