The What And The How
What Are These Tales?
Wondrous Tales is a biweekly community event that is hosted in Final Fantasy XIV, with but a simple goal in mind – to offer the guests a peaceful, relaxing evening, and a story to accompany that.
At the Tales, you will find yourself engulfed in a story that is being written in real time for the audience.
What’s The Story?
Nobody knows! Not even the writer. Vik asks the audience members at random to give a prompt and gathers a list of three to five various prompts for the story. Be it character, setting, a specific plot point, whatever it is that people might think of and desire to see in the story, the writer then will do best possible job at including all the prompts and shaping a story from them. The story is made up and written on the spot. At most, a genre will be pre-selected by the writer prior to the event.
How Does It Work? What’s The Format?
First, one of the staff members will give an intro and a briefing of the rules and the format to the audience, then the writer will take the stage and prompt the audience for ideas for the story.
Once the prompts are gathered, the writer will take a few minutes to come up with a core concept for the story, and then the writing begins. The story will be sent in paragraphs in the game’s chat as they are completed.
Throughout the story, random Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) elements might be implemented. Discussions of the story are more than welcome. Vik will be attempting to keep up with the chat, but should some idea surface in the chat and Vik so happens to miss it, the other staff will relay the info to Vik. In other words, your ideas, and discussions, may heavily influence the story and its plot.
Do I Have To Participate/Do Anything?
No – You are welcome to come in as the audience would to a story reading and just enjoy the story in silence. Check out the Player Tags for an explanation of how we see the tags and what meaning they have.
Additionally, you don’t even need to visit the Wondrous Tales in-game. If you’re simply in for the stories, they can be found on our website, and are also posted on the discord. Discussions and feedback of the stories also does not require in game presence. Each story has a comment section, or alternatively the feedback could be provided on discord in ‘discussion’ forum, or in Vik’s DMs.
Is It Always The Same?
To put it simply, no! The story is never the same as it is always written on the spot and the ideas which people throw out are always a surprise even to the writer! And to keep things fresh, occasionally the formats change. Choose your own adventure, guided prompts, pre-selected genre, are among some of the ways the writer likes to keep things fresh and different.