Okay... here's my feedback:
#1) Wow. It's difficult to see on paper how well the system works. The system is pretty smooth (especially for being new) and the skills and abilities for the most part are balanced. I was a bit afraid of the fact that skills generally don't have "per day" uses and wondered how out of hand things might get, but damn, it works well and now I'm thinking, "Why didn't I come up with that?" LOL
I think the time it takes to charge up or perform most activities (from what I've seen so far) is appropriate -- maybe just a bit longer on empath channeling, but I don't know all the mechanics or world structure, so it's hard to judge. All in all, I've been telling everyone I know what a sound and uncomplicated system Final Haven is. (There should be more systems like ours around, hehe.)
#2) Good mix of roleplaying. As the other post noted, we were a bit leary about bringing in such, uh, distinct personalities into a brand new group of gamers that we weren't very familiar with at all. I've heard some complaints about those that are in gaming groups that constantly work against the group or are continuous sources of obstacles to overcome by the main party to overcome, like you know, fixing the time-space continuum versus an orc's need for a shiny necklace or telling the humanoid that we needed to go "kill the ugly dragon" that was hidden beneathe his human appearance.
Everyone seemed to react the way that their characters would and there was a real in game effort made by many to try to "reason" with the orcs or at least find out what would motivate them and then manipulate them accordingly. By the way, to the one person that truly duped us (and you know who you are), thank you! It was done smoothly and we hate you for it!
The only complaint I had was that there was some difficulty in identifying who was in game versus who was out of game and who was what character. Even when the game clearly seemed to be "on," there were people talking about "e-mails" and "computers" and in a couple of instances, right after a mod, they'd break character and start "reviewing" the mod and revealing in game info. Part of this might be a different culture, if you will, of gaming, but some of it was a bit distracting as we try/tried to stay in game always. (We don't even have "game offs" in the middle of events, just to explain some of the different culture.)
#3) The game stop during the Roland inquisition was a little frustrating, BUT I think totally appropriate. There seemed to be a very serious rules interpretation question that needed to be addressed, as it would have most definitely affected how things would have turned out. My question is this: had it turned out that he should not have known what he did, what then? Do you retroact scenes? We're used to "play it out" and deal with it afterwards, but I don't think we've ever seen something of that magnitude, so now I'm just curious.
#4) Special effects on Saturday night were great. Whether planned or not, the pyrotechnics helped to roll in a fog that streaked across the field and introduce skeletons and zombies. It was especially great because it ended up only being six level one characters that were there to defend against it, and the six of us demonstrated how well things go when you work together... had we not... we would have all clearly died. And at one point, I was nine seconds away from dieing - I was so excited!!! That's the fear and excitement that I miss and that is lost on so many systems... which rolls into the next point.
#5) Your resurrection system, or better stated, lack thereof, is great. It totally works for your system and really introduces that element of fear of dieing. It lends itself well to the cataclysmic "Final Haven" ambience and if you are ever inclined to change it, DON'T! Please.
#6) This is somewhat of a game system critique: The almost total halt of development (i.e. Character Points) is a bit disconcerting in terms of explaining things in game. Why is it all of the sudden my ability to learn things is almost completely hampered? Yet, I can unlearn disciplines and learn with ease again. As a suggestion, if you wish to simulate the difficulty to learn advanced skills, then make them more costly.
As an aside, I like the fact that the game becomes so much more about roleplaying and politics. But you will always have those players (like the gal that plays Kathryn Skress -- sorry, I don't know your name) who want or need some development with their character, and you can't really blame them.
#7) There are some little kinks that I believe will work themself out, like proper verbals, tags and rules clarifications, but at this point in my feedback for the event, it's real little picky stuff that have nothing to do with my overall enjoyment of the game, only constructive suggestions to make the system more fluid.
#8) As for plot, I have a difficult time assessing that, because we got there once it was all described and nobody cared to explain it to the orcs and the orcs didn't know any better to ask. I'm curious to see how it all plays out though, so that's a good reflection on the fact that the plot was engaging.
Have I talked too much?
Maybe some closer-to-home plots next time?
