Extra Life 2015

Welcome, adventurer!

You're invited on our quest to raise money to help children in need. Extra Life is all about playing games and raising money to support Children's Miracle Network. With your help, we can slay monsters like cancer and cystic fibrosis. To support our fundraising efforts, we're running a 24 hour livestream D&D session for the big Extra Life game-day this year. Last year we raised $770, which was more than we had expected. This year, we'll try to beat that record and aim for $800.

On game-day we'll be playing a modified version of Princes of the Apocalypse set in my homebrew setting known as Aresia. Stay tuned for more information about characters, players, and updates to the obsidian portal website. I'll link the twitch streams we'll be using at a later date. Note that we'll be streaming from Saturday November 7th 2015 9:00 AM CEST until Sunday November 8th 2015 9:00 AM CEST.

You won't have to watch the whole 24 hours to follow the game. Every 4 hours we'll take a break, do a quick recap, and start up a new mini adventure that will last 4 hours. This way you can easily tune in at 4 hour intervals and still follow the game.

As a preview to the adventure, you can read one of the character's diaries, which will give you an insight into the character's past and personality, along with his thoughts about two of the other players.
 

What is Extra-Life?

Extra Life is an online grassroots movement working to save local (USA) kids through the power of play. From video games to board games, Extra Lifers do what they love to raise money for CMN Hospitals. Participants can register at Extra-Life.org, and then simply ask friends and family to sponsor their fundraising goal and efforts. On November 7, everyone grabs a seat and plays games to help kids all over the US. We are proud to have various danish gaming shops as our sponsors for this event. See more on our Extra-Life page.

Extra Life is an online grassroots movement working to save local kids through the power of play. From video games to board games, Extra Lifers do what they love to raise money for CMN Hospitals. Participants can register at www.Extra-Life.org, and then simply ask friends and family to sponsor their fundraising goal and efforts. On October 25, everyone grabs a seat and plays games to help kids in Carilion Clinic Children’s Hospital. We are proud to have Domino’s as our local sponsor for this event.   - See more at: https://www.carilionclinic.org/hospitals/carilion-clinic-childrens-hospital/miracle-hospital-events#sthash.ibNo97B4.dpuf

Extra Life is an online grassroots movement working to save local kids through the power of play. From video games to board games, Extra Lifers do what they love to raise money for CMN Hospitals. Participants can register at www.Extra-Life.org, and then simply ask friends and family to sponsor their fundraising goal and efforts. On October 25, everyone grabs a seat and plays games to help kids in Carilion Clinic Children’s Hospital. We are proud to have Domino’s as our local sponsor for this event.   - See more at: https://www.carilionclinic.org/hospitals/carilion-clinic-childrens-hospital/miracle-hospital-events#sthash.ibNo97B4.dpuf

Extra Life is an online grassroots movement working to save local kids through the power of play. From video games to board games, Extra Lifers do what they love to raise money for CMN Hospitals. Participants can register at www.Extra-Life.org, and then simply ask friends and family to sponsor their fundraising goal and efforts. On October 25, everyone grabs a seat and plays games to help kids in Carilion Clinic Children’s Hospital. We are proud to have Domino’s as our local sponsor for this event.   - See more at: https://www.carilionclinic.org/hospitals/carilion-clinic-childrens-hospital/miracle-hospital-events#sthash.ibNo97B4.dpuf

Extra Life is an online grassroots movement working to save local kids through the power of play. From video games to board games, Extra Lifers do what they love to raise money for CMN Hospitals. Participants can register at www.Extra-Life.org, and then simply ask friends and family to sponsor their fundraising goal and efforts. On October 25, everyone grabs a seat and plays games to help kids in Carilion Clinic Children’s Hospital. We are proud to have Domino’s as our local sponsor for this event.   - See more at: https://www.carilionclinic.org/hospitals/carilion-clinic-childrens-hospital/miracle-hospital-events#sthash.ibNo97B4.dpuf

Extra-Life 2014
It all started in the summer 2014. I was joking around with some of my players about having a D&D marathon, something in the lines of a 24 hour session. This was inspired by our summer game where we spent 3 days together in a house in the woods and played D&D 4th edition. A few days after talkign about running a marathon, Wizards of the Coast advertised that they were going to run a 25 hour livestream of a game for Extra-Life and that others could join their fundraising team and host their own marathon. I immediately jumped on the wagon and started preparing the game.

When I started reading about Extra-Life, I discovered that it was a fundraiser for childrens' hospitals in the US. This hit a soft spot because a few years ago I lost my son to HLHS (Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome). My brother had also recently married his American girlfriend, and together they had moved to Alaska because they weren't allowed to live in Denmark, a country where we are privileged enough to have free healthcare. Both of these reasons fueled my desire to be part of Extra-Life.

The adventure I prepared was bassed on the newly released Tyranny of Dragons adventures for D&D 5th edition by Wizards of the Coast. I set up the event so that people could pay for a 4 hour spot, or even pay during the event to join as a player. Furthermore, donors could also influence the game in many other ways. Some donations were used to "add more fireballs to the game". Another very successful aspect of our first Extra-Life was our thresholds. The thresholds I set up was major ingame events. At first a key NPC named Akane joined the party. As we reached the various milestones on our way to our fundraising goal, the players encountered more and more powerful and key NPCs until they were finally allowed to actually play a single encounter as high level NPCs called the Angels of Death. In conclusion, our 2014 event was a success. We raised more money than we had expected and it was a fun experience for everyone involved.

 
Preparing for Extra-Life 2015
Our next major project is Extra-Life 2015. Last year we played the Tyranny of Dragons, and this year we'll be playing the Elemental Evil premade adventure called Princes of the Apocalypse, a 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons adventure written by Wizards of the Coast. Over the course of the next two months you will be able to follow our preparation for the event, including how we prepare the adventure and gather sponsors. We are already more than halfway through the preparations, so I'll use this blog to recap what we've done so far.

I started by purchasing and reading the Princes of the Apocalypse and decided to run it for Extra-Life 2015 just as I had run the Hoard of the Dragon Queen for Extra-Life 2014. I set up my Extra-Life page as I had done last year and started advertising it. As with the Hoard of the Dragon Queen, I wanted to change Princes of the Apocalypse to suit my own homebrew world of Aresia, so I started working on the changes.

I set the events of Extra-Life 2015 ten year after the events of Extra-Life 2014, mainly so that players from last year could return with the same characters they had played with previously. I also decided to split up the adventure into smaller adventures so that it would be easier for both players and viewers to come and go during the event. This inspired me to modify the four elemental dungeons. The drawings in the back of the book were beautiful and fit perfectly to my idea of four elemental towers. I found the dungeon maps and bought them and then I started modifying them.

I have now modified 2 out of 4 elemental towers. Today or tomorrow I'll upload a video on how I populated the second elemental dungeon on Roll20. I'm still missing 2 characters, 2 dungeons, a world map, and to modify some of the text so that I can easily find the necessary information in the premade adventure.


Gathering sponsors
One of the biggest differences between last year and this year is our sponsors. It doesn't hurt to ask, so I called various gaming shops in Denmark to see if they were interested in sponsoring us. 4 out of 4 shops were interested in sponsoring us with giveaways. Due to the interest in our event we started working on material for our current and potential sponsors. We decided to create 3 items and seek a variety of sponsors.

Item 1: First of all we started creating a poster that the shops could put up as advertisement for the event. We are currently also planning on putting this poster up in libraries and around our local community. We're planning to print 25 of these posters.

Item 2: Secondly we started creating a flyer that the shops could have on their counters and that customers could take with them. We are currently also planning on leaving these flyers in libraries and around our local community. We're planning to print 100 of these flyers.

Item 3: Thirdly we've been looking at how to do a giveaway. The largest sponsoring we're seeking are items that we can use as giveaways. The company that I work for was willing to give me resources to print out the posters and flyers, but the various shops we've contacted have all shown an interest in sending us giveaways. We've decided to devide giveaways into three categories.

Items worth 200 DKK or less will be given away to a random viewer after one of our 4 hour interval breaks on game-day.

Items worth 200-1,000 DKK will be given away to a random donor who has donated $20 or more. This requires donors to write down a means for us to get in contact with them when they donate, which they can do secretly to me so that their contact information isn't public. Between 8 and 9 AM sunday morning, we'll go through the donors and announce the winner.

Items worth more than 1,000 DKK will be given away to a random donor IF we reach our $800 goal. This requires donors to write down a means for us to get in contact with them when they donate, which they can do secretly to me so that their contact information isn't public. Between 8 and 9 AM sunday morning, we'll go through the donors and announce the winner.

As a little bonus, we'll show on our livestream which companies are sponsoring our giveaways, which will serve as a bit of free advertisement for them.


At first we sought sponsors at roleplaying shops in Denmark. We have since then expanded to gain sponsor from other companies. The armatur company that I work for have also sponsored us by giving us resources to print the posters and flyers. We're also planning on expanding our search for sponsors to other gaming shops, libraries, and various local associations. Stay tuned for the next 2 months as we prepare for the event.



Next week (week 38 as they call it here in Denmark), I'll be introducing my Dungeons and Dragons world called Aresia, which is where we've set our Extra Life event. I'll explain how the world started out and how it has evolved. I'll give you links to how I'm sharing information about my world with players and how I plan to use it for Extra Life. If you have ideas on articles that we should write about, let us know on our Facebook page, or leave a comment.