With Friends Like These - Masquerade Event Review

[Ivanna]

Thank you everyone for the wonderful fancy dress evening. It's nice to have a low key evening, especially when everyone comes with their best!

And without further ado... Let's have it!

What did you like, what needs improvement, and what were your most exciting stories / moments / interactions.

[A goblin played by Matty]

Pros
All the food, especially whatever Jake cooked.
Getting a fresh set of eyes on how a game works after shaping all year.
Seeing some old and unexpected friends.
People knowing who I was felt flattering.
Dan making sure we were having a good time.
The non combat zone was really cool!!!! I knew the npcs wouldnt come in but it realky felt like they might. It made me feel like an old school zombie movie.
Cats serenading

Cons
All the fighters in my camp complained that they felt useless (and there are lots of them).
No merchants? Or really hidden merchants.

[Alexis]

Pros
-Fighting in the mud in high heels with a psionic dagger against greater undead.. (I actually enjoyed though though painful and wet.. it was fun)
-Dancing with Mintha
-Funny conversations with Sureeta's pc (cant remember your ig name sorry!)
-Remembering I had a resist fire when I would have legit died

Cons
-Absolutely no way to involve PC's inside the building. I really wish we had NPCS who would promote dancing through coin or tags to try and get people involved.
-Wish there was some kind of cook off incentive to entice people to make food
-Generally felt boring most of the event.. I couldn't do much at all to undead yet there I was outside fighting them with just a psionic knife and 4 body.

[Granyte the Ogre]

So normally I like to sit down at my computer after a day or so to reflect on the event, but this event was amazing so let's do it now while it's fresh. 

NPCing was a blast, being given an entire cabin and being told "go nuts" felt great even if there were technical difficulties that I had to rush to fix. I enjoyed setting up some traps and puzzles for people and watching them try to figure them out. 

With that being said, the wooden block puzzles. Let me clarify for those who might be upset or disappointed, both puzzles were whole (no missing pieces) and inside the cabin. Both puzzles were fully put together at least once each. Both puzzles are currently put together. If you felt that they were too difficult or were missing pieces, they were meant to be really hard, magic item prizes don't just fall in your lap. 

I hope people enjoyed my puzzle room, those I spoke to said they did and next time I am given a chance to set up a room like that I will make sure to include even more physical puzzles, as most were mental mysteries unless you were a trapsmith.

Lastly, before people start going overboard with the "nothing to do, more NPCs could have been used here and here"...we had sooooo few NPCs to work with this event it was impossible to do everything. I (and I am sure Ivanna and Dan) would have loved to have had a dozen more NPCs to encourage dancing, or as merchants (as mentioned above) but people want to PC. It's great PCing, but the more NPCs, the better game for everyone. 

From this NPCs stand point, this game was a blast and 10/10 would do again.

[Svala]

10/10 would sticky paste myself to myself again

[Giradin Highwind]

Pros:
The food was amazing. Everyone that contributed to the potluck is an MVP.

The puzzle room. Had a genuine laugh with the bells puzzle, all the restrictions... Loved it.


Cons:
Too many greater undead. The lesser were manageable, even though I couldn't hurt them, but once the death classes came out not having magic made it too dangerous to fight.

[Pawp!]

Pros
-Food
-Was allowed to set up shop and watch poker
-Liked rping inside with no fear of dying
-Liked all the pretty masks and costumes
-Love having my fortune told. Was surprisingly accurate.
-Loved the Gnar/Orokgrim/Erik's orc fight
-So happy my high winter prezzies, as I wasn't sure about my PC's presence at HW, went over so well. ^.^
-CHESS WITH CARRION.  "UH I JUST NOTICED YOUR KING'S BEEN IN CHECK. PROBABLY FOR A WHILE NOW." 
-Lark's impressive paper document.
 
Cons
-Felt what was in the cabins could have been better advertised. i love puzzles and didn't know til the end of the event that one of the cabins was a puzzle room.
-Could have been more engaged inside.
-I dislike the reasons behind some of my tags being declined. Live animals I understand but why Pawp! can't find papers and then document them to be tagged and titled as what they are after consulting her friend who has read/write is beyond me. Just because she can't read doesn't mean the books and papers she finds don't have titles?

[Velvet]

Pro's;
- Velvet's first game and so many people were happy with how he looked
- Impressing people with how hard the little Kobold could swing his Maul
- Getting to help kill the Ghoul that just wouldn't stay down. (50 magic fire slay, thing goes poof, favorite moment <3 )
- Getting to have fun interactions with players and asking about their race and the like. I could tell people were honestly happy with getting to talk about something normally everyone just knows out the gate.
- Playing chess
- Everyone's costumes and mask's were fantastic, PC's and NPC's

Neutral;
- This event felt very 'real'. It was a Party, many didn't come prepared to fight super hard. When the undead were crashing the party, it put a real sense of panic to those under-prepared.

Con's;
- This is a half/con only because of the few NPC's they had, not upset at the NPC's mind you just aware of the 'use what you have' mentality. Everyone is aware of the massive Undead threat, so undead (needing silver or magic weapons to beat) are going to be everywhere. Would have been interesting to have enemies those with steel (normal swinging) weapons could take down. Again, not really a 'omg this sucks' con, just a 'would have been nice' con.

Over all 10/10, fantastic work on everyone's part, every cent worth it, food was fantastic, got my fav cherry cheese cake (shout out to who made/bought it, nice work), fantastic roleplay and looking forward to the next time I bring Velvet to game

=)

[Dr. Moran]

Pros:

• The look on Emilio's face when I immediately removed the mask I had gotten enchanted. Being able to take off the mask when it got too hot inside made it worth the curse.
  
• Blank is a gem. Leo is a gem. Kyle and Hollander's elves are gems. Lupa is a gem. Lark is a little shit but now I can sort of dance so I guess she's alright too.
  
• Mother/Anna/Sarah was great. I accidentally asked all the right questions and then proceeded to be an ass to her for the rest of the night. 10/10 would lick and then nearly get arrested for assault again.
  
• Food was lovely, thanks everybody who contributed.
  
• I know NPCs were short handed but all the ones I talked to were a lot of fun and I loved interacting with them all.
  
• Music was nice, there was actually a bit of dancing and it felt atmospheric. 
  

Neutral:

• I wanted one of those masks, but not like this. Never like this.
  
• There seemed to be a lot of confusion about effects. Like I didn't know that apparently you couldn't cast offensive magic in the tavern until after event.
  
• Fighting a death knight halfway to the disc golf course in the pitch dark is not something I would recommend doing in a dress.
  

Cons:

• I was one of the ones who didn't know that there was stuff happening in the cabins, I went by them a few times and it must have been before they had set up so I missed out on all that.
  
• This event was advertised as minimal combat and just a night to be fancy so I'm frustrated that in the end if we wanted to stop Mother we would have to go out into the pouring rain against very strong undead that 80% of town can't fight even if they DID have their weapons. I was defending myself with a silver butter knife for most the night. God bless Artemis for lending me his sword.
  

Overall I had a lot of fun, thanks to everybody who had a part in it, especially Dan and Ivanna for pulling it off despite the chaos of the night before.

[Carrion]

Hurray, first masquerade. In my case it was mostly an excuse to make Carrion pretty but here goes.

The Good
- There was actually more food than I expected. I think everyone I went with left satisfied, which can be a crapshoot with potlucks.
- I like puzzles so that cabin was fun. The riddle game made up for the missing puzzle pieces, for me at least.
- General hanging out with people is nice. I don’t mind a lot of downtime at day mods / tavern events since it gives folks more time to RP.
- Whoever left the chess board is a good egg. Had some fun with Carrion sand Pawp playing games with very dubious levels of skill.
- I like the idea of us interacting with mother, and enjoyed interacting with Ange. More on that in the cons though unfortunately.

The Less Good
- Most of my concerns about how the event was portrayed vs unfolded have been addressed, so I won’t repeat that part. Alex summed it up especially well.
- I think more activities would have made up for the lack of NPCs. Clearly advertising the cabins, a few more board games, other small challenges for the non combat people... I once say players occupied for a time by a limbo contest at another event. Also giving us something to do while under siege f we were non-combat for the evening might have helped balance it.


My final critique may be a bit more complex, but I feel like it should be said. Lately, plot points have felt a bit inevitable. While it’s understandable that big plots have story points they have to hit, especially on this big, cross guild, semi-world-plot level, it can feel like our characters are simply along for the ride. The mask ritual was an interesting idea, but didn’t matter since the undead came anyway. At Hallows the gates were guarded dutifully in shifts long into the night, but then a bunch of undead bum rushed them to free Mother. Characters have struggled to make compelling arguments to NPCs that need to later be ignored because those NPCs must act in a certain way for the story.

I know it’s a difficult thing to improve on. It’s impossible to write a backup situation for every possible outcome, and it can be difficult to improvise on a level that many writers are involved on. However, I think it would be more satisfying to feel as if more impact was made than either everyone dying because we screwed up or surviving long enough to watch the story unfold as intended. Maybe by having more meaningful subplots or having one or two different endings to coax us into instead? Like I said it seems like a very complex issue, but one that’s been discussed with me by a few different people over the months. There could be more going on behind the scenes than I realize, but sometimes it’s worth explaining how it looks to us players from the other side of the curtain.