Bannerfall is POWCreations’ newest streamed server, welcoming several new cast members to its roster. These new creators have fit seamlessly into the antics and storytelling of the server, bringing in exciting characters and storylines. We got the chance to sit down and talk to Shandrea and Nominalgravy to talk about their experiences as new members of the POW family.
Joining such a well-established project can be a little daunting, especially for people who are new to this kind of improvisational storytelling content. “It’s been so overwhelming, yet so much fun at the same time,” Shandrea tells us. “This is the first time where I’m doing something with lore where my character has a backstory, so instead of just playing Minecraft, I’m really trying to tell a story.”
Bannerfall SMP was inspired by the addition of spears into Minecraft, allowing for jousting. The world takes on a medieval theme, with three classes the players can choose from. Each class – Knight, Mage, or Rogue – comes with unique skills and abilities, such as rogues having the ability to look into the inventories of other players. “It really does feel like every single project [POWCreations does] just gets better and better. If there’s ever anything on the server that needs to be changed or fixed, Owen is insanely fast and we’re able to fix it and change things on the go,” Nominalgravy says. “It’s been an amazing experience.”
Nominal and fellow creator KatieGoBrr play siblings who are members of rival kingdoms, and have a strained relationship as a result. “I got very, very lucky that Katie was added alongside me,” Nominal explains. “Neither of us knew the other was getting added. As soon as I saw someone I’ve been friends with for years join, Katie and I got on a call and genuinely within ten minutes started bouncing some ideas off each other – and then we’re like, wait a minute, sibling characters will fit us perfectly!”
Nominal has talked about how he prefers natural storytelling to more scripted content, and that while he and Katie have some basic storybeats that they try to hit, most of what they do is improv. “In one stream, Katie had this item, which was a torn up photo of our characters as kids,” Nominal tells us. “That obviously is a thing that she’s wanted from the beginning, but it was never in the script that I would end up finding it. That happened completely naturally.”
Shandrea took a bit longer to come up with an idea for her Bannerfall character. “I spent a whole month [working on a character] with one of my closest friends, who’s also a great artist. We spent hours in VC, just trying to come up with something – it was trial and error, but it was fun.”
There are two rival kingdoms on the Bannerfall server and each one has a monarch. While it was not her plan to apply to become one of the monarchs, Shandrea was chosen to be the Queen of the Blue Kingdom. “When I first joined the world I didn’t know where I was, my magic wasn’t working, I had mining fatigue and I was starving,” Shandrea explains. “I had many things holding me back. My chat thought it would be really funny if I became queen after everything that happened to me.”
“The way I’m going about my lore is that I’m posting tiny pieces,” Shandrea continues. “It’s like a puzzle piece and they have to figure it out.” Both she and Nominal have been pleasantly surprised by how engaged the POWCreations audience has been with their stories. “I’ve seen many people get way too close. I have this theory channel in my Discord, and I read that every single day. The only thing I reply is ‘interesting. Very interesting.’ I don’t want to say too much.”
“Everyone in POW has been lovely,” Nominal says. “If there’s anything that has made Bannerfall and joining POW so rewarding, it’s gotta be how kind everyone’s been. It kinda took me away a little bit – everyone has been so nice to all of the newcomers. If anyone has any questions about lore stuff, any time there’s a cool piece of art put on Twitter, everyone is immediately in the Discord talking about it and hyping each other up. It’s just been really, really nice.”
“It feels kind of weird just getting thrown into it and then being like, oh, this is so many people – what am I doing?” Shandrea adds, “but everyone has been so nice and I’m having fun, so that’s all that matters.”
To keep up with Bannerfall SMP, you can watch Shandrea’s perspective on Twitch here, or Nominal’s perspective on Twitch here.
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