i believe that depends on sun's thoughts <3 and that's fair ahahaha

Hi! I was thinking today about how to work the pfp system, and I had an idea. Let me know what you think.

As I was thinking about what I would ask the campers when designing their pfps, a thought came to me. What if some of the perhaps more desirable dragons had to be bought with a certain amount of in-cabin currency? It wouldn’t be a particularly hard amount to acquire, but this would encourage the campers to participate if they, for example, really wanted a night fury. Most of the dragon options would be free, apart from unlocking the hatchery, but this might me an engaging incentive to tie into our in-cabin currency system.

By the way, an in-cabin currency is something all cabins have, right? It definitely seemed like that to me last session but I could be wrong.


Also, an exciting development with the leader pfps! I just realized there’s a Night fury “type” I hadn’t considered- Night Lights! (I looked it up, that’s the official name for the night-light fury hybrids seen at the end of hidden world.) So one of us could have a light fury, one of us could have a night fury, and one of us could have a night light! Or, we could all just have different dragons, but I like this idea.

Has Sun seen the forum link? I’d like to hear their input before moving too far forward.

-SimplyWatermelon- wrote:

Has Sun seen the forum link? I’d like to hear their input before moving too far forward.

I'm here dw bwaha, I'm just currently typing up something that is very… long :')

Okay hello! Apologies for hopping in so late, it's a busy time of week and I'll comment more concretely in two days— I should say I'm very excited to lead with you both ohoho, thank you for the offer <33

My initial thoughts:
- I should clarify that while I absolutely adore the movies my more formative memories of How to Train Your Dragon are with the 12-book saga, which is also very, very good and very, very different movies. It seems that we aren't heading in that direction, do I have that right?

- How deep do we want to get into httyd “lore”, per se? I may have been a bit insane as a child and watched all of the tv shows and specials growing up, but that would probably be a bit much to dump on campers; there are, however, a lot of fun plot points from the shows (mysterious island with dragons never seen before!! marauders!! ghosts!!) that I can go and dig up if you're curious about potential storylines :0

- I'm down for Sheets usage, I've used it before! When it comes to scheduling, I've already mentioned I'm going to be quite busy, so to clarify: I will be almost entirely inactive Wednesdays and Thursdays PST thanks to extracurriculars, and every other Sunday or so I have a 5 hour class. Otherwise, I should have about 20 minutes each morning (7-8 am pst) to check in and at least an hour after school each day + on weekends.

- As a result of said above schedule I don't think I'll be able to mess around with designing/coding projects too much; I would love to pitch in some small ways (edit Canva ideas, mess around with color palettes, etc.), but I don't think I'll have the time to make any big designs/art pieces from scratch and frankly I don't think I have the skill either. (Though I'll still share a promo, as I said I would.) I'd be down to help with anything writing-related though, so writing the cabin intro/flavour text for other studios/storyline beats is something I could easily do :> Summer you said you wanted to write the cabin intro as well, so we can collab on that or you can simply write it yourself, whichever you prefer <3

- Cabin theme!! Hoo boy okay so I do really like the each-camper-trains-a-dragon idea, and I'm excited to see it unfold <33 However, I have (1) a lot of logistical questions and (2) a small persnickety nitpick because that's who I am :'))) Going backwards with the short nitpick I have to say I don't. fully enjoy the name fantasy flight academy (I'm sorry sobbing),,, at least in my mind it doesn't really fit the rustic, pre-medieval vibes we're going for and makes me think of a more victorian-esque hoighty-toighty “education is incredibly important to our divided society!” atmosphere instead alskdhf. though that may just be me. (maybe fantasy flight initiation if we want to lean into the “coming of age” thing, or fantasy dragon training? idk.) okay and then the logistical questions! how do we plan to approach the whole dragon thing in general? if campers are interacting with a dragon tailored to them, how are we going to facilitate that other than in pfps: do we roleplay? integrate them into the story? make a project where the campers can design the dragon? will campers be able to choose their own species of dragon? how will they do that? i love this idea a lot but i think we need to be very cautious while figuring out what to do with the whole dragon thing, because it will be very easy for us to decide to do something that is just not feasible for the number of campers we will have and the limited amount of time on our hands.

- When it comes to in-cabin currencies, they are certainly common but not all cabins do! Steampunk did not last session, and I personally have recently tried to stay away from them as keeping track of transactions can be difficult and it can be a bit unmotivating for campers to have writing activities they enjoy denigrated down to a currency </3 this decision would ultimately come down to moonlit, though.

- Also it's a small thing, but I agree with Moonlit that we shouldn't go around naming a lot of fancy things and having a very plot-heavy storyline, because in my experience campers tend to get a bit overwhelmed with such things. The names and story work best as a backdrop to the overall day-to-day experiences of the campers, as a sort of “look our world is consistent and immersive!” kinda thing instead of a “look how much you can do here!” kinda thing. people are here to write and make friends first and foremost, throwing a lot of other things to do at them rarely works </3

-I will say that when it comes to thumbnails I have personally worked the other way around: designing the rest of the cabin first and figuring out a concrete aesthetic before making the thumb so that I have a clearer idea of what I want it to convey beforehand bwaha. I think it can work both ways!

Anyways it's 11:30 pm and I need to do hw don't follow my example thank you for reading my ramblings good night!!

Long is right! Lemme read this now lol

Okay! Hi Sun!

I’m not familiar with the novels, and I’m pretty sure we were basing this off the movies. You’d have to confirm with Moonlit though :]

I like what you said about the currency, but I’d also like to see what Moonlit says about it, and whether or not she’d planned to have one.

With the pfps: the idea with the currency was very spur-of-the-moment, and in hindsight I think it would be less complicated to just let campers choose the dragon they want. I’ll probably just include a list of a few of the basic httyd dragons to make things less complicated for me, but if a camper wants a very specific dragon they can ask.

With your persnickety nitpick (XD) and logistics questions: I actually agree that the cabin name isn’t the best right now. It doesn’t exactly fit with our current idea. And as for camper interaction with dragons, I think some roleplay would be cool. I was also thinking that the hatchery could also include making a sort of dragon profile - name, species, personality, appearance, etc. I think your question is definitely an important point to consider.

Word count studio intro: Collaborating on an intro sounds like it might be a bit hard, but I’m sure it could be done. Did you want to do it that way? Unless you wanted to, I think I’d rather do it by myself, but with critique and input of course.

Welcome to the team!

ohohoho welcome sun <33

- i also am not familiar with the novels, though you are welcome to bring pieces of their lore into fantasy if you'd like! but yes, i think we are heading down the movie path :>

- i like the idea of using httyd lore where we can! i think we should definitely be cautious of overloading campers where storyline lore and other things to do – we want them to write, interact with each other, and generally have fun, as opposed to feeling that there is constantly something they should be doing. that said, lore within reason is something i would love to do – one of the things i really love about creating fandom based cabins is how much we have to work with, and i'd be happy to use it!

- word counts spreadsheet - got it! i'll set that up and send it to both of you at some point (during cst's) today <3

- sun scheduling - got it, and thank you for letting us know!

- cabin theme - bwahahaha that's fair on the name <3 i will say that i have very much been one to set up the basics of a cabin – studio description, thumbnails, word counts usually pfps, etc. – and branch out from there, though i'd be up for trying it the other way around if you'd like! i also agree that we should be careful with the designing and interacting with dragons – i like summer's idea of designing a dragon alongside making a pfp that portrays it! (again – i will warn you that drawing pfps is going to be a lottt of work, likely all at once! so if you are up for making a icon creator, i would definitely encourage you to consider it <3 at least for me personally, i would much rather sort out and have as many of the aspects of our cabin ready now with the hope of spending more time interacting with campers and writing later in november) i also like the idea of roleplaying – i think how the campers interact with their dragons will ultimately come to how we choose to facilitate the storyline, but roleplaying sounds good to me regardless <3

- currencies - i am also not a huge fan of currencies – they are a bit of hassle to keep track of, and one most campers have generally neglected when i've used them. i also agree with what sun said about putting writing to a number of a certain currency <3

- storyline - definitely seconding what sun said about limiting how much we do and have for campers to do <3 we can definitely talk more about this later – but one idea could be to take the “swc canon”'s already existing activities and events and essentially present them to campers as theme challenges? i'm not sure exactly how this would work, but i thought i'd throw it out there!

(will add on to this in a bit)

Yay forums are back online!

I’m going to bed but sharing a quick thought on pfps, I think I’m going to draw each dragon in advance and campers can choose from a list (which httyd dragon type they want), but I can make small adjustments like color or features according to request. Sound good?

Good night <3
(Or day, or afternoon, idk)

good night summer <33 and that sounds great! you may also want to include examples in the project, or from there, i suspect you could easily create an icon creator if you wanted to – but up to you hehe

I’m sure I could, but I like the freedom of being able to choose more specific aspects of a character instead of using a pfp creator without the options you’re looking for. It does seem that I’m heading in the direction of an icon creator XD I will consider it

Edit: I just watched Hamilton and as a theater kid this has changed my life :0

you could always tell our campers that you'd be happy to add custom elements for them if they'd like! but that's fair :>

HAMILTONNN <3

MoonlitSeas wrote:

you could always tell our campers that you'd be happy to add custom elements for them if they'd like

That’s an extremely good point I’ll probably do that byeee

good night bwahahaha <3 see you in the morning!

-SimplyWatermelon- wrote:

Word count studio intro: Collaborating on an intro sounds like it might be a bit hard, but I’m sure it could be done. Did you want to do it that way? Unless you wanted to, I think I’d rather do it by myself, but with critique and input of course.

It's alright! I'll let you give a go at it then, and then I'll nab an intro to one of our other cabins <3

(reposted below)

MoonlitSeas wrote:

ohohoho welcome sun <33

- i like the idea of using httyd lore where we can! i think we should definitely be cautious of overloading campers where storyline lore and other things to do – we want them to write, interact with each other, and generally have fun, as opposed to feeling that there is constantly something they should be doing. that said, lore within reason is something i would love to do – one of the things i really love about creating fandom based cabins is how much we have to work with, and i'd be happy to use it!

will do! Once we get more into the nitty-gritty of a specific story I'll start digging up some potential plot hooks ohoho.

- cabin theme - bwahahaha that's fair on the name <3 i will say that i have very much been one to set up the basics of a cabin – studio description, thumbnails, word counts usually pfps, etc. – and branch out from there, though i'd be up for trying it the other way around if you'd like! i also agree that we should be careful with the designing and interacting with dragons – i like summer's idea of designing a dragon alongside making a pfp that portrays it! (again – i will warn you that drawing pfps is going to be a lottt of work, likely all at once! so if you are up for making a icon creator, i would definitely encourage you to consider it <3 at least for me personally, i would much rather sort out and have as many of the aspects of our cabin ready now with the hope of spending more time interacting with campers and writing later in november) i also like the idea of roleplaying – i think how the campers interact with their dragons will ultimately come to how we choose to facilitate the storyline, but roleplaying sounds good to me regardless <3

You are the leader, so ultimately how we approach cabin planning is up to you! Prioritize whichever you would like to do first— as for the dragons, sounds good! I can help out with some pieces of pfps/the icon creator and drawing if necessary, if we're planning on going down that route <3 I agree that we should have as much ready before november as possible; let's do this <33

- storyline - definitely seconding what sun said about limiting how much we do and have for campers to do <3 we can definitely talk more about this later – but one idea could be to take the “swc canon”'s already existing activities and events and essentially present them to campers as theme challenges? i'm not sure exactly how this would work, but i thought i'd throw it out there!

Oh I've done this before bwaha, it's not that hard: the day before we just go “guys big event coming up, its the dragon island races!!” or smth like that and then we just talk in renaissance-faire-immersion-speak for the rest of the event. For dailies and weeklies etc. we can just come up with themed names. “hey guys remember to check the daily dragon training challenge!” etc. etc.

Sunclaw68 wrote:
It's alright! I'll let you give a go at it then, and then I'll nab an intro to one of our other cabins <3

if you'd like, you're welcome to write our main intro! i've written more than enough intros over the past year, and there's plenty of other stuff (like thumbnails!) i'm already doing for us <3

speaking thumbnails, what would we like to name our cabin? i'd personally be happy with sticking to “how to train your dragon” for lack of suitable alternatives, but if you have other ideas, i'd love to hear them ;D

will do! Once we get more into the nitty-gritty of a specific story I'll start digging up some potential plot hooks ohoho.

sounds good, and thank you sun <3

Oh I've done this before bwaha, it's not that hard: the day before we just go “guys big event coming up, its the dragon island races!!” or smth like that and then we just talk in renaissance-faire-immersion-speak for the rest of the event. For dailies and weeklies etc. we can just come up with themed names. “hey guys remember to check the daily dragon training challenge!” etc. etc.

ohohoho well if it worked out well and you'd be up for doing it again, that sounds like a great plan to me! if we'd like, we could organize how we name things to correspond with an overarching journey of progress towards training our dragons – for example, the first points daily could be the first flight, and subsequent dailies could become dragon training, as you mentioned, and the writing comp could be regarded as some sort of ultimate challenge their training has prepared them for?

here's a list of Things That Happen, roughly in order -
- (camper signups)
- campers invited
- first day of camp
- first points daily
- first weekly
- word wars
- second weekly (& critiquitaire?)
- cabin wars/mercenaries introduced (i)
- writing comp
- third weekly
- writing comp due
- fourth weekly
- cabin wars (ii)
- last day of camp
- (results)

if we'd like to thematically name things, i'm going to suggest that we make the matching pfps requirement completing a daily (ideally the first non-intro one) or offer all of our campers a matching pfp when we invite them, since it's a little hard to train dragons without dragons bwahaha

Do campers get invited before the first day of camp? If so then perhaps they could be notified that “the elders have deemed you ready to begin dragon training” after the sorting but they don’t get pfps until the first day when dragon training “begins.”

Here’s the rest of them along with some ideas!

- first day of camp: Dragon training begins! I can share “The hatchery” (icon creator) and campers can receive their dragons. This is pretty self-explanatory I think.
- first points daily: First flight? First challenge? I think for this it might be fun to share a project with a short pov of “taking off,” and then an encouragement to campers to do the daily
- first weekly: If the daily was the first flight, then maybe this could be the first mission? It could be cool if the purpose of the mission was somehow connected to the weekly’s theme
- word wars: Sparring! Learning combat!
- second weekly (& critiquitaire?): (Does the second weekly always introduce the critiquitaire?) Maybe it could be a mission that’s focused on teamwork? Or one of the elders giving tips on flying? I’m not sure about this one.
- cabin wars/mercenaries introduced: (Are mercenaries introduced in the first cabin wars this session?) I think it would be really fun to go with something like “Viking raids” for this, and maybe the mercenaries could be just that, mercenaries! I’m sure a viking would be familiar with a mercenary XD
- writing comp: Maybe this could be a test of skill, or a rite of passage? Like a flying course that’s difficult to complete? Or one that makes you rly on knowing your dragon well?
- third weekly: Same idea as the other weeklies probably, except that the campers are more skilled now so we could put an emphasis on how it will be harder? (Not the writing, but the hypothetical storyline mission)
- writing comp due: idk about this, it doesn’t really seem like cause for a named event in my opinion.
- fourth weekly: The final mission? A little bittersweet, since training is coming to an end. Maybe this time they could actually be doing something to help the village, using all the skills they’ve learned?
- cabin wars: The raids are back, fiercer than ever. The campers have to protect the village and fight back.
- last day of camp: I can see the elders presenting each of them with a laurel wreath and telling them that they are all officially the village’s protectors or something, but what is the norse equivalent to laurel wreaths?

I think it might be fun to release a short pov whenever something happens, so that way you can see how the storyline ties in to the events, instead of us just naming them. That way, though, campers are also not really missing anything if they decide not to read them.

All of these are just ideas! Tell me if there’s any you like

campers are usually invited around the 25th (in this case, october 25th), so yes! if you would still like to use pfps as a piece of motivation to get started, you could perhaps share the hatchery on the second day with the requirement that they must complete a daily to use it – not necessarily that day's daily, though i imagine many of them would choose to do that that one :0 which would likely put us higher on the leaderboard, which does tend to provide a springboard for motivation at the start of the session!

if we were to do that, the second points daily (third day of camp) could be a first flight, and the intro daily (first day of camp) could be some sort of viking rally or meet and greet – we could say something about showing their viking pride?

i like the idea of making the weeklies mission themed – perhaps we could connect these missions somehow? as an example, if we were to map the world (sun httyd lore!!), all of these could be about discovering islands ✨ as for connecting missions to theme, i will get back to you on that shortly <3

we could make wird wars sparring, or we could also potentially make them dragon races – whatever you'd like works for me!

i love your cabin wars and writing comp ideas, and yes, i believe mercenaries will be introduced during the first cabin wars.

one thing we could do for the last day of camp is each write a thank you or collaboratively write thank you's for our campers and share them as a project – sun would know better than i, but one viking tradition portrayed in the movies was giving them their helmets :>

write a storyline brief pov also sounds like a lot of fun – we could do these for both the start and end of events if we'd like and are up for it! maybe we could use the first to introduce whatever's happening, and the second to describe its result?

additionally – i would like to settle on a name as soon as we can so that we can get our cabin setup! we could always use “how to train your dragon”, or if you have other ideas, i'd love to hear them ;D

Summer all of your ideas look great <3 As for Moonlit's questions/prompts:

I agree that it would be a good idea to share the hatchery early! A nice way to set the tone for the rest of the session.

I love the idea of the first true daily being the first flight, and for the first intro daily I think that would be a fun way to be like “welcome to dragon training everyone! get to know your fellow trainees by introducing your dragonrider personas” to each other or smth

Over the weekend I'll go read the httyd wiki and dump a bunch of possible plot hooks that we can use to tie the missions together— though exploring/mapping is relatively easy and a very good one already <3 how would we go about “completing” the mission? would that be a certain number of campers completing the weekly, or do we want to be a bit more relaxed and just have some flavour text before and after the weekly regardless of how many did it?

I don't have a strong opinion on word wars being sparring or dragon races, either works bwaha

WRITING COMP RITE OF PASSAGE WRITING COMP RITE OF PASSAGE!! :OOO I think it'd be a great way to encourage writing comp entries, and if that did have some story impact through strengthening dragon bonds or smth like that i think that could be very fun. but hard to pull off. but fun!

and i think compiling a thank-you-project would be great as well <33

writing framing roleplay text would be great for all events if we could pull it off oof.

as for the name: I still don't feel great about fantasy flight academy but it turns out that there is in fact a Berk Dragon Training Academy and I just have a terrible memory whoops. It should also be noted that Dragon Riders are an official organization in the httyd world, so we can really go all out with the “you're joining something important!!” thing bwaha.

MoonlitSeas wrote:

if you would still like to use pfps as a piece of motivation to get started, you could perhaps share the hatchery on the second day with the requirement that they must complete a daily to use it … which would likely put us higher on the leaderboard, which does tend to provide a springboard for motivation at the start of the session!

That’s a good idea! I like how then the pfps could become motivational but not a bother to work for.

if we were to do that, the second points daily (third day of camp) could be a first flight, and the intro daily (first day of camp) could be some sort of viking rally or meet and greet – we could say something about showing their viking pride?

I like those ideas, definitely a good way to get campers enthusiastic right away. I like “show your viking pride”, maybe that could be in the announcements/qotd section of the description for the first day?

i like the idea of making the weeklies mission themed – perhaps we could connect these missions somehow? as an example, if we were to map the world (sun httyd lore!!), all of these could be about discovering islands ✨ as for connecting missions to theme, i will get back to you on that shortly <3

Ooh discovering islands! Maybe we could somehow connect this to a desire to expand- like Berk becoming to crowded in Hidden World. Sun, we need your hidden islands lore now XD

we could make word wars sparring, or we could also potentially make them dragon races

I like dragon races- maybe word wars could be like “the arena” or something, where campers face off in all different kinds of competitions, racing and sparring being a few.

one thing we could do for the last day of camp is each write a thank you or collaboratively write thank you's for our campers and share them as a project – sun would know better than i, but one viking tradition portrayed in the movies was giving them their helmets :>

Oh I love that! I feel like we could say something about it representing independence. And the thank you project could serve as a little in-cabin memory book! I love this idea.

write a storyline brief pov also sounds like a lot of fun – we could do these for both the start and end of events if we'd like and are up for it! maybe we could use the first to introduce whatever's happening, and the second to describe its result?

That’s a great idea! I hadn’t thought of making one afterwards, but I think it would be a good way to make our events seem consistent. Do you think we could split the projects up among ourselves? I know Sun said they didn’t have much time for designing projects, so we could just split the events up between you and me if they didn’t mind. I would definitely like to write a few povs :>

Names! I don’t want to go with just Httyd, although I suppose we could, so I’ll give that some thought. Here are some possibilities. They’re not all that good XD

Fantasy Dragon trainers/riders
Fantasy Flight training
Fantasy dragon flight
Fantasy: Dragon Skies
Fantasy: Take to the skies
Something about vikings perhaps
Woohoo I’m flying a dragon in this cabin with a super bomb title

As for thumbnail, do you know hiccup’s first flight in the movies? I couldn’t find a picture, but I feel like there’s a point where he’a sitting up with both his arms out. I think a shot of that from the back overlooking a horizon could make a good tn. (Or maybe a thumbnail for the “first flight” project)