The House of Paupers News.

4.21.2005

Hear ye! Hear ye!..

Ah...to 'ell with that!

Alright folks, we've mentioned this earlier this year, and now it's time!

What is it? The Haunted House Re-Design Contest!
Who can participate? Anyone!

What the heck is all the details? Good question. This is how it'll work. Each year, Paupers has their Haunted House on the last two nights of October. The entire Houses' room descriptions change drastically, to take on the guise of a dusty, dirty, creepy, haunted house. Well, this year, we've been given the green light to go ahead and..expand! That's right, we won't be changing any of the existing rooms, but we will be adding more! So, this contest is designed to allow anyone who wishes, to crank out some ideas in designing a "haunted" room, for a permanent addition to Paupers annual Haunted House.

We will also be accepting suggestions and ideas, but unfortunately, those by themselves, are not eligible for winning. What we're looking for, is the entire room description designed and written.

At the end of this message, I will give you some possible ideas of existing rooms, that "disappear" when Haunted House comes, so you could make a "haunted" version of them, if you like, or work on a completely different idea.

As for the room descriptions, the characters with spaces, can be no more than 512. You are allowed to create one atmospheric messaging per room, i.e. " The likeness of a handprint appears briefly on the broken glass of the pub's window then vanishes all the same." etc, etc. It's a message that will continue to happen every so many minutes, etc. So, make it fit with the "atmosphere", etc.

As for items in the room, you are also allowed to create 3 items that can be interacted with, which means, touched, sat upon, leaned on, etc. These items can also have long descriptions, or short descriptions with a SHOW. So if that evil rocking chair needs a SHOW on how to prove it's so evil...go for it.

Please refrain from any puzzles, mazes or traps of any sorts when designing the rooms. We've really only been given permission for new rooms this year, no extra specials like puzzles, etc. Atleast not yet. :)

Some ideas for Haunted rooms, could be: On the second floor, there's a hallway, a pub, and a balcony. On the first floor, there's also a performer's courtyard, a meeting place ( The Hall of Lore ) as well as a enchanter's workshop.

Please, send your final submissions to Faeryfire ( sangeleyes@bresnan.net ) and myself ( PlurthePauper@aol.com ) Please include your character's name as well.

We will have three winners, 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. We will be trying to add the rooms of all three, if they fit the scheme. If the room doesn't quite fit, or, if the place before it won and we can't quite have "two" Haunted Pubs, can we? Then you will still be awarded prize money, just not getting the room designed. 1st place winner is garuanteed room creation and we will judge the 2nd and 3rd place winners on availabilty of room, like I mentioned above. Only so many haunted balconies... We also hold the creative rights to add or edit your room description slightly if the GameMaster in charge needs a few things polished up, etc. But that will be up to the House Guru in charge.

As for prizes, 1st place will recieve 5 million silvers. 2nd place will recieve 2 million silvers. 3rd place will recieve 1 million silvers. The judges will be the officers of Paupers, who are immune to bribes in form of silver, drink or women. ( Well, some of us. Bring it on ladies. )

The contest ends May 31st, 2005 at 11:59pm, Eastern time. This will give the officers plenty of time to judge, pick carefully, and then allow the GameMasters to QC the rooms and implement them in time for Haunted House in October. Yes. It takes that long.

We hope you all enjoy the contest and have a good time creating an everlasting fingerprint on your world and on Paupers!

Oh yeah. BOO!

-Plur-
House of Paupers Pub Proprietor