Jesters of Middle Earth

Right, after my absence its time for me to organise some stupidity.

I've decided to go for a server wide horse race, not just restricted to player owned horses anyone can enter (don't know if stable horses will stand a chance, but its peoples choice). I suggest a quite long race to allow people to take different routes, so something like muchel delving to last bridge or rivendell maybe.

I would like to organise something like what we had for the hide and seek and have a donated prize fund, initially started by the jesters but added to by any competitiors who want to donate, but entirley voluntary, then prizes for top 3 or 6 depending how much we get.

As its server wide, might need a few of you guys to be out and about watching proceedings and seeing if anybody is cheating, but there isn't a lot we can do about it.

So that was my initial thoughts, anyone got any suggestions ideas??? anything???

If anyone wants to do some cool artwork that we can use to spam on the official forums that would be cool as well.

I'm thinking around about 29th September

One thought about the bought/stable master horses.. Might be worth giving it a try if some people in the Jesters aren't busy one day. Only I have a feeling the stable master horses will have an advantage being that they're faster horses. Really depends on the route though as to how many shortcuts and stuff there are.

Prize fund worked brilliantly for the Hide and Seek so I'm sure it would again, can always do like a 'suggested donation' kind of thing. 

And I'll chime in to offer my services in the way of promotional material (A fancy poster, really), to spam around the official forums, if you want.

Edit: I'm away on 29th September - So if we schedule it for then, I'll be sad (Though, don't go rearranging it just for me!)

 Sounds brilliant for the poster, as regards date I got nothing set in stone was merely the thoughts of a madman. How about the week after 6th of october?

Fantabulous, that would be perfect.

Once the details are finalised give me a yell and I'll knock a poster up for it

Oh, and if anyone is wanting to try it out with stable horses, to see if it's viable, then count me in for that too.

Had a couple more thoughts about this -

We need a way to ensure that people can't cheat - eg. Start the race in, say the Shire, wait til everyone is out in front, jump off then map to somewhere close to Rivendell, then just ride on and win from there.

Possible way to get around that would be to place some Jesters at specific waypoints and make it so that everyone needs to pass (and /wave?) at the designated Jester to prove that they have been there. Or give the Jesters an item to hand out to each rider - then at the end they'd need to show you (in 'Trade') the items to prove they reached each of the waypoints.

I realise that sounds a bit scattered, so let me know if it makes no sense at all to you.

I think you touched on some key issues there, with mapping and how-to. Obviously, if we get more than 20 competitors trading will be crazy and perhaps ruin someones lead etc.. But if wer doing "wave" its definitely doable, long as those acting as checkpoints have the list of the riders. Given by the proud Jester starting the show ofcourse. Imho it seems like the way to go, but there cud ofcourse be something Ive totally forgotten;) 

I think the waving thing sounds good. Don't release the locations of where the 'waypoints' are until the start so no one can set their milestone to be near the first one or anything as they won't know where it is.

I don't mind being one of those people if you need me.  

Well I could do start and finish, and maybe we would only need 2 people out en route?? That should be enough to deter cheating.

Get a full entry list and then the people out on course could just have one chat window only showing emotes.

Well when I get back off holiday we will finalise palns and get the poster made up, so keep ideas coming in till the 14th :) 

Yeah, well waypoint people can just make a list on paper and cross the names off as they go past or something so we know they've all gone through.

I wonder where the best route would be.. Would be nice if it's somewhere you can take lots of shortcuts, etc. I guess there's always going to be shortcuts kind of on the road itself as they're generally quite windy. But if there's no dramatic shortcuts then people buying horses from stable masters would definitely win. 

 How about michel delving, esteldin, last bridge, rivendell?

That could be a good route to take, yeah. Plenty of shortcuts through North Downs (I spent long enough there to find them all).

Bear in mind that if we're allowing the use of stable horses then we're going to have to release the locations of the waypoints, as the riders will need to ensure they have all of the travel routes. Would be a little unfair to have someone pay to enter then find out they have to travel one of the legs on foot (no pun intended ) as they don't have the route to, say, Esteldin yet.

Hi Guys, Depending on the date, I'd be happy to volunteer to be a waypoint bod.

Cool! Gives me a month-ish to make my last 1.5G and 6-7 lvls (till I can buy Princess! )

BRING IT ON!

The emote/item waypoint people would have to be at horse stables though otherwise non horse-owners might have to dismount in the middle of nowhere. With regards to the route as Esteldin is a level restricted route we could make it Trestlebridge instead? Though this might screw over the stabled horses as they'd then have to go *all* the way back to Bree with no shortcuts

Instead of using emote/items to check for cheating couldn't we arrange for fellowships in such a way that all riders could be checked on? Any mysteriously teleporting green blobbs would hopefully be obvious. Would mean one person in seven checking their map contantly though and so might not be the best way to do it. If we do use items at checkpoints they could be cheap crafted items? They will then show as "crafted by..." and so would not be forgable.

Meh, not great... but they're all ideas.
 

Hey, no, keep throwing the ideas out Rowan

Good point about the waypoints being at stables, as well as Esteldin being level restricted. Definitely need to take those into account when we're planning the route.