Occupy 7V
I took in a Seven Virtues event as an NPC at the end of last year and I enjoyed it. I wasn’t sure when or if I would be coming back, but the lack of a Madrigal Revel this year left a hole in my LARPing schedule that this past event conveniently filled. I still waffled a bit about coming. When I realized it was going to be at the Woodstock site and thus a little bit closer it was enough to push me over the edge into coming.
In general I had a good time over the course of the weekend, but I have to admit it was not quite as much fun as the first event I attended at the end of last year. It is hard to put a precise finger on exactly what was lacking this time. I had a few good moments, and one or two fantastic ones, but for long stretches I just wasn’t feeling the magic.
Still, the good stuff was generally great, and they certainly made the trip worthwhile. I got to reprise one role from the previous event and it was fun to be recognized by the PC’s. It was a small scene and over with fairly quickly but it was the sort of thing that suited my tastes. My roles in the Deep Honor testing were fun and I had to stretch my RP muscles a bit more than I usually do there. I also enjoyed my turn as the Seven Powers administrative assistant guy. There was a chance for some interesting ad libbing at the end of that scene when the PC’s got us a bit off script. I had a brief turn as a surly ghost on Sunday which was also fairly fun.
I think what I enjoyed the most about those four roles were that they gave me a chance to socially roleplay with a couple of people I don’t know. That may sound kind of unremarkable, but it is such a rare thing for me these days. The LARP circles I’m part of are so insular and inbred that it is fairly rare that I bump into players that I don’t know well. And much of the appeal of Seven Virtues is that it is at the periphery of my LARPing circle and thus full of people I don’t know. For me it is so much more fun to act out a scene with both a character AND a player who I have never met before.
Fighting was a decidedly mixed bag this time. I generally love NPC’ing combat roles whether they are large town and field battles or really small fights. I had some examples of really great and downright lousy ones this time. Probably the worst for me was the opening battle Friday night. Several people have told me they loved it for the drama and the impact and the sense of desperation., and from the story side of things I can completely understand that. But it was a miserable battle for me to fight. I really hate fighting in pitch black darkness.
In contrast the two battles in front of Roskins on Saturday night were a lot of fun. The light was a lot better and the PC’s were a little less panicked and more deliberate. I got to mix things up by switching off between fighting people straight up in the middle of the line, occasionally trying to sneak around the edges, and even spending a little time trying to trick people coming in and out of the doors. I had a few bad moments in those fights when I got careless or stopped concentrating on what I doing, but the vast majority of those two fights were pure joy.
I had a couple of other cool and fun moments. I really enjoy sneaking and counter-sneaking, and so I really had fun Friday night stalking and getting stalked by alberteqx. I wish there could have been more of that. When I saw on the schedule a number of scenes where the PC’s would have to sneak past us I was excited. Unfortunately the terrain and the light and some other factors kind of made them less awesome than I imagined, but still fun in a way.
And I can’t finish this without mentioning at least once how much fun it always is to NPC with my friends browstein and silverhare. I sadly missed the the two mods I had been scheduled to staff with silverhare, but I had two small but significant contributions to one of her better received roles. And browstein and I had two brief moments on two different mods where when it was all done and we were walking back to monster camp we got to go “Yeah, that was us. We did that.”
So it looks like there are two more full events, and possibly another one day in the works. Neither event conflicts with anything else at this red hot moment, but the schedule around them is a little crowded. I didn’t get to see how this thing began, but it might be nice to be around when it ends. We’ll see.