Hey Everyone!

In each new event report we see so many neat ways people use Storyteller objects, and with people really experimenting heavily with the system now with Blueprints I thought it might be time to start a new general "tips and tricks" thread to help share ideas on placement, usage, etc.  We share many of these tricks in Event Reports and elsewhere (for example, the question of aliases/macros for object moving comes up every few weeks), but I thought it would be great to have a thread full of them for both new and veteran Storytellers.

Here's my first one:

• Persistent Effects (fire, smoke, electricity) work on NPC's as well as Props, so I've found them invaluable in marking specific NPC's status for the Story Participants.  For example, in a recent Event I marked the Elites with Electricity, and the Bosses with Fire.  This makes it a much more organic experience for the players, and obvious from a distance what their main objective is.  It also prevents people from just plowing in and getting surprised at the level of a MOB, when they just killed 19 Level 90 NPC's and the last one is Boss difficulty.  Here's a pic of it in action:

That's just one idea - like many of you I have many more tricks up my sleeve, LOL, but this is a nice start and will add more as the thread (hopefully) develops with more ideas.

So...what little tricks have YOU been dying to share?

Leyah

• Blueprint "Fun Spawns" - I just made some of these to fill in the slight lulls that can happen in action during events.  Before Blueprints I used to just click the "spawn all" option on a token, but now with Blueprints and Boss/Elite tokens I've designed several small, varied spawns (labeled Fun Spawn 1, 2, and 3) that I can spawn randomly during events when needed.  One is a surprise Tusken attack (with two Elites and a boss among others), a surprise Ewok attack (I love using Ewoks in any way I can, LOL) and one Rebel Spawn.  By putting some tough NPC's in there I am able to get several minutes worth of combat content out of them, and I plan to use them to supplement the main action (or in cases where something goes wrong, as a backup).  These are much better than my old method, because you don't see silly rows of NPCs instead of them looking more naturally.
  

• Here is a simple one but SO effective : Use landing transport ship instant effect tokens (available in several varities, though we need more) just as you are going to drop a Blueprint or manual NPC spawn.  This looks SO cool, if you time and position it properly it can look like your NPC's just jumped out of the landing ship, and they begin to attack as the ship takes off.

My Tip:

 When planning an event and planning your decorations to save as a blueprint etc, time can pass very quickly without you realising. When you place the Storyteller vendor, 1st thing to do is buy another storyteller vendor to keep in your inventory, so after a while when the storyteller vendor disapears and if you still need his services, its easy to place another. Then repeat process.

ziso

When you place the Storyteller vendor, 1st thing to do is buy another storyteller vendor to keep in your inventory..

Storyteller alias makes it much easier to move props.

/alias rsl /rotateStorytellerObject left
/alias rsr /rotateStorytellerObject right
/alias msu /moveStorytellerObject up
/alias msd /moveStorytellerObject down
/alias msf /moveStorytellerObject forward
/alias msb /moveStorytellerObject back

Tip: place camps to flatten out or extend the ground for interesting suspended object effects. Make sure you finish positioning all items while the camp is there, since once the ground is removed too far away from these items you will no longer be able to re-position them (unless you put the camp back).

Related tip: the largest camps will move the most ground, but no sense wasting "Luxury Camps" full of modules like a shuttle, cloner, batteries for camp duration... these are costly to create. I recommend hiring an architect to do a run of crates of the largest camps with no modules. If you get into using these camps to suspend objects you will probably go through a ton of them as you manipulate the ground for yourself.

Suspended platform examples:

Ravine Bridge on endor- we wanted to go right through the middle of some trees, however important note... CAMPS MAKE TREES DISSAPPEAR! =O. We couldn't tell where the trees were till we yanked the camps back out from underneath the platforms.

Guild 2 vs 2 tournament arena-  an outcast tusken warlord calls upon my guild to demonstrate combat techniques for his cloned army of genetically engineered fighting jawas. the winning pair from each fight had the honor of sitting at the smaller thrones to his left and right.:

arena pic 2.

more pix of this tourney arena are here: http://www.mascguild.com/forums2/vi...opic.php?t=9277. the decorations were placed on the roof of that tat style house by placing a camp on the cliff behind that house, which pushed the ground halfway through the dome on top and allowed me to drop items on that vertical cliff at the rooftop level and move them from there. I had assistance with both of these setups from Asadore and asistance from Asadore and Ama-ebi for the arena.

Tip: place camps to flatten out or extend the ground for interesting suspended object effects. Make sure you finish positioning all items while the camp is there, since once the ground is removed too far away from these items you will no longer be able to re-position them (unless you put the camp back).

My Tips revolve around Lag Management:

• Go easy on the persistant effects, especially when using them on larger objects.  Not all participants will have the most capable systems and you could easily shutout a portion of your potential attendees from participating in your otherwise well made event. 
  
  If you're expecting a large turnout and it's a combat related event it might be best to go without any persistant effects as them combined with the particle effects associated with many professions can bog down even the most powerful PC's.
• Lots of NPCs + lots of Players = unbearable lag.  If you're having a large combat event, try keep the amount of NPCs you use to a minimum, especially if it involves PvP too.  If you want to provide a challenge, convert smaller amounts of NPCs to Elite or Boss status.  A single Boss NPC can provide the challenge of quite a number of standard NPCs

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One really useful one, is that using the target lock and weapon safety toggle you can lock onto an object and place the next one in the dead center of it (watch the angle your pointing though)