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Kiralynn
Kiralynn of Rohan
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re: Windy Acres 2015 Events -- Need Your Feedback

Greetings, Banders!

It's that time of year again -- time to schedule the next year of Windy Acres Ranch events.

Over the years, we have hosted a wide variety of events. There isn't enough free time to host them all.
I need your feedback about which events you would be interested in participating in.
Even more importantly, I need to know which events that Banders will volunteer to help host.

Here is the list of potential events:
* War steed horse racing
-- A small number of individual races, or...
-- One race per month, or...
-- Series of races adding up to a Spring Racing Carnival
* Rodeo
-- Usually includes war steed barrel racing, mounted fashion contest, name-that-song, and comedy rodeo clown routine
* Formation Riding Team
-- Weekly practices that end with a performance, fireworks, and music
* Theater Night
-- Put on a play or two (hopefully written by a creative Bander to feature their work)
* Solve-A-Mystery
-- Original style where suspects try to implicate each other, or...
-- New style where there are witnesses with clues in a zebra-style puzzle scenario
* Fireworks Show & Concert
-- Coordinated fireworks launching to fine music
* Mardi Gras Ride
-- Mardi Gras or other holiday parade ride between two cities, usually ending in a concert at the destination, often with a fashion contest
* Storyteller's Festival
-- A (better organized) gathering of people who wish to tell story stories or perform long ballads


If there is something about these events that could be changed to make them more fun (or more appealing for volunteers) please do mention it. Thank you for your feedback, it is sincerely appreciated.


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Caiyyd
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re: Windy Acres 2015 Events -- Need Your Feedback

As I am hoping this year is far better in RL for me than last I would love to be able to help out with any racing or formation events. I still have a war steed route that I designed around Weathertop that was never used!

I can also help with parades - a mounted concert could be fun!
Kiralynn
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re: Windy Acres 2015 Events -- Need Your Feedback

Mardi Gras 2015 is on Tuesday, February 17.


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Molly Bayberry
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re: Windy Acres 2015 Events -- Need Your Feedback

Hi, Kiralynn,

All of these sound like fun, and I'd help with as many as I could, schedule permitting. (Saturday from around 6 and Sunday before 11 are busy times for me in real life.) Although I wouldn't be a contestant in the horse events, I could help, and of course theatre and story events are my favourites.


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re: Windy Acres 2015 Events -- Need Your Feedback

All of these events have been so much fun to attend and help out with! If I limit myself to choosing just a few - I'd have to say Theater Night, Storyteller's Festival, Formation Riding and Horse Racing as my top four. Though, there really isn't a bad choice in the list, all of your events have great attendance! I know I often sign up late due to uncertain RL schedules, but I would help as much as possible!


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re: Windy Acres 2015 Events -- Need Your Feedback

I would be happy to help in any way I can! If you need hosts, I would be happy to do that too.

As no one minds if I take this role again, I would happy to choreograph and direct another formation riding performance. I already have some notes put together for a new routine, and some ideas about increasing interest in the mean time.

One other (rather far-fetched) idea I have been considering for the past year or so is putting on a ballet; specifically, an abbreviated version of The Nutcracker. Honestly, I am not sure if this is in any way feasible, but I do have some ideas...And if we could pull it off, it would be pretty neat.


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Kiralynn
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re: Windy Acres 2015 Events -- Need Your Feedback

RohanArchitect wrote:
One other (rather far-fetched) idea I have been considering for the past year or so is putting on a ballet; specifically, an abbreviated version of The Nutcracker. Honestly, I am not sure if this is in any way feasible, but I do have some ideas...And if we could pull it off, it would be pretty neat.

Not a bad idea! Personally, I'd been toying with the idea of asking people if they'd like to put on "Phantom of the Opera". :)


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re: Windy Acres 2015 Events -- Need Your Feedback

These all sound fun and I'd like to help if scheduling permits!

I do have one question about the formation riding..... Is it necessary to have a War Steed to do this? I'm close but not quite there yet..... but I'm working on it!
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re: Windy Acres 2015 Events -- Need Your Feedback

Tulenn, our most recent riding team performance was a warsteed formation, but prior to that we used (matching) regular/reputation steeds.

As for my opinion/preference: I know that formation riding and warsteed races are both fun for the participants as well as the audience, but I do worry about lag issues for both events. Theater, mystery and storytelling events don't suffer so much from lag, but can have issues with the /say bug. I enjoy all of the events and will look to participate in some way if I can.


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Kiralynn
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re: Windy Acres 2015 Events -- Need Your Feedback

I love the mystery, theater, and storytelling events. I do want to host at least a couple of equestrian events during the year. It seems like the best way to keep the "Ranch" in Windy Acres.

I'd love to see the riding team on standard horses with +78% speed bonuses (Journeyman riding). That way, they would be moving at the exact same speed as each other, 16% faster than their last standard-walking routine. Not so much speed as to go "woah!!!" and not so slow as to be boring. A smaller field would help, as well. That way, there would be more maneuvers and less transition time. I'll leave the war steed formation design to Craicwyth, who is far better at coming up with routines for those crazy-fast mounts.

I'd especially love to see a team of 6-8 riders. I have often watched some of the fancier patterns the larger teams perform... with envy! Perhaps we could find a practice time that works for more people.

I'd also love to film the formation riding team's routine the next time, too. I was disappointed we didn't get to film the war steed routine. It was amazing! Thank goodness that the Insert-Insert trick now has some chance of removing saddle-bounce.

I'm trying to get a non-white chicken token so that I can buy a Hobnanigan's HUGE yard field. I think it would be neat to have a sports/fashion arena in a housing neighborhood, where we can control the surrounding yard decorations.


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re: Windy Acres 2015 Events -- Need Your Feedback

I participated in all the Windy Acres Ranch events from March on, and I feel the event that most defined LMB and was most inclusive was the auction...in the months leading up to it, many kin donated their time and skills, in varied generous ways. I do believe a charitable auction should be held in 2015. I suggest we have a polite kin discussion on whether to stay with Extra Life or pick something else. I personally am fine with Extra Life, and they have the mechanics in place to make it easy, but I want to diffuse any controversy up front...and if we have a majority of kin saying yes, let's continue, that should help. We could have a friendly discussion followed by a poll, perhaps, to pick the charity. Just a suggestion...

The auction should be combined with an event, whatever one would draw the most people.

I personally will want to sign up for any band playing at any of the sponsored events, as a preference over taking on another role. I did quite enjoy being a gate judge at the spring carnival, taking the screen shots and verifying everyone legitimately cleared the gates.

A monthly race seems like too much to me...one big spring carnival is my recommendation with a nice distance between it and Weatherstock. I thought that event was very well executed and great fun.

For theatre, I highly recommend that kin be allowed to submit one-act plays with a Middle Earth theme, then you, Kiralynn, could pick two or three to stage (or use a committee to pick), as a single big theatre or storyteller event combined.

I favor fewer events, with kin resources and advertising very focused to make them quite successful big events.

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re: Windy Acres 2015 Events -- Need Your Feedback

I would also prefer fewer, but more intricate and well planned/rehearsed events. My favourite are the Mystery Role Plays. I like the Horsey things as an audience member.


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re: Windy Acres 2015 Events -- Need Your Feedback

I have been playing with routes and would like to propose a To The Gates warsteed race series. Four races total: Shire, Weathertop, Rivendell, and the area outside the Moria gates. The Weathertop and Rivendell routes would be shorter races all about control with trickier routes and the other two would be longer ones about speed.

Would anyone be interested in helping organize and run these? Would anyone want to race them? I love participating in racing events but will happily design routes to keep racing alive on the server!

I have gold I can donate as prizes (and may even have an emerald shard or some such thing for an overall winner of the series if folks want)
Kiralynn
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re: Windy Acres 2015 Events -- Need Your Feedback

Caiyyd wrote:
I have been playing with routes and would like to propose a To The Gates warsteed race series. Four races total: Shire, Weathertop, Rivendell, and the area outside the Moria gates. The Weathertop and Rivendell routes would be shorter races all about control with trickier routes and the other two would be longer ones about speed.

Would anyone be interested in helping organize and run these? Would anyone want to race them? I love participating in racing events but will happily design routes to keep racing alive on the server!

I have gold I can donate as prizes (and may even have an emerald shard or some such thing for an overall winner of the series if folks want)


These are some interesting and fun ideas. I'd be happy to help host them, or host them if you want to race.


Here are some thoughts drawn from experience.

* Long races have a great chance of cheating, which is why I usually host them as "fun runs" without much (if any) prizes. It's too hard to patrol all waypoints where people could use travel skills to cheat.

* All steed types have the same maximum speed. Obstacles are essential to make riding skill a bigger factor than latency/lag.

* These would make great lead-up races for the Spring Racing Carnival. If designed to make them difficult to cheat, they would be great qualifier races.


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re: Windy Acres 2015 Events -- Need Your Feedback

I really love the idea of a Spring Racing Carnival, but the turn-out last year was pathetic. There were more band members than audience members. I felt that the races really weren't worth all the effort. Few riders even showed up for the final race.

I have some thoughts about what went wrong ---

* Less Turbine support than in previous years. No prizes or advertising. It's anyone's guess as to whether we'll see any Turbine event support in the future.

* Far less LMB support. No advertising posters made, little channel advertising, no streaming, few volunteers confirmed ahead of time, barely came up with the necessary number of judges, less prize support than previous years (less than half the gold purse), few volunteers to host qualifier races, no pie/ale vendors, and not as much Bander attendance in the crowds.

* Event hosts were up to one hour late for their events, so crowds wandered off and other people had to jump in to do it.

* Final race at Hengstacer Farms. Although this helped with some of the bad lag and terrain problems in Bree, people showed a reluctance to take a stable ride to an event. Apparently it's better to make the riders put up with lag.

I took these as a general lack of interest in a big racing event. I figured that we probably wouldn't hold one this year. The rodeo actually had a far larger turn-out, triple the audience size.

If there is renewed interest in the Spring Racing Carnival, I would love to work with you all to put one together. Otherwise, it's probably a good idea to focus on the events that brought in crowds -- rodeo, solve-a-mystery, theater, and riding team. I'd like to stick to events where there is real volunteer enthusiasm.

Naturally I would like your feedback on this. I can only speak from my perspective.


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