Special Events
Alongside our standard monthly gatherings, we run a variety of special events through the year. Some are yearly traditions; others only come around every few years.
Yearly
Feb Feast (OOC Event)
Held over the winter break, Feb Feast is our big out-of-character social event where the community gathers and gets to know each other away from the game. While traditionally it has always been held in February (thus the name), it is sometimes held at the end of January.
During each Feb Feast we also auction, raffle and sell a variety of special items created by the Rules Comittee to raise funds for the game.
This is a wet event (alcohol permitted), which means it cannot be held at Camp Kingsley. Generally, a hotel or similar venue will be booked for it. That means pre-registration is required for catering, and the registration fee runs higher than a normal event depending on the venue. The date is announced the preceding November or December.
Founder's Feast
The only on-site event in March, when the game site is often snowy and icy. To work around the weather, it's trimmed to two shifts: cleanup takes what would normally be third shift, and an in-character feast replaces fourth. Players who don't have a character yet can play townsfolk and join the festivities.
This event is also our home for silly plots. April used to be the joke-plot month, but moving them to March keeps the GMs' metaplot launches in April from being mistaken for jokes and gives players a gentler, more relaxed return to game after the winter break before the year's plots ramp up. Serious stories still run in March, and the occasional joke plot appears in other months too, but this is when you'll see the best of them.
For first and second shift players PC/NPC as normal, with a special shift balance built by Logistics just for the event. Turnout tends to be lower (not everyone loves the cold), which lets Game Masters focus on the players who do come. During the in-character feast, no plots run as the Game Masters are playing their own characters.
Julybilee (OOC Event)
A yearly out-of-character picnic held during July's off month. Every campsite we've used runs summer camp for kids in July, so we can't hold a normal event then which is just as well, given the heat, the layers of garb, and everything we haul around. It began during our move to Kingsley: with no June event that year, we threw a picnic to fill the gap (the "Junebilee"), and it proved popular enough to become a tradition. We shifted it to July to fill the off month, though sometimes it will still fall on the last week of June.
This event is organized by the Player Outreach and Education staff and also hosts an auction and raffle with items created by the Rules Comittee, much like Feb Feast. Expect event details to be announced for this around April of each year, or earlier if we expect issues with booking.
Harvest Fest (August Event)
At Harvest Fest, third and fourth shift are given over to everyone playing their own player character; players who don't have a character yet can play townsfolk and join the festivities. Once held in the fall, it now runs in August to make the hottest month a little more relaxed.
Player groups each volunteer to run a carnival-style game with prizes for the winners. Past games have included trivia, Simon Says, archery, tag-bag throwing, and obstacle courses, really anything with a clear winner that wraps in about 30 minutes. There's also a fighter's tournament each year with custom rules to level the field so everyone can take part. Prizes are epic items whose magic lasts a single year.
For first and second shift players PC/NPC as normal, with a special shift balance built by Logistics just for the event. Harvest Fest kicks off once the logistics building is cleaned up. Much like Founder's Feast, Game Masters spend third and fourth shift playing their own characters so no plots run during the festival itself.
Seasonal Notes
A couple months carry seasonal quirks worth knowing, even though they run as standard events:
Halloween (November) Events
Post-Halloween clearance is a great source of new props, so the Props Marshal usually posts a want list of things to grab on sale. Cash donations made between October and November often earn double experience value to help fund those buys.
The Props and Atmosphere Marshals will post a want list if there's anything they're hoping to grab in the post-Halloween sales. Before buying anything for game, check whether they're after it first.
The post-Halloween sales are also a great time to pick up masks and costume parts for your own NPC kit.
There's no set in-game Halloween tradition, but many GMs seize the season to do something unusual or spooky.
December Events
As the last event before the 3 month winter break, GMs often wrap up ongoing plots — there's nothing sadder than a plot people were engaged with fizzling because everyone forgot the details over winter. Not everything wraps, but smaller, easily-forgotten threads and metaplots generally end by December at the latest.
If your adventuring group isn't sure it'll stay together over the break, let any GMs running plots for you know so they can wrap things up accordingly.
Periodic
These larger events run only every few years — partly to keep them special, partly because they're a great deal of extra work and expense to stage. Both typically replace the September or October event, usually require pre-registration, and may carry a higher fee to cover setup. The two rarely happen in the same year.
Dungeon Crawl
Players explore a dungeon full of monsters and traps in groups of around ten; anyone who normally plays independently joins a group for the event. The dungeon's physical layout stays static as it's demanding to build, but the narrative and the monsters inside change from group to group.
Castle Siege
We rent a different site (such as a paintball park) and use the structures built there to tell a story built around large-scale mass combat.