Good Morning Wonderfolk of the World,

The end of May is upon us and the woods have been kind! From all of us that were out in the forests enjoying a wonderful day yesterday: We hope that you are in fine form, fetlock and fettle and that you had an excellent weekend wherever you were and whatever you were doing. We have had a busy and hard working week that culminated in a fantastic weekend in the woods with wonderful people that we tell you all about in a moment but before that: The important business. 

Huge thanks to all the people that support us through Patreon and the Subs to our Twitch channel, not only does it let us keep providing you with content and additional kit but we also get to provide support to our community through programs like: Offering frontline servicefolk free games and priority bookings, making counselling available to those folk that need it and support where we can with food and the like. If you feel like you are one of the people that could benefit from what we are offering let us know.

So!

Continuing in its new timeslot the Monday Morning Meeting will be between 10 and 11am BST on Twitch as team members meet up to discuss the plans of the week, the month and generally natter. They will even talk to you too if you ask them questions – That’s here on Monday Mornings. Have your say, ask questions and help us shape the future of what we are doing together.

Regardless: Each of our Rising sections are covered by our various organisers who you can contact and talk to via our Discord Server or just a straightforward e-mail.

Onwards!

Sadly the bluebells have had their season so the woods are a little less rampant than they were on the colour front but everything is beginning to properly follow suit and come to life. However with the event being last weekend we were focussed on getting the whole thing put together so we have not yet had the chance to expand the clearings any further than we had. However with all of the holidays at the moment we are looking to get back to the woods and do some more work before the next event there. 

The kobolds worked hard in the CODA mines this week seeking out fresh veins of plots, harvesting precious Feat Sheets and polishing the mechanics to keep them running smoothly. Most of this was set to get ready and run the weekend event “The Phantom Citadel” which we will cover shortly but before we do that, let’s take a look at the work that was done in the build up to the game.

Holly oversaw the Kobold activity with relish and they performed well, taking on their tasks with aplomb, grace and a certain amount of cursing.

Several galleries have been added to the CODA part of the Rising Website which contain the memories from the first two Relic Events: Winter is its bones and The Lost One. We ran with two cameras at each with limited results because the photographers were also dedicated crew. At The Phantom Citadel we had a full time photographer so these pics will take slightly longer to go up.

The week was also dominated by character creation and also rebuilds as we welcomed a slew of new and old players into or back to the system. It has been an absolute pleasure to see so many people enthused by the reinvigoration of the system, the story and the new site as much as it has people excited by coming into CODA or just getting into larping fullstop! It has been an absolute, if somewhat busy, blast and we feel like we are properly returning to normalcy.

Stephen put out another excellent codafying episode, which you can find over on the Twitch channel for the next ten or so days and will eventually join its brethren on Youtube. This week he covered all aspects of the aptitude skills, what they do and why they exist, an excellent delve into the new side of those skills. This week he will be running through the role of Chirurgeons in the field alongside the mechanics and Lore of these folk in the Six Duchies. You can catch him at 9ish AM BST on Wednesday Morning.

Finally, last Thursday we Podcasted with Mark Cordory as ever and we discussed how much larping has changed as a game in the last 40 years and we will be back to talk about more of this nonsense this week with a look at how we have seen magic develop and change, how systems have used it and what it was like for us all those years ago. That’s the Rising of Conversation at 10.30 on Thursday Morning.

Enough of this nonsense however! Let’s have a quick once over of the event at the weekend and what we loved about it and what we learned from it.

We’ll kick off with the usual: Massive thanks to the team that made it all happen: The wonder that is our Lady and Saviour: Holly Goodall who pulled all of the strings and galvanised the team, we would not have been in a position to be able to run the event four days before we actually did without her. Best leader! 

Jon Wickenden with the awesome chops to pull out wonderful vision for an epic story that the players fell into and loved from the getgo. We don’t need to wax lyrical about how amazing his game was because that is all the players have done since they got off of the event! Excellent work to the Jon.

Anthony Gunfield was next in the bag he had a top hole day leading the crew through the event with outstanding chops in his role as crewboss and his team of Gonge, The Mighty Mike Roberts, AC and Muffin. They fought, roleplayed and built their way through the game with diligence and aplomb and we are grateful for all of their work. 

Stephen, who took one the role of primary photographer for the event (alongside Holly when she got a chance) powered through the event despite a hefty foot injury. Not only is Stephen always instrumental in the setup, takedown, writing and running of the events, he takes a bloody good picture and all! Plus, this weekend he was able to reprise his role as that cheeky soul trader we all know and love… The Bastard.

What a wonderful bunch of people 🙂 

The highs for us were many so we will only touch on them briefly here: The Rally was outstanding! Watching the Heretic, Fletcher, standing and shouting down his preachings into the Amphitheatre and the commotion that followed was amazing to see. Along with the later realisation that the returned “bandits” that were discovered were soul fuel for the wicked. That was a brilliant and LONG combat supported excellently by Jon’s Feat Sheets.

The Soul Traders scenes and the two Daemons, one of whom was superbly mysterious and terrifying at the same time was marvellously offset by the absolute win of Rufkhar and his contact! The Backlash has been in play for a while now but the contacts had yet to be properly tested but thanks to Mikes MOST excellent work the rise of “The One” is well underway and Rufkhar, Pilgrim of Blood Magic is well among them! We loved his first casting stealing blood from Ingenium to Professor Kane which sparked some interest!

As ever there were a few lows from our end but they mainly revolved around the packing end of things and a distinct lack of tent poles, although the crew did a brilliant job with camo netting and an old gazebo frame!

Much thanks to everyone that was there; we had a blinder of a day and we hope that you did too but moving on….

Holly is unwilling to give us time off this week despite all the bank holidays so we can look forward to plenty of exciting activity. (Holly is indignant about this, because she is pretty sure she’s not that mean…)

We are hoping to get a debrief out and about before midweek and will be collabbing with Jon to make that happen. We also have upcoming events on the way and some new dates to be announced this week.

On the 11th and 12th of June we are running our next two dayer at a new Site over Swindon way and you can find out all about the Court of the Fae – trust us, you will not want to miss it.

The teams will be in and around Discord helping out those that need and generally listening to froth. If you need some of this wonderful assistance go and find them and they will see what they can do for you. 

The Chicanery calendar has taken shape and  there are more and more regular streamers  over on theChicanery Facebook page.

The streaming for the International Rescue Comittee with the Chicanery for Ukrainery continues and we appreciate all of the help that you have given them. This week the set up streams go along the following lines.

  • On Monday Morning we will be live with the Monday Morning Meeting from 10am BST
  • At around 7pm BST on Monday, Stephen will be picking up Star Wars which is a wonderful experience for all involved 🙂 
  • Tuesday evening has Sam gaming away with more classic funtimes
  • At 9 or so on Wednesday Morning, Stephen will be live to go through some more CODA magic based rules, in the next episode of CODAfying
  • Thursday we’ll be starting off with the wonderful Rising of Conversation podcast where Stephen and Mark will be discussing more stories from the over 40 years of larping experience they have between them
  • And to round out the streams for next week, Thursday night will have the usual Chicanery Gaming stream, with Trews and guests

Ok – So  that’s the week in a nutshell: It looks like the world may well be a hard place to be in at the moment so with that in mind we will be trying to keep the office manned as much as possible on Discord. If you need people, company, nonsense or an ear please feel free to come and find us. 

You can find us easily enough:

Till the next time we talk: Have a Foxes and Crows week people, we look forward to seeing all of you somewhere in the world whether that be in the woods or on Discord. 

Much Love

Take Care of Each Other

Team RoC