Our first event has come to an end.  I’d like to give a big thank you to all the participants!  I know a great many hours were put in to your entries and it definitely shows in the works that were submitted.  I was amazed by the level of creativity and detail in the entries that were produced in such a short amount of time, and I look forward to more thoroughly going through the results. 

The first task we (Glitch, Prose, Firky, Para, Ama, and I) need to do is to go through everyone’s entries to ensure that the entries meet the minimum qualifications, and to record who requested and gave critiques.  Once we have determined that, we will distribute the prizes to those who qualify and get the raffle all lined up!  This shouldn’t take too long—roughly a week.

The second task will be going through the entries again and selecting bits and pieces of some of your entries to work into our first chapter.  This step will be a lot more time consuming and the results from this won’t be available for awhile.  I love the second part especially because many of the user ideas formed during the event will become a permanent fixture in cave canon! 

Again, thank you again for your hard work.  If you have any suggestions for improving this type of event in the future, be sure to let us know! :) 

That was such a great event! And I can’t wait to see what gets incorporated into the new chapter~

Thank you so much for everything. :3

I liked participating in this event it was great to get some of my creative juices flowing again in something other than drawing.
I’m sad I couldn’t do to much of what I wanted though because of personal life and work.

I’ll go ahead and kick off the “things we can do better” next time. These are mostly just things we didn’t think about that would have been nice:

1- Admins and maybe mods could offer critique themselves for people who ask for critique but are not receiving any. This happened to a number of people during the event, and not receiving critique when you ask for it is kind of a shame, especially when you’re asking about specific things!

2- Encourage teamwork more effectively — most people seemed to prefer to work on their own than work with someone they didn’t know. I thought this was a shame because I was hoping this event would serve as an “ice-breaker” getting people together, since a lot of you are new and don’t really know many people here yet. This didn’t seem to happen at all. In terms of “cross-medium teams”, I thought that was going to be the coolest thing about this event, but I think only one or two people did this. Oh well.

3- Make more of the event happen in October, to conflict less with NaNoWriMo and end-of-semester academic stress-times. We could start it such that Oct 31st happens within the second week, for example.

3- Be clearer about deadlines. There were a lot of “do we need to finish by the deadline” questions. We also never addressed whether or not we would be doing “partial credit”, i.e. for participants who did not meet the minimum requirements, etc. In the future it might be better to have multiple “tiers” of participation that you could work towards, but this becomes difficult to judge for entries that are less quantitatively definable (e.g. artwork, etc). We should think long and hard about how to deal with this before the next event of this kind.

4- Minigames should start early enough to finish by the end of the main event (and ideally should be active over Halloween in question)

1- OMGWTFBBQ you guys made some amazing things. I’m totally impressed with the level of awesome that you guys brought to the table. I was also very pleased to see some of you choosing to work with non-traditional media. Watching you guys construct your entries and seeing the final product has been such a pleasure you have no idea.

2- On the whole I think the 2-week timeframe worked really well. It gave you the opportunity to put something really fantastic together, while not eating up your time for tooooo long. What do you think? Is 2 weeks about right?

3- I was really happy with how critique turned out, other than the issue of not receiving critique when asking for it. I saw some great suggestions getting made, and saw them incorporated into the works in question. This is pretty much exactly what I was hoping to see happen, and I hope that those of you who asked for it found the experience both enjoyable and useful. I think Myla’s critique of some of my artwork really helped me grow as an artist ;)

4- I really like that you guys took this opportunity to propose things for the Canon. It’s going to be so much fun going through everything picking out our favorite elements and making them Canon ^^

SAPPHY’S 2 CENTS ON GLITCH’S THOUGHTS \o/
On the whole I think the 2-week timeframe worked really well. It gave you the opportunity to put something really fantastic together, while not eating up your time for tooooo long. What do you think? Is 2 weeks about right?”
=) This was great, well.. besides the fact it overlapped with school and when AC4 came out XD but the length was fine. It’s about the usual for when I’m assigned art projects in school. so.. yeah. n_n

Canon input: I’ve sorta mentioned this in an echo to you but i’d kinda like a way to suggest minor details/ask questions about the canon etc. Like Chapter 1 is going to be a major event that happens in the cave I imagine, but like.. minor things like the already sort of proven ‘are there fish in the cave?’ sort of..normally completely pointless but might come up.
‘what do ineki eat?’
Mushrooms, Fish, and apparently there are apples?
Is that fancy carved building thing where the sorceress lived? it kinda stands out from the rest of the woodhut things and carving alla that by hand would’ve sucked. XD maybe that’s just me being like ‘WANT ALL THE ANSWERS TO ALL THE THINGS YES PLZ’

Admin Critiques: i’m..actually surprised the Admins and Mods weren’t critiquing? So yeah. That’d totally be something kinda awesome.

Teamwork: Yeah uhm..working with people who you don’t know already is difficult? Particularly when you don’t know their style like.. at all. Possibly have a thing sorta pre-event for writers who want to have their work illustrated? They’d have to state what kind of style they’d want, personally. (Ie, cutsey, serious, etc.) Because I know in order to finish on time I needed to start the first day, no questions. which is the main reason I didn’t collaborate with anyone.
I’d love to see more of that though, I think collaborations when done well are awesome. It’s just.. normally they’re very difficult? ((IE School projects. and do not tell me I am not imagining that collective groan when I mentioned that)) In these scenarios I’d..kinda like a safety net for if one user bails because of IRL or whatever and the other is left hanging to dry.

333333-you have 2 threes in ‘things we can do better’ glitch, anwyay, maybe be a bit clearer in general? It sorta seemed like you had to use one of your characters from your profile in the entry, which I don’t think was the intent? Like maybe that was just being encouraged but ??? I think someone asked a question about it but i never saw the answer (I had started working on mine anyway so..yeah)

Suggestion Thing: Speaking for myself I tend to be impatient? XD So I’d probably request the mods to “grade” finished ones when they’re done? (not the critiques as those can be done up until the last date but like.. if i label mine as finished that means I’ve submitted it.) It’d probably sorta reduce the workload at the end and possibly get the prizes out sooner to users =)

...I actually had this vague plan to try to get some sort of critique out to most people, but I totally failed. :| I will try to do better next time! <3 I need to find some way to do it so that it’s less technical and more broad (but I thought I was doing that in the first place and IDEK anymore, haha).

Ishy and Sapphy You could always ask a mod about canon? The thing is the caves can be pretty much anything you want, which opens up the realm of possibilities. It also opens up the floor for a lot of confusion too, but I do like the freedom of it. So if your ineki only eats mushrooms that’s cool. If it wants to eat fish and apples and flying buffalo—I’m sure there’s a cave with flying buffalo. Somewhere. As long as it doesn’t interfere with already set canon then it should be all right.

I think the event was loads of fun! :3 It was nice to look through some other people’s work, and see all the different mediums used.

One thing I would have liked to see at the start of the event was something clearly telling us that this was an opportunity to create/propose new Canon things. I was very tentative with what I roleplayed because I didn’t want to step into anything Non-Canon and so have my entry not count. ^-^’ Maybe that was just me, though.

glitch, I made a new frieeend! :D
I think encouraging teamwork could have been done a little better, but I met someone new and we roleplayed together! So, it wasn’t as cool as something cross-media, but after this event I think I’d be willing to try something like that next time! And even if it didn’t seem to happen at all, some ice-breaking did occur at least a little bit!

Hello glitch!

My two cents:

1. Yes, please do it earlier in October. It was really hard to devote this time to the event, since I have finals that start Monday. That said, the 2-week model was great.
2. I think the admins should offer critique on people’s work that has gotten critique as well. Saying you’ll offer it only to those people who haven’t gotten comments is almost an incentive not to get comments from others because we want to hear what you have to say about our work.
3. If we could have three or four minigames next time that would be cool. Perhaps a secret potion hunt like last year?

I am 100% for having half of the event fall in October. NaNoWriMo owns my soul during November so it’s super difficult to devote significant time to anything else (surely I’m not the only one?) I did attempt to do an art entry, but not only did I not finish in time, I fell behind my wordcount by 4k D:

As for the time frame itself, 2 weeks seems perfect to do entries in. I kind of miss having some sort of clicking game, though I guess that would end up as a contest of who can spend the most time on the computer…but maybe that could be some sort of minigame idea down the line? *shrug*

“2- Encourage teamwork more effectively — most people seemed to prefer to work on their own than work with someone they didn’t know. I thought this was a shame because I was hoping this event would serve as an “ice-breaker” getting people together, since a lot of you are new and don’t really know many people here yet. This didn’t seem to happen at all. In terms of “cross-medium teams”, I thought that was going to be the coolest thing about this event, but I think only one or two people did this. Oh well.”

I personally did not work with someone because I was afraid of my schoolwork getting in the way and I didn’t want to leave them to worry or second guess my ability to be dependable. I am glad in the end that I wrote something on my own because… well… school DID get in the way. I actually was going to write a story maybe double the amount I produced, but I had to condense it due to my schedule.
That being said, if I had the time, I would have looked for someone to work with without question. I love meeting new people or getting to know acquaintances on a more personal level.  Events like these have proved to be a great way for me to find more friends and have even more fun!

A two week time frame was fine. I COULD have used more time, but if I had the full two weeks to work on it without RL responsibilities, it would have been more than enough time. I suppose if there was another feature in the event (potion hunting, for example), then I would extend it a bit, but since creating was the main focus, it was a good.
——-

I’d like to thank everyone who hosted this and will be looking over what we produced!! I’m excited to see how the first chapter turns out! Like someone above me said, I was a bit nervous about stepping out of canon too much, but I think the leap of faith I made turned out to be an interesting idea? Haha, we’ll see.

Jingles thoughts:
1. I would appreciate admin/mod/writer/artist critique :D Especially Artist on drawings on Writer on stories - it just feels more official kinda, since it’s from someone chosen to do official Mycena stuff :3

2. A lot of that had to do with an unsure schedule. I didn’t want to stick someone in a group that wouldn’t finish because I was busy, or get myself stuck in a similar situation.
There are a few things I would really appreciate or that I think would encourage groups next time:
—(Make it clear that you) Allow multiple entries to be started, even if you only get a prize for one - that way if me (or the other person) ditched, the one who still had time wouldn’t be screwed.
——Related: Allow bits of abandoned entries to be reused by those who abandoned them - so the artist could move their pictures to the new entry and continue it, for example.
—Give a warning of the start date and rules 7-10 days in advance, so that users would have plenty of time to find someone who they would want to work with.
—Allow partial prizes for incomplete entries
—Give small extra prizes for grouping - like an extra raffle ticket or something :3
——Related: If you particularly want to encourage random grouping, have a random pool that anyone can join for an extra small prize to get thrown in a group of 2-3 people, with said random drawings happening at least 2 full days before the event’s beginning.
—Make a little “best of” contest with a small prize, with categories for writing, drawing/painting, and other. Groups which use multiple mediums can enter in multiple areas.

3 (1). I would actually really appreciate it if the event ended on or within a day or two either way of October 31st, and October 31st was dedicated to some other minigame. That way the event as a whole would be during the time we’re getting all riled up for Halloween and be part of that excitement, and Halloween itself would actually have some fun special bits to set it apart :3

3 (2). Tiers and clearness are both awesome. I can not quickly think of a way to work out non-writing judging, but I hope you can :D

4. Halloween minigames would be awesome :3 Especially a special one just on Halloween day.

2) I liked the two weeks! It was long enough that a few busy days didn’t screw me over, but short enough that it didn’t feel like a giant ordeal.

4) I liked writing canon, too. I was really happy when I saw that was what the event would be. Explaining tiny contributions to cave tradition seemed like an enormously fun thing to me.

I just finished handing out the prize bags, and so all that’s left are the mini-games and the raffle! We’ve gone through the list and here’s what we came up with. If you think the number of raffle tickets assigned to you is wrong, please let me know by echo:

PyroLuna: 3
Arie: 3
Collie: 3
BlueAutumn: 2
KeeperGreymuzzles: 4
Amaterasu: 4
Chaos: 4
Elfe: 3
Shadow Owl: 4
Ciress: 2
Aloulore: 2
Avis: 2
Tamako: 4
Firkasa: 3
Alice: 3
Ishia: 3
Nyfeaena: 4
Corvani: 2
Kiwi: 3
Niri: 2
Prose: 3
Paradoxical: 4
Eluii: 3
Akira: 4
Morgan: 2
Kali: 3
Dulcette: 3
Echo: 2
Jingles: 4
Nephele: 2
Blemy: 3
-Aku: 2
Meesh: 4
royal: 2
Irefe: 2
feyers: 4
Lilael: 3
Solitude: 2
Darktornathore: 4
Recursion: 4
Insigne: 4
Nine: 4
Pirran: 4
Ishy and Sapphy: 4
Raye: 4
Lena: 4
Fawkes: 4
Cosmic: 3
Roan: 2
Skye: 2
Kareina: 2

The minigame prizes have just been handed out, so all that’s left is to do the raffle drawing…..
So without further ado:

12 winners will be drawn. Prizes, in order, are:

1-3: one White Candy Corn bag
4-7: two Yellow Candy Corn bags, two Orange Candy Corn bags
8-12: a Yellow Candy Corn bag and an Orange Candy Corn bag

Alice with 3 tickets.
Irefe with 2 tickets.
Roan with 2 tickets.
Insigne with 4 tickets.
Nyfeaena with 4 tickets.
Collie with 3 tickets.
Solitude with 2 tickets.
Niri with 2 tickets.
Pirran with 4 tickets.
Jingles with 4 tickets.
Kareina with 2 tickets.
Nephele with 2 tickets.

Congratulations to the winners! I’ll be sending your prizes out this evening. And a huge thanks to everyone who took part in this event and made it as special as it was — I hope you found it fun, and that you’re enjoying your Halloween loot :)

I won? I won! What did I win? :o