Hello gamers, creatures of the screen, and Gillsmouth frequenters,

Now that the finale is about to happen, I would like to get an idea of how you felt about the different aspects of act 1, so I can double down on those aspects you enjoyed in act 2 :)

If you've played any Gillsmouth events, even if it was just one, I would be SO grateful if you took some time to write a bit about your experience with the town and what you enjoyed. I'll quickly recap the events we've done thusfar to jog your memory in the first comment below! I'm looking for a general opinion to make act 2 better than act 1!

Feedback form: (post this in a comment below)

What was your favourite event and what made this one stand out for you?

Which of the themes did you like best from the cursive texts below the titles? (can name one or several)

We’ve had events ranging from about a bit over 1 hour to well over 3. What was your preferred event duration?

Any additional feedback is very welcome, leave any thoughts or comments for me, so I know what to do more of (or less of)!

BUILDING RELATED EVENTS

These took place in or around buildings and would advance the region by adding a new area to interact with after events.

• SPOOKED MAYOR - Texts, Puzzles, Occult Lore - The house was cursed and the players had to discover lots of clues, read lots of texts, and carefully do exactly as the texts said to lift the curse. You succeeded in lifting the curse safely and banishing the demon from the house.

• VACANT EXPRESSIONS - Stealth, Riddles, Occult Lore - The vacant house was in perpetual disrepair and the players had to discover the cause, then use texts from books to discover how to go binding a demon into an object against its will, while it was slumbering. The demon awoke due to an error in following the exact steps in the text and escaped (he will be back in the future, but stronger)

• CREAKING CONSTRUCTIONSITE - Persuasion or Combat, Occult Lore, Archaeology - The people who were supposed to build the workshop were scared away by a possessed arbori creature. You found some tools on site to use as weapons against the creature, but didn't engage in combat. Instead, the creature was persuaded to join demonic forces elsewhere. Afterwards, you discovered an ancient crumbling cellar of a building from other times (Port Silver) and fished out some keepsake ancient loot items.

UTILITY RELATED EVENTS

These events were about repairing broken utilities, like cleaning the pathways, getting the nets back up, and getting a market set up.

• PUTRID PATHS - Light Combat or Persuasion, Supernatural Lore - The paths of Gillsmouth were hardly accessible (soul sand) and were constantly muddy and slimy. It turned out they were being affected by the ectoplasm of a wandering ghost. The ghost of the mailman was set free by finishing the job he still had to do after he died. You discovered how to do this by reading a text and talking to citizens.

• MUSCLES NEEDED - Combat, Repair, Nature Lore - The shellfish business came to an abrupt halt when aggressive creatures made Gillsmouth's shores their home. You had to discover information about these creatures from checking the site, talking to citizens, and reading texts. Then it was time to come up with a plan to combat these enemies. After a failed attempt, you came back to chop them to pieces successfully.

• MARKET DISRUPTED - Light Combat, Stealth, Creature Lore - You discovered the marketplace was infested with aggressive gnomes. You easily disposed of the ones on the surface, but got into trouble when you entered the burrow by shrinking down to smaller than their size. You succeeded by offering the fiend inside a better alternative.

CITIZENS RELATED EVENTS

These events were about meeting the citizens of Gillsmouth, understanding who they are, and helping them fix a problem they had.

• SMOKEY LARRY - Light Combat, Trail Searching, Magic - Larry's fish was being stolen from his fish smokery. It turned out, the fish were leaving on their own accord! You followed the trail of fish scales all the way to a cave in which a necromancer was munching on the smoked fish. You dealt with the troublemaker by killing him, then took his corpse to be buried. One of you ate an undead fish whole.

• WEIRD WAYNE - Strangeness, Trippy, Hallucinations - This was a weird one. The mayor wanted to make sure Wayne wasn't some kind of criminal, since he always had rare stuff to sell. You confronted Wayne and went on a little 'trip' with him, collecting items in his 'dream world'. You found lots of beautiful stuff, which turned out to be mundane items when you 'awoke'. 

• GRETA'S PREDICAMENT - Long Duration, Discerning Lies, Charisma - This might have been the longest event with over 3 hours of questioning Gillsmouth’s Citizens to get to the bottom of a mystery where Greta was targeted with slander and lies. You cleared her name and found the real culprit (and dealt with it).

Events attended:

Market Disrupted

Weird Wayne

Greta's Predicament

I honestly cannot rank them..
MD was special to me because it was infernal in nature, and the shrinking was very unique.
WW I liked the freeform nature of the event. Here's a plot hook, enjoy yourselves as you trip balls.
GP was like the polar opposite of WW.. Full freedom to tackle it how we wanted, but very stressful (in a good way!) as we tried to figure out what was going on. Gave a lot of world building to the various NPCs in the town which was appreciated.

Favourite themes: Light Combat, Discerning Lies, Trippy.. Honourable mention: Riddles would be here too if I had attended that event, as well as the Lore ones.

Length: Any event length is good with me.. Longer events allow more immersion. Shorter events place less strain on the DM. Arguments could be made either way about whether 2 short events are better than a longer event, or vice versa.. I reckon the events take how ever long they take.. No good in rushing a long event, however the NPCs are compelling enough that shorter events could be padded by having some casual rp with the NPCs and this would absolutely slap.

Additional notes: NPCs NPCs NPCs!! I absolutely love these NPCs. Ranking them would go like below
Wayne
Garren
Mr Mayor
Greta/Larry.

And many many more thanks than I can fit on here. These events have been incredible. Keep on killing it, Bart!

• Feedback form: (post this in a comment below)

  What was your favourite event and what made this one stand out for you?

  I liked putrid paths, But that's just because that led to kari putting ren to rest and getting his house built on the ashes of the last house. That was sort of the event that I decided, Yeah Kari could live here, There would be difficulties, but I thought it would make a good story. The mystery of the roads being muddy because of a postman ghost's last desire to deliver the mail one last time was a really fun time for me. It was kari's first interaction with a ghost, He's done alot more since then and i found out burying NPCs is kind of cool. 
  

  I like all of them as they've never been my first guess, and its cause Kari to become more interested in interacting with people. 

  Which of the themes did you like best from the cursive texts below the titles? (can name one or several)

   

   

   

  Supernatural, strangeness, Combat (Any, Though I typically prefer creatures over People (NPcs included)  personally, If we had to bury more bodies, The graveyard can be expanded.)

We’ve had events ranging from about a bit over 1 hour to well over 3. What was your preferred event duration?

2 hours- I liked greta's prediciment, but it did go over, Maybe I could have done a little more, but I'm happy when it all came together that it all went so smoothly.)

Any additional feedback is very welcome, leave any thoughts or comments for me, so I know what to do more of (or less of)!

Didn't expect kari to go and settle in gillsmouth but I don't regret it. While he figures out what the hell hes going to do having a place to forge and dig up hellmetal is handy. I personally don't like the material, but have some cool ideas to work on. I am curious what will end up happening to the village, but I think having kari not strive to be some big hero (At least right away, if ever) Makes the story more interesting for him and gillsmouth.

I sort of want to stay as long as I can before he goes off to tackle his personal business but bart I'm having a pretty good time. It's helped alot to have a place for kari to call home for me, and I certainly didn't expect to attend every event in act 1.  I feel like this model could probably be used for alot of settlments, but I don't think any of them would be 1:1 the same.

Hmm what else. 

larry- Easily kari's favorite dude. He has helped him regularly eat and not have to hunt as often. He wants to help him out as his success means the village gets fed

Greta- Someone Kari doesn't know her opinion on of himself,  He trusts  larry's opinion of her. He hasn't tried the shellfish yet, he wants to ask her about Ren

Garren - A man of little words who kari wonders the motivations of

Wayne- By far the most interesting fella in the village, Kari wonders if he's secretly a mage, Or a vyre or something. Shrinking potions and hallucinations that have more going on then meets the eye...  

The mayor - The man in charge working for some sort of larger faceless group.. Allegedly. Kari thinks he's got something else going on, but he's been helpful right back to Kari he doesn't bother confronting him. Out of all the people, He wants to open up the the mayor about his personal deal, but he doesn't know if he can trust him, despite the clear alignments in goals. 

Ren - The postman, died. At rest. Kari doesn't want to Stir him if at all possible, As he's sort of the first ghost he's interacted with. Greta's recent mention that he may have known something makes him think he may have to cross that road one day, but things have been going smoothly. He's hence decided he wouldn't do that unless he was at a more serious dead end. Kari may look for his remains under his house one day, but he's not bothered anyone. Kari keeps Ren's messenger bag directly under his house, so its at least near his remains.

Other - The loot was a draw for me. Artifacts from port silver, Ancient ancient demon relics. I started collecting a certain set and traded with others.  They are not bonafide artifacts, but are instead something with maybe some sort of demonic taint on them. They don't come possessed simply by the nature of they are already broken when you reassemble them. 

Kari has selected to try and complete the set of the only female outfit he's found among the fragments simply because it is different than the others, The others give off far worse vibes. It would be cool to see these demons be around some day, but Kari's only interest would probably be returning them to their owner for a favor in his backpocket at the worst. If confronted about it, He wouldn't quite be sure what to say about  the outfit itself. He hasn't really picked up that the aura the items gives off are seduction, simply because he doesn't have a wide frame of reference to know what that's like. 

The demon  could all be gone for all he knows. If it ever comes up, I guess it's just a weird thing he's doing, Still having a full set of something demonic adjacent right there could be useful for trading as well.

Feedback form: 

What was your favourite event and what made this one stand out for you? I've only attended the Finale, so, that

Which of the themes did you like best from the cursive texts below the titles? I enjoyed the occult nature of the event, it's the sort of thing that captures me

We’ve had events ranging from about a bit over 1 hour to well over 3. What was your preferred event duration? I think this one ran longer than I anticipated, but that was player choice, I assume this was down to the larger size, so while fun, I can't answer this accurately

Any additional feedback is very welcome, leave any thoughts or comments for me, so I know what to do more of (or less of)!

I really enjoyed the event, it would be nice to see more risks crop up for us to interact with, intentionally or accidently (unless I missed some, and we just avoided them all) that sense of risk in even none combat events always feels gripping

Feedback form

What was your favourite event and what made this one stand out for you?
I've attended a decent number of Gillsmouth events (Vacant Expressions, Putrid Paths, Smokey Larry, Weird Wayne, Market Disrupted, Greta's Predicament, and A Smell from the Well). My favourite of all of those is a tie between Market Disrupted and Greta's Predicament; I absolutely loved Market Disruption for switching the stakes from a trivial fight against gnomes into very dangerous combat once we shrunk, it was a fun way to shift the tides without necessarily needing a mythical monster or something similar.
Greta's Predicament was my favourite social event of the bunch, from the mysteries to being able to freely walk around town and meet NPCs all in one event. We got to interact with the NPCs as more than just quest- or clue-givers, and that was very refreshing. This was a solid event and a good standard for future events in that same genre in general.
Honourable Mentions: Putrid Paths' story, even without the implications from Greta's Predicament, was a nice mystery as well, and I liked the whole premise of needing to put the mailman to rest by finishing his job.
It could be recency bias, but A Smell from the Well was awesome and chaotic. As someone who was there for the Vacant Expressions event, it tied some things together, and gave us a sample of what the future of Gillsmouth could look like. Letting us amble around and figure out little puzzles and mysteries, even if they were not meant to be fully tackled during that specific event, was really nice.

Which of the themes did you like best from the cursive texts below the titles? (can name one or several)
Combat, Occult Lore, Magic, Strangeness, Stealth

Combat is the easiest way to reveal how deep in shit a party has landed themselves or the easiest way to convey the risks and what's at stake, because it's easier to justify dying or getting badly wounded in combat.. if the foe is fearsome enough (like gnomes ). But the Occult Lore or any Lore events have been really nice for showing us what forces are/could be at play in the little town. They work well to get me to wonder how these elements will come back to haunt us in the future or how it ties into the bigger picture. Which is nice! Keeps it interesting

We’ve had events ranging from about a bit over 1 hour to well over 3. What was your preferred event duration?
I think the sweet spot for me lies somewhere between the 2 to 3 hour mark. There's nothing wrong with shorter events, but we get to do and explore so much more when we spend at least two hours on an event.

Any additional feedback is very welcome, leave any thoughts or comments for me, so I know what to do more of (or less of)!
All in all, I love the versatility you are capable of as a DM. You have a solid sense of pace, and most importantly, your passion for this project shines through! I'm genuinely glad to be a part of it thus far. As long as you keep doing it, I'll keep showing up