What's that, Furcadia?

Wolf Howl – Howling for… something.

The days of summer have slowly faded away into those of Autumn here in the northern hemisphere. September is upon us, leaves are slowly beginning to turn from the green color of Spring and Summer to the golden reds, browns, and yellows of Fall.

Kids are getting back to school, parents are slowly weening themselves off the alcohol bottles that got them through the summer. College students are finding out what it is like to be away from their parents for the first time. (Right now, they’re loving it. When they have nothing clean to wear, they’ll cry.)

DEP has rolled out the Fall welcome mat the same way they do every year, (complete with it looking almost identical to past examples, too boot,) by dropping a festival into Drakoria.

Seriously, though.

The website is a very similar creation to the websites of the past. The theme this year is “Howls”, which, as has been stated, can mean “Howls of Laughter, Terror, Fear, Triumph, or pretty much any other kind of howl you can think of.”

The contests are pretty simple and straight forward. You can write a story that depicts a character having strong emotions, or causes the audience to feel strong emotions about the character, or story. You can build one of two kinds of dreams: One for Ferians, or one for Furres. Either of which should illicit ‘strong emotions that make you want to howl’.

If you missed it, DEP wants their players to sit at their desks and howl when they see the creations.

Here are some tips for how to make a successful contest entry. We’re going to start with stories:

You should try and use descriptors that relate not only to your character, but also the readers. If you are going for scary, you should describe exactly why something is frightening. A rustling sound at the window, claw-like shadows on the wall, dull, echoing footsteps coming from an unseen source all add an air of fear to a given story. The same can be said for comedic pieces. Try keeping the tone throughout everything, including your descriptions.

For Furre-Dreams, remember that a Furre is just an extension of the player; it isn’t a role-play based ideal, to be specific. Pick a way you want your characters to howl, and then build the dream around that idea. Devil’s Sanctum from last year’s contest would be a perfect example of how to do this. They took the idea of fear, and played into what most people fear: The Unknown. They accentuated this with inhumane sounds, shades of gray and black, and by narrowing the view-screen. All of these helped put their dream over the top.

If you’re designing a dream for Ferians, you should try steering away from items that you’d see in human society. Ferians are feral creatures. They do not take a point to build great cities, so try to remember to keep with the idea of nature. That’s not to say you can’t have technology, but try to remember that you’re designing for a person that wants to play a non-walking, unevolved, (comparatively,) character. You might make use of the following lines of DS:

(0:100) When 1 seconds have passed, offset by 0,
(0:70) When a furre idles (doesn’t do ANYTHING) for 1 seconds,
(1:1201) and the triggering furre is not localspecies 1,
(5:1200) change the triggering furre to localspecies 1.

While it might be fun to patch in every species with a feral counterpart, this will (possibly) make the experience better for your dialup players that want to see your dream.

These suggestions are specifically that, suggestions. They’re what I would look for if I were a judge in the contests, (which I am not.) The judges all judge differently, so there is no clean-cut way to make certain that you’ve done what the judge might want. It is a good idea to make certain that you follow the Guidelines to make sure that you follow the rules for dream submission.

There is one setback as of right now, however, for those of you working on Ferian dreams, that will hopefully be addressed before the dream contest: There is a certain lack of Ferian Digo. While this DS isn’t a crucial idea or point that needs to be used in a Ferian dream, it could help players make a more engaging map and dream for those who help pay to keep DEP’s pool filled.

Good luck to those entering the contest; I will be writing up a story for submission myself. Hope you all do well!