Saturday, January 17, 2009

I was asked for advice on running tavern-style events over on our Venture Co Realm Forums, and I thought it might be useful to log my response here as well:

The logistics of it that are different [from text-based taverns], are to make sure you've got a good selection of alcohol ahead of time (very few people ever order food, though for a [Lunar Festival] party you might want to bring a few stacks of the Lunar Festival food) and plenty of bag space to carry it! I use my mailbox to hold a warehouse-worth of supplies, so if my stack of Molasses Firewater runs out, I don't have to send someone to Dire Maul to pick up more (that's also a good way to keep event-specific stocks. I've got one mail message with 12 stacks of Greatfather Winter's Ale, one with 12 stacks of green tea, etc). I usually carry a Halaani bag and a Frostweave bag's worth of different kinds of food and drink. Don't forget to leave a space so you can separate the stacks. I've done that a couple times *facepalm*

Other than needing to make sure you've got all your supplies on hand ahead of time, it's pretty much the same as a text-based Tavern. My experience before the Golden Apple was bartending the Wolves Glen Pub (I played Mahri for those of you who are likely to go look that up) and it's a lot the same, just faster because it's real time.

Oh, and if it's cross-faction, Vent is a life saver. If you're having Alliance and Horde waiters/waitresses, it's probably best to have everyone who's working the event in the same vent channel.

I find it helps to make sure that you've got a couple players who are good at starting things for those times when the typical player-generated happenings hit a lull. Someone who can tell a good story, or start an argument or make everyone laugh. I'm blessed by having quite a few of those people in Keepers. But even with the best players, there WILL be lulls and it's important not to let that get to you. View it as a welcome chance to take a breath because there will always be something new incoming any minute.


One down side of text-based chat for running this kind of event: Tell hell. In RL, when you get lots of people who want your attention, they can tell that you already have twelve people talking to you and will stand there and wait. In game, most people will /w you if they need to talk to you and they will think they are the only one talking to you and want an immediate response... and it's easy to get swamped by that. Last night I had two vent channels (mine and I could hear the one my husband was in), my husband talking to me across the desk, and literally more than twelve people /w me all at once, at the same time as I was dealing with people in /s and trying to waitress. Don't be afraid to put up your /dnd tag with a message that says something to the effect of "too many people whispering, can't keep up, please come talk to me in /say". (if you don't know how to do that, you literally just type "/dnd too many people..." and then when people whisper you they'll get a message that says whatever you typed.). You may get to a point where you have to ask someone else to "watch the bar for a minute" and withdraw from the stream of /say to get through the whispers, so it's good to have someone in mind who is capable of taking that spot for five or ten minutes.

It's good to have that in case you need to take a break as well.

No comments: