"A Kingdom for a Cure" Review

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Dramm a'dan

Dramm a'dan

Scholar
Another weekend event has come and gone. As we dry out and catch up on some rest, you think about what you've acomplished this weekend.

List your favorite moments in game. Also list your less favorite moments in game. We do use this information to improve on what we provide you for your entertainment during game play.

As a added note, please do not coment about another person's opionion. They will have a different view of what happened then you, please respect that.
 
Intense weekend, all sorts of exciting things were woven through a very character defining plot. Between Trials, the problem with bounties, the reoccurrence of one of our most beloved player characters, the first defeat of a truly colossal creature, and the Rituals around the King, things are becoming very different from our first year.

I thought the way people adapted during the rainy periods and were still rearing to go during them shows the drive this game puts in us. Being able to overcome terrible weather patterns and still come out enjoying ourselves thoroughly is an amazing quality.

I was the "Victim" of one of the White Taped Tree Events... man those are pretty cruel sometimes :D I enjoyed them though and they brought a lot to the game.

We ran into a minor hiccup during our Lair event.. As we found the lair event envelope prior to a major event, named our party members, and upon being brought to the lair, some of ours lost their items and weapons making our 15 minute window insanely constraining (As we didn't know if we could maneuver other people into the spots just to make it work). If someone was to permanently die, or be unable to attend a lair for any given reason, can we reasonably throw someone else in the Lair group or are we kinda written in stone with the people we were bringing?

The Hydra fight was enormously fun, and I am terrified to see what the future holds for these types of events now that they exist in our chapter!

I was devastated in character by the appearance of Ithawda.. It was a powerful moment in LARP, and one of the best scenes I could ever have been a part of... my heart still aches for those two.. and considering how well Celestials and Biata get along.. that says quite a bit.

Goblins... so many Goblins... (shakes fist at the heavens) Mobeus is going to lose his mind before too long I am sure of it... but here's to hoping for an evolution soon and who knows where things will go with this.. Some of them are amusing... Telling apart certain sheep... what does it have a hat or something.. bahahaha... funny to find a goblin with the wisdom to ask a smart question but give it such a quirky spin...

High Law and Low Law... The Fact of Medieval Justice... this is such a difficult thing for me personally to balance, I know at times I take a LONG time to dole out justice.. sometimes having trials and weighing facts and evidence... I am used to the system we use in Canadian Law.. and being (formerly now) a Law Enforcement agent myself, I find it hard to divorce myself from this ideal. I want to apologize to others for the length of time it has taken me to come to understanding how Justice should work in our Society.. we might be a frontier town, and we might have very specific laws written, but there is a lot to be said for expediting the Justice system, even if it seems arbitrary.. I feel as time goes on, I will rely less on proving "doubt" and rely more on what seems "Right". I am really trying to be as fair as possible, but many characters are blurring the line of what is "Right" and "Wrong".. with what they can get away with under "Law". Rule of thumb for all you who would do ne'er do well things? Don't get caught.. if you do get caught.. there will be punishment... it will have to be that clear cut. I am honestly as fair as you can probably get when it comes to justice, just don't push that line and we will all live in harmony until more Pirates come to town. :D

I was very very very impressed by the cloak and especially impressed that people recognized Mobeus' house symbol! Thank you all for paying such attention to some of my characters historically important facts.. it means a lot to me, both from an In Game and Out of Game circumstance. Thank you so much.

Separation of Monster Camp and Logistics... I think this was a mixed blessing. I loved how streamlined everything was but it lead to some minor problems. I often times could not find Logistical People for Identifications, and was told a few times to Identify at log (6pm) and then told I should really identify things as they come.. I know a LOT OF STUFF happens at NPC camp, and a lot of things I do not really want to see to spoil the surprise for myself.. but is it possible to have a Secondary or Tertiary role of "Magic Item Marshal" or tie it into the "Ritual Marshal" so I know who has the tags, and get these magic items out to people as quick as possible? This was never usually an issue before, but if Log/Monster Camp gets shaken up from time to time, I'd love to have some across the board consistency with Identification of Items.

Anyways, at the end of it all, the issues I noted were very minor, and I had a great deal of fun, I ended up enjoying everything immensely and was absolutely exhausted..

Thank you Staff and fellow players, you make this game great...

Aaron Thompson
 
Items should be Identified ASAP. Find a Marshal and we can get someone to grab the tag quickly (likely Lorne will be the "go to" person on this as he is never really far from the tavern). We are working on another system to hand out tags in a timely manner (trust me, I understand the importance to get the items out there promptly) and we should see a far better system in place for August (july being a completely different beast). :thumbsup:
 
For me this weekend was a perfect blend of helpful marshals explaining things to me and learning lessons the hard way (i.e. losing both weapon tags and having to deal with that). There did seem to be some confusion at log on Friday or maybe a lack of people but nothing that had a really negative effect.

I was really surprised that the NPC's maintained the same pace for the entire weekend - that was either really great planning or a perfect blend of personalities. There was never a dull moment and honestly on Sunday morning I thought I would only have to put in minimal effort to shake off the extremely irritating monsters. But no, I got wounded repeatedly by very energetic creatures who were very happy to remind me of the importance to go nowhere unarmed. :pinch:

Overall, I have few suggestions for improvement.
 
A great weekend!

The memory box burning and the appearance of Ithawda's shade was more "real" than I expected!

The only two concerns I had were the rain and bugs, which I don't think they are directly Cory's fault... <grin>

The NPCs were outstanding individually and as a group!

The number of possible encounters was amazing, and frankly more than we could react to at times. It was also a major resource drain! I used all my spells both days, and burned a dozen potions more than I created with Craft Potion and Gobbies and all of the gold accumulated in the prior year!

One request of the PC's. Sometimes for a story point your character may have something happen that was not how you planned things. As long as it does not damage your character, breath deep, and help the story line rather than take it personally. If you are sent to the stocks for an hour for something you did not do, remember I am standing there in the same bugs with you as the Sheriff, and I did not do it either! <grin>

For Plot, players get very attached to their characters. Messing with them is a given, but permanent damage (like a death) should be earned by the character. Other than in combat, there usually should be a way out for them. If they are paying attention and willing to pay the price.
 
I had so...much...fun. I don't even know where to start.

Favorite moments:
Friday night, as the wolf, I was slinking around in the brush behind the woodpile when I saw someone I couldn't identify standing behind the cookhouse, looking through the windows at the people around the fire. I got about halfway through the brush from the top of the kingsroad before he spooted me slowly raise my head over the brush. a 10-minute stalk through the woods started from there. I lost him behind the bathrooms when I ran into a group of undead, or I think I would have stayed with him. That whole thing was absolutely awesome, and it was compounded when, during cleanup, I found out it was Ben I'd been stalking, and he'd seen part of my face and the fur and realized "Holy ****, I'm being hunted!"

Brad's goblin archer popping out of the woods, throwing 1-2 arrow packets, then running away shouting "Humans suck! heehee!" over and over until we finally ran him down. When I finally closed with him and he bolted through a patch of deep grass and jumped over the drainage ditch, thinking both that I was alone and I would be in my armor and thus unable to jump the ditch. But I had Datonis with me, and I'd stripped my armor off so I could run better - not that I think the ditch would stop me even in full armor.

Standing guard at the celestial circle during the ritual, I got very into the moment. I wasn't moving until the ritual was complete or the damage it was causing knocked me down. Then, carrying Hamish's shield to keep the rain off the King's head as we carried him to the earth circle, and realised there was nobody to let us into the earth circle, so I yelled for Frederick or Isawda to get to the earth circle. Then they weren't moving fast enough for my taste - that is, they weren't already in fron of me, so I screamed "NOW!" at the top of my lungs. The one time I really raised my voice all weekend, and I screamed myself into a raw throat with one word.

Ithawda being raised as a revenant, and the collective gasp/groan from the whole group, then Isawda going down on one knee, and everyone piling in in front of him was an awesome moment. Unfortunately, she was kinda unstoppable. :p

The Hydra fight was amazing, once I figured out what the hell was going on - I got there a little late and had to do some catching up. Hamish's anvil throw was awesome, and literally made me pump a fist in the air and cheer.

The constant goblin/undead/gnoll patrols were great, and when combined with the lairs and insta-mods, actually gave us a reason to go out and patrol ourselves, or to wander and see what we could see.

Speaking of insta-mods, they were really well done and added to immersion. the one where we needed people to pull on a rope that went into the ground was great, since we all lined up, grabbed an imaginary rope, and heaved on the count of three - four of us also blew our poison shields on the poisoned coins we dug up, which I thought was great.

Morrigan and Ariana having a shouting match, with every third word being "****", was great - For that matter, Shauna's character was amazing the whole time. She was almost always in character, and her indignant rage when Hamish got put in the stocks was scary.

Least favorite moments:
I honestly can't think of anything that's directly larp-related. the bugs were annoying, my cloak was too wet to sleep under, and I fell asleep saturday afternoon and missed some stuff, but those are all personal issues, and insignificant.

All told, I had an amazing time. I came out this weekend fully expecting to have a lot of fun, but I was still blown away. This weekend was the best I've had at larp yet.
 
Alright, there were some bad , and some good . The bad have some redeeming factors though.
There were also some improvements , or suggestions for them.

Bruises
Unfortunately, my first encounter of the weekend, the NPC I faced was a little over excited, and hit my legs so hard that I bruised quite badly. This is a risk we all take at LARP, and fortunately I think the NPC recognized that they were over swinging, and eased up afterwards without me having to confront them.

Rain
Probably a con for most, I'm going to consider this a con. I love rain. It kept bugs away, kept me from overheating and sun burning, and best of all: the level of combat, immersion, and action was not deterred by it. It did not turn into a weekend of hiding under the canopy, but remained a weekend of-albeit soggy - adventure!

Pirates
I understand that sometimes, characters can be mistaken. However this at the time felt a bit like a "gotcha"' plot. At one point, I was ranting (in character) about how stupid I felt the trial was. I insulted the Magistrate's honor and intelligence.
At this point I was approached by an NPC and given some out of game information. I understand why, as that NPC I believe didn't want to see me mad. However, though I was a bit irritated out of game, it was my character that was really mad, and now I'm forced to try and not metagame with that information that I really didn't need to know.

NPC Immersion
Again, I am super impressed with the level of NPC committment and immersion. Even crunchies have depth of character and feel real. There is none of that complacent feeling when you see the same old person in a different outfit, because they're not the same, this is someone new...
I would also like to thank the NPCs and plot for their assistance and understanding.
I'm not new to Larp, but I'm new to this game. Some rules I know, some are new to me. Yes I've been reading the rulebook but it will take a while to learn more thoroughly. I noticed that throughout the weekend, if I got hit with an effect, the moment I hesitated to react, they told me how to respond. I'll continue to try and learn all the rules, but new players are constant in larps, and I appreciate the help.

Out of Game Talk
Everyone's guilty of dropping character at some point or other, especially during luls or late night at the fire, I do it too, and that's something that's hard to snuff out completely. The level of out of game talk was something that I brought to the attention of many other players last game, and I noticed that it has already drastically improved, as every player I spoke to in May has already seemed to adopt my suggestions, so I'll post them here for all to see:
when using IN GAME terms OUT OF GAME, find ways to say them in game, for example...


''How many points of damage have you taken''
Instead use: How badly are you injured?

''I have Archery 0 on my character card''
Instead use: Mar tried to teach me, but I'll need a lot more practice to master it.

''wo damage doesn't hurt that monster, and it's hitting back for four!''
Instead use: My blows don't seem to affect it, and it's claws are much sharper than my sword.

Etc...
 
I decided to wait a few days to see what other people had to say first (usually I post immediately when the thread goes up)

I wasn't feeling well last weekend, so I spend an inordinate amount of time in my cabin (didn't stay up past dark, and most of Sunday)

Logistics was complete chaos on Friday. I'm not a terribly assertive person, and I usually 'wait my turn' until I'm addressed - and thus it took me quite a bit of time to realise that the logistics staff were just chatting and not really 'logisticsing' players when I was there. I dislike to interrupt people and ask "Pardon me, are you actually helping someone, or can I get my logistics done?" because I worry that I'm coming across rude. The result of which, I wound up without enough time to re-marshal my armour before the horn was sounded - and was just told to use the tags I've got.

Players have gotten a lot better about not talking OOG - however certain Marshall's and NPCs are notorious for it. I'm not going to name names here, but the biggest one happened on Friday when myself and two other people were looking at the 'creek' and were talking in game about the flooding. Then someone with a white headband on started talking about how the Canadian military was called in to help sandbag areas and totally derailed the RP. This kind of thing happened a few other times as well (with a few different Marshalls/NPCs). PLEASE don't do this! It's one thing if the players are already clearly talking OOG, but if it's even borderline IG - don't talk to us if you've got a white headband on.

I do have to commend Kristen for saying to us at the fire pit "I have no idea what you all are talking about." while she was there as an NPC - however one of our players was stressing out a little about being evicted during the flooding, so it was kind of an important need to fill OOG - however we did get back IG as soon as the conversation wrapped up.

Was quite annoyed at getting to the tavern just before 3 horns on saturday to find that the hashbrowns were almost gone (I got the last scoop). I might be mis-remembering, but I thought breakfast was served at 8? It was quite annoying to show up on time, only to find that it had been served early and it was all gone. Similarily - Saturday night I didn't know dinner had been served until it was almost over (I popped into Log as soon as I heard it was opened and thus missed Abbey shouting about dinner being ready) Please use the horn to announce dinner. Oh and please DO NOT blow the horn in the Tavern - we can hear it when it's blown outside, and when it's blown inside it echoes off the walls!

I was considerably annoyed at first at the amount of theft of untagged items that kept getting stolen by NPCs (the chest that is part of my workshop being one of them) - however seeing the wanted poster for the goblet that was slipped into my chest and recognizing it made me a bit giddy on Sunday, so I'm not upset about it anymore (JP actually got my vote for 'best NPC' for that sticky fingered goblin archer - he actually put me 'on guard' when he wanted to buy my wares I wasn't sure weather he was going to mug me or not!)

Usually I'm completely oblivious to what's going on plot wise around me - but I was really glad that I learned that Rose Salt was used as a fertilizer and when I heard talk about a farmer I made sure to follow that thread. I wound up being the only person to talk to the farmer to know to ask for Rose Salt - which was a really important item (Andreas seemed surprised/pleased that I brought it up - I loved the bunny kin BTW). I had a chance to be in the centre spotlight when Az'Cane asked who the most skilled alchemist was. While Frederick was all "uhm.. er... that would be... ah..." I was thinking "I don't want to work with Az'Cane" and so I threw Yetta under the bus (I actually thought she had more ranks than I did - turns out our skill is exactly the same, but I didn't know that)

The whole thing with the pirates was clearly an intentional 'gotcha' plot, which is annoying. It wouldn't be so bad on it's own, however the earlier goblin who was supposed to be an orc already set the precedent for making allowances for the wanted posters being slightly inaccurate. It left a sour taste in a lot of players mouths and actually takes a lot away from the whole wanted poster system as a whole - I'd be very surprised if players are so eager to chase down marks next time after Hamish got charged for assault for acting on best available knowledge with regards to the wanted poster - and thus that particular plotline was a great way to kill the wanted poster idea. I did find two of the object rewards though (the goblet and the vial of sand or w/e it was) so... yay!

I think the cleanup tasks went well for the most part, but I can't speak for all the groups. I was extremely impressed that when we searched the fields we only found 7 stray packets. We're getting MUCH better at 'cleaning as we go' and not leaving so much behind.

EDIT: Forgot to add - I REALLY liked the Sunday morning bandit attacks from an OOG perspective. I've been getting a little sick of reminding people who say "Game hasn't started yet..." that Game is always on - 'Quiet time' does not mean 'Game off'. This event really did that. I actually made a conscious decision that morning when I went to the bathroom "Do I want to put on a white headband.. or my feathers?" and I decided to put on my feathers and head to the bathroom IG - only to run into Abbey (Who I thought was Dramm) damnable idjit popped a Magic Armour - grr. :D

That said - I have no problem with players who go OOG when they are in their cabins (everyone needs down-time) and other than when I was bunking with the imperials, I've grown to expect it. However, game is still 'on'.
 
Been thinking about my experience at Logistics that I mentioned in the last post, and I came up with a system that might work;

Have a designated area for players who are there for Logistics/Armour Marshalling to line up. After players are done what they need, they can hang around in another area not in the line (ie - off to the side) to chat. This way, players who are there for a purpose know who is in line to be helped and who is just hanging around, and the Marshalls can see who is waiting to be helped. This system ameliorates the experience I had last event without depriving the Marshalls the chance to chat with players.
 
Had another great weekend of fun inspite feeling tired before coming to game. Finally got that bloody choas mace no longer soul linked to me though we nearly died from get go because Rory misread the ritural scroll item. Thankful Aaron had the item. In the future anyone who uses ritural scroll make sure you read the entire scroll to make sure your NOT missing an item. I loved the Hydra fight. It was a challanging yet fun encounter. Hope to see more of that into the future. Had a good chuckle when Justin found an item that wanted poster when me, him and Dawn were doing a patrool and killed a goblin. Only con I have for the weekend is having rain yet again. I don't think I can blame Cory on it though lol.
 
my review for the event? well the day i was there was absolutely brilliant. I absolutely adored the hydra battle and shaunas pc was brilliant XD i seem to be using the word brilliant alot. anywho I don't have much to say beyond that wish i had done this sooner but i kept forgetting to.

if anyones wondering my test was postponed by the flood (better safe than sorry i guess) and i ended up getting a 60 on it and in the course overall
 
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