Behind-the-Scenes Peek: 2021 National Event Design

Gandian Ravenscroft

Knight
Chicago Staff
Marshal
Hey everyone,

Whenever a larger-scale event like the National Event takes place, there will always be a vast array of different expectations from its players of what it is going to be like. After all, even though all Alliance chapters share a common ruleset, every chapter works a bit differently as far as how it runs its events. There will be players coming in from a variety of chapters across the country, all with different expectations, assumptions, and preconceptions about how games flow and function, and we want to make sure that everyone has as good a time as possible at this event.

To that end, we’ve decided to put together a little summary of some of the philosophies and tenets that the Plot Team used when designing this event for our players to check out beforehand. Don’t worry, we aren’t going to spoil the actual plot - just give you a heads-up on what we were thinking when we set up the event structure. We hope that this allows you to get a baseline understanding of our thought processes, see the event through the lens we set it up through, and thus allow you to interact with the event in the most engaging way possible!

The National Event is, by its nature, a one-off event with self-contained storylines. This presents its own set of challenges when designing the plot, since it can be difficult for a Plot Team to have the players get notably invested in the event’s story. A chapter would usually build up a complex plotline or NPCs over the course of several events to get players invested, but we don’t really have that luxury for a one-off game. After all, the players don’t have much for preexisting emotional/personal attachments to the happenings of the event, and they know that anything that happens is going to wrap up by the end. We want to make sure that players have a good time jumping into the event, rather than their characters shrugging and saying, “But why should I care?”

To help with this, the plot of the National Event was designed to have a simple, light-hearted overarching structure that isn’t extremely serious. It’s the kind of story that any character should be able to look at and say, “You know, sure, I’ll hop on board and go with it.” We’re using the National Event as a place for players to come together, experience some fun encounters/combat/puzzles, do some neat roleplay, and have a good one-off time with other players, so hop in and have fun! However, just because the overall event is designed to be light-hearted doesn’t mean there aren’t sections that are planned to be intense, dramatic, and/or darker - we’ve just set up the event in such a way that if your character isn’t really invested in the story going in, you particularly don’t need to be to still have fun.

That said, plotlines are rarely “one size fits all.” Everyone is interested in different things, and it can be difficult to create a singular plot thread that everyone will be excited to follow. So, we didn’t do that. We instead decided to set up the event as a combination of several smaller plotlines for players to get involved with depending on what interests them most, with all of the little plotlines loosely weaving together at the top to form the big plot for the weekend. This way, players can choose which plotlines they are most interested in and pursue those plotlines more heavily instead of just tagging along on stuff they don’t care about. One plotline of the event isn’t really your thing? No problem, there are seven other plotlines, and at least one of those is almost certainly more to your liking! Plotlines were designed to be centric around the different playable races so that people always have their racial background to fall back on when looking for something to engage, but you certainly don’t have to pursue your race’s plotline if it isn’t up your alley. Just because you’re a Dwarf doesn’t mean that you can’t push forward on the Biata-centric plot that you found more interesting than the Dwarf-centric plot!

There is very little planned for the event that involves everyone doing the same big thing all at once for a single plotline, with a much greater emphasis being placed on having a variety of smaller things available for players to get involved with. We have prepared a TON of smaller encounters designed for smaller groups of characters (maybe a dozen PCs or so), since smaller groups allow us to do more encounters for as many people as possible as fast as possible, all while allowing us to cater to more people’s varied interests simultaneously. You miss an encounter? Don’t sweat it - there are lots more and you won’t be bored for long before more is happening!

There are several encounters throughout the event that will be hooked directly to the players via NPCs at the time they are intended to be run, but large portions of this event are going to be player-driven encounters that can be run at any time the PCs get a group together to run them. NPCs will frequently arrive in-game throughout the event to deliver hooks for these on-demand encounters, with players given a physical object that they can use at any time to pursue the corresponding encounter. We will be implementing an easily-visible system outside of our NPC Camp at the event to give players an indicator of Plot/NPC availability, with more information about that to be posted later and/or announced at the event itself.

So if you find yourself wanting to do something, don’t necessarily just wait for the Plot Team to come to you - it’s entirely likely that there are at least a handful of these ready-to-be-pursued encounters available in town, and all you have to do is get a group together to go and do one! That said, we ask that you please be mindful of other players and not “hoard” these on-demand encounters, chain them back-to-back-to-back with the same group of PCs and monopolize the Plot Team’s time, etc. The goal of these is to give our players tons of options for engagement, and we’d like your help in being good sports and getting everyone involved!

We know that inactivity and boredom are killers at big events, and we’re going to be trying our hardest to make the event really efficient from an Plot-running perspective. We’re going to do our best to keep things rolling as much as possible with minimal wait times, including implementing a variety of plot-relevant things that players can engage with without the need of any NPCs, pre-packaging props before the event for encounters to cut down on prep time, making custom masks to let us do more unique NPCs without having to spend as much time on makeup, and more. That said, it’s going to be a big event with a lot of players, and we ask that you please bear with us. The Plot Team and NPCs can’t necessarily entertain all the PCs all the time, and we’re going to have to do our best to simply entertain the people that we have the capacity to entertain. While we’ll obviously be doing our best to engage with players on an individual basis, just know that with so many PCs around, you might not get as much personal attention from Plot as you might be accustomed to during smaller events. During the times the Plot Team is fully occupied with other people, we would ask that you do what you can to engage with other PCs rather than just being bored and relying solely on the NPCs for entertainment. Players from around the country are going to be there - share some stories, learn new things, play some games, make some new friends!

I’m really excited for the upcoming National Event, and I hope this has given you a bit of insight as to what you can expect format-wise from the game we have planned! We’ve got a lot of cool plot, encounters, and props in the works that we can’t wait to share with you, and I hope you have a good time with it all. If you have any questions, let us know and we’d be happy to discuss!

Thanks,
Alexander
2021 National Event Head of Plot
 
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