The Path Unending (A Cultivation Quest)

[x] Plan Design a charm
-[] Eliminate 8, leaving 4
-[] Budget: 8 points per contestant
-[] The contestants will write down an idea they have for a charm using the material they found in the last round. However, Kong Zhi and Fan Zhao have already procured the materials they can use for this round. The contestants will design a charm based on the new materials and try to get as close as possible to their original idea.

So they can design a charm now, the winners make the charm they've designed (semi finals) and for the final they can make it with the rare mat.

Crazyone47 said:

Is it possible to give more than just one scenario?
We could give 3 scenarios. After all answers have been given for 1 scenario those who are considered lacking are cut. By the end of the three scenarios Mo Handing and her judges will have eliminated eight contestants.
To prevent the likelihood that their creativity is just a fluke in one particular area.

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I get where you're coming from but I like the idea of giving them a decent chunk of time to work on the project. Keep an eye out for someone who tries to go look up the Savages in the Archives or go talk to one of Fensui's disciples for ideas on what soldiers need. If we stretch that over three scenarios that might take too long.

I'd like to give them some kind of task the Charm has to perform and let them go wild with *how* it would do it.

The task being for example to get fish from the river. Or dig a tunnel. Or find a Wonder. Or move person from one side of the Sect to another.

KreenWarrior said:

I get where you're coming from but I like the idea of giving them a decent chunk of time to work on the project. Keep an eye out for someone who tries to go look up the Savages in the Archives or go talk to one of Fensui's disciples for ideas on what soldiers need. If we stretch that over three scenarios that might take too long.

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Good point....... Then we could have specific parameters by which to eliminate contestants or judge their work

I think for the finale we want to give them a task that can be solved in any number of ways for the spectacle of seeing their creativity as part of the competition. Something like a huge "unbreakable" see through block filled with water and fish and they have to craft a charm to get a fish out of it? Such a final round would require us to have something like that available to test them, maybe multiples assuming we allow breaking the block to be allowed in the rules.

So since I want the finals to ultimately reward creativity and I also like the idea of forcing them out of their comfort zone what about first telling all contestants to draw a design of a charm to wow the judges, and then randomly switching the designs and have the different contestants judged on their ability to build someone elses' design.

I just don't want to call people savages lol

[X] Plan Good Luck
-[] Eliminate 8
-[] Give everyone 10 Sect Points
-[] The next challenge shall be one of luck and resourcefulness. Randomly divide the competitors into 4 groups of 3. Each group will be given a different scenario that has a few problems that they must create a charm to fix. The groups will be competing with themselves, so that each group will have one winner and 2 losers. Each competitor will be given 10 sect points and may only use materials that they buy from the Market with these sect points plus anything that they can scavenge from the scrapyard. Each competitor will have to bring receipts of their purchases or be followed by one of Lady Mo's runners to the market to make sure they follow this rule. Each competitor will then create a charm that will be able to solve their given scenario and the charm that is most applicable for each scenario will be the winner for that group and that charm crafter will move on to the next round. In the Path Unending, luck is as necessary as any other attribute. No one will be guaranteed to be in an easy group or receive an easy scenario or be able to find relevant mats in the Market or scrapyard.
-[] Four of the following scenarios will be chosen randomly, one given to each of the four groups. This, as well as which competitor is in which group, will be determined by a dice roll.
— The Lady is having a gathering in her garden, but the sun is so glaring, the temperature is so hot and the air is so humid. How can she entertain guests like this?
— The accomplished sailor has gone fishing. On his way back from a successful trip, The sailor leaves a trail of salt water and Fish blood. Someone might slip and fall.
— The great chef has been on the look out for a rare and rather pungent ingredient. But anyone who harvests it will have to make sure they can keep it fresh on the return journey and stop the smell from attracting any wild spirit beasts.
— The fighter has expressed her displeasure at her wooden training dummy not being able to stand up to her attacks.
— The dog trainer is in need of a chew toy for her dogs, one that will not break easily.
— The tired one is tired, but he can't sleep. Help him fall asleep.
— The Warrior is in need of competition, everyone he spars with gets hurt too easily.


Feel free to suggest some more scenarios I can add to the list. Basically I want a contest that's based more on luck than anything else.

[x] Plan Purify and Prepare
-[] Eliminate 6, leaving 6
-[] Budget: none
-[] The contestants will each purify two mixed amen type materials (already sourced or obtained for the contest) into the two strongest single type item they can produce. They will be judged on the combined level of the two items. The final round will then be charms made from these items drafted from the pool of all items, in order of this rounds rank (so the 6 finalists have 4 items each, assuming all 12 contestants have at least some success with two items).

[X] Plan Good Luck

[X] Plan One's Trash Is Another's Treasure

[X] Plan Cold Front

[X] Plan Good Luck

[X] Plan One's Trash Is Another's Treasure

I don't really have much of an idea for a contest but I suggest we try to make acquaintances with the finalists and remember the semi-finalists at least.

They did the favor of eliminating the chaff for us in advance and we do lack information about what goes around in crafting circles.

It's time they start actually marking charms if they're wanting to get funding to be a charm crafter. I'm sure the competitors have been thinking about what they can do with their unique anam material they made, so lets have them creat a charm incorporating the special anam material they have managed to source. The charm can be made completely from just the material itself or it can incorporate whatever items they are able to scavenge from the Creator Garden's refuse pile. Getting the materials from the trash pile is to test their resourcefulness and to ensure that they can make a charm of good standard with substandard materials. We're testing they're skills, not having the quality of the materials carry them and making up for their lack of said skills. By giving them a short time period to complete the charm they have to balance making the most powerful charm possible with making sure they can actually have it completed and infused in time.

[x] plan charm crafter
-[] Eliminate 8, leaving 4
-[] Budget: No expenditures
-[] The competitors are tasked to finally create a charm. They are to use the unique material they sourced in the last competition as the core of the charm and incorporate as many, or as few other materials as they'd like from the Creators Garden's refuse pile. The briefing on the charm is that the charm is for a client whose going to be entering a duel and is in need of a way to defend themselves. The competitors will have 1 week to complete the charm.

[X] Plan For Want Of A Muse
-[] Eliminate 8
-[] Budget: 10 sect points
-[] Charmcraft is an expression of the artist, as much as it is blueprints and fine control.

Each participant will take their sect points, and, should they choose, their material from the previous round, and craft for the judges a charm.
However, in the building of this charm, they must wield creativity, and Inspiration as skillfully as they would a brush or file.

Each participant will find one sight, sensation, experience or wonder that they deem sufficiently moving, and design their charm around that feature, be it the sunlight though the brightmaples, the bubbling of the prospector's tears, or the smile of a pauper gifted coin.

Drasky said:

I don't really have much of an idea for a contest but I suggest we try to make acquaintances with the finalists and remember the semi-finalists at least.

They did the favor of eliminating the chaff for us in advance and we do lack information about what goes around in crafting circles.

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I agree.
One way to do it would be to give advice during this round. Take some form of active part. The competitors will benefit and so will Kong Zhi. He'll at least get more out of that than just passively observing.

@Rah13 can you add something like that in? 10-15 min of brainstorming with or helping the contestants.

I like this one a lot, it seems like fun to read.

[x] Plan For Want Of A Muse

[X] Plan Good Luck
-[] Eliminate 8
-[] Give everyone 10 Sect Points
-[] The next challenge shall be one of luck and resourcefulness. Randomly divide the competitors into 4 groups of 3. Each group will be given a different scenario that has a few problems that they must create a charm to fix. The groups will be competing with themselves, so that each group will have one winner and 2 losers. Each competitor will be given 10 sect points and may only use materials that they buy from the Market with these sect points plus anything that they can scavenge from the scrapyard. Each competitor will have to bring receipts of their purchases or be followed by one of Lady Mo's runners to the market to make sure they follow this rule. Each competitor will then create a charm that will be able to solve their given scenario and the charm that is most applicable for each scenario will be the winner for that group and that charm crafter will move on to the next round. In the Path Unending, luck is as necessary as any other attribute. No one will be guaranteed to be in an easy group or receive an easy scenario or be able to find relevant mats in the Market or scrapyard.
-[] Four of the following scenarios will be chosen randomly, one given to each of the four groups. This, as well as which competitor is in which group, will be determined by a dice roll.
— The Lady is having a gathering in her garden, but the sun is so glaring, the temperature is so hot and the air is so humid. How can she entertain guests like this?
— The accomplished sailor has gone fishing. On his way back from a successful trip, The sailor leaves a trail of salt water and Fish blood. Someone might slip and fall.
— The great chef has been on the look out for a rare and rather pungent ingredient. But anyone who harvests it will have to make sure they can keep it fresh on the return journey and stop the smell from attracting any wild spirit beasts.
— The fighter has expressed her displeasure at her wooden training dummy not being able to stand up to her attacks.
— The dog trainer is in need of a chew toy for her dogs, one that will not break easily.
— The tired one is tired, but he can't sleep. Help him fall asleep.
— The Warrior is in need of competition, everyone he spars with gets hurt too easily.

[X] Plan Good Luck

After reviewing the plans that have been posted, there's one thing I think that I need to be sure is crystal clear: namely, actually crafting a charm is highly time intensive. If your challenge is to have them make a charm- which is perfectly valid- then you won't be judging the result this week. You'd have to spend another action on this next week or week after to actually see what they make and set a task for the finals. If you don't, Fan Zhao will make the call.

[X] Plan Channel your Trauma Zhi
-[] Eliminate 9, leaving 3
-[] Budget: -Give everyone some unexciting charm materials equal to 4 sect points each.
-Arrange access to twelve houses belonging to disciples whom Mo would not mind purchasing a security upgrade for.
-One sneaky disciple from among her followers as an additional judge, unless the idea of adding even more characters into an already busy scene makes our QM sad.
-[] Zhi has recently had an experience that gave him a decent level of understanding of what regular crafters produce in the field of minor security charms. Let the disciples show off what those with actual talent can instead achieve. Each participant is assigned a house, as well as the materials to use, with the objective of enhancing it's security. At the end each of them gets to give Zhi (+potentially Zhao and/or the guest judge) a tour to show off and justify what they created.

The first draft of this was a meme, but I actually really like the end result. I eliminate so many too make sure finalists actually get to be full characters during the last stage.

Vesvius said:

After reviewing the plans that have been posted, there's one thing I think that I need to be sure is crystal clear: namely, actually crafting a charm is highly time intensive. If your challenge is to have them make a charm- which is perfectly valid- then you won't be judging the result this week. You'd have to spend another action on this next week or week after to actually see what they make and set a task for the finals. If you don't, Fan Zhao will make the call.

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Does this really apply to all charms or were the other votes just too ambitious? I so far assumed that charm crafting ran the entire gamut from tiny gadgets that artists spend mere minutes on to the proper named stuff that Zhi usually creates.

Okay, well, a moratorium from 1 AM to 5 AM doesn't give a lot of us time to give input, lol. Still, I'm not quite enthused with any of the ideas so far, so I'll try to think of something.

[X] Master class Kong Zhi edition
-[] Eliminate 8
-[] Budget: 2 points worth of mundane materials per contestant
-[] Kong Zhi will hold a class regarding the use of gemstones in charm crafting. How different gems amplify different techniques and so on. He will demonstrate how to properly prepare them using mundane crafting material. After the demonstration the contestants will design a charm that utilizes the rare material they found and a selection of gemstones. They will then do their best to prepare the gemstones accordingly. They are rated by how they work the gemstones and the charm design.

Why not teach then something? This will also set them up for further charm crafting onwards to the final. They could use the design and the mundane material they make here.

So because I want to see Zhi judge this, and I'm unsure if we'll commit to another action before the finals (we do have plenty else to do) So I propose a on-paper contest version of Good Luck - they have some materials to look at and examine, but don't actually make a charm, just propose their ideas about how they'd use the presented materials.

[X] Plan Good Luck On Paper
-[] Eliminate 8
-[] Borrow about 100 Sect points of materials from the market and other crafters - using Mo's resources and good name to get them for the contest. They will all be returned afterwards
-[] The next challenge shall be one of luck and resourcefulness. Randomly divide the competitors into 4 groups of 3. Each group will be given a different scenario that has a few problems that they must create a charm to fix. The groups will be competing with themselves, so that each group will have one winner and 2 losers. Each group will get a quarter of the acquired materials from them to examine and use in their designs - several designs can have the same material as this is theoretical.
Each competitor will then create a design for a charm that will be able to solve their given scenario and the charm that is most applicable for each scenario and uses their materials the best will be the winner for that group and that charm crafter will move on to the next round. In the Path Unending, luck is as necessary as any other attribute. No one will be guaranteed to be in an easy group or receive an easy scenario or have materials that match their scenario.
-[] Four of the following scenarios will be chosen randomly, one given to each of the four groups. This, as well as which competitor is in which group, will be determined by a dice roll.
— The Lady is having a gathering in her garden, but the sun is so glaring, the temperature is so hot and the air is so humid. How can she entertain guests like this?
— The accomplished sailor has gone fishing. On his way back from a successful trip, The sailor leaves a trail of salt water and Fish blood. Someone might slip and fall.
— The great chef has been on the look out for a rare and rather pungent ingredient. But anyone who harvests it will have to make sure they can keep it fresh on the return journey and stop the smell from attracting any wild spirit beasts.
— The fighter has expressed her displeasure at her wooden training dummy not being able to stand up to her attacks.
— The dog trainer is in need of a chew toy for her dogs, one that will not break easily.
— The tired one is tired, but he can't sleep. Help him fall asleep.
— The Warrior is in need of competition, everyone he spars with gets hurt too easily.

Edkose said:

[X] Master class Kong Zhi edition
-[] Eliminate 8
-[] Budget: 2 points worth of mundane materials per contestant
-[] Kong Zhi will hold a class regarding the use of gemstones in charm crafting. How different gems amplify different techniques and so on. He will demonstrate how to properly prepare them using mundane crafting material. After the demonstration the contestants will design a charm that utilizes the rare material they found and a selection of gemstones. They will then do their best to prepare the gemstones accordingly. They are rated by how they work the gemstones and the charm design.

Why not teach then something? This will also set them up for further charm crafting onwards to the final. They could use the design and the mundane material they make here.

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Not everyone is going to have talent in a given field of crafting. We're supposed to judge these people on their merits, not try to shoehorn them into our own little box.