BYOND Ckey: IAmCrystalClear
Character Name: Connor MacKenzie, Orchid, Aimee Tale
Discord Username (+user id): iamcrystalclear
Reason for Application: I have a desire to see more events in Euro-friendly time zones and have decided to take it upon myself to get them.
Team Applying For: RP
1. When setting up an event for the server, what should be taken into account as your to-do list before announcing the event to the discord/server?
When setting up an event for the server, my checklist would include the following
- Have I got a solid plan for the important storybeats? This includes having defined the genre and style of the event, be it combat, slice of life, horror, or something else entirely.
Have I identified who, generally, would be primarily involved? Which departments would this focus on? I do know particularly want to focus my attention on departments and people who may not typically get much love (see, service and civilian roles)
Have I made the event impactful for more than just two or three people? I can avoid this by focusing on events involving the station, avoiding combat intrinsic events, and ensuring they are not "go here, do this" events for security/exploration.
Are there any lessons I could apply from my previous experience to improve this event in any given way? I want to ensure I am not just repeating myself, and where I may, I want to ensure I am not just stagnant in my delivery and design. Learning from events that have "gone wrong" will improve the experience for everyone involved. I must, however, remember that people will ALWAYS have complaints.
Event managers are expected to run events! Running events is, however, more than just running an event, and includes doing our upmost best to ensure that events remain fun and engaging for everyone involved. This includes helping players to generate natural, real feeling stories and arcs for their characters, making the world feel just a little bit more real. To that end, EMs are also vaguely expected to remain in-lore, not bending the world to fit their story, but rather bending their story to fit the world.
3. What would you call a fun addition to a current round if the players are wanting extra spice?
Introducing minor antagonists such as a pirate crew looking to make a quick buck or neutral journalists interviewing crew is always fun. For in-round events, I have seen such things as the fabled "horse" event, where talking horses appeared on-site, and various ghost related events over the years. These were ultimately small scale events, but were fun for the crew involved. I personally will likely trend towards more neutral and low-down events that do not focus on the paranormal, likely involving minor representatives from various factions coming aboard or something natural happening in the area (maybe a goat migration or similar).
4. If an event you're hosting is going off the rails, or that the players are reacting to the event in a way that is steering away from your original plan and idea,
what would you do at that point for the event?
I've DM'd for a pathfinder game before, and my method was to create a flowchart of "options" persay that people might take and plan from there. Using this technique, I should, theoretically, be able to plan for most actions the crew (and volunteers) might take. I do, however, purposefully leave my flowcharts vague and loose so that I may instead improvise without any lost overhead if needed. For example, in an event where mercs attack the station, demanding an artefact, I might write out two "pathways" that the crew might take: negotiation or confrontation. I'd write out some basic guidelines for each such as "mercs want x, y, z" and prepare what the mercs are willing to lose before they give up in combat. However, most events like can invariably go along the lines of "command tries to negotiate, while various crew perform impromptu attack", and if this happened, I'd have to be ready to improvise what to do.
[Edit: fixed paragraph breaks]
