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I wanted to get these down before I forgot them. Actual feedback to follow a good nap and more headache meds...

Quotes for the event -

Nell: I know dragons. Anything's possible.
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Nell: Paer'An had a nice projection I got to play with!
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(in front of NPC camp Leo is searching through Gondowon's backpack for something, but unable to find it)
Leo: (tossing the backpack to Gondowon) Here, you know your purse better than I do.
Gondowon: Fuck off. A thousand fucks. (slight pause) Ok, nineteen fucks.
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(In the kitchen)
Gondowon: "You're a wonderful human being"
Kami: (says nothing but looks confused)
Gondowon: "Oh! I'm sorry, that was out of game."
Kami: "Aww, thank you! Kami was confused why you'd call her a human being."

Ok, actual feedback this time!

I went into this event with a sense of excitement and dread (which is typical for me). There were 2 objectives I had for this event knowing it was a "now or never" scenario. In addition to those things on my table, I knew I would need to make a decision and aid Paer'An with his objectives. It took me much longer to get to the event than I wanted (I swear, out of the blue everyone wanted a chunk of my time here in town on Friday to prevent me from arriving at the campsite at a decent hour.) I also had an argument with my hair when trying to get into costume.. so I wasn't out in the field til much later too.. *sigh* - the pains of trying to present good costuming

Almost straight out of the gate, Mike threw a curve ball (although I didn't quite know it at the time).

I very much so enjoyed Chris as the bird. Chris was very much so playing a Chris NPC at that point. I've missed Chris' NPCs. This event could have had more of them (beyond that point, I didn't see Chris in much role playing roles, just combatants). Heading down the trail to the Ga'Vin dig site, I remember the NPC leading us instructed us to stay quiet so that they won't hear us coming. Everyone went quiet except for the distinct jingling of Kami's bells. Then I got "that look" from Paer'An. It's those little things. Priceless! There was a moment or two of shivers going down my spine while we were out there - whether it was intentional or not, I thank the GMs for it.

Getting started on the tunnel/demon flower/ring plot took forever. I think that was mostly our fault perhaps building it up to be something bigger/harder than it actually was. I thought maybe it was something to do with a plot Mike was working on with me over the last year, someone thought it was the jinn's ring (because the jinn was relevant this event), and we all thought there was a GIANT mass of Ga'Vin we would need to fight through just to reach the location. We spent so much time arguing about it and ho-humming about it, that the majority of us honestly would have rather gone to bed 3 hours ago instead of finding the location of the flower. We had decided to just discover the location of the flower and come back in the daylight to go down the tunnel.. but one thing led to another and everyone had gone down the rabbit hole.. Kami was a bit too preoccupied with the stars that night and didn't notice everyone had disappeared, so she waited outside the tunnel stargazing for that time

Whether or not this was an official explanation or not, it was mentioned that Smitty had somehow influenced the flower or tunnel or something dealing with that plot. I really hate this. It really rubs me the wrong way when GMs give an explanation that a gone/retired character did something to help the players X events later. I wasn't thrilled about the Abaddon portal thing, and I don't like this explanation either. When you do this, it feels artificial and cheap. The story isn't enhanced in any way - my memory of that character isn't enhanced by this either. Just please... stop.

Saturday Morning - enter Mike's curve ball. UGH! I wasn't expecting this! I felt I needed to see this thing through despite the other things that I needed to accomplish before the end of the event. I had to make a decision whether or not to care, and if I cared, how much? I really appreciated this plot as it perhaps offered a tad of character growth/development and it was just right for Kami's capabilities without having to draw too much on others for help.. and possibly getting into an embarrassing situation with that jerk Kaylan. Mike, great job on playing to Kami's compassionate side. I fear the situations of this plot brought on more questions than answers though.

Most of Saturday was spent trying to figure out which tactics and strategies to use to complete Paer'An's year-end goal. I finally got to see the camp's lake and really enjoyed spending some time down there. It was the perfect amount of sunlight, temperature, breeze and a gosh - the fall colors seen across the lake was picturesque! Gorgeous! I could have spent all day down there and been fine. I liked the little bit of in-game discussion down there with Paer'An and the out of game chatting with Troy while we waited for Brad.

Game Break - This is the first game break in a very long time where I didn't leave the site. Mommy Paer'An said I needed to take a nap since Angie was already getting loopy from the 3ish hours of sleep from Friday night. I HATE HATE HATE staying in the Mansion House. There's just too many people - sorry. I'm a light sleeper. Falling asleep is often hard for me and is staying asleep Both light and noise interfere with the sleeping. I settled down for some game break sleep. I did have someone come in right after and he apologized stating that he needed to turn the light on for 5 minutes to do something, then he'd be gone. Understandable and considerate - he was nice and turned the lights off for me on his way out Later someone else came in turned on the lights, made all sorts of noise, kept speaking quite loudly to themselves and kept slamming the doors. Not cool. Granted, I should have packed up my bedding and moved to another cabin - or gone with my first instincts and never have set up camp in that cabin. I gave up on trying to nap.

By this time neither of my 2 true objectives for the event had been met and I was getting worried that they weren't going to happen (and really, they were both things, at least I thought, that would need to be initiated by the appropriate NPCs). I told GM Nick of my concern and he must have been thinking about it too and assured me it was the next thing he was sending in (See! Communication with your staff/GMs is a GOOD thing!). Nick painted a great scene for us as a story arc that had been (that felt like it had been on hold for far too long), finally reached its conclusion. Thank you Nick for making sure this happened. It may not have been the conclusion we wanted or hoped for, but it was very touching and bittersweet. Good Show!

The plot of least importance to me was the Ga'Vin army. My approach was, "Ok. Let's get this big battle out of the way so we can continue finishing up the important things." - heh. We had reports that the Ga'Vin Army would be upon us in 30 minutes. Good! Let's get this done and over with - there's a lot to get done before the end of the event. *Two Hours Later* The Ga'Vin Army will be upon us in 30 minutes. WHAT?! *30 minutes later* The Ga'Vin Army will be upon us in 30 minutes! You've got to be kidding me! Didn't we do this last event with the 1 hour thing? If you're going to put a time/time limit/time frame on a plot, stick with it! I didn't understand why this was being dragged out.

<post to continue, things I need to do!>

Haha! Glad to see I made some funnies this event. And thank you, Kami, for making sure none of us died tragically.

*Remembers that Aurora's Tsunotaur character had to be resurrected*

...For making sure that only one of us died tragically? (In her defense, I do not believe Kami was present when Aurora's Tsunotaur fell)

Anyway, on to the feedback.

Though Kami seemed to have a different view of things, everything felt epic to me. I'll admit, the wait on the Ga'Vin army was a little disappointing considering that we'd initially been given an exact time of arrival, but I completely understand how things tend to fall apart on GMs at the last second. Either way, I loved the combat this time. The enemies we faced were varied and interesting, and none of the plots I went on felt like wasted energy (though this might be partly due to the fact that I had a personal plot run for me; thank you again to Nick and Phil for running it, and to everyone else involved in its fruition). Another thing I liked was how the culmination of all our previous efforts, both from events prior and from this event, felt like they had a major, tangible impact on the final fight, which had a lot of fun and interesting changes to the norm of battles, such as the "wall of Ga'Vin" drawing slowly closer represented by a few slowly pacing GMs, the surprise attacks from the Nexus Portal, and just about every fight WITHIN the Nexus. The variety of strategy and puzzle-solving involved in each Nexus encounter seemed to me to be a testament to how much work the GMs put into making the final battle of Final Haven a fun one, something I want to make sure is not overlooked.

The only thing I remember distinctly disliking was "the ritual" during the final battle. Before I go on, I do want to mention that it's absolutely not the GM's fault that we PCs misinterpreted the nature of the ritual and ended up spending more time on it than was intended to be spent on it. Nevertheless, the nature of the ritual is what bothered me. Not only did it make it mandatory for players to sit back doing nothing during the final battle of Final Haven, it took nearly HALF the players out of the entire PC base to perform the ritual, since it was not adjusted for the size of the PC base. Still, that was the only part of the event that I did not enjoy, which hopefully says a lot about how I felt about this event.

Now for the irrelevant, but amusing things I encountered during the event:
The look on GM Nick's face when Leo said "Release the Axebeaks" just as the Ga'Vin finally made it through the tunnels to the battlefield. The look on Kami's face when I forgot to put my hand on my head while calling her a "wonderful human being". Forgetting to retrieve my shield off a sinking ship and having GM Phil hold out his hand asking for the tag. Being pet and called adorable while I was playing a baby doom worm... Named Francis. (http://www.winterhavenlarp.com/artwork/ ... -thumb.jpg)

Overall, I felt this was a fantastic event, and I'm glad I was able to make it for the whole thing (again, apologies to the GMs who had so much planned for me last event that I missed...). Even with everything changing drastically as of the end of the event, I'm excited to see what happens next. It's a whole new world. *Begins singing the Aladdin song poorly*

<ok, back!>

The Ga'Vin fight was a mess. PCs were yelling at each other like crazy (Whoever said that we haven't been communicating with each other so we end up with 4 separate groups working on the same thing independently of each other, hit the nail on the head.) There was NPC to PC and PC to PC communication issues all over the place! This combined with people being exhausted from lack of sleep and/or over exhaustion, we were perfectly fine snapping at each other all night. Set up for the Ga'Vin fight - ok we have a handful of people up front fighting... just Nick??? with a huge cluster of people in back trying to do a ritual, and a couple of us in the middle standing around arguing. Then you had the vast amount of NPC staff standing around elsewhere - and for quite some time it appeared as though they were doing nothing, which really upset us (why are all the GMs in the back doing nothing while they make Nick be the entire Ga'Vin army for this "huge" fight). The thing just felt weird.

Admittedly, I was too tired to truly appreciate the puzzles/scenarios given to us as we tried to make our way to the heart of the nexus, and to me it just felt like the battle was dragging on. When we made it inside the dinning hall finally and I saw the puzzles, I wanted to cry, "Why can't this just be over with!" Now that I've had some sleep, I do feel bad about not being able to appreciate the effort you guys had put into this at that time. I'm not really a fan of the *combat, combat combat* *combat ends* *Puzzles!.. while everyone else just sits around* I like scenarios better when puzzles are trying to be done while everyone else defends the people trying to figure out the puzzles. I looked at the puzzles, but dead tired brain didn't understand, so I put my head down at a table while we waited.

So, puzzles done, check! Ritual done, check! Okay, last stand against the Ga'Vin, Bring it!! ... and poof! This felt kinda awkward. Timing seemed to be off and narration/explanation just didn't have that grandiose conclusion, for the final Final Haven. I will say that I think it was very cool that Lisa had her super-god-like powers for a bit. I know it's fun to have that moment in the sun and the ability for your character to do awesome things. I'm glad she was able to experience that.

<pause #2 - I need to actually do some work at work...>

.. and possibly getting into an embarrassing situation with that jerk Kaylan.

*Kaylan sniffles and wipes a tear away*

Before I go on, I do want to mention that it's absolutely not the GM's fault that we PCs misinterpreted the nature of the ritual and ended up spending more time on it than was intended to be spent on it. Nevertheless, the nature of the ritual is what bothered me. Not only did it make it mandatory for players to sit back doing nothing during the final battle of Final Haven, it took nearly HALF the players out of the entire PC base to perform the ritual, since it was not adjusted for the size of the PC base.

Actually this was a result of players using recall on how the ritual was to work(as it was one sentence on a special item card that was stated to be a page or a few pages of notes on how the ritual was to function)[IE did it need a primary caster, if so did it need to be a magus, how many support people, did the support people need to be inactive (not performing offensive actions like throwing channels and shooting arrows....)] and the PCs were informed that the ritual would draw power from the portal/Nexus (no mention we had to be in the Nexus), we needed 10 people and a primary Magus to cast it with Master spells, it would be a 4 packet defined area, and would destroy everything in that area. Then we got different info during the casting form a different GM...after the primary caster "started the ritual" without the ritual starting item in their possession, forcing the PCs to "start the ritual" again. It was ENTIRELY due to the bad info received from staff how it went off, the PC error only being the mistake made by the primary caster not having the "ritual scroll" tag.

Kaylan's right about the mixup on the ritual. That was my bad. Sorry to the player base for that one. I provided what I thought was the correct info on it when asked. Turns out I gave the wrong info. My bad, and sorry again.

My post wasn't meant to condemn, just clarify. It was obvious you
were nearly a one man band on the core plots. You cant be perfect, that's my job.

<Upon reading the above message>
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