Festival 2012 Con Report, part I

Oh, beloved Festival.

Friday night was Jesriah, the new game from morethings5*, lightgamer*, and ninja_report*. I was not alone in regarding it as the most anticipated game of the con, and friends, it did not disappoint. I loved my character, a former pop diva who had been committed to the asylum against her will by her shady politician husband and felt completely used-up by the ripe old age of thirty-three. What was interesting was how I expected my game to be one thing from my sheet, and then a curve ball in the beginning turned it ninety degrees, adding a new and challenging dimension. There was a ton of things to do and explore, between the plots I had to pursue, the fascinating other characters I had to interact with, and the elaborate environment of the hospital around us. The atmosphere the GMs generated was great, a little creepy, a little sad, a little tense, like something was hanging over all of us. Despite it being set in the same universe as the earlier game, The Prince Comes of Age, it was remarkably different sort of game with a very different feel that still managed to incorporate cool throwbacks for players who'd played both. I had a great mystery to unravel, which is one of my favorite sort of larp plots, and I'm only sorry I didn't manage to dig up more. There was a long clue chain, and while I did get a fair bit along the way there was a ton more still left to dig up. I was also lucky to have a fantastic group of larpers to play with, which always makes a game better. If you want something dark, atmospheric, and psychologically thrilling, this is a great choice; I highly recommend it.

The next morning on Saturday I ran my third solo game The Stand. This was going to be interesting because I had a lot of relatively inexperienced people in this run. niobien* and Daniel Burns have played about five and Prentice a bit more than that, while this was katiescarlett29*'s third and the first for Sara Brande and Samantha LeVangie. I am very invested in bringing more people into the community, so I wanted very much for them to have a good time. But fortunately I think this is one of the best runs we've ever had. I think plots were more fully explored in this run than ever, even some that got off to slow starts. I just need to make sure that certain character connections get made so they can share their information and start working together, and it also helped that I spoke to a couple of the savvier players (usernamenumber* in particular) to let them know they may need to let their own secrets out. I also have to thank morethings5* for AGMing, even with everything else he had going on. He had this great idea to incorporate the Bear Man from the new True Grit movie (which the whole GM team are fans of) as this wandering figure out on the map who, while being an interesting weird encounter, also proved a way to inject information into the game about things that happened outside of town. I am writing the Bear Man in as a permanent NPC and codifying the things he knows so as to allow him to help the game keep moving. So I am really happy with this run. Thank you, awesome players who were awesome, especially you newbies who all did so well!

The afternoon was tightly scheduled for SLEEP LIKE DEAD time. And oh, Jesus, am I glad that I slept like dead.

To be continued in part 2!