FinalHavenLarp.com

Unified action... [Rant starting, skip if you feel necessary]

When people make characters for Final Haven, they are making people that are survivors of a wrecked medieval world. They have personalities beyond "Serve our Lord" attached. If they didn't, they would be boring. They band together for basic survival, but are not united around any ideal.

Your characters were born into an army, serving Pentag. Not to mention you were able to get together to work out tactics before the game started.

Based purely on social dynamics, uniting the people of Haven is like walking out side and asking your neighbors to join you to fight a local street gang. While the neighbors have formed a neighborhood watch, a beautification effort, perhaps a few lucky ex-military men, and a few of them did some medical training together, your chances of getting all of these organizations to merely rise up and fight cause you say its necessary is slim. The town will probably organize about the point the gangs systematically drive by every house on the block. Then its in your face survival and everyone enjoys living. They still won't follow orders much unless a really strong personality presents itself.

If you want Haven to be like a Vampire LARP and you get to pick an allegiance before you even start, thats fine although it makes the allegiance point system kind of moot.

If you want Haven to be one huge military organization, then someone will have to force the issue and start drafting. Then we can have the establishment of a wonderful medieval dictatorship, guilds withholding resources and membership to keep newbs in line, and everyone will have fun because someone above you will say "This is fun, you just don't get it."

I think I already played that LARP once, and stopped. I didn't avoid joining a fraternity just to be hazed by a medieval one.

[Rant ended]

I'm not trying to enflame you Dredge, but can you please remove the vulgarity you've chosen to add as your signature? it's really unnecessary.

All I have to say in response to you is "yes." That's what unselfish people and a great leader do in the face of annihilation. They unite and stand, disregarding differences.

And yes, we were able to meet. Havenites were able to meet before hand too. The Phoenix guard as I understood it, used to have regular practices, and meet. What do you think the forums are for? When you can't meet in person, you meet on the forums, and PM eachother.

I'm getting upset that you chose to pick that piece to rant about, and I will stop now, before I say something extremely rude. Your objection to us meeting is absurd.

Dredge,

No one wants or is sugegsting there should be some forced way political system.

The main problem of motivation is us as GM's not presenting a strong enough motivator to unite the different factions for a short time.

We realize this now I think. As Mike said we wish we had forsite, but will learn in hindsite.

I apologize for the vulgarity and will remove it as I now better understand the 'why' of some of these things.

I am not saying you meeting before hand is bad, but I am saying it is an unavailable option to many people and that unifying people playing characters ala a normal rpg setting is harder than it sounds, not just like a "you should use some common sense". How many D&D sessions started with "You guys are together or hired by some schmuck" as an excuse to unify diverse concepts? But with tabletop, you forge together because your PC can walk away, but you the person are sitting at a table and will eventually negotiate to keep the fun going. Nothing forces a LARP character to stay still... well root and bonds, but you get my drift.

My character united with people and walked into the woods, and I died united with them, even as some stood back on the hill gawking.

I tried to unite with people later with my second PC, but in character reasons gave me loyalty to the suicide mission that I was pretty much commanded to go on, while others sat and talked.

And please, don't take this as a personal attack. It may not look like it, but I argue because I care. I hope that my commentary is helpful, and too many people look at me attacking ideas as attacking them. I'm sure you want Final Haven to be a good game as often as possible. I do too.

Thank you for doing that.
I know it's hard to unite people. That is what I was getting at. If Havenites could just do that, they'd have a lot more going for them. My regular PC has given her allegiance to several different people, because of how she was treated at various times. Just like I do in real-life. Some years I sway more towards republicans others more towards democrats. But a divided government accomplishes little.

I think that the event was successful in opening some eyes to potential situations and how things can be handled. If any learning is accomplished, then it was a success.

Dredge wrote:Your characters were born into an army, serving Pentag. Not to mention you were able to get together to work out tactics before the game started.

If you want Haven to be like a Vampire LARP and you get to pick an allegiance before you even start, thats fine although it makes the allegiance point system kind of moot.

A few things on this.

1. Seven of us got together for a meeting about this event. We didn't really go over tactics, we went over what kind of characters we wanted to play, and how the event was going to be run. The folks from muskegon also met 1 week before the event.

2. "...you get to pick an allegiance before you even start..." You're kidding me right? This is the thing that has annoyed me about Final Haven more than any single one thing. I believe that more than 50% of the PCs have picked their allegience before coming into game.

3. Being "Heroes" sometimes means uniting with your enemies in order to destroy a common foe. As you were unable to do so in this instance, I am not convinced that having the "world ending device to force Pentag's Group and the PC's to unite toward one common goal" would have worked. Hell, I did my best to try to negotiate and it was spit on, which I half expected. However if you can't decide to give someone some sort of control to formulate a plan and execute it....well, then this is what happens when you are facing a force of equal strength. If one force is unified and the other is unwilling to do so, the unified force will win. I'm actually surprised that Corbyn didn't mobilize the Pheonix Guard to FORCE everyone to fight in a sort of "Draft".


...I'll have more later I am sure...

Also:

Please note that nothing I say is meant as an attack either.

Second, to the GM's: I understand you are taking responsibility, however I am a GM myself and it is hard not to feel some responsibility. I do regret not attacking for a final conflict, but at the same time, if I go by WWPD (What Would Pentaguishine Do), things played out exactly as Pen would have wanted. A strategic retreat so that no more losses than were necessary were made since we could not construct the weapon, leaving his enemies to fester and fume and to drown in low morale. Even by losing he felt he was winning as he left the last piece needed to be able to destroy the device behind on purpose, with the intention and hopes that the PCs would destroy the device. It was under the pretense of "If I can't have it, noone will." At the same time, I knew that this would also be a big win for the PCs, which was also part of my OOG intention with it (which was part of a discussion with the GMs). I'm also curious though and must pose this question:

Is winning everything?

*shrugs* Hey, I've been here two games. I call things as they look when I'm here. I know I was looking forward to hearing political pitches from different groups to join. Ah well...

Dredge wrote:*shrugs* Hey, I've been here two games. I call things as they look when I'm here. I know I was looking forward to hearing political pitches from different groups to join. Ah well...

Oh, don't get me wrong, there are still political pitches, etc. It is just that there are alot of PCs who come into game with prior relationships to other PCs. Far too many in my book.

I should probably have waited longer before posting, but here goes:

Chris hit the nail on the head – NPCs must realize they are entertainers first. Yes, we want you to have fun, too, but your number one priority must be keeping the players happy. There’s a lot of leeway here – both easy victories and no-win situations can be fun. Puzzles, combat, mysteries, and just plain interaction can keep players entertained. But there’s no way boredom and idleness can ever yield positive results.

The event was going along okay, IMHO, until the ‘plot of doing absolutely nothing’ came alone, occupying the time from game break to whenever. The NPCs didn’t attack. Moreover the GMs, seeking to help out the demoralized PCs, took over command of their defenses – effectively pigeon-holing them in a stance of town defense. The PCs pretty much had no other option at that point, and became dependent on waiting for the NPCs to attack. When it became clear the NPCs had lost sight of what they were and were more concerned about their characters then they were about keeping the game fun, the GMs set out to ‘scout’ the enemy position.

I figured at this point they’d get the game back on track – tell the NPCs to stop worrying about how well their characters do and start entertaining. Drop whatever they’re doing and attack the town – GET THINGS MOVING.

Instead the GMs came back to report the enemy was unlikely to attack any time soon – clearly not setting the NPCs straight.

Yeah, I figured the sides were roughly 50-50 at that point – meaning whoever was on defense would have the advantage. As the GMs didn’t set the NPCs straight, it didn’t seem like they’d ever put themselves at a disadvantage by attacking. Worse, if they did attack, still with their minds focused on the well-being of their characters, they’d be bending the rules as far as possible in their favor – cheesing things up and calling frequent game-stops every minute. Apparently just as they’d done in previous battles (it angers me hear a NPC demanded a PC die because the edge of his cloak had been caught by a 30 boom and not hit directly. Should we all just ditch any effort at costuming then and fight in unitards? COME ON!).

Reaching this conclusion after having sat idle for four hours with no end to the boredom is sight – no interaction happening, no chance to even role-play - I went home. Sorry I didn’t tell anyone, but I was very angry at that point and would just insight more anger in anyone I talked to – it was best to just leave.

Another problem was with the concept of the Weapon. I think most of us just had no idea of what to do about it. Had we found a blueprint of some sort – listing what pieces were out there and how to assemble them - we’d have had a direction to follow. Maybe even provide clues through the ghosts of where we could find the pieces. Have obstacles to overcome before each piece could be had – something like the Perfect Being plot line. As it was, I, at least, had no idea how many parts were out there nor what to do with them should we get them – or even if we SHOULD get them. Seemed like the best we could do was prevent the weapon from ever being built by taking the pieces we had and leave.

Yes, this was the worst FH event ever. Of course, that title is easily achieved given the awesome, spot-on nature of all preceding events. I’ve seen far worse events in other LARPs. But many lessons have been learned by everyone, and Final Haven as a whole should be much better off for it.

Firstly, thank you Brad and Katie for everything that you provided for everyone at the event. OOG encouragement over tiredness, dehydration, and aches and pains are incomparable to anything else. Thank you for the food and drinks.

Thank you Shane for the game break stew. Warm food in the middle of everything is always awsome.

Thank you to all of the people that PC'd on the evil side. Pentag promised us death and destruction, and although we encouraged him to more and more of it, I think that looking back, Brad showed good judgement on not letting us have more of it.

As for the "good" PC's, I have to quite honestly say that I'm disappointed in those of you who are complaining about the event. You still have your characters! I haven't heard a word of complaint from those high level characters who died. In fact, Erik praised the event in another thread.

Chris and staff has always said this was a deadly game, but I don't think it was ever really deadly until this event. The Havenites have almost ALWAYS been able to raise their dead, thus really losing nothing except time when someone dies. You have played this game knowing they wanted deadliness, and never complained until now, when you have actually lost people.

Had I been on the "good" side, I know I would have been disappointed in the lack of organization on the Havenite's part. It took you until saturday night to put together a real defense. Nearly 24 hours! The GMs came to us at that point, and asked us to attack because you had worked so hard on your defenses. It was a "feel good" battle, plain and simple. Why did it take you so long? Maybe that's a question the Havenites should be asking themselves rather then casting the blame on a "failed experiment." All but 2 of our characters were level 12 OR LESS. You should have "won" without problem.

Finally, Thank you Brad and Steve for organizing our side of things. I know you have both put a lot of hours into the planning so that the rest of us could simply show up. I hope that you do not let the negative attitude of some get you down, because I know that you followed the plan and the rules layed out by the GM's.

Doug

Pentag's group was NOT NPC's

I was saying we should have treated all but Pentag as NPC's though which we didn't.

I think about half the PC's kept thinking Pentag was just some other NPC. The experiment was not that we just had a bunch of NPC's that would have been easy. It was tehre was suppsoe to be two groups of PC's and we right plots to pit you both against each other

Well theres a reason most online games have PVP servers and non-PVP servers, and lots of ways to avoid it.

Its not everybodies bag. Honestly, I think PVP and PK are pretty selfish in LARPs. It communicates that your fun is more important than anyone elses and turns roleplaying, a cooperative adventure I like, into a competitive sport, a way for people to get some mental Enzyte and show how 'amazing' they are. I could just do competitive combat sport if I wanted that.

Yes - I realized the extent to which Pentag and the others were being treated as PCs when you came back from your ‘scouting’ mission to their keep and revealed the issue hadn’t been forced, and thus how horribly wrong this event had gone. Had I known that before coming, I would have skipped this event. PCs tend to whine and rule-lawyer when their characters are in danger to other PCs - an ego thing. Most PvP incidents I’ve witnessed result in arguments and hard feelings that can last for months. Pit one army of PCs against another, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

Well please understand that FH is in NO way a cooperative adventure.

At anytime a player has the ability to kill another player with no reason. If we wanted a cooperative adventure we would create a game with NO pvp.

Personally I think No PvP creates an unrealistic RP environment.

The problem with the event was not the fact that there was PvP, or 2 groups pitted against each other. The problems were very subtle and very fixable. As I said in my begginning post that with the very smallest of tweeks this could have been the best event ever.