I really had a good time at last night's BSCF. It was really interesting to have that interviewer there; I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to talk to her. But I got a serious case of the warm fuzzies when I happened to be walking by Matt's interview and the interviewer asked him about his favorite combat system in a larp, and he mentioned the one in Alice! Thank you, Matt, you're very kind, and it means a lot to hear you say that. Though, for the record, it was technically Jared who designed it. I told him I wanted a system that combined random and deterministic elements, so that the stronger character would usually win but the weaker one still had a chance, that somehow involved playing cards. He took those requirements and made the incredibly easy, effective system that I plan on using for all my games. :-D We're such a good team.
Then Sheena ran Unconventional Odyssey for a really fun group. I confess, I was not totally sure I'd enjoy it because I'd heard reports that it was really random and zany-- I thought it was just going to be a lot of random weird things thrown together. That can be fun, but it's not always to my taste, so I just had to trust Sheena that this game would work for me. Sure enough, I was pleasantly surprised to find that all the crazy elements were actually quite well thought out, and planned in such a way that the craziness steadily climbed rather than just be all over the place. The Vampire parody aspect of it was spot-on, so nicely done that I was a little disappointed that the game wasn't all that conducive to actually playing your character's Vampire character. It was have been interesting to see how the parody actually played. I was in the cast role of Jessie, who I joked to Sheena was a mean casting because it made fun of me. In reality she actually is just incredibly fragile and particular to the point of being too prissy to live. I think I may have interpreted that a little too far into bitchiness territory, which may not have been exactly the right note, but it more or less worked and I had a fun time doing it. I got punched out byrigel so I must have been doing something right!
The horde for this game did a fantastic job too. It had a significant number of newer larpers in it who weren't really familiar with the experience of horde, but they all just jumped in and came up with some really great performances. Also, bleemoo was hilarious as the phone player, and I was cracking up over the various phone calls he came up with. I kept wanting to call him with stuff, but the horde kept us so busy there was just no time. Jared ended up as horde as well. In the past he's always expressed a slight trepidation with horde, as he was never sure he'd be good enough at creating multiple characterizations to really enjoy the experience. That is the challenge of the horde from the actor's perspective, and I myself often force myself to ask for horde just to give myself some practice at being very different people. It's quite hard, really. But Jared didn't have to worry; I was really impressed by how varied and strong all his various roles ended up being! It makes me kind of sad I've never seen him in a significantly different double casting on stage; I know he can absolutely embody two separate people at once. I asked him not to try to make Claudius and the Ghost all that different in Hamlet, in the service of making a point, but now that I know how well he can do it, I want to put it to good theatrical use!
Afterward, there were lots of good conversations. I always like talking about larping in a theoretical sense with laurion. He has some really interesting insight, and I remember him giving me a couple of the most helpful pieces of advice when I was writing Alice-- most of all, he clued me into the all-important idea that if you want something to happen in a larp, you need to make the characters want it to happen.
There was a bit of negative business happening as well that I got tangled up in, but I like to think I helped a little bit of resolution happen, so it ended more of less okay. I hate it when two people who I both really care about are just so different that they piss each other off without meaning to by not understanding how the other interprets things. This is complicated when one of the parties is not inclined to acknowledge that they've done anything wrong. For those of you who witnessed this behavior, I will say in that person's defense that they are not trying to be pushy and dickish, they're just not very good at picking up on the fact that people are made uncomfortable by that sort of behavior, and don't understand why people are suddenly angry at them, and so gets angry at that. I think it's okay now, and I hope everyone can forgive and let it go, but that was the one dark spot of the evening. Still, overall, I had a fantastic time with my fantastic hobby with my fantastic friends.
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