Expedition Writing Contest: Thespians and Thieves

Welcome, Adventurers!

We hope everyone has enjoyed everything Expedition has had going on, between things like the June update featuring some new art from our Sci-Fi expansion and the community-made character sheets. However, some might notice we don't have a writing contest going on in the past month! We decided to give our quest crafters a bit of a break, but we're excited to come back and talk about the next writing contest for Expedition.

Hopefully everyone's ready to write their best script, as we're ready to pull back the curtain on our next contest... Thespians and Thieves!

Someday we won't force those awful puns, but today is not that day! Thespians and Thieves will see the return of our dual-theme system, but one might notice, this contest will take place over two months instead of the usual one. 

The themes for this contest will be bandits and drama. In other words, we want to see you publish the best quest you can using bandit enemies, a drama-filled plot, or both if you're up for a challenge. This contest will run until September 30th at 11:59 (EST). The winner of Thespians and Thieves will earn 500 loot points. All entries will be rewarded with 100 points for using either theme, or 200 points upon using both.

The term bandit can be a broad term, so take advantage of that! Maybe you want to write a story involving two powerful, rival families with star-crossed lovers that ends in tragedy? A thrilling fantasy tale, set on a continent full of family houses striving for political power and control of a throne? Or perhaps an adventure featuring a fedora-wearing archaeologist fighting against some nasty villains for a powerful artifact. Show us what you can come up with!

To enter, we're going to ask you to fill out this Google Form with your name and quest title, which will allow us to filter through quests and pick a winner. Your quest must be in English to qualify, but we do encourage quests of all languages to be made for, it just takes us too long to translate in a reasonable time to make a ruling on a winner. Finally, make sure your quests are marked for your audience accordingly, anything offensive will be taken down and the entrant disqualified.

To Participate:

• Create your quest and upload it by September 30th, 11:59 PM (EST).
• Fill out the Google Form with your name and quest title.
• Entries must be in English.

If you're looking for some tips on creating quests, check out our Quest Crafter series and consider subscribing to our Quest Crafter newsletter.

Make sure to follow our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages for the latest updates, and join our community on Reddit for the latest announcements!

Time to write your best screenplay, adventurers. Break a leg!

-Your Expedition Team

Expedition July 2018 Update!

Adventurers, 

Expedition has a whole slew of announcements for July, from more details about our sci-fi expansion to the launch of online multiplayer in Expedition, there'll sure to be something for everyone. We hope you're excited for the future of Expedition as much as we are!

Origins Game Fair 2018 - Recap

Last month the Expedition team (Todd, Scott, Logan, Greg, and Gabbie) were at Origins Game Fair 2018 in Columbus, Ohio! We kept ourselves busy with plenty of demos during the day, and even playtested some of the sci-fi expansion in the evening.

In addition to that, we're excited to announce that our Sci-Fi expansion is planned to come to Kickstarter this fall. There also might be a piece of art tucked away at the bottom of this newsletter.

Origins was an amazing show for us, and will be coming back in 2019. We'll be looking forward to seeing more of you next year!

The Expedition team at Origins Game Fair 2018, from left to right: Todd, Greg, Gabbie, and Scott! (Not shown: Logan, as he's taking the photo.)

Writing Contest - Adventures in Academia

A little over a month ago, we asked our quest creators to create the best contest using progression through character, mechanical, or storytelling elements, and/or have the adventure take place in an educational institute of some variety for our writing contest, Adventures in Academia.

Without further ado, we want to announce the winner of Adventures in Academia to be...The Illyrie Academy for the Arcane by Josh K! 

Thank you to all our participants, once again. Keep an eye on our website and social media, as we plan on announcing the next contest soon!

Online Multiplayer & New Features!

We've fixed a couple of bugs, and even added some new features to the app. Which also Includes the huge announcement that Expedition's Online Multiplayer feature is live!

• Online Multiplayer (previously "Remote Play") out of experimental! Check it out in the Tools section.
• At the start of the combat timer, flash the class icon of one of the enemies in the fight to increase immersion.
• Added an "official" label to official quests in search results, denoted by the Expedition icon in the top right of their result card. (*)
• Added an "awarded" label to quests that have won a quest writing awarded, denoted by a star icon in the top right of their result card. (*)
• Added a "requires pen & paper" field for quests to indicate if they require pen & paper, including the ability to filter search results by quests that specifically do or don't require this. (*)
• We made a big upgrade to our underlying code libraries to keep things as fast and stable as possible (for the programmers out there, we upgraded from Material UI 0.20 to 1.0)

(*) We wanted to take a moment to make a shoutout to Eric Zittel, for all he's done for the Expedition app! If you've been using the search engine in the Expedition app or have seen the official and award-winning icons next to quests, he's the one who helped make it happen.

If you want to contribute like Eric, you can always check out our GitHub.

Discord Server Announcement!

With the recent introduction of Multiplayer in Expedition, we figured our players might want a place to meet other Expedition players and creators. Whether you're looking to game with others, talk about quest crafting, or just chat about all things Expedition, come join the Expedition RPG Discord Server!

Don't scuttle past this part, our first baddie for Expedition's Sci-Fi expansion is ready to make his debut!

Our chief illustrator, Chris, has been drawing the Expedition art on a few livestreams over the past couple of weeks. If you're interested in seeing enemies like the Scuttler get drawn, go ahead and give him a follow on Twitch and Twitter.

If you're looking for some tips on creating quests, check out our Quest Crafter series and consider subscribing to our Quest Crafter newsletter.

Make sure to follow our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages for the latest updates, and join our community on Reddit for the latest announcements!

Expedition Writing Contest: Adventures in Academia

Welcome, Adventurers!

Our past two writing contests have been nothing short of amazing. Language of Lovecraft and Secrets, Sprites, and Everything Nice have produced some phenomenal quests thanks to community participation (We'll announce the latest winner this week!) and we have more participants with each passing contest. Speaking of, we have Memorial Day weekend coming up, so we figured it'd be nice to let you know what's next for our contests in case you wanted to get those ideas rolling...

Adventures in Academia is our next contest!

It seems a lot of our previous entrants are fans of the new dual-theme system, so we'll be implementing that yet again. As school is just getting out, we figured it'd be fun to design a quest around that. We want to see you publish the best quest you can in an educational institute of some variety, show off your best progression through character, mechanic, or storytelling elements, or use both if you're up for a challenge. The contest will run until June 29th at 11:50 PM (EST).

The winner of Adventures in Academia will earn 500 loot points. All entries will be rewarded with 100 points for using either theme, or 200 points upon using both.

Are you striving to write a high fantasy tale, involving a school of mages and their character development over their attendance at said school? Maybe you're being trained as a paladin, in faith and steel, to protect the lands you live in? Or perhaps you're a fledgling gladiator, fighting your way to freedom while learning some new fighting moves along the way? We can't wait to see what you come up with!

To enter, we're going to ask you to fill out this Google Form, with your name and quest title, to allow us to filter through quests easier. We're also sorry to impose a language restriction, as unfortunately, it takes too much time for us to translate foreign quests in a reasonable amount of time. We still encourage everyone, of all languages, to write and publish quests for all of our adventurers around the world. Perhaps in the future we can expand our efforts to including more languages for judging. In addition, make sure your quests are marked for your audience accordingly. Anything offensive will be taken down and the entrant disqualified.

To Participate:

• Create your quest and upload it by June 29th, 11:59 PM (EST).
• Fill out this Google Form, with your name and quest title.
• Entries must be in English.

School's back in session, adventurers! Break out that parchment!

-Your Expedition Team

Expedition Writing Contest: Secrets, Sprites, and Everything Nice

Adventurers!

We're absolutely blown away by the entries for Language of Lovecraft. We have a bunch of new quests available for everyone to play, and we're loving our experiences with them so far (winner will be announced soon). It seems that a lot of our quest creators like this new format for contests. With that being said, it's time to get those creative juices flowing as we announce what's next...

Secrets, Sprites, and Everything Nice will be our next contest!

We like to push our writers to use themes they may not be accustomed to. So we're giving you two themes to pick from again. We want to see the best quest you can make using Fae monsters, mystery plotlines, or both if you're up for a challenge. The contest will run until April 26th at 11:59 PM (EST). 

People also like loot points being rewarded as a system, as it's easier on everyone for reward. So again, the winner of the contest will earn 500 loot points. All entries will be rewarded with 100 points for using either theme, or 200 points upon using both. 

What sort of stories could you write using these themes? Maybe someone secretly stole a bunch of gold coins while a Fae creature enacts its revenge? Perhaps there's a handful of Fae trying to figure out while an evil warlock and his familiar want to bring harm to their village? Maybe a Fae creature takes you to another land to defeat a dreaded pirate? The possibilities are limitless, and we can't wait to see what you make!

As always, make sure your quests are marked for your audience accordingly. Anything offensive will be taken down and the entrant disqualified. 

It's no mystery we're excited to see your next creations!

Your Expedition Team

Expedition Writing Contest: Language of Lovecraft

Adventurers!

With the writing and photo contests of January coming to a close (winners will be announced soon), that means it's time to announce the next one. Drum roll please...

Language of Lovecraft will be our next contest!

As we're celebrating the launch of Expedition: The Horror into the month of February, we wanted to put focus on our new cosmic baddies. However, we still wanted a theme for the contest, so we ultimately decided to give you two different themes to pick from. We want to see your best quests using new Horror monsters, romantic themes, or both if you're up for a challenge. The contest will run until March 8th at 11:59 PM (EST).

The winner of the contest will earn 500 loot points! All entries will be rewarded with 100 points for using either theme, or 200 points upon using both. (Which is perfect if you're looking to pick up the expansion, wink wink nudge nudge.)

Expedition has an audience of all ages, so make sure to mark your quests accordingly. Anything offensive or pornographic will be taken down and the entrant disqualified. We all love Cthulhu, but not like that.

We can't wait to fall in love with your new adventures!

Your Expedition Team

Expedition New Years: Quests, Voting period, expansion and more!

Adventurers,

Welcome to 2018! We thought we'd kick off the new year looking back at all we'e accomplished as a community:

Year in review

At about this time last year, the first-ever copies of Expedition were delivered to backers. Hard to believe, right?

Since then, Expedition has grown tremendously:

• From a community of 1,000... to over 8,000 players!
• We launched - and shipped - our first expansion, raising over $64,000!
• The team expanded from just Scott and Todd to more than a dozen team members!
• We had our first convention booth - at the 50th GenCon anniversary - where we played Expedition with over 300 people!
• The app was updated with tons of new features and fixes - totaling more than 500 commits!
• Community authors wrote more than 50 quests!

Most importantly, we've proven that a community-driven, open-source, technology-enabled game is not only feasible... it's a ton of fun!

New Quests and Contest Voting

The November-December writing contest saw four awesome new adventures ready for you to play! Splice, The Spirit of Festivus, Kingdom of Kelendia: The Curse and To the New World: An Expedition Story.

Cast your vote to help decide the winner of the $500 writing prize here:  https://goo.gl/forms/kkUOT2xEtIyCAmFF2

Voting ends January 15th at noon. Note that attempts to scam or game the voting system will result in disqualification.

January Writing Contest

Need an excuse to practice your writing? Want to win $100? Then you've come to the right place!

This January, the quest with the best out-of-combat roleplaying and character progression will win $100 in cash!

To enter, simply write and publish a quest with the Expedition Quest Creator by 11:59pm EST on January 31st, 2018. After the deadline, the Expedition team will judge all entries and select a winner. Additional consideration will be given to quests that are 40 minutes or longer.

Learn more about Expedition writing contests here.

Buying The Horror

The remaining Kickstarter copies will ship out in the next week (still finalizing the date).

The Horror will be available for purchase starting January 26th on the Expedition Store and in game stores. Want to support your local game shop? Point them to ExpeditionGame.com/retail for details on how to purchase Expedition from distributors.

Paperless Expedition App

Speaking of community-driven... one of our fans made an awesome digital version of the cards. It's currently available on the Android App Store. Note that it's a fan-supported app and currently only has the base set available.

If there's enough interest, he'll make it for web and iOS as well - so make sure to rate it and give him feedback in the app. Thank you, Mike!

New Features

The Expedition app has received several upgrades in December, including:

• Combat audio engine
• Ability to report errors and send feedback without leaving the app
• Improved app interface on large displays
• Remote play now in beta
• Fixed a lot of bugs - thank you to all of the users who reported them!

Interested in helping make the app even better? Your first contribution to any Expedition repo earns you 200 loot points!

Loot Club

We're working on a big update to the loot club to make it even more rewarding to participate in the Expedition community. You can now earn points by writing quests, improving the code, and sharing Expedition with your local game community. Loot points can be redeemed for cash and all sorts of Expedition swag.

We've also multiplied all loot point balances and rewards by 100 so that we can give out rewards for an even broader array of contributions. This month, we'll be integrating loot points with the quest creator, so that you'll be able to easily check and redeem your points!

Here's to many more years of adventuring,

Your Expedition team

$100 Holiday Photo Contest!

Adventurers!

We're happy to announce our first photo contest for Expedition! Starting today until January 2nd at 11:59pm, we'll be accepting entries to win a $100 prize! Here's how you enter:

• Take a photo and post it on social media (Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook), tagging us or using #ExpeditionRPG in the post. 
• Expedition, either the box or game, should be featured in the picture.
• Have fun with it! We  encourage holiday themed and silly pictures. (Though they don't have to be!)
• January 4th, 2018 edit: Bonus points will be awarded to photos that include people playing Expedition! While we love to see how photogenic our game is, we love to see the people who enjoy it too! 

Any entries that don't follow the above criteria won't be counted, so make sure to smile! Everyone is allowed three entries, so get to snapping some photos!

Here are the links to our pages:

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

If you need an example, take a look at this stellar photo taken at the Expedition: The Horror launch party:

Note that by entering the contest, you agree to give Expedition and Fabricate, LLC the right to reproduce your photo for marketing purposes royalty free.

We can't wait to see your photos!

Todd, Scott, Greg and the Expedition Team

December Update: Writing contest extended, new QuestCrafter and new features

Adventurers!

We have several exciting Expedition updates this December, including an extension of our $500 writing contest (with even more ways to earn loot points), a new QuestCrafter and new features.

$500 quest writing contest extended

We want to make sure your adventuring experience is as fun as possible, and we've received feedback from authors that one month hasn't been enough time to write quality quests of this size. So, here's what we're doing:

• Extending the submission deadline to December 31st at 11:59pm. It's not too late to start working on an entry!
• Lowering the minimum word count to 15,000.
• Offering numerous ways to earn bonus loot points, including:
  • Earn a bonus point by publishing the first chapter of your entry by November 30th at 11:59pm EST.
  • Earn a bonus point for every 5,000 words you write over the minimum amount.
  • Earn a bonus point for incorporating a winter or holiday theme into your entry.

We've updated the writing contest page with these changes as well.

Thank you to all of the amazing writers in the Expedition community for sharing your creativity with us! And if you've been thinking about writing a quest but need an excuse, the $500 contest is the perfect time to try your hand at interactive storytelling :)

New QuestCrafter: Advanced Combat

Thanks to Greg's latest installment of the QuestCrafter series, you can now learn advanced combat techniques such as custom text and choices between rounds and changing combat victory rewards. Have questions or ideas that you'd love to see a QuestCrafter on? Email Greg at Authors@Fabricate.io!

New features

It wouldn't be an Expedition update without a bunch of features and improvements!

• Streamlined combat screens in app
• Improved display on large screens
• Fixed numerous bugs, including the "Error!" that would appear on Android / iOS app load.
• Show "Last Updated" and "Expansions required" on quest search details page.
• Added support for several new quest writing tools, including the ability to make paragraphs of text conditionally shown / hidden by adding a comparison operation like {{gold > 10}} to their start.

Thank you to all of the community members who shared their feedback, ideas and bug reports with us in November.

Scott and I are making good progress on both remote play and the audio engine. In fact, our composer just delivered the final audio files to us. Up next: now we have to polish and fine tune the code so that the more than 3,000,000 possible combinations of instruments, rhythms and melodies sound good together. We can't wait to share it with you!

 Until next time,

Todd, Scott, Greg and the Expedition team