Alice, about to go Midwest

I have inadvertently started Facebook-stalking Banquo. At least, his photo albums. The guy is ridulously attractive.

Speaking of attractive people, this coming weekend I go to Chicago to be with Jared and to run Alice for the local larping community. Let me tell you, preparing for that has been a learning experience-- specifically a lesson in humility and persistence.

As arrogant as it sounds, I am accustomed to my games filling up immediately, enthusiastically, with a waitlist well over capacity. For the first three runs, people fought to get into Alice, and any dropped place was instantly taken over by someone delighted to have it. Hell, I think at one point the Festival run of Oz had enough people waitlisted for an entire second game. I don't know if it's because I have plenty of kind and willing friends, or if my name is enough at this point to convince people that they're going to have a good time. This, by contrast, was a lot less easy. This will be the first run of Alice to run under maximum. Two characters had to be cut, while two more will be NPCed. Only recently did we even hit minimum. I can tell you, that was certainly a depressing feeling. I felt like I'd failed, like my game wasn't so welcome and well-recieved after all, like I wasn't ready to step out onto a larger stage than just my local community, and I was worried that I'd have to cancel it and lose the whole experience entirely. Fortunately we've got enough to run, and I have figured out the way to make it work with fewer than twenty-seven characters. It was tough, and it doesn't feel as good as I want it to, but I fixed it.

As bad as I felt, this is a good experience for me. Now I know that I have to work harder in a place where I don't have credit already built up. I have to step it up if I'm going to be a presence in bigger ponds than the one I come from. Also, this will teach me to be flexible, to find ways to make games work and work well in less than ideal situations. I have adjusted Alice to function under the current set of circumstances, and I think it's going to come out just fine. My records don't like gaps the player shortage puts in them, but that I'll just have to get over. In the end, I will be a better GM for it.

And who knows? If this goes well, perhaps I'll be invited back, whether to run Alice again or to bring other games. And maybe then the people who liked this first one will tell everyone that the experience is good, and so more people will be more enthusiastic about playing in my games. And then I won't have to run under maximum anymore.

So this is a positive experience. I should be making the most of it, even if it's not exactly what I wanted.