Feedback on 17th June Gamma (Monster)

[kevino]

Hello hello!

Once again I'm recording my observations. Once again I only caught the second half. This time I monstered throughout. No dead women married me today.

Observations about players:
- Spellcasters need to get the attention of the monster they are spellcasting at. (Although my personal combat awareness is not always great, I've played spellcasters a lot, and you really need to make your target aware of you before/as you expend your spell.)

Observations about monster briefing:
- Information about hits and abilities was good.
- Information about what the monster WANTED was given, which was good, although I think the monster ref mostly ad libbed this (I could be wrong though, perhaps it was in the brief.) It's always good to know what you're actually trying to accomplish instead of just mindlessly attacking every encounter.
- I would really like information about how the monster should move and speak in the brief (assuming they should speak at all) - even just 1 or 2 words on each.
- Running the monster team through their movements and speech before each encounter would give a more coordinated and stronger opening feel to each encounter.
- Lots of crew default towards comedy monsters whenever possible. It's good to spell out the brief on the occasions this is ABSOLUTELY NOT what you want. I don't think strict serious monsters were necessary at any point today - just a note for future briefs.

Observations about equipment:
- Walkie talkies were a big improvement.
- Monster crew kit was very poor. I recommend at least getting in some basic black tabards that you can throw over the monsters, so half of us aren't wandering about in check shirts and jeans.
- More masks and possibly facepaint would have enhanced things a great deal.

Observations about me:
- Try to improve combat awareness for calls, especially timefreezes, even when I am roleplaying my little imp socks off!
- DON'T shout next to the livestock.
- DON'T suggest the three-dan black belt ex-army guy is a cheerleader.
- DON'T.... oh never mind, that'll do.

[kevino]

Oh, a couple of additional points about magic:
- Were there more low level spells than last time? I didn't see any, and I would like a little more variety in my magic.
- Once again, things were weak to fire and the other elements don't get much loving. This happens a LOT in fantasy LARP - fire elemental magic exciting, other elemental magic crap. Even it if gets better at high level or further into the campaign, it's starting out on a poor footing. If I'd specialised in air/earth/water elementalism and played the first two games, I would have felt a bit miffed.
- I feel more strongly now than ever that the way enchanting weapons currently works is much worse than more common alternatives. Aside from being a real chore for anyone with mixed beads as outlined in my last post, it leads to very silly situations. Today Rengard rushed in with a stack of six blessed weapons, striking with each and discarding them in turn. Yes, it was funny - THIS ONCE.

If players are encouraged by game mechanics to do ridiculous things, then the game mechanics are wrong. I know Sully in particular is happy with the current enchant weapon spell, but I want to scream as loudly as possible that it is NOT AS GOOD AS IT COULD BE. A timed enchantment (1 min?) with unlimited hits would:
- Encourage reactive spellcasting in combat, instead of proactive spellcasting between encounters. More reactive casting is simply more exciting, and makes the spellcasters feel more relevant in battle.
- Remove the need for Rengard's weapon stacking tactic, which I feel would be a very bad thing if several players started doing it. Which they will.

Please revisit weapon enchantments!

- Kevin out

[lonewolf]

Just idea... maybe enchanted weapons should not stack up but last say once for weak enchantment and more turns for strong enchantments... would be a bonus which comes from leveling up.