by Jason "Aeston" Rosa
From the event's rules document:
"It is the Friday night before you launch a full scale invasion on the occupied lands of Darkvale. Many of you have gathered here tonight wondering how to best ready yourselves for the task. Many others will arrive tomorrow morning expecting to make best use of the preparations you will make. Now is not a time to be idle.
In order to give your army the best possible chance of success, this beachhead into Darkvale must transform into the best fortification possible. A safe area to store arms and armor. A firm anchor to secure the supply lines. A place for leadership to plan and organize. Creating that place, that war camp, is your task this evening."
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A decade ago, during the last time I was a part of throwing an event to retake Darkvale, I designed the Friday night content of the players building a war camp and that war camp factoring into a large-scale set of mechanics for the weekend that managed various aspects of the war. In that camp players had to physically bring building materials and construct, in the area of the fire pit at Abe's land, a couple dozen structures that each had specific criteria and purposes. I remember it being one of my favorite parts of the event. There was so much anticipation in the air, so much purposeful labor. I felt like the players were taking ownership of their own potential for success.
I thought a lot about how to recreate that magic, but how to do it in way that allowed more people to get involved and create something with more depth, more of its own life. Rhiassa has been very successful over the years with incorporating an "arts and crafts" component into our questing events, so the idea of creating the war camp as a scale model was a natural conclusion I was able to come to having ten years more experience than the last time I wrote rules for these kinds of mechanics.
I had hoped, in the weeks leading to the event, that the players would not only embrace this mechanic in terms of the advantages that the war camp would grant them, but also in terms of creativity. Yes this would be labor with purpose, helping them gain powers for the battles ahead, but it could also be a labor of love - players could show off how much they cared for their deities, their heraldries, their roles as members of the army and their greater positions in the context of the entire Realms. And they could do those things by crafting buildings and other objects put together with thoughtful consideration and care.
As event holders it's not uncommon for things to go *mostly* the way we plan them in our heads. What is a little less common is when things work out exceedingly better than what we could ever hope for. When I looked at the finished war camp on Saturday morning that was the feeling that I got. It was deeply moved by how much thought and care was put into the scale model and I was immediately possessed to document it as well as possible.
Below please find the short video I made displaying and honoring the efforts of the army in building their war camp.
Ultra high resolution version: Here
For those of you who are interested, here is the rules document the players were given that governed the construction of the War Camp.
