The Let's Play Competition: 1st Gen

[Jellicent]

Cheers, OI!

This thread is serving as both a way to gauge interest and a heads up.

The basic idea is to make an OI Let's Play competition of sorts. The first series will be an on-going community playthrough of Red/Blue. Players will have 12 days to reach the goal posted in each OP (usually beating a gym leader) and write up their experiences. Be as detailed as you like, as this is your chance to share your personal adventures through this marvelous game. The Let's Plays for this event will be text-based, though snapshots of your progress are welcomed (but not mandatory) supplements to add some flavor to your tale.

After the 12 days to submit, there'll be a 2 day voting period where anyone can vote for their favorite tale. Then, it's back to playing/writing. Feel free to get ahead in the journey and start working on the next portion before it's due if that will help you make each deadline; just don't post it until the next thread is up, obviously. If this goes over well, there will be future Let's Play competitions of other games ^.^

So, the main question here is: who wants to play?

 

[Ray Jay]

I'm down so long as FireRed and LeafGreen are allowed.

 

[Jellicent]

I would say FireRed and LeafGreen are true enough to the original to allow them, sure ^.^

 

[Nix_Hex]

Good idea Jelli. Man, I'm like 18 Pokemon away from completing the Pokedex in Blue (only missing Red exclusives, which I don't own), now I get to start again! Of course it won't be on this cart. I'm assuming Yellow is allowed as well? In that case i will start over since I want to reset for Eevee and friends.

 

[Jellicent]

Yellow's cool, too. All 5 are pretty much the same thing, with slight variations between them. If anything, those slight differences should make for more variety between the Let's Plays ^.^

 

[Solace]

I'm totally up for this! I'll be playing Pokemon Red :)

 

[Stellar]

I'm going to be playing Blue.

 

[Ratatat]

I might be down for this. Hafta dig out my Blue version and Game Boy Pocket and do this thing for real, though!

Also, I'm going to make it a challenge of some kind just to make things interesting.

 

[TrueSoprano]

If I have time I'm in.

I'll be doing Fire Red. I'd LIKE to do Blue, but I don't have a GameBoy and there aren't any good Blue emulators that I'm aware of.

 

[Daenym]

Alright, doing FireRed. And I'll even try to not use my standard squad !_!

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

Jumping in on this, LeafGreen is my favourite of the series

 

[Windsong]

awwwwww yeah leaf green time

 

[Daenym]

So I might have made a slight mistake...

In that I've already beaten the E4. That spacebar is a real beast.

 

[JockeMS]

This sounds like fun, but you also need time to do it.

Maybe I'll get in on it when I don't have as much to do later on, but the general idea is great.

One question though. Do you have to use the actual cartridges? Cause I don't really feel like restarting any of my games after catching every Pokemon in each game, except maybe Diamond (but not Pearl or Platinum :P).

 

[Daenym]

Do you have to use the actual cartridges?

The short answer is "no"

 

[Son_of_Shadoo]

I'll be in, playing Pokémon Blue like a boss.

 

[Keiran]

I'll be playing Pokemon FireRed, it has better exclusives

 

[Nix_Hex]

I'm really eager to start this; I recommend that we make the first limit clearing the Cerulean Gym. It's long enough to have some interesting encounters such as fossil collecting, meeting Bill, catching Abra, the Mew glitch, etc; but short enough to be manageable in a short amount of time. It's up to Jelli though, just my 2 cents.

 

[Stellar]

I'm really eager to start this; I recommend that we make the first limit clearing the Cerulean Gym. It's long enough to have some interesting encounters such as fossil collecting, meeting Bill, catching Abra, the Mew glitch, etc; but short enough to be manageable in a short amount of time. It's up to Jelli though, just my 2 cents.

It seems to me like twelve days is a horribly long (not short) time for this type of thing. Most people aren't going to be willing to wait two weeks between each iteration of the competition, they'll want to continue playing through the game. If we waited two weeks for every two gyms, we would finish this about two months from now. That's way too long.

Of course, they could always continue playing and write the corresponding entry when it is posted, but that approach seems to be against the spirit of the competition.

To be honest, I'm not sure how successful the writing part of this competition will be... I have a feeling that a lot of people will duck out. It might be better to transform this into a play/share your experiences type of thing rather than an actual competition.

You could also change it so that you give everyone a week/two weeks to play through the game and write about a pre-chosen group of events that are listed at the time the competition begins.

 

[Jellicent]

Two gyms per round is about the pace I was thinking. If you guys would rather go faster, say 5-6 days to write, 1-2 days to vote, then I'd be all for speeding this thing up ^.^

While I'm sure no one will have trouble playing the game that fast (someone's already beaten it !__?), it's the actual writing of each section that will be time consuming. Remember, the writing portion is what you're competing on here, so you'll wanna make it good.

If the general consensus is still to speed this up, say more like 2 gyms per week, then I'm down. The actual competition itself will be up shortly, probably tonight or tomorrow, so if you have a speed preference, now's the time to post it.

 

[Solace]

I agree with Stellar, it seems like people have already started up playing (I know I have) and it might just make more sense to do it as a "share your adventure" rather than a race or competition. 12 days is probably enough for most of us to finish the entire game, let alone one specific section.

This would probably work best if we just enjoy our Gen I (or III if you're playing FR/LG) nostalgia and talk about specific events and share our teams with everyone at different points of the game. It'd be cool to see how everyone tackles in-game (over leveling, under leveling, only training up a few mons, whatever it is!) I think we'd be less likely to have people being lazy doing this rather than a write up of their journey to be the very best like no one ever was.

I'd like to hear what everyone else has to say! Would people not mind writing their adventure, or is there a better alternative you can think of that can still keep some kind of competitive spirit while playing through RBY/FRLG?

 

[v]

Can we make comics/other mediums? Or is this competition exclusively textual

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

I'd personally rule in favour of comics and the like, although in the competition piece they would have to be separated. But visuals can only be entertaining for the readers!

 

[Stellar]

Jellicent and I have been working out the logistics of the competition on IRC. I think we came up with something that solves the time issue.

• An "Entries" thread is posted at the beginning of the competition. The game being played will be referenced in the title.
• The first post of the thread lists every checkpoint as well as the corresponding deadlines. i.e., Defeat Sabrina - June 3, 2012, Defeat Giovanni - June 10th, 2012, etc.
• Participants can submit entries for each checkpoint at any time. If you want to write all five entries and submit them within a week, go ahead; however, each entry must be submitted by the corresponding deadline.
• All entries must be posted in the "Entries" thread. There will be separate voting threads for each stage of the competition due to the limiting nature of polls. The voting threads will be compiled by the host.
• Each stage of the competition will last approximately a week--five days for playing/writing and two days for voting. Because entries can be submitted at any time, the length of each round may be extended in the future.

Vader, we think it might be a good idea to create separate divisions for written stories/comics/let's play videos. Of course, this depends on the number of entries we get for each division.

Let us know what you think! Should anything be changed about this format?

 

[v]

Okay, sounds reasonable to me