I’m collecting ideas at GridStream parties again for Halloween brainstorming. After two weeks, we’ll put them in some semblance of order, and I’ll put a little more detail into our favorites, with reference images where appropriate. Then I’ll send the whole list off to FC roughly two months before the event, hopefully about the time they’re looking for ideas of new stuff to add. So yeah, it has to start pretty early. I’ve just started that thread again for this Halloween on the GSP forums.
Posting the official list on the GSP forums and linking to it from the AO and SWL forums worked well so far, so let’s go with that again. On the GSP forums, I don’t have to worry about dividing the list between games, and the post length and editing restrictions are much looser, so I can manage the list better as ideas come in.
If you don’t have a GSP forum account to post your ideas there, go ahead and tack it on here. I should see it and I can just copy it over. Or better yet, come to a show so we can talk it over and bounce it around a bit. That often results in more and better ideas.
Once I’ve finalized the list, I’ll post the whole thing here too, but separated into AO and SWL posts.
And yes, you can always just post your own suggestion any time you want, but I find that these threads, especially the discussions of them at parties, bring up a lot more ideas and more of them actually get posted in a big pile FC can more easily find. So let’s hear it. What do you want The Pumpkinman’s clone uncles to bring you this year?
It’s been quite a year for the grieving pumpkin head’s, it seems they’ve found love! Mrs. or Mr. or Thister Pumpkinhead has come to back their beloved in combat~! If you and your team can manage to weather the combined force of this dynamic duo, then PHATS will ensure your Halloween is more treat than trick!
Possible loot includes : Docaholic’s other ring MM MC BI ring with nano init and max hp
Lindelu’s stripped pajama’s back item - nano skills evades ts skills AC’s and coffee stains *special effect on click locks perception for 600 seconds 240
second buff 15 dm 15 evades 18 aggdef 2 crit increase 100 inits and -5 skill lock modifier
Macrosun’s actual punching gloves: 400-600 (666) 2/1.75 MA weapon with brawl dimach and fast attack
more loot
Michizure’s special earthquake machine: spawns a giant Mr. Squeaky that explodes and rumbles the ground (cooldown 1 min)
Mean’s Mr meany: a lvl 200 req variant of the patchwork defensive drone
Raetos’s unbiased belt: neut only version of belt of great justice
A pack of Silirrion’s deep fried steaks(100 stack): consumable gives the same buff as Silirrion scones but also polymorphs randomly into either a bronto, a shadow, or a rhinoman
ShadowGod’s bigger picture: painting for home that’s just Mr. Squeaky destroying civilization.
Vhab’s factual damage calculator: hud 1 with add dmg 45 add off 45 add def -45
Lucier’s cup of strong liqour: 200-400(420) 1.4/1.4 1 hand blunt weapon with chemical dmg and 4% chance to stun enemy 6% chance to lower init’s 1000 enemy for 30 seconds and a 2% chance to cast debuff on user “the worst kind of inebriated” that forces you to see in the old fisheye lens green of advanced scent sensor for a minute.
Darkbane’s Dark Bane: A weapon with a chance blinding the enemy reducing AAO by 500 ( I honestly cannot remember what weapon DB used rip.)
Saavick’s strap of Rubi-ka: a lowbie pistol that has a high chance of giving a small vehicle air and runspeed buff *activation effect: 30 minute cooldown beacon to Reet’s Retreat.
my primary argument for so many items on this list is because I have high expectations because working on testlive I saw first hand what devs are capable of. my secondary arguments include; doing a list of items I suspect several of these will be ruled out anyways or perhaps saved for another year. I set high expectations for myself in game (doing subway in record times, challenge runs without active healers in subway, having a box but never selling loot only giving it out freely, power leveling players free of charge, running the froob raids, doing deferential analysis on damage and survivability of my builds, etc) so I set high expectations for the game itself. with everything in life, true labors of love require sacrifices, and I respect the devs sacrifices, regardless I’m going to hold them to the highest standards because I hold myself to them
Here’s GridStream’s annual brainstorming contribution of Halloween ideas. They were collected at two weeks of GSP parties, plus a couple that came up since last time. The forums were pretty quiet, and our parties are mostly in AO these days, but we got a pretty good list anyway, and a lot of the ideas apply to SWL, too. GSP DJs, Dancers, and staff helped put them in order so I could fill in extra details on our favorites, but as always, the whole list is here. [on the main list anyway, this is trimmed for the AO forum]
[AO] Halloween Play Costumes
Halloween colored versions of the Anniversary and Christmas ones. Midnight black, pumpkin orange, blood red (a little darker than Christmas red), and/or bone grey (like old dusty bones, not clean fresh white bones). Maybe a little purple to go with the Mysterious Cloak. A good start would be the Anniversary “Play Costume - First Edition” in orange with black details and black with orange details.
[AO] Angeleets to go with the Devileets
Leets with crooked little halos tied on their heads. Maybe with a chin strap. Not so much with the wings; “fethers” are for reets. A little lyre or harp strapped to their backs would work. Spawn them as mobs wandering about the cities and give them a holdable lyre/harp you can loot for yourself.
[AO] “I got murdered by all the Birthday Event World Bosses and didn’t even get this lousy” T-Shirt.
A t-shirt torn up even worse than Dear Liza’s. Ripped, burned, shot, bleached and dissolved with acid, blood stained, the works. It will obviously get abbreviated “B.E.W.B. Shirt”, which will make perfect sense considering that what little remains of it only covers barely enough.
[AO] Rollerrat Screech Protection Headphones.
The audio version of Atrox Thong Protection Glasses. In orangey or dark red rollerrat colors, or a variety of extra creepy flesh tones. Disables audio when worn in Clothes head slot. Of course, we can just do that with F10, but it would be funnier this way.
[AO] Pom-poms
Spherical Martial Arts-skill weapons held in both hands that give your hands a glow like an MA damage buff in the same color as the pom-poms, but stationary, not rising, so they have short trails when you shake them. Or make them “burn” downward a little bit, so the “trails” default to hanging straight down when you hold still.
They should probably be the same range of colors as the pennants in the old Veteran shop, as well as red and gold like the Anniversary Play Costume - First Edition.
[AO] new wandering mobs to give new loot to
They could use existing models, like small black cats, shadowleets, various semi-humanoid mutants (glowing blue skeletons and tentacle mutants come to mind), rollerpumpkins, and devilleets. Those would all make good Halloween monsters, roaming the cities or the areas surrounding them, maybe the same areas Uncle Pumpkinhead haunts. Maybe give the rollerpumpkins a boss, or queen, like the rollerrats? Aunt Rollerpumpkin?
Loot should preferably include some of the old goodies that haven’t dropped in years and some that have only been rarely avaiable in old missions, like plastic pitchforks for the Devileets, tombstones for the zombie-looking mutants, skulls for the skeletons, Splat shirts for the rollerpumpkins, The Grinning Devil for the shadowleets, etc. I’m not sure what to give the black cats… maybe something new from elsewhere on this list.
[both] shiny and feminine, but practical, female armor
Not typical MMO female “armor” or unisex “storm trooper” armor that just happens to be wrapped around a curvier mesh, but more like Wonder Woman 1984. Perhaps it’s something like a nano-woven honey polymer non-Newtonian ballistic cloth armor, very light and flexible, but effective.
If it ends up being too girly for men to wear without looking silly, that’s fine. Some like to play that way, and there are plenty of other choices if not.
[AO] Flying carpet vehicle
A hover"bike" version you sit on, cross-legged, and a hover"board" version you can stand normally on, or dance on. Some simple or traditional pattern on them, not just a plain square of red carpet like Uncle Bazzit sells.
[both] Tiger Print outfit
A black and orange version of AO’s Zebra Print outfit. SWL would need the original, too.
[AO] Non-dancing Uncle Pumpkinhead doll
A clickable toy like the Dancing Santa Doll, but it spawns a little Junior Pumpkinhead who says, “I can’t dance, I can’t sing, I’m just standing here scything everything.” And then he swings his scythe and has a little deathcackle and poofs.
Bonus points if he approaches another nearby pet before he talks.
[both] balloons pet, in Halloween colors
Maybe make some of them pumpkin-shaped. Not much more to say about that. …unless…
What if they weren’t full of helium at all but were kept aloft by trapped spirits trying to escape back to the Shadowlands and you could occasionally see a blurry face pressed against the inside of the balloon, amid vague swirls of mist trying to hypnotize you into letting them out? Like the creepy spheres the Soul Hunters used in Babylon 5, but floating on strings like they’re supposed to be cheerful.
(AO) a new mission from the Halloween leets, to infiltrate a monster party
A spooky old lonely mansion on top of a hill, maybe one of those hills in Holes in the Wall, with low lighting like the Abandoned Facility, and that old Halloween fog effect too, so even your own lighting doesn’t reach far. Lots of jump scare monsters like Eremites and Grasping Tentacles and Shadowleets.
Get one of those morphs from the Halloween leets and you’ll see it’s actually a party, with tentacle mutants hitting on medusa and skeletons chatting around a punch cauldron and vampire transvestites doing the Time Warp or whatever, but as long as you keep the costume on, they’re not aggressive. Run/creep/hover/squirm you way to some prize, and bring it back, or plant a recorder, or spike their punch, or set up them the bomb or something.
(The leets giving the mission would totally make ALL YOUR BASE references. In 1337sp24k. Possibly on their communicator, gloating to the monsters’ boss when you return for your reward.)
[both] fishnet stockings with matching heels (or pumps) and booty shorts
in dark red (matching AO’s Vulcana)
and rich purple (matching the Mysterious Cloak)
and light blue (matching the Blue Bikini)
[AO] nano to morph yourself into a large quabbit
So what if you can’t dance or walk sideways or sit? You hop! Maybe with a little runspeed buff? Like +20 or so? Could it make you default to running forward unless you’re actively holding down your “walk backwards” key to counter it?
[AO] flooded subway dungeon
An underwater maze of tunnels, like a submerged version of ToTW, with all the cultists replaced by sharks. You’ll need SCUBA gear or an Underwater Breathing nano or something, like Adonis. Might explain why all the old subways are closed now. I bet someone forgot to account for the whole terraforming thing when they built those subways.
[AO] Any Color Bikini Top to go with the color changing thong in the shop
Classic basic triangle would be fine, and should be easy enough considering the Naughty List and Midnight Pumpkin and Devilish Grin are available for color changes. Or you could make it a bandeau like SWL has. Or minimal triangles for something new.
And that’s just if you’re not feeling too imaginative about it. As long as the colors match, we’re not that picky about the style. You could make the cups shaped like the Anarchy logo and we’d probably still want it. We just need something that matches the bottoms we have.
[both] ocelot print bikini with some ocelot spot tats
Full set of body tattoos, like the Shade tats, but no mystical “armor” stats and wearable by anyone, with a matching minimal bikini or Speedo. Ocelot pattern is similar to leopard, but even cuter. Google has pages of reference material for ocelots and ocelot body paint.
[both] More Halloween colored shorts
… and AO still needs Midnight Pumpkin / Devilish Grin Boxers for girls, too! Seriously, with all this form-fitting one-size-fits-any-breed armor, how can those boxers not even have elastic and need a big package to hold them up? That just never made sense.
[AO] junker hoverbike
A hoverbike made of junk, like old reclaim terminals duct-taped to pieces of the old square player city social whompahs, with wires and hoses sticking out all over. Well, everywhere except the ratty-looking seat and crudely welded bicycle handlebars.
[both] “steamy bath censorship” costume
A little bit of strategically opaque white cloud underwear that emanates a particle effect like adventurer shields but with slow fluffy white cloud particles, aka “The Onsen Episode” costume. Great for screenshots in those Sunrise Station apartments and Tokyo bath houses. AoE nosebleed effect optional.
[both] Figleet of your Imagination
An especially silly pet leet.
[AO] Campfire cauldron
Like a Winter Survival Kit with a cauldron on a tri-pod over it. A smaller version of the giant cauldron ARK brings to big parties. Click to spawn a temporary decoration, like the Winter Survival Kit.
[AO] Chess costumes
Black or white robes like the Tree Dress, with different hats for different Chess pieces, click to change piece, screwdriver to change color.
[AO] crystal ball with Psychic buff
[AO] Funhouse Morpher that casts a nano to temporarily randomize your height/weight settings
[both] that glass sphere the Goblin King juggled in Labyrinth, with a reflection still inside it of David Bowie’s hands flowing around it. Maybe it could be a Shoulder/Util item, and on use cast an AoE pacify/snare that levels up with Agility/Psychic?
[AO] Shoulder-mounted Uncle Pumpkinhead dolls
[AO] A skeleton sitting on an electric chair at the end of the subway side branch (that safe dead end one no one ever goes to), doing energy dmg when approached (like a mini tower) and spawning a coffin when killed (like Loren) and black gift boxes (with a % chance to explode upon opening). On 1 hour respawn timer
[AO] I’m still waiting for the Halloween leets’ shade morph to work as camouflage to get past the shades in U-Turn Forest.
[AO] some of the cool art and decorations used in random missions that you always wished you could take home and put in your apartment, dropped by generic humanoid mobs hanging around cities, named “Halloween Vandal”
[AO] Leetles poster (crossing a street in Omni-1 or something?)
[AO] candy corn backpack
[both] undead teddy bear costume, like an almost life-size version of the Childhood Memories one taken all apart and tied on as a costume
[AO] R.U.R. Leetbot (Rubi-Ka Universal Robots)
[AO] pet hover-cameras / recorders made of slightly smaller, disarmed Probe mobs
[AO] Nanos to temporarily morph into a skeleton, like what the Reanimator does, or a ghost, like the Horror Ghost costume without having to unequip your gear
[both] Stillsuits or hunter-seekers or worm-riding gear or something from that new game you’re working on, as a teaser
[AO] Flying Reaper morph, VA81 like the yalm/hoverbike nanos, but the same morph as the Halloween leets cast, just with flying enabled
[AO] clicky toy that makes it rain bacon in vicinity
[AO] Bellydancer thong
Like the Purple Thong (from Item Store) with a thin gold chain belt worn low on the hips, with little gold tassels and coins
[AO] Cheerleet hotpants, with one big heavily made up eye on each cheek, giant eyelashes and all
[both] wireframe suit - back item that’s just pitch black like the morph suit, but with one pixel wide white lines at the edges of all the polygons
[both] Low-rise boyshorts (to go with the tails in AO), and matching lacy balconette bras
[AO] cauldron backpack
[AO] Aunt and Uncle Pumpkinhead raid encounter
It’s been quite a year for the grieving pumpkin head’s, it seems they’ve found love! Mrs. or Mr. or Thister Pumpkinhead has come to back their beloved in combat~! If you and your team can manage to weather the combined force of this dynamic duo, then PHATS will ensure your Halloween is more treat than trick!
Docaholic’s other ring MM MC BI ring with nano init and max hp
Lindelu’s stripped pajama’s back item - nano skills evades ts skills AC’s and coffee stains - special effect on click locks perception for 600 seconds 240 second buff 15 dm 15 evades 18 aggdef 2 crit increase 100 inits and -5 skill lock modifier
Macrosun’s actual punching gloves: 400-600 (666) 2/1.75 MA weapon with brawl dimach and fast attack
Michizure’s special earthquake machine: spawns a giant Mr. Squeaky that explodes and rumbles the ground (cooldown 1 min)
Mean’s Mr meany: a lvl 200 req variant of the patchwork defensive drone
Raetos’s unbiased belt: neut only version of belt of great justice
A pack of Silirrion’s deep fried steaks(100 stack): consumable gives the same buff as Silirrion scones but also polymorphs randomly into either a bronto, a shadow, or a rhinoman
ShadowGod’s bigger picture: painting for home that’s just Mr. Squeaky destroying civilization.
Vhab’s factual damage calculator: hud 1 with add dmg 45 add off 45 add def -45
Lucier’s cup of strong liqour: 200-400(420) 1.4/1.4 1 hand blunt weapon with chemical dmg and 4% chance to stun enemy 6% chance to lower init’s 1000 enemy for 30 seconds and a 2% chance to cast debuff on user “the worst kind of inebriated” that forces you to see in the old fisheye lens green of advanced scent sensor for a minute.
Darkbane’s Dark Bane: A weapon with a chance blinding the enemy reducing AAO by 500 ( I honestly cannot remember what weapon DB used rip.)
Saavick’s strap of Rubi-ka: a lowbie pistol that has a high chance of giving a small vehicle air and runspeed buff *activation effect: 30 minute cooldown beacon to Reet’s Retreat.
[AO] a clickytoy that spawns a cloud of fireflies that are actually, if you zoom in close enough, tiny black drone spaceships with glowing orange engines
[AO] Teh Wicker Tweet - a pet / shoulder reet woven out of dried reeds
[both] the lockdown Wookiee “I really need a haircut” outfit
[AO] clicky toy that makes a “pollen cloud” effect like the Weird-Looking Candy Cherries, with additional pitch black and blood red floating dots
[AO] social that looks like old Newbie Island armor, but the unprotected areas are gorey wounds you can see the implants through
note: you can’t get Halloween loot on Newbie Island, or Arete, so wearing this shows what happens to you if you keep wearing that QL2 Low Tech Armor long enough to have implants. Also good for role-playing a zombie or acting as the corpse extra in someone’s YouTube video
[AO] Uncle Pumpkinhead doll helmet, Babyface style
like your Junior Pumpkinhead pet turned on you, scythed your head off, and is standing on your neck, driving your corpse around. Equipping it makes you do his deathcackle animation.
[AO] Nanomage Liberation Front piano
[AO] Bigmanforce statue (a player who makes YouTube videos)
[both] Like bath bombs, but for kitchens. Throw one in the sink and tentacle monsters spring out of it and grope and flail all around your fridge and cabinets and randomly cook you a meal with whatever they find and then slither away, leaving decent, if creepy, food, and a huge mess. … I don’t actually know how that might apply to AO other than as creepy descriptive text on something icky-looking.
[AO] Scotch chirop eggs
like a Gestating Pustule reskinned to look like fried meatloaf with egg leaking out. Feeds a family of 12 or one Atrox.
[AO] make a bottlecap spawn in your inventory when you “use” a bottle of Ed’s Zombie Brew or Pumpkin Juice or Mr. Pointy’s “Not Fake” Blood or Bad Brew. Make them stack like bullets and leave them tradable so we can use them for currency
[both] I doubt the engine supports it, but it would be cool if there was a nano that could make a rainbow appear leading to your mission waypoint - and if that is possible, a Halloween version could be a cloud of bats or a rolling jack-o-lantern or some such
[AO] Rick Astley costumes for pet Rollerrats
They’re never gonna give up chasing you.
[AO] “I survived Covid 19…but Uncle Pumpkinhead got me in 2HO” T-shirt
changes into “I survived Covid 19…but got ganked by a (Clammer/Omlet/Newt) in 2HO” T-shirt
[AO] rollerpumpkin hat, like a basic rollerrat helmet, but comes all the way down to your neck, like a ski mask, with eye and mouth holes cut like a jack-o-lantern, in pumpkin orange, of course.
[AO] bring back the old pvp titles
I’m not sure what that has to do with Halloween, except it seems a popular time for ambushing folks trying to loot Griefing Pumpkinheads
[AO] a “no sun” placard for protesting to turn down the orbital heat death ray
Thanks for your continued work on our favorite worlds and for reading (at least some of) this and letting us contribute some ideas to the holiday development cycle. I hope you find at least some of it useful or at least amusing.
