Adventure Building Challenge

[Legacy_CaveGnome]

               Hello, What you think about this simple seed idea?

Under siege:
A peaceful village, town, castle... is under siege. An army of orcs, trolls, drows, etc. attacks in number. The mayor/lord recruits everybody volunteering to protect citizens. Would the PC action turn the battle tide and save the day? And what about the brutal chief of the doom army?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               That is a great idea, CaveGnome. I'll add that one to the poll. I'll add it to a future poll. Current one is already going.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 04 mars 2013 - 01:09 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

rogueknight333 wrote...
After seeing the number of people who had to drop out, or submit an unsatisfactory product at the last minute, I think more than ever that it would be a good idea to make this challenge bimonthly rather than monthly, especially if there are plans to implement a review and revision period as well, as that is just one more thing people involved with the challenge will have to take some time to do. In the course of a month, a participant would be expected to:

-play and review last month's modules
-determine the theme and what CC is sponsored and plan a concept around that
-build a module
-playtest and revise the module (or else submit a hopelessly unpolished entry that will need to be redone)

I disagree. The biggest reason for this is that I think it serves the community better to enable more participation, more often, rather than to lower our expectations based on how few seem to be participating in the forums now.

I also think that you overstated your case. We had good results for the first challenge. If we are unable to sustain the turn out that we had in February, I agree that we should look at reassessing.

A builder only needs to build a module in the month. Play testing and revision comes in the following month. Why do I like this? Because these small challenge entries might grow into larger modules, and we may gain more module builders in the community because of it, which in turn leads to more players.

Play and Review of modules is aimed at the wider community as anyone can participate in that. I don't see a larger pool of players engaging yet. But we've only had one month so far and the modules have only been up for a few days. Perhaps if we get the word out on the NWN Podcast we'll get more attention. I appreciate that The Amethyst Dragon did so recently (I listened this morning), and hope that others do so as well.

As far as determining the theme and what content is sponsored goes, that is on my shoulders. And so while it has taken up some of my time, managing the ABC is not what prevented me from participating in February. I just have a very busy life and sometimes works takes up all of my free time. I suspect most people here have the same problem.

And anyway... like I said above I think we had great turn out.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_rogueknight333]

               

henesua wrote...

I also think that you overstated your case. We had good results for the first challenge. If we are unable to sustain the turn out that we had in February, I agree that we should look at reassessing.

Depends on how rigorously one defines "good." Many if not most of the submissions were in various stages of incompleteness or buggyness. And the early stages of something like this, when one has the enhusiasm of a new thing to work with, can be deceptive. We might also get a fair number of submissions for March (among other reasons because some people might actually have been working on something for longer than a month: there has not been much doubt for a while now what theme would be the winner of this month's poll), but over a long period of time enthusiasm is going to wax and wane.

 A builder only needs to build a module in the month. Play testing and revision comes in the following month...

Which just illustrates the problem, becuase at least to some extent it is going to be the same people doing that play-testing and revising (for one month) and trying to do the building for the next month. That is a lot to do in a month, and does not leave much margin for error when stuff from our busy lives comes up (as it inevitably will). I am not planning on doing a second submission this month (I need to get back to Swordflight Chapter Three - if I can make good progress on that I may be back in a future month), but if I were I am not sure I could take time to even play the February submissions (I would need every last scrap of NWN-time for building and testing), which would be unfortunate, since making something people will play and hopefully enjoy is after all the ultimate point of the exercise.

Now while I fear you might be too optimistic about the long-term sustainability of doing this monthly, I have to admit that it is possible I am being too optimistic about what people would actually do with some extra time. I am hoping that they would budget their time in a disciplined way so as to do more testing and revising before initial release, with more satisfactory products released as a result. But it is quite possible that extra time would just encourage people to take on more ambitious projects and thus they would end up in the same situation of having unfininished and poorly polished modules. Still, it would be good to allot a period in which people reasonably could play and review last month's modules, design and build something interesting, and subject it to a decent amount of play-testing, while dealing with the occasional intrusion from the non-NWN related spheres of life, even if not everyone is going to budget time well enough to actually do all that. Again, one option would be to experiment with different time limits in different challenges, to see which one seems to work best.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MagicalMaster]

               I pretty much agree with everything rogueknight333 said.  Especially the part of wanting to play the other modules instead of feeling like you have to ignore them to work on your own project.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               I see. Well if its always the same people participating each month, then I agree with you. But that is neither what I want nor what I anticipated.

I figured that people would participate one month making a prototype. Play other's modules after that month. Then move on to expanding their own. Eventually in another month or two they would come back to participate again. Meanwhile different participants would try their hands at it.

In my view, that is the best outcome as it will expand the community of builders and players over time, and increase module output to the vault which provides more for players to enjoy.

If its just the same builders each month, then yeah this challenge won't have enough energy to persist. And that may be the case. But at this point I don't see the value in lowering my expectations. If it becomes obvious that we aren't going to get new builders, then we should take a look at reformulating the schedule, but not before. I'm not ready to give up on this challenge's potential to encourage more builders to rise out of the community.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 05 mars 2013 - 12:00 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_olivier leroux]

               To me it's not quite clear yet who is meant to be the audience of the ABC's final products. As far as the participants and the challenge itself are concerned, it's quite simple: It's an opportunity for new builders to experiment and get feedback, and a little distraction and fun for veteran builders who'd like to take a break from more ambitious projects. But regarding the audience, is the ABC targeted at the other builders who'd give each other helpful feedback and advice according to their own experience with building, kind of like the old Builder's Project, or are the products meant to be enjoyed by curious players looking for new short stories or series as soon as the deadline has passed?

I'm assuming that you'd probably want it to be both, ideally. But I think that's a bit hard to pull off, if the modules are explicitly conceived a s prototypes. I think if you'd actually want to involve players without experience or interest in the building process and have them follow the ABC with curiosity each month, the goal should be to produce the most polished products possible within the given time frame. There's nothing to be said against fixing a module after the deadline if it needs fixing, but IMO the goal should be more than just a protoype if you want a greater audience of players to take an interest. Unless the ABC is really just more about learning and aimed more at builders than players, because I think the average player is put off by words like "prototype"; they'd rather wait for the final product before they'd even give it a try, so you can't expect much feedback from them.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par olivier leroux, 05 mars 2013 - 03:24 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

olivier leroux wrote...

I'm assuming that you'd probably want it to be both, ideally. But I think that's a bit hard to pull off, if the modules are explicitly conceived a s prototypes. I think if you'd actually want to involve players without experience or interest in the building process and have them follow the ABC with curiosity each month, the goal should be to produce the most polished products possible within the given time frame.

Definitely want a little bit of both. Perhaps to help I'll tone down the use of the word protoype. But I'm not keen on demanding polished content from builders in a month. How much polish they want to apply is up to them. I'd rather see progress and releases than perfect modules. Once the module is out there, they can keep polishing. And thats the beauty of encouraging the separate Vault entries when they are ready to post improved versions. They can improve their modules to their heart's content, and announce them as finished projects at their own leisure.

As I discussed with you, perhaps one way to make it easier for players is to prepare one master CC bundle for all the modules, and one Read Me explaining how to install the CC. That way players wouldn't have to run down all the CC and read several Read Me's to get in game.

But yeah, I hear you. What the ABC is needs to be clearer to players looking at us from a far.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_olivier leroux]

               The concern I mentioned above is independent of how the haks are managed and how the modules are presented though. I'm just saying that most players probably aren't interested in playtesting unfinished products. Like I said, adding the last polish afterwards - when players spot typos or find unexpected bugs - that's fine, but saying it's just a prototype to expand upon and authors consciously releasing unfinished modules will have most players ignore them until they can be sure that the module's definitely completed and out of "alpha" or "beta" stage.

This doesn't have to be a bad thing, it's just something to take into account when you define what kind of project the ABC is going to be. IMO it's not very realistic to hope that a compromise here will make both builders and players happy and keep them interested. "Alpha", "beta" and "prototype" are concepts that might scare off all but the most dedicated players, thereby also reducing the chance for builders to get much feedback on unexpected typos and bugs. Anyway, just my 2 cents.

EDIT:
To clarify, I didn't mean to say I'd expect "perfect" modules, but I'd expect them to be enjoyable in the current form. If a builder is aware that something is not working or too ambitious for the scope of a month, as a player I'd expect them to scrap that and do something technically less ambitious instead. If the modules are built as a learning experience and for other builders to discuss and give advice on, it doesn't really matter, but if you'd like to catch the attention of players you'll have a hard time baiting them with something that doesn't feel finished.

My guess is that if the ABC heads in that direction most players will only check out the modules months or years afterwards (if they don't forget about it completely), in order to avoid the ongoing updating process of the modules and to save themselves the trouble of having to check for each module whether there's a new version available already.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par olivier leroux, 05 mars 2013 - 06:28 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_rogueknight333]

               

henesua wrote...

...if its always the same people participating each month...that is neither what I want nor what I anticipated.

I figured that people would participate one month making a prototype. Play other's modules after that month. Then move on to expanding their own. Eventually in another month or two they would come back to participate again. Meanwhile different participants would try their hands at it.

To clarify, I very much hope more people can be drawn in as well, and agree it is too soon to despair that any will be. However, there is realistically going to be some overlap. In any case, even if we manage to bring on a completely new set of builders in a new month they would probably still want to first play the previous month's submissions to get an idea of what is expected, and generally get oriented to how the challenge works, and would therefore be in more or less the same situation of having to do all that on top of making their own module.

I also agree with what Olivier is saying. We will have a hard time attracting the interest of players without some sort of improvements to quality control. Most people are not going to be interested in downloading a half-finished, buggy mess. How to best go about doing this I am uncertain. Providing a little more time should help but might not be enough. One idea (if we had two months to work with) might be to set a preliminary submission deadline two weeks before the ultimate release when participants would be encouraged to submit a beta-version of the module as a project on the ABC group page. Members of the group could then use those two weeks to beta-test each other's work before the final release (this would be a "soft" deadline that only those interested in participating in the beta-testing would need to worry about, and with generous policies regarding lateness). Just one thought, perhaps others will have better ideas.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par rogueknight333, 06 mars 2013 - 04:36 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_MagicalMaster]

               I also think two months would work better, especially with a twoish week period of beta testing.  Would also make it more viable to play other modules from the previous month.  Could even do a general flow of:

1. First two weeks, play previous challenge's stuff
2. Next four weeks, build stuff (month long)
3. Final two weeks, polish and beta test

Some people may still be stupid, ignore the two week "deadline," and release something unplayable, but it helps give more structure.

On a personal note, having more beta testing would have helped avoid the issue with my module (namely, one boss being overtuned and nigh unkillable for certain characters).  I did four playthroughs of the "release" version with different characters and someone else did a beta run as well, but none of those runs had the "wrong" characters and none noticed the problem as a result.

I'm also curious what people think about the general state of what I submitted - is submitting something that is half-done in a sense but still equal in length (or longer) to the other mods a poor idea?  Would "officially" ending it and making a separate "part 2" instead of adding onto the original idea be more palatable to people?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_jackkel dragon]

               I'm not sure about whether one or two months would be better, but I do sort of like the idea of ending the submissions a week or so before the calender end of the month for the "completion prize". This way the review process starts a week before the next month begins with the next challenge, and players who don't want to risk a buggy mess can wait until the next month actually begins before playing and hope that the gamebreaking bugs get fixed in that week.

Of course, I'm *used* to playing buggy messes, so I'll probably still end up playing them right away. '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_jackkel dragon]

               Writing a scene for one of the characters in Precious Metals made me think of a possible theme candidate for April's poll of things for May. (If it's not too specific, of course.)

Divine Aspirations - An ally or enemy (or maybe someone the PC doesn't know yet) is trying to convince others to worship him/her as a god. It is up to the PC to help, hinder, or attempt to steal the worshippers of the would-be god. Actual divine power in the "god" optional.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par jackkel dragon, 08 mars 2013 - 06:44 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Thanks, Jackkel. I'll add that to the list.

However in May (for which an April Poll would serve) we won't be using Adventure Seeds. Every 3rd challenge I plan to mix it up and enable opportunity to change things if need be.

Considering the push for a longer cycle, for example, we may make that change then, if it seems like a good choice for the challenge.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_jackkel dragon]

               Interesting. Gives me time to set up the story I suggested the theme for though, which will help considering I'm already kinda behind.