Harts Of Albion Events

Booking Policy

Player booking applications at Harts Of Albion events will be prioritised as follows:

• Priority will be given to those applicants playing primary characters (see below) in the Harts faction and who crewed the last Harts Of Albion event ... allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.
• Second priority for places will go to other Harts faction primary characters; again allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.
• Player places will be exclusively restricted to these 2 groups of players until the early booking deadline for the event has passed. After this time all remaining places will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis to any player who applies - regardless of faction or primary/secondary character.
• If any bookings are received after all available player spaces have been filled these will be put onto a "reserve" list and allocated places if/when they become free.

All applicants (regardless of faction or primary/secondary character) are welcome to submit their booking form and payment prior to the early booking deadline in order to to qualify for discount and to gain precedence in the first-come-first-served stages. No bookings or payment will be processed until a place is confirmed.

If you have problems arranging for payment immediately but still want to play please send in a completed booking form (minus payment) and contact the event organisers to make arrangements. Full payment will however be required before the the start of the event.

Primary Characters

We consider your primary character to be the one that you play (or have booked as) for the 4 main Lorien Trust events during the year (Heartland Games, Moots 1 & 2 and The Gathering). Booking priority at Harts Of Albion events will be given to primary characters that are members of the Harts faction. Although people are permitted to play secondary characters, this is only at the discression of faction command. People wanting to play secondary characters should mail harts command to give the reasons why they don't want to play their primary character.

Obviously players new to either the Harts faction or the Lorien Trust will be unable to meet this requirement, so a degree of discretion will be used in respect of new players to ensure that they are not penalised. We hope that such players will then be able to join us at the main Lorien Trust events in future.

Crewing Events

Playing vs. crewing

Ultimately we realise that most people prefer playing events to crewing (particularly at their own faction's events) ... however to provide a good standard of event often the organisers need almost equal numbers of monsters to crew.

This allows organisers to run a variety of different plot lines simultaneously, thus providing plot of interest to a range of different players. Increased crew numbers also make it easier to ensure balance in large combats so that the monsters are an appropriately challenging fight for the players involved.

Thankfully there is a relatively obvious solution ....

Unfortunatley this is seldom the case and so most event organisers have a problem recruiting sufficient crew numbers

Harts Of Albion firmly believe that crewing events should be as much fun as playing them and will do their absolute best to look after their crew ...

• We do our best to ensure that there are a wide range of good NPC roles available at each event, and endeavour to match crew with parts that they'll enjoy playing (the earlier you book the easier it is do this).
• Facilities permitting, we provide free tea and coffee (and sometime sweets and even beer) for consumption by our crew.
• If you're the player of a Harts primary character then crewing for us will give you priority booking at the next Harts Of Albion event (so long as you book as your primary character - see above).
• Each Harts Of Albion event you crew will give you a voucher that can be redeemed to get money off the next Harts event you play!

... and if you'd prefer to play all Harts events you can still help out simply by crewing for another faction (if you speak to Harts command they will almost always be able to direct you to a good event that's currently looking for crew). Other factions do notice when we crew for them and frequently their players return the favour by crewing Harts events ... so everyone benefits.

Where crew lists are published on this website we will attempt to show which faction those crew come from. We'd ask players to try to take notice of where are crew is coming from and return the favour if they're able.

Being good crew

Whether you're crewing for the Harts or another faction there are a few things worth remembering that will make for a good monster crew ...

• Crew are not in competition with the players ... no one should be aiming to "beat the players", nor should success be measured in terms of how many characters you can kill or what you can steal. A "win" in crew terms is to help run an event that's as enjoyable as possible for as many players as possible.
• Running a good event requires more than just people to play monster parts. Sometimes crewing will require you to help behind the event desk, build props, sort costume/make-up or similar ... and event organisers appreciate help with these sort of non-monster-related aspects of the event too.
• Not all monster parts are the same; some involve combat or running around whilst others are purely roleplayed parts ... a mixture of such roles is an essential part of an event and there should be something for everyone to do. If you are unable to play (or simply uncomfortable with) a certain type of role please let the event organisers know in advance and they will ensure that you are still able to make a valuable contribution to the event.
• Events don't always go as planned (timescales rarely survive contact with a player group) and unfortunately sometimes this will mean crew have to wait around for a while. If this becomes necessary please bear with the event team and they'll try to get you active again as soon as possible.
• Look after yourself. Crewing can be a physically and mentally demanding (particularly if the weather is poor) and we don't want anyone running themselves into the ground. Make sure you have enough food, drink and rest - because if you're exhausted, hungry and dehydrated by the final day of the event you're unlikely to have a good time.