MORDAVIA Live Action Role Playing

Responses in italics are from Ryan.

*Ricky Ording* Player of Caranthir (deceased), crewmember Hi - I'm Ricky. You may remember me from such roles as: The Drunken Elf (Friday) The Elf with an extremely bad hangover (Saturday morning) and the Elf who also got drunk once more, wandered off into the graveyard alone, and was sure-enough soon feasted on by the damned (about 20-30 minutes later). Aside from that you may remember me from the roles of: Evil window-bashing goul #5 or Orc-who-sounds-like-he's-constipated #4. I have to say, right off the bat: Thankyou SO much to everyone involved; The GMs the NPCs & the Players... not to mention our numero uno cook-o, who makes the best darn bread and cheese fondu out-there - Whoever you are lady, you RAWK! When I first arrived at the camp I didn't really know what to expect, but after a few swigs of my trusty wine-bottle the tongue got rolling (figuratively speaking, of course), and I ended up meeting a variety of people. The mind-boggling thought that kept passing though my mind that night was: "I wonder what there people are like IRL?". Of course, there was the odd OOC bonding moment. One of my personal highlights was with the representative of the Spanish Inquisition [Patch], he really knew how to keep the moral of us battered NPCs up. I remember hearing a few of the players griping about not having enough to kill - heck, I was sharing the sentiment - having spent the better part of a day hopelessly trying to track NPCs only for them to appear at the location I was just at! Ergo, I never killed a darn thing on Saturday-day. However, things sure heated up in the evening, didn't they fellow-players? ;) As the forces of evil (A cool'n neat chick with red glasses, some NPCs, "Jacob" and myself) teamed up to form the greatest faction of all time: The Diseased, Cancer-Ridden Bloody-As-Hell Doers Of Untold Amounts Of Demonic Evil! ....v2.0 It was good to see the players weren't treating the NPCs as jokes. Heck, we took about 3 lives that night. The GMs and NPCs had heard your call for more action. They delivered. SUCKED! to be you guys then eh? hehehe. Weekend Highs: -Meeting some really cool people (special shout-outs to the my 52nd Street Elvish Posse, "Jacob" - the man who died in an ORGY! (Coolest. Death. Ever!) & Helga, who does the best Donnie impression I've ever seen random banter. -Causing several players to fill their pants as I approched them with the SCYTH OF DEMENTED TORTURE AND NAGGING PAIN. Sorry you guys mistook me for death, cos damn you ain't never seen Death laugh like that before. -Getting to be an NPC and make the days events more interesting. Lows: -Blisters on mah foot -Bruise on my leg -The odd player who forgot how to count their hitpoints - you know who you are. ;) All-in-all, the most fun thing I've done in a long time - SO going back. ...and so will YOU, the reader, because YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO GO! :) ~Richard

*Simone Michaux* Player of Serinda (deceased), crewmember I just have to say how much I really, really enjoyed that weekend! I was incredibly shy/frightened to begin with but lovely people and a great atmosphere made me feel at ease pretty quickly. Afterwards the real world was an incredible shock - after 32 odd hours (a disproportionate amount of which was spent awake) of being immersed in Mordavia-ness, it was strange to no longer be running around trying to find monsters and such to harrass. I arrived home, thinking 'no, I'm not tired!' but, as the saying goes, as soon as my head hit the pillow I was gone. Strangely enough my dreams were full of people chasing me, me chasing people and a lot of light hearted violence involving sticks... oh... and corsets. Then a very, very sad thing happened. The next day at school I had decided to go to sleep in the library, I was so tired, and when I was half asleep all these kids started screaming. I immediately arose from my half sleep thinking 'OH MY GOD! Where are the Orcs attacking from?!' This is how deeply Mordavia has managed to affect me, which leaves me very, very impressed. My personal favourite moments were: - definitely anything to do with that corset, especially throwing it across the room at my poor, long suffering master. - The Siren Orgy, that kept me amused for hours afterwards. The general response I've got when I've told people about that was '?!'. I guess it was one of those 'you definitely had to be there' things. - And last but not least the two major battles, especially the one at night, which was highly excellent (lights & music, etc) apart from the fact it was hard to see who was friend and foe... but that only added to the excitement and general confusion. So I would just like to thank EVERYONE, because that weekend seriously rocked & I'm definitely going to be back for more. -Simone

*Andrew Hart* Player of Valader Walharut Well, where to start? The Broken Circle, from my perspective, was an absolutely invigorating experience. The development of the world of Mordavia, with maps, civil war and the evolution of characters, is truly fascinating. It's the thing great fantasy sagas are made of. You may remember me as Valader Walharut of the southeast Elven clans. I was the only player that decided to betray King Silvermoon in the final battle. As a player, I found myself getting absolutely mutilated. On the first night, while I took the point as one of two town guards the gypsies decided it was a good idea to raid us. When I went around to investigate I found only one person, who I threatened and cursed at. The other guard went to get reinforcements apparently. He never did come back. I was found unconscious, with all my belongings stolen and my left ear removed. Bloody gypsies! Although it was a rather large annoyance, I must congratulate who I suspect was Ryan playing the gypsy that robbed me. It was very well done. [Nope, wasn't me. Did they strip your tabard off? If so, I have a purple and white one with a little teardrop symbol that could be yours]. The second day was no better for poor Valader. As we went on an important mission to intercept a magical box containing a message to the king for reinforcements against the Orcs sent by an Elven lord, or someone of importance. I'm still too tired to remember who it was exactly. The box contained 3 gems and a piece of Elf ear. Some silly person lost the piece of ear, and being the only Elf around we had to bite the top of my remaining ear off to replace it. I'm wondering if the GMs noticed, and if so what did they think about that? [You found a piece of elf ear in the puzzle box? And someone bit off a piece of yours to replace it? I'm speechless. We didn't put any ear in, and I don't remember pulling any out. I can only conclude that someone played a very swift and horribly funny trick on poor Valader]. Oh good Lord, Saturday night. If Patch is reading this I have no doubt he's laughing hysterically now. Dark One Followers captured me, along with Helga and one other. We were the subjects of some dark ritual, which you may have noticed drove us quite insane for the rest of the game. I'll never forget Patch giving the order for me to remove my shirt and get painted with lipstick, or how cold it was having to walk around outside like that. You'll have to see the photos of it to understand what it was like if you weren't there, but I assure you it was by far the funniest thing I've seen out of the past 3 Mordavia games. My only complaint would be that while the special effects for events like Thor coming to the inn were great, there was a lot of waiting around on the players' side waiting for these events to happen. Although this all comes down to the size of the NPC crew so there isn't really anything we can do about that. [I'm always astounded when players want more action than Mordavia provides. Maybe we should put a roller coaster in the Inn?] My special thumbs-up award goes to Patch and the two artists who turned me into the twisted sacrifice I became. You three did great. And finally a great, big hand to all the GMs, NPCs and game crew for providing this fantastic experience. -- Andrew Hart

*Scott Farndon* Player of Edreak von Hoven (deceased) Finally after many years of NPCing and Organising I got a chance to experience Mordavia from a player point of view, and to be honest it was bloody brilliant. Mordavia's rule system was written so many years ago that it makes me feel old, it was tested over a period of a couple of years by members of the Dark Gate, Wotan's Volk and Portal LARP groups (most of these have faded into Mordavia) and fine tuned by Ryan Paddy as my grammar left much to be desired and the rules suffered from a few serious loop holes. It feels good to know that the rule system and the world itself is improving and growing with the fine individuals that attend these events. Ryan and I have disagreed on many a Mordavia topic leaving us with a compromise or involving a judicator to make the final decision and I feel these 'discussions' have helped improve the Mordavian experience by not making it a one sided view. In saying that I am extremely pleased to see players taking a bit of a beating with death and destruction happening around the land. This to me was always a major factor in helping to instil fear into players and destroy the arrow-proof belief. Some people may find this a little unfair but bear in mind that I too perished on the Saturday night so even retired Organisers are not immune to the madness. All the NPCs, GMs, and the Organiser regardless of NPC numbers that were up and down most of the event put in an awesome effort. The high points ranged from the trial on Saturday morning against a corrupted white mage, to fighting the stone golem in the afternoon. However in my own views I would like to see some bigger and meaner monsters, possibly another Necrotaur. Bigger monsters present a scarier challenge for players, the fear that a Necrotaur inflicts in a player is something that a plain orc cannot do. A variation of unknowns would keep us the players guessing and a little less bold to the slaughter of poor NPCs. For those who have never been NPC'd I recommend giving it a go. Unlike players the NPCs can take a little down time when needed, plot and plan devious deaths for players, play multiple roles, sleep in, inflict fear upon the players, and much much more. All in all great game, excellent organisation as we have grown to expect from Ryan's brilliant planning, thank you to all for attending and helping to grow Mordavia into something bigger and better. - Scottie (Retired Organiser with Player rights) P.S: Tell you friends and family about Mordavia we would love to see the game grow I'd just like to add that Anna and Patch lent us their experience back at the beginning when we were writing the rules, and that the system owes a lot to their Lateral Worlds game. When it comes to spotting devious rules loopholes, I bow before their superior acumen. Also, we will be re-considering all the rules and the rulebook before the next game. That's not to say the whole thing will be re-written, but that we will try to incorporate all we've learnt in three years of running the game, and make it simpler where possible.

*Sarah Lauder* Crewmember Wow! Talk about into it. I was a newbie NPC player and I have to say, it was the most exciting weekend I have ever had! After some rather degrading characters (the poor garlic/onion farmer's wife to name one) we finally got to the important bit. The fighting. Although I must say that on that night, the only thing that hit back was the tree. It was fantastic playing kamikaze ghouls who have absolutely no chance in HELL of causing any damage and all the chance in Mordavia of getting their butts kicked by the PCs! Running down the track, you would turn the corner with 3 other ghouls and come upon a group of 15 who happened to include someone with Holy water so we ended up getting quite wet! The next night was a bit more profitable, to my mind anyhow, as I got to play the part of the Fantastic Red Eyes!! Weeeeeee, go the ghouls! We finally got something back on the PCs who had tormented and thumped us all day long (although the group ORGY was a blast!) Oh the thrills you can get from having 30 odd people with a lot of swords and spears running from 7 of us! Muhaaaaaaaa!! Skipping ahead a few hours to the Last Battle, I have to say it was seriously fun to know I had put the fear of chicks in black cloaks back in to the PCs! Close enough in costume to my fantastic Red Eyes, I was then picked on by the little males who I had running in fear the night before. :P Overall, I have to say it was absolutely amazing experience and all the PCs will have to watch out next time as I'll definitely be back. Along with all my psycho friends from school! See you all there. :) Sarah

*Kath Dewar* Player of Toa Kata (deceased), crewmember Kia ora koutou! Yes, what a great weekend! Thanks to everyone for doing their bit. :-) Have had a message from the dear, departed Toa Kata to say she rides with the Valkyries. (King Silvermoon's crew got this news from a quick haunting very late on Sat night, ha ha!!) If you listen closely next full moon you might hear the crack of her laugh and see the flash of her blade in the sky! Altogether a fitting end - freeing 3 slaves, slaying a stone golem with her new found friend Davrik and claiming a special shield before being defeated defending the village and her comrades from the very hard to kill 'red eyed' nightmare!! And a suitably moving send off with much appreciated tributes. Glad the idea of a funeral pyre didn't catch on and a trip to the muddy graveyard was jettisoned in favour of lying in state!! ;-> And I went on to have LOTS of fun as an NPC - playing a zombie in the fab big Sat night set piece then a marauding zombie then a kitchen wench, a medieval tabloid scribe, an orc and a demon in quick succession!! Just about enough fighting even for me!! ;-) And it was good to get to hang and fight with the NPCs as well as the players. More than made up for not having had an in-character fight till mid morning Saturday and a tad too much general villager milling and politics early on. (As well as the usual larp irritants of blows not being pulled or hits counted.) High points for me included - Being able to defeat the stone golem, but only after mounting a sustained attack - The adventure with Silvermoon to slay Slagnost the Orc where it felt like we might all die - Getting to create general mayhem as an NPC and a monster - Being able to play a whole run of different 'characters' as an NPC - Sat night and Sunday lunchtime's battles - Renewing previous Mordavian friendships and meeting cool new comrades - Getting to play in such a beautiful spot all weekend! Have fun till we fight again! Kath (ex Toa Kata)

*Alex Vague* Crewmember Hey everyone, What a great game! I had such a cool time. You might remember me from such roles as: The Holy Paladin Lord Neville Denteque (The one who wanted the slave) The sneaky sapping weapons thief The orc who nearly garotted himself on the power pylon And many, many more! :D Big thanks to the NPCs and game crew - especially the GMs (Patch has disturbed me forever more). And cheers for the great food to Anna Cruise. I'm definitely going to NPC again next game as I had a awesome time. Thanks everyone, -Alex P.S. That bodice will haunt me forever!

*Rhiannon Daymond-King* Player of Dariyan Celebfin Thoronhen Well that was great and I wish I hadn't had to leave early, apparently I missed a great fight on Sunday. I was rather disappointed when I got up on Sunday morning at 8.00 and there was no-one else up. And I'd taken the trouble to sleep in my ears so I was ready to get up early in the morning and have another go! Oh well... I didn't manage to get a lot of plot development done from my end, apart from learning a couple of cool spells in Elven (meticulously pieced together from my meagre store of knowledge of the true tongue). Running around in the dark looking for an Elven baby was not particularly successful so basically I just spent time avoiding the guitar, fiddling with my garnet ring, and running my fingers through the candle flames (yes, that WAS in character, Dariyan's friend is a Fire mage and the red ring is from him) I think she may have been shocked into realising she cares for him, a bit at least. She still hasn't read his letter though. Damn honest elf. (maybe next time...) Compared to last time, possibly there wasn't as much stuff going on during the day time but there was more stuff going on at night time, and scarier than ever. One thing I was annoyed at was the vampire Vanian (Cheese-man, Raoul) draining me without permission when I walked round the corner after him to see if there were any orcs out the front. I wouldn't have been quite so annoyed if he had read the scroll, but he just said 'Drain' and walked off. He may have noticed that I avoided him like the plague afterwards. Some of the really memorable bits: APPLE TEA!!!! I don't like tea so I didn't have any last time but I had some on Friday night and it was wonderful. So I drank it all day Saturday and somehow I managed to psychologically convince myself that it was some kind of Elven liquor, and ended up feeling slightly giddy on Sat night, which I kind of enjoyed. My favourite quote from the game - "Let's go to the graveyard and dig up a corpse!" That was just a totally spur of the moment idea and was fun. Also roaming around with the little Elven hunting party was fun even when we got locked out of the tavern. Seeing the glow-worms by the chapel in the dark was an illuminating surprise - I didn't know there were any around. And actually remembering the way to the Dreaming Tower (eventually) was a good point. I dont think I've ever been more scared than on most of Saturday night. (Well, only a couple of times, and not while I was awake. Maybe only once. Oblivion is bad shudders) I had great fun running away shrieking when a wraith cast fear on me, and as usual that thing with the red eyes was scary. I'm sure having six PCs completely killed made all of us quite cautious! I was totally afraid for my life when we went out on that field facing that line of Cthulhu-faced One True God monsters - in fact I was so scared that I was praying aloud to the Elven god... don't know if anyone heard me though, lol. I tell you what, though, that vampire mist in the tavern at the start of the game was really neat! As usual thanks to all the GMs and NPCs for their creative abilities and getting their butts kicked by us PCs (bring on the archers!) And to the other players for camaderie and support, and the tavern's own gypsy wench cook for her great catering (as always) woot apple tea! glug glug Looking forward to the afterlarp... Rhiannon (who is relieved to regain control of the body again, and wishes that Dariyan had left it in a condition without bruises)

*Mike Curtis* Player of Davrik That fully rocked ! Once more the Mordavia crew put on a wicked and wild weekend of fighting, fantasy and fearsome monsters. To everyone who played a part in this event, well done - it was excellent. Especially the bit where you recreated the swamps of Berium ;) Highlights: * Prince Silvermoon becoming King Silvermoon (and the very scary battle that took place beforehand) * Casting Earth Strength on Toa Kata who went on to take out the first Stone Golem and thus claim the Sheild Impervious for Silvermoon * The feast (big ups to Anna & helpers) * LOTS of player character deaths ! Having died at the last game, I can relate to the loss of a character, however, it certainly made it much more scary to know that some of those monsters out there are out for my scalp :o * All the special effects (go Craig !). Next time I'll stay up late enough to see my oil wheel in action... * Getting Silvermoon's troupe to break out of character (with GM approval, of course) and harrass the town as the Shining Pink Path of Self-selected Supporters for the Chosen of the One True God Crack Suicide Squad. Especially the bit the the brave Lord Von Hoven boldy ran into the inn and locked the door :P I would like to echo some of the other reviews and say that more frequent/numerous/nastier monsters would be useful in a general Inn Harrassing capacity, to keep the swordhappy happy. That being said, there will always be points in the game where the crew are busy cooking up the next big plot events and the players themselves will need to organise their own amusements (anyone for a spot of Orcball) ? I've got a few things in mind, but will save the details for the forum. Cheers, Mike Curtis/Davrik

*Kelly Broomhall* Player of Salamander Just saying Mordavia was fun. I really got a kick out of having my own quest and mission. The only MAJOR BUMMER was my character's husband Fontenoy being murdered (by an NPC instructed specifically NOT to kill him no less). This murder caused my quest/plot to become null and void and totally useless, which of course... well... sucked. Both my character and I are rather distraught over his death, especially seeing as we were very close to having him turned/blessed. But other than that, and my falling up the back steps (damn its embarrassing falling UP stairs), it was great. People were staying in character a lot more than last time because most had their own little plot-lines. I really enjoyed it and of course look forward to next time, though it was hell scraping up the money. Look forward to seeing pics too of course. Tata, thanks for a good time, Kelly

*Matthew Moore* Crewmember Howdy y'all That was the greatest week end I've had in a long time!!!! As a first timer at larping and Mordavia I really enjoyed myself. You may remember me as: The essence of the Dark One The orc archer The spear weilding Elf The Wraith One of the gaurds who came to collect the slave and many more Over all the weekend was a blast fighting (and on an occassion killing) players was heaps of fun. The plot was good but playing a corpse in the Inn and one of the Zombies got a bit tedious. The only other downers were the lack of NPCs (try the other side you players out there) and some players not counting their HP properly. Lastly a huge THANK YOU! to the GMs and everyone else who went. Matthew (all hail the Dark God!) Cheers Matt. Can't seem to find any photos with your face, will add if I find one.