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Squire
 
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Sunday, July 04, 2010 10:02 AM
Posts: 48,
Visits: 655
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A brand new event, featuring upper class Regency gatherings and aliens attacks.
Premise is based around Jane Austen novels, Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and presumably pretty much anything else that could logically be squeezed in.
Plot
Friday night, after a late start, we all gathered for our dinner. We were announced by our MC, introduced to the hosts, and directed to the dinner table. Turned out that one of our guests was a vampire, so after some vampire hunting we retired to bed and woke up the next morning for some civilised events. We were disrupted by some faeries who were most impolite in disrupting a civilised game of croquet. Political machinations as some players negotiated a deal to resolve the dispute in a faerie lands. So, this resolved, we returned to our social activities, had some good natured combat games and some good natured wagers, discussed business and current affairs. The fine gentleman Mr. Kipling gave us some of his exceedingly good lemon drizzle cake, all the time denouncing the evil Battenburg family. The event proceeded in a very civilised manner with the innovative idea of a "buffet", and a terrible faux pas when it turned out that the servants had brought us some Battenburg, resulting quite an outburst from Mr. Kipling.
We later proceeded to dance, and as we reached the final dance, we were attacked by vicious bloodthirsty creatures. Fortunately we had a number of skilled swordsmen and men armed with pistols, and soon saw them off. But there were too many of them! They kept attacking us! We managed to find a weakness and that made our lives easier. Terribly, many people lost their lives. Fortunately we had the means to resurrect them. This did lead to a number of our group being under the control of the fae. Sunday was a much more civilised affair, and we were rather surprised to see a marriage already.
Excellent aspects
The setting worked very well. Having a setting of a lodge near Bristol, in early July representing a lodge near Bristol in Early July certainly helped with suspension of disbelief. All the players were fantastic at remaining in character, although I think people found it rather hard to quite stick to the attitudes. And we had an actual band and proper formal dances. The band didn't dress up but our caller did keep in character, and they quite sensibly ran away terrified when the aliens attacked (I was actually too busy fighting to see this so this is based on hearsay).
The calls system worked very well ("Ha!" for a single point of damage, "Take that!" four double damage). The envelopes for medicine also seemed to work (we ran out but only towards the end of combat and refs were on hand to deal with that).
The alien physreps were amazing! Full body latex Gigeresque costumes.
Problems
Saturday afternoon seemed a little quiet and subdued.
The large number of magical or otherwise touched people did make being remarkable a little more mundane than it perhaps should be. Catering on the fist evening was a minor issue, and there were certain problems with balance. Combat was far too lethal and surgery was far too likely to go horribly wrong. But these issues are minor and mostly the sort of problems one can expect on a first event.
The system could possibly use more merits and flaws. It seems that almost everyone had a disfiguring scar. Or was weak or foreign (yes, "foreign" is a flaw in the system), or the wrong religion, and there were many of us with an education in natural philosophy which meant that there was a mass of us trying to deduce the nature of the monster we just killed.
Overall
The event was tremendous fun. Excellent costumes and roleplay, a plot that kept us occupied, and a lot of great work from the crew.
edit And I've just realised I got the name the wrong way round. It's Masquerades and Massacres. Doh!
Maelstrom: Kekoa of the wayward scholars King Stephan of the New World Jack Nithsdale.
M&M: Samuel Taylor St. John
Nyctophobia: Eduardo Morratelli
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Champion
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 12:41 PM
Posts: 268,
Visits: 3,969
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Just throwing in a perspective from another player at this event.
The Site
Goblin Combe is a lovely site and very well equipped. The bunks were adult sized and toilets and showers were clean and tidy. Showers were hot and there was even a lift to the first floor for anyone who needed it. The hall was fairly small, but managed to hold all the players for the opening banquet. There was a large field and a set of woods. The only real problem was the gravel area between the two buildings which proved difficult to walk or fight on and a rather dangerous drop where the one building cut into the ground.
Rules
As the event was low on stats, characters creation was simple with a mix of up and downtime abilities built on a three level system with blocks to prevent new characters starting at level 3, though I think some special cases were allowed. Combat system was very simple as stated in the other review. I found that this type of IC damage call helped maintain the role-playing experience as it fitted the atmosphere of the game.
Communication
Responses on rules and other queries from the game organisers was quick and efficient. I had one or two questions and email response was within 24 hours.
Plot
The event plot was fairly low level and, apart from the main combat on Saturday night, didn't intrude for anyone more interested in other things. The majority of plot was player driven. This may have partly been due to much of the player base coming from Maelstrom. I tend to prefer an event with plot and found this balance between event and character driven plot to be ideal.
Costume
NPC costumes consisted of servants, local ladies and gentlemen, a number of fae and aliens (from the Aliens film series). Servants had matching waistcoats, ladies and gentlemen were dressed for the background and the aliens costumes were highly convincing especially as they were used in semi-darkness as per the original two films. So all of excellent quality.
Overall
Its very difficult to write a balanced conclusion without gushing. The professionalism of event organisers, crew and even the hired entertainment (who maintained the IC pretense even to the point of reacting in fear when the monsters attacked) was of the highest standard. The players remained completely immersed for the duration of play with and absolute minimum of drop out for OC converstaion. There are some glitches in the rules, but these are up for open discussion.
I think the final thing I have to say about this event is after it finished there has already been a demand for more events and multiple offers from people to run player lead events. The player base seems to be hugely dedicated and we all had a fantastic time.
Ian
M&M: Commodore Matthew Fallow
Riftworld: Lt Jason "Jigs" Gee
Ian
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M&M: Commodore Matthew Fallow RN
Riftworld: Defender Maccharius
ex Lt Jason "Jigs" Gee
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