 So, this is gonna be a new type of video. I originally intended to use my big awesome expensive camera, but that got busted, so instead I'm going to be using my dingy $5 Best Buy camera. My apologies, I hope you can forgive the whole grade. Anyway, let's begin. Toward the beginning of 2022, I took part in a big blockbuster larp called Reckoning LARP, on the recommendation of a bunch of my friends who were also going. It was this new first time ever event being sold on Kickstarter, with a website that advertised massive PvP battles between four unique factions and political intrigue as you try to see your faction come out on top. My friends and I thought it would be awesome, and now, half a year after playing it, I have only just now gathered the courage to speak about my experience. Even if you aren't a fan of larp, or you haven't had the chance to experience one before, you should still be able to follow along as I explain how this larp was my Reckoning. But with that out of the way, let's begin. As I said, Reckoning LARP was a kickstarted blockbuster larp, which in layman's terms is a huge event that focuses on spectacle and grandeur with a $200 price tag, or a $175 price tag if you bought it on the Kickstarter. And me and my friends were lucky enough to grab our spots before the hot deals ran out. The main draw was that it was a three-day event, from Friday to Saturday, where you joined one of four fantasy factions representative of some type of historical army, and throughout the weekend you would take on challenges and negotiate with other factions to become the most influential group by the end of the game. Factions were color-coded so that you would always know who your teammates were, and you were expected to dress up somewhat similar to the historical era that your army was taking inspiration from. I chose the Hadrian's, who were the red team, inspired by the Roman legions, and they were in lore, the most powerful faction, having taken over most of the country and trying to take the rest of it in the name of their empress, an oracle, who could divine the future and came to the conclusion that some great calamity would befall the world if we did not unite under one banner, that banner conveniently being Hadria. The other factions included the Rivlins, the Green Team, whom Hadria was trying to take control of, and that rose up under the banner of a Popper King in a sort of guerrilla warfare revolution, then the Vatican, the Blue Team, Viking-style Raiders, who were terrorizing the Rivlins before Hadria showed up and would really like to get back to that, and lastly the Suzec Mar, the Yellow Team, Middle Eastern mercenaries from another continent that was dying, and now they have to move to a continent that is not doing that. The central conflict was that Hadria had just signed an uneasy peace agreement with the Rivlins so that they could diplomatically discuss non-violent solutions, but tensions were high and violence could break out at any moment, so everyone was being very careful not to accidentally trip and start an international incident. I went with a team of three friends, two of which played Rivlins, and one of which played a Vatican, meaning that of the factions, the only team that I didn't have insider information about is the Suzec Mar. We live in central Michigan, so we drove about four hours to Indiana, got by with only one instance of a gas stop worker warning me to look out! The young cashier girl loves hitting on pretty guys like you. And we made it to Reckoning's playfield with gods stolen rainbow intact. The actual playfield was a large, open plan, with a few branching paths that led us to the areas where each faction was separately making camp. There were also porta-potties under a tent near the central area, and a 15 minute walk would get you to a working shower that, for the first half of the LARP, didn't have a workable heater, so you had to make do with cold water, or else be medieval. This was in May, the days were warm, but the nights were freezing, meaning you had to be careful when you took that shower, or else when they found you in the morning, you'd be a set decoration. As far as the faction camps go, there were no provisions given to us besides the locations themselves, so the overall look and feel of each camp got to be designed entirely by the players, who were required to bring only LARP-appropriate camping gear for their weekend, to the point where there was an issue with one of my Rivlin friends almost not being allowed to use their tent, due to it using modern metal spikes to hold the ropes down. For what it's worth, though, once people started pouring in and assembling their camps, all the sites looked really good, which can't be said about the central area that the game runners created. I had mentioned that the porta-johns were hidden under a tent, so that they wouldn't just be within eye shot when you were looking to role play, which is great, but that was where the considerations ended. The main indoor location was a stark white wedding pavilion, with generic unfolding tables that had black tarps thrown over them and weird modern cafe lights hanging up on the upper corners. Other than that, the only other structure was this octagonal arena that was made up of long planks of wood thrown together with a nail gun, and it hadn't even been assembled until an hour before game time, which meant that the game had to start an hour late as the staff scrambled to assemble the weird octagon thing. For a game that costs $200, I would have expected a little more showmanship, but at least there was a small booth right next to the pavilion where they were giving out free booze. More on that later. So the game starts an hour late because the staff are scrambling to build the frame of the arena, but as soon as it does start, all the factions immediately started scrambling to make alliances with each other because we've all played Fall Guys before and we know what happens when you're the odd team out. The politicking is fun. There were a lot of people getting used to playing their new characters and we all started testing the boundaries of what we were allowed to say and do within the context of the story. My character was a medical doctor who studied the four Bloods and healed you in-game by cutting you open with a straight razor to get the bad blood out. For roleplay, I requested that anybody who I was healing needed to scream as loud as they could because their screams would be my indicator of how good a job I was doing. Since all healers were required to be non-coms or non-combatants, basically we couldn't participate in fighting outside of the healer role, my sociopathic doctor became the central diplomat of the Hadrians given that roleplay was the only thing I could do and the rest of the Hadrian team was super accommodating. In the LARP scene, people play non-coms for plenty of reasons, whether they be health risks, psychological issues, or maybe they just don't like combat and it has a tendency to be an overlooked part of our community. So to see a LARP that not only takes time to consider non-com roles, but also makes entire classes dedicated to non-com, it's a breath of fresh air. I really have to give reckoning props for that. But yeah, politicking began and the one thing that immediately became clear to me is that while the Hadrians were the strongest faction in lore, in the game, they actually had the second smallest number of players with the Susak Marr being the actual lowest. Yeah, I got this hair in my fucking eyes and I can't get it out. The Vatican were the second highest and the Rivlins by far had the most people, which is very funny given that they were supposed to be the guerrilla warfare faction. What this meant is that I had to negotiate under the pretense that I was part of a super powerful nation of well-disciplined soldiers being led by a future-seeing matriarch. But in reality, I was backed by roughly two dozen dorks in armor and no sooth-saying mommy monarch to ask for help. It's also worth pointing out that as the narrative-invading force, the Hadrians were already predisposed to be the villains, making the Rivlins the clear good guys. However questionable their commoner king was. And the Vatican, despite being antagonists in the past, clearly wanted Hadria gone as much as the Rivlins, which meant that not only were my numbers small, but I was playing from the disadvantage of being the red team, which if you don't know, red is psychologically predisposed to be perceived as the villain. That's just a little color theory for ya. This all came to a head in the middle of our opening feast, which along with all the food at the event was provided by the game. All the players were brought to the mighty wedding pavilion of destiny and we all ate together at our individual faction tables. While we were eating, drinking, and being merry, suddenly, out of the blue, the commander of the Hadrian army, played by one of the staff members, came into the tent, dragging a Rivlin by the wrist. Everyone got up in arms and the commander accused this Rivlin person of sneaking into our base and trying to steal our stuff. The penalty for this thievery was that their hand would be chopped off, and in an admittedly cool scene, the commander role-played bringing down their sword on the Rivlin's arm before pulling out a fake bloody hand and everyone lost it. There was shouting. The heads of each faction were trying to corral their people and it only stopped when the Rivlin king admitted in front of everyone that he had actually sent the spy to steal from us. Apparently, he was fine with political espionage, but drew the line at fibbing, which, hey, you do you, but it at least stopped the scene from being a bloodbath right at the gate. While it was a cool scene in the moment, it ended up having severe ramifications for the Hadrians as a whole, because once everyone saw us remove a Rivlin's right-hand salute, we were effectively persona non grata and nobody wanted to work with us because we were barbarians. This was doubly annoying because the scene had apparently been planned way before the event started as a way of kick-starting distrust and getting the political ball rolling, which meant that the staff had taken agency away from the players in what was predominantly a political role-play-centric game. Tripoli annoying is that it only negatively affected the Hadrians, which the story writers I'm sure didn't mean, but the player saw the Rivlins as justified given that Hadrio was an invading force, so it undid all the progress that our team had in trying to find allies, and this was all from something that wasn't even a player-led scene. Either way, it wasn't the worst thing, and at the time I was definitely willing to take it on the chin and keep trying because I was having a lot of fun role-playing with the other players. After things settle down, we go back to our base and we get told our tasks for the rest of the event. Apparently, the Hadrians had two relics of great importance, a sword and some other thing that wasn't a sword, and we were supposed to keep those items protected at all times so that the other teams couldn't grab them. Likewise, the other teams all had two items of their own, and this was meant to add a little bit of bargaining power to the game since factions could fight, stealth, or negotiate their way into acquiring the other team's items, and I guess whoever had the most items at the end was the winner of prom. While this gameplay mechanic was fun at first, the glaring issue was that there was no end goal. Factions would just fight over these items that didn't provide any mechanical benefit, they were just really important for some reason. By the end of the event, I had forgotten that these items existed entirely and they truthfully had no greater impact on our game, but I guess they were a thing to do, so that's fun. In the meantime, night had fallen and everybody wanted to rest, so we got in our tents and braved the cold. I mentioned that our game took place in a field and you might think, hey, grassy plains, perfect spot to lay down, eat a bagel. But what I did not realize until after we had arrived on field was that the entire area from back to front was absolutely covered in poison ivy. Not only that, but ticks had infested the grass and nowhere was safe. By the end of the event, I had four ticks pulled off of me and I was covered in more poison ivy than Harley Quinn. Still, we were sleeping in tents, so it wasn't the worst thing, but I spent both nights thinking about that $200 price tag as I continually checked for ticks. Come the morning and it was back to business. The Hadrian's were on the low end of the social totem pole, but we were going to change that. We got to work making allies and over time, it became clear that a fight would be happening soon. It was just a matter of who would be on what side. We managed to strike a deal with the Vatican where we arranged to pay them a lump sum of money if they agreed to fight with us during the battle, which didn't work with the Suzechmar because they had already been coerced by the Rivlins. The Vatican agreed and took the money, which money in game is used by the healing classes to revive somebody who had been killed in a fight. So it might seem like money is super useful, but up until now, a fight hadn't even occurred, so money existed predominantly for bragging rights. The plan was for the Vatican to stand alongside the two other factions, and then once fighting began, they would turn on the other two while the others were distracted with us. Not the most noble of plans for the Roman faction, but all's fair in larp and war. When the big battle was set to begin, the Hadrian commander lined us all up in double file, and even though we were the smallest faction, we marched onward like a trained legion. It was honestly really exciting to be a part of a big unit like that, and we stood at one end of the field gazing out at a sea of green, blue, and yellow garb opponents. The commanders of the different teams yelled threats at each other, and then everybody charged. The fight began, and we looked to the Vatican for aid, and they said, Apparently, when the Vatican took our money, their very next move was to walk over to the other factions and say, Look! These losers gave us all their money! Let's go kill them! So instead of a game of 40 chests where the second smallest faction managed to squeak out a victory, the battle lasted for all of 15 seconds, and we became a red smear on the tick-filled ground. Upon realizing that the game was rigged, my player interest dropped to zero. I didn't care for the combat mechanics, and I was a non-com, so I couldn't participate in them anyway, and finding out that a day and a half of talking to people and trying to forge alliances was actually for nothing? Really put the nail in the coffin for me. Even as far as combat goes, what ultimately happens when a person dies is that they will lay in the ground for however long until a medical person comes over and spends a minute healing them, and then they get back up and play like nothing ever happened. Medical players, like I said, are required to be non-combatants, and hitting them is expressly forbidden. Your character will die immediately, and you will be reprimanded because that is not allowed. So when the big fight happened, I was in the back, grabbing people and healing them, but I was very quickly surrounded by enemy soldiers who didn't know what to do with me. I couldn't be harmed by the game rules, and they could just knock down whoever I healed as soon as I finished healing them, so they ultimately decided that with the other three factions having formed a bond built on Hadrian blood, the Hadrians as a whole were simply not a threat because the numbers were so much in the other group's favor. So they didn't even bother taking the hostage. They just left me to fix up my two dozen party members. I'm not gonna lie, spirits were low in the Hadrian camp. We had our image of being noble knights shattered. We couldn't go into the central area for fear of embarrassment from the ridicule and mockery that we would receive from the other players, and I couldn't even lay down on the grass and accept death because the ticks were there, waiting for me to let my guard down. We did try once to get back at the blue team for betraying us by raiding their base after the big fight had settled down, but while we managed to knock a few people down, the green team swiftly came in and trounced us again, which cemented our place as bottom tier losers. Really, combat seemed pointless in general since there wasn't a consequence to dying, and I eventually decided to just stand, staring at the sun and hoping that if I died in the game, I might die in real life. Solis finally came near the end of the second day when after a few more pointless political dramas, the majority of us were out in the central tent, and some of our commanders had told us that the forces of evil might be mustering and that they needed scouts to go check it out. I was thinking of going along with the scouting party, but my commander suggested that I stayed behind, which I thought was weird, but whatever. They go off and we don't see them for another half hour. Now, small tangent, in the lore of this world, everyone is basically human. Monstrous races like trolls and orcs are explicitly manifestations of the evil darkness that used to rule a long time ago. There are not so much races unto themselves as they are byproducts of dark magic, and in the current fantasy year, a few of these monsters pop up every once in a while, but it's almost always a very small affair. This is a very low magic setting, and while magic is commonly accepted as real, nobody has it save for a select few who can perform small feats like heal people or see the future. I mentioned this to give you context for how shocking it was when after 30 minutes of being gone, the entire scouting party came back marching towards the central camp with black veins running across their face. They were seemingly possessed by dark magic. The whole group of them lined up in formation against the forest wall and just stood there battle-posed. At this point, the rest of us were confused and trying to get in some form of formation, but it's important to note that the scouting party consisted of roughly 40% of our collective player base. Most of those players were bored and had nothing better to do, so they jumped at the chance for plot, and now here they were, standing as vile enemies against all that is good. Once everyone was in position, the possessed army yelled out but didn't charge. Instead, their yells served to mask the accompanying yells of what was right behind them. All at once, a group of half a dozen fully armored uraki just burst out from the trees and came charging at us. The possessed army followed suit and the resulting battle was pandemonium. This battle, which lasted all of 15 minutes, was everything that I wanted all weekend. Maddening warfare where enemies were on all sides and you didn't know who your friend was until you spun them around and saw their face. I was running to a fallen ally as more people were just dying around me, and an orc stood in my way only to get stabbed in the back by a ranger who then quickly had to dodge role to avoid another possessed soldier and they both kept fighting around me and one paranoid player just spun around and struck me in the chest. On accident! And I'm an oncom so I just looked them in the eyes and said, you die. And then they fell over and I went to pick them back up. Overall, this 15 minute struggle was a glimpse into what reckoning had advertised on their Kickstarter and I felt genuine excitement during and just after the mighty struggle. If this was what the entire weekend was centered around, I would be a lot more copacetic over spending the $200. Although it still wouldn't fix some of the more glaring issues that we'll get to later but now there was a common enemy to fight. Anti-Hadrian resentment was lowering and we, with a capital W, were ready for whatever was next. The battle ended with the invading monsters being pushed out and with them gone, the mind control on the infected players ended. And then... the game runner himself as his in-game character stood up in front of everyone and began this big speech about how the enemy had finally revealed himself and we must be prepared for what the future holds! And then, led a big champion cheer for everyone else which may be is a little self-indulgent, but hey, that's fine. But then, after his performative speech at the height of the excitement, the game runner announced out of game that all of the staff ran plot for the event was over and that we were free to keep role-playing until game off tomorrow morning but as far as the story was concerned, that was it. I honestly didn't know if I should laugh when he did that. The game wasn't over yet so not only is it a bad idea to announce prematurely that your game is effectively over when there's still the rest of the night and Saturday morning to get through but you especially shouldn't do that right after the climactic battle that just reignited your game. He was just like, Congrats! You've finished the ride! Please enjoy the rest of your made-up side quests! If you have to announce that your game is basically over for some reason, like maybe so that people can get a head start on their drive home, you should probably give that message to the rest of the staff so that they can spread it to the other players quietly in a way that doesn't destruct the role-play. The reason being, as he immediately learned, is that everyone suddenly broke character and went off to the Rivlin camp to drink and sing folk songs. I can't be too mad about that though because if there's two things I like, it's drinking and singing folk songs. Like I said at the beginning of this video, the main pavilion had this bar next to it with a person staffed to pour alcoholic drinks for people but there weren't any cups provided so you had to have either bought your own or find someone who can lend you one. Luckily, I knew the person manning the bar and they gave me one of their own tankards that I filled up a lot that night. I'm a responsible drinker but between singing, eating and moving around a lot, I'm ashamed to say that I spent the first night underneath the tree and the second night bloated with very little supervision. It wasn't terrible, but I can see how it could easily slip into terrible if someone isn't careful. But the last night eventually gave way to Sunday and in the morning, we all spent time hanging out halfway in-game, halfway out before saying our goodbyes and returning to our depressing lives. So overall, was it a good experience? For $200, I can't really say so. I've been larping for five years and I've been to a few different games, all of which have different price tags and outside of the incredible Orc fight, I got the same level of enjoyment out of reckoning LARP for $200 as I do going to my local backyard LARP for $40. To give you context, the biggest pro for reckoning is its player base. Everyone I interacted with was awesome and looked really cool and they were all really wonderful role players. Honestly, I almost want to go back just for them. I also want to give a shout out to skill tree and living anachronism to YouTubers that also went to reckoning and shared their very positive experiences in their own videos. If you want a completely separate take on reckoning that seems to be just absolutely glowing, you should check those channels out. I also talked to the guy who runs the Orc battalion that showed up in the final fight. Apparently, they're like a whole squad of 30 or so people who dress up in really high-standard Orc garb. They go around from LARP to LARP playing this wandering tribe called Nartung Kall. The lead Orc also played one of the two commanders of the Suzak Mar and he sat down for an interview with me, which you can find right here. He's a super chill dude and the long and short of our talk is that of his group, about six people made it to reckoning and they all played Suzak Mar and they all had a very good time. How was the actual event of reckoning for you? Good, bad, all the stuff. I had a great time. I think for the most part we all did. But Suzak Mar did a really good job of taking advantage of that player agency and just kind of like doing their own thing. They did say that more Orcs would have gone to reckoning if it weren't for the huge price tag but of the people who did go, it was a grand experience. Unfortunately, my friend who joined the Vatican could not say the same. Apparently there were some people harassing her and also one of the Vatican commanders who also happened to be a woman to the point where my friend switched to the Riveling Camp and had a much better time. Luckily those players were reprimanded but the point is that my positive player experience isn't universal. Still, the player-to-player experience was amazing and I hope that I can one day play with them again in reckoning or out. And I say out of reckoning because players are not the event. Enjoying the people and loving their costuming and vibe is irrelevant to the venue itself. You can try to create a good community but the only thing that you really can do is prevent yourself from having a bad one. Outside of that, the community will grow as it does out of your control. And as far as what they had in control, all reckoning could provide for the experience was the wedding tent, food, outhouses, the half-cold showers and I guess you could say that they provided the field as well but that's not exactly a point in their favor. Most of these things didn't really have to do with the in-game experience so as far as creating an immersive event goes, they didn't really create much. It was the players playing amongst themselves. Not to say that they didn't try but of the plot that reckoning could muster, there was the hand-chopping scene that wildly backfired. The one battle on Saturday that was mostly player-organized, the weird fetch quest items and one thing that I forgot to mention in my breakdown were the side quests that were being given out by this mysterious lady known only as the Countess. I didn't interact with the side quest much so I don't have a lot to say but the seeming intention behind her character was to stir up trouble amongst the factions by giving out antagonistic quests for gold which gold, again, was not very useful. And unfortunately, because nobody wanted to cause an international incident, I don't know how many people followed these side quests down a meaningful path. But yeah, contributions from reckoning felt improvised and poorly implemented which is fine if you're a backyard lark running things for $20 but totally outrageous if the cost is $200 or $175. In fact, I want to go on a diatribe to talk about who really did contribute and what really spurred me on to make this video. The staff. From what I heard from multiple people who helped run their first event being staff at reckoning lark, it was disorienting. It was a mismanaged experience and none of the staff members were compensated for their efforts. On the contrary, staff were allegedly given an incredible discount of $25 off of the normal $200 ticket price. This is the same discount that everybody got if they pledged to the Kickstarter and that infuriates me. They had to pay practically the whole ticket. It's honestly the biggest motivator for why I wanted to make this video in the first place. Hobbies in general but especially larks have this terrible habit of treating their workers poorly and giving them peanuts in exchange for those same workers lifting the sky for them. We are well past the point of not giving staff members who are working a free ticket and in all honesty, we should be past the point of even considering hiring someone without paying them. Discounts are arguable if the person is only playing an NPC for like a couple of hours and their time is by and large spent playing the game. Like the orc dudes who by the way weren't discounted at all but from what I've heard and in some cases seen the staff went beyond the call of duty for things that they weren't even signed up for. Like, they're not your buddies when you make them assemble a giant octagonal arena from scratch. They're your employees or at the very least they're your volunteer workers and volunteering does not automatically mean you don't have to pay them. And even then the staff did not know what they were getting into. The octagonal arena was one thing that sprang up out of seemingly nowhere and it held the game up for an hour after the players were supposed to start but that wasn't the only thing. Apparently, according to several staff members who I spoke to after the game was over the check-in list wasn't alphabetized so whenever someone showed up it was a scavenger hunt to find their name. The fire pits hadn't been assembled so the staff had to scramble getting that done. The booze wasn't bought early and I know that one for a fact because I personally drove with someone to pick it up. Every meal was late by hours. The equipment to move people's supplies to their camps was never provided so staff had to burn gas money driving it all themselves. There was no definitive list of things for the staff members to do. It was just wait until I tell you to do something and then I'll tell you to go do this other thing. There's more but the list I have from disgruntled staff members is very long and we would be here all day. I did talk to one particular staff member who out of the many others who were infuriated they said, well, we all knew what we were getting into and I'm ignoring the fact that no, they did not know what they were getting into. When you get into this mindset of well, it's a terrible deal but if I don't do it, it won't get done. Then you invalidate the efforts of people who are willing to say no to a raw deal. You cheapen their work and you make it harder for them to argue for better conditions because why would I pay someone with self-respect when there's this other guy who will roll around in ticks if I ask him to and he'll still give me money for it. To be clear, I don't think that the game runner set out to abuse the good nature of his volunteers. This feels less like manipulation and a lot more like sheer negligence. According to several accounts, people tried to communicate these issues to the game runner but they fell on deaf ears because the game runner felt like he knew better. I think there were a lot of speed bumps and I think for the most part those things have been addressed and I think Thomas is super aware of that and I think this year he's a little more willing to listen to other people's experiences whereas the first year I think it was a lot of like whatever, like I know what I'm doing kind of mentality. Ultimately the staff allegedly had to make do with what they had and use it to entertain the entire LARP for that weekend. It looks like Reckoning is gearing up for a season two and the location is changing so no more bugs and plants to ruin my day. Before shooting this video I did send a version of the script to the game runner so that I could potentially get his side of the story before I just started blasting. In his defense, he responded very quickly and a lot of it was apologetic. I'll leave my whole breakdown of his response in a different video which hopefully by the time this video is out you can find in this link here. Oh, look at it go. But ultimately, he said that a lot of what happened fell on him and that the learning experience of Reckoning 1.0 pushed him into taking steps to fix things for 2.0. He said he really did consider it a massive learning experience and on the staff side of things according to both him and the Orc camp leader who is now acting as leader of Monster Camp for Reckoning 2. They've actually started paying their staff and they started giving discounts to people who NPC. I don't know the exact figures but it looks like a good sign to me. That being said, it's not all good news because in the same document he sent to me where he was apologetic he also seemingly tried to shift some of the blame to several members of his staff by stating and I quote, During the event there were a couple of volunteers who were absolutely busting their ass and I am eternally grateful. Without them there would not be a second Reckoning. The same could be said for a few players who stepped up. However, not everyone in staff actually took that initiative or even completed the things we had all agreed to as our responsibilities. We had several complaints about our own staff from other staff members and players for either not helping being too drunk to handle player issues or creating plots slash quests which led nowhere and made players feel undervalued. After the event I had to address those who didn't contribute and I explained that as we moved forward especially now that we are in a position to compensate that we expect responsibilities to be taken care of or that they would be better suited as players. This led to an immediate falling out and division. Several of these staff members won't be returning at least not in any sort of volunteer capacity. Now having read that I have some... discrepancies. I don't know about you, but if I were working under someone who failed to clearly lay out what my job was I would probably not accomplish all of my tasks either. Likewise, if I had a staff of reportedly 20 people and the majority failed to do their jobs I wouldn't actually be inclined to blame the staff members. When he sent me this I sent him back another response and what I said to him was it's very hard to believe that out of the people working that event there were only a couple of volunteers that pulled their weight and the rest were some mix of drunk, belligerent or simply unhelpful. Likewise, talking about the staff members creating plots that were poorly implemented or went nowhere is a responsibility of the game runner. Everything falls on you when you're the head guy and if your writing staff is not writing or writing poorly it is your job to be on top of that and fix it before it hits the players. The game runner also claimed that part of the miscommunications during the event were due to a lack of setup before the event. He said that they were supposed to spend Wednesday and Thursday working on the site so that all they would need to focus on during the event days would be the actual event. Unfortunately, the game runner says that he was the only one who showed up on Wednesday and when it came to Thursday only two staff members showed up at the correct time and even then only seven people showed up who set up their tents and then left. If true, this would paint a pretty damning if anecdotal portrait of events that exonerates the game runner for not being able to manage his staff. Unfortunately, when it comes to portraits I happen to have some of my own and by that I mean screenshots. I have screenshots from the disgruntled employees. From what these screenshots show none of the staff members were ever told to show up on Wednesday which would explain how out of 20 people not one of them showed up to work. After getting his first response and seeing all of the discrepancies I tried to get a second response from the game runner because his own explanation did not paint him in a good light and I wanted to give him the chance to perhaps clarify. Once again, he seemed very on board even offering to set up an actual virtual interview. Unfortunately, his schedule was wild which makes sense. He is a businessman. So I said, no problem. If we can't schedule a day you can respond via written text at your earliest convenience. He seemed gung-ho on doing a virtual interview though and we tried for a couple of weeks to make it work but his schedule seemed to be busy. This was December so it was holiday season. Makes sense. Curiously though around the time that we were trying and failing to set up an interview I received several notifications that the tickets for Reckoning Season 2 had just become available for purchase. I'm sure that's just a coincidence. Eventually I had to say well my due date is right here so if you can't make it this time maybe you can write a written thing and he said I'm sorry. I just can't make it work. And so here we are with me left alone with my thoughts and I think personally I can't bring myself to go back to Reckoning until I'm sure that things are on the level and while I want to give the game the benefit of the doubt I'm not going to take the game runner on his word that things will be better. If things are better in Reckoning Season 2 maybe I will check out Reckoning Season 3 it all depends on the optics and what people actually say and even in spite of this a lot of people had fun at Reckoning. I know that for some people it was their favorite LARP ever. This is not me trying to guilt-trip you into not enjoying Reckoning. This is me sharing my experiences and the experiences of other people who felt like theirs weren't being shared. But time will tell how this whole thing shakes out. Until then I hope you all enjoyed this long-term version of something that nobody asked for me to talk about and I hope that I can talk about more things that nobody wants me to in the future. But yeah. Davi out.