Reposted from the FB Note: Explanations about D-C and life.

Apparently there has been some unhappiness with the way Drakalyth has gone this semester. It took three months for someone to actually come to me about it, though.

At what point did I give my friends the impression that they couldn't talk to me if they had a concern? I'm not delusional enough to think myself to be higher than anyone. I'm the same as any of you, the only difference being I wrote the system. Since only one person has come forward with the concerns, I will addrses them here since I'm too pressed for time as of late to have a meeting.

1) Some of you are concened about $5 for PVP events. I have yet to play a LARP, even for small events, that didn't require some kind of fee. I don't consider $5 to be an overwhelming sum of money, especially considering that it's not even for personal gain. If you think that I have intentions of pocketing the money for myself, then you're mistaken. Ask Nate. Ask Kelly. Ask Hobbie. Ask any of the other staff what I have talked about using the money for. It's for setting up future events. It's for improving their quality. It's for covering the cost of tag and character sheet printing that, thus far, we have had to eat from our own pockets. $5 is a very VERY low fee compared to what you will find at other LARPs, even for just a 6 hour PVP battle.

2) My LARP isn't as well-developed as others. Well considering that most of them have been operating for longer than Nate has been in college, I think that somewhat stands to reason. Is my system perfect? GOD no. Is it functional? I'd like to think so. Is it fun? Well, you would have to be the judges on that. I can only give the point of view I have.

3) My staff are mostly inexeprienced when it comes to staffing. Of the staff I have, only one of us has staffed another LARP, and not in an administrative capacity. You'll have to bear with me as I sort through things because I've never done anything like this before. I've never tried to organize this many people for anything because, to be quite honest with you, until I came to WCU I could count the people I called "friend" on my fingers and toes alone. I'm not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. Hell, there are days when I'm not even good at this, so perfect is far out of the question.

4) You want a schedule. So would I. But unfortunately, that's not how this works. I'm not so well-established that I can give you guys a months, or even weeks in advance timeline. In case you haven't noticed, I have been in the Commuter's Lounge maybe once every other week. The fact is that this semester is so much busier for me than my previous semesters that I have barely had time to even sleep some weeks.

Note: I don't want anyone's pity or sympathy. This semester's time restraints have been self-imposed, and they are things I knew would take up time. I should have warned you at the start of the semester that I wouldn't have as much time to organize events as I did last semester, but all I can do now is apologize for not warning you when I should have. My loans were cut by about $6000. My tuition (like everyone else's) went up. Most of you have everything paid for in your tuition. Meal plan, dorm, etc. I don't. I have a trailer payment of $226 a month, lot rent of $175 a month, phone and internet of $67 a month, a cell phone bill for $37 a month, electricity that gets as high as $200 when it's extremely cold or hot, about $200 a month in gas to commute from Franklin to Cullowhee, trailer insurance, car insurance, food for myself, food for my cats. I have no money for entertainment outside of what I can afford on campus when they show movies for $2. I work as many hours a week as I can fit in to try to cover the difference between the $2000 refund check I got from my loans and the expenses I have every month. I don't want you to feel sorry for me, this is the life I have chosen to live and I'm happy with it. I do want you to try to understand, though. I have a full semester of classes and 4 honors contracts on top of it, along with work. So if I haven't scheduled as many events as you might have liked, forgive me for being blunt, but LARPing has been the very bottom of my priority list because I'm trying to finish with (what can potentially be) a 3.6 GPA and Honors.

I had intended this LARP to be something fun. Something that we could all enjoy together. It seems that there are some players who, for whatever prejudice they might have, I cannot please. I'm sorry to have let you guys down. I'm sorry that I'm not able to plan and organize things as well as I would like. I've tried to plan things for a PVE chapter. I've tried to set up events for us with what limited assets I had available to me. When those plans have blown up in my face, I've tried to salvage what I could from the wreckage. I'm sorry if that hasn't been good enough for you.

I can't give you any dates for when another event will be. I can't give you the answers you seem to want. I'm sorry to prioritize the way I have, but my educational pursuits will come before anything and everything else. That's just how it's going to be. I'm not going to fall behind my coursework for LARPing. I did that already. I made that mistake at UNCW. That's not something I will ever do again.

Thomas has gotten me some info on the Venture Crew. To get set up with them we have to pay $25 per person for yearly registration. When he gets me all the paperwork I need for it. The hitch is that we can't even use the camps we want to with that insurance until next year. I wish it was sooner, but it's not. So our fallback is still Arrowmont. Unfortunately, I still haven't had the time to talk to them to work out a price. I might not get the time to do it until summer. Does that suck? Yes. Horribly. But I can't do anything else about it.

I'd like to have an event, though. But to do that, someone will have to take the initiative to find a place for us to have the event, and believe me when I say that it's not an easy hunt.

There IS a place we could do it in SC. But it would be $50 per person to be able to afford it, and we would need at least 25 people. I don't think you guys want to pay that.

So if there is anything I haven't addressed, if you have a question to which you want an answer, or if you feel that there is something else that needs to be said about this matter please do so. I'm not going to get mad at you for sharing your input. I've tried to do the best I can.

If that's not good enough, maybe we should just wrap it all up and see if I have time to rekindle it a few years from now when I'm out of school and working off my debt.