Dusk Hollow and Campout Updates

I went to Dusk Hollow (Dallas, OR) on Sunday, but I didn’t stay very long, it was Super Bowl Saturday. I’m not a football guy but I was invited to a party by some new friends and I wanted to take the chance to hangout get to know them better.

I got to the park around 12:30 and ate the lunch I picked up on the way. I visited with people for a while before they started a game of Two Man Forever, with class abilities. I took some video of it HERE if you’d like to watch it. The video is about 20 minutes long, they played the game for about 30-40 minutes though. I left shortly after the game finished but that’s not the end of the blog.

I wanted to take a chance to talk about the two events I’m running this year, Shattered Kingdoms and Pacific War (also known as Pac War). With Pacific War I’m running it with Ceian. We also got the bid for Olympiad so it’s shaping up to be a big event.

Pacific War

Yesterday, Monday, Ceian and I made the trip out to the Pacific War site, about 13 miles from Vernonia. It was the first time we got a chance to look at the site in person. We’ve seen a map and some pictures but this visit gave us the chance to get orientated and see the area. It was unexpectedly snowy and wet though.

I think the site will be positively received. Most of it is much nicer than the Oregon 4-H Center. The fighting field is very large, mostly flat and not riddled with holes. There is a second field we can use for side games or extra tent space as needed.

There is a kitchen and an open air lodge for feasting and gathering which right next to the main field. There is also a second building we’ll by using for Olympiad Arts and Science entries.

Everything is pretty well centralized. It all sort of spirals off from the lodge and main fighting field. There are several groups of adirondacks, 3 walled structures that have wooden beds in them, one group of cabins, the A&S hall and the camping area. We walked the whole area and it’s not that bad of a walk, it’s pretty manageable.

There are a few concerns, the main one being the parking. We’ll have to keep a tight reign on it and manage it well to fit everyone in. There is one large parking area, some parking by the tent sites and very limited parking at the adirondack and cabins.

I was also concerned about the tent camping but after talking with Ceian and the fact we can use the second field for tent camping, I don’t think it will be a real issue. People just won’t be able to be spread out as much as they were at the 4-H center.

All in all I was happy about the trek out there. It was nice to be able to get eyes on the site and make some sense of the map. We have rented a good amount of the site but not everything. There is still a horse camping area that we don’t have reserved so the whole park won’t be ours. We might have to watch how loud we get after 10.

Shattered Kingdoms

Saturday I spent some time working on Shattered Kingdoms. I will freely admit the planning is behind, but we have enough time to still make it a great event and we are working on doing just that. This year we encountered some personal problems that were unexpected. Life comes up so it’s understandable, but it didn’t help.

I’ve added two more people to the quest team, Kormac and Darb, so we should be getting rolling on that soon. I set up a new system using Google Docs that should allow us to keep great documentation and keep it orderly. That’s what I worked on, on Saturday.

I have a main document that outlines the event and gives descriptions of all aspects. The quest and themed battle games are detailed in their own document and then linked back to the main outline. This lets us have a centralized document where everything is organized.

My hope is for us to start figuring out the quests this week. I’ve already started working out on the themed battle games. The people are new to our event’s normal style, in so much as they haven’t worked on the quests format for our event before but they are top notch people so I think they will adapt well. I do hope they will start asking questions soon, I know they will need to ask several to help flesh out the story.

I also need to actually create the event, which I will be doing after I’m done with my blog today. Chances are, if you are reading this, the event is up or will be up shortly. I’m not ready to take pre-registration yet, but that will come in a month or two.

I contacted an artist about doing the coin a while ago but again, life stuff has came up and they aren’t able to do it. Today I contacted Co-ach, the person who designed the coin last year and he agreed to do it again this year so that is still on schedule.

The next big challenge, other than the content, is getting enough volunteers to run the event. There are a lot more positions that need to be filled that are a hybrid of NPC and logistical work than in previous years. It has to do with our plans of players building up holdings for the event. If you are reading this and what to help, please feel free to reach out to me.

Next weekend is the Kingdom Qualifications at Dusk Hollow. I of course will be attending. More importantly there is a chili cook off scheduled and I challenged Darb. We didn’t place any bets but we are making sure at least two people are entering the contest.

I’m entering my usual bean free recipe (because traditional chili doesn’t have beans!) but with a few alterations which I hope will give it a little bit of an edge. I think the base recipe is fine by itself but last year it lost to Dat boi Sploob’s chili so I need to see if I can make it stand out a bit more. I’ll let you know how it goes next week!