Tavernites and Adventure the Flags

Hello everybody! As the first of two followups to our previous email, this is being sent to provide more details on Tavernite and Adventure the Flag submissions, which we're expecting lots of! Write them! What have you got to lose!

Tavernites:

Tavernites are basically half-games with no, or nearly no, combat. If there is combat, it should generally either be a small planned scene, or simply the vague potential for a brawl or similar fighting. Tavernites generally run from 1 PM to 5 PM, and generally on Saturday afternoons. Production and costuming generally bring very little to Tavernites: if you want a few small props or specific pieces of costuming, it is likely possible they can be supplied, but these games are meant to be mostly self-costumed. The intent is to have zero additional creations asked of production and costuming for a Tavernite, so they can keep their work focused on our big games. The day consists of a bit of improv work, and then usually a couple specific workshops, then the game during the last hour or hour and a half. Keep these factors in mind when thinking about your Tavernite concept.

A Tavernite submission is far simpler than that of a full game. Because of the shorter scale of a Tavernite, many things necessary for a game could be missing in a Tavernite if the other aspects of the game are well designed. There are only two truly required elements of a Tavernite:
-A summary of the setting/world background. This establishes the overall feel and place of game for the characters to be drawn out of.
-A description of the situation of game. This could be meshed with the world background. This is a description of the game on the local scale: what's the situation at game, why are these people here, and what are they doing?

There are a number of other elements which are often important. Generally you'll want most or all of these other parts, but some can potentially be left out. Keep in mind that all of the descriptions here are guidelines! If it works, write it! But keep in mind, a game with none of these other parts is likely too vague and undefined.
-Flow and events: These are very useful, however a Tavernite cannot have an extensive flow with many steps: there simply isn't enough time. A good standard would be to have an opening and a conclusion, and perhaps one or two planned events somewhere in the middle.
-Character groups: It is useful to add a description of each group in game, and even if you don't they should at least be described in the situation description. An important thing to remember: Even in our full games, but in Tavernites especially, you DON'T need to fully write individual characters. Putting people into described groups, and then allowing them to create their own characters, is the preferred method of character creation for Tavernites.
-A teaser: It's good to have a teaser, however it is not required (although highly suggested by the time it is being run, even if you don't submit it with one).

We are going to be running Tavernites in quarters this year. This means that there will be four calls for Tavernite submissions, one every three months. In each quarter, we intend to run 2-3 Tavernites. If you are already running a full game in the quarter the call is for, then we won't run your Tavernite that quarter, but feel free to submit it for a different one. This email is officially opening our call for Fall Tavernites: September to November. Tavernite calls will be open for the month running previous to the opening of the next quarter. As we're already rather a bit late, Fall quarter will end up slightly shorter this year, and we will likely run 1-2 Tavernites. Submissions are open for one month, running from today until Friday September 24th.



Adventure the Flags:

Adventure the Flags are basically miniaturized versions of our larger games which we play occasionally at our Sunday Capture the Flag at Cordornices. They are much simpler, often (but not necessarily) conflicts over some object of importance, making them effectively Capture the Flag with characters and a setting and maybe a bit more. They run for one hour out of the four hours of CTF, and generally have no advance preparation: Costuming brings nothing to an Adventure the Flag. Production is capable of bringing some weapons beyond the standard swords if you specifically contact production beforehand. There are no workshops in preparation for an Adventure the Flag beyond possibly a couple introductory workshops we run regularly at CTFs: Sword workshop, improv workshop, improv magic workshop, shadowboxing workshop, or the like. There are generally few game conventions.

Effectively, an Adventure the Flag is a quick adventure story, somewhere between Capture the Flag and a full game. Combat with roleplaying, player-developed characters, and often some unusual weapons or magic mixed in. Perhaps a conflict which results in an interesting or unusual type of combat which we don't see in simple Capture the Flag. Or maybe just a mash up of different groups with some special capabilities fighting over some (likely flag-shaped) tokens of importance in a wild melee. Usually there is little to no flow planned for an Adventure the Flag game: perhaps an opening, or an ending, or something in between, or a few of these if you think they will fit.

An Adventure the Flag submission can simply be a paragraph summary of the concept, conflict, and details you want to add. The only teaser you need for an Adventure the flag is a title, and if you want, maybe a few sentences of description. There is no preparation for the players before the day of CTF for an Adventure the Flag: no surveys. There is one other factor which you need to detail when you submit an Adventure the Flag game: how often are you capable of attending Capture the Flag, and would you allow us to run your Adventure the Flag when you can't make it to CTF?

Submissions for Adventure the Flag games are ALWAYS open. The entire year long and ever onwards, we will be keeping an open pool of Adventure the Flag submissions. If you ever have a fun idea, throw together a description, and mail it in. We will add it to the table which tracks the pool of submissions. Every month, we will select a game from the pool. If we have enough submissions, we will run Adventure the Flag games more than once per month. If all you people out there really write, we may be able to run Adventure the Flag games at nearly every session of CTF! In addition to keeping all submissions for consideration, we will respond to submissions which we are not running with advice and modifications, so any game submitted will likely be run within a few exchanges of improvements and resubmissions. The permanent pool for Adventure the Flag games is now officially open as well, so get writing those games!

First news of Season Five!

Hey Westfinders!

Hope you all had/continue to have fantastic summers. Quite a bit of change has come to Westfinder over the summer, what with half of Staff moving off to college and the SITs of last year coming in to take their places. And so, with August starting to wind down and Westfinder's 5th season about to start, it's time for.... EPIC NEWS EMAIL TIME.

Staff News:
Staff now consists of Tom Kelly, Co-Head of Production and CTF staff; Sam Sher, Co-Head of Production; Jaron Smith, CTF and general staff; Benjy Wachter, Workshop Head and CTF staff; Eve Irwin, Costuming Head; and Jeremy Gleick and Simka Senyak, Co-Directors.

As all the old SITs have become new Staff, we're going to need some new SITs. We'll be sending out a call for applications very soon!

Capture the Flag and Adventure the Flag news:
As always, Capture the Flag will be every Sunday from 12 to 4 at Codornices Park in Berkeley. There's a suggested donation of $1 (CTF staff is awesome! They work super hard! Yay!) but that is, of course, only suggested. CTF has been going on all summer, but with pretty low attendance. Start coming again, guys! It's awesome and fun.
As of now, the Adventure the Flag submission pool is OPEN! This is a constant call for adventures, with absolutely no limit on how many you submit. Please send Westfinder a paragraph summary of your one-hour-or-so-long adventure. ATFs have no advance preparation or assigning of characters; everything will be done day-of. Also, no propstuming. The title is all the teaser you need. We'll pick one a month to start, but as the number of submissions (we hope) goes up, we'll increase the frequency of running them.

Bootleg and Tavernite news:
If you haven't heard already, we have a truly awesome lineup this year (like it's ever not awesome...). The schedule is as follows:
September 11th: Chord: Quest for the Tree of Song, by Ben Gould
October 16th: Artichoke Salad, by Rowan Abraham
November 13th: Hive: Shadowplay, by Jeremy Gleick
January 1st: Too Soon Forgotten, by Ben Schwartz & Jesse Riemer
January 15th: Spectrum Nations Delegations, by Jenna Brotsky & Molly Fullerton
February 12th: Karolina’s Bloodline, by Tait Melody "Purple" Pan/Adams & Colette Smith
March 12th: The Bestiary of Baton Rouge, by Devon Brinner
April 16th: Uber, by Stefan Hulaj
May 21st: Covenant, by Sam Magness

The teaser and survey for Chord are going out shortly!

Bootlegs are usually run in Tilden from 9 to 6 and cost $20. Specifics and other information will go out with each game.

We're doing something different with Tavernites this year. Instead of making a yearly call like we do with the bootlegs, we will have four Tavernite seasons throughout the year (and the summer!) with quarterly calls for submissions. Submissions should go in in August, November, February, and May, and of course we'll send you a reminder email. One or two will be run each season.
A Tavernite submission should be a teaser and a little summary, with one or two flow points and some characters. Remember that they should be low production. Please start sending us your Tavernite submissions for the September - December season! We'll send out a separate reminder email about this.

Finally, as you may have noticed, we're losing quite a bunch of people to the gaping maw of college (college is great, we support college. We just miss you guys!), so it's time to take action. How? With the Solano Stroll! If you don't know already, the Solano Stroll is a ridiculously fun yearly event on Solano Avenue, which goes through Berkeley and Albany. This year, Staff and anyone else who wants to join in will meet up, divide into groups, and go up and down Solano having epic sword battles and handing out fliers. It'll be super fun, plus people will see and want to join in and thusly we'll have new members! Once again, a separate email with more information will go out closer to the Stroll.
Also, anyone interested in helping design fliers and/or posting fliers around and possibly in schools in the area, please contact us! We want you, we need you.

So here ends our news. We want to keep ya'll up to date, though, so we're going to start sending out monthly newsletters and regularly updating this blog again!

Lost and Found

Hey everyone. Its time once again for a lost and found roundup. Here is the current list of items in our lost and found. If you recognize something, let us know, and we'll get it back to you as soon as we can. Thanks!

1 brown hoodie with a bear on it
1 blue hankercheif
1 blue shirt with gold sides
1 white blouse
1 copy of Gardens of the Moon, by steven erikson
1 small blue umbrella
1 blue shoulder bag
1 rubber rat
1 pair of blue swimming trunks
1 black shirt with a white line running diagonally on the chest
1 purple hankercheif
1 kqed baseball hat
1 large The North Face hoodie
1 blue wetsuit
1 pair of dark green canvas cargo/painters pants

Let us know if you recognize anything.

Sincerely,
Westfinder Staff