I have some other thoughts lined up waiting for me to finish this one, so I may as well get this out of the way. A pity, isn't it, that one's mind sometimes prioritizes order and structure over content?

The quest was a blast.

My summary to Rob Maa was that it gets a B+ for props and a solid A for plot. Surprising, given Adam's usual tendencies toward excellent prop quality, but those marks falsely imply criticism of the quest overall. Give it another A for interplayer roleplay and involvement, and while I'm at it an A- for loot.

Highlights would include the end scenes where two factions, working toward the same end, killed each other's principals out of distrust (but worked it out in the end); my personal subplot, a dark secret, coming off in the best possible way - almost blown, but not quite - and thereby Raven's character becoming falsely but widely known as a traitor; roleplay moments as two soldiers shooting the shit, with Ender; a tiny box with Jason Campbell's voice saying, "The Empire Must Be Preserved", worth killing for. The moving eyes and mouth of the sphinx prop, and the funky scene-changing dimensional-vortex-in-a-box.

Downlights would include poor use of the backfield, a "quadruple door" sequence which had to be narrated in and had no prop representation whatsoever, underpowering the rift hazards, hanging people up on a lengthy gauntlet with long wait times, and putting what I must assume was one of the best props into a position where well-informed players would simply choose to never see it, knowing full well that (a) it was invulnerable and (b) it wasn't really important, once the rift itself was dealt with. Player downlights would be Davyd's reading aloud a piece of information which constituted a breach of Imperial Security of the first water, and Jeff's insufficiently painstaking work on the coverup bombings.

Which again makes me sound critical, but it's not; it's just lessons learned.

This latter, because I seem to be earning a name as "Catalyst" for Sunfall. See, back after May 2004 (Faerie Quest), I posed a challenge to Adam: design a quest at Camp Encounter which makes use of the island, during the first night. It has become routine that the island is in some way opened up to players, as of the second day, simply because of the logistics involved in getting players to and from an island, guaranteed dry and safe, in the dark. But it IMO cripples the site, because the non-island portion is really kind of lame as sites go, so the first night ends up very constrained. Adam took up that challenge and (with Shannon et al) designed the early form of Dyscord... only to learn that Encounter wasn't available on the long weekend. Anyway, this led to Shannon saying to me that Dyscord was "all your [my] fault."

Now, during the afterparty of Dyscord, I seem to have sat down with Scott Messier and Cam Johnson, and helped design May or September of next year. And it'll be good, oh yes, if it lives up to what we've got right now it'll be very yummy.

I didn't mean to. It started out with me explaining a few private theories about questing. Stuff like avoiding gauntlets, or if you must have one, designing them so that the players are distracted from the lineup that will inevitably form. Or the taxonomy of encounter types, not just combat and in-character skill/lore encounters but also puzzle-type (player brains), kinesthetic (building things, doing stuff with your hands), and player-physical (the over/under/through obstacle course type of challenge), as well as "legwork" challenges (the part that drives you to tire yourself out chasing all over the field). Or the problems with relying on player-player antagonism (everybody ends up on one side, among others) and some possible solutions. But it all ended up with the quest itself emerging, kind of like a case study, from the midst of the analytical discussion. And looking verrrry nice.

[I'll give you a hint. It doesn't have a name yet, nor does it know whether to be May or September, but I can legitimately drop this teaser... those who do costume should plan to bring two versions of their costume: a living version, and an undead one. This will not be required for those without the imagination or means, but I strongly recommend at least thinking about it. This goes equally strongly for players playing primarily living or primarily undead characters.]

So. See last post for why I am not helping actually organize this one. Instant death for all involved. However, I plan to keep kicking ideas and help toward the fellows planning this, and updates will follow at this location as they exist.

Sunfall rocks. It's all about the endorphins, the exhaustion, and the cool props. Oh, and apparently (to quote Gil), the zombies. It's all about the zombies, too. Even at quests that don't have any.