And now for something completely different.



Ladies, gentlemen, and distinguished guests of indeterminate or eldritch gender!

Welcome to the Kyren Story Character Auction Game! Long have the goblins of Mercadia secretly plotted from the shadows against the rulers of this forum and now I have let loose the floodgates and all shall play the games of the Mercadian bazaar!

The game works like this:

First, there's an auction where people use points to bid on prompts!

Then, the winners of the bidding round compose a bunch of character biographies based on their selected prompt!

Finally, our kangaroo court made of goblins rather than. strictly speaking, kangaroos will rank the submissions based on their cohesiveness, originality, effervescence, and whether or not I've managed to find a new apartment! The higher your rank, the more points you earn back.

Here's how bidding works:

1. Each time you bid, you can add up to three points total divided as you choose among one, two, or three prompts
2. As soon as someone else bids, you can bid again--but you can't bid right after yourself!
3. Your TOTAL POINTS ASSIGNED TO ALL PROMPTS must not exceed the points you have available
4. If you win a bid, you gain that prompt and can write about it... but you pay for it with the bid's worth of points, just like a real auction.
5. You can at any point declare your bidding over. You may not bid after that point.
6. In the event of a tie, the first person who reached the high number wins.
7. In the event of someone winning more than one bid, first the lowest winning bids by that player are instead forfeited, and second if there is still a double win any ties that player would have won are instead forfeited. If that STILL doesn't fix things, bugger it, that person just wins two prompts that week, congratufreakinlations, I hope you're happy.
8. Bidding ends when no more moves are possible OR after three days have passed, whichever comes sooner.

You can post submissions at any point during the week based on your prompt. At the end of the submission period the pieces will be ranked and receive point awards based on their ranking.

Out of a spread of eight prompts, typically the award spread will be like this:

1. +10 points
2. +8 points
3. +7 points
4. +6 points
5. +5 points
6. +4
7. +3
8. +3




Simply ask to join and I'll give you ten points to join in on the bidding and add your name to the running tally.



Character Origins!

Write a character biography (not necessarily for the plane that this card comes from) featuring or based on, in some way, one of the following: (Note--the character does not have to be the figure depicted in the card art)

1. Orbs of Warding
2. Meteorite
3. Blood-Cursed Knight
4. Evolutionary Leap
5. Avaricious Dragon
6. Demonic Pact
7. Thopter Spy Network
8. Relic Seeker

Stories will be due: December 15th.

~Current Game Status~

RuwinReborn
Points: 19
Completed: Gift of Orzhova, Door to Nothingness
Mothballed:
Docket:

Tevish Szat
Points: 35
Completed: Vectis Agents, It That Betrays, Aeronaut Tinkerer
Mothballed:
Docket:

TheAmazingSquid
Points: 12
Completed: Bazaar Trader, Wild Evocation
Mothballed:
Docket:

Heliosphoros
Points: 15
Completed: Priest of Urabrask
Mothballed:
Docket:

Aaarrrgh
Points: 11
Completed: Caged Sun
Mothballed:
Docket:

Razorborne
Points: 14
Completed: Door of Destinies
Mothballed:
Docket:

Yxoque
Points: 24
Completed: Tethmos High Priest, Gargoyle Castle
Mothballed:
Docket:

Lord LunaEquie is me
Points: 15
Completed: Eaten by Spiders
Mothballed:
Docket:

vlord
Points: 14
Completed: Vampire Nocturnus
Mothballed:
Docket:

Neru
Points: 10
Completed:
Mothballed:
Docket:

AzureShade
Points: 12
Completed: Indestructibility
Mothballed:
Docket:

Tolarian Epidemic
Points: 18
Completed: Witchstalker
Mothballed:
Docket:

Current Phase Is: Bidding
Phase Ends: End of the day Saturday

can you clarify what "character biography" means here? is it still a story or like a dossier or what

Also, will the "Secondary Game" be making its debut?

Welp.

I don't really have a choice. Bidding on Demonic Pact.



Ruwin: 19 (1 assigned)

It's a dossier. It can be as detailed as you like and include as much or as little in the way of narrative as you like.

Basically this is like the old character creation contests just, you know, with a bidding system.

And yes I'm still fiddling with the text on the secondary game but I'm working on that.

I will say that if you want to start bidding on this the point assignments for the secondary game are going to be more in the range of like 2-4 points committed per week so you can plan around that to an extent.

Ruwin: 19 (1 assigned)
Tevish: 35 (2 assigned)

Q: Can I get a definition of Character Biography?

Imagine the character is an important person. Write the wikipedia page for him/her/pronoun.

OK, that's not entirely fair, but in general it's more what a dossier/bio is. You're not telling a detailed narrative, but rather trying to give an overview of the character including their personality, history (which can get more narrative) and abilities.

This is a terrible idea for so many reasons:

1) The whole "compete against each other!" aspect of this kinda gives me the shakes.
2) I have literally no time to do this properly.
3) I'm probably going to write a story, instead of a dossier, thereby defeating the point of the entire exercise.

*sigh*

With all that being said...



Ruwin: 19 (1 assigned)
Tevish: 35 (2 assigned)
OL: 7 (3 assigned)

Nnng. So many good ideas. Can I just bid on ALL the prompts?

Legitimate question: one of the prompts immediately reminded me of an old character I made... I think for the Map of the Planes roleplay group? Question being, assuming I get that prompt, it wouldn't be bad for me to recycle that, would it?


Ruwin: 19 (1 assigned)
Tevish: 35 (2 assigned)
OL: 10 (3 assigned)
Luna: 15 (3 assigned)


[Corrected OL's point total]

-----


What about autobiographies? Or quotations?

If you're looking for examples you can look to the M:EM bios. Vasilias, Lord of Ariva for example.

Or the character bios that Wizards produces for their Planeswalker characters.

@OL:

I believe in you Do you think the competition aspect of these games is bad though? Serious question, I'm always a little leery of competitions myself, though usually only because eliminations and "final" winners rather than ongoing games feel... bad to me.

Also just so you know you don't have to subtract the points assigned from your total unless you win the prompt at the very end.

Speaking from my own perspective, I think the competition aspect of at least the bidding phase is what has attracted as many people in here to begin with, so in that respect it's a good thing. The limited resources means everyone is jockeying to be on top and be proclaimed the king of duelists. I would suggest in future, if we end up with somewhere closer to 20 active bidders, to increase the number of prompts by a bit. I don't have any good idea of a formula, but having half the number of prompts as people seems like a good start, so maybe increase it to 10 if/when we end up with a lot of players.

I mentioned this kind of in the other game thread but the prompts are limited artificially to eight because that's... kind of what I can effectively handle within the grading period? And this week was even a bit of a stretch just because I was also grading waaaay too many essays for my Respectable Productive Citizen Job.

I've thought a bit about alternatives though. We'll have to see if we get to that point. If we do I'm sure we'll work something out. I do want to increase the ability of people to participate since I'm promoting this on social media and all in an attempt to get folks onto these boards.

I just spent 2 points in the worldbuilding game, so my current total here is 9, I guess.



Ruwin: 19 (1 assigned)
Tevish: 35 (2 assigned)
OL: 10 (3 assigned)
Luna: 15 (3 assigned)
Aaarrrgh: 9 (1 assigned)

Ruwin: 19 (1 assigned)
Tevish: 35 (2 assigned)
OL: 10 (3 assigned)
Luna: 15 (3 assigned)
Aaarrrgh: 9 (1 assigned)
AzureShade: 12 (3 assigned)

Ruwin: 19 (1 assigned)
Tevish: 35 (4 assigned, 2 spent in Hangar)
OL: 10 (3 assigned)
Luna: 15 (3 assigned)
Aaarrrgh: 9 (1 assigned)
AzureShade: 12 (3 assigned)

Ruwin: 19 (1 assigned)
Tevish: 35 (4 assigned, 2 spent in Hangar)
OL: 10 (3 assigned)
Luna: 15 (3 assigned)
Aaarrrgh: 9 (1 assigned)
AzureShade: 12 (4 assigned)

No, no -- I don't think it's bad. In fact, it seems like most everybody enjoys it.

It's just... not my thing, you know? For me, it just feels kind of like a no-win situation. Because, if I write something and share it, and people don't like it, then that's obviously bad. But, if I write something, and share it, and people do like it, then that means that I would be getting points at someone else's expense, and that doesn't thrill me, either.

Plus, I don't feel great about the notion of fighting someone else for a prompt, since I don't want to block someone else from getting what they'd want to get.

Which is sort of why I've just been lurking on the sidelines. I don't want to bump anyone else out by jumping in.

But everyone seems like they're having so much fun, that it's kind of killing me not to participate. So I guess I'll give it a shot.

Well, the worldbuilding game is much less directly competitive if you want to give that a try too!

I totally get where you're coming from though.

What a weirdly quiet round.