This is going to sound silly & down right insulting to some of you, but I have to say that my absolute favorite thing from this event was BEING ABLE TO SLEEP IN! My wife works mornings and she hates getting out of bed, so she's constantly hitting the snooze on her alarm from 7-7:30AM. It always wakes me up forcing me to kick her out of bed.
Then by 8-8:15AMish my kids wake me up because they gotta eat and I gotta cook. I love my kids to death, but it was such a relief to have no one bugging me in the morning. I was in bed by 2-2:30AM both nights and was up around 9-9:30AM both mornings. The last two events I played I couldn't sleep in past 7:30AM. I know I miss stuff by sleeping in, but I don't care. It felt amazing. I'm sure sleeping in is defined as much later than 9:30AM to some people, but that's good enough for me.
Now, actual game-related favorites:
Hanging with Black Forest. Hau, Matt, Mike, Dave, & Tommy--OMG Tommy! We had some great times as always. I've known these guys since '98 (except Hau who I met last year), and they are some of the coolest guys to hang out with OOG & IG. I actually went out for breakfast with them Saturday morning. That's something I have literally never done in all my time playing. I just hardly see these guys anymore so it's nice to spend some OOG time joking around. For weeks leading up to the event we laid out some groundwork for how we wanted to get things done. Other than a few snags (Hau is the new president of Krispy Kreme, LOL!) we really did a great job working together in battles. The RP stuff with Luigie was amazing. Seeing him flip out of Mugg first thing Friday night really had Perwin sweating. I thought there was gonna be some fighting out of that one, but luckily it didn't come to that. The elemental stuff with Luigie was great, too!
Hanging with the hoblings. Perwin is so damn jealous that he's not a hobling, but he was mingling with them trying to find out as much as he could about the Ambassador before he met him.
Pitching my idea to Ambassador Berrybucket. I was nervous about this one leading up to the event, so I took down an idea I've been working on in my head for a long time, wrote down a few pages of notes, and pitched an absolutely amazing IG idea to him. We sat and talked for 15-20 minutes. I'm not going to go into details, but I don't think there has ever been a more profitable idea in the history of hoblings! :lol: I'm really proud of this one, even if nothing comes of it.
The unscaled werewolf encounter. It was dark, and I only had a silver short sword (long was normal). It was BF and a couple others, and we had no business fighting those baddies with such few numbers in such a confined area. I'm the first to admit that I suck at fighting for the most part, but I felt I did decent this event. With the werewolves I didn't really fight much. I was too busy thinking of a way to get BF out of there without us all rez'ing! It got ugly at one point and I had the big bad werewolf reviving behind me with Engler as a "normal" coming at me from the other side. I realized then that I was just going to run away and get help. Engler comes at me with an eviserate, 140 slay, 140 slay, eviserate--magic armor, dodge, dodge, dodge, SEE YA! I look at Auric and said, "We need help." He just yells, "GO!" I took off up the hill, grabbed my liquid light and started screaming and waving it around. I was amazed that no one rez'ed. Hau got his life spell in time, and Tommy & Dave took off in the woods. It was great to go on an encounter that struck true fear into me. It's probably only ever happened 10-12 times at the absolute most in my NERO/Alliance career. I can tell you the first time was walking up a hill as a level 1 rogue & coming face-to-face with the Undoer & his minions. I probably pooed myself a little as I ran away. :lol:
Troll cave mod. Tim (Maddox) & I kept messing around with the trolls. We hit the first wave and Tim shouts out, "Quick, trolls--what's 6x6?" They look at each other and go, "Uhhhh..." Tim quickly replies, "Too late--nausea gas poison!" Haha! I decided to one-up him with the next wave. I say to a troll, "Hey troll, your head is empty!" and replies with something like, "No it's not!" "Feeblemind gas poison--it is now!" :lol: Then the 3rd Tim dominates a troll that laughed at him for running away when he peeked around the corner and then took off. Troll tried to make fun of him, so he dragged the troll over and we beat him down. I know the NPC's had just as much fun with that one as we did.
Selling food has always been a favorite thing of mine to do. It's a bit tricky because a lot of times I leave my weapons behind to do it. In the past at Lindenmere this has resulted in me negotiating with wandering monsters so they wouldn't attack me. Of course I'm never truly without weapons. Gas globes are always on hand, but I always found it more fun to try to sell them food. Sometimes I just would give the NPC free baklava because it's cool to hook them up with it OOG-wise. It also gives them a chance to RP when they are playing a goblin/troll/rat or some other kind of crunchy. I didn't have to worry about that this event, but I had a blast selling to PC's. It's always fun to hear all the stories from folks I never met as they talk about the legendary baklava. The new Perwin cookie was a huge hit--especially with my freeloading teammates! Seriously, if you don't want to go hungry join Black Forest. These guys have probably cost me hundreds of gold in profits since I started bringing baklava up my 2nd or 3rd event. It's all good though.
Mike V's innkeeper also loved the Perwin cookie. It's a cookie that's supposed to be enjoyed with coffee, tea, or hot chocolate. I know I got him extra business from my cookies.
This goes back to the thing about working together with my BF guys, but the final wave battle was awesome. It felt like old times the way we found the big bad guy, pulled him away from everything else, and proceeded to beat him down. Hau and I worked well together rogue dancing some NPC's, but we both got in behind the guy and handed out a beating. I love a good team effort like that.
Attacking the order elementals. Luigie has a serious problem with elementals. We all knew OOG that we didn't stand a chance against these guys, but that doesn't matter IG. Luigie was going to attack and we had to help. Period, end of story. Glad I didn't eat any of those arcane imprisons! I guess they like bakers better than cooks. Again, I'm sure the NPC's enjoyed this encounter, especially since I'm sure they had no idea it was going to be violent!
Crazy Pickle. Renee, I love your MWE. There are times I didn't want to laugh IG and had to just walk away. You're sitting there mocking Berrybucket and I knew I couldn't laugh at it. I'm trying to get all friendly with the guy! You told me to sit there and get in trouble with you, but I had to go outside and start laughing. You making fun of him with that little plastic horse was hysterical.
The folks that hung out with BF at times--Brian/Ignatius, Emily/Khaadij, Justin/Tetzu to name a few. I enjoy RPing with you guys, and also joking around OOG at other times.
Hey Robb, nice bind on Ignatius. Haha! We don't really hang out IG much, but we did get to RP a bit the couple times I needed to stop by the mages guild. Nathan has definitely come a long way since you started playing him (before you quit for a few years).
Finding out Andros & I go waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back OOG. I used to hang out in a comic store in '93 when I was 13 playing Magic The Gathering all day. He came down every once in a while, especially during a time period when he was alpha testing a card game called Guardians. I got involved with it. I remember him teaching us how to play. Back then we were only using these pieces of paper glued onto card backs, but eventually we all bought boxes and would play that & M:TG. It was a lot of fun! He also came out to Laser Quest a bunch back when I was there all the time, but I haven't really seen him since. It was cool to catch up with someone that I've known that long and didn't even realize it.
I hope NPC camp enjoyed the case of Monster. I'll try to bring one up every event I attend. I figured it would be a good way to keep you guys & gals going.
I'm sure there is more, but that's all I got right now.
