Idea for a new event - what do I do now?

[Strange Power Duck]

I have an idea for a new Adventure or Epic. How does sponsoring a game work? I read about scenarios requiring approval before they can become eligible, but who do I send the idea to? Or do I post it here?

Also, I think I'd want to team up with someone on sponsoring a potential event revolving around my brilliant idea, because I think I'm not experienced enough to make sure it'll be balanced enough.

[Sirian]

I have an idea for a new Adventure or Epic. How does sponsoring a game work?

That's a great question. The answers are fairly simple but not widely known.


You need all of the following to line up correctly:

1. You have a fun idea.
2. You develop it in to a COMPLETE scenario -- map type, civs involved, etc.
3. You write up your scenario rules, variant rules if any, and description.
4. You submit your idea to me in private. (Email is best).
5. If your idea wins approval (and this is not to be taken for granted), you generate the start file.
6. You wait for the appropriate slot in the schedule to arrive (could take months).
7. When the info thread for your event opens, you are responsible for answering questions, deciding on rules clarifications when necessary, etc.


If any of the following occur, you've hit a wall:
* Jumping to Step 4 above, without completing the first three.
* If your idea is to "reuse" a fun map you played in single player.
* If your step three is not up to spec.
* The more involvement you need from me, for anything, the worse off you are. You need to be ready for prime time -before- you step up to this type of venture.

Scheduling issues include:
* Epics are revisiting the original Civ3 Epics concepts, so the only slots open at this point are for Adventures.
* Adventures are easier to get approved than Epics would be anyway, because the Epics follow a 25/50/25 formula for easy/normal/hard games, mixing up civ choices, map types, and gameplay flavors. It can be hard to time your event to fit smoothly in to that flow, so wait times may sometimes be extensive in some cases.
* There are always more ideas for events than there are event slots. A really good idea sometimes jumps to the head of the line, but usually not.
* The more obscure and outlandish the variant, the harder it will be to get a slot in the short term, since we are still playing out the most basic concepts, or in a couple of cases experimenting with sticky gameplay issues (like in Adventure Thirteen).


Only one Civ4 event has so far been sponsored by someone other than me, and that was by Arathorn, who had extensive experience with sponsoring Civ3 Epics and knew how to sail through the process without needing it to be explained to him.

I would like to get some more sponsors going, but this is the first time anybody has asked the right question. Perhaps that is a positive sign for you, SP Duck, although this tidbit...

Also, I think I'd want to team up with someone on sponsoring a potential event revolving around my brilliant idea, because I think I'm not experienced enough to make sure it'll be balanced enough.

...would stop you cold in your tracks if you moved before you are ready. Almost everybody who ever managed to sponsor a Civ3 Epic had experience crafting ideas for succession game play and could put one together (which was ready for prime time) all on their own.


- Sirian

[Ruff_Hi]

Sirian - I always wondered about this ... but can I suggest a little change and I'm not trying to make your life more difficult ...

Can you add a 1.5 which is ...

1.5 - you email (or PM) sirian with a 5 line write up (no more) outlining your idea with the understanding that all you will get back is one of ...

1. dull, forget it
2. fairly dull, needs work
3. might work, flesh it out a bit
4. hmmn - interesting, please think about steps 2-7
5. wow - great idea ... you must go onto steps 2-7

[Kodii]

I'm glad that someone decided to ask a question on sponsoring games. I sponsored a game in Civ3, but then after that there was a transition to Civ4. I liked sponsoring that game, and I think I would be interesting in sponsoring some Civ4 games in the future. Of course, Sirian's reply gives me a good outline of what to do when considering the game.

[Sirian]

Sirian - I always wondered about this ... but can I suggest a little change and I'm not trying to make your life more difficult ...

Can you add a 1.5 which is ...

1.5 - you email (or PM) sirian with a 5 line write up (no more) outlining your idea...

I haven't met all that many ideas that were flops. This isn't the part where folks are getting tripped up, for the most part. The devil's in the details, and it's the details of an event concept that will make or break it, so there really isn't much point in adding this step.

In fact, I'll go as far as to say that if the extra work of writing an event proposal is unattractive in itself, without knowing in advance whether or not the game will go, then that's probably an indication against proceeding anyway. To me, it's NOTHING to blow through a page or two of writing. That's necessary just to exteriorize one's thoughts and see if they hold any water. So your step 1.5 would actually be counterproductive. To quote a recent line from a sports advertisement: Amateurs work until they get it right; Pros work until they can't get it wrong.


A Gentle Adventure will open next week, and I have not decided on a game plan for that yet. It's time for a scored event, but other than that, the slot is available for a would-be sponsor. Or, come Friday or so, I'll put one together myself. ... I realize that sponsoring a Gentle Adventure is probably not everybody's idea of what they want to be doing, but sometimes you have to choose between taking an opening or not.

(I just hope I don't get like fifteen proposals in my inbox tomorrow. Heh.)


- Sirian

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I'm trying to determine how much work there is in the proposal; I presume from your description that there is more than what is visible on the Tournament Games page (example http://realmsbeyond.net/civ/c4tourney/adv13.html)

If that's correct, are there any samples available? It's hard to know if writing an event proposal is too much trouble without knowing what an event proposal looks like.

Is there an apprenticeship program? Where somebody can learn the ropes by doing the grunt work for an experienced sponsor?

If some intrepid soul tosses a mock proposal here, as an exercise, will experienced sponsors volunteer to red pencil the proposal to help illustrate the degree of detail required?

[Strange Power Duck]

Sirian, thanks for your feedback. The procedure is clear now and I'll get to work on it. Heh, I've already got step 1 down, and just 6 more to go...
I have in fact about a page of 'if's, 'however's and 'it-would-probably-make-things-more-interesting-to's, and I'm not done yet.
<schizo>My dreams... they won't leave me alone! There's all these yellow little ducklings that bring me new thoughts! Help me...I...can't...aargh...</schizo>

I think I'll try out a few games to get a better feel for things, but I won't be able to play before the weekend, so don't count on me for next week's Gentle Adventure.

There's one thing though:

You submit your idea to me in private.

I had somehow hoped to maybe sponsor an event that you would know nothing about whatsoever. You sponsor almost all events and I thought it would be nice if you could, for a change, participate as a 'pure' player.

I mean, there's probably no-one better than you (where's that worship smiley?) to evaluate my proposal, but I'm sure you will enjoy a good dive into obliviousness once in a while. For me that's part of the biggest thrill of playing Civ: not knowing what's coming at me.

So, no offense, but is there any way to get 'around' you?

[Griselda]

Nope. Sirian's your man. My brief stint working on the lineup for some of the later Civ3 Epics made it all-too-clear that that is not where my talents lie, and for CIV I'm afraid that it would just be worse.

I can't see how it would make a difference if he was involved in the scenario design process or not. Experienced players, and especially experienced scenario designers, can see between the lines of scenario descriptions and will generally have a good sense of what will be coming at them before they even open the save file. For a good example of this, just read any of Kylearan's pre-game analyses from his game reports. If there's a "twist" in the game that hasn't been announced, odds are he'll have figured it out before the game even opens.

I think that the biggest help for Sirian, if you wanted him to approach a game "cold", would be that you would be creating the save file, so he would not have seen the map. Of course, since he wrote the map scripts, that might not even be enough anymore.

[T-hawk]

As the most prolific sponsor of Civ 3 events after Sirian, I'll weigh in here with an example. Here's my original writeup of the proposal for Civ 3 Epic Twenty-Nine.

Hi again. Inspiration struck me again regarding an Epic I'd like to sponsor. We haven't had a 5CC or any such type of restrictions in an Epic, and this should make for a decent smaller game to complement the Always War and Huge Map games.

Epic TwentySomething: The Five Pillars

Scenario goal: Five-City Challenge, building all five cities as well as you can.

Civ: Arabia
Map: Small, Continents, 20% land, customized for viable start and game
Difficulty: Monarch
Victory: Any except Domination

Variant Rules: Your civilization may never possess more than five cities at the end of a turn. You may temporarily acquire a sixth city (via conquest, flip, propaganda, cession, etc), as long as you get down to five before ending your turn. You may not temporarily acquire a seventh city (and thus cannot build the Forbidden Palace.)


Scoring:
All of the Five Pillars of your civilization are equally important. None should fall behind the others. The main scoring factor is the cultural value of your LOWEST cultured city in either 1800 AD or your victory date, whichever comes first.

I pick 1800 AD because most of the culture in the game will be complete by then, but most player victories won't happen too long before then. (Tech should go slowish with 20% land and the player probably not researching.) What would you think about setting the benchmark slightly later (1900 or 1950 AD), and allow playing after reaching game victory until that date?


Bonus score:
500 points: Victory
100 points: Each Age in which you commit no dishonorable acts
100 points: Extra bonus for playing the entire game Honorably
(Note that acquiring a sixth city and then abandoning it would be dishonorable)
100 points: Each slot in the F11 Top Five Cities list occupied by one of your cities at the benchmark date
200 points: Extra bonus for possessing all five Top Cities

As you can see, the scenario proposal is fully formed with all the details already specified - map setup, civ, theme, and the integration between the theme and the gameplay scoring. If Sirian had any concerns about the scoring or potential loopholes, or recommendations for a different setup of civ or map, he would've brought them up. For some of the other games I sponsored, we did hash through a few iterations of details. But the best proposals will stand as-is without needing any such tweaking. Here, Sirian nixed the idea of using a potential post-victory cultural benchmark date, and that's all the input that was needed from him.

The bottom line here for would-be sponsors is to go ahead and write up the full-blown realization of the scenario. The expected material is everything that would go on the game info page, plus any further notes or reasoning that you feel warrants an explanation. If the proposal is good, Sirian won't shoot you down. It may go on hold for a while until an appropriate slot in the schedule opens up. For this one, I already knew it was a good fit for the Epics as a popular game variant that hadn't been done yet at RB, and it fit with the schedule as a lighter, smaller game among a few heavyweights. Sirian welcomed it and asked me to generate the starting save pretty soon afterwards.

If anyone would like to run a proposal by me before submitting to Sirian, definitely feel free to do so. I'll vet it for loopholes and any suggestions I might have. But for a game that you're sponsoring, you are expected to do the heavy lifting. A ship needs one captain; there really isn't room in the sponsoring process for an apprenticeship.