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I asked my friend, Malomy, and she said that I could use one of her mules. She has been one of my best friends since we met in college years ago, so she trusts me with her mules. She also said that she would be happy to be an NPC again if we need one again. (In the 8th Annual Ball, we had a very general plot in the Celebration room, and we didn't really advance the plot much. One night the guests were bored, so GreenInkling and I devised a game of capture the flag complete with a cornfield of monsters. I used my mule as one monster, and Malomy turned her avi into another monster. We had fun hindering the guests in their quest for glory. I think that we had almost as much fun with that game as the people playing volleyball had with their game.)

I would be fine being either. I have years of acting experience from college, so I've become pretty versatile. It's easier playing a character like yourself, but it's more fun playing a character very unlike yourself. I think I actually had the most fun when I got to play the villains. But, I don't really care either way. Either role would be fun. So, I guess my answer is... wait for the main plot? sweatdrop

Hmmm...you know most of my firends on here don't actually do art. But mayhap I can run an Artists Wanted post explain the situation and the Annual Ball and then go from there?
Plot! We're pretty much hung without that plot!
I'll run an ad and I geuss let you know on the progress from there...
Otherwords I'll just work on some self fund raising by playing the marketplace.

Hello again everyone, sorry I haven't been on lately. I have been reading the last pages and it looks like you all have some excellent ideas for games, and design.

Let me know if I can help with anything.

So far I have only one artists who has responded and I hate to say it but-
She's very good and she says her art runs at around 450k pending. And she will donate 2% of her profits to us...
Does this sound about right? Of course, I'll be doing my part and be charging only about 5,000-50,000g a piece and all profits will be donated...plus self raised funds.
Waaaaah I want that plot sooooo bad! This plot though will tell us like a tme period setting and what else though?..

I am definitely happy to donate as much of my time and artwork for whatever purpose it will be needed, even though it does seem very different to many of the other artists helping on here. sweatdrop

Ah! I'm sorry I haven't checked in for the last couple of days, everyone. All of sudden there were a lot of things happening this past week!

It's good we're thinking about art this early on. Getting a list of artists together before we can even tell them what to draw would be extremely well prepared, haha. Free art is what we're focusing on, though. I agree with your plan for budgeting the gold, Chibi. We will definitely all have to search for ways of obtaining free art, though. If fundraising goes well though, perhaps that can decrease our limitations?

Chibi, can you tell us more about how things went last year, in general? It might help us get a better idea of what to expect, and I'm quite curious, personally. I need some more experiences to learn from. XD

Omg... I got like... the best plot explosion in my head EVER!

hint: dance party with zombies

Things we need to get done before the ball:
- Get the main plot... hopefully soon...
- Write our room plot after we get the main plot
- Assign roles (based on the plot)
- Maki avi's of our characters so we can get art for them
- Get post styles made (need to match in the room)
- Get banners for each main post in the room
- Make test threads to work out the code, and make links to the other main posts in the room
- Get art to the main posts at the beginning of the room thread
- Get art and banners to decorate the game threads
- Make games and buy prizes for those games
- Fine tune the rules, scoring system, and prize distribution for games
- Get avi art for our sigs
- Edit the room plot over and over to work in the games with the plot, and account for people leaving/coming and try to make it work with one or more rooms
- Raise funds so we can give out prizes for the games
- Make character profiles
- Delegate responsibilities for the different games
- Edit the plot some more

And... that's all that I can think of at the moment. I'm sure there's more, but it's kind of hard to think of it all at once. Btw, those things are in no particular order. Some things have to wait on the room plot, but fundraising has no dependence on the plot whatsoever. Getting artists doesn't depend on the plot. Just about everything else needs the plot. I'm not even sure if Sloth and Zeal are going to be just regular virtues and sins, or if they are supposed to describe humans. The same thing goes with co-hosts. I have no idea if they are going to be humans for not. So much is up in the air right now.

How things went last year
We got the plot around Christmas, and everyone quickly made their own room plots. Of course, these plots were made and remade over and over. I actually remember someone saying at the end of the first day of the ball that they were going to re-do their plot because it was bad. Oh yeah! I almost forgot! For all of you first timers, we have a meebo room going in the background during the ball, or at least we did last year. The different rooms shared points that were going on, asked questions, got help, and planned for event overlaps. We also laughed and joked quite a bit too. Let's see, back to planning! We got our games worked out fairly early, and we got our avi's done 2 or 3 months before the ball (at least in my room). But, despite our best efforts, it somehow ended up that most of the rooms weren't ready yet, so we had to push back the ball. It was three weeks if I remember correctly. There were so many last minute things to get done, so I really want to make sure that we have all of our big stuff done a month in advance. The last month should be devoted to fine-tuning everything. We need to have the test threads ready in a guild, so they will be ready to go when the guild arrives. Everything needs to be as close to being ready to go as possible. We really shouldn't have to do anything the week before except try to coordinate a bit better with other rooms and possible tweak the plot again. And, for those of you who haven't done the ball before, the weekend of the ball is intense. We start on Friday at noon, and we go through noon on Monday. Last time, barely anyone was around on Monday morning, so the ball ends Sunday night for all practical purposes. You will be guiding and shaping the plot all day long for those days. I spend about 15 hours on Gaia on Saturday, and I spent almost that much time on Friday and Sunday. Everyone's schedules are extremely important. We need to make sure that the people who are going to be doing certain plot points are around when they need to be. There's always some crisis or other where people aren't around, and you have to improvise and edit the plot for the 1000th time. But, improvisation is a very big part of the ball. We need to check to see what times people will be able to be around. If we have someone who doesn't live in North/South America, we can have that person man the room at the odd hours. Last time, we had a crisis where someone put phishing pages in the various rooms. Angel happened to be on in the middle of the night/early morning, and she took care of it. It was probably the way that she handled that situation and got everything back together that made her stand out in the last ball, and that's probably why she's now the main host.

How did I do Crystal? Is that pretty much all you wanted to know, or do I need to elaborate on something?