36 hour - In Hindsight

Thought I'd post a more specific review of the 36 hour as a GM. Just in the form of a sort of good memories/things to do better next time list. The plan was the party would visit some 80-85% of the rooms, I wanted them to have real choice. In the end they saw some 72% roughly, but all they missed were either fights against different creatures, or a puzzle which wouldn't have been that amazing anyway.

Successes:

• That it worked, people had fun and no one got seriously hurt. The most important result of the weekend.

• The feeling that all the effort, planning, organising and writing was worth it, when talking to people and hearing from them about it afterwards.

• hotpork as a co-GM. Absolutely invaluable and fantastic. Kept things going, kept up the momentum even when things were running behind and getting a little confused. Packed everything as needed even at the end. Couldn't have asked for more from a co-GM on my first 36 hour. Well maybe help with the statting :P.

• How hard my monsters worked considering they were outnumbered.

• How patient the players were with the set up required for some rooms.

• There were no OOC arguments. There was IC conflict, but IC conflict stayed IC, and didn't stop the players enjoying themselves, even if their characters suffered.

• Knightmare in larp form. Making it work, making it fun and making it fit sensibly in a game. My favourite moments were:
  -That the challengers did it properly with their eyes closed.
  -Blaine's complete trust in the party walking him into the combust 10 square when they could have sent him safely around.
  -Raphael's/Chris' face as he realised that damage feedback wasn't dependent of the characters armour, and that the cloud formed Rhegor slowing moving through a swinging blades path meant lots of pain for him.
  -The very Trapt-esque moments involving Monty. The first being caught by the swinging pendulum and knockbacked directly into the path of the oncoming circular saw. Then being recalled back to the start, by an unfortunate trap choice, and lastly being hit by the pendulum once again, but this time forward into swinging blades and a freeze trap.

• The Beast Room. Especially the various roleplay of their respective animals by the players and monsters. The one room I could see turning into a full larp.

• The wind-flag based marble madness-esque Air room. It looked really complicated as we set it up, but watching the players enter the maze and get it instantly filled me with joy, and then watching them being blown around corridors had me giggling.

• almosthonest in the room of Falsehood and Truth, I couldn't stop laughing. He was best of course in the room of falsehood, but I'll leave it to him to demonstrate for the full effect.

• Having the writer of the system play a game I ran and enjoy it, feels like a right of passage almost.

• Doing Portal in larp form.

• The room of sinking and introducing more people to the horror of sand squid. Especially liked Breeze and Cuthbert's interactions with them, and Travesty's weakness based fishing.

• That you can always guarantee party members will give in to greed.

• How well the doors worked. It was the perfect way to run a dungeon crawl larp short of having an actual dungeon, and it showed.

• magicaddict as the elf in the very first room, who'd been there far too long.

• Tarrack in the room of Secularism - his reaction to suddenly having no miracles running.

• Getting the difficulty level right, pushing the party, but not breaking them.

• Fighting as the Labyrinth Avatar at the very end. The way the party reacted and the quin strength battles with Blaine as he desperately tried to save a completely demoralised Archer.

• yamamaya's report(Found at 2008-06-15 21:49:53)

• saranthian statting for me on Friday when I ran out of time.

• indigogecko kindly making kit for the beast room.

• purplegirl23's help in creating the Research team characters, buying me props in town, helping me on Wednesday evening, and generally keeping me unstressed. Utterly wonderful as always.

• Getting good weather.

• That everyone had fun. Worth saying twice.

Of course it wasn't perfect, so here are the lessons I feel I learnt, or things I would have liked to be different:

• All the people who couldn't make it. It would have been a very different game with 10-12 more people I'm sure, but it would have be nice to have more people experience it. At the very least a couple more monsters would have been good.

• Mistiming Saturday - mostly because Knightmare took a lot longer than expected. Still everyone had fun, so I have no problem that it took a long time. It just made things harder.

• Forgetting the Lost NPC's. There was enough going on, but it would have made a nice addition. We forgot from room 2, and in hindsight it's the kind of detail that will get lost first.

• Forgetting the elemental bonuses in the elemental rooms. It helped define the path rooms, and it would have helped define the elemental rooms too.

• 'You do not talk about VA club.' A silly mistake easy enough to fix with the scenario, but a little random idea for atmosphere that would have been better never fought of.

• Introducing the random room entering on Saturday evening without letting the party know first. Again could have been handled better.

• The people who felt ill or suffered mild injuries that took them out of the game for a little while.

• Terror and playing 'What's the time Mr Wolf' not working. In hindsight I should have seen the problems in advance.

• That lucy_k_p's hope to make food couldn't work out due to lack of stoves.

• In the Beast room missing an opportunity to traumatise Archer by making him a wolf amd failing to realise that Calamity=Llama

• Not seeing purplegirl23 all weekend.

Now I just have to wait a couple of years and see what stories the players, monsters and characters tell to see how good a game it was.