Sign up for SFS Live Action Weekend and larp at WPI!

Attention, larpers! This November from the 9th to the 11th, WPI will be hosting SFS Live Action Weekend, or SLAW, a three-day event of four-hour larps!

The schedule of games will be visible available August 27th. Signups open for current WPI students August 31st at 7PM. Signups open for everybody else on September 7th at 7PM. If you're not a current WPI student, please don't sign up before this time.

The lovely Sarah Judd was kind enough to chair this event, so to ease her mind that you're coming, please register now to attend. The website can be accessed here, so be sure to sing up to join me there!

I will be debuting my new short humorous larp Break a Leg, so if you'd like to be in the inaugural run, be sure to come in November!

Break a Leg running at Intercon M

I just got word this past week that Break a Leg has been accepted at Intercon. Glad to hear it, but I would have been very surprised had it not. It will make for a nice, short, funny eight-player game on Sunday morning. Intercon can always use those, and I get my attendance comped for a new game. Everybody's happy.

Now I've got to write the thing. Besides the interpersonal stuff which will provide the bulk of the humor, two somewhat nonstandard major sources of gameplay will be the interactive environment, and the performance aspect. It will be very important to examine the setting, which will be limited to a backstage area, to gather information and things to respond to-- there is a murdered body right in front of you, so of course there's some clue-gathering to be done. But you also have to go on in two hours, and at the moment due to that murder the show you had planned isn't going to work. So you're going to have throw something together then, because of course the show must go on! You know that the eccentric genius playwright associated with the troop has been working on her next project, and as luck would have it pieces of her work seem to be scattered around the space... but rumors of her recent complete mental breakdown may be proven by the fact that these pieces are not as coherent as the troupe might hope. Still, it's your best bet to having a show, so you'd better find ways to make the material work, or you might never work in this town again! Perform what you find for each other so you can figure out how to stage it and assemble it into a some kind of complete show.

I think that performance aspect will be a lot of fun for players, but that means I have to write that weird-ass, hopefully humorous script material too. Which makes the job a little bit bigger than originally planned. Oh, well. As usual, it'll be worth it once it's done.



What I'm working on right now

In an effort to refocus myself on the projects that are important to me, I thought I'd give a rundown of, if not ALL the projects I have in the works, the ones that currently in the forefront of my mind.

The Tailor of Riddling Way, in two forms. There is of course the original audio drama form, but lately I have been working more on the film version that I am making for my Screenwriting grad school class. The story is translating pretty nicely, even working better in some ways because I can show in a visual medium rather than tell everything, and my teacher has given me both positive feedback and very useful constructive criticism. I haven't been posting my film script pieces here because they're not completely different from the audio drama stuff I've already showed you, but when I finish it I think I will post it here in its entirety. It's kind of cool to think that by the end of the next month I will have finished an entire screenplay, even if only the first draft.

I'm also working on my fantasy novel idea, Fallen. I've had this idea since senior year of high school to tell the story of a demon found and raised by a Catholic organization to fight on their side against the forces of hell while struggling to cope with what seems to be the inherent evil in his nature. I've been working on scenes here and there to submit to my Science Fiction and Fantasy study. What I've done has been posted here if you'd care to read it.

Those are the major ones I need to focus on. But there's some other stuff that I've been thinking about lately too.

I would like the first full-length play I write to be Mrs. Hawking. This piece is set in the Victorian era and about a sort of female Sherlock Holmes whose withdrawal from the world and growing distrust for humanity seems to be getting in the way of her good work until she is forced by her well-meaning nephew to take on a young lady housekeeper, Mary Stone, who turns out to be the companion she's been lacking. I love mysteries, I love that period setting, and I love the dynamic between the embittered middle-aged lady and the young woman whose perseverance through her hard luck begins to draw Mrs. Hawking out of her shell. And perhaps it's naughty of me to cast already, but it helps that I am totally imagining crearespero* as Mrs. Hawking and nennivian* as Mary. <3 There are a couple of scenes from this piece posted here.

There's also my short humorous larp idea, Break a Leg. My fourth (FOURTH!) metatheatrical piece to date, this humorous two-hour larp will have eight players as members of a dysfunctional theater troupe whose leading lady has been found suddenly dead two hours before the curtain is supposed to go up. I have already bid it for SLAW in November and Intercon in March, but I am planning on finishing it way before then. It's small enough that I could probably get several runs in beforehand. It will involve an interactive environment and sides for in-game performance opportunities... which I will have to write. :-)

Those are the majors ones. There's other things I plan on working on eventually, and though they are not currently at my mind's forefront, sometimes I noodle on them as well. Imperium, my Ancient Roman larp. Sundan, my Shakespearean-style epic tragedy about a man who destroys himself and everyone around him when the woman he loves marries another man. And a possible project for the next semester of school that is percolating in the dark recesses of my mind...

But these are the ones you can expect to see more of in the near future.

New game bid!

So I did it! I went ahead and bid my short funny larp idea for SLAW. I have taken laurion*'s suggestion and called it Break a Leg, as I like how it connotes both theater and disaster at once. Sorry, oakenguy* and morethings5*, for not going with Slaybill, which was also an excellent suggestion. :-) I think this game will be engaging and light, fun and funny, so I am excited to write and run it. I decided there will be eight core players (with one ninth that will be completely capable of being excised from the game) in one small to medium-sized room. The environment will be highly interactive and exploring the "set" will contribute to the plot. I also want to facilitate people performing scenes, since the characters will be actors, after all, which I am interested in writing original script fragments to facilitate. I have a lot of ideas that I'm excited to work out.

Since SLAW is so far away in November, I think I will have to plan an earlier, non-convention run. As a beta, perhaps. I am sure I can get a two-hour eight-character game written in fairly short order. Schoolwork has to come first-- I may be breaking my no-larp-writing rule, but I can't blow off the reasoning behind it-- but I'm used to writing four-hour twenty- or twenty-five-person games. This game should be a snap by comparison. When I figure out when and where that would be, I'll let everyone know so I can gather who's interested. Maybe I'll even do more than one pre-SLAW run. It's short, it's small, so why not? I've been wanting for ages to have a light, quick, funny game I can bust out at a moment's notice, and this just might fit the bill. Hooray!

Call for games for SLAW 2012

The lovely Sarah Judd is getting an early start on planning for SFS Live Action Weekend, a Festival-like weekend of larps at WPI that will happen November 9th through 11th this year. She's put out a call for games to get things going, so if you are interested, send her an e-mail containing this information:

1. Name of game

2. Short Description

3. Min/max gender player breakdown

4. Kind of room/rooms you'd like (Salisbury Labs is reserved for the weekend)

5. If your game can take last-minute casts and add-ins.

She has expressed a preference for newbie-friendly games, as there seem to be a nice group of new larpers at WPI now. I haven't decided what I'm bidding yet, but I am certain that I will bid something. Most of my games have been run into the ground at this point. Though it occurs to me that Paranoia is popular at WPI, and there might be enough people still interested in playing to fill a fourth run. I didn't think to bring it up last night with my co-GMs when we were casting the game, but it's something worth considering.

I may even take this opportunity to break my no-new-larps rule for real. I've been pondering my idea based on Merely Players-- a humorous two-hour larp, maybe fit for a Sunday morning, where just before the actors must go on stage, their leading lady's body is discovered lying dead backstage. Figuring out who did it, and how to deal with it so the show can go on, will reveal the troupe's humorous dysfunction. I think I will go ahead and bid it once I give it a name. Don't want to go with Merely Players, as that's not quite the point in this one. "The Show Must Go On" is an obvious choice, but it's a bit long and unwieldy. "Walking Shadows," maybe? Hmm. Suggestions welcome. Hopefully it will be funny and fun, and not too burdensome to write. *crosses fingers*

Anyway, bid something for SLAW!

Merely Players: The Larp?

Wow, after feeling like for ages there hasn't been much larp in my life, I sure have had it in the forefront of my attention this past week or so.

After laurion* suggested several scenarios for a light, quick larp in a contained space, being the meta-theater freak that I am, I latched onto the ideas of actors, maybe actors just about to go on stage, utilizing the lovely convention of the dysfunctional troupe who've got more drama going on behind the scenes than they do onstage. Eight or so character, two hours, trapped backstage hashing out their bullshit so the show can just go on already! Funny, silly, easy to run and hopefully to write.

It amuses me that I am basically thinking of writing Merely Players: The Larp. Well, not exactly. Similar plots and character archetypes to those I used in Merely Players, if not exactly the same people or plots as they existed in the show. But if I could take a PC and an NPC from The Stand and make a play out of their drama, why can't I take a piece of theater I wrote and use it to inspire a larp?

I think I'm going to noodle around with this, at least idly. Not committing to run it or anything, but it might ease my current malaise somewhat. At least it'll provide an easy, low-pressure alternative to the more serious work I am responsible for lately. Thanks, Chad, for tossing out the idea!