For a few days now, a background story on the disappearance of Toine Velaio has been escalated in the Role Playing section of the boards, in in-game news section (thanks to Devs for posting the Amber Alert and the initial Stolen Centurion MkII reward news flashes) and in-game galaxy-wide chat channels.

If you've missed it, then we need to rework out AMBER ALERTs!

The last chapter can be seen here: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/7/11658

This event is a player-sponsored event (me!) and is to take place this saturday, 10AM ET.

Toine, being resourceful, will recover most of his comm channel functionality but his navigation system is hosed. Being a seven year old, you can forget about him fixing it!

Was he abducted? Is he simply stranded is a damaged ship? You find out this saturday. Clues will be given in order to find him. It'll be ANYONE's job to help him find is way back home (or at least in a safe sector) to collect his father's reward of two million credits.

One extra million credit will be handed out on those who've helped Toine's recovery.

Well, this one ended quite prematurely.

The Find Toine Velaio event was basically a Role Playing test & event. The event had been somewhat sketched sometime this summer when I was pretty much inactive on VO. A recent observation of mine ( http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11568 ) made me realize this was a good time to try this out.

Being a long-time D&D player and DM, I used some f the same principles that help develop a character: create a back story over time and adding bits here and there. Not one giant text blob that lays out everything in one shot.

So, over time ( http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/search?q=Toine ), a background story around the family of Mogul Velaio developed and included bits about a son of his, Toine Velaio.

This basically set Toine for a crash course to disobedience and have him "steal" one of his father's ship.

Mogul has made it clear in the past he had done some "surveys" in Serco space. Throughout his missions, he actually became respected there but, in the end, returned to his true self and the Sercos realized he wasn't necessarily all that friendly, making him KOS.

So this set the premiss of having a Cent with a course pre-plotted deep in Serco space.

I've mentioned in the past that it would be really interesting to have cascading ship failures ( http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11515#136685 ).

During this event, I used Role Playing to simulate major com channel and navigation map failures. This was also done throughout the week prior to the event, in the form of quick messages on galaxy-com, with Screwball being the first to report them ( http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/7/11645#138989 ).

During the event, Toine finally gets the com system to work properly in order to make things easier during the event (easier for me I suppose).

Through questioning and more or less vague answers (Toine is 7 year old), participants begin to make a picture of where Toine is. Joyce Sanders was the first to report the system Toine might be in, out of 3 possible 3-worm-holed systems in Serco land.

Obsidian and Bus Tour also helped pinpoint the location with some star/nebuale observations.

Then Dr Lecter shows up and downs Toine as I'm replying to some other message. A pre-ploted course didn't help Toine escape given sector jumps now leave you vulnerable.

During the week, the VO Devs kindly re-homed Toine into Dantia K-5 in case something like this would happen. However, when Toine was mercilessly exploded, Vo decided Toine didn't have a right to home there and moved him off to Divinia instead.

Dang.

So, in retrospect, what worked, what worked less and what didn't...

What worked;

- The role playing part of the event worked out nicely. Many players picked up on it and discussed the situation.
- The event itself started off well. not many participants but this can be atrributed to other factors bellow.

What worked less;

- In order to augment the role playing aspect of Toine's escalating situation (stolen ship, amber alerts, reward offer etc), the event relied on the devs to post messages in the News tab, in-game. This to separate "mgl_mouser" in the message boards from Toine, Mogul and an hypothetical "amber alert" system.

The devs have their own agendas and throughout the week, conflicting agendas caused some of the messages not to be posted at the scheduled times wich caused delays in the actual event info posting. Not many people knew about the "event" although more knew about the "role playing" aspect of the background story.

What didn't work;

Toine, being an Itani, is hated by the Sercos upon creation. To help in the event, the VO Devs teleported "Toine son of Mogul" to a random sector of my choosing. It would have been the rescuers' job to protect Toine on his way back to Itani space.

Toine was also re-homed in a Dantia (K-5) station in case something went bad, so not to cut the event short.

However, when something bad happen (Lecter), Toine was refused entry in a Serco station and sent back to Divinia, thus utterly screwing the event.

What would have help make the event more successful;

- Upping Toine's Serco faction rating from -695 to -599 would have avoided the station refusal situation. I was actually unaware of this VO aspect.

- Not having Toine sitting duck would have made it harder for anyone to gun him down. Turboing away from jump-in location point would have avoided this.

- Given that some messages (including final event announcement) came in late, some players were caught-up in a Bus War event that kind of took some attention away.

Final results;

After only 20 minutes into the event, Lecter killed off Toine son of Mogul and ended the event.

The original event mission called for a reward of up 3 million for whoever help bring Toine back to safety.Although Lecter could have played the hostage card, he opted to destroy Toine, even as he tried to jump to safety (there was a pre-ploted semi-random course that would have been used during the event--remember the nav system is hosed).

So, given Toine is now dead (yes, I'm deleting the character!) I've decided to split the promised loot among the 3 players that really were making progress on recovery and role-playing aspect of the mission. Joyce Sanders, Bus Tour and Obsidian will equally share the 3 million reward.

Lecter actually found Toine first, but, he totally failed on his rescue.

Congrats to those who "won" and thanks to those who participated in this event. Thanks also to the devs that, despite their schedule, did take time to help on this.

This was a player-sponsoered and organized event. If you feel this could have gone quite well or if you liked the event (regardless of it's outcome), then please do organize one yourself or with the help of other players/guild. More such Role Playing events would make the game and some of the characters more interesting.

becasue NO ONE reads the RP forum

(1) I cannot prevent even a damaged cent MK II from escaping unless I destroy it. Damage has no effect on its ability to outrun my Prom II in a major way.

(2) A cargo widget labled Escape/Stasis Pod <Toine Velaio> would have been a much wiser approach. When I hosed the Cent, I was hoping to scoop up something and then the rescuers would have had a much more interesting time of things.

(3) If you're RPing a lost itani kid in Sercoland, I hardly think I failed in my role. While I can't expect cash from the parent of the brat I devoured for breakfast, I also don't agree the event failed. It just ended faster than you'd have liked: see point (2) supra.

I for one had fun with it. Having a race against Lecter to see who got to the kid first gave it an edge that would have been absent otherwise, so it was more exciting (too bad Lecter won out in the end).

On hindsight, keeping the kid alive and leading him to safety would have been a monumental task because of his Hatred standing. Fighting off players and/or SFs would have been too much even if the would-be savior didn;t mind his Serco faction getting huge holes gouged out while defending the kid. Even if one had brought a repair gun (Joyce kept pulling into all the wrong stations to look for one, LOL) that would have meant one less weapon to fight the foes with.

For a similar event, I'd do away with the bad standing; I wouldn't change much else. It was entertaining, and it did end with everyone looking for and ganking Lecter, which is always a good thing :D

Oh, and Joyce says thanks for the money; seems her funds are rather short of late, for some reason...

I didn't say you failed as Lecter. But you failed the >mission<. I still think you could have played the hostage card, bring him to safety at gun point and collect the cash.

The cargo thing is an interesting idea but the cargo crate can't reply back. That's basically CtC scenario hat doesn't need anyone behind it. I was going for the role playing aspect. Not the Xith crate one.

Well, I could have asked nicely that you pull over and surrender, a la [VPR]...

I enjoyed the event, although, yeah, it did end kind of quickly.

Lecter did exactly what his character does, so I think he role-played it well.

I agree that escorting a hated Itani back through Serco strike forces would be nigh impossible. Even if that were possible, how would you explain the sudden regaining of navigational control necessary to return?

As for other people role-playing, I think there was a good community effort going on to find this kid. I was part of a three person, multi-guild group of UIT traders crawling Initros (which also matched the description of a large yellow star, 3 belts of roids, and three wormholes) because we wanted to save the kid. One of us even had to evade Serco strike forces himself just to help look. Also, many of us broke off from a fun but non-role-playing Bus War specifically to participate in the hunt, so I think that's a good sign.

Yes. As I mentioned, the Role Playing part worked well.

Including Lecter I suppose, but for the good of the event, it would have been nice to prolong the situation. I'm not sure about pull-over [VPR]-like thing, Lecter. I've not witnessed this myself, but if you've played it true to Lecter, I can't ask you to have changed that role-playing part of your character. I should have just prepared better.

As my afterthoughts mention, though, I'm partly to blame for this. I should have turbo-ed away from jump-in zone in order to have plenty time to escape from afar.

My biggest dilema right now is Mogul's reaction to this. Of course he's going to be upset but, given he can't *kill* Lecter (merely send him home provided I have the skills); so that angle's going to be complicated a bit. I did delete Toine's character. I wanted this event to be a deciding factor on the character that is Mogul Velaio and perhaps his brother (Lesgul Velaio, wich was absent from this RP event). We'll see how this pans out. But Toine *is* dead.

Given that Lecter announced in the Role Playing board that he himself killed Toine, then Mogul knows about it. There's no way around it.

I'm still not sure how's that going to affect Moguls true devotion to a *defense* force, as a Council-Lieutenant of IDF. I've not had time to ponder that issue yet.

(One person I should also thank for it my real-life son, 7 year old Antoine, for lending me his character for this event. Antoine was 100% responsible for having made "Toine" the levels that he was. I'll make it up to him with another alt of mine that's the same levels.)

I'm still happy with the outcome. It'll shape things up in terms of RP-ing and Mogul might have a few visits to pay, including Joyce Sanders, Obsidian and Bus Tour. They are most definitely his friends as of now, as they have risked their necks for his son.