Winter's Bite Event Review

[Promises]

Hello, from the other side.

I feel like Log went as smoothly as it could from our end. The table rarely had a line up. This was helped greatly by people prelogging. We had an incredibly low amount of unexpected things come up at the table which was delightful. ++Ralinwood PCs (and travelers!)

For the time that I did get out of the door, I had fun harassing the lot of you as the NPCs I was out as.

From inside NPC camp, it was a constant flurry of movement and getting mods going. I do believe that there was a lot going out for the numbers we had. If engagement continues to be a problem, opening the door to more volunteers may be a strong consideration to make. Otherwise I fear we're going to see more people forced to being captive audience to other's spotlight.

Careful with the hand shots, particularly in the cold. I didn't get many myself but this was a frequent complaint from my fellow NPCs. Injured NPCs lead to more downtime. When it's already freezing, do your part to not slow down the game. Swing responsibly™. 

The Wardens

I think this organization on a whole, from a purely OOG perspective, is something to keep an eye on. There is some great roleplay and dealing with responsibility coming out of it. However, their only ability right now, as Wardens, to respond to threats seems to be to go bang on the door to NPC camp. Or that's the end that I saw this event. It can't be fun for the main response to problems to be to have to go ask for orders. When quick mods go out and the initial reaction is to go bang on the door and ask for orders, there's some problems there. I would personally keep a very close eye on how any plot or PC-PC interactions go with them. My initial reaction so far is that the way the organization is structured causes a roadblock to fun on an OOG level, for both the Wardens themselves, the PCs they interact with, and the NPCs sent out to entertain the players. 

One solution may be more attention paid to it from NPC camp but given reasonable limitations of how much attention can be paid to an organization it may be a problem. What I have seen in the guilds/player organizations that have prospered is that they engage a segment of the population with a certain character type and make it easier to provide plot to larger groups of people. As someone that has been involved in most of them, this does lead to some bias on my part, so all of this should be taken with a grain of salt. New to this organization though, the Wardens have instead splintered off numbers from the bounty hunter's guild shortly after it grew.  This makes complete in-game sense as a conflict of interest, but as can be pulled from some of the other reviews here, we have to stay cognizant that this is a fantasy realm and we're here to have fun.

[Stars]

Side note to what Brent said about: Careful with the hand shots, particularly in the cold. I didn't get many myself but this was a frequent complaint from my fellow NPCs. Injured NPCs lead to more downtime. When it's already freezing, do your part to not slow down the game. Swing responsibly™.

This also goes to NPCs when fighting PCs. Watch your swings in the cold and very careful of hands. I saw a couple PCs get hit in their hands after 5 when they are already frozen. Just a quick reminder. Also remember no overhead swings. 90% chance of a headshot incoming with those.

[Zia Sashana]

I don't remember if I have actually been organized enough to post reviews for the other events I've been to, but here goes I guess!

I had a ton of fun! I feel like I am reaching the point where I know enough people in (and out) of game to get by with talking to people and doing my own thing in character to make my own entertainment. I also didn't mind the weather - I was checking obsessively ahead of time and knew what to expect, and planned accordingly. Having two heated cabins to retreat to to warm up made it pretty easy to manage. I like the snow though.

-I really appreciated the set up that was done for this game - for those of us who went looking, there was a ton of stuff to be found just wandering around and hunting for it, and I had some great RP while out doing that. In general I had great RP with the other PCs I talked to or hung out with!
-This is extra great for someone like me who has been busy avoiding combat like the plague. I swear I will get a weapon rep before next game. Then I just need to afford armour in game and I'll be set ;p I had a great time (really) running and hiding from the big combats - skulking in shadows by the tree line, watching the big battle at the end of game and hoping it wouldn't come my way, for instance.

That said, I did have some issues:
-I could not for the life of me figure out why anything was happening (other than the general scarcity), and how/if anything related. I have no idea why there were fey, and no one else I asked seemed to have a good idea either (something something Aja?). I tried!
-We spend a lot of time waiting for our "insta" mod, because things got backed up pretty fast. Good that they were popular, though! But it was also confusing to try and put things together in game - whether it was all the same person, completely different people, people dressed the same, etc. I recognize in retrospect that there was probably more that we could have tried to do as PCs, but the earlier waiting made me feel less like the pay off would be worth it.
-The scarcity plot really stretched my suspension of disbelief. Maybe the context I got in game (about the Hellfire) was missing something? And while I appreciated being able to forage instead of hunt, there was really nothing to find in that regard that could make any real difference in terms of helping the community more broadly. More RM for me guess!

I agree with people who've said that the personal plots were really cool, especially where they engaged people beyond the characters directly involved, so definitely kudos for that!

[Aelin]

I normally try no to comment on the reviews, but I do have one thing to point out;

If you haven't figured out why the fae are meddling yet, that means you need to do some digging. Clues have been dropped, things have been done, and the PCs involved have been very, very good at either hiding their involvement or hiding clues from everyone else.

That aside; not every baddie is going to come and announce precisely why they are there. Especially not if beaten into the ground before anyone gets any information out of them. Just sayin'. There were ample hints and clues put out; put your detective hats on and go sniff around. It's part of the fun.

[Zia Sashana]

Figuring out why things are happening is one of the things I enjoy the most! In this case, things didn't really pan out for me, and it just wound up being confusing :/ There was one thing I could have gone and looked in to, but it was one of those 'does this seem like a good idea' questions where the in-character answer was a 'probably not.' Unfortunately I'm not around enough to catch things that have had longer term set-up, for the most part .

[Lilith Caia]

Fuck yeah, mystery! (Will solve mysteries for souls.)

[M.M. Salt]

Fuck yeah, mystery! (Will solve mysteries for souls.)

are you trying to drum up business in a review thread?
gold star for you

[Lilith Caia]

I've been editing the Erasmus wiki entry. It's contagious.

[Hannick]

Pros

-The NPC make up and costuming, it's a lot better than I've experienced for the most part, barring a few major NPCs
-The level of danger, I never really felt safe, dying both by other players allowing me to bleed out and monsters murdering me felt really real. Often I had to run, and I had to utilize the big front liners so I could support them or look for people to stabilize.
-The level of loot felt appropriate for the danger.
-The variety of mods, instamods, and random loot scattered was lovely.
-Monster/NPC diversity
-The build up of the last fight, slowly, more and more ice wolves, a bit of a break, then the final battle was staged amazingly.
-I at one point, ran after an ice wolf stupidly, and they lead me into an ambush. They broke all my armour and if I hadn't had a bolster on, they would have actually knocked me out (I TRICKED THEM HA), I REALLY loved that little sequence.
-Bad things happening to those I care about, makes me RP with them. While I am sad IG and OOG for what happens, I love conflict to RP about.
-Exploring the site was lots of fun.
-The tavern food was great.
-Letting PCs lead in many scenarios, feels like we have a lot of autonomy, and seeing these examples makes me feel that if Hannick wanted to, he could lead some stuff too as it is not driven purely by NPCs.
-The ability to collect things for the farmers was really cool, encourages leaving town center.
-The warm cabins.
-Personal plots that I got to tag along to.
-I enjoy having day mods, regardless of the weather. Tavern nights are fun, but get boring quickly for me.

Cons

-The start was a little slow for me, but as it was the first time on site, it was also kind of nice to walk around a little.
-I feel like I missed a few mods, though I believe this is in part to me trying to stay warm and therefor missing the hooks.
-I also feel like I didn't understand why a lot of things were happening, particularly with the attacking Winter Court Fey. (ah, I read the thing Brittany said - if it is undecided and requires digging, good. I didn't look too much into it anyways, so if we were meant to dig, I don't deserve to know).
-STARVING farmers selling potatoes. Maybe sell something else that is not food. I found this more amusing to be fair.
-Lack of hand sanitizer.
-Perhaps, too many instamods, if the NPCs were stretched so thin. Not that i experienced this, as I was unlucky and found none, but I heard some people complain that they waited a good bit.

Note about the Wardens:

I enjoy having the Wardens being player driven. LARP is not D&D, especially Underworld - the objective OOG is not co-operative, it is determined by IG actions. It's not meant to easily be a fun and happy place (if all the PCs strive for it sure then). You should have to connive and bribe and kiss ass to get in with other PCs/NPCs, it should be given to people who actively seek it out.
Ted gave a speech at a Jericho tavern night, about how UWL was founded because they wanted PCs to have the ability to choose to be bad if they wanted to. To me UWL is about autonomy, if players want to ABUSE the law (not that they have that I have seen yet), let them, deal with it in game. Just because you sat by passively and did nothing IG, doesn't mean that them building relationships with PCs should be made meaningless. Them buddying up to the person who chose the other Wardens is a result of IG action and thus deserves reward. PERHAPS, it should have been that only people who applied would be considered, but I didn't see anything about that.

[Gustav Von Schattenkrieger]

As someone who has been town Sheriff of Jericho for a year as my first PC players having positions of authority don't ruin games. Be a smart criminal and nothing changes. Be a law abiding citizen....and nothing changes. The Wardens become corrupt and/unbearable......get some people together and final them all. Most of the game world that effects PCs should be in the hands of PCs with a minimal amount of NPC interaction outside of merchants, monsters, and other roles needed to run the game. In my opinion that is. And it works. 9 years at UW I have seen the good and bad in PC governments and authority figures. PCs DO NOT have to listen to the Wardens or the PC government if they don't want to. They just have to be prepared to deal with any consequences which may or may not arise.

As for taxes.....they add a touch of realism to the game. Nothing is free in the real world nor in our make believe world. LARP is not a tabletop or video game where the only things that cost you coin are weapons, armour, scrolls, and potions.

Suck it up or move along. (Yes, I am aware saying so is likely to get me verbally slapped)

Now on to my review.

Cons:

As stated before there seemed to be no overarching story for the event which hurts it.

Hunting and killing animals always has and always will be a point of 0 interest unless there is a key reason to doing so other than put food in your bellies. I did so once out of boredom

Wandering the paths and woods the first 40 minutes of the game and at various other times and not having encountered a single roving band of NPCs. Might just be bad timing on my part, wrong place at the wrong time, but stuff like this tends to make players stick to their camps or town center until Plot sends hooks to get them out of there.

Weather isn't your doing

Pros:

Well statted and well looted NPCs. Thank you for this. The reward definitely felt worth the risk.

NPCs that didn't just run into the PC amoeba just to die. A number of times I saw NPCs showing tactics and survival instincts. Bravo

Glad I brought my heater to supplement the one provider by the owners. The two kept the Saper cabin nice and warm for the PCs. Thank you for not constantly sending NPCs in there to constantly kill the wamrth by attacking the PCs in there.

Interactions with the PCs of Ralinwood, new and old, and of Jericho, as a character most are not used to seeing or interact with, as has been the trend over the last couple of years for me made the game worth it to me. The RP for everyone was great and little to no being drawn OOG by OOG chat. Thank you all.

Final mod was very entertaining. Needed to be more like that throughout the day. Two more times earlier in the day would have been ideal.