14/05/2024
Dear all, this is a very long but very important post.
It’s been 3 days since our event took place and we’re still trying to recover from all the emotions from the game.
We would like, however, to thank you all for this amazing experience. Your participation was highly appreciated because you made this game incredible and, to be honest, some of your decisions and interactions were surprising and beyond our expectations (in the best possible way).
- We’re thankful to all the players who have played the "regular player” mode - you have managed to finish your storyline and main quests which wеre: to gather a sufficient amount of scrap material and other artefacts, to trade them and buy supplies such as: ammo, medicaments and hazmat suits. Most of you have dived deep into our setting and successfully uncover the enigma of RSC, gathering all the letters, exploring the monuments, the family tree, finding the other additional information about the raiders, speculating and searching for clues, while in the meantime collaborating and interacting with other the players, in order to build up your truck anew, trying to solve the puzzle with the car wheels, sending your message from the telegraph, after the thrilling fight with raiders and mutants, in order to receive the last supply from the drone and taking off the carter from the car by the swamp. You did an amazing job and without you no one would’ve been able to escape the sick place, called RSC.
- We’re thankful to all the players who have played their raiders roles with dedication, respecting the setting but still showing amazing role playing abilities, completely portraying the role of the « sick bastards » with us. We have received some feedback from the players already who declared that you were indeed cruel at times, they were afraid of you, trying to avoid interaction with you whenever they could. You have showed high discipline to all of our tasks, no matter if they were pre-scripted events or you had to find the truth in-game, by yourself. We enjoyed the fact that at some point you were indeed questioning should you believe the traitor (Luiza), turn against us, rejoin with the stalkers and escape, or should you stay “true to the cause”, choose to not believe the rumours, stay with us and receiving the rest of the honorary badges of the raiders. And you chose to flee, which is such a cool and unexpected turn of the events! Fear not, the Gligans have replaced you, which means that the next event already has such an interesting flavour.
- We’re thankful to all players who have played the role of mutants - we made our best for you to have maximum comfort, places to get dressed, sufficient time to rest, sleep in an actual bed and take shower. We understand how hard and exhausting this role is, we are completely aware of the fact how painful it can be and we are very proud of you for not having a single complain, no matter what happened. You and the raiders team were the MVPs of this game!
- We’re thankful to all the hardcore players for the trust. You were wonderful and beyond! You accomplished your mission successfully - both teams managed to escape from the horrors in the building, while freeing themselves from the chains, collaborating with each other, they have killed the butcher with an extremely clever move - to push him to be eaten by the mutant, they passed safely from the raiders in the building, took their own locked gear and, surprisingly for us - everyone committed to descend from the building by our zipline. We understood that some people did have challenges to surpass their claustrophobia in the pipes, and others - with their fear of heights, so congratulations to all of you, we’re so proud of you! And the fact that you enjoyed the horrors of “Chervena gvardiya” is one of our most precious gifts for us from this game.
- We would like to express our deep gratitude to every single one of you who was not part of the organisational core team, but still helped in every possible way. Without you, this game wouldn’t be the same: Konstantin, Hellen, Kiril, Alex, Steli, Nikifor and, once again, of course - our semi-npcs - the raiders, thank you, thank you, thank you!
Now straight to the less pleasant stuff:
We have received negative feedback from some players and we are promising that we will work in the direction of improving the game. We took into account every positive and negative feedback from “October blast” and we have worked hard to make this game more enjoyable for you.
Because of the setting, this game was supposed to happen in a hut such as Buntovna, where we can have both the comfort of actual in-game places with an actual bar, places to eat, sleep and take a shower, and in other hand - a big forest terrain with mutants lurking in the darkness and an abandoned building.
However, there were people who didn’t really care about the game, nor the setting. We do not know what were their expectations for the game, but we would like to point out the fact that if you refuse to collaborate within the game and interact with other players, no one, no matter the setting, can make the game interesting for you. This is the sad fact. Feedback such as: the night is too dark, we are too scared to go outside of the city, we are afraid that the mutants will kill us in the forest is kind of irrelevant to a Stalker LARP game. If you don’t have ammo and medicaments, maybe it is intentional, so you can crawl in the shadows and do your best to find some scrap. Maybe you should be in a group with soldiers, medics and looters, so if you find an anomaly, the looter - you can take the gear, if you find a mutant - part of you need to sacrifice themselves, in order to distract the mutant, so the rest of the people can flee or find a scrap material, or a loot box and receiving enough resources, so that you can buy medicaments and ammo. If you don’t have enough scrap - it depends entirely on your role play abilities to interact to the NPCs and try to bargain and negotiate with them.
In LARP, you have endless possible ways to overcome whatever situation if you think strategically, work in a team or try to manipulate the events via role playing and improvisation. Organisers are flexible when it comes to such interactions and can change any mechanic during the game. For example: We saw that players couldn’t gather enough resources to buy all the hazmats and we ordered Alex to give you some, as she was a traitor. We decided to put one hazmat in front of the bar and someone was clever enough to steal it. And this was our intention, because we wanted you to be maximum protected and dry during the swamp mission. Please, keep those things in mind in future games.
LARP is a collective hobby and we repeated numerous times before the event that you will benefit more from this game if you try to collaborate with each other. Those of you who understood it, had an amazing time. Those of you who didn’t - maybe it is not a problem of the game itself. If someone didn’t fully enjoy the experience - we are open to any ideas and proposals, we are open to negative feedback because we really want to improve our games and make the experience better for you every time, but please, ask yourselves if your negative response is really pointed towards the game itself.
And last but not least - we will not ignore the fact that there were people who didn’t respect the safety rules. As you know, both in facebook and during the registration we made you read a form which said that:
- shooting in the hut area is strictly forbidden, not only for our own safety and for the safety of the hut, but also - because there were plenty of cars nearby. No matter if the mutants are passing by or not, the rules are there for a reason. If mutants come and you know it is forbidden to shoot, you can run, hide in the bar or elsewhere. We’re all carrying our glasses, but imagine if in this chaos, the hut owners were outside to feed their dogs and no one saw them. Nasty, isn’t it? We all agree to the fact that the adrenaline can consume you in such cases, but we should all think for our safety first and the safety of other people.
- we are tired of explaining how important is to have your safety gear at all times - knee and hand protectors, gloves, masks, glasses - they should become part of your skin during stalker events, so players will avoid injuries and other unpleasant situations.
- if we said that automatic shooting is forbidden, it means that it is forbidden, no matter the situation. Please, understand that behind the costume of a mutant, there is a real player who is not fully protected and their costumes are not completely safe from pain, let alone for regular players. The robot NPC was allowed to “play-pretend” that he is shooting on automatic mode, but we did NOT give him BBs.
- extra (personal) BBs, that wasn’t given to you from the organisers are strictly forbidden, but somehow people are still ignoring this rule. Please, don’t.
And now let us conclude with 3 positive things:
1. We cannot stress how much we are grateful to all of you who respected the environment. It’s the first time we didn’t find endless amount of trash, everyone was respecting and keeping the areas as clean and tidy as possible! We are extremely proud of you and we believe that our community can make those experiences better for everyone, it only takes a bit of responsibility for our actions.
2. There was a huge amount of food that hasn’t been consumed during the game. However, our team decided to make a charity and donate the food to a nursing home, which happened today.
3. PHOTOS ARE COMING VERY SOON!
Ey, we love you all!
Thank you once more and thank you for your attention!
