Ok, to try to summarize...
Things I liked:
Drama and epicness- from my perspective, it was an intensem dramatic, climactic and definitive end to a plotline I have been very interested in from the beginning, while I could see how some people could be disinterested with the weekend being 90% Dominion, for me it worked- because I wanted those F@#%ers gone. Just like in the movies, there was a fight, the heroes started to get the crap kicked out of them, then came back and rallied and won. The whole barracks/tavern episode was epic, and the drama with the Duke in the final wave battle was awesome. I love a good pissed off PC charge.
Organic hooks- The random damage hooking into the troll lair mod made a lot of sense. I feel bad for the NPCs waiting for us to go do it, but IG it made a lot more sense for us to go back to town and regroup first (especially when we went in and did it later- I was like "Yeah, we would've gotten creamed if we did this when Ivan wanted to"). Also, the ducal army guy resurrecting in the Healer's Guild- I got to see how that tied into a mod the Healer's Guild had already done, the barracks wave battle a little while later, and so on. And my interaction with the PC made the whole thing, to me, seem very natural in it's flow- especially when he stayed with us for the fight. It really felt like the whole thing flowed well, and tore down that PC/NPC barrier.
Reactionary plot- love this stuff. Knowing that mods and stuff affect wave battles- it also gives the battles a little more variation- some were tough, but some seemed like something I could actually handle. Same thing with the mods I was on- one kicked our butts (we barely won), the other we handled cleanly. I don't know everything that caused those variations, but I liked them.
For me, just enough downtime to get to roleplay with my IG friends. Not too hectic, but not too slow (but I think how busy you are is mostly a combo of luck and your own roleplay). But I actually liked the tempo.
Only thing stopping it from a perfect score? The debauchles at the barracks battle. Some of it was IG misunderstanding, but some of it was not. The OOG confusion at the beginning (although now I know why it all happened), for me seemed to stem from a combination of two things:
1- OOG NPC told us (while we were all still IG in our minds) "You need to be here now."
2- using a different than normal mechanism to move us to the scene of battle. Usually we all gather, then there's a "Hold: ok, now you walk 20 minutes out of town until you reach the barracks. 3-2-1 layon." This time, it was a "OK, the instant you reach this point you are now instantly 20 minutes away." If I had realized that, my IG actions would have been different. It wasn't the normal format.
Added to that the IG confusing things, and it made my brain hurt. I didn't take off much for that, though, because in retrospect, I now understand why things were done the way they were and in the end it just made the whole thing more dramatic.
Oh, and I kinda saw the Duke and Keegan show up before the hold in the rain, and then suddenly when we went in the basement and got back IG, they were gone. No problem, I just said IG that my character had a vision of them arriving.
Ok, for me, that IS summarizing. Anyways, overall, loved it. It was epic and climactic, and I really felt the closure.
-Sheila
But it made sense IG for him to be around, and Broomis and Sonia and Keegan. That leaves a lot less plot people at desk. But the plot people pretty much have to play these parts, as they are the ones that no all the background and story. And with war weekends, in the interest of making it epic, a lot of times random fishbowls and goofy fun get put ont he backburner.
