Day2Day

I'm going to miss stuff out, I know, but off the top of my head in no order at all:

Hot:
- Doing set up. It was tiring, I was too inexperienced for some of it and too short for other bits, but I kept myself busy, learnt new skills, and went to bed worn out in a good way each night. This was made fun and worthwhile by the excellent company and teamwork.
- Fab lammies that make people discern as winners
- Ushering Ittimin a few feet backwards for her own safety when she accidentally stepped into our camp
- Feeling integral to things happening. In particular, being called to answer to the sword lady who was cross at us for not making our swords better and being needed to summon the big bad for the final fight.
- Being in the right place at the right time and being invited onto the Muster Chef judging panel. Awesome mushrooms from the Bears and yet they were outclassed all the same when we reached the Gryphons and were served a restaurant level four or five course meal that had been cooked in the field. Other entries were good, but the bar was set so high for future competitions!
- Watching the Warrior and Wench competition. Ridiculously overplayed parts, and greenskin indignance were hilarious.
- People agreeing to get involved with stuff I asked them to help out with.
- Cornering the urchins, keeping them on carpet, and finally understanding how all the Black Flame plot fitted together.
- Yelling at Satuun and vampire cult leaders.
- Talking to Incantors with excellent IC reason to do so, which builds a bridge to letting me hang out with them more in future - since the Crows congregate there and Sue NPCs this is a good thing.
- Nice weather during packing up, and cars allowed on site - I was so concerned during Sunday that it would be otherwise and I'd spend 6 hours filling my car with sopping wet kit.
- Finding the Fireball liquer at Asda - haven't seen it on the shelves since last year and everyong who tasted it liked it.
- Nice roleplay around forging the seven swords into something a little bit closer to their ultimate destination.
- Phobos and his scary secret messages. Finding out later, out of character, that an item I created previously was used in the downfall of someone who wished me ill.
- Being considered competent: Ravenfire asked me for protection, Planar Cartographers came looking for me regarding rites, I was called to talk to the sword lady, and I helped train up some newbie healers to a level of competance on the field.
- Having endurances and not dropping on the first hit.
- Being bemused by a Leviathan ancestral trying to control me.


Not:
- Cold and wet, and failing boots in the mud
- Red paint, green pain, unnecessarily large staples
- Not getting to see either of the big bads in the final fight, despite being marked as one of their primary targets
- Doing lots of organisation for the Armourers linear and having our people turned away, then pulling out because the party ready to go looked woefully inequipped and the Harts were sure it was a suicide mission that couldn't possibly succeed with that party configuration.
- Feeling stretched at times. Barely made it to the healers guild and felt like I should be doing more around organising the sword forging.
- Wearing bad footwear and getting blisters the first night of time in.

One of the things we do at work is to have small bursts of work known as "sprints". We plan what we'll cover at the start, work on it, then present it with a demo at the end, to all interested parties. On Friday they asked me to do the demonstation part of our presentation.

I went in with no preparation beyond writing down on a post it note the four things I wanted to show people. I stood up and talked to the room of somewhere around 50-60 people about it, and then we moved on. There were more presentations and demonstartions, the last of which was very innovative and flashy and interesting.

After the meeting eight different people came and told me separately how well they thought I'd done. I've been told I paced it well, I was engaging, I put things at the right level for the audience, and that I was a natural.

Now, I was comfortable with the material I was talking about, but I had no preparation time, and didn't feel particularly nervous. This morning two more people told me how well I'd done - and that's after they had a whole weekend for it to fall out of their heads completely.

I appear to have wowed an audience. I can only attribute this to being a side effect of learning to present material in an off-the-cuff way through larp. Give me a skeleton and I can give you back a ritual. Dump some plot on me and I can manufacture a rite. Tell me where we're going and I can pull a transportation rite out of nowhere. And give me the thing I've been working on for three weeks and I can tell you all about it and make it sound impressive.

As a colleague said on Friday - the trick is to work out how to make this skill work for me. Hmm.

Hot
- General buzz - people like my character lots.
- Cap'n's ritual results
- Rumours of Graf's death on two consecutive nights, and being entirely fine.
- Whack-a-Satuun and Twister Balance rites were hilarious - although the first de-power Satuun of the weekend was awesomely powerful in terms of atmosphere, too.
- Peace negotiations saving our bacon, but hairy moments despite it
- Running away from Satuun and sitting in camp with fingers in the air, Jay and K8's reaction was priceless. (Wide eyes and a subdued whisper of "motherfuckaaaa...." as they turned around immediately upon seeing us.) Subsequently being congratulated on actually having left a message saying where we'd gone.
- Stealth healing during the final battle.
- Monstering for a change at a mainline and getting to be part of the group that did the rites that empowered the Big Bad of the weekend (although I would have been better if I could speak at that point but my throat wasn't having it).
- Getting caught up in rites to Law after hearing the rather funny comment that "The Chaos worshippers are very organised".
- A chance opportunity to get to know Sue's new Incantor character.
- Shocking the healers: "We could use more sanctuary items" "Just use your paladins" "We don't have any."
- Trying to give away beer cake to the Bears who seemed wary that it might be poisoned and kept refusing.
- Inadvertently choosing a totally sheltered corner to camp in - standing in front of the Jackal's fire I was freezing, but when I came to my tent to sleep and took layers off, I warmed up!

Not
- Stupid, annoying illness. No voice for most of the event and a hacking cough developed, too, reducing my ability to sleep.
- Trying to get everything into the car - in both directions. Packing would take far less time if I had more space to play with.
- Weather. The crazy, crazy winds. My new bell tent has uber metal pegs and was placed well so survived, and my oc tents were sheltered, but the wind killed tents around us and just made it really cold at night, as well as throwing my cloak in people's faces. And, despite factor 50 sun screen and snaz all over my face, I've got mild sunburn.
- Vague guilt at not doing a ritual. I had IC reasons to not be there and I had no voice, but the circle was perfectly aligned to my character and with a couple of rituals under my belt I think I could have beaten the score we got by a lot (a sad and harsh 4). Still, it means the new guy has got one under his belt now and the feedback was useful.

They actually updated the LT website! Like, really updated with something professional looking, not just a bodged bit of extra info on the homepage. And Rune has useful information in it and stuff. Boggled...

http://www.lorientrust.co.uk/Homepage.aspx

Daytime.

Wear:
Underwear
Jog pants
leather trousers
paid of socks
pair of carrier bags (on feet)
second pair of socks
pair of leather boots
t shirt
cagoule
tiger-print leotard
furry bodywarmer
long tabard (reaches to mid-shins)
giant leather (lammied) hero belt
suede and fake fur oversize waistcoat
fur coat without arms
cut off sleeves of a sheepskin coat
fleece cloak

And run around a bit. All waterproof and warm. Yay!

Night time
Version 1:
Sleep in t shirt, socks and balaclava using bedding that goes:
airbed
picnic blanket
4 season sleeping bag with a 3 season sleeping bag inside it
large, heavy, fake fur and fleece blanket on top
large wool cloak on top of that
hug a hot water bottle tightly

Wake up cold at 7.30am after about 4 hours' sleep.

Version 2:

Find spare bunk availability at 5am while chatting to irdm, sleep until 9am, struggle to leave cosy warm bedding to obtain food, eventually managing it at 10am.

Result:
Super-sleepy Max.