*victory dance*

I got into Shadow Over Babylon! I got into Shadow Over Babylon! Huzzah! I got into a cool game and now I have a game to play in on Friday night! Yay! I had pretty much despaired of my chances at this point. I think witticaster* was the one on the waitlist before me, so she probably got in too. So that makes at least two fun people, her and jh1230*, in that game with me. :-) Yay!

I wonder who dropped, and why. The schedule is so packed as it is, there isn't much chance of them getting into another game. Maybe they dropped the con entirely. Ah, well, their loss is my gain. I wonder if at this late point I'll get a casting questionnaire or if I will just be put into the role of the lost player. Either way, I'm just incredibly happy to have gotten into a Friday night slot. I would have been very disappointed if I had no game to be in the night I got there.

On another Intercon note, Jared and I cast Oz last night. A lot of players just leaped off the page for us to receive particular roles, so while not everyone was an easy place, it was one of the most straightforward casting sessions yet. We should be sending out costume hints today, with full character sheets to follow shortly after. We just wanted to sleep on things and recheck them in the morning. There's at least one interesting character gender switch, as most parts are technically neutral, that I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays. We're also lucky enough to have some really cool players signed up, it'll be so exciting to see what they do.

Suddenly my Intercon is looking way, way up. :-D

Home from WPI

I ran Oz with Jared, Bernie, and Joe sticking around as an AGM. I wouldn't have thought so much help would have been strictly necessary from previous runs, as I've run it with just one other GM in the past, but I was incredibly glad to have them all for this one. I suppose it had slipped my mind that WPI and RPI larpers tend to be a lot more intensely goal-oriented than those of us at Brandeis, but I was definitely reminded by this run. Personally I prefer a bit more balance between plot advancement and character development, but I guess that's a matter of taste. I was very pleased to see that my measures to fix Ryan's character (also played by simplewordsmith*and Kevin Munn) so that he wasn't too brokenly able to tip the scales of the game actually did work. Also improved the workings of the character previously played by beholdsa*, usernamenumber*, and most recently ultimatepsi*. I think pretty much everyone had fun, which is the true measure of how well the game went.

Saturday I rose early to take Ryan and Tegan to their morning game, then immediately turned around to hit Somerville to collect in_water_writ*. I was happy to help her out and get to spend that extra time with her, but the extra driving was tough on me physically. I'm not used to driving for long stretches of time, and my back and tailbone were killing me by the end of it. Still, we got there in plenty of time for her to buy me a nice lunch (thanks so much, love!) and we got to our first game of the day, Bard of Avalon.

I really enjoyed Bard, and I was especially glad since I'd been looking forward to it for so long. It was really a well-written game, so props to yunafonfabre*, and something really funny happened. The game is inspired by the characters of Shakespeare, and I found myself stalking around reverting to my Hamlet persona. And I was like, "Why am I doing this? This character is not Hamlet. I should be capable of doing something other than Hamlet!" And then I found out at the end of game, I actually was Hamlet and my instincts were right! It just wasn't directed at my own family, if that makes any sense. Oh, I love being the Hamlet character. :-) Though it wasn't really part of any of my goals, I ended up becoming the lord of two duchies and the king of the realm, so heh. I made out like a bandit! But I had to be married to Goneril, so maybe those things didn't balance out. And, incidentally, my character was technically an amalgamation of Hamlet and Tybalt, so I was actually playing, well, Frances. :-D That delights me.

Saturday evening was Chateau Ennui, a game that I am still pondering my feelings about. The premise is brilliant, and I had a character that was both interesting and very well suited to me. But there were some real structural issues that needed to be sorted out, and I'm trying to put my finger on exactly how that should be done. I'm thinking the trouble is that so many plots depended on pursuing mysteries, and while plots can still function if the mystery is not solved, it needs to be possible in game to access the information necessary to make any progress on that front. Mysteries are hard to write in games, because it isn't always easy to leave truly useful clues in game, but I think if some real effort is put into including real accessible helpful clues, that would go along way toward helping plots move. So I had fun during the game, but I think it needs some real fixing.

Sunday then was our second run of Paranoia. I must say, our GMing team worked our asses off editing this thing, and I am immensively proud of what we produced. The first run went really well and players had a lot of fun, but it needed tightening and fleshing out in a lot of places. The game as it stands right now is incredibly well-rounded, and the job we did during actual runtime was excellent. We quantified the NPCs and cast them-- Bernie as Friend Computer, Joe as the wandering janitor bot, Matt as the mech bay bot, Mac as the doc bot, and myself as the vending machine, plus stellar performances from Jared as both the High Programmer Acc-U-Men and HK-47 and 1/2, the warbot brain stuck in the storage bay computer, and Ryan as the poor frightened Friendly Luggage Bot. Also, none of the players seemed bored at any point during the game, which pleased me immensely. There may still be some minor kinks to work out, but overall the thing is extremely solid, and good fun to players whether you're a Paranoia fan or not. Also interestingly of note-- I think we had eight drops over the course of signups for this game, and we still ran with a full complement. Yay for us!

We all went back to my place afterward and had a really nice, low-key chat that included Jared, Bernie, Joe, Matt, and myself. I enjoyed this until I fell asleep. Now that weekend, the preparing for which has dominated my life lately, is passed. Physically, I feel okay but off in small ways. I got a good night's sleep last night, which helps. Body is still a little stiff from the unusual amount of driving I had to do on Saturday-- knees feel tight, lower back is still a bit tender. Also woke up with a slightly sore throat, which worries me I'm going to get sick. Don't really have time for that right now, so God, I hope not.

ROMEO AND JULIET

The next week and a half promise to be intense for me. We're starting full run-throughs for Romeo and Juliet tonight, for which our call is at 6:30PM and, particularly when we move into the theater on Sunday, we go as late as we have to. I'm pretty excited to be at this point, all I need is a bit more brushing up on my lines and I think I'm good to go, so at least it'll be fun even if it'll be a lot of work. I'd better plan to bring food and things to work on during the downtime, so make the best use of spending the whole evening there. The one thing I'm concerned about is that since I'm working now and have to get up earlier than I did last semester, I won't be able to stay extremely late to get things done that still need finishing during tech week, something I've done for every previous show. Yeah, I know others can step up this time, but the reason I always did it previously is because so few others ever did. I really hope somebody else steps up this time around, 'cause I don't think I can push it.

I guess we're close enough that it's time to do the plug. And so, without further ado,

HOLD THY PEACE presents
William Shakespeare's
ROMEO AND JULIET

Directed by ELANA FRIEDLAND
Produced by TEGAN KEHOE
Stage Managed by MAC MAGRUDER and EMILY BAUM

In the Carl J. Shapiro Theater at Brandeis University
October 22nd-24th at 8PM
October 25th at 2PM

Featuring JARED HITE as Lord Capulet
and PHOEBE ROBERTS as Count Paris

Come see me kiss a girl and do my manly walk. :-)

Musings on Festival of the Larps

Still have larping very much on the brain-- more so than usual, even. :-) I want to get to work writing more games, and I want to make plans to run more games. As I mentioned, I finally got Oz bid for Intercon, which I'd been meaning to do for a while. So naturally that got me thinking about other cons, which turned my thoughts to Festival of the Larps.

I'm incredibly proud of the Brandeis community for putting on its own larp con. First of all, let me say I think everyone involved puts up a fantastic show. It's well-organized, well-put together, and well-run, such that I feel that we impress and show a good time to anyone who attends wherever they're from. I even feel like quality has increased along with the number attendees, which is pretty awesome if you think about it. Festival con com, you guys are fantastic and you knock it out of the park every time. And more than that, Festival, beyond just being the con we host, is our con. For me, that means I feel like I am welcome and encouraged to be involved. I know a new game I want to debut will be welcome. I will have plenty of my people there that I want to share the experience with, people whose games I want to be in and who want to be in mine. "You wrote a new game? I want to play in it. I care that it does well." It really means a lot to me that people have signed up for my games just because I wrote them-- some because they care about me and want my games to go well for my sake, and some because my name was enough of an indication to them that it would be a game worth playing. Those are both really great things that you get most easily at a con made up of your people that feels like your own.

One thing that's always made me smile is that people are so encouraging of the emergence of new larp writers from the Brandeis community. I was introduced to larping by zapf*, for which I am forever in his debt, and at that time, he was the newest writer to come out on the Brandeis scene. When I came out with Alice, that title passed to me, and I think it was mine for quite a long time. It was finally claimed by jh1230* and kamianya* when they debuted GM Space. If I've got the current state of things, it now belongs to Bernie, lightgamer*, and witticaster* for their work on Paranoia: Research and Dismemberment. And now morethings5* has an idea for a game in the works, and when it comes out, the title will go to him. I like this sense of, I don't know, congratulation there is for people who actually go for it and get into writing larps for the first time. I feel like the fact that we have Festival as such a willing host for our new games really contributes to this.

I kind of wish I had more to do with the putting on of the con, but to be honest, the contribution I really want to make is the bringing of games. I want to bring lots of good games to Festival and run them so that people who come to the con get the experience they came for. :-) I really really love Festival, you know.

Too sad for a goth club

*Sigh* There's XMortis tonight, and at least one fun person I know is going, but I'm missing Jared kind of keenly right now and the idea of going without hm just kind of kills the mood for me. Haven't spoken to him since Tuesday, and he won't be back until Sunday yet.

Heh. It occurs to me I'm too sad to go to a goth club. :-)

Been kind of stressed out lately, between missing Jared, looking for a job, and the various other unpleasantries in my life. I am resolved to try and be more mellow about it today; yesterday I was kind of a grouch about everything. It was relieved in large part by a very nice dinner with witticaster*, who ate pork chops with me-- I never had to really make an endeavor to hang out with her when she lived with me, but now that she's not just the next bedroom over, I am resolved to actually PLAN to see now and again. Then I went to the first full session with the new group on Kindness's game, and it was a lot of fun. I'm still trying to find Arien as a character, but I'm enjoying the process very much. Good group, good DM.

Need to be less of a grouch. Today I'll try to do that.

Cross-casting

Talked to my brother a little bit about my role as Fleance in Macbeth. He told me cross-casting doesn't happen as often in actual theater as often as one might think-- while college theaters often make use of whatever actors they have available, it usually only happens in real theaters when they specifically intend to do it. He thinks my size and delicacy made me seem like a good choice for playing a young boy; when I mentioned that they made a point of comparing my height to those of the other auditioners, that confirmed it for him. I've always been comfortable being cross-cast. Sometimes it allows me to play a particularly interesting part-- Dromio, Puck, the Fool --and sometimes it's an acting challenge in itself to try and be believably male. And I while I may be capable of looking boyish fairly easily, acting it is pretty tough for me because of my high voice and fairly feminine carriage. I sometimes wonder if that affects my larp casting, at least by people who know me. I've mused on getting cross-cast in larps in this space before, but I'm thinking about how infrequently it happens to me. Even though I always say I am cool being cross-cast on my casting questionnaires, I almost never actually get a male character. No matter, it's fine either way. But I wonder if it ends up this way because people who know me can't see me as a grown man. I suppose I get that, given that I'm kind of small and have such a girly voice. That's not the case at all in my theater experience, but again in that instance there tends to be a necessity because there just aren't enough guys for all the male roles. But the final word for me on it is that while I don't necessarily prefer it I'm completely fine doing it, and sometimes I particularly welcome it. So, my GM friends, don't be afraid to give me a guy role if you think I would be suited to it.

People's feelings on it tend to be mixed. Most guys would really rather not be while more girls tend to be okay with it even if it's not their preference. It's kind of funny when you think that in previous times in the theater men played all the roles. Still, I don't know why it is, but for some reason a woman playing a man is easier for me to accept as "male" than a man playing a woman is as "female." Not that I've never seen a guy play a woman convincingly, but I think it takes more for it to be believable. I've even known a few girls, like witticaster in larps and Frances and Brenda in theater, who actively prefer to be cross-cast. Never really met a guy that way, except for perhaps morethings5 whom I gather sometimes on a whim decides he would like to play a woman.

A lot of games are written with characters that are gender-flexible in order to conform to preferences of the player. In general I am not a fan of this; the gender is usually, at least to me, so intrinsic a part of each character I write that I would rather cross-cast the player. Even if a lot of the genders in Alice don't necessarily factor much into their characterizations, I chose them based on the character they are inspired by in the book, and I am pretty attached to them being played as I wrote them. Unfortunately, that means for a very low number of female parts. Alice has fortunately never had much of a problem finding a way to honor the requests of the players to which this is something important, but a lot of girls still end up playing guys.

Despite my preference for fixed genders, in Oz I decided I needed to have if not all then most of them be flexible. Oz is a smaller game than Alice, with only fifteen players, and also based on a fairly famous source material. I didn't want people to look around at the genders of the other players and be able to say things like, "Okay, four of these females have to be the witches, and since I know a little about the source material, I know two of them are good guys and two of them are bad guys." So in order to combat that, I decided that most characters would be gender-flexible so that no one could metagame using the genders of the characters. In the first run of Oz, there was one character who's intended gender was flipped, the one played by contradictacat in honor of her preference, and it worked fine. The game is probably better for this flexibility, though it's not my preference in these things. For the next run, I expect the genders to be at least somewhat different than they were. I just need to make sure I thoroughly edit the sheets for pronouns.

Vegan dinner

In one of my literature classes, Professor Flesch is in as a guest speaker, talking about the possibility that Claudius and Gertrude may have had an affair before Hamlet Sr. died, and therefore the chance that Hamlet was actually the son of Claudius. I am amused and interested.

Light night I experimented with the vegan dishes that jh1230 enjoyed so much when his professor from last semester threw a class dinner. We made artichoke pie, carrot and pear soup, and witticaster handled the mocha cake. Jared and I had to wrestle with the old Cuinsinart when it came to the soup, but it worked out in the end, and he was a really big help putting that together. As for the artichoke dish, hey, I've never met a pie I couldn't tackle. I was impressed with Mac's baking skills; cakes are hard to make from scratch. She also whipped up the most perfect homemade icing, which is something I always have a hard time pulling off. While normally I don't really feel satisfied without some kind of animal protein, I liked this dinner. It made me feel much better about having lightgamer and twilighttremolo. They're such good company I wanted to show them a good time. I don't know how often I can make myself leave out any kind of meat dish, but I'm wondering if I shouldn't work on adding really substantial vegetarian dishes that complement the carnivorous main one, so it's still a full meal if you don't eat meat.

Hold Thy Peace and money

I've had some very nice conversations with witticaster*lately. We don't usually talk like that, and it was really nice, so perhaps it's something I should seek out a little more often.

Yet again, we got the Hold Thy Peace allotment from F-Board, and the results are not good. In fact, even worse than last year-- $750.00 out of a $1750.00 request. So that means we need to budget the hell out of this show. The biggest thing that worries me is that certain parties seem to have a mentality that our fundraising account, the money in the club's bank account that isn't part of what F-Board gives us, is there to expand our budget. That isn't right at all, it's there so we can take care of problems that may arise. Yeah, F-Board giving us a thousand dollars less than we asked for is pretty bad, but Hold Thy Peace is going to have shows after this one, and it really wouldn't be fair to wipe out the rainy day fund. What I think we should shoot for is doing everything in our power to stay within the $750, and then use the account for when we inevitably go a few hundred over. But again, I really don't think it's okay to budget past what we were given. I'm the treasurer of the club, so nobody gets reimbursed unless I hand in the expenses, so I'm asking all the people who are likely to be spending money on the show to clear things with me before they actually pull out their credit cards.

Verdict: success!

Last night was the playtest of GM Space, and I am delighted to report that I had a blast. Jared and Sharone should be very proud.

I played Lily the GM, one of the cast characters, and I had a really fun time wracking my brain for ways to get players to keep playing even when they seemed determined to somehow break or ruin the game. Apparently rigel is signed up for this game at Intercon, and I would hazard guesses both that she would enjoy/is likely to get cast in this character. I believe that would be the second casting she and I will have shared. But as much as I liked my cast role, the horde had so many hilarious bits that I was starting to get jealous. There were lots of spot-on parodies of the weird things that happen in larps and the stupid things that players do that just cracked me up-- not to mention a lot of cool stuff taking off of the Lovecraft universe. All the horde players, particularly Nat, Susan, and Ryan, were just so funny and awesome. I really loved a lot of Mac's bits as well. I remember when Jared started getting concerned that certain important things hadn't come up yet, because the players weren't moving through the horde characters fast enough. Well, dear, that means you've written horde characters that are strong enough to actually stay in game for a while! Apparently they were written too well. :-) The game pretty much accomplished everything it was supposed to-- it has just enough plot to create a framework and a trajectory, with enough humor to really carry its true goal of being a humorous game. With some minor tweaks suggested by the playtesters I think could be completely polished and ready for Intercon. Should this game rerun in the near future (I want to bully Jared into bidding it for Festival) I highly reccomend it.

I extend my congratulations to Jared and Sharone, and I am immensely proud of both my love and my friend. Say nice things to them when you see them!

GM Space playtest!

Last night I determined my head just isn't safe around witticaster. ;-) She knows why!

Tonight is the official playtest of GM Space, the humorous two-hour horde larp written by Jared and Sharone. I'm very excited for it. I will be playing Lily, one of the cast characters and the lone female GM running the in-game game, Miskatonic Graduation Party. It'll be at BSCF tonight, going simultaneously with the regularly scheduled gaming. Wish them luck, it's their first game!

Also, this week I had the audition and callback for A Midsummer Night's Dream. Jared did as well. Tonight all the theater groups will get together and fight over actors, and then we will get our roles. I'm very interested to see how this casting turns out, but that won't be done until late at night.

Winter break at home

Packing up and getting ready to head home. Casey went to pick up his friend in Boston who will be catching a ride in our car. I am cleaning up the room and putting fresh sheets on the bed so I can come back to everything just right.

I am planning on spending this break accomplishing things. I am going to watch what I eat and work out. I am going to work on my various larp projects, specifically Oz, my next solo piece, Men of Respect with Jared, and the Paranoia game with Bernie, Mac, and Joe. I am going to learn to cook more dishes. I am going to take proper care of my skin. I might even start looking for a post-graduation job.

This is a tall order, and will take discipline to not just be a lazy-ass, as is my inclination. But I have faith in myself.