Friday, April 30, 2010

Household items for the coming year

Elsinore has had a lot happen to fix it up recently. We got our new windows, which are lovely, and I am quite optimistic that they'll do a lot to reduce the heating bill. Won't know for sure until it gets cold again, but I'm the last person on Earth to complain about warm weather. :-) The basement has been cleaned up since the time it flooded over Intercon weekend, and should now be more resistant if that much water ever happens again. And today a mason came to repair the deterioration on the front steps as well as to patch some spots on the chimney. I am pleased by these improvements and hope my soon-to-be-roommates are too.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what household items, specifically furniture and kitchen appliances, that will be departing when some of my current roommates move out. I just got my not-large but still appreciated tax refund, which I divided equally between savings, rent, and checking, and decided to use the amount that went to checking to buy new dinner plates. They are not gorgeous, and cost a bit more than I expected them to, but I got twelve good-sized and perfectly serviceable white china dinner plates from the restaurant supply store on Water Street. I figured that plates were the most essential pieces that would be leaving, and therefore should be the first thing to replace.

We housemates for the coming year should really start talking about this. We should at least begin to figure out who can bring what, and who will buy what of the things that no one already has. I also suddenly recalled the kitchen things my parents meant to give me but I never brought up because they would have been superflous, but now can fill in for departing items. My parents should be coming up to help my brother move out of his dorm next week, so I must remember to ask them to bring them along.

Completed my sheet assignments!

I just finished my second replacement character for Labor Wars. That means I have completed all my sheet assignments! Yay! I am actually extremely pleased with how this last one turned out. I shamelessly stole a brilliant structural idea from natbudin* (with his permission!) that he used in another sheet, and it turned out to be the perfect mechanism to convey the information. It makes for a slightly unorthodox character sheet, which has never been my inclination, but I found that my typical format wasn't really working for me.

Today will be spent in low-key pleasant things. I will be picking up crearespero* around lunchtime and we'll be running some errands together, as I believe the place she needs to be is right next to the place I need to be, so that coincides nicely. And then this evening I have my hot date with blendedchaitea*. Way back when she went above and beyond the call of duty helping me with To Think of Nothing, I promised I'd take her out to dinner to thank her, and now, months later, we're finally getting to do it. We'll be meeting at Tom Can Cook, and I plan to dress up pretty for her. :-) I am looking forward to spending some time with her and with Frances, and using it to relax and feel okay.

I've been a ball of stress lately. If I can't fix the source, I can at least do something to manage the effects.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Happy birthday Erik!

I want to wish a fantastic birthday to flyingstalins*, not only a remarkable and amazing human being, but the wonderful friend who hooked me up with Muppety goodness! Hope you have a wonderful day! :-)

I just finished writing one of the two replacement characters I have been assigned for Labor Wars, and I'm feeling pretty good about it. Replacement characters are a tricky proposition, in my opinion, but I'm quite proud of the way we're handling them here. There's a lot to recommend using them, of course. The Labor Wars is a weekend-long game with at least some possibility of character death, and nobody wants to be cut out of the game way way early because they got killed. So replacement characters are a way of getting those players back in the game so they don't miss out. But they can have problems. They are often much thinner than full characters, so I've encountered people getting back in the game and finding that they don't have much to do with their new role. Depending on when the second-run character gets into the game, the plots they're supposed to follow may have already resolved, or gone on in such a way as to make it impossible for them to get into those plots. And you can never predict when someone's going to die, so you can't predict when the new character's going to get into the game. Another issue is with information/knowledge management. You might get a second run character who doesn't know things that you already knew in your first character, so you're put under enormous difficulty to not metagame.

In Labor Wars, however, we've done a lot of planning to circumvent these issues as best we can. We are writing the replacements to be each tailored to a particular first-run character. So, if you're cast as X and you get killed, your replacement character will always be Y, whereas if you were cast as A, your replacement will always be B. The replacement is designated as your first character's lieutenant, to whom you've been reporting the goings-on of the game, who is ready to step in for you in the event that something happens to you. This helps make the transition smooth from one, by making character goals stem from the same stuff (if not necessarily consistent!) and by giving a reason for in-game knowledge to be consistent. Your replacement knows everything your original character knew because they are understood to have been informed of everything you learned. And usually you can pick up some aspect of your old plots, if not exactly in the same way to allow you to still have plot when you re-enter the game. It's an incredibly clever design on the parts of emp42ress*, natbudin*, and simplewordsmith*. In the past I have tended to not like replacement characters because of the issues stated above, but their implementation of the concept in this game makes me feel really good about them.

One more to go. Here's off to do it justice.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

"You don't mess with Animal. He eats glass, man."

I would like to extend an amazing thanks to flyingstalins* for pointing me in the direction of the Muppet special I was seeking. It is called "Secrets of the Muppets" (the fact that I was always searching using the words "behind-the-scenes" may have prevented me from finding it) and I delightedly watched it on Youtube yesterday. It was really cool to be reminded just how much effort and cleverness goes into making the Muppets seem so real and seamless. Henson's work is so beautifully and appears so effortless it's easy to forget what technological genius it required to put it together. It makes me want to devote my life to puppetry just to share in some small part of the fantastic acheivement.

Now I want to watch Muppet stuff all day long. Also, this picture, combined with the caption beneath it, cracked me up:


"Sam disapproves of Liberace."

Heehee. Yes, I am certain that Sam does. ;-)

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Muppet fan help?

think there are enough Muppet fans on my friends list that this might be an effective venue to pose a Henson-related question.

So many years ago, when I was but a nipper, I saw a Muppet special on television that I absolutely loved. It was a behind-the-scenes documentary of sorts on all the processes behind the making of Muppet movies and shows. It was hosted by Jim Henson himself; given the timing, it probably would have had to have to been one of the last things he made before he did. The really awesome thing about it was that the Muppet characters were part of it, too-- though they acknowledged their existence as constructed things, they were still people participating in the presentation. A scene following the mention of having to periodically replace worn-out Muppet parts where Bunsen points out to Gonzo the cracks in the foam around his mouth to Gonzo's extreme discomfort particularly sticks out in my mind.

I loved it so much, and I've only seen it the one time all those years ago. I desperately want to see it again.

Now I have periodically tried to identify this fantastic special over the years and met with little success. I am beginning to wonder if I hallucinated it, as with my luck nothing of that level of sheer unadulterated awesome could actually exist in this life. But on the off-chance that the universe will throw me a bone, I was wondering if any of you were familiar with it and could, at the very least, tell me the NAME of the thing, if not point me to some obliging collection of videoes on Youtube with which I could view it again.

Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Or am I raving here? Help!

iPad musings

Okay, the sleeping-badly situation is getting out of hand. All the waking up again and again during the night has got to stop. Jared suggested I try taking melatonin, which can reset circadian rhythms, and at this point it can't hurt to give it a shot. And that is the last thing I'm going to say on my sleep issues for a good long while, as I'm sure you're sick of hearing about them.

Not that anybody asked me, nor should they given my complete dearth of expertise, but I'm going to tell you what I think of the iPad. I got to handle one at an Apple store recently, and well, I liked it as a thing on its own, but in the larger sense, I wasn't especially impressed.

Is there anything to it besides the fact that it's... a giant iPhone? That's cool, I guess-- God knows the annoyances I have regarding the limitations of the iPhone, and one with expanded capabilities would be much appreciated. As I mentioned, I use my iPhone as a makeshift laptop all the time. I only have a desktop right now, so if I ever want to bring a computer with me, the phone is as close as I'm going to be able to get. Something similar to the iPhone that is intended to function more like a laptop would suit my purposes nicely, wouldn't you think? But besides the larger screen, some of the more basic personal computer functions like word processing, and (I would hope) faster processor, I don't really see a huge leap forward. There's no camera, it doesn't support multi-tasking, there's no input besides the one for the typical Apple charger cable. It's basically a giant iPhone you can't make calls on. If I need a laptop, and I'm willing to spend money to acquire one, what reason do I have to not put the $499 price the iPad retails for right now toward an actual laptop that does more?

It's a cool thing. A very cool thing, in fact. If someone gave one to me, I'm sure I'd use it all the time. But is there enough utility in that coolness to make it necessary for people to pay all that money to own? I'm not sure. My question simply boils down to, unless you're buying simply for the coolness factor, which some techies certainly do, why would one prefer to spend that money on an iPad rather than a regular computer which would have more functionality?

The thing that annoys me about it is that the people whose purposes I would think they'd truly suit, the people that compute only on the most casual level, are probably never going to get them. The people who are going to buy iPads are techies, the hard-core Apple fans. They're going to think it's cool and living-in-the-future-feeling enough to shell out the money, despite the fact that they've probably already got machines at home that can do more and need way more computing power for their doings than an iPad can provide.

The iPad would be the ideal machine for someone like my mom, who uses computers to read, send e-mail, and surf the internet. A lightweight, easy-to-use device that allowed her to do all those things would be perfect. But she would never be inclined to spend so much on some gadget. She is, however, not totally unlikely to get ahold of one if bought for her by my much more technologically-inclined dad.

Am I missing something? I am not very technologically savvy. These are just my impressions from my very ignorant point of view. It's basically just a highly portable, not-very-powerful computer, right? Is anyone going to buy it instead of a computer? Is its utility really great enough for it to be bought as anything more than a cool novelty or convenience in addition to your more useful machines?

I now sit here and prepare to get schooled by people who understand the subject far better than me.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Fucking AT&T

I'm getting increasingly fed up with AT&T. I love my iPhone, but the number of dropped calls I've experienced lately and the snail's pace of any network connection is driving me crazy. I know, I tend to use my phone like a makeshift laptop, which isn't really what it was designed for, but it WAS designed to, you know, CALL PEOPLE, and it's been quite pathetic at doing that lately. I've heard that the explosive popularity of the iPhone wasn't totally anticipated and now the network is way overloaded, but seriously, cell-providing-company. It is unacceptable to not provide cell service. I could deal with the ridiculously slow and often ineffective web access if it actually let me talk to the people I called.

Oh, and just to clarify--

By the way, I meant to mention something in the spirit of clarification regarding my thoughts on how we would manage "pinch hitters" at Festival of the Larps.

When I said "commit to be in the consuite for a time period," I mostly meant that you'd agree to be somewhere nearby to the game spaces at the beginning of the games when they were going to trying to fill gaps. This would be so you could show up to gamespaces quickly if you were called upon to fill in. Once games get running, no one would be obligated to stick around anywhere. Some people just seemed to be troubled by the notion of having to spend an entire timeslot in the consuite, which was not what I would actually think was necessary, so I wanted to clear up that you'd pretty much only have to be around for the beginning of a timeslot unless you got into a game.

Sorry for not making that explicit.

Griping as head goes *pound pound pound*

After over a week of exhaustion and stress, I feel particularly lousy today. There is a low-grade headache in the top right side of my head that isn't as bad as it was last night, but still hasn't gone away even after a night's sleep.

I spent last night helping Jared work out the writing of his thesis. The first half was due today, and he used me as a sounding board to figure out the structure and flow. I agreed to read it once he was done and make suggestions as if I were the theoretical "mean, lazy, and stupid" reader that his professors warned him to write for. At some point I noticed I had developed a halo in my left eye. This has happened to me before and gone away on its own, so I wasn't too worried, more annoyed because I knew it would make it difficult to read. Then the headache set in, starting high on the right side of my head and spreading to just behind my hairline. I drank tea and grumbled as Jared finished the first part of his paper. The halo eventually went away, thankfully, and I read the paper and I think made some helpful comments. It really is a good work; I'm incredibly proud of him. Just one more section to go, and the second part is supposed to be easier than the first.

As I lay in bed that night, still headachey and now with nausea settling in, I wondered idly if I had a brain aneurysm. I was tired enough that I decided if I woke up dead the next morning, well, at least I'd get to sleep in.

Well, needless to say I did not wake up dead. Head still hurts, though, so perhaps my aneurysm is just a lazy-ass that's taking it's own sweet time to kill me. I feel zombie-like, quite useless for any form of productivity.

Traffic on my Livejournal has dropped drastically from last month to this. I am depressed about it. Maybe I've been less interesting. I feel less interesting, so it would not surprise me if my entries were becoming less so as well. I even look less interesting; I think the look of tiredness that's been dogging me makes me appear ten years older.

I think I need to take it easy for a little while. This week I shall do things to take care of me. I have a couple of minor social things I'd like to indulge in. I have a hot date, heehee, with blendedchaitea* this coming Friday night that we've been meaning to have for a while, and I've been meaning to have Michael Hyde over for dinner sometime, so that would be an enjoyable way to spend an evening. Maybe I need to just take a little time to pull myself together. At least until this heavy, overwhelmed feeling goes away.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

I like my stompy shoes

I bought a pair of boots the last time I was at the thrift store, costume shopping for Festival with nennivian* and katiescarlett29*. I actually wasn't planning on buying anything, just enjoying their company while they shopped, but I guess it's true what they say about when shopping with your friends, their encouragement will make you much more likely to shell out cash for something. ;-) I may have spent money I didn't so much have to that day, but I'm glad I did. The boots I bought because they were perfect for my costume as an ex-military demolitions expert in Diamond Geezers-- stompy black combat boots, heavy and ankle-high. They're a bit heavier and clunkier than my typical choice of shoe, but I like the thick rubber platform soles that allow them to have a not-insignificant heel while still staying very comfortable. The toe is a bit more bluntly shaped than I like, but it's not terribly noticeable. They also suit any number of costumes-- I think, after four years, they're finally the right shoe to wear with my Alice costume. Though they were picked specifically because of their costume-appropriateness, I find I like them for their own sake and have been wearing them a lot lately. That may be helped by the fact that my standard black shoe, my suede Pumas, I believe are still in morethings5*'s unicorn box, left there after taking them off in his performance piece. Jonathan, if you see this, I really must remember to get those back from you. ;-)

Also, either Steph or Charlotte, I don't remember exactly who, found a blue dress they thought would fit me. As I said, I wasn't really looking, but it did look to be my size, and I did like it. It is slightly sparkly and has some pretty gathering down the bodice, leading to a lightly flounced skirt. Sure enough, it fit like a charm, and I decided to take it home. I actually really like it, though I wish I had more opportunity to wear it. But I don't really have many fancy dresses. It's nice to have one that isn't either too costumey or too slutty to wear to an elegant event. Maybe I'll have a fancy dinner and ask all my guests to dress up, and give myself a chance to pull it out.

This reminds me that I really need to figure out better ways to store my shoes and costumes. I'm always trying to find ways to make my space at Elsinore more efficiently utilized, for neatness and for ease of use. The costumes, at the moment, are stuffed into a bag under my bed, and the shoes are on the floor of my closet. valleyviolet made a good suggestion about getting a hanging door rack, but my closet doors slide rather than swing, so there really isn't room. I wonder if those little floor shelving units would be very expensive, or take up too much room. I'd love to have my shoes stacked on them, easy to access and kept from getting lost. I'm sure I could find some kind of box for the costumes, again one that wouldn't take up too much room but still have space for my various pieces.

Friday, April 23, 2010

More Larpercalia planning-musing: pinch hitters and more

Wow, thanks to everyone who weighed in on the Festival issues I was discussing. Your input is very useful and much appreciated.

The thing causing the most discussion, it seems, is the "pinch-hitter signup list," as we'll call it. To reiterate, this idea refers to having a signup list for attendees to commit to be hanging out in consuite during a given time slot ready to jump in and fill a last-minute player drop. This would be in the interest of giving GMs the fastest and best possible information on who they can get to step in. I wanted to expand on some of the excellent points you guys brought up and see if we can plan things so as to take them into account.

First, there's the issue that not every larper who agrees to be on the pinch-hitter list will necessarily be interested in playing every game. I'd know I count among them. I'll usually jump in if they're desperate, just so that my fellow larpers don't have a bad time, but not every game speaks to every larper. But frankly, I see no problem in going to the consuite and generally addressing the pinch hitter list with "X Game needs someone. Who's up?" and allowing them the option to say no. I guess this runs into a problem if the list is short, or if no one wants to play a particular game, but we're going to have this problem whether we have a list or not. Having the list will at least increase the chances of securing someone quickly who is willing, even if it's not automatic.

So, the point: Pinch-hitters would maintain the option to turn down a game if it doesn't interest them.

The biggest concern people have seems to be whether or not knowing that someone can fill in and prevent the ruining of the larp will encourage people to blow off games. As several of you pointed out, there is a possibility that people might feel less guilty about punking out if they know that the game will probably still run without them and they won't be responsible for ruining anyone else's good time. Even when you can get a replacement, it's not always an ideal solution; it's a pain for GMs to get someone up to speed quickly enough to play, and talk about knocking over the carefully-constructed house of cards that is casting a game.

So this is definitely a concern. But I am of the opinion that optimizing our ability to patch holes in casts is going to have a larger positive effect on runtimes than an increased number of blow-offs is going to have a negative effect. First of all, I believe that if an increase does occur, it will not be huge. In general, people sign up for larps because they want to larp. It's not like larping is a video game you can turn on in your own home anytime you want to play. It takes a lot of people deciding to come together and go to the effort of putting on the game. If you don't take the relatively rare opportunities that arise (such as the fabulous one offered by Festival) you... never get to larp. The people that don't care about getting to larp do not usually sign up. Second, I believe that the ability to restore a game to a full cast is the real priority.

My conclusion: A possibly increased number of last-minute drops is an acceptable risk because having the ability to replace four dropped players is better than having only one drop that you can't fill.

I wonder if it might be useful to make it clear that by blowing off games, people will be let down. I like to think that it is fairly well-established larp ettiquette that because of the dependence on the collaborative effort to make larps work, one only drops a larp at the last minute in a legitimate emergency, and one makes sure to inform the GMs of said dropped game so they can try to find replacements. Of course, the fact that my player who didn't show up last weekend never contacted me at all, and when I tried to call her, her phone was turned off, would put lie to the supposed universality of that notion.

Also, I think I may place a ban on games longer than four hours going on the schedule next year. The fact that they claim so many people for more than one slot makes any game running across from it suffer. This is nothing against School of Young Women, which by all accounts is a very good game and was much enjoyed this past weekend, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed that of the four games running opposite of it, only one of them (Alice) managed to get a full complement of players. It may have just been because School is so large at forty players; that's an awful lot to have nipped out. I might consider a longer game if it is significantly smaller than that, but at the moment I am inclined to stick with four-hours and less.

Again, I welcome your input and opinions.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Larpercalia plan-musings

So I am pondering various things about planning for next Festival. And though at this early, early point I am simply thinking out loud, but I'd like to hear people's opinions on whether my thoughts might be useful.

Bernie made the suggestion that it be made known that there will be board games for play during downtime in the con suite. I like this idea as it is good for facilitating socialization. This is easy enough to arrange; just make sure that the BSCF games are present and available. This also, however, may make another idea I had more feasible.

So for the first time this past weekend I had a situation where one player just didn't show up, and we had to scrounge for a last-minute replacement. We got lucky and secured one fairly quickly, but that sure is an unpleasant situation. I was thinking that perhaps, when time draws near to the con, there can be an extra sign up that basically indicates "I am going to be in the con suite during this slot and am willing to fill in for a no-show, so if you need a last-minute player, you know who and where to look." It might be overkill a little, as it seems like most games find replacements without excessive difficulty anyway, but I think that might make the whole process more efficient, and minimize delay to the game. I envision it as possible to be on a waitlist AND be on this "pinch-hitter" list at the same time, but you're removed automatically if you get off a waitlist and into a game. If people think this might be a useful idea, I'll talk to natbudin* about the technical workability of it.

The most important thing I think we need to gauge is the number of player openings we want in each time period. Using the very useful data kindly compiled for me by bronzite* and Nat, and comparing it to my own observations of the website post-Festival, it seems like between sixty and seventy-five player openings per time slot is about right. In certain higher-participation slots, which seem to be Saturday afternoon and night and maybe Friday evening, the number would be on the higer end of that range. In certain lower-participation slots, like Saturday morning and Sunday, the number would be on the lower end. Heck, it would probably be smartest to push it down to fifty-something for Sunday.

And I'm thinking of making a point of finding someone who would be willing to throw an extra, probably smaller game up on the schedule if we find ourselves getting close to the con and there are still lots of interested people without a game. It would be understood that this game would only get put up if there seemed to be unusually long waitlists; otherwise, this person willing to GM would probably be sitting that slot out. This would allow us to err on the side of helping games to fill while still having a contigency to include anyone who didn't get into anything.

I also would like to encourage people to bring new games this year, or at the very least games that have not been run at Festival before. This would cut down on the "I've played everything interesting in that slot already" trouble that I think we had a bit of this year.

Does anyone have any opinions on these things? Suggestions? Desires? Issues you want resolved? Let me know, so they can be included in the planning process.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Festival report

On Friday night I helped captainecchi* and electric_d_monk* run the fantastic League of Extraordinary Hogwarts Students. I loved playing this game, and I only wish I'd had time to study everything more carefully. I read all the character sheets and the rules, but I still wasn't quite familiar with the inner workings of the game to be all that useful as a GM. I mostly got answers from Matt and Lise and then passed them on to players. I was particularly proud of katiescarlett29*, who stepped in as Irene Adler even though she wasn't totally confident about the improv part of larping, and of nennivian*, who I always thought was a larper waiting to happen. By and large the run went very well, with lots of activity and engaged players, but I wish I'd been intimate enough with the game to be able to give better suggestions to the couple of (usually new) players that got stuck. I wanted to talk to them after the game, but I was so blasted by gamewrap that I had to drag myself home and sleep. I have been sleeping badly lately, and I had to get up for a 9AM game the next day.

Saturday morning that 9AM game was the fifth run of Oz. It was an excellent run, one of the best, with the capable assistance of Jared and Bernie as my fellow GMs. We were a little nervous about the casting in places, but it turned out that everyone had a part they enjoyed. Standout players include the awesome natbudin*, who we initially wanted for EVERY ROLE IN THE GAME, but we finally settled into a part because he wanted to see him portray the personality-- which he did amazingly. Again, Charlotte was fantastic, showing so much talent for getting into and becoming characters. I was incredibly impressed with wired_lizard*, who played the character the way I had always imagined it to be, and gave me a few new ideas on top of that. Zachariah came up with some fantastically clever stratagies for executing his fairly difficult plotline. Hell, pretty much everyone in the game did an excellent job. I should probably stop casting bronzite* as my big bad, because I think people expect him to be the villain all the time, and so no one is inclined to trust him. In the previous run of Oz, Marc Blumberg as the villain did very well and in fact managed to achieve his goal of cataclysmic destruction, but it was more because the characters he was in opposition to made a fatal error that they could not fix. John actually pushed things farther along the doom track than anyone so far, but his opposition managed to repair it properly. I was immensely pleased with this run.

Saturday afternoon, I went home to sleep. I think it helped a little, but I was still pretty draggy for the rest of the weekend.

Saturday night was the fifth run of Alice, again assisted by Jared and Bernie. I think it went well in that players had a good time, but this was the WEIRDEST RUN EVER. Though of course there have been variations, the previous four runs tended to follow some pretty clear trends. Basically, there is a pattern of connections that is supposed to get made, and with some variance in the order in previous runs they all came together, leading to an endgame scenario where two large groups are polarized against each other. A lot of those connections did not click this time around, and I'm not sure where the broken link was. The villain was vanquished again, but not by the person who is supposed to and always has in the past. In all the previous runs, either the core villain group acted so covertly that nobody knew who they were until the end of the game, or they formed a tight-knit group so cohesive that they just overwhelmed and crushed all opposition. I feel like they were more scattered and freewheeling this time around, which made them more obvious and less able to protect themselves should someone decide they were a target. There were still some fantastic performances-- I loved Lise's analytical approach to her character and she made amazing process putting together the pieces of her challenge. And April was excellent, not to mention wearing a fantastic costume. I guess any game where the players have fun is a success, but I was really shocked at how weirdly this run went.

Then I went home to sleep. Again, my sleep has not been terribly restful these days, so still. So. Draggy. Blah.

Sunday was Diamond Geezers, the only thing I played. I had a blast. I was playing an ex-military demolitions expert whose rough, ruthless, but not terribly malicious outlook I enjoyed. It was an interestingly set-up game, basically us in a confined space with a few story hooks built in but a plot that was more or less on rails. I wasn't exactly expecting that, but it was a really fun character game, involving yelling in Cockney accents and waving guns around. We experienced an odd phenomenon that I think was troubling Brad as GM that the only ones who were talking much, at least at first, were bleemoo*, Charlotte, and myself, and everyone else was fairly quiet. I wonder if it was because the three of us were comfortable doing the accent and they felt slightly intimindated to speak if they couldn't. It's not like mine was any good at all, though Josh's and Charlotte's actually were. Josh was so much fun to play off of, and Charlotte continued to prove my theory that she has always been a larper, whether she knew it or not. Definitely recommend this game as a fun silly character experience.

Oh, as a side note, I was amused at usernamenumber pointing how at Brandeis, of course there was going to be less shooting and killing and more hand-holding and agreeing to work things out. :-) I have noticed this trend myself.

Next year I shall be con chair. I am looking forward to it. I am in the process of pondering a few thing to help optimize, which I will record when I have a better handle on my thoughts. Until then, thanks to everyone for making our very own con a fantastic experience again!

Monday, April 19, 2010

Post-Festival cooldown

Mercifully I do not have to work today. This is wonderful, seeing as the lovely but draining weekend of GMing or AGMing three games and playing one with little sleep in between has left me wiped. Today will be spent finishing my character sheet for the next Labor Wars meeting tomorrow, and getting back on top of chores that were thrown to the winds in favor of preparing for Festival. I will also be producing an LJ report on my Festival experience, but that will come later.

I spent the morning cleaning my disaster area of a room. It's amazing how much damage can be inflicted on a bedroom when you have printed two larps in it, changed costumes several times, and had time only to run in and out of it all weekend. There were scraps of paper everywhere, and I counted no fewer than four pairs of pants thrown out on the floor. It is mostly better now, though I still need to find a better storage system for my shoes than "crammed into bottom of closet."

Thursday, April 15, 2010

My All-Clad is nicer

Watching Good Eats today, my favorite cooking show, I noted to my amusement that Alton Brown uses the cheap All-Clad.

Okay, there is no such thing as "cheap All-Clad," gorgeous high-end stainless steel cookware, whether referring to quality or to price. But most of what he uses on his show is from the brushed patina line, which is less expensive to buy than the polished steel variety, which in turn is cheaper than the stainless with the copper core. I'd be willing to bet it works just as well, and probably is easier to keep looking new than the easy-to-discolor polished alternatives. As an owner of the polished steel, I can attest to the pain that it is to scrub the hell out of the stuff with Barkeeper's Friend.

But it amuses me to think that my All-Clad is nicer than my cooking hero's. I'm such a snob. ;-)

Tonight is for work

Finally Kindness's long-awaited post-bac show has come to fruition. We did our performance in front of his magnificent and meticulously-constructed environment involving suspended tree branches, flowers, nails, hooks, domestic items, and various accoutrements reflecting the life of a little girl. i think he was pleased with it; I had fun doing it, and it was certainly a unique experience for me as an actor and an interesting addition to my creative resume. I've done art before, but I've never been art before. :-) His installation will be in the Dreitzer Gallery in Spingold for the rest of the week if you missed last night. I, sadly, being living art, will not be.

*Yawn* I've gone to bed at a ridiculously early hour (10PM on Monday, 10PM on Tuesday, 9PM yesterday) every night so far this week, and yet I don't feel recharged or well enough rested for having slept so long. I don't feel sick, but I wonder if something's up. I'm hoping the excitement of Festival this weekend will cancel out my early-evening heaviness so I'm not a drag the next couple of nights.

I'd like to go to BSCF tonight and hang with people, but I have to prioritize my chores in preparation for the weekend. I have most of the sheets printed, but none of the cards, and nothing's packed yet. I may even have to buy a few new sets of supplies, like folders and playing cards. I need to put clean sheets on the guest bed for Seamus Reynolds who will be crashing at Elsinore for the weekend. And I have to finish reading the materials for LXHS. I'll only go to BSCF if I've accomplished enough of all of that by the time seven rolls around, but I doubt I will be able to afford it.

I could try to get a bit of work done on my next character sheet assignment for Labor Wars, as we have a meeting next Tuesday. But I won't be working on Monday next due to the need to work a monstrously long day on the following Thursday, so I should at least have all of that day to finish up the sheet. It'll be nice to have a day to recover after what promises to be a packed and possibly sleep-deprived three days.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Randomness of this focus-elusive week

Have been very busy and yet annoyingly unable to focus very well for the past several days. I've still got a lot of work to do in preparation for Festival. Printing and packing hasn't gone nearly as quickly as I'd hoped it would, so I'm a bit behind on my self-imposed scheduel. I've read most of the materials for LXHS, but not everything, so I'll have to get on that.

After polling and gathering opinions, I've decided to go with Larpercalia for next year's Festival nickname. It amuses me and we can always put an explanation on the website. After all, "Festival" is the most important name and the one that people mostly use when talking about it and advertising it; the nickname's just for fun anyway.

This past weekend I held the cast party for To Think of Nothing. I ended up cooking basically a full dinner for it, which turned out to be a good choice as everyone in attendance was pleased and impressed by it. With my three lovely helpers (so nice to have helpers!) nennivian*, katiescarlett29*, and crearespero*, we put together guacamole, chicken braised with cider and apples, garlic bread bruscetta, and the complicated wild rice dish. The extra hands made it easy, and the company was very much appreciated.

I have started reading Penny Arcade. I don't always find it funny, but they do a lot of really sharp commentary and certain strips are hilarious. I decided to check it out on a whim the other day because so many people I know read it. Right now the only web comics I follow are Something Positive (have since high school), Penny and Aggie, Girls With Slingshots, and of course Order of the Stick. I'm not sure if I enjoy PA enough to put in my regular rotation, but I'm glad to have finally absorbed it.

Tonight I am performing in Kindness's post-bac art show. I will have to get in contact with him to find out when he wants me to come over and make sure we're set with our plan. If you're available from 5-7PM, come to the Dreitzer Gallery in Spingold to see the work.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Just throwing this out there...

If I made the suggestion that the next Festival name should be "Larpercalia," would anyone get it?

...

It would be a play on the Lupercalia, the ancient Roman spring-rebirth celebration, that literally translates to "wolf festival"? So our version would roughly mean "larper festival"? Which is appropriate... 'cause it's... Festival of the Larps...?

...

No? Anyone?

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Cast party and costume shopping

Today shall be very fun. I'm going to meet Steph and Charlotte for costuming for Festival later. They're going to show me what they've come up with already, and I think we'll be hitting the thrift store after in case we need to look for anything else. They're working for LXHS and Oz, while I got my Diamond Geezers sheet! I believe I got the "tough cast" character, which always makes me smile-- it's nice to be trusted to step up into a character the GM is not sure about. I actually really like the character am really looking forward to playing her. She blows stuff up!

Costuming came to me immediately. I have an army background and I'm a demolitions professional, so I plan on wearing my olive-drab cargo pants, a black tank or maybe sports bra, and my stompy hiking boots. For some reason I see my hair put up in outrageous pigtails made to stand as straight out as I can possibly manage. And I'm going to wear that sun-deflecting paint that football players wear and draw tattoos all over myself with Sharpie.

After that, I will be dragging them back to my place to be my kitchen helpers. Tonight is the long-awaited cast party for To Think of Nothing, and we will be cooking a number of lovely dishes for it. I plan on setting up a buffet-style selection of goodies, significantly more substantial than your chips and pretzel snacks. I started off the process by cooking for my lovely actors, so it seems fitting to finish it off by feeding them as well.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Things I am grateful for on my birthday

1. All the lovely compliments. Thank you, sweet, kind, obliging friends, for humoring my tacky, needy request.

2. The sweet birthday card and phone call from acousticshadow2. I kvelled.

3. The red velvet cake. My favorite!

4. The nice weather. I was so weary of rain and cold.

5. The resupply of my favorite Teavana tea. Thank you, Bernie, my dear.

6. The wonderful dinner at Solea. Thank you, Jared, my love.

7. The love. Always the love.

Thanks for everything.

Friday, April 9, 2010

What I REALLY want for my birthday

It always surprises me just how weird people get when I comment that I think celebrating my birthday is silly. I don't mind if other people do, of course, but I can't get into it. I have considered whether it could be related to my mortal fear of aging, and though I do frequently make jokes along the lines of "Oh, yay, I'm one year farther into my metabolism slowing down!" I don't really think that's it. I think it's just mostly that celebrating me for coming into the world, something with which I had very little to do, and buying me material things is just... silly. But still, people tend to think I'm the one that's silly.

So, to silence those yowling annoyances, here's how I will celebrate. I will ask for exactly the kind of celebration of myself that I want. For my birthday, I want compliments.

Last summer we were having a card game night at my house. For some reason the subject of birthdays came up, and I was going on my typical I-don't-like-celebrating-my-birthday spiel like the one I wrote above. I said I also didn't like the ritual of buying people junk; I hate stuff! Why couldn't I, I mused aloud and loudly to my guests, instead ask for something meaningful to me-- why, like compliments! Compliments are the perfect gift-- they make me feel happy and loved, they don't cost you a thing, and they don't sit in the corner collecting dust. My next birthday, I declared, I would ask people to give me compliments as gifts. Apparently I very much offended a guest present that evening (though I'm fairly certain everything I do offends this person in some way) because to their sensibilities it was significantly ruder to ask for compliments than material things, but to me it's the other way around. Asking someone to spend time and money on you is to my mind much more demanding, and simultaneously much less meaningful.

So I'm doing it. Tomorrow I turn the ripe old age of twenty-three, and in celebration of this event, I want everyone who is feels so inclined to write down three compliments that they genuinely have for me. Your love is worth so much more to me than any other kind of gift, so expressions thereof are what I am seeking. Yeah, perhaps soliciting compliments is tacky. If you think I'm being a self-centered juvenile jerk in throwing this out there, well, sure I am-- I'm celebrating my birthday! ;-) In that case, feel free to not comply.

Happy birthday to me. :-)

Chairing next Festival!

So since receiving the okay that I may mention this, there is a reason I'm so interested in figuring out why games didn't fill at the con this year. I intend to put the data to practical use, as it looks like I am going to be the con chair for next year's Festival of the Larps! I was asked the other day by natbudin*, and he passed my interest along to current con chair zapf*, with whom I discussed the duties last night at BSCF. It doesn't seem difficult, just planning and making sure that things get done. As I said to Sheena last night, I'm mostly in it for the permissions to see what games everybody is in, and to get to pick the theme for next year's con! ;-) I am taking suggestions for that second one, if anyone has any.

I am also seeking for the con committee over the course of the next year, but of course would prefer to line up as far in advance as possible, a bid chair, a GM liason, a housing coordinator, and a master/mistress of the consuite. If you have any questions as to what those positions do, let me know and I'll explain. There are some other positions, but I've been told there is a good shot that those who currently fill them will be willing to do them again next year.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Brain blah, and mystery solved

God, I cannot focus today. Had a ton of work waiting for me upon getting back from my trip home, and though I'm making myself get through it, the brain, she is not there. I am especially annoyed that in my absent state I forgot the tasty leftovers I was intending to have for lunch today on my desk at home, wrapped in their convenient travel-ready package. :-P Bernie and I made steaks for dinner last night using the Alton Brown method, which is unorthodox but quite good.

In regards to my musing about the problem of so many unfilled games at Festival-- in case you haven't seen it already, bronzite* pointed out that this year's Festival has more quite a few more slots for players than the previous year's did. And while we managed to fill more than we did last year, there are just TOO MANY extra slots even for the increased number of players. Some numbers crunched by natbudin* also indicate that while we are growing at least a bit every year, but have mostly leveled off. And the number of people who played the previous year but didn't this year lends some likelihood to the idea that there are no new games for them to play. I'm so lucky to have friends who are smarter than me and think to look at the metrics that matter. :-) Though to be honest I was inclined to look at those player counts myself, I just felt too guilty to spend the time on it when I had real work I was supposed to be doing. Anyway, this is good data to have for planning next year. Maybe shoot for a target number of slots somewhere a little higher than last year to account for a small amount of growth, but not quite so high as this year so as to be able to fill games.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Player scarcity musing

After a pleasant Easter vacation spent at home with my family, I am now back in town and glad to be here.

This week is going to be full for me. I'm working longer hours to make up for the ones I missed to go home. And I've got to get my two games printed and packed in preparation for Festival. I'm pleased to say that even after several drops and mixups, both Alice and Oz are full. NOBODY DROP NOW. Gah. I know captainecchi* and electric_d_monk* were having similar problems, even worse than mine, but it looks like the game is good to go now. I am happy to say that Steph is going to give larping a try, which brings the number of newbies I have directly or indirectly brought to Festival up to six!

One thing that's been on my mind is how tough it's been to get games to fill. Things look like they're going to go off okay for the con as a whole, but I know a couple of games have had to drop, and a few more may yet drop still. In the course of pondering the problem, I want to point out a few facts I noticed by comparing this Festival to last year's:

- Last year's Festevil had 118 attendees. This year's Vestival has 127.
- Festevil had 26 games on the schedule. Vestival has 20. I didn't bother counting the number of players per time slot.
- Festevil was 4 weeks after Intercon I. Vestival is 5 weeks after Intercon J.
- Only 1 game at Festevil was missing more than one player. 7 games at Vestival are missing more than one player.

This year we have more attendees, fewer games, more time to prepare and solicit signups, and yet this year more games are not full? What is the problem here?

Well, several theories have been put forth. The first and probably most likely reason is that I don't think there is a single new game running this year. Most of the games on the schedule are excellent, tried-and-true larps that have been well-received, highly recommended, and already have been played by lots of the community. I know I have played a fairly large percentage already, and many of the ones that I haven't conflict with games I'm running. So I'm only available as a player in one slot, and have a number of games already discounted for me. I know a lot of us more experienced people are in the same boat.

The other thing is, I wonder if we should have started solicting people to sign up for Festival earlier than we did. It basically seemed to start just after Intercon, and although Intercon is a big deal and takes focus away from later events, it was farther away from Festival this year. Looking back through the entries of my LiveJournal, which is how I measure the progression of my life, I notice that Festival was a presence in my mind a lot farther before the date of the con last year than it was this year. It may be because I was in the process of writing two new larps for it, so I had a lot more prep work to do and therefore was planning much farther ahead. But perhaps we need to start pushing it earlier so people can block off the time on their schedules.

Something to think about in preparation for next year. I know that, as pleased as I am that Alice and Oz are both full for their fifth runs when other games have had a tough time of it, they will not be bid for next year, and probably will not be bid again at Festival for a while. I guess Intercon remains a possibility, as there are more non-local larpers, but I think they have hit, as Matt put it, market saturation. For next Festival we need to shot, I think, for more new games, to get the easy filling and high participation rate we got at last year's. Maybe I can do something to contribute to that effort.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Happy Easter

Had a very nice Easter yesterday, if a little more work-intensive and annoyance-riddled than I would have expected. My family and I went out to a lovely Easter dinner at this beautiful inn in town called the Glasbern. It is a converted farm with lovely old farm buildings like barns and stables converted into dining rooms and lodgings, with gorgeous landscaping and actually raises a lot of its own livestock on sight. Homegrown chicken is very tasty, it turns out. I also ran into an old friend, a girl, Debbie, working there who went to my old high school, and in fact played Selene in the very first production of To Think of Nothing four years ago. I told her that I got a chance to direct it for myself just recently, and she said she loved the role and had very good memories of putting on the play.

The only problem was that I got quickly and inexplicably carsick on both the drive there and the drive home. Fortunately it wore off by the time dinner arrived, but I was really angry. There was no reason for me to get sick; the trip was short and over easy roads. I'm kind of afraid to get into a car again.

Fighting a very mild remnant of nausea for the rest of the night, I finally checked over and sent out all forty character sheets for my two games. It took hours, and feeling slightly sick did not help. And we had a drop in Oz RIGHT AFTER I sent out all the sheets. We had someone on the waitlist, but if that drop had occurred just a little earlier we could have redone the casting. The character that had to be filled is extremely well-suited to a particular kind of player, and I can think of others who probably would have enjoyed it. Ah, well. It will be fine, and I'm just grateful that the games are still full.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Easter is here!

I just ate a fantastic piece of white chocolate almond bark to celebrate the end of Lent. It's not the chocolate-covered roast suckling pig I've been longing for, but it'll do.

How is it that the month I give up sugar and butter in everything is the month I get fat?

Oh, also, Christ is risen. He is truly risen. :-)

Kept Jared and Bernie up way too late last night finishing the casting for Alice and Oz. It took several hours, but I think we did a good job. At this point I've only sent out costuming hints. The only copies of the sheet I have access to at home are the ones on Google docs, and I'm not a hundred percent sure they're the most recent ones, so I didn't want to send out whole sheets without checking them first. Hopefully I will get them out by the end of today.

The parents and I will be going out to a late Easter brunch today. In the time I'm home from that in which I am not sleeping off the massive quantity of fantastically trayf pork products I intend to consume, I will finish checking over those sheets. God, I missed pig.

Happy Easter, my lovelies.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Finally working out again

Today for the first time in way too long I worked out. I was inclined to for several reasons; one, this is the first day in a very long time I was pressed for time by nothing, and two, my chronically stiff knees were tight and sore in a way that meant I needed to stretch them. I was out of shape but not as out as I feared. I am fairly fortunate in that I stay in decent condition even when I'm out of practice. The final straw, however, was that a trip to the old bathroom scale confirmed my worry that I am, in fact, gaining weight. Not much, but enough to make the fit of my second-skin-by-design pants a bit uncomfortable. And this is certainly due to my increased amount of time spent sitting on my ass that I tend to do when stressed out and the weather is cold. I despise working out, honestly, but it's the only way to maintain the whip-thin figure I seek to possess, and of course there's obvious health benefits. So I must work this back into my daily routine the way I used to.

In a bit my parents and I will be going to this fantastic farmer's market they discovered in the last year. I love this place so much; it's full of all kinds of culinary delights and the ingredients to make them, all contained in a building about the size of football field. I wonder if there's one like it close to me in Boston. The produce is fantastic, there's any kind of butchered meat you could desire, and so many artisanal creations like cheese, bread, cakes, candy, and so much else. It warms my little budding cook's heart. :-)

Home for Easter

Yesterday I got back to Allentown for Easter, but it turned out to be more complicated than I thought. My train got cancelled due to flooding in Rhode Island, so at the last minute my dad got me on a flight that was technically full. I begged a ride early the same morning to the airport from the wonderful bronzite*, to which I am very grateful for going out of his way. I managed to get home, had a lovely and enormous meal with my parents, and went to bed at around 10PM. Travel always takes it out of me.

Tomorrow we will be going out to an Easter brunch, but today will just be low-key. I have to arrange a time to sit down with Jared (though it will have to be over the phone) to cast Alice and Oz. I want to get the sheets out as soon as possible-- it seemed like the whole process of Festival this year started a lot closer to the date of the con, so I don't want to lose any more time.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

"There was one other. But she was in Egypt. And besides, she didn't last as long as I have."

Last night I had Frances, Brenda, and Charlotte over for dinner and to watch a little I, Claudius. It was a lovely evening with some of my favorite people, and some of my favorite television.

Given the company, the timing, and theme of the evening, the conversation inevitably included talk of Caesar. I mentioned (something I am only just now revealing here) how when I made suggestions to help Lenny and Jenna cast the show, my only thought that differed from their final choices was that I had Brenda and Steph switched as Antony and Cassius. This was with total respect for both as actors (seeing as neither role is exactly undesirable) but with concern that Steph would not want to play as a man, and I could more easily see Cassius as a woman than Mark Antony. I must concede my error in judgment in that case. To have cast as I had suggested would have not only deprived us of Steph's remarkable interpretation of Mark Antony, it would have also removed the advantage of the remarkable onstage chemistry of Brenda and Frances. Their version worked out fantastically, and my concerns turned out to be for nothing.

The truth is I have a difficult time holding the Shakespearean Antony as the conception of Antony in my head. I tend to see him far more (and I think this may actually be more historically accurate) as a rough-and-tumble soldier who partied too much, said whatever came to mind, and was much less of a politician and much more of a born battlefield second-in-command. That is a very masculine image, and it is from this that my inability to picture that character feminized came.

Of course my thinking on all matters of this period is influence by I, Claudius, one of my two all-time favorite novels and the fantastic BBC miniseries we watched part of last night. Antony is dead by the time that I, Claudius begins, but it still does a great deal to emphasize the cruder image of Antony I have in my head. He has been soundly dishonored and defeated many years ago by that point, and is dismissed by Marcellus as a "wine-soaked lover and his Egyptian whore." In his place remains only Augustus, and for all that I'm not sure it's accurate to history at all, I LOVE the Gravesian version of Augustus. He is expansive, emotional, forthright, friendly-tempered, in possession of a strong code of values, and perhaps even a bit boyish while still having the more typical qualities of a supreme statesmen of cunning, discernment, and political acument. I like that balance, that atypical combination. He is intensely likeable and yet respectable in his capacity.

I find myself wanting to write a play about the period where he and Antony split, clashed at Actium with Octavian emerging the victor, and the transition from triumvir Octavian to emperor Augustus. I suppose that is a time period already covered by Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, but as I said, that interpretation of Antony does not particularly strike me. And at any rate, I am significantly more interested in Augustus as a character.

With him as my central figure, I would go with my preference for the expansive, emotional Octavian. This man would mourn Caesar and despise treachery but genuinely mull over the position of Brutus; he would adore Caesar as his personal god but feel the pressure of having to live up to him; he would have a bright outlook on the Rome that the new Triumvirate was going to build together and be genuinely wounded that Antony, a man who he thought was his friend, could betray him. I would like to play with the notion that Augustus became emperor with the intention of sort of putting Rome back in order, and then returning it to a more Republic notion of government. The he liked the idea of the Republic, but it was clear that the empire couldn't support it at the time, that it needed the firm central guidance that at that time only he was in a position to provide. I would also want to show Livia as a strong driving force behind him, not so wicked as the Gravesian version of her, but with a much more cynical view of things than he had. She'd be a pragmatist who was willing to do the hard, sometimes distasteful things for the good of Rome, someone who didn't believe in the Republic at all and thought that only an emperor could run things the way they needed to be. And I'd want to contrast the two of them with portrayals of Cleopatra and Antony, more power-hungry and less civic-minded, their relationship more lustful and more tempestuous than the loving but more subdued and more intellectual one of Octavian and Livia. Though battles are tough to depict in theater, I think it would culminate in the defeat of Anthony at Actium, and the making of Octavian into the Emperor Augustus.

I don't know what I would call the piece. I like the way Shakespeare gives simple, punchy main-character-name titles to his historical and psuedo-historical pieces, so maybe I'd just go with "Octavian." I know I've got other things going on right now, but I really like this idea. I think it bears a little more exploration to see if I could viably write it.
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