Festival 2012 Con Report, part II

Saturday night was Folding the River, the newest game from powerhouse writing team wired_lizard* and mllelaurel*. I am at the point where I'll sign up for a game based on who wrote it more than anything else, so I jumped on this. It took place in a world rebuilt after basically a cataclysm on a strange new source of power. I was playing a scientist who had discovered some secret projects going on and I was trying to get to the bottom of them. Though I enjoyed the game a lot, I was expecting to absolutely adore it, so I was ever-so-slightly disappointed, and I feel like I was considerably less awesome a presence than I usually work to be. It is a gorgeously written game with great characters and a lot going on, I was just thrown by the fact that there is so much fictional science that I had to understand. It was hard for me to keep it all in my head, and when a phenomenon happened around me I was never sure if I was interpreting it right. I feel like it kept me from unraveling my plot as far as I would have liked; I'm sorry I made so little progress. That said, I had lots of good interactions, particularly with Greg Lohman, Micah Hollis-Symynkywicz, Mike Hyde, and morethings5*. Definitely would recommended this to people who are interested in complex science fiction games.

Sunday was Paranoia: Research and Dismemberment, our crazy silly dystopian game set in the tabletop universe of the same name. Basically you buy into the concept and you go nuts, which is definitely what happened in this game. There actually is a fair bit of structure and plot for those who want to pursue it, but it's also a great big silly sandbox for those who just want to indulge in Paranoia-style craziness. I think this group tended more toward playing in that sandbox, which is great, as I think most players found that very fun. I played the Vending Machine who is distraught to the point of histrionics over being abandoned by a certain clone who she thought she HAD SOMETHING with. That NPC has gotten more and more over-the-top every time I've played her, and this time we had the hilarious twist ending of when it had seemed that the cruel clone who'd left her also clumsily triggered her destruction in an explosion, a kinder clone put her in the body of the warbot, after which she and the warbot body's former owner ran away together to kill all humans. It was a lovely high note to go out on.

Dead Dog this year was great, a buffet-style affair at Margarita's on Moody Street. My compliments to Shannon for arranging it. She did a wonderful job and I'm so impressed with how she handled everything. This Festival has yet again lived up to my exalting it to the status of one of the most important weekends of my year. Next year lightgamer* will be helming the ship, and I offered to be GM Liaison. I know that now my brain is absolutely buzzing with larp, so I hope to bring something new to delight all my lovely fellows. Thanks to everyone for the wonderful experience!

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!

Final to do list before Festival

All that remains before I can lose my brain to larp:

- Get cash to give to Shannon for dead dog
- Buy edible contribution to con suite
- Prepare edible contribution to con suite
- Shower so as to render myself inoffensive to other con goers
- Lay out my costumes
- Make up the couches and spare mattress for crashers

Just twenty minutes till I can get started.

On the eve of Larpocalypse

Last day before Festival of the Larps 2012: Larpocalypse! I am mostly ready to go, just have a few more things to get in order before tomorrow. One or two more things to assemble for The Stand, costume pieces to lay out, crash space to make up for our larper guests. I am ridiculously excited. I think both of my characters are going to be fantastic to play, and both of our games are going to be fantastic to run. This is the biggest Festival in its history, with over a hundred and fifty people signed up, a decent number of whom were friends I invited over the last several years who are now either real parts of the larp community or well on their way to becoming so. I am so proud of our little con for how it's grown and how successful it's become. Big props to our fabulous chair ninja_report* and her awesome staff including natbudin*, in_water_writ*, twilighttremolo*, and lightgamer*. Way to make it happen, guys.

Tonight is also when Jared and I are going to see Lenny's directing project, her HTP-sponsored production of Cymbeline. Sadly it's real performances are over Festival weekend, so instead of missing it we are going to the final dress rehearsal so we get to enjoy their work. It has some very talented actor friends in it who I am excited to see. They've had to deal with a lot of disadvantages, such as a terrible performance space, but they've worked really hard, and Lenny is an extremely talented director. So after I take care of as many last-minute pre-Festival errands as I can this afternoon, it will be off to an evening of theater just before I disappear into the roleplaying haze.

The Larpocalypse is nigh!

Notes from the weekend

This Easter my mom gave me her slow cooker to take back up with me. She bought it years ago and barely used it; she found most of her recipes came out better in the oven or stove stop so she didn't bother with it. But she thought that with my busy life I might be able to make use of it, so up with me it came. This weekend I decided to try it out and made a boeuf bourginnone, a recipe I make frequently. It wasn't bad, but I didn't have enough time to let it cook for the full five hours it was supposed to take, so it wasn't quite as tender as it should have been. On the stovetop I've made it in three or so, but on days when I can't watch the pot (and can time my presence in the kitchen just right) this could be of use.

Bernie also hosted an Avengers movie marathon leading up to the release of the new movie. Jane was kind enough to organize a group trip to the midnight opening in May, so this was to refresh its predecessors in our minds. I had to come in and out because of other obligations, but it was fun to watch and spend time with the fun people who were present. I hope they all forgive me for my catcalling directed at Chrises Evans and Hemsworth. Avengers apparently has pretty much uniformly good reviews, so I'm very excited. Unfortunately I have to go to rehearsal beforehand, but I'll get out in plenty of time to meet up with everyone a little later, well in advance of showtime.

I learned Singer is holding a sewing machine sale right now. Go here if you'd like to take a look. I am very tempted to purchase that two hundred dollar serger they're offering. That seems a little cheap for a serger, so maybe it's not all that good, and I should practice my regular sewing skills before I worry about how I finish my seams, but still... I kinda want one. I still have two more weeks to think about it, so maybe this would be worth dipping into my savings.

This is the last week before Festival of the Larps and I'm in pretty good shape. Paranoia is packed, thanks to Bernie, Matt, Mac, and Tegan, and The Stand is close to it. I have all my sheets and my costumes are in order. I just need to finish reading all the materials and I am going to be good to go. This promises to be an awesome weekend, and I'm excited to throw myself in. Thanks to our lovely con chair ninja_report* for putting it all together! Great work, dear!

Pride and Prejudice and elsewise

Yowza, busy here. Lots of the things on the plate right now, which has lead to a lot of running around. And in what little free time I've had I've wasted on TV Tropes. I am mostly fascinated by the ones about behind-the-scenes things of the writer's process. Nobody is surprised.

So, things. I forgot to talk about seeing Jared's show Pride and Prejudice last Saturday. I screwed up the planning for the outing; I really should have suggested we meet at the restaurant at six rather than six-thirty, but the service kept us waiting for forty-five minutes anyway until we got after people to just bring us our meals with boxes so we could get to the theater on time. I was pretty pissed about that, though as I said I should have planned better. We did manage to get there on time and I actually enjoyed the show very much. There were a lot of good actors in it, and I liked the costumes and the theory behind the set design, even if it didn't always quite work with the space. It was also quite thrilling to see Jared, Tegan, and Jenn on a big fancy professional stage like that. Jared himself was great, turning in a fairly difference performance from his previous work, Bingley's sweet naivete a real departure from the Angry Authority Figures he's mostly been cast as. I am going again tomorrow night, hopefully with less trouble around eating beforehand. I am admiring this group a great deal, and I hope I get to be in one of their productions before long.

I had my first read through for Sherlock Holmes last night. I was not at all as good as I wanted to be starting off, for some reason I felt very stiff and not very expressive, so the first half of the script I was a little disappointed in myself. Paranoia setting in me makes want to prevent anyone from regretting my casting. But the second half I did a lot better with, so hopefully nobody was too disappointed. I am confident I will warm up soon. I finally have my rehearsal schedule, which takes two or three days a week. Sadly, frequent Thursday rehearsals mean I will miss out on ballet class that night rather often for the next few months. This makes me sad, as I don't want to hold back my progress, and I like the Thursday night teacher as well as the Tuesday night one. But at least I can start planning things.

Like GM meetings, for example. The Stand is cast and sent, and I plan on doing all the printing on my own, but I'd like to have a meeting where we go over plot stuff and make a plan of who will be running what. Paranoia needs more. We unfortunately have not cast yet, but it's such a silly larp that even though it has a story the character sheets don't need a ton of time to read or plan about. And costuming is almost without exception "red shirt, black pants," so no need to give people lead time on that. But we need to refamiliarize ourselves with the game, we haven't run it in two years, organize all the materials, and figure out how the printing's going to get done. Fortunately I think we can get on this in pretty short order.

Readying The Stand for Festival, and Pride and Prejudice opening

I sent out all the character sheets for The Stand. I'm pleased with myself for getting them out a month in advance, because it gives people time to read all the materials (there's a fair bit of them) and to get their costuming together. I hope my players like them.

I wrote a short play last semester about two characters, a PC and an NPC, in The Stand. My teacher liked it and I was happy with how it came out. It occurs to me that there's probably more ten minute plays I could get out of the characters in this game. Something between Tall Bear and Negahse'wey, for example. Hmm. Might be worth thinking about. I do want to write more ten minute plays, and they get easier to perform all in an evening of theater when they're related in some way.

I am excited to get cast in the games I'm playing, Jesriah and Folding the River. They both sounds like they're going to be awesome. I desire very strongly to costume these games out of my own closet. I have made a number of interesting acquisitions from thrift stores over the last few months, fortunately none expensive but they do add up after a while, that I would really like to make use of. Both to justify their purchase and to prevent me from spending any more on costuming in the near future! ;-)

Tonight is the opening of the play that Jared, Tegan, and Jenn are in, Pride and Prejudice. Unfortunately I won't be able to be there tonight, but I know it will be great and I'm really excited to see it. I am going with a large group Saturday night, so anyone who'd care to come with company is welcome to join us. I'll be going again next Friday night, and have yet to make plans to join anyone, so please let me know if you'll be there then. Jared shaved off his beloved beard for this role, so go if only to ensure that its sacrifice will not be in vain!

With trouble and at length, The Stand is cast for Festival

Cast The Stand for Festival last night, one of the longest and hardest casting sessions I've ever had to do. Took me literally five hours yesterday. Frequently I'll get a run where everyone wants to be the same character. Usually everyone wants to be the heroic white hat, and finding a villain is next to impossible. This time around everyone wants to be a baddie, or a shifty shade of gray. I've got some of those but not an entire game, so I struggled to fit people in as best I could. I really hope people like their characters even if they're not perfectly what they ask for, I tried really hard to make do. :-P Hints are out now, as well as bluesheets and rules. I want to look over the full character sheets before I send them. Even though the game's been run twice before, I like to make sure there's nothing that needs tweaking between runs before I give them out.

There's one player who I have not heard any communication from whatsoever. No casting questionnaire despite numerous pokes, no nothing. I'm a little afraid she's not going to show up. I cast her in what I consider to be the easiest character to excise from the game just to be safe, but still, I want that character there. I think what I may do is engage a pinch hitter to be on standby to step in and take over the role if necessary. Of course, I would technically be within my rights to replace her entirely. Last year when I was con chair of Festival, one of the GMs contacted me to say that she had a player who was completely unresponsive, even to an email asking to please even confirm that he was still interested in playing. I made the call that she could cut him off her list and put the first person on the waitlist in. I'll give this person a little more time and at least one more ultimatum to respond and confirm that she wants to be involved, then I may just do that myself.

Anybody interested in doing me a huge favor and possibly taking over this role? :-)

Festival signups and Titus build

Both of my games at Festival, The Stand and Paranoia, have now filled. The Stand will be interesting because this time it seemed I was getting a lot of female players, so in order to accommodate them I opened up a few neutral slots. Now I have thirteen men and twelve women to play seventeen male and nine female characters, which is more skewed to the female than either of the previous runs were. If any of these lovely ladies are willing to be cross cast that will make everything a snap, but if not enough of them are, I will have to consider what currently male characters I can gender swap. Given the setting and historical time period, it's a pretty gendered game, and while there are plenty of people stepping outside of their proscribed roles, it's usually pretty significant to their plot. Still, that should actually be a fun and interesting challenge should the need arise. Festival looks to be a good con overall; it's a good roster of games at this point, and they're almost all completely full. Well done, ninja_report*, for making this happen!

Build for the current HTP show, Titus Andronicus, has begun. Though the show is still several weeks off, their unfortunately early performance dates mean there is no show in the theater before them, so they were able to move in and get started. I hope the extra time proves to be of benefit to them. I went by the last couple days to lend a hand here and there where I could. I really enjoy helping with build week. With work and school I spend so much time doing mental, sedentary work that my body craves a chance to pit itself against physical work of some kind. And It's not often that I get a chance to build things. Carpentry is one of the many things I'd love to learn if it weren't something that required a significant money and space investment, so it's nice to have an outlet every now and then to experience it. And I like the challenge to my body to do that kind of work.

Free on a Friday

For the second round of Festival I got into Folding the River. I was torn very much between it and High Rollers, but I'd already told the GMs I would be signing up, so I decided to let that decide for me. Neither Paranoia or The Stand have filled yet, but neither are in the time slots that people tend to prioritize, so I am hoping that once signups go open on Monday night we will get our full complements. Paranoia was in theory supposed to be modular, so it might be able to work if we have to excise parts, but frankly I think that fell by the wayside enough that we'd have to do a lot of fixing to make it work. The Stand is not really able to work without pretty much the entire cast-- I could maybe cut out two roles, max, without having to do major surgery --so I really really want it to fill.

In other news, I have finished my first screenwriting assignment and have decided to declare my afternoon and evening free. I am now making a list of things I'd like to do with that open time. I would like to take a walk into town, maybe run an errand or two, maybe just walk. It occurred to me recently that even if I get back to going to the gym as often as I did in undergrad, back then I was also walking across campus three or four times a day in addition, which I am definitely not getting now. So I am determined not only to make time for workouts, but also just get off my lazy ass and walk during the day. It means a significantly greater time commitment, unfortunately, but I think if I schedule correctly I can make it work. It would be worth it to shape up a little.

I want to finish another scene for Tailor that I've started but not yet made much progress on. It's the confrontation between Tom and Kenneth where we finally learn why Kenneth's been hanging around with so much interest in the Lorings. We recorded a scene between Plesser and Jared this week, which has inspired me. I would also like to have it for the Artist Meetup morethings5* and I have planned this weekend, where we use each other as accountability partners to keep us working on our artistic projects. Maybe I'll noodle a little on my short-quick-easy larp idea, since I'm feeling particularly engaged in larp production right now.

Finally, it'd be nice to make a little more progress with my new beginner sewing text, Sew Everything Workshop. I've gotten a little ways in and so far it's exactly what I was looking for. It starts with the basics and explains them very clearly. So far I haven't learned anything I didn't already know, but I like things that emphasize the foundation and confirm that I understand correctly before moving on to what I don't already grasp. I'm anxious to get to the part where it actually walks you through a sewing project, which is what I think I really need.

Oh, and one last thing. I recently decided that the first "plot line" I'd like to feature on Hipster Feminist is a story about Rhoda stalking an ex-boyfriend. Not sure how that's going to work yet, but I think it has the potential to be very funny. Maybe I'll do a little work figuring out the storyline and seeing how I can chunk it out into individually funny, one hundred and forty-character pieces. 

Larpocalypse signups begin!

Festival signups opened last night, and the flurry for game registration began! As I predicted, Jesriah filled within the first few minutes, but I was fast on the button and made it in. Glad I made that my first-round pick. Congratulations, morethings5*, lightgamer*, and ninja_report*! You win the brass ring for this Festival. The tiered system I think is really good, as nobody will get shut out of everything they want. There were some minor technical issues that some people observed in that some of the games didn't have a signup button appear even though signups were open-- both The Stand and Paranoia were affected by it. But our intrepid con chair and heroic webmaster were on it, and before long all issues were solved. We even got a few people making those two their first round pick! I am flattered that katiescarlett29* and nennivian* chose The Stand-- can't wait to cast them! --and there's also a young man I don't recognize but who appears to be a Brandeis student. Yay, new larping blood! In Paranoia we have, among others, Prentice and niobien*, Emily Baum, and Nat Lathrop. I am confident that everything will fill within the next few rounds, and I look forward to the final cast roster.

My next pick will be Folding the River, and if I don't make it into that, High Rollers. I want to play both of them very much so I won't be disappointed either way. Jared's going for High Rollers as well. Remember to be at your computer at 7PM this coming Thursday so you can get into the game you want before it fills!

Good larp news burning through my gloom

Stressed. Overworked, overtired, and over-scheduled. Panic over it set in yesterday at the first possible time, and in my upset I was a complete ass to katiescarlett29*. She was gracious and understanding, but I feel terrible about it. I will make it up to you, dear, once I have my head back on straight. I promise. I got a decent chunk of schoolwork done last night, which helps, but there's still a fair bit more to go.

On the positive side, the larp fairy knew I am longing for larpy things, and she has granted my wish. In lovely news for our little roleplaying community, ninja_report* has released the schedule for Festival 2012! I am excited just looking at it. As for the games I will be running, The Stand will be 9AM Saturday morning, while Paranoia will be 2PM Sunday afternoon. That leaves three possible slots for me to be a player. Ideally I have a break somewhere in there, so I will try to limit myself to signing up for two. We have tiered signups this year (yay, natbudin*!) so that means one must prioritize. My first-round choice, no question, will be Jesriah, the noir-style game set in an insane asylum within morethings5*'s fascinating roleplaying world, written in collaboration with lightgamer* and ninja_report*. That takes care of Friday evening. My second-round choice I think has to be Folding the River, written by wired_lizard* and mllelaurel*, a futuristic sci-fi game that may or may not involve time travel. They always run such great larps, so I'm excited. That will take up Saturday evening. Unfortunately it is across from High Rollers, acousticshadow2*'s World War II-era caper game which I've heard excellent things about. I've already told Tory and Lily I'm going for Folding the River, but if I don't get in, I will try to get into High Rollers instead. There are some pretty cool-looking games in the Saturday afternoon slot-- bleemoo* and staystrong62805*'s Vampire game, zapf* and ninja_report*'s Edwardian game, and laura47*'s amnesia game --but I think I need to have at least one free period, where I can go home and take a nap before I die.

The first signup round will open at 7PM this coming Monday, February 6th, so to be sure you get your first choice, register for the con at the website, then be ready to jump in once Shannon throws open the gates!

In other larp-con-related news, I got my casting for my other game at Intercon, The Feast of the Minotaur! It's an ancient Greek mythology-themed game centering around the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. I will be playing Princess Ariadne, who in the story was the daughter of King Minos of Crete who falls madly in love with the Athenian prince. No character sheet yet, but that sounds promising that I'll have a lot to do. I will have to come up with a pretty pretty Greek princess costume between now and March. Once I get this homework assignment done, I think I can afford to give that a little time and attention.

Festival schedule almost ready

Our lovely Festival con chair ninja_report* just sent out the preliminary schedule for Larpocalypse. It looks to be a very good con. Shannon looks to have balanced the schedule nicely, meaning there should be a good variety of games in every time period with an appropriate number of slots. And she and natbudin* have arranged to have tiered signups-- as in, one signup total per person for the first round, two signups total for the second round, and then as many signups as you like for the third round --which Festival has needed for a while now. We've had a problem in the past when people who logged in at 7:03 rather than 7:00 when signups opened and got shut out of their preferred games in every slot. Everybody should get a shot at getting into at least one of their first-choice games.

Oh, and I don't believe I ever mentioned the final verdict on which games I would be running. I did bid The Stand first, as I am quite proud of that game and it's only been run twice before. I'm excited to put it on again. My one concern is that maybe the map needs one more GM, so more traveling and exploring can happen at once. But after some discussion with my co-writers, we elected to run Paranoia as the second one. Despite having debuted it in 2009, if I remember correctly, because of its particular space requirements and the need for the right players (not everyone's into that style of game or the Paranoia setting), we've only run it two times. Bernie in particular has wanted to run it again. We've been waiting for the right time and place, but it did well at Festival in its maiden run so now seems as good a time as any. The edit we made for the second run was really strong, so players should be in for a treat.

Bid, bid, bid for Festival!

I have bid The Stand for Festival. It is a good game that is still pretty fresh to this player pool and I think it will work just fine. Good thing I did, because apparently there are not all that many bids as of yet and twenty-five more player spaces is still very welcome. That of course means the rest of you must step up and toss your hats into the ring. Have something that you want to debut? Bid it for Festival! Have something that hasn't come out in a while? Bid it for Festival! Know a game of someone else's that you've always wanted to run? Bid it for Festival! Last year we made such a fabulous schedule, of course you want to contribute to making this one just as great!

Of course, it is certainly not unusual for me to run two games for the weekend. As I mentioned, I did have several possibilities of my own games. Paranoia or Resonance could still come out. But it occurs to me that this past summer I was given the materials for a game of someone else's that I very much admired. Pending permission for an April run, that could be an interesting idea. Or perhaps satellite GMs could be engaged, again pending permission, if the schedule became desperate. I may not wish to lock myself into GMing twice if I don't have to-- who knows what interesting things there may be to play? --but I do love running games and bringing joy to fellow larpers, so I could probably be persuaded to make a second offering.

The game call's out for Festival '12

Yesterday I saw that the official Festival of the Larps 2012 Twitter feed put out a call for game bids for Larpocalypse. This is about the right time if you want to have a schedule up by January. Good on you, ninja_report*, for being on top of it! And I find myself trying to figure out what I will be contributing this year.

The last two weeks since the semester ended were more responsibility-laden than I expected them to be, which meant that I didn't end up really digging into a project like I meant to, except that I've returned to sewing and made good progress. Much as that pleases me, no new writing of any kind got done. I still have my idea for Imperium, my ancient Roman game, which I would love to be able to debut for Festival, but... the con is only four months away. I've never written a game in so short a time, and school with all its writing assignments will start back up again within that period. Seems like that would be a recipe for making myself miserable and over-committed. So I think I am going to make the tough choice and say no new game for Festival. *Sigh* That makes me sad, but I think that's the right thing for me right now.

Still, I want to run something for it. I feel a real personal attachment to Festival and I want to contribute to its success as much as I can. The question is, what? I am the author of six games. One, The Labor Wars, is a weekend-long and completely unsuitable for a con. Two of my solo games that I'm better known for, Alice and Oz, I believe are still at market saturation, so I won't be bidding either of them. I'm pretty sure there aren't enough people who haven't played in the community at this point to get full runs.

With those three eliminated, that leaves the potential for the remaining three-- Resonance, Paranoia: Research and Dismemberment, and The Stand. Resonance will see its fourth run at Intercon L, but I suppose if enough people are interested I could check with the Alleged Entertainment team I worked with and see if they were willing. A fifteen-player game can theoretically support a fifth run; Oz is the same size and saw six. Paranoia has only run twice and I know Bernie has been itching to run it again, but for some reason I feel a little unsure about it. I have a fear in my gut that it won't fill. Paranoia takes place in a very specific setting that I feel like you have to be interested in already, and I've met a number of people who say they flat-out don't want to play that sort of game. I just be, well, paranoid, but for some reason I'm nervous about that. That leaves The Stand. It's my newest game and has only seen two runs. I seem to recall a great deal of interest being expressed in it, but it did run last year at Festival and I guess I wonder if that satisfied the need. I don't know why I'm so worried about  games not filling, but for some reason it's nagging at me this year.

Or... hmmm... maybe if I wrote something new that was small and short... something that would be easier to write in four months than a full-sized, twenty-plus character larp. I might be able to manage that. But what would it be about? I don't presently have an idea.

So, friends... what should I do?

Second-round Intercon signups tomorrow

Tomorrow at 7PM second-round Intercon signups open. My first round I signed up for Feast of the Minotaur because it looked to be filling fast, and I'm really glad I got in. It sounds like a fantastic game and there's lots of cool people in it, so it should be a fun time. I've decided that if I get cast as a slave girl, which is a possibility, I will wear the crinkly tan prisoner dress Steph wore when the Duchess of Gloucester was arrested in Margaret. Maybe I'll cut it to knee-length, we'll see. At any rate, I am really excited for that game.

That means I am booked for Friday night with that and Saturday night with running Resonance. This is the only game I've ever run at Intercon that has always filled first round! Yay for us. But that means I still have three slots open. I think this may finally be the year that I don't overload myself with games, so I think I will only sign up for one more thing. My first choice for the morning on Saturday was A Garden of Forking Paths, which also already filled-- congratulations, AE! --so I think I will be sleeping in for the first time in years. I never play Sunday games, so that leaves Saturday afternoon. I think it will be An Evening Aboard the HMS Eden for me. Jared and I like to try to have one game a con together, and we both thought this one sounded fun. I have a weaknesses for Victorian literary pastiches, and I have only ever played one other, LXHS. I think that will make for just the right amount of occupied time, and maybe I won't be so utterly blown by the end of the weekend.

Casting probably won't happen for a long time yet, but I would love it if this year I got to use some of the things I picked up just becuase "they're sure to make a good costume someday." My ballerina-like, peachy-pink pixie dress, for one. The real mink fur stole I found at Savers once. My cream and gold halter-style Cordelia dress. The old-fashioned ivory wedding dress I simply had to have when I found it in the course of shopping for Margaret. (Will have to post pictures of that one.) I even have a bustle I picked up for three dollars at the otherwise-disappointing Brandeis costume department sale. Probably out of luck for Feast of the Minotaur, which takes place in ancient Greece, but who knows, I could see any of these pieces being possibly useful for HMS Eden. I could get cast as Miss Havisham and get to swan around mournfully in the wedding gown, or something!

ninja_report* also sent out a call for registration to Festival of the Larps recently. Early registration helps give an idea of attendance, which helps estimate per-timeslot player counts, so it would help her out if you can indicate that you're coming now. I must say, all this thinking of Intercon and Festival makes me itch to get back to larp writing. I have purposefully held off working on my newest idea Imperium, a vaguely I, Claudius-inspired larp set in Ancient Rome, because I wanted to focus on schoolwork and playwrighting. But now that I've finished my last assignment for the semester, and classes don't start up again until January... I find myself tempted to switch gears, at least temporarily while school is not in session. I'd love to have a new game to debut at Festival. I guess I just worry that I won't have enough time to write that and the stuff school will require of me between now and April. But the temptation, she is strong... I guess I'll have to think about it and come to a decision sooner rather than later, so I leave myself enough time to write and bid if I end up doing the crazy thing...

Larpercalia con report

Now for my actual reviews of my experience of Larpercalia as a participant rather than as con chair! Spoilers are minimal.

Friday night was Prince Comes of Age, a game the production of which I had heard a great deal. It is, as you may know, set in the larger campaign setting made up by morethings5*, and in fact included larp versions of five PCs of a game he ran a few years ago. I had a blast in this one as a secretly scheming character who was playing several sides against one each other. One of my favorite things to do in a larp is weave an elaborate lie to achieve my ends that everyone buys into, and that is exactly what happened here. Great interactions included my drug-dealing ne'er-do-well date played by Michael Hyde, and speaking very very earnestly to hazliya* in ways that served me and actually did kind of help her despite the fact that I told many, many lies. :-) I highly recommend this game, written by Kindness, Bernie, and Matt to excellent collaborative effect. There is a lot going on and the writing is very well done, though I think the character sheets could stand some pruning-- there is a little over-enthusiastic background scene-setting that is a bit too verbose. And for those of you who were afraid everyone else would be supporting cast to the characters of that campaign's PCs, worry not, the storylines are well-balanced.

Here is me and my date, Ferlis, who spent most of the evening either high or facilitating the getting of others high.



Saturday morning was the second run of my newest solo game, The Stand. The game went well enough and pretty much everyone told me they had fun, but frankly I thought the Intercon run went better. The first time around nearly all the secrets came out except for maybe two, while in this there was a lot more plot that simply failed to materialize. I was especially disappointed that so little of the emotion-heavy plot that would have been bronzite* 's did not come to be, as it's some of my favorite in the game. One thing that may be to blame was that people seemed really low-energy, too tired from the late night before. Also, as solid as the game may be, I don't think anyone was really excited about the concept. They signed up for it because it sounded neat enough and probably on the strength of my name, as I've built up a pretty decent reputation by now. That's flattering, to be sure, but I don't think anyone really sunk their teeth into the concept. I confess I'm slightly disappointed, as the game is extremely full and well-constructed and I think really demonstrates how much I've grown as a larp writer, which I'm not sure really showed through in this run. Ah, well.

Saturday afternoon I played Ruins of Grandeur by Bernie, Matt, Kindness, and Michael, which I really wanted to like. Unfortunately my particular piece of it was fatally flawed in the design and could not function in the game. I'm really sorry I had such a low time, but all my tricks to get engaged failed me. I think by and large people enjoyed it, but my casting was so broken that I had very few hooks into the plot and literally zero power with which to make anything happen. I'm usually the kind of player who can make something up if her character is a little thin and find a way to have my own good time, but when I tried that absolutely no one really met me on anything I did. I wish I could speak to the overall story, but I saw so little of it that I'm afraid I can't give an opinion. I think most people really liked this game and had a good time, but my character must be completely overhauled before they ever run it again.

Saturday night I ran the most recent game I wrote with Alleged, the experimental larp Resonance, and this time it went amazing. At Intercon natbudin* and I were slightly disappointed with how things went-- we had a fairly gamist set of players who didn't seem to really get that the story is supposed to be allowed to unfold to make for an emotional experience, rather than a problem to be solved. This time we didn't have that problem at all. Our group here went with it smooth as you could be; I especially enjoyed their conversations sharing information and trying to speculate on what it meant. Among many others, in_water_writ* was amazing with a character completely against her type, and rigel* fascinatingly stepped into a leadership role. I spent much of the game watching Jared, curious for his reaction, and was pleased to see him leap into the concept wholeheartedly and beautifully act his parts. At the dead dog, bleemoo* gave us the great compliment of saying it may be the best game he's ever played. I am incredibly pleased with it this time around, and consider it proof that our concept is capable of working out the way we wanted it to.

Sunday afternoon I zonked around consuite and tried not to pass out. So, despite some ups and downs, I consider this to be a typically awesome Festival weekend, made even better by the knowledge that I put it all together. Hope you all had a great time, and will be joining us there next year!

Larpercalia concluded

After organization efforts spanning over the last year, at last the first con I was ever charged with putting on has come to a close. I am very pleased with how it went on, given how many good events occurred and how many attendees enjoyed themselves. Before getting into any review of my own experiences, I will go over the various goals I set for myself and review to what degree I feel I achieved them.

1. Ensure a high attendance.

Handily accomplished, as this Festival had a real attendance of about 120 people, give or take a couple that didn't show up, which is a bit higher than the previous year's of 112. We recently have only been growing by a little bit, but it seems we are still actually growing. I credit this year's numbers to early advertising and early solicitation, so I advise all future con chairs to start recruiting well in advance. 

2. Ensure that every game gets a full roster of players.

This I think I did pretty damn well on. Nearly ever game ended up running with a full complement, which was due to a combination of getting enough signups before the run and by filling the handful of drops that occurred at the last minute. Of the very few that did not, I only know of one game that was missing so many that it was hurt by it. This is closely related to my next goal, which was...

3. Choose the appropriate number of player openings in each available timeslot.
This one I wasn't totally sure about. I know last year's Festival had lots of games that didn't fill, which after some analysis seemed to be because there was a significant increase in the number of player openings per timeslot from the year before without a corresponding growth in attendance. Since Festival attendance has at least mostly leveled off, I decided to go with slightly fewer openings per timeslot than we had last year in an effort to encourage full games. I became unsure of this choice around the time signups first opened, because we had some fairly significant waitlists, so I worried maybed we had too few. To borrow some data kindly compiled by bronzite*, and using my knowledge of how games were actually attended despite the website data, here is how the numbers compared to the previous years'.

Larpercalia:
Friday: 74 (2 waitlisted)
Saturday Morning: 65 (13 open)
Saturday Afternoon: 66 (1 open, 5 waitlisted, 3 pinch-hitters)
Saturday Evening: 77 (3 waitlisted, 1 pinch-hitter)
Sunday: 54 (2 open, 4 waitlisted)

Which is adjusted to actual player counts of:
76  52  73  81  56

As compared to Vestival:
Friday: 83 (10 open)
Saturday Morning: 69 (5 open)
Saturday Afternoon: 83 (13 open)
Saturday Evening: 78 (3 open)
Sunday: 57 (2 Waitlisted)

We can adjust this total to actual player counts of:
73 74 70 75 59

As compared to FestEvil:
Friday: 58 (2 open, 2 waitlisted)
Saturday Morning: 36 (5 open, 3 waitlisted)
Saturday Afternoon: 68 (6 open, 1 waitlisted)
Saturday Evening: 46 (3 waitlisted)
Sunday: 45 (4 open)

We can adjust these totals to:
58 34 63 49 41

Which is actually not to bad for us this year. We had minimal failures to fill, and the only serious discrepency in required players versus available players was in the morning, which I believe is due to the nature of a particular game rather than a failure of my estimate. There are a handful of players who were shut out of all games in a slot, but by the time of the Festival there were not many who still wanted in, and I don't thnk they were enough to justify putting more games on the schedule-- at that point, we probably would have had more failures to fill. So I am satisfied with my schedule balancing abilities.

4. Have as many new games as possible on the schedule

This is the goal that I feel was best achieved. We had nearly every game there be a first or second run, which meant as many options as possible for even experienced larpers to play. Completely avoided the problem of "But I've already played everything in this slot." As natbudin* once mentioned to me, an intention of Festival's that has never really become a reality before is to encourage the writing of new games, particularly by new writers. Several games were written specifically for this year's Festival, including a couple by writers who have never produced larps before. I think I am proudest for encouraging this of everything I did for this con. Again, I attribute it to soliciting games from people early.

5. Get things done in advance

This helped enormously to make this con as successful as it was. Start bugging people to sign up early, ask them for games early, release the schedule early, allow signups early. Have the schedule finished and full by no later than the beginning of January. I also sent out lots of reminder and explanatory e-mails to keep people aware and understanding what was going on. Future con chairs, take note!

6. Institute the pinch-hitter system.

This one I was kind of displeased with, if only because I don't think it got a good enough test to consider it a success or failure. Not a lot of people signed up to pinch-hit, which made it tough to whether or not it was actually helpful for GMs to fill drops. There was also the question of whether not the workings of the system were clear enough in the minds of the people who were being asked to sign up for it. I would like to try and work the kinks out of it and try it again next year. If anyone has any feedback or suggestions, please let me know.

So overall, a real success, I think. Again, I am interested in everyone's feedback on your experience, so please don't hesistate to contact me or ninja_report*, to whom I have passed the chalice and will be chairing next year's Festival. Thanks again to everyone who helped make this amazing con a reality, and made it so damn much fun.

Larpercalia is at hand

At long last, Larpercalia is here and it is time to see everything we've worked on over the last year come to pass. I am very pleased with myself, and with the hard work everyone on the con com has done. We have a full, balanced schedule of almost all brand-new games that by this point have nearly every slot filled! Hooray! Congrats to everyone who contributed to making that happen.

I am really looking forward to all this, not only because Festival is one of my favorite weekends a year, but because it will be extremely validating if the things we planned and the ideas we used go off without a hitch. Some things were done a little differently this year (the idea of pinch-hitters, for example) so I would be pleased to see them work the way I hope they will.

Got Prince Comes of Age tonight. I'm so glad for Bernie, Matt, and especially Kindness that they put this together. After briefly being held by Ryan, the title of Newest Game Writer to Come Out of Brandeis now goes to Jonathan. I think I will enjoy my character and the chance to wear my pretty costumes. I would like to have pictures of me in it that I don't hate, if someone would be kind enough to take them, and patient enouh to put up with my whining.

Ruins and Prince castings

Not doing so well again. Every time I think I might be okay for a little while, before long I go crashing back down. But I'm sure everyone's tired of hearing about that by now, so I'll try to think about something else.

Got my castings for both Ruins of Grandeur and Prince Comes of Age. Seems like both of them will suit me. I'm planning my costumes now, endeavoring to put them together without having to spend any money.

I was a wee bit disappointed that Prince called for a classic high fantasy look, though I guess I technically already knew it would. I don't actually own any garb that would be appropriate for a fancy party. Still, I think I can throw something together and fake it. My character is a courtesan, so it needs to be sexy too. I think I can do that. Right now I'm planning on wearing this diaphanous black gown I have, technically a nightgown, with the long slit up one side of the skirt underneath the silver and black side of the lace-up bodice I wore to tech for the Boston Babydolls. Not perfect, but it will work. Not sure of the sure shoes yet, I want something sexy that won't kill my feet to stand in for four hours.

As for Ruins, in that one I'm crosscast as a government official. I'm thinking of tying down under a crisp white shirt and my navy pinstripe blazer with the rust and gold silk scarf tied at my throat to look like an ascot. Not sure what pants, as I recently gave away the unflattering ones I used to use as my man-pants, or what shoes. Hair will probably be gelled back and tied in a low ponytail.