Hey guys, thanks for all of your feedback so far, and I apologize for taking so long to get back. I haven't been able to devote as much time to the forums as I'd like to because of some IRL stuff, so there's been some delays in me doing stuff here.
I do think going the more traditional route and taking advantage of the forums themselves would be great. I love the scavenger hunt ideas and maybe more broad themes for contests. For them, I would like to be able to reward trophies, but we're using vanilla xenforo (the type of forum this site runs on) which makes rewards a little difficult. I'll have to make some changes and properly install some ways we can manage trophies and make them more rewarding to have, too. Along with that I think temporary/interchangeable taglines would be nice (like the space that has 'Sodbuster' or 'Farmer' while mine is 'Administrator', etc)
There's not really many non-forum things I would give out, even though I like the idea. I just would rather encourage some creativity and togetherness. I think bragging rights is a good enough part for that, but we can certainly do more. I'll be mulling on it and try to see what else we can do, too.
Needless to say maybe we won't start doing little contests until later. I was hoping to have something for this month, but I would be rushing for something a bit mediocre if I did that.
In case anyone doesn't know, though, the Stardew Valley Discord (it's fan-run, I run it on my free time along with several other wonderful people) does seasonal events and usually there's lots of fun things we do. There's a Summer event going on right now if you'd like to check it out :)