Event writing walkthrough

*Disclaimer, if I offend you somewhere in here because it sounds like I'm picking on an event you made or something, chillax. I'm not singling anyone out, but just addressing issues that I've seen in the time I've been playing. I probably don't even remember your event or that you created it. Resist the urge to defend your methods please.
=Preface=
So, I think I've written a lot of different events now and feel a responsibility to share the things I've learned and my perspective for creating them. Events can be kind of scary when you're new or haven't done many before, especially if your first doesn't go well for one reason or another. People can be kind of judgmental when it comes to these because they're very public and out there and that can be intimidating too. Hopefully this little guide will help make people who have only run a few events or none at all more comfortable. The best advice I can give is to just throw yourself out there and try. Don't be afraid to screw up.
=Event Type, Target, and Power=
Before you even start start fretting about the details of your event, you should familiarize yourself with what is and isn't possible with the code. Some people may think this takes away from the creative process and limits RP, but that's life. If you can't find a close approximation for the RP you'd like to do, you might not want to use an event or need to revise your idea a itty bit so that it can fall into one of the categories. Help Event Types will give you a list of the different types and a short description of what they do.
You should also know who you want to target with the event before getting too far into the process as well because a good event will take into consideration who that individual is and be sort of customized for them when necessary. For example, a character who is codewise, a half-demon, but is RPing something closer to a normal human who just happens to have demon abilities a la Cordelia from Angel, who you want to humanise should have an event that focuses onaddressing or sealing those powers and not go on and on about how you want to make them a human. Another example might be running a 'blind' event on a character who is blind, but uses some other method to see such as telepathy or intuition to get around or see to some extent. Those characters aren't automatically immune to those event types, but special attention to their individual circumstances should be addressed. That might require that you figure out how it is exactly they see to begin with to write something relatively accurate and believable.
*Even though some events don't have targets, swarms use the target field for the name of the mobs in the swarm.
The event power usally ranges from 1-5, but can jump around a bit depending on the exact event type. Lower powers will have lesser effects and won't last very long, but will require less time to complete. The opposite is true for higher powers. Generally, power five events take a very long time to complete. In my experience, by the time they do, you've stopped caring about whatever you were doing with them. Think carefully before going over three.
=Event descriptions=
After you have your basic idea, then comes the important part. Basically, events are just a series of descriptions. Think of them as a starting point for any roleplay that will occur during the course of your event. Each will be revealed as the party works through and should both hook relevant groups and adequately explain what your event is about.
=DescriptionBasic=
This will be the blurb available to everyone, all the time, without any work put in on their part besides taking the trouble to use the event info <number> command. Basic descriptions usually get very generic descriptions because people don't want to reveal anything about their event, but I feel that is counter productive and antisocial. Instead, your basic description should give everyone a general idea of what's going on without going into any detail or otherwise tipping your hand. Think of how your event is going to look on the surface. Maybe something pops up in the local news or something noteworthy happens at some point of interest within the area. Remember that these should be kind of attention grabbing bits of information that merit further investigation. Try to avoid falling back on something like, so and so was seen entering the Magic Box after school and carrying a load of magical supplies unless you're already giving them a lot of other tidbits, because, honestly, no one cares otherwise. It'd be uninteresting.
=DescriptionMedium=
Players recieve this after putting in about fifteen minutes of sitting around and researching your event in my experience. This is usually where some players seem to try to make up for the fact that their basic description was utterly boring and contained nothing of value, but a few still are awfully stingy with the information provided her. Let me remind you that by this point, players already have access to two-thirds of your major descriptions! By this point, people should have a relatively good idea of what's going on, but probably not too many specific details. It should still be hard to thwart the event, but they should know everything they need to know to come up with an inform request and if they even want to. That is, they should be able to make a log of essentially RP that is taking place without you giving them any additional information of how they're finding out more about your event. If your descriptions suck, it will be increadibly hard to do this effectively. There are new event commands that can be used to enhance this experience, but that doesn't mean you should write lousy descriptions and rely on that as your primary method of providing people with details. Messing up the medium description will mean that you'll probably only get the more die hard, must-thwart-this-event people to take any interest.
=DescriptionResearch=
A minor description, this just informs researchers of a way to learn more about your event. Only visible during act three, you should be pretty specific. I like to think of this as a hint for people who might be stuck on how to proceed.
=DescriptionAdvanced=
Okay, this your last chance. Everything should be on the table once a party obtains this description from you. They'll only ever get to read it if you decide to let them with the command event inform <person> <number>, so don't be afraid of laying out all the details. They won't learn them prematurely. After reading this description, not only should the party know everything they need to know to make a reasonable attempt at thwarting your event, but should also feel like they understand what's going on very well so that they can make an informed decision about whether or not to thwart your event. This often means spelling out exactly what type of event it is and the intended target if you haven't already hinted at it in one of the earlier descriptions.
=DescriptionChallenge=
A relatively new section, the challenge of an event must conform to the information laid out in help event solutions. Each event must have one challenge and only one challenge. That isn't to say that they can't have other minor obstacles, or that your challenge can't have multiple solutions, but that one of the solutions must be applicable to the challenge you create. This is the major barrier to thwarting your event. For most proper thwarts, the challenge should be acknowledged and adequately dealt with or you shouldn't allow someone to defeat the event.
=DescriptionSolution=
Only visible to immortals, this is an example of how your challenge can be solved by using one of the solutions listed in help event solutions. Just one example is necessary, but it needs to makes sense in relation to all the other descriptions you've already written. Basically, pretend like you were going to thwart your own event and how you could do it. The point of the exercise is to prove that your event isn't unthwartable.
=Mark=
This is just the field for whatever mark you're putting on an invidual. It's only used in two event types: mark and Imark.
=Message=
For message, wrath, and global damage events, this is where you put the little string for what's hurting people or where whatever message you want the target to get upon completion. Each different line should be a different broadcast for the message events a la dream.
Once you've set the event type, target, power, descriptionbasic, descriptionmedium, descriptionresearch, descriptionadvanced, descriptionchallenge, descriptionsolution, and other optional fields if applicable, you're ready use event launch, event instant, or event persistant as appropriate.
Category:Guides
Category:Events