Tag Archives: events

Happy Anniversary, ReVo!

By Stabz

It’s become a tradition at ReVo to celebrate the anniversary of its founding with a one-night roleplay extravaganza. Over the years, these events have taken numerous forms, from no-holds-barred all-realm crossovers to a field trip to Jurassic Park!

This year, organizers Hippolyta and Veritas decided to try something a little different by doing something (almost) exactly the same! Rather than design a whole new event, they invited us to revisit the Ouroboros Society, a mysterious organization seemingly focused on obtaining eternal life.

If you were among the party that travelled to Society headquarters last year, you might recall that play unfolded through a puzzle-based exploration of an aging mansion. This year’s journey began in much the same way, but quickly spiralled into an experience no one expected and few will forget. The clues revealed through books, phonographs, and close examination of the items in the room led members to believe they had been drawn back to complete a rite not only arcane, but erotic as well.

Through a ritual that mixed pain and pleasure to open an orgiastic pathway into Hell itself, the particpants were able to summon the Whore of Babylon, who permitted them a single question: What did Alistair Crowley seek, and what did you give him? From her response, they learned that he sought knowledge and power of a sort not meant for mortals, and that while she could not grant him that on her own, she could teach him how to reach one who possesses such ability: The author of the Necronomicon, the Mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred himself.

With Crowley now suspected to be in possession of the true Necronomicon, the world may be in great danger. If the words of the Whore can be trusted, the only way to avert the disaster to come may be to acquire a single existing copy of the forbidden tome, transcribed from the original but lost to time and memory. The Whore has left a clue as to its whereabouts – but who will seek it out, and when?

Rally In The Desert 2017

By Malice

If this article seems familiar, that’s because it’s supposed to! Malice covered Rally in the Desert so well last year that there’s not much else to be said about it. We know, however, that we always have new chatters dropping by the site, as well as established members who may be considering the SoA genre for the first time. In that spirit, we’re reprinting our 2016 article, updated with information about this year’s rally!

With as many Sons of Anarchy rooms as we see either popping up or reformatting from week to week on the who-chat, the question always seems to arise: “Why can’t they just all play together?”

The reason why most Sons of Anarchy rooms cannot “all play together” is because there are different areas, and in each of those areas, there are different allies and different enemies. These rooms do not always run canon, because that can be frowned upon, so allies and enemies can come from a number of sources: Fiction, reality, or something created wholly by the mind of room contributors. Each location for a Sons of Anarchy charter also holds different scenery and different challenges, and it is all in what the audience or participants crave. Given that, how could they all be brought together for an event?

The answer: Rally in the Desert. Originally the brainchild of kitten, with the assistance of Nalice and a few others, this concept for a way to bring these rooms together – while still allowing them to have their own locale obscurity – was born.

Rally In The Desert was held in a fictional town in Texas named “Burnout”, which seems apt for a place that is mostly a biker hole; its only real draw and tourist attraction the yearly biker rally. For its inaugural year, this rally was closed off to other biker groups and weekend warriors and left for only the Sons of Anarchy charters to attend. There were no RSVPs – you just came and went as you pleased. The entire event was designed for optimal amount of role-play, as well as to encourage the individuals attending to meet, greet and mingle.

In its second year, Rally In The Desert was opened up a bit more. The founders realize that sometimes rooms close, yet people still have characters that were part of those charters. Thus, RITD2017 widened its approach to include more individuals.

There were traditional biker rally games to be found: A drinking contest – self explanatory for you alcohol aficionados! Bitch fishing – which involves couples [of any gender, for amusement!]. A sausage slathered in mayonnaise is hung on a string that is attached to a structure large enough for a bike to pass underneath. The goal is to get a “full pull”, which means your ‘bitch’ managed to rise up on the back of the bike and suck/remove the entire slippery sausage from the clip fully intact, while you kept the bike steady even with the shifting of weight. There was a burnout competition, which is also known as a peel out or power brake – the practice of keeping a vehicle stationary and spinning its wheels, causing the tires to heat up and smoke due to friction. A chili cook off, which found a surprising winner in a character believed unable to cook anything edible. And of course, what would a biker bash be without a wet t-shirt contest?! We saw women wet tatas, men wet tatas, and a charter prankster ride a water hose! We saw naked butts streaking across the stage, too! All judgements were based on roleplay posts of three to five lines and a dice roll that was the judges score, to make it all even and fair. Boy, were those judges hard to win over, too! There was even a boxing ring set up for those that wanted to air out issues, or just take a jab at being in the ring with a brother. Much fun was to be had!

But not all of this event was fun and games. As with all events, there was some measure of business, even if it was not seen or announced outright. Arrangements for charters to assist other charters, moving plans and transfer plans, talk of ‘corrupted’ charters that may need investigation; all matters of business were conducted between bouts of laughter and rough-housing.

We also had two weddings at this year’s rally, both of them spur of the moment and happy occasions!

From all of this came some forged friendships, some new alliances, new business arrangements, transfers, and establishing replacement and new officers to various charters. All in all, the venture was productive for many charters, including those new seeking members and those established filling holes abandoned by members. In the end, many prizes went out and everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, proving this event a success.

We’re very proud to announce our winners for this year: Charity, Care, Gabby, Covet, kels, Rutger, The Guru, Kaliko, and kitten!

There may be some changes to open things up to other players as well. Ideas are being tossed around, and kitten, the creator, is open to suggestions. If you happen to have any, feel free to PM her on the ReVo forum!

Staff Appreciation 2017

By Geenky

Here on ReVo, our staff works very hard. Often, their work goes without thanks, but in April, we held a Staff Appreciation event to rectify that. Initially, it was intended to span over two weeks, but the board has been left available, so there is still a chance to get down there and leave your own words of appreciation.

Qristal started off with beautiful letters to the staff. After that, the board was opened so that we as a group could contribute our words and gifts of thanks. Many artists donated avatar tokens or resources of some sort, and many more people have left amazingly heartfelt words for our staff members here at ReVo. It has been a beautiful thing to read, and if you haven’t yet taken a look or gotten your thanks in, I highly suggest heading down to the Staff Appreciation board now!

Clash of the Artists II

By Care

While ReVo’s mission is primarily to provide for role-play and role-players, we know that there’s more to it than just the game. In addition to writers, our community of creative minds includes coders, fact masters, and graphic designers. In this issue, we’re spotlighting the latter with Care’s continued coverage of Clash of the Artists.

In April, Grafica hosted the second annual Clash of the Artists event. For those who don’t know what the Clash of the Artists is, it’s a live battle between two artists. After rolling for themes, elements, and models, they complete a graphic challenge – usually avatars. The finished pieces are then put up for a vote on the Grafica – Clash of the Artists board, and after five days, the winner is announced.

This year, with the help of Qristal and Addiction, the Clash had a new scoring system. The system added win percentages rather than relying wholly on how many battles were completed. It was a nice change. Qristal took on the percentages, while I handled the voting and most of the board work.

For the live event, I had the help of Nicole, Mikhaela, and CD, which made sure it went as smoothly as possible. Of course, the event itself was the brainchild of a late night of talking between Demonatrix, Adept, and myself.

We had a great turn out this year, with some new artists stepping into the ring. Curiosity, Lady Edfeil, Asteria, Rutger, Addiction, Jenna, kitten, Covet, Miss Mickie, Caedam, and many others joined in the fun. We had a hundred different models that could result from a roll, as well as ten elements and themes. The outcome was so close that Aeternum was one battle away from taking it, but the addition of a new rule that required competitors to be present for two nights and complete eight battles kept him from holding the lead. That left Rutger in third place, with all the corresponding prizes.

The final battle royale was between kitten and Miss Mickie. Miss Mickie was in the lead until it came down to the last battle, which left kitten as the winner of this year’s Clash of the Artists!

A big thank you not only to the participants, but to Qristal and Addiction for their assistance with tweaking the system. And if you missed this year’s fun, you can still find everyone’s work on the Clash of the Artists board at ReVo!

Rally In The Desert 2016

By malice

With as many Sons of Anarchy rooms as we see either popping up or reformatting from week to week on the who-chat, the question always seems to arise: “Why can’t they just all play together?”

The reason why most Sons of Anarchy rooms cannot “all play together” is because there are different areas, and in each of those areas, there are different allies and different enemies. These rooms do not always run canon, because that can be frowned upon, so allies and enemies can come from a number of sources: Fiction, reality, or something created wholly by the mind of room contributors. Each location for a Sons of Anarchy charter also holds different scenery and different challenges, and it is all in what the audience or participants crave. Given that, how could they all be brought together for an event?

The answer: Rally in the Desert. Originally the brainchild of kitten, with the assistance of malice and a few others, this concept for a way to bring these rooms together – while still allowing them to have their own locale obscurity – was born.

Rally In The Desert was held in a fictional town in Texas named “Burnout”, which seems apt for a place that is mostly a biker hole; its only real draw and tourist attraction the yearly biker rally. For its inaugural year, this rally was closed off to other biker groups and weekend warriors and left for only the Sons of Anarchy charters to attend. There were no RSVPs – you just came and went as you pleased. The entire event was designed for optimal amount of role-play, as well as to encourage the individuals attending to meet, greet and mingle.

There were traditional biker rally games to be found: A drinking contest – self explanatory for you alcohol aficionados! Bitch fishing – which involves couples [of any gender, for amusement!]. A sausage slathered in mayonnaise is hung on a string that is attached to a structure large enough for a bike to pass underneath. The goal is to get a “full pull”, which means your ‘bitch’ managed to rise up on the back of the bike and suck/remove the entire slippery sausage from the clip fully intact, while you kept the bike steady even with the shifting of weight. There was a burnout competition, which is also known as a peel out or power brake – the practice of keeping a vehicle stationary and spinning its wheels, causing the tires to heat up and smoke due to friction. A chili cook off, which found a surprising winner in a character believed unable to cook anything edible. And of course, what would a biker bash be without a wet t-shirt contest?! We saw women wet tatas, men wet tatas, and a charter prankster ride a water hose! We saw naked butts streaking across the stage, too! All judgements were based on roleplay posts of three to five lines and a dice roll that was the judges score, to make it all even and fair. Boy, were those judges hard to win over, too! There was even a boxing ring set up for those that wanted to air out issues, or just take a jab at being in the ring with a brother. Much fun was to be had!

But not all of this event was fun and games. As with all events, there was some measure of business, even if it was not seen or announced outright. Arrangements for charters to assist other charters, moving plans and transfer plans, talk of ‘corrupted’ charters that may need investigation; all matters of business were conducted between bouts of laughter and rough-housing.

From all of this came some forged friendships, some new alliances, new business arrangements, transfers, and establishing replacement and new officers to various charters. All in all, the venture was productive for many charters, including those new seeking members and those established filling holes abandoned by members. In the end, many prizes went out and everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, proving this event a success. Will we see it happen again in the upcoming year? We might! There may be some changes to open things up to other players as well. Ideas are being tossed around and kitten, the creator, is open to suggestions. If you happen to have any, feel free to PM her on the ReVo forum !

Keep The Music Alive 2016

By Care

While most people have probably listened to a few online music services, not everyone knows the ins and outs of managing a site-hosted radio station. While some such stations are effectively “pirate radio,” operating without licensing or approval, ReVo has made an ongoing committment to broadcasting legally, both for the protection of its staff and deejays and the continued enjoyment of its listeners. Recent changes to licensing agreements made it necessary for the Edge to reach out to its fanbase in a new way. In this issue, Care takes a closer look at what’s been going on backstage.

If you were on Roleplay Evolution back in June, you were probably aware of our Keep the Music Alive event. If not, let me tell you a bit about it.

Roleplay Evolution has its own radio online radio station called The Edge. From the inception of Roleplay Evolution, the cost of the station has been falling on Qristal. “Why would she cover it on her own?”, you might ask. Well, why does anyone do anything? Ultimately, it was both because she could, and because it was a demand that she wanted to fulfill.

In June of 2016, a licensing agreement that allowed online radio stations to operate both legally and at a lower cost than “real world” radio came to an end. With the terms of that agreement no longer in effect, the cost of hosting online radio increased significantly. All online radio stations were affected by this change, not just The Edge, and some were put out of business altogether as they could no longer afford the required fees. There were petitions to get the cost back down, but as of this month, there has been no reply to these petitions.

Addiction and Qristal asked for ideas that could help cover the rising costs of The Edge not because they didn’t want to keep it, but because the increase was so substantial and unexpected. I don’t personally know how much the jump was, as I didn’t want to press Qristal or Addiction to find out. However, when it came to thinking up ideas for ways to keep the station and cover the increased fees, the deejays were on top of it. Ultimately, Qristal and Addiction put out the feelers for items for a silent auction.

It took some planning and I don’t actually know everything that went on to pull it together, but I do know that I and my nephew, Zackary, were two of the people that donated. Why did we donate? Let me put it to you in a way that could be understood by, and the words of, a thirteen year old that was willing to help: “Aunt Care, if it means something to you, and if it means as much to others as you, then I would like to help.” Yes, folks, my nephew is a bit of a wise one. He has spent hours at my home with me, and has listened to The Edge radio when I’ve had it on. My niece and most of my nephews have sat and heard me, or others, while we were on air. My niece was my introduction to my Throwback Thursdays. So I asked around, and most of the others that donated felt the same way as my nephew.

The auction received donations from Hippolyta, Charity, Psychobarbie, Stabz, Ravage, Jenna, mouth, Yoko, Rutger and his mom, myself and my nephew, and ReVo itself. Bidding went on for about two weeks, and on June 15th, the auction was closed. Once the winners were announced, then the final tally of how the auction did was revealed by Qristal. The bids received on all donations helped pay for the radio station for six months. This gave our lovely Qristal and Addiction a huge help in keeping our music alive!

The auction was a success and the music still lives, and that shows that Roleplay Evolution chatters and players are more then just a little willing to help out and go all out for their home. Thank you to everyone that helped “Keep The Music Alive”.

Grafica Challenge 2016

By Care

For the past three years, I have been hosting graphics challenges of one type or another. Since Laramie had to give up Grafica and it became a site run room, me and Dark have been taking care of it. Two years ago, I decided to do a month-long challenge that is hosted by Grafica, where I supply the prizes and we have fun with graphics.

So now every year in September, Grafica hosts its annual challenge. Every other day, challenges are posted in Grafica’s section of the ReVo message board. This year was no different. Starting on September 1st, I posted the first challenge, and it continued on until September 29th. At that time, the last challenge was posted and the designers had until October 1st to get their submissions in.

This year we had a turn out that was pretty awesome – nothing compared to the first year, but that’s to be expected, as it seems there’s an overall decline in both chatters and designers. The first year I ran this, we had ten designers in the challenge and only four finished. In 2015, we had nine designers, with only one, Hippolyta, finishing the challenges. This year, though, we had the best turn out yet, with fifteen initial participants. Four of those participants finished on time, and we also had an additional participant that completed all the challenges, though they didn’t make the October 1st deadline.
This year’s challenge winners were Jenna, Joy Naomi, malice, Rutger, and Aelurus.

The challenges this year were slightly different from the previous years. I wanted to try something new and I think it made for a good turn out. Some of the challenges this year were ReVo-related holiday graphics, fantasy genre avatars, horror/scary avatars, room-related banners, and Facebook cover images, just to name a few. This year, we also had to switch up the prizes as I honestly didn’t expect four people to finish the challenge – I was taking a look at last year’s numbers and based my expecttaions on that. So this year, I had a “Pick Your Prize” option for finishing the challenges. You can find the full list of prizes on the board. There were a few good ones picked! Ten paid resources, ten exclusive resources, a six-month membership, and a three-month membership were ultimately chosen.

The challenges will return next September, and remember, you don’t have to be a great designer to participate – just have fun with it!

Clash of the Artists

By Care

While ReVo’s mission is primarily to provide for role-play and role-players, we know that there’s more to it than just the game. In addition to writers, our community of creative minds includes coders, fact masters, and graphic designers. In this issue, we’re spotlighting the latter with Care’s coverage of the first Clash of the Artists.

In April, a great new event took place in Grafica. For five Saturdays, starting April 9th and going all the way to May 13th, we held live battles within the room.

This event was the brain child of myself, Demonatrix, and dapet. It started from a night on Skype voice where I was thinking I wanted to do something fun for Grafica – originally the room of Laramie, Grafica was left in the hands of Dark and myself. Now, however, it is site-run, though still under my care.

The plan was to do something different then what has been seen before. That’s when I went to Demonatrix and dapet saying that we should do something like Red Queen of Digital Circus Designs did, but make it our own. After much time spent talking about it, setting it up, and coming up with a name, Clash of the Artists was born.

“What is the Clash of the Artists?”, you may ask. Well, in case you missed it this year, it is a live challenge avatar battle. What that means is that on every Saturday for the duration of the event, watchers and players gathered in Grafica, where our designers threw out challenges. Once a challenge was accepted, we had the participants roll the dice. One was for the model they were to use, and the next two were for the elements and overall theme that had to be used within their pieces of work.

We had a total list of ninety different models, even though we only used thirty at a time. In addition, we had twenty elements and twenty themes that could be drawn. For example, some of the battles rolled were:

Model: Charlie Hunnam
Theme: Apocalyptic
Elements: Decaying Buildings, Destroyed Vehicles

Model: Phoebe Tonkin
Elements: Knives
Theme: Apocalyptic

Model: Vin Diesel
Elements: Mountains
Theme: Supernatural

Model: Katheryn Winnick
Theme: Movie Poster
Elements: Must contain pieces of Lost or Bitten

The battles were tough. Particpants had three hours to get in as many challenges as they could within that night. Then we put the finished pieces up for a blind board vote to decide who the winner of each challenge was. Though we started with numerous designers including Addiction, charity, Covet, Demonatrix, dinni, geenky, Hippolyta, Jenna, Kaliko, kitten{Mutt}, Rutger, Xams, Caedam, CD, Edfeil, fatal, Gabby, Heather Renee, Kuro, harlot, Mizery, Qristal, Echo, and ck, eventually, it was narrowed down to four.

In the end, there was only one. Our grand winner, with a total of ten wins from all four nights, was Xams! Her prize was Grafica’s Clash of the Artists Bling, which she will have until next year, when we crown a new winner of the Clash of the Artists.

Though there were plenty of bumps and bruises along the way, we will be back next year with another Clash of the Artists, so stay tuned!