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!

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!

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.

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? :-)

Intercon L con report

Back from Intercon L, and although I am utterly exhausted, it was a heck of a lot of fun getting that way. I didn't prepare for the unusual schedule as well as I should have-- I'd stayed late to see the Titus naked tech on Wednesday, and I'd had two days this week when I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep, so I went in with less reserve than I usually did. But even if I couldn't stay up late, I was determined to enjoy this special once-a-year occasion as much as I possibly could. Ahead is my non-spoilery review!

Friday night jhite1230* and I arrived at the con about an hour and a half in advance of games, allowing us to connect with Seamus, who was one of our gracious roommates, socialize a little, and prepare. Jared ran off to meet in their game space for House of the Rising Sun. I socialized a bit and dressed in the hotel room to play Ariadne in Feast of the Minotaur. I must mention again how much I love this dress and how pretty I felt in it. It's a brand-new couture piece I bought on eBay for a fraction of its retail price, made of this luxurious crinkled velvet and washed silk straps in a gorgeous berry color. It's rare that I get a pretty princess role, and I've been feeling like such a frump lately, so I really wanted to look good for this role, and I think I succeeded. Thanks to for taking this picture:

I bought some sea shell necklaces to wear around my neck and maybe like a circlet in my hair, but I decided I looked better without them. Showing cleavage is not my preferred form of sexy dressing, but given the style of the dress I figured what the hell, just this once. Might as well enjoy the one benefit of gaining weight. However, I discovered a dress that's held on only with tied ribbons is not the most stable, and I found myself adjusting it to preserve good taste quite a bit. I should probably look into some body tape for next time I wear it. I decided to wear my beloved Bast sandals with it, and was pleased that they remained comfortable for the entirety of the game. I must have gotten twenty compliments on the look and felt very good.

The game itself was wonderful, but in a very strange way. As I mentioned, when I read my character sheet there was next to nothing in it. Some personality, very little plot. I heard other players found the same in theirs. But when we got into game, it took a little digging and faking it until we made it, but there was quite a bit of plot that existed in the world-- it's just that very little of it got into the character sheets. It helped that it was very strongly based in Greek mythology that, being geeks, we were all pretty familiar with. But I had a wonderful time, particularly interacting with the other excellent larpers, without whom the game would not have worked at all-- it takes active, creating player to dig up plot out of the ether like that. Highlights included offside7* and a new larper named Kelly Morgan as my sisters who gave me dramatic conflict and support at the same time, morethings5* who had a note-perfect transformation partway through the game that would have been awesome if only for the look he gave me at one point, and Alex Pogue as my Theseus who made the romance plot so interesting and fun. There was also a particular twist that I thought was a very clever way to get a crucial element into the game. I got the feeling there were a handful of characters who didn't have enough to do, but for the most part the nebulous plot was available for everyone to seize on to. Still, if it were up to me I think that plot really needs to get put into sheets. I don't know if it was a stylistic choice or if the writers just ran out of time and had to fill the sheets with something. I highly recommend this in its current state, if only on the condition that you are an active, independent player, but I can honestly say this is the most enjoyable game I've ever played for which I would still recommend a total character sheet rewrite.

The other other game I played was as Irene Adler in An Evening Aboard the HMS Eden. I put together a costume I was very pleased with relatively inexpensively, including a thrift store prom dress with a corsety-looking bodice, a gauzy black blouse beneath it to give it sleeves, and a wide Kentucky Derby bonnet with ostrich feathers on it. But I'm sorry to say I was quite disappointed by this game. It had a very fun theme/set dressing, but the writing was, at least in my part of it, pretty lackluster. As I said to some people after the game, all the direction I had was ticky-box goals-- what boiled down to "Okay, go ring that bell over there!" and once you've run over and rung it, you're unsatisfied because there's no reason to have wanted it nor anything interesting that comes of it. Join that club that doesn't do anything, buy a bigger airship that you can't actually use in game, cure this disease that doesn't have any in-game effects so why waste the time, that sort of thing. The only things in my sheet that were like actual plots, the mystery of what was going on with my sister and what the deal with this item I had was, no one seemed to know anything about so I made no progress on them. Not everyone seemed to have unengaging plots, Jared had a pretty good time and a number of people seemed about to stay busy, but I got the impression that around a third to a half the game was in the same situation I was. It was just very amateurish larp-writing, and though the GMs I asked for help didn't really managed to point me in any useful direction, I will give the gentlemen credit for trying really, really hard. I worry I came across as a difficult player, for which I'm sorry, but I think I failed to convey, no, I don't want another ticky-box to check off, I want a plot thread, but given the writing in the game they may not have been able to understand the difference. I will be hesitant to sign up for any game by these authors again.

Last thing I did this weekend was help natbudin*, emp42ress*, and simplewordsmith* run our game Resonance. By this point I was draggy and tired, but fortunately this run of Resonance mostly ran itself. We had a very good group of players who bought fully into the concept and were happy to ride the rails of the story we'd laid out. This game relies heavily on that willingness in order to work. We also implemented a new device in the third act to see if we could convince players to play it out the way we'd intended. In the first run, the third act didn't happen like it was supposed to at all, so we tried a subtle restructuring. It mostly worked if not entirely in the second run, and didn't really work at all in the third. So this time we basically put in a plot hammer. The hammer made it so the players had no choice but to do what we wanted them to. I think the players were fine with it, but seeing it in action I've decided from a writer's standpoint that I do not like the particular technique we chose. It is a kludge, and it's slightly off-tone in my opinion, but I will say that it works and players are okay with it, so ultimately it's an acceptable mechanism. I prefer the subtler one we implemented for the second and third runs, and I'm not really sure why it didn't work, but the fact of the matter is it didn't.

Also, one of my fellow GMs Danielle pointed out how susceptible this game is to becoming derailed by issues of Maslow's heirarchy of needs. We want the players to be thinking of higher-order issues, that's what the story's about, but the game's setting suggests threats to safety and physical well-being that human nature tends to want to attend to first because you can't do anything if you're dead. We need those threats to exist in a vague sense to maintain the atmosphere, but we really need to manage how pressing they are so as not to distract players from the real, emotional issues we want them to explore. We struck a good balance in this run, but I remember how previous runs have been stalled simply by questions of "But will we be safe if we do X?" that resulted in a reluctance to move forward into the unknown.

I left early on Sunday to catch the last show of Titus, which I'm glad I did, but still, I was sorry I couldn't spend more time socializing. Intercon is one of the most important moments of my year, and I love how it surrounds you with creative, interesting people. I was happy to hear that Jared and EB's game House of the Rising Sun ran great, as did The Prince Comes of Age by Kindness, Matt, and Bernie. Congratulations to everyone who brought their artistic labors, and thanks to everyone who helped make this con so wonderful.

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. 

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?

Impressions of the Intercon L schedule

The schedule of games for Intercon L is now available for viewing. I'm on bid com, so I knew all of these things were going to run already, but now the schedule is available for everyone to see. As is my custom at this stage of con preparation, I will now go over my current thoughts for what my signup plan shall be.

Friday night I think my preference is for Feast of the Minotaur. It's written by Andandi Gandolfi, who has an excellent track record, and I like the Ancient Greek mythology setting based around the myth of Theseus. Also interesting to me is Colonel Sebastian T. Rawhide's Circus of the Spectacular, which is a classic I've heard very good things about. I've already played in House of the Rising Sun and I highly recommend it to those of you who are pondering your own options for Friday night. Venezia will probably have a test run at Brandeis before Intercon rolls around, and I will try it then.

Saturday morning, I'd go for Garden of Forking Paths. This is the work of my sometime coauthors emp42ress*, natbudin*, and simplewordsmith* taking the "your choices affect the nature of your game" concept touched on in Resonance to an even greater extreme, with simultaneous runs of the same scenario affecting where everyone else's scenario ends up. I'm not sure how it's going to work exactly, but I know this group does amazing, envelope-pushing work and I'm always game to play something they've written. Failing that, I still haven't gotten into a run of Concordance Station written by readerofposts*, or if all else fails I could always sleep in.

Saturday afternoon the options are not leaping out at me. I would probably go for An Evening Aboard the HMS Eden. It sounds interesting, being a pastiche of Victorian literary characters aboard a cruise ship, and even so Jared thinks he's going to sign up for it, and it would be nice for us to have a game together. I confess I'm curious about Nat and Vik's Harmony Quest, despite the fact that I've technically been spoiled on it and when I first heard about it I was certain it wouldn't be my kind of game. Still, there's a morbid streak in me that wants to know just how uncomfortable I'd be. Also I've heard it's well done for the style of game it is, and as was said by at least five members of bid com, I trust Nat. Probably won't go for it, but the thought has crossed my mind. I also have some curiosity as to how The Linfarn Run is, being an intimate Brit game, though I'm not really interested in Firefly.

Saturday evening I will be running Resonance with the aforementioned writers from Alleged Entertainment. We're quite proud of this unusual sort of game, so if you haven't played yet it might be worth your while. Of the games going up concurrently with it, I'm quite sorry I won't be able to play in Port Hidalgo, a well-regarded pirate adventure, and I've heard good things about Roanoke, a game about the Sir Walter Raleigh's colony in Virginia. I tend to like period games.

Sunday morning the only thing that particularly interested me I've already played (GM Space) and so will be observing my usual Sunday-of-the-con tradition of collapsing in an exhausted heap. I do recommend GM Space as probably the funniest larp I've ever played, however, so keep it in mind if you've never been in it.

And that's my plan. Not sure what my first signup will be; logic dictates that Garden, as the game with the fewest number of slots, should be my first choice, so probably I'll go for that. Feast is the other possibility, because although it's large I'm very excited to play it. First round signups open November 2nd, so put it on your calendars, everyone.

Bridgewater Larp Day concluded

Bridgewater Larp Day is accomplished. It turned out to be a pretty good event that I had a lot of fun with, despite the fact that I wasn't feeling particularly healthy or energetic. Congrats to EB for organizing it. Oz ran well, if a little on the quick side, lasting about three hours rather than four. I guess everyone pushed their plots very fast! Everyone did seem extremely busy, which is my usual marker of people enjoying their play experience. It would have been notable if for no other reason than katiescarlett29*, who has been trepidatious about larping, seemed to have a good time! She was cast as Dorothy, which tends to be a very good newbie role, and got into her plot and connected with the other larpers around her. I was also amused by how people seemed to be constantly putting the environmental cataclysm on the back burner; I'm very glad they were that engaged with their individual plots, but you'd expect a little more concern for the threat to the entirety of the universe. ;-)

After Oz, I finally got to play in House of the Rising Sun, which has been Jared and EB's project for the last year. I was very excited, and the game itself did not disappoint. House is a dark, angst-filled game, perfect for people who like emotional extremity and dramatic scenes in larps. I really enjoyed the presence of the ghosts, and the way the walls between their world and ours slowly broke down as the game went on. I was in a privileged position of being able to see the ghosts straight off, which made for some fun freaking out, and it gave me an interesting position to glimpse into the struggles and closet skeletons of everyone around me. I was also really luck to be in it with such a great group of players; morethings5*, captainecchi*, electric_d_monk*, wired_lizard*, mllelaurel*, April, Nick, vortexofchaos*, darkoni, kamianya*, Alison, and more. I have some minor criticisms about issues in certain characters' back stories, but they are mostly literary stylistic points that don't affect the thrust of the narrative too much. All in all, though, I highly recommend this game, as long as you're not bothered by dark content. I'm really proud of EB and Jared for putting this together. This is Jared's first finished four-hour larp, and I'm incredibly happy for him that it went so well. Well done, my love. :-)

Sick all week

This has been a real rough week for me, health-wise. First the migraines, then a jag of vomiting, now a run-of-the-mill achey sneezy cold. I suppose technically that means an improvement every day, but still, I'm sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. Normally I'm a very healthy person, so it's been very rare that I've ever had any extended period of being unwell. The worst of it is how low-energy I've been for productivity of any kind. I've struggled through, but it's been rough. Tomorrow I'm running Oz in Bridgewater and playing in the first run of Jared and EB's new game, House of the Rising Sun. I really hope I'm not dragging too badly. It's a good crowd in this run, and I've been looking forward to House for a while now. I really want to do it justice. I'll just have to get a good night's sleep tonight, maybe take a decongestant in the morning, and do the best that I can.

Status update

Finished my first blank verse assignment. Jesus Christ, that was hard. My brain felt like melted Jell-o by the time I was done with it. I can't put off starting on the next verse piece for too long or it will be harder than it has to be, but I definitely needed a mental rest after that.

Now I have started on a ten-minute play for my next regular drama assignment, which as I mentioned involves a PC and an NPC from The Stand. I am quite pleased with it so far; these were always some of my favorite characters in this game, and this is a dramatization of something that actually happened in the backstory of the larp, though I am considering changing the ending so that the scene ends on a more climactic note. I will post it here as I've been posting my other pieces, but it's a bit spoilery if you haven't played the game, so I may post it with the names changed so that people can read it even if they still want to play.

Oz has filled at Bridgewater Larp Day. Still awaiting a number of casting questionnaires, but it looks to be a good cast. I haven't run Oz in over a year now, but because it's relatively small at fifteen players even with five previous runs it didn't completely exhaust the player pool. Looking back over the materials, I am amused with the ways I emulated the novel's sense of slightly disjointed fantasy. I love, in particular, the weird and silly names I picked, like Dapperjohn Greatgourd and Glinda Aralinda. For some strange reason one of the most satisfying things I find about writing is to that when you come up with a name, people who read or perform or play your work will use it. So when people go around in my game calling each other Jubilation and Perpetua and Phineas because I chose those names, it gives me a real warm fuzzy.

Soon I am going to start taking an adult beginner ballet class. It was by blendedchaitea*'s suggestion, and I'm really excited. That's something I've always kind of wanted to do but never really had time for it, but now seems like the right time to work it in. I want to get more into dancing, as well as have an exercise habit I actually enjoy. And it will be fun to go to it with Rachel.

Also trying to get some household stuff accomplished. Yesterday I got a box with plastic dividers in it to hold all my various sewing odds and ends. So I organized my work table and got everything put away. Then I promptly messed up the space all over again working on some projects. It's funny how often I mess up my room because I'm busy doing something, then spend a day cleaning it up so I have space to start another project that messes everything up again.

Finally, yesterday my iPhone battery broke. It will work as long as it's plugged in, but it won't hold charge anymore. I'm going to have to go to the Apple Store today to get them to take a look at it. My mom mentioned my brother had sort of a similar problem with his, and when he took it in they just gave him a brand new replacement phone. His is newer than mine, though, I think, so mine may not be under warranty anymore. And I know we're getting to the point where we're all eligible for upgrades. So I'm not sure what the most efficient response to this is. God knows I rely on that damn thing for just about everything.

Bridgewater Larp Day

In case you haven't heard, acousticshadow2*  is organizing a larp day built around the introduction of the game that she and Jared have been writing, House of the Rising Sun, a mystery set in a haunted whorehouse in post-Emancipation New Orleans. The day is Sunday, September 25th, and it will be taking place in building belonging to a cafe in Bridgewater, Massachusetts that will be hosting the dead dog after. House of the Rising Sun will be running in the afternoon at 2:30, but beforehand Jared and I are going to be running my game Oz alongside Emillybeth's game Happily Ever After? in the morning at 10. So if you've been wanting to play Oz but never had the chance, here's a shot before it goes back into the Breaking Light vault for a little while more. And I have been excited to playtest House ever since I first heard they were writing it. 

Game signups are going to open by next weekend, so if you'd like to register for Bridgewater Larp Day, go here for the event page. I hope you'll come out for Oz, and for the maiden run of House of the Rising Sun!

"We did acrobatic interpretations of Russian novels. I spent 7 hours on a trapeze in a overcoat."

The Burn Notice game went well last night. I felt especially good going into this one, partially because I was so excited to get back to this game, and partially because I was feeling very well-prepared. Jared and I had hammered out a particularly well-thought-out storyline this time around. While normally I do try to be very thorough, I usually have some gaps in what I've settled on that need to be filled in on the fly, but for this plot things were about as fleshed out as they possibly could be. I have Jared's help to thank for that.

Probably the thing I love best about this game is how the players play off of each other. The original three, Bernie, Matt, and Kindness, have established these awesome relationships between their characters that they roleplay so well together. And even better, before long Michael was clicking into it too, and I had an entire table to fun, funny, dynamic players who did interesting things, had fabulous interactions, and interspersed so much humor between the more serious plot moments of the game. Seeing as getting that going was my whole purpose in starting up the game, I am ridiculously pleased.

I still sometimes think I'm the world's lamest GM, given that I forget stuff like action dice and sometimes have to say, "Okay, GM break time," then go hide in the bathroom and rock back and forth muttering "What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?" But of course, there is no scenario you can entirely plan out, because players always always do things you don't necessarily expect. Still, I think I did a good job of expanding the concepts I already had to give responses to the actions they took. The one thing I'm a little disappointed with myself over is how I handled the investigation of the red herring in the plot. They were supposed to look into it and figure out that it wasn't actually the solution to the mystery, but unfortunately I couldn't find a way to tie in any actually useful clue into that investigation. I guess that's not unrealistic, but I didn't want the players to feel as if they'd wasted all that time. Not sure they did, but I think I could have handled it a little more skillfully.

What I want to do from here is activate more of the personal and meta-plots for the characters. I planted a couple of seeds for future things here and there, but they need to start factoring in. That will require a lot more planning on my part, but it will make the story and world so much richer.

My long important project list

There are so many things I need to get working on.

I want to get started with my schoolwork. The natural starting place seems to be to do the reading, but my teacher hasn't yet sent along the packet of ten-minute plays that I must respond to for my first assignment. I guess I can read the craft book I need to review; just ordered a copy of it now.

I need to finish planning the revival session of my Burn Notice game for this coming Tuesday. We will be joined by the fabulous Mr. Michael Hyde, who has graciously agreed to take on the role of Riker, the nerdy hacker who remade himself into the ultimate cool guy (or so he thinks.) He will be coming over for dinner tonight to discuss the particulars of the campaign and how best to fit into it. Hopefully it will inspire me a little. I like the sessions to be extensively planned out so there's a lot of detail and possibility, which requires a lot of forethought. I also like to emulate the way the show incorporate personal hooks for the characters into an otherwise caper-of-the-week plot structure, but that can be tough. No wonder I can't manage to run this as a weekly campaign; I could never churn out that level of work in that short a period.

I do, however, want to get serious about writing a ten-minute play a week. I think it would be beneficial to my development as a dramatist. The problem is right now I am totally stuck for an idea. I've always had this problem. When I have an idea, I've no trouble coming up with the project to match it, but when I know the project I need to do, I really suck a coming up with a fitting idea. I might have to cut it down to a ten-minute play every two weeks if it's going to be this tough to come up with something to write about. Suggestions welcome, I suppose.

I need to finish the final edit of Merely Players. The show is so close to being finalized it's painful, I just need to buckle down and make it work. I am endeavoring to add back in the stage manager character I had to cut for a lack of lines, but now I think I can include him if I make him a pantomime character who is totally silent for comedic effect. Also, I want to have an initial blocking plan made up to go into the process with. The show is supposed to be really funny, which the blocking must support, and is also intended to work outside the conventions of traditional theater. It has a cabaret sort of atmosphere, so the fourth wall is a lot less firm, for example, and the "actor's space" is not confined to a separate area understood to be the "stage." The blocking must take full advantage of that freedom, and be sufficiently unusual to create the proper effect.

I want to find a good beginner's sewing reference. I will be FINALLY getting my sewing machine at the end of the month, as that's when I will be next visiting home and my parents discovered the thing would be exorbitantly expensive to ship. In the meantime, I would like to cut out pattern pieces and study up to be ready for the machine. There's a lot about technique and terminology I am completely in the dark about, so might as well use the time before I can actually start sewing to read up on the matter and be prepared.

Sadly, I think I should probably be putting my new larp idea on hold. The Roman Empire game, which I am thinking I'm going to call Imperium, is very exciting to me right now, but sadly I think I need to be prioritizing dramatic writing and more immediately relevant writing instead. Of course, knowing me, I'll be struck by ideas for it anyway, which of course I will be obliged to record lest I forget them even if I'm not actively working on the project. Nice as it would be to have something new to debut at next Festival, I need to balance my love for larp writing with writing I can make greater use of in a career as a writer. I hate saying that, but my current portfolio is kind of unbalanced and that needs to be corrected.

So those are my major concerns right now. Looks like I have a lot of work ahead of me. Let's see what I can do. *cracks knuckles*