Event Review - Highwinter: It's Infectious

[Dr. Moran]

Thank you to all the NPCs and Shapers for all your hard work!

The Good:

• I want to start off by saying I don't go in hoping High Winter will be a good event, I go in hoping it will be a good High Winter. The content is often so zany or spread out that my bar is very low. This event, though, blew me out of the water. It was possibly one of my favourite day mods in 3 years of playing 2 guilds. Pacing was good, there were a variety of different mods, I felt I could actually contribute, and it was really funny without being horribly infernal.
  
• PC organized things like the warming cabin and the Brewlord Feast were lovely and I really appreciate all the effort people put into those types of things. Having the game mechanic encourage people to take a break and warm up was a wonderful idea.
  
• Rob and Ivanna managed to make me cry over an NPC I knew for all of ten minutes. I can count the amount of NPCs I have cried over in Ralinwood on one hand, so that's saying something.
  
• Nice to actually see some single charge chemistries/rituals/artifices out. It was a pain to get them last year (partially due to IG stuff, I know), so seeing the plot team starting to send them out early is delightful.
  
• Tikkin and Stikkin, my two wonderful toy soldiers, will be missed dearly. Hiring them led to some of the most hilarious RP of that event, such as being triggered into turning into a snow man and killing Stikkin or poor Tikkin saying "that was my dear friend" after killing one of the other toy soldiers to protect me.
  
• 3 years in a row and across 2 different PCs I have found the one death alchemy ornament/christmas box. I'm not even mad anymore. It's hilarious and I appreciate this year's one not actually killing me outright. It was worth the Shadowmark all day.
  

The Less Good:

• Blindfolds + ice + mousetraps = massive safety hazard. If somebody had slipped on the snow due to the reduced visibility of the mountain mod and taken a mousetrap to the face that would have been a potential player injury. 
  
• The cabin puzzles grabbed a whole bunch of people to sit around and do a puzzle for 20 minutes and then there was no reward. That was kind of frustrating. It was cramped and half the group was just sitting around while the others figured it out and then we were sent on our way feeling we accomplished nothing.
  
• Shapers/marshals yelling at everybody to "shut the fuck up and listen" when we have just arrived on the mod site is kind of uncalled for. I love swearing. I swear constantly. But there is a time and a place for it and shapers should have some degree of professionalism when explaining mechanics.
  
• If you write something on the back of a tag (ex. the contact death with the 'after 10 seconds you're fine' note on the back) please indicate you should turn the tag over. It was taped to a box and if Falcon hadn't happened to pull the tag to look at it then life spells would have gotten burned. ilu Falcon. 
  
• I'm kind of frustrated that if you put down a ritual circle on the old site you can't use it when we're on this site. If I had realized all the day events would be at Peacekeeper and my ritual circle would be useless for half the season I would have made it a 3 month and then recast it rather than a year long one.