The Culture ReviewArticle by GerrickThat's kinda what we do around here. This is the first installment of the Culture Review, written by me, Gerrick, Wintreath’s Jarl of Culture. I’ll be talking briefly about some events going on in the cultural areas of the forums, such as Ministry news, monthly contests, and forum games.
The Monarch’s Game Bag is a list of over 150 spare Steam keys that Wintermoot and other citizens have donated to the region over the years. As the Monarch’s Game Bag used to only be rewarded to those who won the Monthly Recruitment Contest, which had no winner for a year, it had no real use, and the Steam keys were left unused. To help with this as well as to help spur civil service activity, a new system was put in place to reward those who take the initiative to make Wintreath a better place. All of the games were split into two categories: Gold Rewards (those that cost at least $10 each) and Silver Rewards (those that cost less). Silver Rewards are given to those who write 2 articles for the Orendi, gain 1000 recruitment points in one month, or win Wintreath's Finest of the Month. Gold Rewards are given to those who win the Monthly Recruitment Contest, gain 2500 recruitment points in one month, win Wintreath's Finest of the Year, or complete two of the Silver Reward tasks. Rewards will also be given out during festivals, so make sure to attend our Summersend Festival in August!
Wintreath’s Finest is the name for Wintreath’s citizen of the month. Nominations are for those who stood out as contributing or showing dedication to the region or having been extra active, caused activity, or been a good influence on others. The winner of May 2017’s Wintreath’s Finest was
Justinian Ezkantion, who was nominated for creating and hosting the newest roleplay,
the Wild Men of Wichita. I had the pleasure of interviewing him about the RP in an article in
last month’s Orendi. The other nominations for Wintreath’s Finest were Fortis_Scriptor, who has written several
stories and
pieces of lore for the world he and Crushita are building for a book, and Elbbsas, who has been writing short
timed prompts to work on her creative writing. Both Fortis_Scriptor and Elbbsas have helped revitalize the
Halls of Art and Writing and have inspired others to post their works as well.
The Avatar Theme of the Month is the theme that several forum users will adopt into their avatars for the month, whether that means using pictures or memes that have to do with the theme or Photoshopping the theme into their usual avatars. Nominations are typically related to current world affairs, historical dates, holidays, or happenings in Wintreath. The winner of June 2017’s Avatar Theme of the Month was a tie between the
FBI (nominated because of the ongoing high profile FBI investigations) and the
Battle of Midway (the famous WWII naval battle that took place in early June 1942). Other nominations included Skyrim, flags (nominated because of Flag Day in the US, which takes place in June), and June as a name (May as a name was a nomination in last month’s contest).
The Monthly Recruitment Contest is back after a year of having no winners. The winner of the contest must have the most recruitment points (with at least 1500) by the end of the month. Recruitment points are earned by manually sending out recruitment telegrams to new NationStates nations, using our recruitment tool. The winner of May 2017's Recruitment Contest was
Mathyland, who recruited to 1578 nations. As the winner of the recruitment contest, he was then allowed to choose any game from the Monarch’s Game Bag, which he decided to be Sid Meier’s Civilization V.
Spyfall is an easy-to-learn party game of bluffing, probing questions, clever answers, and suspicion. In the game, one player is the Spy and has to try to figure out their location, while all other players try to figure out who is the Spy without giving away their location. We had already had five games since it was first introduced to Wintreath in early 2015. This sixth game was made up of eight players and took place in a cathedral to Wintreath’s unofficial religion, Potatoeism. The non-Spy players took on roles (such as Bishop, Beggar, and Tourist) to help them ask and answer questions in-character. The game ended up lasting from May 30 until June 13 when
BraveSirRobin, the Spy, figured out the location and won.