Event Reviews: The Shortest Day of Your Life!

[Lilith Caia]

I agree with everything Shoshana said. My favourite moments of the game were all PC driven. The spider cave was cool in that it was actually repped, but it was not cool in that nobody knew if the webs actually did anything. The tree was also great. Besides that... everything seemed to either be fighting, walking, or waiting while 2-3 PCs interacted with all the NPCs. And when there was fighting, almost no one could impact the enemy, because they were undead. I didn't feel like any PC choices mattered to the plot.

[Ishtaar]

I am one of the people who was actively trying to find out what was going on, and actually listening to the shapers. The things that I had a difficult time with were figuring out "why" we need to all stand and wait why one or two people did everything. Why are we running between two mod-sites, to try and appease something that is going to attack us later anyway?

The tree mod is actually an excellent example... several people attempted to ask what 2handers were supposed to do and got no response.

I get that we *could* climb up to a branch and start swinging, but getting attacked on the way up, was a total disadvantage and only guaranteed a ton of damage. All risk, for no reward.

The areas that I personally did try and wedge in, I found it got me nowhere. The RP roles seemed to only speak to some PCs and/or only want to speak to certain ranks of PC. Which, is cool and all... but really doesn't do much for those who are just starting out and trying to get involved.

Personally, I don't care about the undead and the amount of them. I am used to hordes of that stuff in Jericho... and it was the MOST useful I felt all weekend, deflecting strikes from defenseless PCs cause I couldn't do anything else to damage them. Just stay them until they could be killed by others.

I really didn't want to make it a negative review, but... having some time to think on things, I think it needs to be shared. A lot of things really soured my experience over the course of the day, and like it's stated in an above review... all the fun I had came from PC interaction, and stuff I made for myself.

Overall, I felt very "ushered out" of interactions with people that I hadn't met prior (I tried to meet and interact with people I didn't know) and I know it's a small sample size, I just simply didn't find it welcoming for the most part, or enjoyable. :/

I don't know how much of that could have been fixed by the shaping team, the NPCs worked their asses off and I give them props for that. I guess it just is what it is.

[Sigurd Vask]

Shoshana summed it up for me but my biggest issue was not touched on.

- Racials. Racials always trump. In every situation. That has been the case for a very long time. Orcs getting cowered. Or elves taking mind effects is just not cosher if they have said racials.

- Not knowing how skills worked. Decapitate is hugely expensive. Having it be wasted and just do absolutely nothing despite doing damage made me angry on behalf of the pc.

Overall: Thanks other pcs. You made this event awesome.

[Branya]

Can you shoot me a PM about the racials concern? I don't know what happened and I'd like to follow up.

[River_forestwolven]

This was my first game NPCing and I had a blast. I loved my Pixie role, even though it wasn't a long one, it was very much fun to have a werewold rip me from a tree, and have to sweet kind men walk me to the fire. ((Pss plot: I would love to play that Pixie again!))

Although I dont know the full story line of yesterday game-- I lost track with the mini mods, I wasn't on. I think it was pretty fun, running around a house trying to find odd ideas, but I did notice that a lot of people where standing around, or looking left out. ((I would have loved to role play more with people on the tree-- I was allowed to talk and bug people!! you should have come to learn things. Maybe we had information, maybe we didn't. You may never know!!))
BTW thanks to Plot for allowing us birds the one last skill!!


I know you guys felt like there was a lot of space between mods, but myself personally-- I needed a break. But it could be because I am out of shape, badly out of shape.
- Plus it takes time to put on make up and get a snack or two and some warm tea in to a cold body.
-as well as to go over our new roles and try to memorize our stats. If none has notice I have yet to remember one good spell being an NPC.

[Stars]

Pros:
-Finally seeing my brother and sister in law
-Interacting with a few new people and some old faces from Jericho
-Snake mod something we had taken upon ourselves the handle with sword
-Dont follow Sven Ive said it multiple times he doesnt know where he's going

Cons:
-Too much site bouncing for no reason as said before we walked to the golf course a few times and the baseball diamond for a social call.
-The Undead cat thing was ridiculous not the cat itself just that a magic decap was put into the thing and didnt do a soft resist just took it like a champ and kept going. Decaps are expensive like weaver mad me pretty angry.
-Racials I heard a lot of complaints about racials or some sort of defense that was penetrated by plot, which is a no no. Those are what make the race a plus to play to balance the disadvantages.
-Undead, I know this was a plot thing but still nobody wants to fight things they cant kill.
-Too much diplomacy in places where we should have killed things. If we didnt fire off that arrow I doubt the snake mod would have been as fun as it was.
-After the ants I have pretty much gave up and put my armor back in the car I wasnt going another distance just to talk.
-I found loot was kinda dull this game but Im not sure if its because we didnt fight anything.
-A group of us managed to make it to the very depths of the spider cave only to find it empty and then on the way back it was full not enough to cut us off completely but just enough for all the spiders to say hello.

Overall I want to say it is our fault for letting the select few do talking when we should have kept firing those arrows. The day was slow and next time Ivannas is going to get mad when the Einher just starts killing the npcs

[Brennus]

I had fun being a grumpy old man and then a big mute werewolf. Was refreshing to not have any responsibilities other then pulling people out of webs confounding npcs with opposed strengths and chucking spiders through an attic. Some pretty accurate criticisms so far and i don't think i have anything more to add. Personally i was happy to let people take the helm for negotiating (bias toward ivanna i know) but honestly for all the grumbling people are doing about to much talking only a new player with a bow had the balls to do what they wanted. There are consequences to solving everything with a sword and if it happens to much plot will smash your beloved characters to bits its not hard to do.

[Orokgrim Gibelplot]

This was my first High winter event. I have very mixed feelings about this event. Alot positive and negative.

There were some good innovative ideas used this event that i liked, the tree was the first one, although not everyone got to climb up, its an theme id like to see used again. at first i didnt see a point in climbing up myself, but as i saw more and more people falling and not a lot of enemies dropping i decided to go up, straping my halberd to my back, only to be told to go back down, so thats my bad for taking to long to decide i guess. Most of the combat was fun, as this was my first high winter i didnt know how much combat to expect so i guess its supposed to be just as combat heavy as the rest of the year. The choice with the marbles was fun. The descriptions of the areas were well done, we knew we werent in ralinwood and we knew we were tiny so we can guess what things are supposed to be if we were late to a descriptive hold. The Costumes for this event were very well done, the birds and the Ants were very good in my opinion.

Getting captured by the Spider queen and enslaved was interesting and fun.
ALTHOUGH, it seemed when i went back to her to warn her of Ralinwood's attack against her that it didnt change anything at all, the spiders seemed not really prepared for us at all. I understand that there might have been other factors i cant see, its just disapointing when you dont see result of the decsions you make as a PC.
Also as a side note, in regards to the Racials debate, I didnt care about the power word cower affecting me for 3 seconds as i was told, cause i can choose to Roleplay it however i want, so i choose to Roleplay it as my orc got a pounding headache for the duration. But i ask you all this: Is it fair to nerf my beneficial Racial of immunity to fear to fit your story when you also make me take the full effect of my Negative Racial of being susceptible to charm effects? i dont mind personally cause it could have gone a lot worse, 3 seconds of being feared could have potentially killed me, and getting enslaved is always dangerous.

While the rules are rules i am in the opinion that they can be changed if it benefits the progression of the story/ peoples experiences. I was okay with the decapitate Ruling with the zombie Cat at first, because a shaper ruled it, i had hoped that it would be for the better of the plot that my ability didnt work the way its supposed to. But by the next time we saw the zombie cat, this was not the case, to my perspective, and to many other PC's perspectives, the zombie cat only showed up again to attack us with a group of snakes and cats. This did not contribute to the story at all, the only thing changing the ruling on my decap did was delay the zombie cats death.

Thank you to all the Shapers and NPC's who busted their asses i the cold to make this happen, I did a lot of running and moving this event which was okay with me as it keeps me warm

[Thorum trinktbeir]

I really enjoyed this event, I came in as this new character to try something a little more different. There is a lot of negative reviews about the undead and negations, however I took a tip an old DM gave me, which was even if the situation is not what my character is made for, make it work for you. (In case anyone was wondering I'm the arrow happy dwarf) When the undead came up I shot at them as target practice and when the arrows I borrowed ran out, I ran up front to taunt them away from those who could attack. I had a lot of fun doing so even though I got very close to breaching and some PC's took my bow away on a few occasions. With the descriptive holds, I felt some of them were called while people were still walking up to the area and missed that a hold was even called. I know the shapers were trying to make sure everyone was there and able to be heard but on a few occasions I was not even aware a hold was on while walking up until I heard it called off (In front of the attic). I also love the idea of talking something out but while we had a lot of people at some of the areas where we could of easily overpowered the critters. Was a really good game regardless and as stated before, the tree event was really innovative and is a mechanic I look forward to seeing used again.

[Lilith Caia]

Oh, regarding holds and waiting for PCs to arrive: before the tree mod, my group that went through the (door? portal? the thing at the bridge) was told we were in game once we reached the basketball net. We had no idea there was a hold, or that anything was waiting on us, and couldn't see the big group standing and waiting (there was a building in the way).