That was the weekend, that was....

[caddyman]

Well that was only the second time I've been fully involved in the writing and reffing of a huge two and a half day freeform event.



I shall look less quizzically on pax_draconis during future stress-outs on his part. Many, many thanks to Chalkie for his obvious concern when it looked as though I might go on a murderous mad-axe rampage through what felt for a moment like a very thankless entourage of knackered and wired players. I don't think I've ever seen him look quite so worried!

Stress was eventually relieved by spending half an hour kicking an inanimate object around the kitchen behind the main hall, and then, somewhat later - and after a couple of mugs of wine, sitting with magpye discussing the private lives of the inhabitants of Little Hammersby-by-the Craggy-Castle; being the strange little village in every Hammer Horror which has no clear means of economic support and no obvious reason to exist. This reduced the pair of us to two hours of hysterical giggling which neither of us is entirely sure was humour or released hysteria, but welcome nonetheless.

All so different from the previous evening when I discovered the transcendental enlightenment that comes with three and a bit bottles worth of strong red wine on a largely empty tum. I believe I was EVERYBODY'S best mate. Even people who knew me not from Adam. This lead to some certain amount of ribbing from the rest of the ref crew and a couple of players for most of Saturday.

From the way my body felt the next morning, someone must have reversed my skeleton while I slept in a drunken funk. But no headache, so I am WIN.

So the event itself? Despite the stress and haggard looks of worry from the writers and refs, I think it went reasonably well, but there were some deficiencies which we will try and ensure do not recur next time. Mostly we managed to wing it it but there was a couple of (luckily small) instances where to no-one's amusement the hazards of writing and running an event this large showed their ugly faces. Kudos to the reffing crew for the fact that barely a player noticed.

Things stuck in my memory?

DM as the Yellow-robed Demon Bishop from Hell.

The intake of breath around then Tribunal room as the casualty list from the destruction of Durenmar was read out.

The stunned silence that followed the announcement of the destruction of Durenmar.

The almost audible wince around the room when people realised that Ligea the Raptor aka nyarbaggytep had travelled 1,000 miles overnight after crawling out from under ground zero of a magical nuke.

forbinproject for the finest 10 seconds of role playing ever: Walk in. Shout 'Vadja' and die instantly as he is ripped apart by the talons of a certain Archmaga who just happened to be standing there on his entrance... Thirty minutes of preparation and costuming lost.... c'est la guerre.

The hopolites grumbling that their gaffer is tougher than them by a factor of about a zillion.

The certamen between Lord Archmagi Marain and Al-Jaffar.

What I wished I'd seen:

Everything. But particularly the moment the Dracon Vek stood up after remaining immobile for 9 years of downtime and 36 hours of game time. I am reliably informed that people fell off their seats in shock.

Thanks to the players and the refs for combining to make the event so memorable. You know who you are.

More sleep now.