February Update

Post-Election Mechanics

In December major NPC factions put together a ballot based on candidates that aligned with their own goals and motivations. No single ballot was passed. However, each faction did have half their ballot elected. As a result each faction will inject a minor version of their original mechanics.

The Oil Barons are pleased with the election of Rajah who knows the status quo. All characters with Income will receive +2 Brass this event.

The Bucks are pleased with the election of Chloe who knows the struggle of the underdog. They will inject additional modules focused on increasing the political and economic literacy of Tenderhorns.

The LOA are pleased with the election of Keegan who they view as a hard-working man of the people, like themselves. The LOA will inject trade routes related to local goods and resources.

Bartender's Tongue

Faction information in Bartender's Tongue now includes the last time it was updated. For example: 

Landowners: The Red Menace (updated Feb 2018)

Scrounge

Not enough Scrounge was seeded last event. I'm trying to rectify that in the scheduling. 
 

Back End Organization

Reformatted the schedule we use for Modules. We were running into a problem during events where we were not sufficiently planning for modules that needed advanced staging. Probably this didn't impact your event at all unless you were a Marshal. We've now explicitly scheduled that to reduce on-site chaos. 

Infection Damage

This will come up a bunch this weekend...

If afflicted with the Infection status effect, it lasts until it has been removed by standard means of curing toxins, or until triggered. If you are knocked into Bleed Out while afflicted with the Infection status, after 30 seconds your Bleed Out count will pause and you will rise as a shambler zombie with Health equal to half your permanent Health. (Use beaters and small weapons, or short-half safe weapons as needed.) One knocked into Bleed Out again, your timer resumes, and the individual comes back to their senses, typically with serious emotional issues. While Infected, you should roleplay flu and fever-like symptoms....

Radiation Poisoning

I've not upgraded Radiation Poisoning from April's Dirty Bomb in some time. That's an intentional choice to give players a breather before everyone (who's not Tenderhorn / Retrograde) gets upgraded to Active next month. 

This information is available IC to any character with Lore: Radiation. 

Start planning. I also recommend checking the Research Binder early if you've been chasing this plot. 

January Post-Event

Good Morning Survivors! 

If you haven't already sent in Feedback, I encourage you to do so. We would like to hear from you about what you enjoyed, what you would like to see more of, and what could use improvement.

Based on feedback we already received, we wanted to address a couple house-keeping / rules questions. 

Sunday CvC

Our rulebook requires characters initiating CvC to have been in play for at least 3 hours. That same character must remain in play for at least three hours (or until the next Twelves). That functionally means there is a window from Sunday 7:00am until game-off that there is no CvC. 

Raider Rage and Chop

There was some confusion in the field about Raider Rage and Chop. The problem is that the Berserker Raider write-up has two different descriptions for Raider Rage. 

The first write-up is: 

If a Berserker Raider is dropped to the ground and is not Double Tapped in 1 Minute, after one minute they will get back up with full health (no skill refresh) ONE TIME.

This is where we get into debates about whether a Raider's weapon can be chopped or not, because while its a legal target for Chop, we can all agree that a Raider who 'resets' without weapons is functionally ridiculous and a waste of that NPC's time and energy. 

The second write-up is: 

If a Beserker Raider is brought to bleed out their first time, they will scream RAIDER RAGE instead of dropping to the ground. Raider Rage fixes all mangle limbs, regains all health, and enter into a berserkers rage. Raiders under Raider Rage are immune to Fear and Nightmares and swing +1 melee damage.

This is the correct write-up, however its also the last one, and therefore sometimes missed. We've included a note to the franchisor about the error and struck the first with black marker to avoid confusion. We've also briefed Marshals to remove confusion in the future.  

Anticipating 3.0 

We have been having a wonderful discussion about 3.0 here. If you have burning issues to bring up, I encourage you to do so there as we are presently compiling feedback to present to the franchiser. 

January Update

Start time

A gentle reminder that we'll be starting game one hour earlier at 9:00pm. The Post Office will still open at 10:00pm. This may change for the February event, but we thought changing the start time, npc times, marshal times, and module times was enough change for one event and to cling to one last vestige of the past just for the sake of preserving our sanity. 

Communication

A lot of our communication with the player base tends to happen via Facebook. The upside is that this is where our players are. The downside is that sometimes the boundary between the game, the community, and the outside world can blur a lot. This can create some frustration when it feels like the game is 'always on.' 

We want our players to make friends here, but we want those friendships to have substance beyond the game. We also need to have our own boundaries as well. 

There's been good progress here but there's still some improvement to do. And frankly, with FB adjusting their algorithms anyway, this is as good a time as any to reflect on the vehicles we use to communicate. More on this post-event. 

Pre-Game Spoiler

Last month we ran an atypical storyline. It was nuanced, timely, and definitely a statement about politics (and the gaming industry). That was only possible because we had huge buy-in from you - the players. A pre-game briefing really helped set expectations so you could buy-in, portray NPCs with nuance, and also understand the limitations of a 'win' as a player. 

While the level of briefing we had last month won't be necessary every event, we are considering a brief pre-game 'spoiler' about the theme and/or mood for the event. We'll share this month's theme at opening announcements. 

Sunday Spoilers will continue to be a thing. Last month's 'what if' spoiler was well received so we'll continue that this month. 

Creative Processes

While not visible to the players, we have been doing a lot to improve our processes with creatives / writers. There's still more to be done, and building it means we have not yet had a chance to enjoy the benefits of it, but we're hopeful this will give us more time to spend on content creation. 

Hot Zones

Green Hot Zones will continue to have standard mechanics associated with them. We'll be using Blue glow sticks to denote Hot Zones with slightly different mechanics. If you're moving through a Blue Hot Zone, please read the Zone of Mechanics (ZOM) sheet for the specifics. 

Scrounge

Scrounge will continue to hold to 'sane hours' with the initial seed going out after coffee time (8:00am). Modules that warrant Scrounge will continue to have it. 

Sailing

Sailing will only have additional opportunities provided by way of a Unique Item card (or standard Blueprints). This really only effects two players. (Sorry guys). 

Scheduling Sundays

“It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

We've been going through October's feedback to collect your thoughts on late-Saturday / no-Sunday. While there was some variance in opinion, we noticed several trends on feedback. I want to touch on what those were, and then how we want to incorporate them (skip to the bottom if you want the bottom-line up front).

Late-night threats.

Most players enjoyed the late-night threats. The October schedule had NPCs scheduled until 4am, with overlapping shifts until 2am. This meant we could do roaming threats until 2am instead of 12am, and still have other NPCs on other modules / encounters. Overall response to this was really good, so we're going to keep the late-Saturday NPC time. In the future I'm looking forward to having two hours of overlap for 'after shock' events following a climactic fight. 

Post Office hours.

Most players said the Post Office was not open late enough. The Post Office did close at 3:30am on Saturday (technically Sunday), but it saw little activity at that time. This is also later than we have ever kept the Post Office open. I think this is a little bit about production time (more below), but also making those hours visible. Typically we publish Post Office hours at the window. We didn't this event (it just got missed) so we're going to do that again. I'll post the complete hours below but anticipate the Post Office to be open until 2am at night, and again on Sunday. 

Lost Production.

A number of economy players missed the opportunity to do more crafting or production, which is safe to do on Sunday but less viable Saturday at 2am for reasons that are probably obvious. 

Sunday Closure. 

Those who don't craft still lamented the loss of Sunday because its an opportunity to get closure on any number of things - business arrangements, character conflicts, character death, etc. The response we got here was surprising. We anticipated that some players would miss Sunday roleplay, but there's a lot more going on Sunday than we anticipated. Which is great!

Morning Modules. 

Almost nobody missed morning raiders, modules, or npcs in general. think this is one of the reasons Sunday can feel like a drag by the end of the event, is that players have burned up a fair amount of energy chasing plot and chop. 

Less Game.

Players lamented the loss of game time, especially in light of last year's ticket increase. This is perfectly understandable. Everyone wants to get more time and entertainment for their dollar and we want to give that to you too. We also want the game

More Sleep.

Nobody actually slept in. The sun came up and one person woke up and soon everybody was awake. So that did not work at all. 

Cleanup was easier.

Most people who commented on cleanup itself said that it went faster and easier. We agreed. Players had more energy. We had more energy. It seemed that most of us finished up at about lunchtime which is perfect for afters. Those two hours made a lot of difference. 

Conclusions

We're going to keep Sunday in play until 10am. We will have scheduled NPCs until Saturday 4am (technically Sunday). We will not have Sunday morning modules, wake-ups, etc. In fact, we will have no NPCs for that time at all. This is strictly going to be a time for roleplay, closure, crafting, and beginning to decompress. That means the Post Office will be open from 8am to 10am. Those who want to get an early start on heading out can join me in Logistics for an early camp clean-up. 

We think 10am is going to be the best of both worlds. Its enough time to be meaningful, but its not so long that everybody is waiting out-of-character for the bell to ring. It seems to compliment trends we see in the Post Office activity on Sunday. Its also earlier which seems to coincide with players having an easier cleanup which ultimately means a better experience.

This is an optimization problem and its one of the challenges in trying things out with a schedule. Every solution has a 'cost' somewhere else. So really its about trying to find the solution that maximizes the experience with the least 'cost.' 

We're hoping this gives everyone what they are looking for and improves the overall experience. After all, this schedule is almost verbatim based on suggestions several of you made. (That's correct that several of you made the same recommendation). Its also well supported by the trends we saw in feedback. If it works out, then great. If not, then we can tweak it or change it. The only way to really know is to give it a shot and find out together.

On Larp Criticism

When people post critical feedback to an event within hours or days of an events conclusion, I want to scream. 

I am watching people do it with Downfall, even after a very polite request to send feedback in a few days. Including a link to this article about why. People are just ignoring it and posting their feedback in the same damn thread.

It sucks. And selfishly I’m looking down the road to October 23 and know what’s waiting for me.

October is my favorite event. Its also the hardest.

Expectations are HUGE. The pressure is incredible. So I spend probably two months writing, rewriting, revising, planning, editing. Then I take two months of work, throw it in the garbage, and start over. I bother Sara at completely inconvenient times with random ideas. I ping Anastasia with “What ifs.” Then I write, revise, plan. Trash it. Start over. 

I immerse myself in movies for inspiration. I practice walking, talking, and being the role. I get playlists together to put myself in a certain kind of head space. 

Probably a week before the event I basically stop sleeping, because I have all these ideas, worries, pressures in my head that just won’t stop. So I have to physically and mentally exhaust myself before I can close my eyes for a couple hours sleep. Its pretty restless. By dawn I’m too awake to sleep, but not really rested. 

The event itself is a thirty nine hour marathon, set to the pace of a hundred yard dash. Its schizophrenic in the extreme. From one moment to the next I might have to be the organized and efficient game director, keeping dozens of npcs to a strict schedule; an organizer who handles conflicts and personal melt downs with fairness and compassion; or a fictional psychopath who is trying to grind down characters until they are wholly unrecognizable. 

The secret is to simply never stop moving. So I don’t stop moving. I burn more calories than I consume by an order of magnitude. I live on what would be too little sleep for one night, never mind two. I punish my body until it gives up.

By Sunday morning I can feel days shaved off my lifespan. By Sunday night I am nothing but a raw nerve. We eat afters with a small group because we’re off-site when everybody else has already finished eating Chinese food. I’m often quiet. 

Monday I have nothing left in me. I tell close friends to leave me alone. I am distant from my wife. I cry for no reason, and try to distance myself from the frame of references and characters I have created which think the very worst things about people. Sometimes I get angry.

So after all of that.. if you have not enjoyed yourself, if you have something critical to say.. I just want to not hear it right away. I could say that I don’t care, but that would be a lie. 

I do care. I care a lot. I read every Facebook status after an event just hoping that you had fun. Its not healthy and that’s on me. 

If you didn’t - that’s okay. If you have a criticism, that’s okay too. I want to hear it. But I just need a little time and a little care. Because the thing is, I just saw you. I looked you in the face over that weekend, and I marshaled every bit of myself to put on a good show. I gave you everything I had, and for at least a few days after, while I unscramble my brains and right myself, I need to know that everything was enough.