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I do talk a good fight
 
Group: System Moderators
Last Login: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 9:41 PM
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There's always something, isn't there?!? In this case, several somethings, though none of them too major. I thought. It's just not possible to have "the perfect LRP event", because perfection is impossible in the real world.
* Over-ambition. As ever, much of what went wrong could be put down to over-ambition. I wanted 3 x 8-mile (ish) hikes up hill & down dale. It turns out that while you can do an 8-mile hike in 3 hours or a little more, even over the Berwyns, once you add encounters & running back & forth & stuff an 8-mile adventure may be significantly more than 6 hours. So most or all of the adventures overran a little - not a huge problem most of the time, and better than underrunning. But this also meant that players and crew alike were pretty exhausted after 3 days of hiking & adventuring, much of it in inclement weather (see below), and 3 nights of partying. Admittedly we all seemed to enjoy ourselves... It also meant, unfortunately, that we had to cut short the routes of Adventures #2 and #3 slightly, though again the weather was the main culprit for that as some areas became unusable (again, see below).
* The weather. Gah. This wasn't nice. Those 3 routes, up and down hills I'd wandered over many times in the previous weeks while scouting potential adventure locations, were suddenly much less pleasant in driving rain, drizzle, wind, and cold. Plus, what had in the previous weeks been mud became ankle-deep pools; what had been slightly marsh ground became full-on swamp criss-crossed with streams; what had been full-on swamp, criss-crossed with streams but with the occasional safe crossing point, remained full-on swamp but was now criss-crossed with raging torrents. Walking all day in the rain and cold is inherently more tiring than walking all day in pleasant weather. One of the major locations of Adventure #2 -- a spot of gorge-walking down 4 waterfalls, culminating in a lovely rocky flat area with standing stones & a thick dark grey boulder that was going to be phys-repping a "lodestone" -- was entirely inaccessible, in that we couldn't even cross the aforementioned stream-turned-to-raging-torrent to get to it, so we had "bog-men" rather than the planned "Ur-men". That was a bit disappointing, but still worked, just about. Adventure #3 suffered too; I had planned to finish it by a different waterfall, along an underground river & into an old mining complex I'd found, but (a) we ran out of time on the Monday & would've had trouble getting there in time anyway and (b) I was fairly sure it, too, would be inaccessible due to flooding & weather by then.
* The drying room. What a luxury, I thought, having a drying room that will sort all our wet kit out overnight... The site manager had gone on about its effectiveness, but it didn't perform as expected -- one of the radiators wasn't working, which didn't help, and I suspect that the materials of LRP kit are generally just soggier & heavier & slower-drying than the high-tech fabrics used in the modern outdoor gear that the site manager usually dries in there. So most of us were in wet kit for most of the weekend.
* We forgot some props. This always happens. It's annoying though. Bridie forgot the troll's upper arm pieces for Adventure #1. I forgot the treasure (ancient vampire's grave goods) for Adventure #2. I forgot the backgammon & chess for Tavern #3. Not a big deal. We improvised.
* Party missing stuff. We built a kind of dark altar thingummy from branches & a sheep's skull, but Party #2 came up the hill at a different place & so didn't spot it -- not their fault. Fortunately Jenko nipped back & dismantled it before any locals decided there'd been Satanic sheep sacrifices, and Pete (party ref) improvised.
* Crew/player briefing. This is often a thorny one. Basically I need to overhaul the rules a little anyway, & make certain the crew & players have all read them. Mostly this is about ensuring that everyone understands the way that magic works in the game, even those who don't use it. I tend to kinda assume, without really thinking about it, that people have read me or heard me rabbiting on about how the magic is all roleplayed, its effectiveness based on how the sorcerer & victim choose to roleplay it rather than strict rules. I need to make that more explicit.
* Adventure #2 finale too tough? Still not sure about this one. We make this game balance stuff up as we go along, obviously, since we've only run 3 events now with these rules... and we've found that previously, when we designed a rock-hard encounter that we thought would kill a couple of party members and maybe even wipe them all out, the party just more than rose to the occasion, demonstrating virtuouso levels of combat skill & roleplaying to defeat the foe by any means necessary. (The case in point for this is probably last year's Adventure #2, where the final encounter, after the party fought & defeated the already deadly 40' long Ghost Snake, involved all the crew in as much armour as we could find; I was in mail & plate over virtually my entire body, but hadn't quite had time to get my bevor (throat/chin armour) strapped into place, so Jenko leapt over a wall, evaded my halberd, & slit my throat with a dagger -- it was the only part of me that wasn't immune to more-or-less anything the party could throw at me...) So I was kinda hoping that might happen here. It didn't, and we (as crew) paggaed them. I'm going to put that down mostly to lack of party cohesion, but it's equally possible that I set the encounter as too tough; this was exacerbated slightly by the crew/party briefing on magic, or lack thereof (see above). On balance, not a huge problem, though I should probably have ignored one player calling for a Time Out as I hadn't realized another player was still up & scrapping "in another part of the forest." Still, all 4 characters in the party survived, most of them less a fate point or so.
* A couple of the players had to leave early on the Monday, so couldn't crew the Monday adventure. Frustrating, but I guess to be expected.
* Overambition, again. Was 3 hard-fightin' adventures & 3 hard-partyin' taverns in 72 hours too much? I don't think so, on balance, but it was kinda tough to cram all that into a weekend and get some sleep, too. Maybe I'm just getting old.
http://www.hyboriantales.com
PD: Ghostdance ("The most irritating curse I've ever encountered" -- NPC played by H.)
Riftworld: Rossar Kuug ("Clearly mad, because he thinks he's a Com-Trow Skirmisher" - Aela)
Hyborian Tales: Crew, cook, dogsbody, general labourer, toilet cleaner ("Dangerously overoptimistic ref" -- Tom Nowell)
Otherwise usually crew ("Quite spry & fit, & willing to wear a big costume & run around a lot" -- various event organisers)
"My other oversized foam weapon is THE LORD" -- Questionable Content
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Heroic Knight
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Yesterday @ 8:02 PM
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you couldnt control the weather the 3 adventures were all great so is def a good format to stick to 99.99 percent of us had no probs with any of the weekend.
Go tell the Spartans,stranger passing by,that here,obedient to their laws we lie.
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Heroic Knight
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 2:24 PM
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*If people weren't ambitious larp would suck, I went to Hyborian tales specifically for the 8 mile hikes over hill and dale. Timing and distance for linears is always a tricky one, lesson learnt, next time it'll be fine. Certainly I've been drawing up plans on how to try something similar based on what I learned.
*Weather happens, next time I'll make sure my kit is better suited to it. In all honesty we were warned.
"Adventure #3 suffered too; I had planned to finish it by a different waterfall, along an underground river & into an old mining complex I'd found," - You must give me the map reference of this place, or better yet let me adventure there.
*It seemed to work alright Saturday night, otherwise it was something I hadn't planned on having access to anyway, always bring spare socks.
*Meh, it happens.
*That's kinda what happens when you follow what really isn't a path up what almost constitutes a cliff. Had it been placed closer to the wall we nipped over then everything would have been fine.
*Lesson learned, it'll be fine next time. Perhaps including this in the rulebooks will be helpful, as it is I wasn't really sure how my 'magic' worked until I collared you on the second adventure for five minutes.
*I think the key problem here was not fully factoring in the combat capabilities of a couple of the players and including people who were all fresh and energetic (having not walked the linear) on top of the magic brief issue.
*We'd have been awesome regardless of how many people we fought. Seriously though, Luckily it wasn't too many people who had to nip off, if things were stricter with regards to waking up and rolling out they may have been about for more of the linear. We were running rather late that day. As it was just case of adjusting encounters to compensate, things seemed to balance out fine.
*Nah, nobody got themselves into to bad a state from what I recall. Overambition is the way forwards.
__________________________
"It's not Mordenkainen's, it's mine."
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I do talk a good fight
Group: System Moderators
Last Login: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 9:41 PM
Posts: 1,870,
Visits: 5,835
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Jon,
One of the weather casualties was my OS map of the area, I'm afraid (a combination of water and leaking fake blood meant that the entire map was pink and soggy). So grid references are out. But I told Steve (site manager) where the place is, so if you book Nantyr OEC for an event, he should be able to tell you. Or I can show you on an OS map, if you have one & we make it to the same event sometime (I still hope to get along to a Serenity one day).
http://www.hyboriantales.com
PD: Ghostdance ("The most irritating curse I've ever encountered" -- NPC played by H.)
Riftworld: Rossar Kuug ("Clearly mad, because he thinks he's a Com-Trow Skirmisher" - Aela)
Hyborian Tales: Crew, cook, dogsbody, general labourer, toilet cleaner ("Dangerously overoptimistic ref" -- Tom Nowell)
Otherwise usually crew ("Quite spry & fit, & willing to wear a big costume & run around a lot" -- various event organisers)
"My other oversized foam weapon is THE LORD" -- Questionable Content
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Heroic Knight
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 2:24 PM
Posts: 241,
Visits: 367
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Cool, now to begin 'Operation obtain OS map of deepest, darkest Wales.'
Would it be possible to send me contact details for Nantyr OEC at some point? I've got a linear system all ready and waiting to adventure out of it's playtesting grounds at Earlham Park and into the great wide world.
__________________________
"It's not Mordenkainen's, it's mine."
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I do talk a good fight
Group: System Moderators
Last Login: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 9:41 PM
Posts: 1,870,
Visits: 5,835
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Yeah, will do -- poke me at Serenity if I don't get round to it before then. I intend to write up a review of the site soon-ish & I'll put contact details there.
http://www.hyboriantales.com
PD: Ghostdance ("The most irritating curse I've ever encountered" -- NPC played by H.)
Riftworld: Rossar Kuug ("Clearly mad, because he thinks he's a Com-Trow Skirmisher" - Aela)
Hyborian Tales: Crew, cook, dogsbody, general labourer, toilet cleaner ("Dangerously overoptimistic ref" -- Tom Nowell)
Otherwise usually crew ("Quite spry & fit, & willing to wear a big costume & run around a lot" -- various event organisers)
"My other oversized foam weapon is THE LORD" -- Questionable Content
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