Sweet freedom

After all the madness of the last several weeks, I think I am finally past the crunch and now have some freedom from commitments and responsibilities. Making my to do list now, it seems remarkably light compared to how much I've needed to get done for recent events. I will be going home for Thanksgiving on Wednesday, which means packing my work week a little more tightly, but otherwise I am relatively unburdened, and God knows once I'm home I will not have a ton to do. I think I need it; the recharge time has been too long in coming.

I think I will work now on planning for my play, developing some ideas for a new probably Peter Pan-based larp, making a character for the FantasyCraft game I'm in, and other miscellaneous writing and gaming projects. I'm at work unusually late today and there doesn't seem to be much to do, so I should have plenty of time.

PSA

I don't have to like your friends. I don't care if that makes your life tougher sometimes. I don't care if it makes you sad.

I don't care if you like them. I don't get to pick your friends. But you don't get to pick mine either. If I respect your choice that they're worth your time because I respect you, show me enough respect to accept that I have valid reasons. And our disagreement on this matter is fine.

If you insist on talking me to about these friends, you had better either be prepared to let my side of the conversation remain monosyllabic and solicit no matter of my opinion, or be okay with the fact that I don't have positive things to say. Either be content with my embracing Thumper's philosophy, or just don't ask. Don't expect me to pretend, or say things I don't feel.

I don't care if you don't like my friends. That's why they're my friends, as opposed to yours. Show me the same courtesy.

Because sometimes, for reasons that make complete and total sense to me, I will hate your fucking friends. And that is my right.

To Think of Nothing cast

After much pondering, struggle, and debate, I finally cast To Think of Nothing and sent the list out today. Though I'm very pleased with my final decision, I'm still hating myself for who I had to cut. I am not just trying to be nice when I say that every single person I saw deserved a part in this show, and I would have loved to have them in it.

Anyway, here is my final decision:

Cassander - Jared Hite
Andromeda - Frances Kimpel
Thalia - Stephanie Karol
Euphrosyne - Caitlin Patridge
Aglaea - Liz Baessler
Damon - Jonathan Plesser
Selene - Charlotte Oswald
Palamon - Jonathan Kindness

An excellent lot right there. Though I had to exclude some who where also excellent, unfortunately. It tears me that I couldn't find a place for Brenda. Lenny was fantastic, and is an amazing actress, and I have always wanted to direct her. But she's going to be directing the mainstage HTP show Julius Caesar next semester. Not only is she going to have a ton of responsibilites for that, scheduling her would probably have been a bitch. And likely my timeframe will be kind of tight. I hope they all understand. :-( Because I really do feel bad. Maybe people will be willing to understudy.

I need to focus on the fact that I have a really great cast right there. Heh. I've never been so happy and so sad right after giving out roles before. A new experience. I printed up scripts today as well, and packaged them in little envelopes with the recipient's name and role on them. I shall have them messengered (read: chase people down and hand them over myself) soon, and then we'll try and find a time for the readthrough.

Signup lists?

Just throwing this out to all you programmery-types out there who build and maintain larp web sites (which may just be natbudin, but to any possible others there may be):

Is there any particular reason why players aren't allowed to see the lists of everyone who's signed up for each game? I know I'm always interested to see who else will be playing in the games I'm in, and it might even help me decide which one to choose if I know lots of fun people will be in one but not another. Players shouldn't have access to GM-only functions relating to sign up lists, like changing role gender or anything like that, but I don't think it would hurt if they could at least SEE who's in. I know I would like that. Is that possible to do?

Too many good actors!

The last two nights were the auditions for To Think of Nothing, and boy, was I surprised. Not only did I get a pretty decent number of people to come out, all of them were actually good actors! That's not something I'm used to. But I liked and would be interested in working with every single one of the people I saw. It's great from the show standpoint, as I know I'll be able to have a solid cast no matter what, but it sure makes choosing that cast a lot harder. I hate that I have only eight parts to give them, because I'd love to be able to use them all. That's a funny predicament to be in. I'm going feel so bad about the people I can't cast-- it certainly won't be because they weren't good enough. Maybe I'll ask them if they're willing to be understudies.

I have until Friday to make my decision. Casting is one of my favorite parts of the process, but I'll need to do some serious thinking on this one.

Intercon schedule

Friday night: Waitlisted for Shadows Over Babylon. I think I'm second. Hope I get in. I hate not having a Friday game, but none of the others really grab me.

Saturday morning: Waitlisted for Supervillain Academy. I'm first, so I should probably get in. And if I don't, not the end of the world to not have to get up for a 9AM game.

Saturday afternoon: Running Oz. For a pretty awesome list of players. Still, hope bronzite* and Margaret get in.

Saturday evening: The Last Seder. Got in handily, and this was the game I want to play in more than any others.

Sunday morning: Nothing. Will probably watch GM Space run. Can't get over how much I like watching this game.

So I'm waitlisted for more things than I would like, but I'll probably get in at least one of them. Not sure which I'd prefer. Jared and other fun people are in Shadows, and I would really like something to do on Friday night. But Supervillain is supposed to be awesome too, and it's run by Chicago people whose games I rarely get the opportunity to play in.

Still. Whatever way it goes, it should be a good con.

RPI next weekend

So hard on the heels of SLAW comes the larp weekend at RPI. I'm a little bit apprehensive about it, to be honest. I'm only playing in things, so I have significantly less prep work, thank God, but I still have to put two costumes together for To Kill a Vampire and Mystery at Hart Manor. I think I'm good for TKAV, though I seem to be missing my black shawl, but I'm not sure about MaHM. I should probably be wearing a red cocktail-type dress but I don't have one, nor do I really have time to look. I don't suppose anyone has anything like that in a size 0 that I could borrow? Probably not, huh? I guess I could just wear my black one, but I've been using that one in larps a lot lately. Ah, well, I guess as long as I look right it doesn't matter.

The circumstances of the journey itself trouble me most. It's a three-hour drive to get up there. My poor car Constantine is going to have a hell of a lot of miles put on him. I will be traveling, fortunately, with rigel and look forward to her company and the chance to chat with her. The length of the drive up to Troy, New York makes me wince, though. I have been advised to take a break, or multiple breaks if necessary, but if the driving to WPI this past Saturday took a toll on me physically, I'm sure going all the way to Troy will be even worse. I'll just have to be very careful. I also tend not to sleep very well anywhere besides my own bed; I vastly prefer my own space to crashing in someone else's. I know I'll just have to put up with that, but I'm a little concerned I'll have so many things to put up with that I won't enjoy things enough to have made it worth going.

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.

To Think of Nothing

I realized I never formally announced this on LJ, so here I go. Next semester I will be directing my own litle show, To Think of Nothing, as a side project for Hold Thy Peace. This is something I'd wanted to do for a while, and at the moment Hold Thy Peace has both the money and the interest to do it. It's an unusual little piece modeled after the Shakespearean style of speaking, taking place inside the thoughts of a playwright who is struggling with the problem that his current play has no point. I wrote it my freshman year for my brother's competitive theater troupe, any they won an award with it. Though it was amazing to see it put up, I always wanted to direct it myself and see what I could do with my own work. It will be going up alongside the mainstage show Julius Caesar, directed by Lenny Somervell and Jenna Schlags.

Auditions will be held on Tuesday the 17th and Thursday the 18th of November from 7-9PM. It's really flattering how many people are enthusiastic for the project. I'm hoping to get it cast by the end of that week, and then assign people to memorize their lines over winter break. We should be going up in the end of February, hopefully in the Merrick Black Box Theater in Spingold, if we can afford it.

I'm really excited, this is really a dream come true. :-)

Gaming status update

Had the day off today, but still, very busy. Today included running errands for Jared, getting the last costume piece I needed for the weekend, finalizing Oz, and working on the last major task left for Paranoia.

Almost ready for SFS Live Action Weekend. Costumes are chosen, only must be packed. Oz is pretty much finished. Paranoia is extremely close; only a few more editing jobs remain, and the game has become so much tighter and more polished for it. The ride situation has been organized, though it was no easy task. Just have to get my stuff in order, and then I will be ready to go.

On another gaming note, Oz filled for Intercon J, huzzah! I'm among impressive company too, seeing how few other games are full at this early point. I even got lovely people from Chicago in, including the wonderful David Cave and Marc Blumberg. The only thing I'm sorry about is that bronzite* is on the waitlist. I really want him to play. But he's number one, and the first person almost always gets into the game eventually. I myself used my signup this time to be first on the waitlist for Supervillain Academy, the work of Marc Blumberg that Jared says is fantastic. I'll probably get in, and if I have no morning game, that's not the end of the world.