Week in the Life 2013 Highlights

Wow. Where to begin...

Of course, the Ritual of the Exemplar. Steve and I had this concept in mind for months, and in the two weeks leading up to the event, we discussed the idea of making it a "mod" to entertain people and show off some awesome ritual RP. Of course, the dice had other ideas... Zach, you're fired, at least for rolling for me. Thank you to everyone that came out and watched, offered to guard, offered to help, etc. for me. I hope it was fun for people who had never seen / been in one before.

Take two the next day - GOT IT! Exemplar: The Next Generation!

Food. ZOMG the food. "There is an allegiance between the two cabins of the Alisandrian Steakhouse, and DinerDark." Garlic Spread so potent Diane couldn't have it, which is saying something. Sausage, Biscuits, and Gravy. Grilling outside Pendarvin.

The Silverbow wedding - it was beautiful. Well done, by everyone involved.

Post-Wedding Reception. Rowan with red icing all over her lips... "Why so serious?" It was creepy!

Kristin as the Undine / Siren. I saw her walking to the lake OOG, and just quietly thought "Oh, crap." The little stretch she did after "snacking" was downright disturbing.

How can I forget... Ianto the Kitten! Fierce demon that guards the Armory! He's home and happy with Diane now, and had his bed, toys, and vet appointment already lined up before he even left camp.

It's four weeks to the next game, and I can't wait to KR again... but I am glad I will have a chance for my circuits to reset.

What I liked most was the huge battle on saturday. Me and Doran (OOG Jeff) Just stood in the middle of that field and killed as many Gobos as possible. It was hilarious the way that Doran lifted me when I went down and just threw me in front of a healer. Absolutely awesome! I also loved the starting of Frogdom a little inside joke out of Alisandria since the bullfrogs like to be so loud. New player mod was awesome. I killed some undead and some wolfs as well as met the Baroness who I was not drinking Sader's wine with! Also Buckles playing bagpipes was great and so was learning break limb from Orin. So excited for the next moon! My mighty hammer will smash the skulls of the enemies before me!

Edit: I forgot about swimming in the lake, the mass Lizardkin assault on the in I had the pleasure of npcing (though I did catch a low blow), Sunday morning with Buckles as well as drinking Sader's wine with Ginny and the Baroness...er I mean...... not drinking at all!!!! Roach leaving me to die by wolves was cool and Dr Demontfurt the third becoming the Grand Mage of Ale. Blackjack with Saleem was cool and roulette won me a lot of gold. I think one of my favorite parts of this weekend was my first NPC shift where Me and two others got the jump on Misaki Gideon and one other. (Sorry I forgot your name!!) Then meeting the kitten!!

This was a strange event for me, but definitely had some highlight.

I had a LOT Of really strong NPC experiences this event.

Firstly, BEST NPC SHIFT EVER. Those who went out with me know what I mean. Beyond the fact that it involved being in the lake, I really enjoy when there are follow ups to small things that happened in prior events. I hope this new species of fish comes back.

Next, I really enjoyed getting to go out on a mod with my son. James, it was brilliantly designed, and my son is still talking about it. I'm sorry those who tried to save him weren't able to do so, but A++ for effort.

I'd also like to give props to my goblin scout co-horts. Even after our leader was killed, we managed to scout all the locations for good siege weapons. However, we were on our way back when townsfolk saw us in the woods. Thankfully, the howling of wolves distracted them, and two of our number ran back to report while our replacement leader talked to them.

Also, had a great time as Demons just burning and destroying. I really thought we were going to make Calvin take a tag. Hats off to Ginginny for keeping up with the song to protect her friends while we tried everything to distract her. Also, hats off to the full time NPC who was doing the "5 fire" on everything and to Ree for the creepy, CREEPY laugh.

While it ended on a sad note, I really enjoyed being the pie making goblin who dreamed of vassaling and getting away from the goblin wars. Chief Runs To Fast will always have his loyalty.

onto Caldor:
An overall fun weekend. Got to make some new friends, including more northmen and a the dwarf with the chainmail protecting his beard. Excellent fun.

Had one of my most intense moments with the "card mage jerk guy" low level mod. Really just enjoyed how he kept smiling while I tried to convince my allies of how dangerous he was and how stupid it was to keep playing his games. You'd think after watching one person "draw badly" and get utterly destroyed by statues, only to explode in fire upon his being revived would be enough to stop people from playing with the cards.... In that same mod I really loved being able to ignore all the damage of said explosion and just keep yelling at the card guy. I wish the trip hadn't been unavoidable, but what can you do. It was fun to crack so many of my random big things that I rarely get to use.

I really enjoyed seeing Tommy and Xod acting as a team fixing people's armor and giving them buffs before the main mod.

The "strange occurrences" while annoying to Caldor have opened up some FANTASTIC role playing opportunities for me. I never got to work so closely with Gideon or Dr. Maxwell or Mirwen.

I was very sad to miss main mod, but glad to hear it went well.

Slaying the Dragon. Awesome. Again my son is so thrilled to have been part of it.

Giving Ardin marital advice during the feast.

Thank you to everyone who was awesome to Xander (Xod's real name). He had a wonderful time. He doesn't want to come up every month (nor would we even if he did), but he definitely wants to do it again. He's said the magic phrase "Once I'm older, I really want to do this all the time". Oh, and he was sad that he didn't get to go out MORE on NPC shifts. He wanted to be monsters.

A great time as always, I'm glad the next week long feast isn't for another year, though; I couldn't possibly do that again any time soon!

In particular order:

-The RP on main mod was amazing. All the NPC's were hamming it up like champs and taking prat falls. My personal favorite was the gobbo that takes a point blank "shot" to the chest from my crossbow, staggers back and falls, then gets up again to drop me like a sack of potatoes!

-Learning this week was crazy for Ben; 33 build spent translates to lots of long, walking conversations with better people than Ben. I don't know what I was expecting to get when going to an insanely powerful scion for lessons in "courage", but it was scarring...

-Beginning to search for information from a menagerie of scary people is IG daunting, OOG a blast. The ominous laughter Thursday night in the inn was more than a little spine chilling, so thanks for that, Scary People.

-Discussing with Anhil about when to not shoot things with the crossbow for my first lesson in master marksman was mentally stimulating. Learning from the only Master Scout in Travance about reservation is truly an honor.

-Surprising a katta and it consequentially avoiding eye contact with Ben for the rest of the weekend was hilarious!

-Fighting a copy of myself from the deck of many things was exciting! Too bad for my copy I keep a fire bomb handy at all times.

-Going to tell bandits to go away with Grimkell but getting enslaved instead was disheartening. The escape attempt started with a fizzle(or two) but nonetheless successful. Another batch of great NPC's!

-Fighting elementals with Jack Sunday morning while searching the remains of the goblin battlefield was a good time. I was glad to have somebody on hand who is better than I with a close scrum!

The week was a great time and I can't wait to see you all in a month!

EDIT- How could I forget the sexy fishmen mod!?

Chris McKenzie wrote:
-Learning this week was crazy for Ben; 33 build spent translates to lots of long, walking conversations with better people than Ben.

Buckles be swimming in build.

Oh gosh, in my case it is more where to start?

NPC fun: I loved playing a healer and meeting the one healer who always works the Bar. I'm terrible with names but she was splendid and I went with her to logistics and the RP marshals to tell them just what an awesome job she did. Gosh I wish I remembered her name. Hopefully the NPC healer Tommas will make another appearance at some point after having figured out his abilities a bit more. I spent 45 minutes in the inn just rping about being an angst-filled former butcher drinking the empathic pain away and it was wondrous.

Another great moment for me was NPCing as a hayseed farmer come to give a ring before one of the IG weddings, as we wandered around and generally acted like backwater goofballs and amused all the players while strutting about and generally acting extremely foolish.

Sunday morning had morning wakeup, which was a lot of fun slinking around as ratkin going "Quick quick! Kill kill! Eat eat!" as a Rat-Ogre and surprising quite a few people, enforcing one of the rules of Travance, never sleep alone. I am glad to hear no tags got taken though it was a close run thing. Props to Cree's player for running with what happened during that little mod so well, it was an absolute joy.

As a general rule I've learned from WITL and the normal event this weekend that I love playing either very different from my PC NPCs, or hilariously dopey and somewhat pathetic NPCs that while villainous do tend to have motivations. Playing dumb in a comedic manner is one of my favorite things to do when I gm my own tabletop or LARP games, so it was no surprise I enjoyed it just as much here.

As far as PC stuff goes New Player Mod was a blast, everything from meeting the Baroness to having great interactions with the Guard and my fellow new players. It was funny that the blond elf archer Anhil, I think, actually offered to hold Grim's furs right as Grim handed them off in his typically loud manner.

I particularly loved the Bard circle during WITL portions, it was a joy to sing rather sad love songs with Grimkjell and give a bit of depth to a character that mostly seems like just a one-note brute of a guy. Everyone was so lovely to hear there, I was sad I had to leave to go NPC with my best buddy Jason. Someday when we have time and have the lyrics we'll duet Immigrant song by Led Zeppelin IG as an old Barbarian tribal song

The Card Shark Bandit which Jason mentioned was also a favorite of mine, as was the incident with the Bandits that Chris brought up. We had some hilarious botches and I wasn't swinging aggressively enough before we briefly got enslaved. Thank goodness for fancy hats and firebombs which are up ins!

Caldor's strange "curse" is also an amazing RP streak and I hope this plot continues. I'm supremely excited for it as a player.

The second new player mod which was run at the same time as the wedding was interesting and fun, I liked that the NPCs were well thought out and the cave environment was great.

The main mod was really fun, the massive battle around 10 was gloriously sweat inducing and loud. Singing various songs with Bran as we headed towards the battlefield was a true joy, and hearing everyone pound on shields and shout battlecries was great too.

I'd like to point out some particularly character interaction highlights for me:

Everything that Goggles was involved in.

The vice-captain of the guard, Orrin, was particularly fun to bounce off with Grimkjell, as was Lars, and aw jeeze I remember his name, the fancy-looking witch-hunter guardsman who I got a lot of interaction with. Darned if I remember his name though, I'm a dolt. Lar's odd scholar friend was also great, Caldor and Aella, as well as Xod and Thomas were fun to play with as well, and Rayven and his fiancee's engagement feast was wonderful as well.

Meeting Clove on the first night was also great fun. Interacting with the newly married couple and giving marital advice at the feast was a joy as well, because barbarians know EVERYTHING being happily married. And we'll gladly tell you without any prompting at all.

The long talk I had IG as Grimkjell with the one staff-carrying healer who used to work in a mine was amazing, and I'm extremely sad I can't remember his IG or OOG name.

Everything Bran did was great, especially how we ended up teaching people the Fear ability by using Grimkjell as the crash test dummy for it twice, I think the Chaos warrior elf who begins with a K was in on both of those shenanigans as well. Grim felt so bad when he had to use Cleave on her for his own training.

Having people totally not understand Grimkjell's peculiarly barbarian way of talking about fighting and killing was great too, they required people to "speak Barbarian." and otherwise translate his odd usage of language. I think the phrases "cutting threads" and "Sleeping on the red snow." as well as "HJOLDA!" will be heard quite a bit in game going forward.

The OOG lessons in boffer two handed sword fighting were also great, I got like 4 of them so thanks everyone who helped me out. I had a blast, even though I'm covered in bruises from dying repeatedly in hilarious or pathetic ways as my NPCs.

Oh, one last thing, the Chaos Orb on friday night was insane, I think we had a group of 10 people get dropped 10 times in the course of a 30 minute mod.



I was amazed by the level of roleplay and thought put into the game, and how when we were OOG everyone was totally cool too. I hope I'll be able to come back soon, and I hope you all had as much fun as I did.