Event Review - A Pain in the Boat (January 2020 Tavern Night)

[Dr. Moran]

A big thank you to all the shapers and NPCs that worked hard to make this event possible. It's clear a lot of prep work went into this one, and it was appreciated.

Pros:

• I liked the NPCs who stuck with us for most of the night. That was a nice touch. Made the world feel a bit more organic and less “here is a random man. Now he is gone. Such are the mysteries of life”.
  
• Increased level of combat were nice.
  
• The organ-organ pun was really funny and I enjoyed the use of bard mechanics for that fight.
  
• The prop for the surgery mod was fantastic. I liked the stages of it and how they felt distinct but still coherent. (Ex. start with outer shell, then balloons, then elastics.) Dear Dan: We solved a mod via honorable Sudoku. You’re welcome.
  
• Whatever Tory was up to as the depression cloud was neat and she clearly put a lot of thought and effort into her RP prompts, but more about that whole thing in my cons/suggestions.
  

Notable Highlights:

• Pep talks with Cora and some of the Crossroads. Less peppy but still good talks with Blank/Void.
  
• Kiyo and Deon have forever stolen my heart. The tea. The excited sigil painting. The tiny guitarlutethingy. The lacy jacket. The realistic reaction to getting an arm ripped off/watching your pal get her arm ripped off. 10/10.
  
• Jeff’s Red Draconian + Horns trying to deal with an increasingly depressed Ori was some unexpectedly good RP.
  
• AMREEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNN. I can’t believe she and Ori skipped marriage and went straight to adopting homicidal extra planar children.
  
• I talked to some players I don’t normally interact with (site is big and I don’t happen into their neck of the woods that often). That was a nice change. I think one of my goals for this season is to meet more people.
  

Cons/Suggestions:

• So, pacing was a bit wonky. I feel people complained about how little combat there tends to be at Ralinwood taverns and in response this event swung a bit too far to the other side. Once the event started it was mod after mod after mod and the only breaks came if you sat off to one side and risked getting picked off by a stray ooze. A “safe zone” or at least some sort of breather between mods would have been a big improvement to let us actually rest and RP a bit. I prefer too much going on to not enough going on, though.
  
• The puzzles didn’t always make sense and I didn’t always know how what we were doing was helping/effecting anything as a whole. Also literal “300 piece puzzle” puzzle mod when you HAVE to complete the puzzle in order to move on was rough. (I highly suggest making jigsaw puzzles via drawing/glueing a picture to cardboard and then cutting that out in order to make custom puzzles.) Also the final mod had a sort of “Oh, you didn’t sort out the puzzle? Fine. Get out.” feel to it which was rough considering town was getting wrecked by those oozes.
  
• Overall mood of the event felt kinda vulgar? Plot can only make so many sphincter jokes before I question my life choices.
  
• So, for the whole sad-depression-self-doubt thing. I love it as a concept but the problem is I feel it went on far too long. The only way to deal with it was to blow expensive alchemies, level 8 spells, or have a suitable doctor who could cure a person once per night and then the person would contract it again. It was novel for a while but by the end of event it was a bother to have to constantly alter your RP to be miserable. If I wanted to sit and be depressed for 6 hours I do that most nights without paying for it. If the effect had more of a clear end/only started part way through the night I feel it would have been far more effective. Or maybe this is teasing something else for later on. I know not. I don’t wanna discourage this kind of effect, but it lasting the whole night and being such a negative emotion was hard.
  

Looking forward to next event, see y'all then.