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Event Review - Sequela (May 2019 Four Day)
#11
(05-21-2019, 02:57 PM)Dr. Moran Wrote: I forgot one of my downsides, and this was a bit of a big one.

Shapers, if using rituals, really need to know exactly how the ritual works and be prepared for questions when PCs identify said ritual. A few were incorrectly handled this event due to confusion over whether or not they had been activated and how activating them actually functioned. Then, due to NPC camp not wanting these rituals in PC hands, they were handwaved or otherwise ignored. I'm hoping this was a one time thing due to the sheer amount of dominates/tasks/enslavements that went out, but it was a real pain to deal with Friday night.




I take personal responsibility for this one. I forgot that the task ritual on the weapons had already been activated but in my haste I left them on the tag when I wasn't supposed to. 
 I apologize thoroughly for that and it will not happen again. Sincerest apologies for the confusion!
Jenn Wood.
Email only.
Please do NOT contact me here, or on facebook.
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#12
I would like to add something here about the Monday Morning Mod. Yes, it seemed anti-climatic but that was mainly because we were dealing with maybe 10 NPCs vs the rest of town. People who has signed up for Monday Shift had decided last minute to not show up, and others simply went home. If people want big wave battles, we need NPCs. I am not a heavy fighter, so throwing on a big piece of armor and swinging weapons without a breather between pops kills me. It is much scarier and more entertaining for 30 NPCs to come running out with 1 pop each than to have 10 NPCs do 3 pops. 

NPC guys, it really is fun and will create a better game for everyone.
Epic NPC Man!! -guitar riff-
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#13
I've tried to make my browser quote Jay's post like three times and it won't load properly so bear with me, this is a reply to his mentioning the lack of NPCs on shift Monday morning.

While this is a very good point, to me it wasn't an issue of numbers. Perhaps it's my fault for listing the two mods that had the most waves and extra NPCs as climactic highs, but in both cases it was because of the way they were presented, not the manpower. The not-Citadel tried to burn half of town alive during what started as a bit of RP heavy downtime and then tried to stomp folks with explosives and witchhunters. The Dragon Knight showed up stacked with rituals, great costuming, and with a bellowing Shaman behind him. In comparison, some Shak'tar and a really big alligator with a lacking physical description (after days of being told it was so big it could be mistaken for an elemental beast and sent tremors through the ground) and a handful of kidnapped farmers felt like a let down from a plot and stakes standpoint.

I absolutely agree that people should commit to the NPC shifts whenever possible, especially if they know it falls on one of the big evening or final day mods, since I suspect Shapers try to estimate the numbers they'll have for them. However, I still feel like more could have been done even with the NPCs and descriptions we had. I know I prepared a lot of Silences in case another Shaman showed up to do Rite of War, and with a dire beast that big you could totally slam out some area of affect body slam massive or have it do some kind of directed charge (since alligators can absolutely motor when they need to), or calling a descriptive hold to have the thing stomp onto the scene might have conveyed more of a threat (especially if immediately coupled with any big show of force) instead of just making it seem like the third dire alligator to show up. People were cracking jokes about this thing death rolling our literal cabin building with us in it when we found out how big it was supposed to be, and to me at least that wasn't very well conveyed.
IG: A human man in a crow skull mask, grey stole, and black clerical vestments. Occasionally carries an iron or silver dagger, but more often seen without any visible weapons or amour to speak of.

OOG: Danny Heintz, he/him. Transmasc in progress, please disregard mine bræsts. 

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#14
Now that I’ve given myself to calm down a bit from the constant adrenaline I’ve been running on since Friday I’m going to give this a go. I’m just going to go point by point, because a lot of things gave me very mixed feelings: somethings had good and bad that kind of blur together. Warning: this is a bit of a monster.

I’ll start by acknowledging one of my own flaws, which has since made it to me from two sources, both, I think, starting from new players. Due to a combination of factors, including pre-game discord and email mods, Cata came into this game very angry, and this continued for a lot of this weekend due to the various events. I promise guys, I’m not a rude or mean person OOG, and I apologise if anyone thought that I meant to exclude anyone from things or that they thought there was bleed into real life. I will admit that my sleeping disorder in addition to poor sleep and being off my sleep schedule, caused the irritation to be much easier for me to play, but if you are ever feeling that your OOG feelings are being hurt, please just tell me. I would never want anyone to feel uncomfortable by my roleplay, especially just because the big scary Elemental caster is just having a bad day.

Now with that out of the way, the actual review:

• Starting Friday night with two different mods for which the plot lines had a lot of development on discord gives me mixed feelings. On the one hand, I really like that it makes it feel like town has things going on all the time, and we can see the progress of events more evenly than in bits and spurts all at once. On the other hand, I worry that these plot lines exclude those who don’t participate in online roleplay, be it email mods or discord. For example, while I know all about the progression of the Tooth Monster due to interacting with that plot for two weeks or so, someone coming into game won’t have any idea what is going on. I tried to negate this on this mod by pretty much running after the monster and shouting information I had gathered, but I’m not sure if that helped at all.

• On the other hand, looking at the Tooth Monster mod with context, it was really cool. The mechanics made sense given the previous descriptions, the costuming was pretty good, and the monster was appropriately scary. Other than my criticism before, I will say that it wasn’t clear, given the story, if the monster was coming back or not, so I waited all weekend for that plot to further. That it was just over felt a tad bit anti-climatic after the two weeks of build up, but that’s something I can live with.

• Something I did notice all weekend was that Shapers were doing their best to handle the consequences of player choice, only to be caught flatfooted again and again as we did things they didn’t expect. My only advice there is to spend a bit more time thinking about what options players have at their disposal, perhaps play a bit more devil’s advocate with each other in Shaper meetings to find possibilities. Even if you don’t flesh out these possibilities, you’ll a least have something to go off the next time I do something you didn’t think was an option. Making it up as you go along makes sense when PCs mess things up, but that is a slippery slope into letting things get out of control, like the demon gate a few years ago.

• Balancing for this game was mostly good, given what NPC camp had at their disposal, but given the numbers in town being in flux, sometimes thing got rolled quickly, and sometimes things were way too difficult. This isn’t really something that NPC camp can help, especially as you don’t always know when people have left site. What I will say is that difficulty is fun for some, but it scares newer players into hanging back. I’ve seen a bunch of new player mods go out, and the occasional new player monster on the regular mods, but I hope we as PCs can encourage new players to help us with town mods and more complicated plots too, so they can feel involved and make friends with more people.

• I did like that we got to run a ritual this game, especially as it was directly caused by PC involvement. I love the solution that has been offered by NPC camp to the problem of lack of ritual casters in being able to hire ritualists to help run rituals, and I love that it allows PC ritualists to participate and use our skills. Showing more rituals in game showcases that part of the game to people who haven’t seen it before much, or haven’t considered it as an option, and gives casters a goal to work for. And hey, if I take a death or a weird RP effect in an attempt to help my friend get a cool thing, I’m cool with it. I would also like to say that Yoshi’s reminder between rituals about loose clothing was a good idea, I haven’t done a ritual since Warcry and it’s easy to forget. Related: when a marshal gives you an important tip, please listen.

• Others have mentioned that loot problem, but that has been a problem for ages. I don’t think there’s anyway for NPC camp to deal with it. On the mods that I have some control over, I try to make sure everyone comes away with something, but on town mods that’s impossible from what I can see. Rogues are gonna rogue. I dunno. Just please keep in mind that even though you were the one to killing blow a monster, casters and archers exist. I’m constantly seeing monsters which I took down from range being looted right after I take them down. I get it, it just sucks sometimes, and while I can totally handle it I can see where others get really discouraged.

• The storytelling on many of the mods of this event was really, really good. The emotional pull caused by the various events was really well done, creating highs and lows of emotion all weekend. This kind of storytelling feeds the best roleplay in my opinion, because when people are emotionally invested in their character’s lives they can understand them better. I can honestly say that this kind of storytelling has probably gave me the best roleplay I’ve yet had as Cata.

• I did have a bit of an issue with NPCs a couple of times. I think a few of those were just inexperienced, but please, please, please, if you don’t know what something does, just ask. New players, for sure, but vets too. Hey, everyone forgets sometimes, I know for a fact that I don’t know every ability in the rulebook. It’s better you ask and know the effects than ignore something and make someone upset.

• I have also noticed that there have been more and more reasons for the big bad type monsters to ignore a PC’s Big Thing, the kind of skills which PCs save for the scary monster. I get it, I do. You want the Big Bad to last a while so that it’s actually scary, and so that the mod lasts longer. But negating someone’s skill just upsets people, making it feel like they wasted their time and CP on skills that they can never use. Maybe, soft resists? Especially if it allows the PC to know that you want this thing to last longer but allows them to use the skill on something else. I’m not quite sure on the solution to this one, especially because I may be more understanding than others. I can say that twice in the last two months I’ve had a level 9 spell wasted on a something that the NPC team wanted to last, and it seriously stings.

• There was also a lot of really creative mod ideas, and those are the ones I enjoyed the most. These included, but weren’t limited to: wizard battle chess, the escape room, the citadel mod, the two-pronged attack, the tooth monster, the four statues mod and the elemental balance mod. Cool ideas like these make people actually think. I may be a nerd and love puzzles.

• The PC interaction I’ve done this weekend was also really good for the most part. I’m really excited to see so many new faces this year and tried to go out of my way when I could to include people. I’m so happy we got a chance to actually collect as many wild elves as we did for our meeting, giving new players, new characters on returning players and vets the opportunity to speak evenly. Everyone in the game world is equally important, and in the two IG factions I’m currently involved in running I’m trying to give everyone equal say in decisions. Given that, feel free to approach me about either of these groups in game or out of game even if you are ineligible for them, Cata loves to explain things. Note, as I stated above, approaching me IG limits what I can explain to you to what Cata knows about things, which may or may not be what I know about things. I’m doing all I can to stay in character IG, sometimes to my own detriment.

TL;DR: Overall a really good game, but with a few problems which can be addressed. Keep working on improving your skills as shapers, but I, at least, can really see you all coming into your own. I tried to keep things a bit vague when I could, but Shapers can feel free to message or email me if they would like more specific examples.
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#15
Overview/General comments
- Great pacing! I didn't feel like it was too much or not enough at any point in the weekend. I had serious FOMO any time I sat down or took a break and it's been a long time since I felt that way about LARP
- As a visitor, the plot was really accessible and clear to follow! Even things like Einish politics, as an orc I still felt invested in the outcome even if I wasn't super involved in the details. The whole squamata plot was very well written and kept me on my toes all weekend. I'm so used to visiting other guilds and not having any clue what is going on, but you guys made me feel like a real member of your town and not just a visitor
- Every one of Jenn's mods that I got to partake in was fantastic fun, and I loved that things that happened on Discord flowed into the weekend really seamlessly
- Can that really bright light near the cabins be turned off? It seriously messes with night vision and it felt dangerous to fight facing that direction because it was really blinding and not at all nice
Your bathroom facilities are so luxury. I really appreciate the few people I interacted with in the bathroom and that they did not drop character just because they were in modern bathrooms. I know it's very easy to do when you're under electric lights in a cinderblock building
- The last mod ended pretty abruptly. I'm not sure what happened with the key, or why we needed a key. I thought we were in a swamp, so I was confused when game was called

Memories/Moments
The shit monster
The really dedicated snake
Charr picking the shiny rock!
Posing with Ebon and Aine
Sticks m leggy walk with Aine and confusing random people
Helping Aine prank Wigzozz
Pranking Ethan on Monday morning with the 2 coffees
Fighting salt golems with newbies, new player shield wall (so proud of Zegore for taking the lead!)
So many amazing new players who really got into the game and got right in the middle of everything
Getting attacked by therians outside the bathrooms…..Chu is never walking off with Alistair and Oz again. First Chu was 5th wheel during kissy kissy goodnights outside cabin and then get attacked because Oz had to pee
The bandit! He took off SO FAST right after selling me something #didIjustbuystolengoods
DIRT, FLEAS, and TICKBITE! "I'm looking for my friend Horns!" "I'm gonna be…...A WARDEN!!"
Dirt for Warden!
The kobold executioner
Finally met Enna in game!
Shadowlight showing up Saturday night and having to pretend I don't know anything about them or why everybody is so scared
But then having a perfectly nice conversation with Setth the next morning
15 fighters to crush 1 old squamata harassing a baby kobold lol
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#16
I had a great weekend! I'd been throwing out 8.5/10 as my number but in hindsight I think I'm gonna bump that up to a 9.5.

Personal higlights include:

RAMPARRRRRT. We put up some good shield walls this game, and I'm super happy we got to include some newer folks in it as well cuz I love including newbies on big organized things. I heard my boy Zegore led a new player mod using tactics he learned and I'm super proud. Watching the rogue Citadel goons actually start stepping back from the advancing wall was a great feeling.

MAH BOY HELM. PRAISE TEZOTH.

The kobold children! Dirt for warden captain 2261!

Taking two hits of hobling herb followed shortly by the "shield bearing hips" comment. I don't think I've laughed so hard at game ever, that was amazing.

Kobold Charr "I will fuck you up". Sorry Gabe you were too adorable to take seriously.

Watching Alex come out from around the outdoor showers and wind up a slay to get Bast, only for me to dive in front of him, shield raised. The dejected look on your face was probably my single favourite combat-oriented moment of game.

Likewise, Ivanna giving me the disappointed knowing look when I blocked her own slay with my shield.

DAN'S SQUAMATA ON THE FINAL MOD STEALING MY SHIELD. Waking up from being KO'd by the giant gator and seeing my distinctive shield in Dan's hand and going "HEY THAT BOGGEREL HAS MY SHIELD".

Meeting all the newbies. You guys are great and I hope you had a good time and come back! I didn't get to talk to all of you as much as I would've liked but I'm sure we'll be great friends in the future.


Downsides:
Like others have said, the final mod was kinda underwhelming.

Also like others have said, perhaps do a sense level call when you're therians/assassins and are going around shanking people in the night. Or at least do so once you've shanked them and then throw them to the crowd as an "intimidation tactic" if they're level <5. I heard a lot of newer folk went through the rez circle.

Very minor, but it was kinda unfortunate that all the dragons represented through NPCs this game weren't represented by players (even worse--they do have PCs that follow some of those dragons but they weren't playing those characters!) Not enough to make me actually upset, just a minor niggle.
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#17
(05-22-2019, 09:06 AM)SarahW Wrote: - The last mod ended pretty abruptly. I'm not sure what happened with the key, or why we needed a key. I thought we were in a swamp, so I was confused when game was called

there was a locked chest picked up. the game was called before the contents of the box could be discussed.
Good, Bad  either way im the guy with the Gasglobe. .

Wildelf (Baby) male, seen dressed in leathers and Green and black attire. Im fancier than you.
House of I
Wardens

CO HEAD NPL.


(OOG :JUSTIN HOLLANDER)
jj.hollander59@gmail.com
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#18
*The yays*
-As a visitor, I understood what were the challenges and the reasons we were doing what during the weekend. That is wonderful, and a lot of time this is hard to achieve. And I can't stress this enough, I felt involved, I felt like I understood the plot, 10/10, bravo.
-The amount of new player content was good to see, warms my lil heart.
-Citadel not citadel mod brought me emotions i never felt at larp before, It was a scary first, at the instant, i thought it was real hard on me, but in retrospect.. pls i want more lol.
-Einhers, fuck I love you guys, GIVE ME A KILT ALREADY
-Shadow light coming was dope and made me real happy

*The nays*
-The amount of medical holds, like guys, it sucks to be hurt, watch your shit and take a deep breath before charging an npc, watching your bow, i don't know, were adults here and play built on the trust that people can be trusted to be careful, don't break that trust.
-Don't use the playground mod site, it's full of criminal penalty flower thing, it puts restriction on our ability to play and be aggressive and use the terrain.
-I found that npcs were too weak, that's just me thought, i'm just not scared by 5's
-Yellow arm band npcs, get off me, If i can't attack you, don't jump on me and then say no effect to me.
-Last mod was a bit eh

*Personal highlight*
-Bully an old lady, break a shrine, praise baaagh
-Clearing a mod with only me and Kyle
-Kyle
-Wigzozz kicking hopper's ass
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#19
I had strange game

Let's begin. I missed Friday night and most  Saturday.
So I was like the guy who skipped tutorial. Learn everything as I go. Then I did my Npc shift Sunday morning. That was great fun. I was greatest spider I could be. I missed out on the Monster Hunters guild but that's
Okay. Also I missed the great shield was of Ralinwood.
The assassins where great the snuck out of the dark.
So this game I finally realized that I could kill things.
So one best parts for me this weekend was getting my first kill and Thanks to Azkaban for letting me kill the werewolf . So I go to and say   I'm no longer a virgin.
It was great role playing with everyone especially Sir Abbot.  Teaching the lesson about leaving your drinks lying around.
I think the shapers and Npc did an amazing job this weekend. I looking forward to a great season. If I don't die which I'm still nor allowed to even though I'm not getting married.  Which I almost did . 10 seconds til retirement Great game everyone.
What wad with sudden end to the last mod.
P.s more loot.


A largest roguish human dressed in all Studded Black leather
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#20
I had strange game

Let's begin. I missed Friday night and most Saturday.
So I was like the guy who skipped tutorial. Learn everything as I go. Then I did my Npc shift Sunday morning. That was great fun. I was greatest spider I could be. I missed out on the Monster Hunters guild but that's
Okay. Also I missed the great shield was of Ralinwood.
The assassins where great the snuck out of the dark.
So this game I finally realized that I could kill things.
So one best parts for me this weekend was getting my first kill and Thanks to Azkaban for letting me kill the werewolf . So I go to and say I'm no longer a virgin.
It was great role playing with everyone especially Sir Abbot. Teaching the lesson about leaving your drinks lying around.
I think the shapers and Npc did an amazing job this weekend. I looking forward to a great season. If I don't die which I'm still nor allowed to even though I'm not getting married. Great game ever.
P.s more loot.


A largest roguish human dressed in all Studded Black leather
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