Idol Sacrifices - August Event Review

[Ivanna]

Thank you everyone for all your hard work this weekend. We literally could not run this game without everyone's support, ideas, energy and enthusiasm. We had a really awesome time this weekend, and hope you did too.

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

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


Bonus: Which mod did you find the most engaging / challenging?

And a reminder: we always take RP awards recommendations! Please email ralinwoodshapers@gmail.com if you wish to recommend someone for excellent / outstanding RP / role playing contributions!

[Ostrozne]

MOST EXPENSIVE EVENT EVER. LIFE BERRIES AND LIFE ELIXIRS AIN'T CHEAP YO

Pros:
- The Mortigeist. I am a fan. Not saying that because I don't play an elf. Our cabin got rolled. I like that in many ways Dan played him indiscriminately, but still with purpose. Plus the MORNING-GEIST. Expected by no one. Except those that remember that whole sticky noise ordinance thing. And I thought wake up kobolds were fucked.
-Showing up at game at 4am Saturday morning. Set up. Asleep by 7:30. Uncle Morty wrecking my beauty sleep 90 minutes later.
- BARELY surviving.
- Owlbear-ing with Justin.
- Morality lessons from Grym to a tired and grumpy Oz.
- "So tell me more about Roland" - swapping to Cleric.
- RP with Julia's Faun. "I wish to offer you my companionship.", "Umm... what sort are we talking here? Because my beloved is standing right beside me and she WILL kill me in my sleep."

Cons:
- As I wasn't there Friday night, this Con may be irrelevant. There seemed to be very little continuity from the previous game to this game. I thought the previous game was Whoaaa, we're going to be 100% White Raven in a month, Eeeeek here comes the citadel, Yowzaaaaa new laws and expectations, Heeeey there's some spirits doing some possessy stuff. With the exception of wild elf assassins and the final Sunday mod, I personally didn't see any story progression from the last game to this game, and that was fairly surprising. Again, maybe this happened Friday night. But if so, no one was talking about it.
-Saturday, noon to evening seemed incredibly sparse. The brief interlude with Ice Elves and Umber Hulks was fun, but over quickly. I tried to stay in the tavern and cabin area the majority of the time, but if there was much in the way of mods going on, I didn't see it.
-The newbie snake mod took waaaaay too long to happen. I figure a bulk of the NPC's were co-opted for the Ice Elf attack which explains some of the delay. But I'm a big believer that newbie mods should have a priority to them, as new players become the repeat customers. We older and grumpier players begrudge long waits, but we're usually fairly good at entertaining ourselves with banter and pissing contests. It's harder with new folk.

Overall, I think whatever overall theme you had planned for the event was present, but was completely railroaded by uncle Morty, and to a lesser degree, the Thing.. It changed the feel of the entire event. I know I spent the majority of the time waiting for Shattered Elves to come out and do more rituals to extend his playtime. Because of this I can completely understand how it might make things feel disjointed

Question - Soooooo how long to those contingency life spells last?

[Java Aquari]

While its still somewhat fresh lets fire these off
Pros:

- All the mystic plot and ghost interactions, never felt happier being a rank 10 mystic. Having some on the fly calls for things that made sense was fantastic "Ten ranks Mystic, +1 strength I push you" to a ghost trying to possess someone and worked in pushing it away, didn't abuse it but felt good to have that.

- The HAUNT! Thank you again to plot for being awesome, felt super nervous before I started it but even more happy that it worked. To see it work almost instantly gave such a huge satisfaction for me playing a dedicated Mystic.

- The Augury sunday morning. Who says augury's dont have risks~ Asked a question about a demon and sure as hell got an answer. 5 Elemental Fire Body and Blind for a minute but still got the answer. On-the-fly roleplay had my 'good eye' burst into flame, someone went to get help and all I can hear is "Java's eye just burst into flame....no his good eye", loved it~. Taking that dive back off the chair was worth it, didnt get hurt so all around win-win.

- The Souls trapped in Idols. This more-so during saturday afternoon rather then the night mod was great~ Figuring out which souls resonated with which race was a great deal of fun. Loved what was needed to free them which was Blood, water, salt or sweat.

- The Contingency Life and other spells granted after Morty left. As it truly did suck to die it did feel nice for plot to send out elves that honestly wanted to help and care for those after Morty and the Shattered Elves left. Felt nice to have that 'we kicked you in the nuts so here's an ice pack and a protective cup', very much appreciated.

- Manifested and speaking with the soul of my dying brother. Spoilers, Capri and Java died. Java being able to Unfetter walked over to Capri's body and while keeping in contact with his body 'spoke' with Capri. It was a heart-filled talk and truly drove in the weight that comes with being a Mystic, to watch those who have died or are dying and can do nothing about it (unless you spec into healing magic). Then as a good brother would stuck by his side right to the point of Resurrection. Much love, many feels.

- Talks with Oz, never fail to make me laugh or hanging off every word he says. You're awesome Oz, thank you for being you.

- The backlashes. While mine was fun, seeing everyone as a spirit, witnessing Capri with his was a riot. Everyone joined in on the hilarity of it and it was amazing to see everyone love the most simple of things.

- The Shaman talk with the Thunderstorm Faun (sry horrible with names). Really got to test my knowledge of the 'Mystic Arts' being a teacher to someone honestly curious of how to 'become a shaman'. Also having others join and listen while I spoke and taught was really heart warming, super happy to be that guy people can go to for Mystic things.

- The eye-patch, super happy how it turned out and hearing people giving it good compliments. <3

Cons:
- Sucks that I died, it was a fair death, got ganged up on by Shattered elves when town was out of lives.
- Very old/strong characters being jerks because they can. You know who you are, enough said.

Overall had a great time. 9/10 would happily spooky with everyone again.

[Deosshen Aeronwy]

I had an awesome game considering my traitor boyfriend played a character that doesn't get along with mine lol.

Pros!
-Lamalas, the gold Draconian and I had an ooze baby together. That was neat.
-the idol mod Saturday night was amazing! Especially because they were swinging normal damage and I could actually use my threshold! It wasn't a useless racial!
-I saved 2 Draconian and went swimming in the ocean with the aqua one!
-I pulled off a dragon enlightenment ceremony! And apparently I did pretty alright.
-I got to keep a physrep box.
-weather was nice
-tavern shift was super fun

Cons
-Hollinder snores loud and we shared a tent.
-I medical marshalled myself and missed an awesome demon mod. But I needed to be medical marshalled so yeah....
-House of I got moved cause of swampy land and I couldn't sleep in my(Theos) ritual circle.

Game was overall good though it felt like it was setting up for an awful time huehuehue
(camp moving, rainy forecast, huge ass accident on the way)

[Alfric Smith]

Pros:

Morningeist, distinct pro I: The first thing I saw when I opened my tent was Capri bleeding out on the other side of the town square field, and Morty walking into the woods. Not only was that a good one, but I'm also a big fan of very dangerous things taking place at odd hours - not just very early or late, but generally at times which aren't typical of the meta. A lot of players have trouble with metagaming, and it becomes the norm that things don't happen too early, or too late, that there will be a big mod between each mealtime and one after dark. This generally means that a lot of the on-your-toes horror elements fade away.

Morningeist, distinct pro II: Morty's behaviour was good. There were a few really good things that felt really fitting of the nature of a bloodthirsty demon prince. As a non-elf, I wasn't safe - if you weren't an elf and were clearly trying to hide or escape while there were bigger targets nearby, you'd be ignored. If you were in the way of elves, if you were acting like you were safe because you weren't an elf, or if you were just around and the only thing nearby, you were a target.

Thresholds: It's really good to see far more monsters that lack thresholds. Even if you're dangerously outmatched, the difference between doing *essentially* nothing and *actually* nothing is HUGE. It goes from a sense of disappointment and futility to one of danger and risk, which is nice - while it makes perfect sense for monsters with non-normal thresholds to be on smaller mods from a mechanical standpoint (and for them to exist outright, it makes tons of sense), when they're major dangers in whole-town mods, it just makes it so that those mods are stand-back-and-watch-the-big-kids-play sorts of things.

Assassins: It's just generally really nice when the night feels hostile. Sneaky, lonesome NPCs trying to gank you in the night is kinda played-out, but it's played-out for a very good reason: it works.

Tiny Tower Mod: Cool mechanics. It's really interesting when the "tests" that a supernatural place of magical import are... actual tests. Testing packet aim, testing cooperation, and putting the volunteers through unusual and uniquely challenging circumstances (something something feet planted, something something switch places) makes a lot of sense for testing mages.

Neutral:

Plot: As was said above, the plot seems to have been largely self-contained during this event. That being said, there was a certain Mr. Geist around, so it would likely have been difficult to threat together plot during those interruptions. Plus, it makes a lot of sense re: lore for there to have been little development elsewhere - everything that was a threat during previous events' plot was just as vulnerable to Geisty McGeist as we were.

Disparate curiosities: It's always interesting, during low-stress parts of events, to have small groups of NPCs generating flavour. However, I won't list that as a pro or con, since I think pros and cons should be things that were unusual about games that worked, or didn't. The ebb and flow of danger makes it such that it's good to have more interesting, sparse, and less dangerous things when the action is gone, just to keep things dynamic. This is a good thing that should keep happening as normal.

Cons:

Managing the whole town, and NPC numbers: This one is three different things that remain intertwined. Full-town-mods are problematic, and logistically difficult at the best of times, but are also entirely essential to making sure that there's, y'know, a plot. They're also almost always the highlight of a game.

MTWTANPCN - Die Hard: Full-town-mods seem to follow a distinct pattern: The strongest players in town steamroll the NPCs, who pop further and further into mod sites. The weaker players stay at the back, since it's certain death or watching from a distance. The mid-level players make tiny dents, fall back, get patched up by mid-level support-role characters, and chip again. This is a problem. No matter the event, every full-town mod follows the same structure, and as a result, plot-proper seems to be restricted to higher-level players, and the lower-level players who can't survive (or the newer players who haven't saved the frags and CP for five levels of looting) rarely get any items, RM, or other curios. This, however, is a problem endemic to the nature of, well, having the full town go out on mods.

MTWTANPCN - And Then There Were None: The final full-town-ish mod, with the ritual and things crawling out of the woods, was highly engaging since we were being flanked. As such, we were spread more thin, and in small groups, lower-level characters have a chance to shine even among the stronger ones. The big problem with this is that it requires a mountain of NPCs, and very specific geographical features. Having more NPCs requires, just... so much infrastructure. Each handful of NPCs means another shaper is needed, each handful of shapers means more dans and ivannas, and we only have one of each. As things get spread thinner and thinner, NPC camp devolves into greater and greater stress and panic. Our shapers, owners, and seasons don't deserve that for all they do for us. That would be the easiest option, but it's the one with the strongest backlash.

MTWTANPCN - Divide and Conquer: Perhaps the solution to all of this is to just meta things and physically split the playerbase. Characters of similar levels in groups works really well because their abilities mesh. Low-level characters can be easily healed by low-level healers, high-level characters need the threats and dangers that would simply steamroll lower-level characters for the game to be validating. Splitting based on level could be quite effective. Alternately, as was seen in the final major mod of the last day, splitting people into small groups works really well even if there's a large level disparity. Moreover, this requires fewer NPCs - a smaller number of NPCs can be far more easily managed by shapers, such that even 3-4 NPCs and one shaper can be a challenge to a group of 8-12 players, if well-coordinated. The downside with this is that it promotes segregation of players into cliques - groups with good cohesion tend to stay together and form their own groups, alliances, and in-game friendships; this applies to grouping by level or by number.

In summary: things are good, there are problems endemic to the medium/locale/meta that can't really be solved super easily. it's honestly just great to run outside with cool people and do some stuff you wouldn't be able to without this wonderful organization.

[Pawp!]

Pros:
-almost breaking my hand on chief's head.
-getting killed by the morty
-capri's amazing curse
-demitria's amazing curse which leads me to;
-every interaction with magnar. Please give this man some RP awards. From saving my trunk to trying to convince the gargylen she's not an aja, to 'helping' me get through a hallucination to everything having to do with the bunny rabbits. just...10/10 Max.
-Blank is so cute
-Lilith is so scary
-Lamalas was eating plates
-Tavern bullies throwing dirt in my eyes got me sympathy so that was fun.
-getting to be a bit useful to the clan.
-npcing saturday night. all my roles were fun. "worst merchant ever", NOT witnessing the ganking of my guards and being the hard mage in that town fight was awesome. makes me miss NPCing full time.
-looting the snake mod.
-beautiful weather all weekend
-mama being mama
-scaring myself on the way back to my cabin and trying to throw a lock on the door while my brain played tricks on me. ((thinking there were people chasing me, thinking there was someone in my cabin only to find it empty, etc.))

Cons:
-the wait for the snake mod. i'm with Jordan on this one. I believe we were ready around 1 and did not do the mod until 6 (because I got my abilities back.)
-sad i missed plot because i NPCed and a bit of dissaray in NPC camp.
-getting killed by the morty
-Very old/strong characters being pretty nasty at points.
-Lax saturday afternoon. I think it was to help us save spells and abilities for big fights but reset happened before it anyway. Even some crunchy animals or people are better than nothing.

[Brondulf Elricson]

Pros:
-Getting roped into Eindridil visions and fighting a giant tentacle monster to (hopefully) appease her.
-Surprisingly I enjoyed the town mod into Witherwing (correct name?) territory saturday night. It was one of the few times I've been genuinely terrified at a game, unable to see the enemy that can kill you instantly and realizing that if you fall down dead your not getting back up. Thanks to the physician who used my unconscious body as a shield and kept me alive, managed to make it out of that mod with only a few body points left over.
-Literally everything Einher related. It felt great to bond with my local kin during the duel for Jarl, the troll hunts and the other RP stuff tailored for us, even if it got a little derailed for the town mod.
-Witnessing the near reality of a bloodbath between the Einher and the Blood Red Rose, which thankfully got solved before it came to that.
-Elias's Vitkis giving a rune reading to me, gave me some cool stuff to play off of and he seemed genuinely impressed with reading himself, great things to come perhaps?  
-Somehow I managed to not die.

Neutral:
-Morty did seem to take center stage early on and did feel like it messed with some pacing. Not a big deal as something that powerful and scary should be allowed to take some priority both in and out of game. Overall I don't really have too much of an opinion as I never got a chance to see it or interact as we arrived late friday and NPC's saturday morning while it was active.

Cons:
-Nothing really feels like a massive negative to me, pacing felt slow at times but thankfully Einher stuff was there to watch my back. I did feel like there was a general sense of confusion about stuff in and out of game, but this could honestly just be me.

Overall, excellent game for my PC and I'm excited to see what happens next. I was able to get great moments of RP, fighting and even some minor personal development. 9.5/10 would fight wild elf assassins in the dark while we have nowhere to run again xD

[Dr. Moran]

I had a great event, it was nice to be back in town with Ursel. Thank you to everybody who helped make this event possible, be them the shaper team, NPCs and players that brought the game to life.

Pros and good memories:
- The saturday night mod was terrifying, I couldn't see, the elves were one shotting people left right and centre and we barely had the resources to keep up. With that said I loved it. I am personally a fan of mods actually feeling dangerous, it forces us to be more creative and cautious. 
- Ramsay's loom stuff was great. Even though it ate my favourite catalyst... the temptation to lick everything that is strange and magical has only grown.
- Hearing an Einher call for those in colours to follow him and then realizing he was including my random wild elf who had gotten adopted into Galloglach. So many feels. Led to one of the best talks I had that game when Skol(?) the Vitki saw me being conflicted about things.
- "So Ursel and Dexter are going to see if the hell gate is active."
"It's gone."
"Time to go rep a full emotional breakdown at House of I then."
- Coincidence and shaper hilarity leading to it looking like Ursel has a murderous hatred of chickens. Between the enrages I kept taking throughout the event and the possessions I'm amazed none of the PCs just up and killed me.
- Ice Elves. Most of my highlights for that I can't actually talk about but those involved know that it was a highlight of my character and basically made my event. 
- The completely broken, tired, dead inside look on Riven's face when he held his sword out to stop me and said he was detaining me. OOG it broke my damn heart but IG I had to be an ass about it.
- Being back in town was really interesting. Realizing that I didn't know many of the people around me was strange and realizing that one or two had heard of me was kind of hilarious. The reactions people had to the change in Ursel's personality was nice to see, made me feel like I was managing to RP properly. 

Cons:
- None really. Just a heads up though when it's super dark and you're hiding in the trees we can't see if you have a hand on your head, we just see a murder shaped shadow.

[Virgil]

"What are yah gonna fuckin' do? Obliterate m-"

[Hannick]

Oh boy, I loved this event.

Friday night NPC shift was awesome, all the roles I went on were fun and scary.
Getting woken up in the morning by the Mortegeist (who decided to open our tent even though neither of the occupants were elves 3:<) and nearly dying were it not for magics
Hiding from the Mortegeist repeatedly that morning, with Brin and Tybalt mostly.
Drakkon doing some strategical uncharacteristic good to Hannick
The number and variety of mods was good. It was great to feel scared on some mods, useless(ish) [you're never truly useless when you have anatomy and first aid] on some, and useful in others.
The light meeting was good
I liked the night mod on Saturday (and I normally hate night mods) - it felt scary, uncertain. At parts I was useful and I was useless and confused. Getting to bleed on the idol and it working was satisfying.
All the idols being repped was awesome!
Same mod - surprise sap! "Foresight riposte" - helmet - "Okay! 8 body 8 body 8 body 8 body 8 body 8 body..." (why did the wytch have a stiletto >: ( <3)
Sunday's mod was pretty good. Getting hit with a confused gas globe, wandering around humming and no doctors checking me for toxins : ( (COME ON GUYS I NORMALLY HELP OUT : P)
Ending on a murder mystery!

Overall I didn't really have any bad things to say about this event. Yes it felt slow at points, but rightly so. Town was so tapped after Morty and the night before. Maybe Sunday was a little light but it happens.

Edit: Also, "What are you going to do? Obliterate me?" *poof*