Good Morning Brilliant People of the World,

Welcome to the ever exciting, RoC, Monday Morning Message which we hope finds you in the finest of form, fetlock and fettle. We had a fabulous week and find ourselves in the most excellent position of being able to properly plan for the 25th anniversary year in extravagant style. We equally hope that your weekends were as positive as ours and that the week ahead looks rosey. 

As ever we offer our ongoing support for the emergency services that are out there looking after us and still fighting the pandemic and all that comes with it. Those frontline ambulance service folk still receive free games and priority bookings for any and all events. Much love and respect to you.

So! We have much to discuss and we will start with the land and when we can use it and what we will be doing with it: 

We have purchased two plots of land right next to each other that give us a lot of options. For those who joined us at Blackwell it is about five times the size of that land and has some beautiful features for us to work with. It needs some work done to it: Water and Electric are being prepped to be installed as are toilets and showers which will be moving forward through the winter months. 

The new style of game has supported the core area of a player camp with the woodlands being used for “missions” and “battles”. Dedicated crew areas have been mapped out and there may even be treehouses and the like. Obviously we’ll keep some of the really big surprises for development under our hats but we can say that the system now stretches to Three Emperors, five, five metre Bells and a number of smaller tents which will cover player sleeping if hired and set dressing if not. 

We will be looking to run 3-4 day events every six weeks on the site with a one or two day bookable inbetween for the skits that players want to get done between the plot points. These events will max out at around the 35 player marker and with Blackwell games booking out with a max of 20 players AND a fill on waiting lists this seems like it should be a good starting point for us.

A priority for us this and next week, now that we have the land sorted, is to make up our rosta for 2022 and the start of 2023 and get those dates out for you. We will be showing our Site Bookings and Hall events and maybe even a Fort event depending on the dates that they offer us and if we think their asking price is worth the site. Will there be another ten day on the 25th year anniversary? Yes there will.

We will not be alone on the land use! Over the last year ROC tried to branch out into other things, mainly community care and started offering, as starters: Free games for ambulance crew, counselling for its community and sustainability projects. We wanted this to be bigger but that’s hard to achieve on your own so soon we will be announcing some other “Risings of” which will serve to support the whole.

People keep asking: Are you done for land and the answer is maybe. We have an eye out for more options and the system has done well enough to be able to scoop up some more but we are moving forward as we are for the moment. People also ask – Can we use your land and the answer is: Yes! Of course. We are looking to support our fellow communities so long as they are on board with our policies and general vision.

What else can we tell you?

Well the rules side of things has been shaken up a little more. Why after all the changes? Well it comes down to site use and readability: With the new site styles a lot of how the skills were implemented into the game just doesn’t work anymore so they have been tweaked, not massively, just to fit the new surroundings. Readability? Yeah: The current rules work and are simpler than they look and that’s the thing we weren’t happy with so they have been reworded to make proper sense. Sorry about that! They are ready to start appearing again this week.

Games this year?

Yes! Thrice yes! Well. Actually. Twice yes. We are looking at a horror event on the 31st of October BUT we have been considered to run a Cthulhu Larp on that day so we may well take that up. We WILL let you know tomorrow. That’s a big promise: One way or the other we will announce tomorrow what we are doing on that front. 

The other game will be a Christmas event and will be sorting the dates out for this week and posting up. We are hoping to be able to promise a couple of days of eventing rather than one big day but that really will depend on the availability of the crew around the festive period. Something will happen for sure.

The Crew?

Yep a lot has changed for us this year, obviously. Where RoC used to rely on people volunteering to crew there is now a dedicated team who are the Viginti. These, just over twenty, peeps show up and dedicate themselves to being crew and DPC’s to all RoC events. If you fancy joining them and forcing a name change to the Triginta drop us a line and we will throw you at that side of things.

More Website Things!

We have worked really hard this year as can be seen in rules, land and character packs but that’s not all that we have been doing: The story relaunch has locked the players into the lands of the Six Duchies which is where players have currently been starting. Players recently breached into other areas of the world once more so we can start to announce that the Iskarani will be making a welcome return very soon. Preliminary documents are up with the Plot and Story team and plot discussions are rife. The Drayal Vork and Dragon Empire are not far behind!

Equally the Wiki continues to update and not just for the players! A new, behind the scenes, plot wiki is being developed because, well, the game is plot heavy and it’s a lot to keep referring to. We’ll keep making efforts to make this a living, unique world that you can interact with in new and interesting ways. Which leads us to our final point of updating for this week (yes there is more, this is just getting long) – Downtime!

Downtime will be making a return – Not immediately but definitely for the 25th anniversary year: The system is developing a sequence of Apps for the game and downtime will be one of them. These Apps have been playtested to a degree but we will go into more detail with them next week.

In the meantime, if you want to get involved, tell stories, play games, run games or whatever we are continuing to build that community and you can find us here and that goes doubly for anything you need for the LARP or just for company on long days. Equally If you want to join us on Patreon we are here.

As ever folks: If you need us, for any reason, let us know and if we can help in any way we will, whatever you are up against.

In the meantime have a Foxes and Crows week people, we look forward to seeing a whole bunch of you at the online game and bumping into even more of you, online, between now and then. 

Take Care of Each Other

Much Love,

Stephen and the RoC Core Team