April 12-14 Event Feedback

[brconvery]

Please take a few minutes to provide us with feedback regarding our April season opener event. We love to hear what you liked, but it is also important to hear what you felt didn't go so well. Please remember to be constructive with such comments; plot runners have feeling too .

 

[Alkalin3]

I had a lot of fun for starters. We always seem to end up on festival events, and I was pleased that there was a lot of other things to do.
I really like this campsite, I'm excited to learn more about it and see more parts of it. We promised ourselves we were just going to dip our toes into a few things.
I do guess we did that with some success but, we kind of got hooked into some other plot lines despite that want.
I mostly went on Brigit's stuff! I didn't even see Cory, and only interacted with him once. I think that's dandy, it looks like you folks were able to handle a few things at the same time, which is a super hard skill. I enjoyed the Ashwoods plotlines more then I thought I would because as Nature stuff goes, it's relatively unique. So, I'm excited about being more involved in that. Special thanks to Joe for understanding the plotline enough to run it while Brigit had to take care of some other things. As an NPC that goes a bit beyond.

I'd really like to see some more "gimick" fights. The great part of 2.0 is certain builds excel at certain things. For example Joe Menotti had a great setup for channeling shield when fighting. I'd like to see more monsters being no effect to normal and silver (or reduced to 1). And have tricks needed to beat them. Threshold, specific damage types, shattering their armor. Those kind of fights where you have an npc wading in wading into a group work really well in 2.0. (They felt stupid in 1.3). This is especially useful with events that have a bad npc to pc ratio. I'm happy to help craft some of these fights if you need assistance. (Not that I'm some kind of master monster stater but I've seen a few things work well)

I spent some time actively looking for the golden foxes hidden throughout the site but, I didn't find any. I really love that there was stuff going on in town that didn't take any npcs. This is a trick we do at Somi a lot. But, I didn't find any. Maybe next time we can see more stuff hidden around you get folks excited about hunting down stuff.

Your "games" have come such a far way. I remember watching a high experienced player robbing a newer player of a win in the arena. That wasn't a good feeling. These games took all kinds of skills, several of which folks already had in real life. That's very inclusive. I hope you expand on the idea of finding stuff, or small minor games to play. We were hanging out in the tavern a lot. Feels like a missed opportunity to not have the puzzle master have some pre setup puzzles that could turn right into some kind of reward. So folks could entertain themselves in the tavern.

I want to talk about playing a character with back moves in your game for a second. It's not a great experience, and we for sure have similar problems in South Michigan. It's a problem with the style of mods we have. I went on probably 6 combat mods. 3 of them took place in a functional hallways. This is unavoidable. Not much you can do about that. One of them took place the bottom of the pit and it was chaotic. I did get a good chance to use some of my skills there since folks were turning around a lot. But, there were defenses on some of those cards. So all weekend I waited to use my doom blow only to have it phased by some non hero bad guy. Additionally, I did manage to sneak around on some monsters but, I guess they were immune to paralysis, which should be super uncommon but, I'm probably just unlucky.

Two others took place in open fields, the kind of fights Rogues should excel at. One of these fights had a bunch of kyn, so it's a bit more understandable they are hyper aware. The other had fire elementals, which I do not imagine should be hyper aware. However, during both of these fights I pretty much couldn't get behind folks, I watched other Rogues struggle (Chandler, Jared, T.C.) as well. During the Fire elemental fight, I had to pretty much just walk Fire elementals into groups of people since the npcs would have rather gotten attacked by 3 people who swing 5-8's then let me see their back. (Which is really great that I have such control over the battle field because folks don't want to be backstabbed.) I typically talk to folks npcing for me about how it's important to show your back sometimes. This is especially true for dumb creatures like elementals. I have 215 xp in Rogue skills, probably 175 of that is back facing powers. I'm lucky in that I have a high level character and a fair amount of front facing ability too. But, for lower level folks and/or pure Rogues this isn't an option. Generally it's a good idea to consider fun of the players over realism. Sure, things should be super duper self preserving but, that doesn't always make a fun card to fight. I think this is a super large reason why we don't see a ton of pure rogues at higher levels.

Wait times seemed pretty high. Especially for mods that were short. We waited a bit, walked 10 minutes and a lot of mods were just 2 or 3 waves of stuff. Might I make a suggestion to help cut wait times down. Get a bunch of Envelopes. Write the mod description and layout on full piece of paper, with information about treasure. Print out cards on white index cards, pack them in the envelope, and write the name of the mod on the envelope. When folks come, you pass out the envelope and you're ready to go. Maybe that'll help? It takes a bit more up front time.

It felt like every other mod had someone who was running away. I spent 30 minutes chasing down a running away person. It's not super fun to do but, it is something that can be needed from time to time. While certainly more realistic, what does having some creature running away that the players need to chase down add to the game so much that it's needed more than once in a while? Not everyone can run fast, or even run. I'm lucky that I have enough stamina that I could keep moving. I'm also not everyone. Just something to consider.

Brigit the feast was great. I ate a Turkey Leg and it made me feel super in game. You always do a great job cooking.

Makeup is always great, it doesn't go unnoticed.

I am a really huge fan of the politics you folks have in the game world. The political system seem very well thought out, and it makes it hard to not worry about repercussions. That's a really high compliment.

I'm super sorry we did the thing we hate when players do it to us, and back loaded a bunch of stuff on the end of the event. We'll try to avoid that.

I had a ton of fun. Maybe if I can schedule it, I'll check out one of the state land events because I'm itching to play more. Keep it up folks you've grown a lot in the year I took off.

 

[Cory Walker]

I always believe in peeling back the curtain and discussion some as well to some feedback.

I'd really like to see some more "gimick" fights. The great part of 2.0 is certain builds excel at certain things. For example Joe Menotti had a great setup for channeling shield when fighting. I'd like to see more monsters being no effect to normal and silver (or reduced to 1). And have tricks needed to beat them. Threshold, specific damage types, shattering their armor. Those kind of fights where you have an npc wading in wading into a group work really well in 2.0. (They felt stupid in 1.3). This is especially useful with events that have a bad npc to pc ratio. I'm happy to help craft some of these fights if you need assistance. (Not that I'm some kind of master monster stater but I've seen a few things work well)

Well, this was only our first event of the season. But I do myself enjoy gimick fights more then straight up fights (I am not the best fighter and would rather challenge people with a mechanical fight). If you want to share with me some ideas, cards, or whatnot; would definitely consider them. I know we are only scratching the surface of 2.0 stuff and most of us are still trying to get our heads around it (new skills and inchants).

I spent some time actively looking for the golden foxes hidden throughout the site but, I didn't find any. I really love that there was stuff going on in town that didn't take any npcs. This is a trick we do at Somi a lot. But, I didn't find any. Maybe next time we can see more stuff hidden around you get folks excited about hunting down stuff.

There were two versions and perhaps I explained it poorly. There were palmed sized golden animals AND npc fox to chase down. There were twenty six golden animals hidden; half were hidden Friday night and the other half were hidden Saturday morning. 15 were turned in. There were quite a few in the back half of camp that didnt get explored yet, perhaps a mistake with us not using rustic cabins is this was further then people wanted to walk. I like NPC-less mods as well, it helps mask wait times, entertains people, and whatnot.

The fox hunt was to be chased down (will comment on your running part below) and collect a thing. I kinda figured once wind got out on the scavenger hunt that a few would run around and collect a bunch; and foxes would be a balancing to that. It was also meant to be a NPC boredom / something they could run on their own. I will admit this one didn't go how I wanted. One, us run running. Two foxes didn't come out as much as I had envisioned, especially later in the event due to NPCs being used for mods. That and it didn't serve my goal very well (see next paragraph) cause the foxes rarely made it farther then the tavern-ish area.

Also we tried something different with our plot planning; we laid out goals for the event. One of mine was to get people to explore the new camp; ultimately both the golden animal hunt and fox hunt were with this goal in mind, something that was not very threatening and made you explore rather then hunker in the tavern.

Your "games" have come such a far way. I remember watching a high experienced player robbing a newer player of a win in the arena. That wasn't a good feeling. These games took all kinds of skills, several of which folks already had in real life. That's very inclusive. I hope you expand on the idea of finding stuff, or small minor games to play. We were hanging out in the tavern a lot. Feels like a missed opportunity to not have the puzzle master have some pre setup puzzles that could turn right into some kind of reward. So folks could entertain themselves in the tavern.

Yeah I agree. People will feel like there is less wait time or boredom if there is "something" to do in the meantime. We will put our heads together and try to think of some things (without it just being the same thing over and over). The plus side that we annually do a faire festival style of event is we have learned and adapted some. The only thing I didn't like from my personal side is I was way behind on my scheduled games (like hours).

I want to talk about playing a character with back moves in your game for a second. It's not a great experience, and we for sure have similar problems in South Michigan. It's a problem with the style of mods we have. I went on probably 6 combat mods. 3 of them took place in a functional hallways. This is unavoidable. Not much you can do about that. One of them took place the bottom of the pit and it was chaotic. I did get a good chance to use some of my skills there since folks were turning around a lot. But, there were defenses on some of those cards. So all weekend I waited to use my doom blow only to have it phased by some non hero bad guy. Additionally, I did manage to sneak around on some monsters but, I guess they were immune to paralysis, which should be super uncommon but, I'm probably just unlucky.

Two others took place in open fields, the kind of fights Rogues should excel at. One of these fights had a bunch of kyn, so it's a bit more understandable they are hyper aware. The other had fire elementals, which I do not imagine should be hyper aware. However, during both of these fights I pretty much couldn't get behind folks, I watched other Rogues struggle (Chandler, Jared, T.C.) as well. During the Fire elemental fight, I had to pretty much just walk Fire elementals into groups of people since the npcs would have rather gotten attacked by 3 people who swing 5-8's then let me see their back. (Which is really great that I have such control over the battle field because folks don't want to be backstabbed.) I typically talk to folks npcing for me about how it's important to show your back sometimes. This is especially true for dumb creatures like elementals. I have 215 xp in Rogue skills, probably 175 of that is back facing powers. I'm lucky in that I have a high level character and a fair amount of front facing ability too. But, for lower level folks and/or pure Rogues this isn't an option. Generally it's a good idea to consider fun of the players over realism. Sure, things should be super duper self preserving but, that doesn't always make a fun card to fight. I think this is a super large reason why we don't see a ton of pure rogues at higher levels.

I will say it again and again. Rogue is the hardest class to play in alliance. More then any class it depends on personal skill, speed, and opportunity. I would love to hear more the encounter about the non hero bad guy phasing it. I think more traps or locked boxes what not are fairly short coming as well in general larp wise for rogue feeling play. Nevermind half of the monsters being immune to poison/alternation as well for the alchemy rogue. It's rough. I have had rogue kind of plots in the past year that just get stormed through by the fighter types. When it comes to mods, some of it is more PC tactics help hinder (being clumped together) help prevent easy angles. It is food for thought and we will discuss it some at our plot meetings.

Also bare in mind, we as a plot team are still adjusting to balancing (heance why transforms were down).Did you find monsters to have too many defenses? Information and your thoughts on this I would find highly useful so we can nail the balance more regularly. I think there is room on improvement on npc coaching and description on our end; elementals are usually "dumb" and loosely lock on.

I do know there was at least one stealth mod that a bunch of rogues killed it on. I can tell you we didn't hear or see you until you were on top of us. And some of them were belly crawling under the houses!

Wait times seemed pretty high. Especially for mods that were short. We waited a bit, walked 10 minutes and a lot of mods were just 2 or 3 waves of stuff. Might I make a suggestion to help cut wait times down. Get a bunch of Envelopes. Write the mod description and layout on full piece of paper, with information about treasure. Print out cards on white index cards, pack them in the envelope, and write the name of the mod on the envelope. When folks come, you pass out the envelope and you're ready to go. Maybe that'll help? It takes a bit more up front time.

Yeah this is something I think we are aware of and disappointed with our performance in this area. We need to get better about being able to run each others mods. I don't think overall that was the issue (for the most part). There were times we struggled to NPC to PC ratio. This isn't that you guys out-numbered us (which is always true), but that there more then twice I had gone to prep a mod that I needed a few npcs and go down and they are all gone with someone else. So in some ways is more NPC management. I am sure it was NPC volunteering "Do you need me" and us always saying yes rather then I only need 1-2. I will take fault and do better on directing the team some on this next time.

We also need to find a way for the PC community to be more inclusive and bring groups 4-6; we have tried things in the past (mist curses, but seem to make things less inclusive). We want people have a good time, but it really sucks when only two-three people down on the que board for X mods. Maybe higher priority on the que list for larger groups (and not wanting every mod to become a town mod)? I wouldn't mind input or ideas here as well.

It felt like every other mod had someone who was running away. I spent 30 minutes chasing down a running away person. It's not super fun to do but, it is something that can be needed from time to time. While certainly more realistic, what does having some creature running away that the players need to chase down add to the game so much that it's needed more than once in a while? Not everyone can run fast, or even run. I'm lucky that I have enough stamina that I could keep moving. I'm also not everyone. Just something to consider.

I do realize that I had two flee monsters set amongst my mods. The first being the foxes and that was the challenge as they had no offensive abilities. In regards to the kin when the town came to take vengeance was if the Monkey King would know. There was some confusion amonst my directions and I had more flee on their last pop when there was suppose to be only one fleeing. To what it adds, is outcomes for later mods. But overall I can promise you, it is still rare to have flee'ing / chase down monsters overall.

I'm super sorry we did the thing we hate when players do it to us, and back loaded a bunch of stuff on the end of the event. We'll try to avoid that.

I had a ton of fun. Maybe if I can schedule it, I'll check out one of the state land events because I'm itching to play more. Keep it up folks you've grown a lot in the year I took off.

I am starting to re-think our rolling re-mem. At first it seemed to work good (maybe a 1.3 thing). It was a tool for PCs to control their resource so there wasn't a Saturday afternoon lull because they had no skills and could play more during day light then pitch darkness. I think for the last few events, I had PCs tell me they hadn't re-memed yet on Saturday night PCs are sometimes like weird junkies were they feel like they need to unload all their skills to feel productive. I think I heard that you guys were trying a new system of mem at 2pm and would be curious to hear how that goes. We don't always through out a big monster or town fight every event either because the game just feels very predictable then.

Thanks again for coming up and sorry for the crappy drive home. I am happy to see you guys come up and in play again.

 

[Alkalin3]

There were two versions and perhaps I explained it poorly. There were palmed sized golden animals AND npc fox to chase down. There were twenty six golden animals hidden; half were hidden Friday night and the other half were hidden Saturday morning. 15 were turned in. There were quite a few in the back half of camp that didnt get explored yet, perhaps a mistake with us not using rustic cabins is this was further then people wanted to walk. I like NPC-less mods as well, it helps mask wait times, entertains people, and whatnot.

The fox hunt was to be chased down (will comment on your running part below) and collect a thing. I kinda figured once wind got out on the scavenger hunt that a few would run around and collect a bunch; and foxes would be a balancing to that. It was also meant to be a NPC boredom / something they could run on their own. I will admit this one didn't go how I wanted. One, us run running. Two foxes didn't come out as much as I had envisioned, especially later in the event due to NPCs being used for mods. That and it didn't serve my goal very well (see next paragraph) cause the foxes rarely made it farther then the tavern-ish area.

Also we tried something different with our plot planning; we laid out goals for the event. One of mine was to get people to explore the new camp; ultimately both the golden animal hunt and fox hunt were with this goal in mind, something that was not very threatening and made you explore rather then hunker in the tavern.

Nope. That makes sense. I scoured where the pcs were staying a ton Friday and Saturday. I didn't go out into the woods or explore other cabins. With that goal in mind, I might have.

I will say it again and again. Rogue is the hardest class to play in alliance. More then any class it depends on personal skill, speed, and opportunity. I would love to hear more the encounter about the non hero bad guy phasing it. I think more traps or locked boxes what not are fairly short coming as well in general larp wise for rogue feeling play. Nevermind half of the monsters being immune to poison/alternation as well for the alchemy rogue. It's rough. I have had rogue kind of plots in the past year that just get stormed through by the fighter types. When it comes to mods, some of it is more PC tactics help hinder (being clumped together) help prevent easy angles. It is food for thought and we will discuss it some at our plot meetings.

From what I understand of west coast games, that isn't the case. I've talked a lot about how they play rogues there. I think our style of game is particularly damaging to the rogue play style.

I'm not asking for rogues to be super easy to play. But, I think taking into account the weekend, and monster intellegnce goes a long way. Are regular fire elementals really smart enough to avoid exposing their back?

Also bare in mind, we as a plot team are still adjusting to balancing (heance why transforms were down).Did you find monsters to have too many defenses? Information and your thoughts on this I would find highly useful so we can nail the balance more regularly. I think there is room on improvement on npc coaching and description on our end; elementals are usually "dumb" and loosely lock on.

Generally no. This just happened to be the mod I was willing to commit skills on after saving them all weekend. It wasn't really a problem but, I was using it to help explain the nuisances of playing a rogue.

I do know there was at least one stealth mod that a bunch of rogues killed it on. I can tell you we didn't hear or see you until you were on top of us. And some of them were belly crawling under the houses!

Sad I missed it.

Yeah this is something I think we are aware of and disappointed with our performance in this area. We need to get better about being able to run each others mods. I don't think overall that was the issue (for the most part). There were times we struggled to NPC to PC ratio. This isn't that you guys out-numbered us (which is always true), but that there more then twice I had gone to prep a mod that I needed a few npcs and go down and they are all gone with someone else. So in some ways is more NPC management. I am sure it was NPC volunteering "Do you need me" and us always saying yes rather then I only need 1-2. I will take fault and do better on directing the team some on this next time.

We offered to npc on the last mods of the night. We should have been better about this. Maybe a pc schedule form for folks to do a shift would help out? I don't know. It's a hard problem to get folks to jump the fence. I don't have a good solution.

We also need to find a way for the PC community to be more inclusive and bring groups 4-6; we have tried things in the past (mist curses, but seem to make things less inclusive). We want people have a good time, but it really sucks when only two-three people down on the que board for X mods. Maybe higher priority on the que list for larger groups (and not wanting every mod to become a town mod)? I wouldn't mind input or ideas here as well.

I don't know. I wouldn't mind a currency. You npc a shift, you can cut in line. Encourage folks to come to do you and do stuff.

I do realize that I had two flee monsters set amongst my mods. The first being the foxes and that was the challenge as they had no offensive abilities. In regards to the kin when the town came to take vengeance was if the Monkey King would know. There was some confusion amonst my directions and I had more flee on their last pop when there was suppose to be only one fleeing. To what it adds, is outcomes for later mods. But overall I can promise you, it is still rare to have flee'ing / chase down monsters overall.

I actually wasn't even considering the foxes. It happened on the Monkey King fight, and later with the Dryads.

I am starting to re-think our rolling re-mem. At first it seemed to work good (maybe a 1.3 thing). It was a tool for PCs to control their resource so there wasn't a Saturday afternoon lull because they had no skills and could play more during day light then pitch darkness. I think for the last few events, I had PCs tell me they hadn't re-memed yet on Saturday night PCs are sometimes like weird junkies were they feel like they need to unload all their skills to feel productive. I think I heard that you guys were trying a new system of mem at 2pm and would be curious to hear how that goes. We don't always through out a big monster or town fight every event either because the game just feels very predictable then.

I kept my mouth shut about it. I don't want to steam roll you folks with our ideas, or make you feel like I'm grand standing about how we are the best. We're not, and a lot of our ideas don't pay off. I was talking to Joe C who struggles with the same problem I do, which is never use your skills. Rolling Remem compounds this problem. (I went to bed with a full Saturday list of skills). It kind of encourages you to stay up late and find things to spend your skills on.

We've only done one event with 2pm remem. But, I have to say I like it a lot. It indicates to players that they can do stuff Friday with out worry of running out of stuff Saturday. We're not forced to have a super giant Saturday night fight so folks can blow their skills and go to bed at a reasonable time. No one is sitting around Saturday during the day because they're out, and that's a time when everyone is awake and not tired. We've had less mods of people just trying to find something to do because they have left over stuff. Part of it is an agreement about event pacing between the pcs and plot.

 

[PYKE]

Having a lot of preparation and extra things to gather for the event made the week stressful. Coming in Friday night I was looking to get info and try to meet the new adventures. Didn't care much for mods as I did food but the ones I did were either too many people coming out of boredom or just a town fight (kin) that came out of people getting ressed. I wanted to relax and enjoy some down time and the tavern let me do that. going past the tavern seemed like a waste of time because of not knowing where the in-game area was and ended for mods. Next event should be better with actual cabins.

I Think having a npc shift would help with the wait time and will plan on that with my group.

I would like to get feed back on food. As it was my first time cooking for a full meal. I did learn alot but still would like to know what people enjoy and what I can do to make it easier.

I would like to see mods where tools are needed to accomplish the mod. using production and resources are missing. even just not norm use of a potion to open a portal or contact to see a writing. just a thought.

Jared

 

[Cory Walker]

I would like to see mods where tools are needed to accomplish the mod. using production and resources are missing. even just not norm use of a potion to open a portal or contact to see a writing. just a thought.

I think this is a good suggestion, especially with the more flexible crafting system.

 

[Anique]

First and foremost: I had a great time.

My new char is vastly different from my old. It is a challenge to stay in her mindset. Certain people intentionally trying to make me break character is a pain in the ***... you know who you are.
Even though I am not 1st level, I am a new character. I have no coin, no friends, no investment in any plot line. I think being new and yet experienced gives me a unique perspective on New Player content and issues. Most of which I addressed with Corey at the event.

Food. New players start with 12 copper. Food is ridiculously expensive. Not being able to buy food is a very real problem. I intentionally took a new player with me on a 2 man mod Friday night with the goal of being able to afford breakfast (so sue me for meta gaming this). We made 1 silver each. I, not being truly new, had brought breakfast because I knew this would be a problem. He hadn't and of course I offered to share. Pyke worked out some kind of trade deal so he could eat (thank you). Regardless, this should not be a problem. I know our economy is severely out of whack when it comes to food (1 meal = 2000+ chickens?) so I proposed a different idea to Corey. Make it a point to run a special Friday night mod for any new characters. Make sure they get at least enough treasure to buy food. What the mod is doesn't even matter. It's a simple welcome to alliance mod. They get to use skills, ask questions, and eat breakfast.

Playtesting. I am testing out a build that couldn't have existed in the old version. Or trying to. I used 1 skill all weekend. There simply wasn't the opportunity to use anything else. It wasn't applicable. (I have a very defensive build and was never hit by anything that I could have used those defenses on). Since we only have 1 more playtest event, I would love to have an additional "note" on our IBGAs that is a request for a certain style of mod. ie: I want to test out my backattack skills, I want to test my defensive skills, etc. Hopefully plot will design encounters specific to these requests and invite those characters requesting it on the mod. Ironically, the one mod that would have tested my build, was the kin party tpk, that I had walked out of before it got ugly I doubt my char being there would have made it a win, but she would have at least gotten to use a handful of skills.

Inclusiveness. There were at least 4 times I was told I couldn't go on a mod. The first was the rogue mod, and honestly, that was a good choice on their part and I have no quarrel with that denial (I am NOT sneaky). The other 3 were "super secret" mods that they didn't want to take everyone on. I get having secret things you take a small group on. I have no issue with that. However, on all 3 occasions, about 90% of the town went, leaving ~4 of us sitting in the tavern not doing anything. The 3rd time this happened, I went to plot to make sure they knew it was NOT a town mod, and people were sitting around bored. (Corey was aware of this one and had something for us, so THANK YOU COREY). I did address this in game with Soro as well. I'm just mentioning it here so everyone can be more aware of the situation. If you don't know about it, you can't fix it. Taking a small group is fine. People choosing to stay behind is fine. Telling the same few people over and over they can't participate (and not having any other option for them) sucks.

Wait times. Virtually everything I did was Corey's plot. Corey was also running a lot of the feast games. That man never stopped moving. Thank you for all you do. Rather than rant, I'll just give suggestions. I like the envelope idea mentioned above. I also think having someone (Bev maybe) be available for any quick talky style mods were be great. You want to purchase a scroll from x npc in y guild? Well they aren't available, but their assistant (Bev) can help you with that. Thank you move along. With that, I also propose a slight change to the white board. Instead of putting your name under a certain runner, just do a list. You name, goal/mod, potential runner. Each runner grabs the group highest on the list that they can run, even if it's not specifically theirs. Why? ie: At one point I wanted to purchase a map. I thought it was Corey's plot. Apparently the map maker is actually Chris. Chris is busy, he sent Joe. Joe had no idea what we were looking for, but did have something else, that we couldn't afford. It was 5 gold and the 2 of us combined (first event for both) had a combined worldly wealth of <2 gold. Short version: we waited hours to accomplish nothing. If we had random person that could have talked to us hours earlier, this failure wouldn't have stung nearly so much. I think another huge part of wait time is 100% on the pc side. There were a number of times people were signed up for multiple mods. They would go off on mod 1, then mod 2 would pop before they were back, but the group didn't want to go without them, so everyone waited, which also pushed back all other mods. As pcs I think we need to make it a point to not wait for every single person every single time. If the mod is ready? set some kind of time limit. You have 10 minutes to leave for the mod. If the other people aren't back yet? They miss out. I love that we don't want to leave an interested party out, but sometimes you have to choose. Either that, or only be on the board for one mod at a time. When you get back, put up another request, or join a group that is still waiting.

Favorites:

Everything jungle. I specifically did not want personal plot. I certainly did not anticipate things spiraling out of control so quickly. I'm vastly amused by how things have turned out so far. (And confused why Eragon is still alive).

Sunseeker pointing out who Eragon was Friday night. Sorry/not sorry I woke up the entire room.

Kin bonding. You guys are great. I loved our conversation. (Shortly after the retribution murderfest in the Jungle, the town ran off and left 4 kin sitting in the tavern...)

Winning the gauntlet. That wasn't supposed to happen. I am not nimble, and have a giant tail to hit.

Moral Compasses.

Getting yelled at. So, this may not seem like it would be a favorite, but it means I am playing my character right. I'm glad at least one of those people seemed to understand my side of it once they calmed down a bit.

Having Justice on my side. If I knew what Justice was, this would be even more amusing. (PS Ahlana hated and avoided Justice, so this is even funnier).

Accidentally being included in the resonance, and knowing things about who was there that no one else did.

I wish that I had known what the golden animals were. I saw a handful of them and didn't touch them because I presumed they were part of some mod I didn't know about.

 

[Grianadhmad]

I intentionally took a new player with me on a 2 man mod Friday night with the goal of being able to afford breakfast. We made 1 silver each.

This is one hundred and thirteen percent my fault, as I am assuming the mod in question was the fungus one? I was asked to fill in a mod since the primary plotrunners were busy and I wasn't sure on all the details aside from you bringing a new player (thank you for that btw), much less how treasure policy worked and what I should have awarded. All part of the learning curve for joining Plot Team, I suppose, but I still feel bad now that I know what you were trying to accomplish.

I don't want to say too much / can't say too much else about the weekend as I was NPCing and didn't spend a lot of time hobnobbing with the PCs during noncombats, but I did enjoy the various interactions we did have -- being chased down by Brett over and over as a mystic fox, and later eating cookies and raw steak out of people's hands ; the goblin mod; definitely the wylderkin mods; and the poison vendor's escort late Saturday night right before I had to head home.

I've also said before but have no problem saying again, thank you to Brigit for all the GM work and prep into getting the location and also putting together the feast, and thank you to Bev for pretty much non-stop logistics work all weekend long!

 

[Chad Schaffer]

Jumping in kinda late, it's been a wild week:

Had a great time at the event, even missing Friday night it felt full and engaging.

Really enjoyed the different tactics used by differing NPC groups. Its easy to RP a group of Kin or a group of bored guards, but having that difference affect the combat really makes an encounter for me.

I love that the scope of the world isn't flat, mod to mod. Watching the Monkey King's Forces count the adventurers and run off was awesome, finding out that a group of other adventurers hooked the same mod after us and found the stuff WE DID in the forest was awesome too! Its easy to run mods, hard to stitch them together into a cohesive world.

Speaking of a cohesive world, I LOVE THE POLITICAL CLIMATE. I decided to dive into the political sphere this event and didn't even make it past deep conversations with players about alliances and intentions! The layers here are amazing and I am really looking forward to walking this path further.

The contests I watched were great fun, and watching Finch finally humbled by Aragon(sp?) was a feat to behold! The Feast was also fantastic, I have no idea how Brigit ran plot AND made dinner, the concept blows my mind, much less how both turned out great.

I love every puzzle. I love that there is a guy who's whole thing is giving out puzzles. I was in denial about this guy the first time I met him, I have embraced him fully now. I will do all the puzzles, we are going to be best friends.

The new camp is great, and the plot team made great use of it! Players may not realize how hard it is to run an event at a new camp; there are a lot of tiny questions that need to be answered at the worst time, you don't know where the plot person you were supposed to meet up with went because they found some magical secret spot to run the mod, you can't find that one prop you need because there is no set organization at monster camp, and someone just broke a chair...

It's super stressful, but the plot team ran super smooth. Shout out to this amazing feat!

I agree with Chris, OEF was late to pull the trigger on Saturday, which is awful.. we'll be better.

Much love, looking forward to May!