Kidnapped Feedback

[Loxmardin]

Hello guys!

... I know I have a general feedback thread! I'd love for people to post in that too for the general stuff, but I want to use this one specifically for Kidnapped and future events I may or may not run.

I'm going to lay down a few questions that I'd love it if people took time to ask who actually did participate in the event:

• -> Did you enjoy the event? (No? Why not?)
  
  -> Was there anything in particular about it that you did/didn't like? Why's that?
  
  -> If an event like this was to be ran again, what parts would you like to see more of/what parts would you rather exclude, if you could choose?
  
  -> Was there anything you wanted to see that didn't come up?
  
  -> What were you looking to get out of the event, if you participated in this one (or any of the previous)? What did you expect, walking into it? (Were you positively/negatively surprised?)
  
  -> Was the size of the crowd to your liking?
  
  -> Do you think there were enough RP opportunities away from the main events?
  
  -> Was the area chosen for the event easy to navigate, fun to RP in, and overall to your liking? Why/Why not? (Do you have any suggestions for other areas to use in the future?)
  
  -> What of the length of the event? Was it too long?

If you can think of anything else you want to bring up, please do~! (andpostsomefeedbackformyotherstuffinmyotherfeedbackthreadplease)

[Grakor456]

Okay, moving this to here from your more general feedback thread!

Right. I think you know a lot of what I'm going to say already, but I'm going to put it out here anyway. For the record, you know that grimdark is not my favorite anything, so take this feedback for what it's worth: it's from someone that was intimidated and scared off by the tone of the event and an explanation of why I forced myself to take a break from it before the finale.

So, my points from the earlier post still stand. I'll just try to write what was both good and bad here.

The Ghosts: From the level of whether the event succeeded as a social experiment, you pointed out that it was the best one for those purposes. It was...different in this one. Certainly, there was a lot more clique forming in the beginning. That actually ended towards the end, and I want to say that was partially because of the whole ghost attacks that discouraged people from breaking off into smaller groups. In a way, you kind of defeated yourself with that decision. They did sort of pay off in the end, though. I would caution to be more careful with mind-control effects, though. Not everyone is very...happy to deal with it.

Length: The other problem that kind of cut off the social experiment part was the length. Around the half-way point everyone just kind of huddled up on the island and stayed away from the rest of the cave as much as possible. I do feel that the event probably would have been better off as a brisk one-week event. Rather, this one really did start to feel like it was dragging once it got past that point.

No Scene Shift: So Kidnapped 3 had the shift from being stuck in the cave to having the run of the island. Kidnapped 4 had the shift from being in the cage to having the run of the building. More than any other Kidnapped, I really felt this one needed some kind of scenery change. Not only does such a shift usually accompany a moment of levity and a better position, staring at that cave for two weeks was not ideal.

Tonal Shift: I think you know what I'm going to say here since you heard me say it all before. So I'll just summarize for everyone else: this was the darkest of the Kidnappeds that I've been in. I can take dark events...I loved K3, after all, but this one crossed a line with me with how unavoidable most of everything was. My main comment: yes, it's good that you can strike such emotional chords with people. However, it still drove some off. Is that really a good thing?

Guards: Player guards were sorely missed for this one. I understand that in previous incarnations they never worked how you wanted them to, but they still added an element that felt very missing from this one.

Finale: You were probably pressed for time and all, but I have to ask: why did we not kill Greeneye? The event kind of concluded on an anti-climax. In fact, after the fact I was wondering what, ICly, was exactly stopping us from breaking out on the first day since that's essentially what we did anyway. 4-5 people having magic isn't THAT big of a difference, when you weigh it against all of the people that were incapacitated before the end. Greeneye's not-death actually brings me to another point...

On a Meta Level...: Okay. So you've told me who's really behind the Kidnapped events. That's a cool idea! You should do something with it. It reaches a point here where...frankly, the real perpetrators are a bit too clever for their own good. I mean, kidnapping hundreds of people over the course of six major incidents, and no one can track this back to them? At all? That's stretching credibility a bit far. We got hints that there's someone above Greeneye, but not only do we not kill Greeneye, we never actually see or hear who was really in charge of this whole thing.

Overall: That's a long list of complaints. I'm sorry, I didn't intend for this to be a "this event sucks, and here's why" post. Some people liked it, some people didn't. As you've said before, it's not for everyone. I still did like some of my time in the event: it was a good way to get Surthak out to meet more people that he wouldn't otherwise. Survival events are good for that, getting people to mingle. And yes, the social experiment part often worked better at the beginning, it was good to see the people collect into groups at the beginning. I just wish that logging into the event didn't make me feel so depressed.

Gron: So, let's end this on a positive note. I can't offer much on Myron since I didn't RP with him that much. I also can't actually offer too much on Gron just yet because Surthak is still getting to know him and Gron was very closed about himself for most of the event. But, he was still a big success, and for good reason. This guy showed that guard characters can work in Kidnapped, and they can work well. We've got a mystery guy here at the beginning, with everyone not knowing if he's good or bad. There was a lot of risk he put himself to. And his conflict, his reason for being there and why he couldn't act, was all interesting. He really was a person that made folks (or, at least me,) want to figuratively take him apart and see how he ticks.

I do want to RP with you more. Especially now that Kidnapped is over, I think I can be a bit more relaxed and just enjoy the RP as it comes. Do poke me for it sometime, I'm quite eager to see more of how these two play off of one another.

...the rest of the questions that I didn't address I might answer later.

[Geoni]

The Crowd: The crowd was only big on the first day and the last day. The true crowd was usually 10-20 people online for most of the event's duration. This is how it usually is with long events like these. I can't say I'm a huge fan of giant crowds as seen in the ending, but in reality, the event didn't seem too crowded.

What I liked in particular: The risk you took with taking away the guards and making starvation the main conflict of the event. However, I disliked that in a way, even though I was able to roll with it. In this event, there was no dynamic between the guards and captives to enhance the tension and aside from the occasional person being harmed here and there by the Gnolls, not much happened. I think that this forced us as the players to make the event exciting and that is why I think some didn't enjoy it. I myself had to think carefully about how to pace Geoni's downfall into poor physical and mental health, because I knew that I had to create my own tension in order for the event to be fun. This is why I presented him as friendly and likable for the first week and then tore him apart during the second week. What I'm saying is that I had to be the one to make this event enjoyable because we the players were left to create the tension, rather than the setting or the dynamic between captives and guards.

That leads me to...the area: I think that this was kind of bland for two weeks. Kidnapped 5 had us stuck in a cave for a long time, but at least everyone got to move up and outside towards the end. In this one, there was no new area introduced. Not that I should be comparing it to skin thieves, but one of the things that I enjoyed in that event is that every other day, there was a new area to explore, and eventually the place that our characters were stuck in became huge and expansive, and there was something refreshing about that, especially with the element of 'is he or is he not a skin thief' thrown in. In this event, the only dangerous element was...well...Bedlam and the occasional Gnoll conflicts towards the end. When things were getting boring after a few days, he infected the water source and added a new threat to our characters. But this was the work of a player and not the DM.

What I expected out of this event: eventually became what I put into it. This is both a good and bad thing, as I've said before. I had a feeling that this was going to have to do with being without resources for a long time, so taking Felweed away from Geoni and putting him through withdrawal was what I intended to play with in this event, but when I began to think about the real consequences of starvation, I was able to do more.

...can't think of any other feedback. I think that Reigen employing the use of ghosts in order to mess around with characters was helpful. Future Kidnapped events would benefit from having more DMs.

[Grakor456]

Because I thought the whole 'AND FACELESS HANGS OUT TO DIE' at the end part was silly. Greeneye was meant to be an intelligent, competent opponent who was a threat. What kind of smart villain hangs out to die? He just sent a mass of undead to cover the retreat of his still-living forces. Surely you can find some satisfaction in the fact he 'NOPE'D' out of there instead of thought he'd really stand a chance.

I wanted a shift from the usual henchman Loxxy employed in kidnapped (unfeeling, replacable, etc), and instead made a villain who had a finite supply of resources and did not want to lose anything. Two gnolls and an ogre ticks him off because those are three henchmen he's not getting back anytime soon. Yes he had a ridiculous number of undead at the end, but that was mostly because we didn't expect the 38 person mob at the end, so we had to add in more.

I know there's this whole tradition of killing the 'main villain' at the end of every event, but I think most the people who roleplay evil characters will agree that it's a situation we're not big fans of, regardless of what others believe or think.

Speaking of Greeneye, I'm more concerned with feedback about him. If people ended up enjoying him, who knows, maybe he'll make a return.

There's a few problems I have with this. The first is that it kind of robs the event of a proper conclusion. The climax of the event was essentially "okay, you kill a pack of mobs, now you can go" which didn't have any real punch. No, the villain doesn't always need to die: but the narrative should still have a satisfying conclusion.

And more to the point: Kidnapped as a series is already one in which the bad guy always escapes at the end, because the real perpetrators are never touched. Faceless was a good idea -because- she was disposable and not the true culprit, and yet killing her gave the survivors a sense of accomplishment and a way to enact vengeance for what happened in the event. So it's not even that we didn't kill the main villain: we didn't kill the main villain's -lackey- either. Combined with the fact that the real villain is never even touched in six events, it just compounds a problem that it was struggling with already.

Re: Greeneye: This ties in as well. So, Greeneye's name is supposed to provide a hint that he's envious of something. Envious of what? I don't know. All we ever really saw of Greeneye was him coming in, torturing some random person/people, and then leaving. He went on this long lecture at Gron and Surthak about friendship being a lie, so on and so forth, but that didn't amount to much that I could see. This is why his not getting killed honestly confused me...it felt like he was being set up to die, and then it just didn't happen.

[Rigley]

...This one's long.

Spoiler:

Alright; I always endeavor to be candid in feedback, so here we go.


-> If an event like this was to be ran again, what parts would you like to see more of/what parts would you rather exclude, if you could choose?
See below for some of this, I feel this and the next bullet are slightly similar there. But:

-More authority interaction. I feel that the players who were taken up by Greeneye were too few, and that’s too little interaction with the captor. By no means is it bad to have an isolated feeling, but at times it was easy to forget we were even being held by an entity other than the boards up there. And they weren’t even a particularly threatening or interesting entity this time—just... gnolls. Which can be made interesting certainly, but I don’t feel much was given on them or that they were used enough.

-The spirits: I didn’t really know what to think of these guys. I can’t say I cared for them, as they seemed particularly random both in their behavior and how they showed up. There was never really much of a sign of the supernatural early on to the event, and I don’t feel their introduction was really given too much other than the OOC announcement of ‘CWs all around if you go off now’. They also just irritated me some from an OOC perspective, as I have a bit of a distaste for ‘bystander’ entities treated as positive characters (which did improve over time, so I didn’t mind them as much as Standard and Generic in previous runs). But that’s just a gripe from my own mentality there.

I also don’t feel that much was made out of them—they came randomly and then faded away with a simple emote in the form of ‘X leaves as you exit the cave’. I feel that if they were to be put in, something should have resolved with them in –some- way. I’ll discuss the event’s resolution with this later.

-Less Gron: Hear me out. There is nothing wrong with Gron as a character, or having an entity like Gron in the event. But here’s what I know about Gron:
-He gave out food for weapons.
-He had a big OOC flirty joke with Surthak.
-He became a love interest and friend for Surthak.
-He talked to Surthak a lot.
-Most of his interactions were with Surthak.
This is not a bad thing, I will repeat. Having a character specifically warm up to and interact with another character is normal, and that’s not the issue. The matter comes up when most of the event is riding on the DM’s action, and that ability to act is split by portraying a character.

In essence, it feels like a lot of attention used on playing Gron took away from attention that could have been used on larger events within the run of Kidnapped. And as a direct response, it felt like a lot of exposition or intrigue was being given to one specific character at times, or at least an excessively small group in the grand scheme of things.

Gron did not affect many people. He affected a small group, namely one person, and alone that’s how a character should work. But due to only having two DMs and those DMs being on with relatively limited time, this stood out to me during the event, and I fear it might have detracted some.


-> Was there anything you wanted to see that didn't come up?
More interaction. I’ll lump this one into the below question mostly, but I’ll address a few directly here:

-Guards. I feel that player guards add a great deal of interaction to the Kidnapped events. They add things for players to do and interact with, and they can provide interaction during downtime when the DM isn’t on. While I didn’t like the forced player guards in the former kidnapped, I preferred them to having no guards at all.

-Progression: I’ll touch on this when I talk about the cave, but in short I feel like there should have been something past the barrier other than a broken-up room and a cave. I’ll elaborate on this further down.


-> What were you looking to get out of the event, if you participated in this one (or any of the previous)? What did you expect, walking into it? (Were you positively/negatively surprised?)
Right, so I’ll put this forth as an accolade regarding the earlier Kidnappeds; Kidnapped 1 and 2 basically defined Endling for me, and I consider her one of my most successful characters in terms of story output and general interest. It gave her difficult decisions and consequences to deal with and made me sit and think—‘how would this character deal with this, why, and what would they think’?

I don’t believe I had this come up in this run of Kidnapped. It may have been from my choice of character, but Seda wasn’t overly afflicted by what she endured—there were no hard decisions such as obeying an authoritative figure or aiding the captives, or opportunities to do much at all with their own situation. The primary thing I noticed in this vein was giving up weaponry for food, and while this could have had more of an impact, I feel it happened far too scarcely to have any real effect.

As well, it didn’t help that there was no real change on whether they had their weapon or not—there were few instances where this was actually a thing, or where hunger itself played a role. It was rare that people got jumped, to the point where the cavern was only really intimidating when we saw you were online. In which point people sometimes made the precise action to go off and wander away, in hopes of invoking some event due to it.

I feel that the lack of a clear authority probably played into this. In former Kidnapped events, you could act on this—defying the authoritative figure to be a pillar of strength for the group, taunting them to distract them from weaker captives, or going the other route and being an informant or a lapdog to their demands. These sorts of things are interesting for a character; dealing with the blanket issue of food and water on the other hand can be a hook, but it’s a hook that requires ramifications.

Really, I feel most development and intrigue was player-driven this time around; I certainly felt that my logs with Seda and her degrading mental health were more or less unchanged by most of what happened in the events. Another one to look at would be Geoni, who was playing out his various afflictions. These two characters did not progress in such a way due to the event at all—the same thing could have happened in a Shipwreck! event. The changes were products of passing time and lack of resources, which is able to be done in almost any survival event.

Again, these elements are fine. They cannot carry an event, however, and I feel that they were given too much expectation as to their effect IC and OOC.


-> Was the size of the crowd to your liking?
I can’t complain about crowd size; take as many as you can handle. I don’t find anything wrong with including larger numbers, especially in a long event.


-> Do you think there were enough RP opportunities away from the main events?
This is tricky to answer. There were certainly a lot of opportunities for socialization, but at times that felt like the only thing going on in the event proper. The cliques that formed fell apart or were non-factors quickly, and without player guards to interject their own events into the run we were left with –only- main events, by which I mean events you or Xigo had a direct hand end. Even if you didn’t mean it, everything you two did effectively became a main event, because that was the only point where much was really happening for players to act upon.

This could be seen as a failure of the social experiment aspect, but that depends on what you intended to get from that. As Grak said, boxing the captives in with a blanket character warning dispersed most of the possibilities of the cliques accomplishing much—because to plot or carry out plans you would have to be off on your own, making you obvious targets for bad things to happen to.

While on this note I’ll also say that in terms of the main events, I’d say there just weren’t enough. And again, this is largely to blame regarding the previous comparisons of player guards, which added an entity which could interact with the captives in various ways. Without these the DMs were the sole point of action, and there just weren’t enough events or enough time spent into them to make this effective.

To compare to another survival event—the initial Skin Thieves was very much a ‘do as you will’ event, where minor attention was required from the DMs. However, Skin Thieves had a mechanic—going out meant you could get jumped and have your character altered. The important thing there was that it didn’t end in death, which is ultimately the logical conclusion of this sort of ambush in Kidnapped—either the attackers kill the victim, or the attackers are impaired themselves when the group as a whole retaliates. Death doesn’t give character development, or at least it shouldn’t be a primary method of doing so—at least, as a personal opinion. So I feel this dissuaded a lot of hostile characters from acting out, as well as possible victims from branching off.

Because of all this, in short I do not believe there was enough to do in this event.


-> Was the area chosen for the event easy to navigate, fun to RP in, and overall to your liking? Why/Why not? (Do you have any suggestions for other areas to use in the future?)
I’m afraid I didn’t like the cave. I understand that’s the intention, but for the most part it just felt... empty. Devoid of any intrigue or reason for exploration, once it had been strolled through the first time. The place was also very visually draining to be in—and while that can be a plus, being static within a cavern for two weeks is draining both OOCly and ICly.

I’ll compare to other kidnapped events. The first I attended was at Alcaz, and it took place in a tiny cell, partially sunk with water. While this room may not have had much to do in it, it had better atmosphere; it was a dungeon, there were torture implements scattered all about. But beyond the cell there was a topside as well, with longhouses and a weird tower and... stuff. It made things more interesting, and when you finally got out and into the area formerly restrained to the guards it was a visible shift and an interesting change. This ties heavily into the gripe concerning guards and length (coming up), to note.

The others that I attended took place in Alterac (again, interesting outer area that people were brought into for events), the Island and the monastery (which people were given free reign over after a certain point, providing a welcome change of scenery).

Perhaps more important though is that while these areas were more interesting, they were also more visually appealing. The cave was blue and black. That’s it; blue walls and a ton of shades of black and gray. It really did all mesh together, and without additions the place was just –droll-, especially with the factor of time wearing down its appeal more and more.

The issue being, in short—the cavern wasn’t just a droll place ICly, but it was also a tiring venue ICly as well.


-> What of the length of the event? Was it too long?
In short, yes. I mentioned in the last two week kidnapped that I disliked the longer running time, and I stick to that. This one in particular felt even longer though, for reasons I’ve covered above. I feel that the event could have been ran in a week’s time, and not only would nothing have been disinclined, I believe that attention and interest would have been retained –much- better in such a scenario. There wasn’t much to define the days for me in this event unlike others, and I believe that if you had shrunk down the running time it could have been much more fluid.

Really, pacing was a big issue in that regard, and some of the stuff from Seda’s entries were quite mirrored in my OOC perception—it felt like there was very little accomplished most of the days, and that nothing much had shifted in the grander scale by the time the event ended. The only change of momentum came when powers began to be given back, which was only really a big thing in the last two days.

-> Was there anything in particular about it that you did/didn't like? Why's that?
Right—the ending is probably my biggest gripe.

Through the run of this event we heard that the bad guys had harpies, ogres, and gnolls [as well as a big, bad gnoll]. And possibly more. One assumes they needed more than a single room and cave to house such beasties.

Not every event should end with a dungeon crawl or the like, but it felt like we were going to be leading towards one or that one would have been appropriate; running up and ransacking the bad guy’s hideout, fighting through the droves of baddies, and most importantly offing something notable. In the past the notable person was Faceless, of course; and that worked fine, since it served as a sort of catharsis and IC endpoint. “She’s dead, we’ll not have to worry about this again!”

I’ll segment again:

-The event in general: The ending event felt a bit rushed. It was a large mass of the same NPCs spawned, with a big guy in the back. The affair was comparatively swift, was carried out in trust with general ‘you hit, trade blows, etc’ sorta deal, and only once did the mind control thing play a part, for an excessively brief time. The big guy in the crowd wasn’t even given many notable emotes amidst all of this, and fell down alongside the rest of the crowd.

-Even progression: I was fine with the relatively nonclimax of the initial fight, especially when we heard Greeneye fleeing and when we reached the staircase—the idea of getting summoned into a bigger place immediately came to mind, since it seemed to be a logical leap that these guys had a sizable little operation up top. But instead there was nothing but a cave and machine upon leaving—we came up into a room, got all our stuff and Gron’s kid, and were done. This seems more like a halfway point than a conclusion—from here I expected us to go on and –use- the newly acquired gear in more fighting, or at least have to expend some more energy on our push out.

-Resolution: Again, Faceless got offed in the end of the previous events; this was fine. It gave a proper conclusion since the big bad of the event was put down. I expected the same with Greeneye—not because RAAGH BLOODLUST but because that’s just how the narrative usually progresses, and it provides the end with something of IC worth atop of the other things.

Compare to other Kidnapped events, again; in terms of IC merit, we took down Faceless. We took down the head honcho of this evil place and then we stormed out all heroic and whatever. I’ll go ahead and address Xigo’s reply here as well. I guess I’ll just toss another segmentation and talk specifically on...

Greeneye: I did not find him particularly compelling, because he felt like a comparative non-entity to Faceless. In terms of having the bad guy make it out, I’d be fine with that if the bad guy was notable. But for most people, their only interaction with Greeneye was hearing him shout, and the one time he opened the trapdoor and told them off. Very few saw him, very few interacted with him. This is fine, but compiled with the relative slow periods throughout the event and the assumption of his working for another person, he came off as... another Faceless, really, and a Faceless that was more truly apt to the name since we didn’t see much of him.

In this sort of scenario it would have been a big boon if Greeneye had a Dragon [this kind], to give the players something of interest to fight in the end. That way he didn’t have to die, but at the same time there would have been more personality to the fight than just a large mob of undead. In fact, the presence of an ‘important goon’ character would have added a lot in making Greeneye more of a mastermind-esque character, since you’d have the muscle doing his bidding and in the end, making the sacrifice for his escape. More importantly this goon would have been a recognizable face, and thus would have given some progression in terms of the shift.

I understand the intention with what you mean, I do. But due to the way the final event played out it ended with a large non-climax; this is not just to the fault of Greeneye, as the slack could have been picked up with a crawl through the bad guy’s base, or whathaveyou. But just as it was, Greeneye’s retreat left us with no real BANG to the end of the event. And without that for a two week long event, it just doesn't leave a pleasant taste in the mouth.

...

In a small aside:

Regarding Meadowrest: I really feel something needs to happen with these guys, and interaction with the true force behind Kidnapped seems long overdue. They're reaching past the suspension of disbelief at this point, and I feel that it's hard to justify their continued actions without more... information on them, I guess. Right now they just seem implausible and cartoonish in the lengths they go to to carry out these events continuously, with no obvious purpose.


That about wraps it up. I'm sorry if anything I've said comes off harsh, and I don't intend to cause any anger.

[Jonoth]

What I expected out of this event: eventually became what I put into it. This is both a good and bad thing, as I've said before.

This most accurately sums up my general feelings about the event as well. It could be seen as a negative in a sense where there were people that waited for things to happen that didn't, but by that same token, it was a positive because its the first lengthy roleplay I've had in a long while where players were logging in and doing instead of just waiting for a big event, and to be honest, I miss that. So big kudos for making that happen!

The lack of change in the environment was't really an issue for me during the course of the event, but when I got out, I did kind of have an OOC feeling of being institutionalized, meaning I didn't immediately know what to do with Thalvin once he was free. I don't know yet if that's a positive or negative. Just an observation for the moment.

I have a love/hate relationship with villains dying at the end, so I'll explain why Greeneye living was a bit tough. I'm a fan of great villains, and I do generally think it's a waste to get rid of a good villain. But in the case of RP, there is a sort of unspoken threshold I feel at times. That threshold is the amount of suffering a character can experience before a lack of retribution feels like failure. And I think that's what happened in this case. This event was a taxing one, both ICly to the characters involved, and as previously mentioned, OOCly to some of the players. There was an intensity to the depression and hopelessness, and in that environment, a visible victory is sometimes the only solace that can be had. It may not need to be the death of Greeneye, but the captured never got to see him defeated in any sense, whether through visual fear of the villain, or giving him a dose of his own medicine. They never got to really see -him- as powerless, and I thought his desire to be seen as powerful in the context you put it in made him a very compelling villain. The lasting image many characters may have of Greeneye is him having the Gnolls fire upon them after torturing three of the group publicly.

My last points I wanted to make were about some OOC issues I had. The first was during the digging incident at the very beginning of the event. On one hand, I didn't expect anything to happen with it, as it would defeat the purpose of the event if people were finding ways to escape so early. On the other hand, I felt like some of the comments about it, basically laughing at the players attempting to try, were a bit rough. I thought there could have been better ways to handle it where it was clear that escape wasn't going to be easy without belittling the players for trying.

The second was the day before the end, when this was going on. It was a bit off putting to me, mostly because I was dealing with an important character choice, trying to keep up with everything and respond quickly, when things got flooded with OOC emotes. Mind you, I'm not saying it's wrong to inject emotes with a bit of wit and humor, but it was another thing to me to suddenly start puppeting people's characters out of context, which made the flow of the conversation very hard to follow and respond to. From people's reactions though, I assume I was probably alone in that regard, but it was enough to make me log out to regain my mental footing a bit, so I thought at least it would be worth mentioning.

All in all, I enjoyed the event a lot, and would definitely participate again! Great job to all involved!

[Noble]

Overall, I'm not really sure I have any right to give feedback. And in truth I can only provide it in thoroughly over two parts; The beginning and end. Yes, perhaps I was not particularly active, or seeming to be taking the event the most seriously. I just couldn't get into it.

This is partially my fault, Joseph isn't exactly a character you take fully seriously, nor was he really the kind of character for this particular event. Kidnapped just felt like .. that event you felt obligated to do, but never really found the time or inspiration to try and participate into. The few times I've been on and at the event I just really felt .. disengaged. It went so anti-climatically and slowly I really didn't feel like hopping on CoTH. The few times I was on in-between, briefly, were never really when Loxmardin herself was on. Though, this really feels like a complain I myself (and a minority) only experience.

Another problem would be, the crowd, it was just too large. Too the point we're it felt unplayable by all standards. When people are in large quantities of groups like this, it tends to scare off other, less sociable minorities (like myself) into just damning the occurrence of events like this. I really don't have any problem with your DMing Loxmardin, or any of the other GMs, but events like this just tend to have everyone huddle up and form social cliques within mere hours (IC though). This resulted in a lot of outer-group .. isolation, and that just killed it for me. I am however biased in my judgment admittedly, I have the philosophy that events should be consistently served to smaller pockets of the overall playerbase and general population. Anyone should be able to join along, and they should usually be very well capable of opting in or out throughout the event.

Finally, I really felt my (though barely little) participation in this event was pointless, and that I never really got anything out of it. This is mostly my fault, given Joseph's err, behavior. My main aim was to try and make friends through Joe, find some future RP partners. Just didn't work out.

[Delta]

The above posts have gone over almost everything I would have brought up, more or less. I second what was said by Grakor and Rigley, with the exception of defeating Greeneye. While I missed the big escape, I would've been content with his escape if there was hope of some kind of follow-up. A group of determined survivors could be given the opportunity to track/pursue him and engage in a kind of confrontation. Even if this didn't result in his death, and was just a prickly chat followed by a beatdown, it might offer a bit of closure to those who desire it.

Up to you guys!

Anyway, I'll just bring up two points relevant to my own experience in the event:

Casters were massively disadvantaged from the outset.

I mentioned this to another participant even before Kidnapped began. I thought that it may play some relevant part in the plot, but it didn't seem to. Casters were just lambs in the lion's den, and to make matters worse, it was later pointed out that any non-weapon trump card they may have held would have been taken from them before the show commenced. This would have been fine if there was an equalising restriction placed on the melee characters, such as drugs or magic that rendered them lethargic/docile/weak. Trading weapons for food was an interesting aspect of the event (albeit one never capitalised upon), but if a character didn't rely on a weapon, s/he didn't have the opportunity to partake in that.

Action relied a bit too much on the players.

I regret not putting in an antagonistic character, frankly. They were the only sources of conflict and strife. This was no one's fault, but since I couldn't be around during the hours when players were most active, I didn't really get much out of Kidnapped. I think there could have been more DMed events, just to edge the plot forward. Every two or three days would have been fine; something resonant could happen, and the players would be given a chance to react to it.

[Xigo]

While I missed the big escape, I would've been content with his escape if there was hope of some kind of follow-up. A group of determined survivors could be given the opportunity to track/pursue him and engage in a kind of confrontation. Even if this didn't result in his death, and was just a prickly chat followed by a beatdown, it might offer a bit of closure to those who desire it.

This was my intent, to have him escape so he can come up again and I can actually flesh out his story more/provide an event chain.

But now I just... don't want to.

Please don't bring up any more Greeneye feedback. I thought I was doing something that people could enjoy -- experimenting with the villain of a plotline. Evidently I was completely, absolutely wrong. Ignore the fact he existed if you can. He won't come back.

[Loxmardin]

I'll touch on the point of Meadowrest right quick;

The issue I have with getting them any more involved in the chain than they already are is the general tendency to uproot any sources of evil. If Meadowrest go too public in a way that makes them available for lynching and hunting down, then the events would be over. My antagonists wouldn't be able to provide any more events. At the same time, people want closure and people want to feel like they progress and get somewhere with their investigations.

... I guess I just don't want people to kill the organization (and the event chain, by extension). And that's what's going to happen if they become too visible.

[c0rzilla]

This was my intent, to have him escape so he can come up again and I can actually flesh out his story more/provide an event chain.

But now I just... don't want to.

Please don't bring up any more Greeneye feedback. I thought I was doing something that people could enjoy -- experimenting with the villain of a plotline. Evidently I was completely, absolutely wrong. Ignore the fact he existed if you can. He won't come back.

I liked Greeneye, and I want him back. :C

[Wuvvums]

I think this Kidnapped more than any sorely lacked a good mechanism that would pit players against one another and rise the tension. In the past the tension used to come from guards, but then some of it was lost when guards were unwilling and didn't have the incentive to provide a source of danger to other players. I think there also seemed to be a point where it was discouraged for guards to go against players and mess with them in Kidnapped 4, and in 5 I just don't think it really happened enough. I'm not saying things should be grimdark, but I think to some extent these events really need something dangerous to them, that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Unfortunately, I feel most all of that was removed, or at least there wasn't enough danger to keep you hooked for two weeks.

If you really want to play the angle of social experiment then I think there needs to be something more nuanced than just throwing a bunch of cats in a bag and hoping they claw each other's eyes out. There needs to be a reason for characters to turn against one another even if they may have to work together some time.

For some reason I feel like the best setup would actually be akin to reality shows as weird as it may sound. Create teams, have them compete, losing teams have to vote a member to undergo the losing penalty (which could actually be something like wearing a heavy ball and chain if they don't want to undergo something grim) but don't eliminate them so losing players don't get thrown out. There could be an overarching thing that keeps them motivated to compete, such as the promise of freedom. And it gives them incentive to sabotage other teams, like targeting their fastest or strongest members.

It would take a lot to set up and bring together and plan, but at the same time I feel it would still serve as the social experiment without having to sit down with characters one on one and do something weird to them (I don't know what went on to players that were selected, from what I understood only a few got chosen to have stuff happen to them). This is just my idea, I feel like Kidnapped really lost a lot of what made it interesting after 2. But even since 2 there seems to be this feeling that.. a lot doesn't happen with Kidnapped on the GM side aside from the occasional event peppered between the beginning and the finale. And in this case, both were incredibly lacking this time around.

I don't mean to sound harsh but I just feel like at this point Kidnapped doesn't have much going that makes it really stand out as an event chain. You're imprisoned against your will, but there isn't something that makes you feel incredibly endangered, and most time is spent huddled in a corner if you're one of those “sheep in the lion's den.”

[Rosencrat]

I really don't have much in-depth feedback to provide. The things that I would go into have already been touched on above. That, and I really was only active in the first week when there wasn't much DMed involvment, so I can't speak to all that much.

I will say this, however: I really missed (and really noticed how the absence of effected role-play) the player guards. My favorite Kidnapped will always be the third Kidnapped, where Prisoners and Guards frequently switched places throughout the week. It had such a great vibe, what with the Guards having to tread the line between being cruel to avoid losing their position and being kind to avoid prisoner revenge when they lost their rank. The guards attempts to tread this line heped really humanize them, to the point where I changed the entire personality of one of my characters simply because I enjoyed so thoroughly what she had become through her work as a guard.  

I hope, in the next Kidnapped, that you bring back the Guards. If arranged correctly (Placing some leverage over their head, like Gron, to force them to be cruel and antagonistic) they would be able to stirr up some great RP without all that much involvment from you or other DMs. The events would become more player driven, which would help fill up the large chunks of time we had during the two weeks when there was nothing to do but sit around and starve.

To shorten this post down? Bring back the guards so I can have Moriok lisp and punch people again.

[Loxmardin]

I already did plan to bring back the guards in the next one. This one has been an experiment, much like the rest of the Kidnappeds. My personal favourite was the third and every single one after that has just fallen flat on its face and it's been very difficult for me to fix it since... well. My solutions seem to only create new problems instead of addressing the previous problems. We'll see if there'll be another one at all seeing as it just doesn't go all the way when I try. This time, removing the guards was a mistake on my part. Even if I spent almost every day in Kidnapped this time trying to make things happen and entertain people, that was obviously not enough. I couldn't entertain everyone, despite these efforts. There were too many people expecting a bit too much from me (and me expecting too much of myself, in addition), and a choice few players took matters into their own hands to create their own conflict. I loved that they did that and I'm very grateful for it since that made the event more interesting for me as a spectator. I'm glad if people still walked out of this event with something they could spice up continued RP with, but I do recognize this event as a blatant failure.

I tried new concepts this time, and they failed. There are still a few things I can salvage from this (such as being much more picky with how many guards I have and who gets to play them, in the event I decide to run with this again).

In the end, Kidnapped was never supposed to be a progressing event chain where the story behind it gets any real spotlight. It was supposed to bring people together to RP under extreme circumstances, a concept which is very much hit-and-miss, trial and error. Mostly error, on my part. I just won't try to bear the event on my own next time since it's boring to people and even with the help of Xigo and Reigen, it wasn't enough. I want as many people as possible to enjoy the events, have fun, and not have to worry about entertaining everyone else. But if it's come to the point that people aren't having fun because I just can't provide enough for everyone, I'll have to rethink that stance. Ultimately, I'd like to be able to slow down a bit in the event and get in on the roleplay without worrying too much about the DMing all the time. I didn't really get to do that this time around.

Like I said; Trial and Error. Mostly Error.

Keep the feedback coming. Any constructive suggestions and ideas would be appreciated, too.

[FlyingSquirrel]

I'unno. I didn't really have anything that would be too big of a deal for me to ask you to change. However, there was kind of one thing that stuck out to me. I was personally really looking forward to my first Kidnapped because it seemed like it would be a great chance for physical conflict between characters. I understand that other players dislike this, but I still thought it was going to be a fun opportunity for characters to just have their nerves break and break out into brawls or just inspire some conflict in general. However, I feel like the spirits were introduced to kind of go against this.

Now, I may be wrong, as I only really had one RP with the spirits. However, during this RP, there was a fight going on and Emra (not sure who plays her) just showed up and immediately broke it apart. This was kind of a buzzkill for me. I mean, you have all these building tensions between characters like Jaedyn and my own (Bulin) and then they're just broken apart like nothing. And it wasn't like it was anything we could fight, either. The spirits had the distinct advantage of magic and it seemed purely like their job was to stop any combat RP. I understand where it's coming from for the story RP, but I personally just think that it squandered some RP that possibly could have been a good addition to the environment that I otherwise felt was largely Tavern RP with starving characters.