the_plateau | Summer time, event time!

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Summer time, event time!

Those of you who have taken a peek at our event calendar (or literally any other calendar out there) will already be aware that the summer solstice will be happening on the 21st of June. The summer solstice is the longest day of the year and oft considered the start (or middle) of summer by many people. And here in our quaint little regions of Johto and Kanto, it's also a day that historically has been associated with Ho-oh, fire and renewal.

Which obviously makes it a great day for a party.

This year, Cianwood is going all out for the Solstice and everybody is invited to join the party. Flyers will be distributed to poke-centra in both regions announcing the celebration and urging you to come join the fun! After all, where better to celebrate the solstice than on a beach?

However, it won't just be beach celebrations, bonfires and barbecues this year.

This year, not one but two events will be taking place during the Solstice. One is being organised by us mods, while the second is a player-organised event by Sofi, our lovely Jaskier player! Don't worry, you won't be forced to choose just one of the two to participate in. One event will take place during the afternoon, while the other will be taking place during the evening, and obviously both will be happening in Cianwood. Both of these events will require a bit of organising beforehand, which is why we are already going to give you some information now.

Event the first (mod-run)

Starting the 10th, the flyers announcing the Summer Solstice party in Cianwood will start to be accompanied by a second flyer. This brightly coloured flyer features what seems to be the silhouette of a Squirtle cutting through the water, a Butterfree zooming through the air, and a Nidoran dashing along the ground. Large, loud letters in the middle of the poster proclaim DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES with SEMPER RACE, JUNE 21ST right underneath.

Without further ado, Cianwood City would like to invite you to their first-ever Semper Race.

Semper Race?

Semper, which stands for the Small and Medium Pokemon Relay, is a race that will be held this June the 21st, during the solstice celebrations. During the Semper race, teams consisting of three pokemon will challenge land, air and sea together in the hope of beating all others to the finish line and winning the grand prize!

Please tell me more!

Absolutely!

The Semper race combines both relay and triathlon racing into one big spectacle. The course will be comprised of a water, air and ground section, each with their own unique obstacles to test your pokemon and their skills.

Accordingly, your pokemon team will consist of three pokemon, one for each section of the course. Only by working together and using each pokemon’s unique abilities and skills, can you win this race!

That sounds awesome! But wait, what do you mean by small and medium pokemon?

While we all love our Rapidash and Pidgeot, the organisers of this race wanted to take this opportunity to try and give your smaller pokemon a chance to shine as well. There are plenty of fine racers among them too, but do they ever get the chance to show their stuff?? Not nearly often enough!

As such, the organisers have put a size limit on the kind of pokemon species you can enter in this race. Only pokemon species up to 4 feet can enter in this race.

Wait, if our pokemon are supposed to be small, how will they be able to carry us?

They won’t be! But that is all right because in this race, your character is not going to be racing together with their pokemon. Instead, they’ll stand on the sidelines and shout encouragements.

This is also why the information for this race is being released ahead of time! That way, trainers will be able to spend some time training their pokemon to handle racing on their own.

My pokemon is an odd size for their species, can they enter?

To keep things fair and easy, we’ll be judging based on the average size of the Pokemon’s species, which is the size mentioned on Bulbapedia. This means that if your pokemon is of a species that is normally under four feet, even if your individual pokemon might not be, they can still enter. This also means that if your pokemon belongs to a species that is normally over four feet, but yours happens to be smaller than the average, they will still be unable to enter.

We’ve chosen to go with this system because we feel it is the most impartial. Just imagine that the sign-ups are done by some poor overworked and undervalued volunteer who was given a chart of allowed and disallowed pokemon species, but has no power to deviate from said chart. Even when they can see your individual pokemon does adhere to the average species size.

You said something about a prize?

We sure did!

And just this once, you can even know what it'll be ahead of time. The organisers are hoping for a lot of interest, and what better way to generate that than by showing just what you can win?

First place will win 50,000p, a gold trophy, and a Choice Scarf.

Second place will win 30,000p, a silver trophy and a Quick Claw.

Third place will win 15,000p, a bronze trophy and five Salac Berries.

My character would love to enter but they do not have a pokemon for each leg of the race. Is there something I can do?

We realise that the size limit can severely limit some characters, especially those with smaller teams or who tends towards bigger pokemon. To also give these characters a chance to enter, your character is allowed to borrow one pokemon from a friend for this race.

Our only restriction on this (apart from the size limit, of course) is that that person is not entering in the race themselves.

Can my character allow multiple people to borrow pokemon from them for this race?

They can, but we have capped this at three pokemon. We are willing to revise this limit, should the size limitation prevent too many people from entering, but for now, we believe that considering the amount of characters in play and the fact that most have pretty substantial rosters (we are not judging, but we sure are looking), this should be sufficient.

Will the relay be judged like the last two races?

Broadly, yes! However, we also want to experiment a bit with incorporating actual stats (such as the speed-stat of a particular species) in the judging, so feel free to take this into account when choosing which pokemon to bring to the race.

We have no intention of making this an all stat challenge though; there will be plenty of chance to get creative and have that affect the outcome of the race too.

I have some other question!

Chuck it at us below as is custom.

Event the second (player-run)

First, in order to explain this event, there is a little organisation we need to introduce you guys to.

"Helping Hand" is a Johto/Kanto-based charity organisation which aims to help the victims of Team Rocket, human and pokemon alike! While small and not particularly well known up until this point, this organisation has been working hard to help any victims of Team Rocket, whether that is through emotional support, helping them to replace their stolen or destroyed property, or helping to place ex-Rocket pokemon with new and responsible trainers.

As you can imagine, it's the sort of work you need plenty of funds for, but as so often with charity organisations, funding is always the hardest thing to find.

After the recent prom-turned-disaster, Helping Hand has gained the best patrons anyone could ask for: Riegfried and Soy. And while they are happily putting plenty of their own ridiculous wealth into Helping Hand, they also want to help them find even more patrons and collect more money to help the poor victims of Team Rocket. And what better way to catch the public's eye than with a bit of show and spectacle? Being the old romantics that they are, Riegfried and Soy had the perfect idea for a little eye-catching event to help Helping Hand catch the attention it so rightfully deserves. Unfortunately, they are still a bit too busy to organise this event themselves, but they have found the perfect replacement host and organiser.

After all, when it comes to getting attention, who better to employ than Jaskier the bard?

But what is their brilliant idea, you ask? Well...

Get your wallets ready, trainers, because we're having a charity auction.

Now, we are sure you all have plenty of questions, so lets try and answer those.

Wait, what does the auction have to do with R&S being romantics?

Glad you asked! You see, it isn't just any auction - it's a date auction. We'll be auctioning your character!

...and some items as well, but we all know what you're really here for.

Alright, I'm all ears. How does this work?

ICly, fliers start appearing in every town/city promoting the event and telling you to contact Jaskier (

rollstoseduce) if you want to donate an item, a date or your time. He'll also make an IC post on the network, because this is his way to celebrate his birthday and he's always hungry for attention. ...attention for charity. Obviously. Ahem. The actual date interviews will be handwaved, but you can reply to his IC post to ask questions, chat about the event in general or ask how he manages to keep such wonderful skin at 41¹.

OOCly, there will be a separate post (with screened comments) for you to sign up your character and/or donate items. You have time until June 15th to comment. Sofi (Jaskier's player) will contact you the next day to tell you if your character got chosen and to hash out some details to include on the top level. Make sure your journal is open to PMs!

Tell me about the items.

There are two categories: items and eggs. Anyone can donate either, you don't need to be a breeder to donate eggs or be a trainer to donate items! You can even donate one of each if you want. All items and eggs will be auctioned and something doesn't get any bids, R&S will put on costumes and bid themselves so nothing goes to waste.

Regarding items: you can donate any Pokémon game item. TMs, held items, evolutionary items, apricorn Pokéballs, you get it. Yes, this includes items from the Christmas market or gained during events. If your character has a December-exclusive TM or an ability capsule from an event that they're willing to part with, we'll accept them! There's only one thing that won't be accepted and that's multi-use TMs.

Yeah, yeah, that's nice and all, but let's talk about those dates!

Everyone is allowed to sign-up, the only rule Jaskier will put down is for the character to be "a teenager" as minimum age. He'll conduct a very short interview (this will be in the sign-up form to be filled and handwaved ICly) together with Lampro, his Luvdisc. From all the volunteers, up to 15 will be chosen to be auctioned according to this criteria:

1. Trying to have a variety of ages
2. Trying to keep all genders covered in equal numbers
3. If they're single
4. Their interview answers

Please note: points 1 and 2 are the most important. So even if you think your character won't do well in points 3 or 4, don't hesitate in signing up anyway! We'd rather choose a taken girl over a single guy, for example, to fill up those girl numbers.

Riegfried and Soy's donation to this event (besides paying for U-bird) will be paying for the dates themselves! So don't worry if your character is poor or doesn't have much access to the map yet, they got your back! Five-star restaurant? Tickets for that expensive play? The sky is the limit.

I want my character to be an auctionee but they wouldn't volunteer themselves.

You can say a friend or a Pokémon sent in the request for an interview with Jaskier. We can't make them go to it, but perhaps they caved in to peer pressure? Or they're too embarrassed to back out now since it's for charity? There's a chance Jaskier is going to them, as well, just jumping off his Altaria next to your character and thanking them for their time and oh, thank you so much for participating, this is so incredibly important! Can you say no to these big blue eyes? Can you?

...well, you can I guess, but that would be very heartless of you. Would someone think of the children?

How will this be played out?

The auction will have a separate log from the festival so each date and item have their own top level. The auction will happen the night of the solstice (June 21st) and the winners will ICly be known on the spot, like every auction ever. OOCly, however, you have a week to bid-tag, after which threads will be frozen and the winners decided.

If you donated items/eggs, you can bid for both dates and items/eggs. If your character is one of the chosen ones, they can't bid for other dates, but they can bid for items/eggs. We won't be controlling how many things people bid for, we only ask you to keep to the spirit of the games' rules regarding money: it isn't moderated, just don't make your character magical rich overnight.

The date themselves can be played out whenever the players want, that's up for them to coordinate. We won't go around checking that it gets threaded, you don't have to hand it "proof" or anything. But we do encourage you not to handwave it, since getting a funny/embarrassing/romantic/alloftheabove thread out of this idea is kind of the point.

Where can we sign up for this event?

You can sign up here! Remember, the deadline is June 15th.

Wait, did you say a Luvdisc will be at the interviews too?

Yes. Luvdisc are the cupids of the Pokéworld. Don't fight it. Look at Lampro in the eye and open your soul to him. You won't regret it!

...or maybe you will if he ends up Water Gun-ing your face, but hey, no biggie, right?

¹ I bet it involves moisturising

Now, we are sure you all have plenty of questions still, but that is what this post is for! Just keep in mind, while we mods will be taken care of any questions related to the mod-run event, Sofi is in charge of any questions and details related to the dating event.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

For items, it just hit me it specifies Pokemon game items (pokeballs, heal items, king's rock, etc), but would more mundane items be allowed as well? Dimitri has been working on his woodcarving while in Johto, and he thought that might be something people would be interested in.... but I just realized I don't know if that's good to go, whups

Yes, those are allowed as well! Show us your wood, Dimitri.

Piggybacking off of this (on the wrong character account, but still), would art commissions be an acceptable donation?

Yes, that's fine!

1. Do levitating/floating Pokemon count as air or land? (i.e. Ghost types)

2. Rainer has been training her Rotom to possess and power her wheelchair. Could it use that to compete for the land portion? Or does it need to be one of the standard Rotom forms? (i.e. Mow Rotom)

(I'm sure I'll think of more questions later but that's it for now)

1. Levitating pokemon would count for air. For the ground section of the race, the pokemon need to be in actual contact with the ground while moving for them to count.

2. In the spirit of fairness, it'll be standard forms only. After all, a rotom might have an speed unfair advantage if it possesses something that is motorised.

So. For the race.

Do Pokemon for the water section *have* to be water *types* or, could they... just know Surf....

Oh no, they can be any pokemon you want that can swim/dive. They don't need to be water pokemon. They don't even need to know the move surf (though it would help, obviously) as long as it can be argued that they are capable of moving in the water in some way.

Echoing the query re the size, as I have a pokemon that is 4"03, plus your Bulbapedia height link goes directly to the 4"03 - 4"11 section, so it's unclear if those pokemon are included or excluded.

Also, are you taking base speed stats only, or taking into account each pokemon's actual level (as their speed would have increased as they leveled)?

The race is open for pokemon under four feet, so, unfortunately, a pokemon in the 4"03 section would not be eligible.

We will use the base speed stat, as that is one that is the most objective for judging. Pokemon obviously become quicker when they level up, but with all the specific EV training mechanisms the games introduced, stat progression has become a lot more varied. Though, we will be using the base speed stat as a starting point. We are an RP game, after all, so creativity is what is most important. A pokemon with a lower speed stat could still come out on top if the strategies they choose during the race are superior to all others.

Cool thanks! Galarian Ponyta it is haha!

Sooooo.

Are we enforcing any no cheating rules here just for my own sanity and because you know I have to ask with this idiot.

You can't always cheat your way through life, Jolyne!!

... but you can cheat your way through races. Yes, characters will be allowed to try and cheat. However, keep in mind that any cheaters that actually get caught will be removed from the competition. There will be tons of spectators throughout every section of the track this time around, so anything too obvious will get punished.

If you can make it subtle though...

LOOK, SHE'S BORED AND IT WASN'T HER IDEA THIS TIME.

:]

Thank you, mods~ I have some planning to go do with someone now, then.

SO

Wishiwashi has a size of 0'08" according to Bulbapedia, but... we all know what Wishiwashi does.

WHAT'S THE RULING ON WISHIWASHI COMPETING...

~~It has a base speed stat of 30 meaning that it's very slow but regardless if I can cause chaos with Wishiwashi...~~

Wishiwashi can compete! However, it's schooled form cannot. So if your Wishiwashi behaves and stays solitary throughout the race, there will be no problem. If it accidentally cries and calls its friends over, it will be disqualified.

wISHIWASHI NOOOOOO—

The logic that it's schooled form is just a bunch of small Pokemon has unfortunately failed it.

Can Dimitri tie a balloon to a rat and have it compete in the flying section of the race?

As hilarious as that would be, unfortunately, no artificial aids will be allowed.

Softly, and with feeling:

What happens if a pokemon uses trick room

In this, we're going to have to say that due to the lack of actual battle conditions on the field, Trick Room will fail to activate.

Speed boosting moves and items are still totally fine. Speed lowering moves or items (for other contestants) would fall under the banner of cheating which you can get away with as long as you don't get caught.

Is relative size going to be an issue? For instance: good old Skittles the Joltik could theoretically make an appearance here, and obviously a race geared towards smaller pokémon is the only kind of race a Joltik could participate in! But just as obviously, even within the small-to-medium category, Joltik is so far on the extreme end of smallness that it'd be at a severe logical disadvantage to (for example) a Thievul in terms of movement. Are the race and its obstacles balanced in such a way that even a Joltik could make a meaningful team contribution?

We'll try our best to make the challenges as evenly balanced as possible. This will probably mean that size could be an issue in one challenge but might prove an asset in another challenge. However because the challenges are split over the various race legs (right now, we are planning on having three challenges per leg, plus the two relays which will be luck-based, for judging), it is also hard to guarantee that the challenge where small size might be an asset (though of course, this also depends a lot on how creative you get with your strategies) will also coincide with the leg of the race Joltik will be running.

Oh yeah and also, because I didn't see an answer to this question on the mod plurk unless I missed it -

What about Ditto tho

Ditto is allowed to enter. They would also be allowed to transform (though they can only participate in one leg of the race) however they would obviously only be allowed to transform into other small/medium sized pokemon.

Steven wants to have a small egg raffle at Fight Club the week before to the event and then donate the raffle ticket proceeds in a lump sum to Helping Hands that night. Can he do that? Or rather, I guess, would Jaskier be fine with hooking him up with the Helping Hands people in general?

~~Ssshhh, he doesn't feel bad about any of his Rocket crimes at all, what are you talking about...~~

Yes, of course he can! At the event, there will be a table with NPCs that will be taking donations and will be handing out fliers and phone numbers in case of emergencies, all that promotional stuff. But also the organization is now there for anyone to use whenever! Jaskier will be happy to introduce the NPCs to Steven, before or after the event, but in general, anyone can contact them any time by just visiting their welcome centers. There's one in Goldenrod for sure!

Excellent! Then yeah, Steven's going to talk to them beforehand so they can, like, use the official Helping Hands branding to promote the raffle around the club and he'll have it, say, on the night of Sunday the 19th, so he can easily bring in the raffle money to the NPC table at the event.

(Three sibling-eggs to the massively OP Hawlucha egg he's donating to the auction are being raffled off. They have a stupid number of egg moves because their same species parents have full movesets and move tutor moves and their father went to fight the E4 so he has far too many TMs.)

That works! And lmao I swear all these eggs we keep getting aren't Pokémon, they're weapons of mass distruction.

At least it's not all that and a shiny. He had Kiri do the breeding for the shiny chance, but it failed.

This is REALLY belated but if someone would ICly be a good option for the date auction, and OOCly that would surely be fantastic, but would be... very very hard to convince to do it due to some major issues with the idea of relationships, would Jaskier make an effort to convince them anyway?

...I'm talking about Sion and not this kid here, for the record. >_>

He would try a bit. He would get all "hands on waist like a housewife" (points at icon) and ask if they made him come all the way here for nothing. :') But after like, two tries he'll leave with a "thanks for wasting my time", which is half genuine annoyance and half trying to make the other party feel guilty.

What sort of approach/argument would he is? Sion is uh. Well put it this way: the first (and thus only) time he started seeing someone she was murdered just as a means of hurting HIM, and later there's also the unsuccessful attempts on his bff's life. (And that's not even touching on what his poor mother went through...!) Plus his family line is cursed in a bad way that he has zero intention of risking passing on. So he's not entirely adverse to relationships so much as having serious hangups about it!

Not that he'd disclose those details, but if you think Jaskier could assuage that it miiiiiight be possible to pressure him into it. Just this once, for charity!

Is someone signing up Sion in the first place? Jaskier won't go around trying to convince randoms on the street. If someone does sign up Sion and Jaskier arrives for the interview, a talk can be had, but it depends on Sion's reaction and what he says aloud. If he only says "no thanks" then Jaskier will huff and react as I described above, just a little pushing before leaving, not much to be done. On the other hand, if he expresses doubts about what the event may imply, then Jaskier will do his best to explain it isn't a big deal and romance will only happen if both parties want it.

Between Ryner and both of their 'mons there shouldn't be a problem arranging for someone to sign Sion up initially whether he wants it or not! In which case he'd probably by surprised/pull a "you must be mistaken" while trying to figure out who the culprit is.

But otherwise Sion's version of a polite refusal is usually to make an excuse rather than refuse outright ~~especially if he has mixed feelings about it~~ so...

If he's just making excuse then yeah, the reaction I first described it's what he gets.

I mean if he goes straight for the guilt trip like that I'd bet even Ryner would sit back and enjoy the show. Serves the manipulative jerk right! etc

Really though Sion would be an excellent candidate for the auction! He just needs a little convincing to do it, is all. ;)

The interviews are one-on-one, so Ryner wouldn't be there. As I said, Jaskier's reaction is what I described in my first comment, so if it's enough to convince Sion or not is up to you!

If a Pokémon competing in the ground section of the race doesn't know any special/distance moves is getting creative with the moves they do have allowed?

This isn't actually an issue unless I choose to make it one and actively retcon learning moves, but also I really want to force a rat to launch pebbles using Tail Whip if that's suitably in the spirit.

If a pokemon has an ability affected by the weather, but not the move that changes the weather, can they piggyback on another pokemon's weather changing move? Say Jaskier's Luvdisc uses Rain Dance to enhance his own Swift Swim--can Greg's own Luvdisc piggyback on it?

Are there going to be normies at the auction bidding as well? For the dates and items. If so, can we handwave them bidding, within reason?

I had to think about this a lot - on one hand, NPCs also bidding make IC sense. On the other hand, OOCly I don't want late taggers to come and see a bid has been raised because of freaking NPCs.

So to play fair, I'm going to steal Dimitri's strategy and say you can describe NPCs bidding but only a couple of bucks (up to five) higher and only use it a couple of times per thread (allow a few PC tags go between those).

Thanks! That works for me!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Summer time, event time!

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