Get out of my ear already

Awesome 4th of July party this past weekend. The food was delicious, the company was great, and I very much appreciated the chance to swim in the nearby lake. My bikini doesn't get nearly enough time to come out and play; once a year is really not enough. It was one of the best social events I've attended in quite some time. Congrats to captainecchi* and electric_d_monk* for putting it on, they really knocked it out of the park.

The only problem is now I have water in my left ear that won't seem to come out. I have tried every home remedy that friends and the Internet can suggest, and nothing has helped. The pressure's a bit painful, and I can't hear so well on that side. I think it may have reduced slightly since Saturday, but it's still bugging me. This has never happened to me before and I'm quite vexed. The most annoying thing is that it's most comfortable when I lie on my back and the water shifts to the back of my head; when I'm upright it pools downward and is painful. I was extremely prone to ear infections when I was a kid, and I've read that the risk increases the longer the water stays in there, so I may end up seeing a doctor about it just so I don't have to put up with it anymore. Not the momento I was hoping to bring home with me from attending a fabulous party.

Diving into sewing

So I have decided to dive right in and try to sew something. I am attempting to make a "full, gathered skirt" as directed here by my new hero Gertie of Gertie's New Blog for Better Sewing. I am doing several silly things on this project. The first is that though I should probably wait for my mom to send me her sewing machine, which would make this worlds quicker and easier, I am too excited and feel like diving right in, so I will be doing it by hand. I like hand-stitching, so it might be fun. Secondly, it's probably too nice a fabric to waste on what will likely be a distrous early attempt, but it was so pretty, and on massive sale, so oh, well.

Here is the piece I cut for the body of the skirt, just a large rectangle that will be gathered into a waistband at the top and wide at the bottom. I'm hoping that the way the fabric holds its shape will make for a nice full silhouette.

I am mentally preparing myself for my first attempt to be a mess. Sewing, after all, is actually quite hard to get good at. I remember when I was in the Natick Mall with my parents this past weekend we looked at the display of outfits made by local fashion design students. Some of the designs were interesting, but I was struck by how amateurish the construction of the garments was. I commented to my mother, "My friends captainecchi* and electric_d_monk*'s work is way better." Shouldn't design students, I thought, be good at sewing? But it occurred to me then that they probably have only beeing sewing as long as they've been designing. They're probably only paying their dues hoping that they'll be able to get into a position where they don't have to do their own sewing. It just shows that sewing is hard to get good at, so it won't happen unless you're really working at it.

As a side note, "sew" is one of those words that I never pronounce properly in my head; the misleading spelling just really dug into me for some reason. Somehow I always manage to say it correctly, but when I read it in my head it always sounds like "soo."

SLAW 2010 Report

Am now back from my lovely weekend of larping at SLAW. This was kind of my weekend of "games I am not sure about," since in an effort to expand my larping horizons I signed up for all games that were not to my typical inclining. By and large this tactic was a success, and I had a very good weekend overall.

Friday night Charlotte, April, and I all played in Martha Stewart's Guide to Interdimensional Summoning (and Basting a Turkey.) Fortunately Charlotte had reminded me just before the game that it actually took place at a party and not at a business conference like I originally assumed, so at the last minute I changed my costuming plan. I thought I looked quite nice, wearing my black asymmetric cocktail dress with my white gold anniversary necklace, the nearly-matching silver infinity earrings, silver pumps with the perfectly-matching silver bag, and my silver-gray pashmina over my shoulders. Though I had a good time in it, this game was not to my taste. It was a game purely about schmoozing, with most interactions conducted solely for their own sake, which is totally fine, I just tend to prefer a little bit more plot. I did end up bonding with the demon who had been my childhood imaginary friend, but I did it mostly as a favor to him-- he needed it and I didn't, which I think may have been a common thing about demons and humans in the game. Glad I tried the game, had a nice time, but it was not exactly what I was hoping for.

Saturday morning I drove Charlotte and Ryan in early so that they could play in their morning games. I had nothing in that slot, so I decided to go cruise a nearby thrift store. It was a very nice, well-organized Goodwill, and there were lots of stuff to choose from. Unfortunately most of the things that caught my eye weren't in my size, but I find it amusing how often even in the thrift stores my eye is drawn to items from Express. Very frequently I see something I like the cut and styling of among lots of random pieces on the rack, and when I check the tag, Express is the maker with surprising frequency. I ended up taking home a fantastic black sweater with a drapey fold-over collar, two dressy knee-length skirts, one with an orange and white cloudy pattern and the other with swirls in various shades of red, and the neatest thing of all, a low-sided oval pan with a copper bottom and a stainless steel interior. It needs polishing, but this pan that looks just like it is selling for hundreds of dollars, and I snagged this one for four. Score! I'm not sure what you would call such a thing-- it's oval kind of like a gratin pan but only has one long handle, and the sides are too low for a saute pan --but I look forward to shining it up and cooking with it, which will promptly require shining it again. :-)

Pleased with my haul, I returned to WPI to grab lunch and get into costume for The Sound of Drums. I wasn't sure if it was going to be my cup of tea, and I was fairly certain I would like Two Hours in London, but natbudin* had highly recommended it and I trust the man's judgment. So, in the spirit of the Try New Games weekend, I went for it. My costume wasn't terrible, but it was weaker than my usual standard. Despite playing a sixty-plus-year-old, I did end up wearing my brown tribal-looking bikini with my brown pashmina tied around my waist like a skirt, and Charlotte kindly lent me her huge patterned green scarf to wrap around my shoulders. This mostly concealed all the decidedly-not-sixty-year-old body in the bikini, and I made some attempt to paint age makeup on my face, but I didn't white my hair and overall looked pretty much like the vain twenty-something I am. Also, I think I lost my brown and white headband scarf at the gamespace afterward, which I am annoyed with myself about.

But the game itself was excellent. The world is very full and well-thought-out. I loved my character and was incredibly busy throughout the whole game. I also had great interactions with Susan, who was my brilliant-but-mad younger sister, and Ryan, who was the troubled outsider with the haunting in his soul. I even got to use my badass spiritual strength to beat up a fallen god! It was awesome. The culture they built, with its ways and its norms that were so different and unusual, was really well-made. There was one small instance of "Christianity as the great bogeyman of non-mainstream living" that irked me, but otherwise I thought they did a really nice job of establishing the foreign people. There was also lots of interesting story told, which pretty much makes any game for me. Overall, I think this was my favorite larp of the weekend, and the one I was most glad that I took a chance on. Congrats to Tory and Lily for making it!

Saturday night was Clarence. By this point I was really dragging, energy-wise. This weekend marks the third week in a row of little sleep and poor eating, and I think I am reaching my limit. Luckily for me, Clarence is a game that is impossible to screw up, and I was playing an AGM so I could afford to be reactive rather than active. Fortunately, others were doing a fantastic job of pushing the game along. This run was blackbagged and carried off over the shoulder by electric_d_monk*, whose portrayal of the fanatically German-nationalist GM Bucher drove the events by sheer force of personality. By the end of the run, we had vampires passing on their nationalities as well as their vampirism, resulting in bronzite*'s General and rigel*'s Carmilla being determined to be genetically perfect Aryans who of course must then go on to spawn the Master Race. With the use of the time accelerator to hasten their growth, soon we had six little Ubermensches prancing about named after the Von Trapp children singing songs from The Sound of Music. And naturally, these unstoppable German supermen went on to take over the world and some surrounding planets, leaving Brewer as Kaiser of the Earth and Mars. It was a typically insane run, but the birth of the Master Race, I think, was a uniquely amusing touch.

"Allow me to explain zee rules of Der Kriegspiel."

Sunday lightgamer* was nice enough to let me ride over with him and twilighttremolo*. I was signed up for In the Jungle that day, the final game of the sort I wasn't sure what I'd think of. But I like the work of emp42ress* and simplewordsmith*, so I wanted to see what it was like. My costume was like most of my others this weekend was a little half-assed, since I tend not to keep worn-out clothes around, but I settled on an outfit that when my parents last saw me in it told me I looked like a bum. I figured that would work. It is a game about hobos, a pure conversation exercise where we do nothing more than talk to each other in character. The game was at bare minimum cast, but it was a good one, including myself, natbudin*, rigel*, nyren*, beholdsa*, and electric_d_monk*. Being in it with such good larpers helped a lot, keeping the converstion interesting and helping ease some of the awkwardness I was feeling about just having to spitball. Not something I'm certain I want to do again any time soon, but I enjoyed the experiment in this instance and I'm glad I decided to give it a try.

Now I am exhausted. I have been going at a breakneck pace for the last three weeks and I simply can't go any more. I have been kind of hoping that if I have one day where I sleep really well and eat properly it will fix my weariness and the mess my digestive system has been in, but I think I need a more consistent effort to really fix things up. Wednesday I will be going home for Thanksgiving with my brother, and I'm hoping to reset myself over that break with healthy eating and enough rest. I have things I need to get done in the near future, such as writing more Resonance characters and getting out the casting questionnaire for The Stand, but as cool as my activites have been, I think my body needs a bit more of a break before it will feel back to normal again.

"It's like I speared you-- like a fish!"

Okay, so I didn't really follow my plan (such as it was) when it came to signing up for stuff at SLAW last night. I ended up going with Martha Stewart on Friday, The Sound of Drums and Clarence on Saturday, and In the Jungle on Sunday. I blame natbudin, captainecchi, and electric_d_monk as bad influences, since I did my signing up while I was at the Fantasycraft game with them last night. I went with Sound of Drums because I'd never played a game in that sort of setting before, though I am very sad to miss Two Hours in London. Costumed Henchman was full (surprisingly one of the first to do become so) so Nat suggested I sign up for Clarence, since, as he pointed out, if I hated it, storming out because I thought it sucked would not only be acceptable but totally in character. So I figured, what the hell, why not? And Lise and I made pacts to sign up for games we weren't sure we would enjoy together, because then at least we'd have a buddy with us, and maybe we could find some way to make them fun for each other in spite of everything. Like, we're not sure we're going to enjoy In The Jungle, as we both tend not to like extremely freeform games, but we figured that we could at least get some fun out of being hobos together. :-) And I am curious how many more romance plots I will be in with Matt, as this tends to be a recurring theme. So this SLAW looks to be an interesting one!

The game last night was fun as well. I really enjoy being Ophelia, yammering on about nothing in particular and making really inappropriate observations about everything like a small child. Ophelia's exploits last night include picking the pocket of an unconscious stoner, fending off the advances of a pervy pech-fancier, pegging a fleeing assasin with my throwing dagger "like a fish in a barrel" and thereafter referring to him as "Fish," getting courted for a covert op by an elf who apparently has species-dysmorphia, and telling and retelling an acnedote involving a stolen greatsword and a barrel of pickled herring. Lise, I like this game you've got going on here. :-)

After work I will be hanging out with my family. Today will probably loosely scheduled, but I really hope we nail down what we're doing tomorrow. My parents are normally rather firm and decisive planners, but they want to spend time with my brother as well and he hasn't really gotten back to them about his availability, so they're afraid of making any plan that he wouldn't be able to go along with. :-P Hopefully we'll do something fun. I just wish we could figure out what the hell it is already.

Busy keeps me going

Had a lovely dinner party last night in the charming company of natbudin, captainecchi, and electric_d_monk. I settled on making Italian crusted pork chops as the main dish. I breaded them according to my mom's recipe, using a mixture of panko, parmesan, and Italian herbs, then threw them in a saute pan to brown. To my dismay, all the breading came off in the pan, probably because I forgot to flour the chops before the dipped them in the egg mixture. So when I placed the chops in the baking dish to finish in the oven, I scraped the lost breading out of the pan and sprinkled it over the meat. I then made up a new panko-cheese-herb mixture and shook it over them to create a new crust. This I finished with a drizzle of melted butter, then baked. They came out with a nice golden crust that way, and the slightly more well-done bits that browned in the saute pan complexified the flavor. I would like to try this same recipe doing it the way I'm supposed to sometime, but I liked how it came out even with my mistake. Also, the company was lovely, and did a great deal to make me feel better after the stress of the last few weeks. Must be certain to feed them well on a regular basis, to encourage them to make the long drive out this way again!

Was very productive this morning. I put the chicken for the picnic tomorrow in bags of marinade in preparation for cooking, cleaned the whole kitchen including mopping the floor, and folded and put away a load of laundry. Shortly I will be leaving for Medfield to have lunch with bronzite before opening day of my show. He sadly cannot make the picnic, so we'll spend some time together today instead. I am looking forward to putting on our first real performance, though I am quite certain I will crash afterward. My plan is to pour all my energy into a good performance, then go home and chill, doing nothing more strenuous than chopping vegetables for potato salad for tomorrow. If I can make it through those things satisfactorily, it will have been a very good day.

Wait, I know how to cook?

It occurs to me that I haven't done any cooking in weeks now. I hope I still remember how, because I've got quite a bit to do for this coming weekend. During the weekend of Labor Wars, natbudin* and I made a series of bets about what would happen during the game, with the understanding that the winner would make dinner for the loser. Nat won a fair number more of the bets than I did, so I have the happy task of hosting him this Friday evening. And, because I've been meaning to have them over for ages, I am having captainecchi* and electric_d_monk* over that night as well. I don't believe I've ever cooked for any of them before, so I am looking forward to taking this as an opportunity to show off. I haven't decided on the menu yet; I will do that today between work and rehearsal.

For the picnic on Sunday there doesn't really seem to be any kind of "main dish" being brought, so I think I'm going to step up and put one together. The guest list is around fifteen people at this point, so I need to figure out a dish I can make in large quantities that isn't excessively expensive. My first thought was chicken marbella, mostly because it is very delicious and requires nothing more complicated than marinating it in a bag the night before, laying it out in a pan, and baking it in the oven. Still, it requires some kind of fancy ingredients, which could push up the cost. Maybe if I can get someone to go in on it with me, it'll be a little bit more workable.

Awesome Independence Day

Had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend. Went to a fantastic party with Bernie, lightgamer*, and morethings5*, who are some of my favorite people to do anything with, let alone going to fun parties. I had a blast at this same party last year, and so was really really looking forward to going to this year's. My excitement grew when shortly before the day, captainecchi* sent out an e-mail saying we could swim in the lake if we brought our swimsuits! I was so happy we did; that was the first time I'd been swimming in over a year, and it was a lot of fun. My poor bikini doesn't get to come out and play often enough! We swam and canoed and explored islands and I didn't get the whole story but I'm pretty sure Kindness beat a bear into submission with his bare fists. ;-) It was cool. Then we came back to the house where electric_d_monk* grilled up some fantastic burgers, hot dogs, and corn on the cob. I had made my "inaccessible rice," as some are wont to call it, with the golden raisins, pecans, mint, and scallions and brought it along. And because the beef in the burgers was locally grown, lightgamer* actually got to eat one! I was happy for him, since they were damn good burgers, and I am sorry when anyone can't enjoy deliciousness. Then there were board games, fantastic strawberry shortcake, and morethings5* sweetly offering to learn how to brush out my hair. The party was a blast, the food was excellent, the company was great, and it was also lovely getting to spend time with captainecchi* and electric_d_monk*. Thanks to our gracious hosts for having such a fun gathering!

Marissa moved into Elsinore on the Fourth as well. Unfortunately I was at the party when she got in, and due to feeling sick and gross with the heat the next day I did not so much welcome her as spend the day hiding from all human contact like a small wild animal. I shall have to rectify that soon. I may also have to take steps to rectify the intense heat situation in my bedroom. For some reason, no matter what the weather, my room is always the mostly extremely affected in the house, making it an icebox in winter and a blast furnace in summer. Climate control is expensive, but it's getting to the point of unbearableness.

So much Small World

Had an excellent, busy, friend-filled weekend. Saturday there was a gaming party at Elsinore at which I spent most of the day. I made two enormous pans of what I will call baked squash in mozzarella and tomato sauce-- it's basically eggplant parmesan, except no eggplant and no parmesan --which turned out to be fortunate, as there were many more people present for dinner than I had planned. I wanted to make dinner for Plesser, who was staying a couple of nights with us before heading out. Also, Marissa came back from her year in Greece! She got too late to have dinner with us, unfortunately, but it was nice to see her again.

The next day Jared and I went to have dinner with Matt and Lise. It was so nice. Matt made the most amazing meal, squash ravioli in sage wrappers, beets with mozzarella drizzled in balsamic, and panna cotta. It was really delicious and expertly made. We put together a cornmeal cake with a balsamic glaze to take with us, as well as a bottle of chardonnay. The company was excellent, we will have to do it again sometime. The evening ended with the dessert as well as the company of Nat, Viktoriya, Kerri, and Andrew, which was so much fun.

I played so much Small World this weekend, it was great. Played two games of it at the gaming day at my place, and another at Matt and Lise's. I love this game so much. I'm still not very good at it, but I fairly consistently come in second, so I don't totally suck at it like I do at most strategy games. I kind of wish there was a solitaire version so I could play even when nobody wanted to play with me. You guys will probably find me someday camped out around a board with four different sides set up, each one of them played by me against myself. Might be a good way to practice strategy! ;-)

So much Small World

Had an excellent, busy, friend-filled weekend. Saturday there was a gaming party at Elsinore at which I spent most of the day. I made two enormous pans of what I will call baked squash in mozzarella and tomato sauce-- it's basically eggplant parmesan, except no eggplant and no parmesan --which turned out to be fortunate, as there were many more people present for dinner than I had planned. I wanted to make dinner for Plesser, who was staying a couple of nights with us before heading out. Also, Marissa came back from her year in Greece! She got too late to have dinner with us, unfortunately, but it was nice to see her again.

The next day Jared and I went to have dinner with Matt and Lise. It was so nice. Matt made the most amazing meal, squash ravioli in sage wrappers, beets with mozzarella drizzled in balsamic, and panna cotta. It was really delicious and expertly made. We put together a cornmeal cake with a balsamic glaze to take with us, as well as a bottle of chardonnay. The company was excellent, we will have to do it again sometime. The evening ended with the dessert as well as the company of Nat, Viktoriya, Kerri, and Andrew, which was so much fun.

I played so much Small World this weekend, it was great. Played two games of it at the gaming day at my place, and another at Matt and Lise's. I love this game so much. I'm still not very good at it, but I fairly consistently come in second, so I don't totally suck at it like I do at most strategy games. I kind of wish there was a solitaire version so I could play even when nobody wanted to play with me. You guys will probably find me someday camped out around a board with four different sides set up, each one of them played by me against myself. Might be a good way to practice strategy! ;-)

Festival report

On Friday night I helped captainecchi* and electric_d_monk* run the fantastic League of Extraordinary Hogwarts Students. I loved playing this game, and I only wish I'd had time to study everything more carefully. I read all the character sheets and the rules, but I still wasn't quite familiar with the inner workings of the game to be all that useful as a GM. I mostly got answers from Matt and Lise and then passed them on to players. I was particularly proud of katiescarlett29*, who stepped in as Irene Adler even though she wasn't totally confident about the improv part of larping, and of nennivian*, who I always thought was a larper waiting to happen. By and large the run went very well, with lots of activity and engaged players, but I wish I'd been intimate enough with the game to be able to give better suggestions to the couple of (usually new) players that got stuck. I wanted to talk to them after the game, but I was so blasted by gamewrap that I had to drag myself home and sleep. I have been sleeping badly lately, and I had to get up for a 9AM game the next day.

Saturday morning that 9AM game was the fifth run of Oz. It was an excellent run, one of the best, with the capable assistance of Jared and Bernie as my fellow GMs. We were a little nervous about the casting in places, but it turned out that everyone had a part they enjoyed. Standout players include the awesome natbudin*, who we initially wanted for EVERY ROLE IN THE GAME, but we finally settled into a part because he wanted to see him portray the personality-- which he did amazingly. Again, Charlotte was fantastic, showing so much talent for getting into and becoming characters. I was incredibly impressed with wired_lizard*, who played the character the way I had always imagined it to be, and gave me a few new ideas on top of that. Zachariah came up with some fantastically clever stratagies for executing his fairly difficult plotline. Hell, pretty much everyone in the game did an excellent job. I should probably stop casting bronzite* as my big bad, because I think people expect him to be the villain all the time, and so no one is inclined to trust him. In the previous run of Oz, Marc Blumberg as the villain did very well and in fact managed to achieve his goal of cataclysmic destruction, but it was more because the characters he was in opposition to made a fatal error that they could not fix. John actually pushed things farther along the doom track than anyone so far, but his opposition managed to repair it properly. I was immensely pleased with this run.

Saturday afternoon, I went home to sleep. I think it helped a little, but I was still pretty draggy for the rest of the weekend.

Saturday night was the fifth run of Alice, again assisted by Jared and Bernie. I think it went well in that players had a good time, but this was the WEIRDEST RUN EVER. Though of course there have been variations, the previous four runs tended to follow some pretty clear trends. Basically, there is a pattern of connections that is supposed to get made, and with some variance in the order in previous runs they all came together, leading to an endgame scenario where two large groups are polarized against each other. A lot of those connections did not click this time around, and I'm not sure where the broken link was. The villain was vanquished again, but not by the person who is supposed to and always has in the past. In all the previous runs, either the core villain group acted so covertly that nobody knew who they were until the end of the game, or they formed a tight-knit group so cohesive that they just overwhelmed and crushed all opposition. I feel like they were more scattered and freewheeling this time around, which made them more obvious and less able to protect themselves should someone decide they were a target. There were still some fantastic performances-- I loved Lise's analytical approach to her character and she made amazing process putting together the pieces of her challenge. And April was excellent, not to mention wearing a fantastic costume. I guess any game where the players have fun is a success, but I was really shocked at how weirdly this run went.

Then I went home to sleep. Again, my sleep has not been terribly restful these days, so still. So. Draggy. Blah.

Sunday was Diamond Geezers, the only thing I played. I had a blast. I was playing an ex-military demolitions expert whose rough, ruthless, but not terribly malicious outlook I enjoyed. It was an interestingly set-up game, basically us in a confined space with a few story hooks built in but a plot that was more or less on rails. I wasn't exactly expecting that, but it was a really fun character game, involving yelling in Cockney accents and waving guns around. We experienced an odd phenomenon that I think was troubling Brad as GM that the only ones who were talking much, at least at first, were bleemoo*, Charlotte, and myself, and everyone else was fairly quiet. I wonder if it was because the three of us were comfortable doing the accent and they felt slightly intimindated to speak if they couldn't. It's not like mine was any good at all, though Josh's and Charlotte's actually were. Josh was so much fun to play off of, and Charlotte continued to prove my theory that she has always been a larper, whether she knew it or not. Definitely recommend this game as a fun silly character experience.

Oh, as a side note, I was amused at usernamenumber pointing how at Brandeis, of course there was going to be less shooting and killing and more hand-holding and agreeing to work things out. :-) I have noticed this trend myself.

Next year I shall be con chair. I am looking forward to it. I am in the process of pondering a few thing to help optimize, which I will record when I have a better handle on my thoughts. Until then, thanks to everyone for making our very own con a fantastic experience again!

Player scarcity musing

After a pleasant Easter vacation spent at home with my family, I am now back in town and glad to be here.

This week is going to be full for me. I'm working longer hours to make up for the ones I missed to go home. And I've got to get my two games printed and packed in preparation for Festival. I'm pleased to say that even after several drops and mixups, both Alice and Oz are full. NOBODY DROP NOW. Gah. I know captainecchi* and electric_d_monk* were having similar problems, even worse than mine, but it looks like the game is good to go now. I am happy to say that Steph is going to give larping a try, which brings the number of newbies I have directly or indirectly brought to Festival up to six!

One thing that's been on my mind is how tough it's been to get games to fill. Things look like they're going to go off okay for the con as a whole, but I know a couple of games have had to drop, and a few more may yet drop still. In the course of pondering the problem, I want to point out a few facts I noticed by comparing this Festival to last year's:

- Last year's Festevil had 118 attendees. This year's Vestival has 127.
- Festevil had 26 games on the schedule. Vestival has 20. I didn't bother counting the number of players per time slot.
- Festevil was 4 weeks after Intercon I. Vestival is 5 weeks after Intercon J.
- Only 1 game at Festevil was missing more than one player. 7 games at Vestival are missing more than one player.

This year we have more attendees, fewer games, more time to prepare and solicit signups, and yet this year more games are not full? What is the problem here?

Well, several theories have been put forth. The first and probably most likely reason is that I don't think there is a single new game running this year. Most of the games on the schedule are excellent, tried-and-true larps that have been well-received, highly recommended, and already have been played by lots of the community. I know I have played a fairly large percentage already, and many of the ones that I haven't conflict with games I'm running. So I'm only available as a player in one slot, and have a number of games already discounted for me. I know a lot of us more experienced people are in the same boat.

The other thing is, I wonder if we should have started solicting people to sign up for Festival earlier than we did. It basically seemed to start just after Intercon, and although Intercon is a big deal and takes focus away from later events, it was farther away from Festival this year. Looking back through the entries of my LiveJournal, which is how I measure the progression of my life, I notice that Festival was a presence in my mind a lot farther before the date of the con last year than it was this year. It may be because I was in the process of writing two new larps for it, so I had a lot more prep work to do and therefore was planning much farther ahead. But perhaps we need to start pushing it earlier so people can block off the time on their schedules.

Something to think about in preparation for next year. I know that, as pleased as I am that Alice and Oz are both full for their fifth runs when other games have had a tough time of it, they will not be bid for next year, and probably will not be bid again at Festival for a while. I guess Intercon remains a possibility, as there are more non-local larpers, but I think they have hit, as Matt put it, market saturation. For next Festival we need to shot, I think, for more new games, to get the easy filling and high participation rate we got at last year's. Maybe I can do something to contribute to that effort.

Alice has filled!

I just noticed that Alice filled at Festival! Huzzah! We were missing one player for, like, two weeks. You don't know how pleased and proud I am by the fact that it's a large game that has had four previous runs, and it still fucking fills.

Mike Hyde gets the award for most entertaining casting questionnaires. I am also amused by how many questionnaires list that they would prefer not to have plots involving a specific despicable thing, like rape or psychological torture, but then follow up with something along the lines of "But you probably don't have anything like that in this game." Heh. To give you an idea of the nature of the story, I began my writing process by making a list of all the horrible things I could think of to see what among them I could turn into plots. ALICE IS THE GAME OF HORRIBLE THINGS.

I have also agreed to help run LXHS with captainecchi* and electric_d_monk*, about which I'm very excited. I loved playing that game and am very happy to help them. There are still a a handful of spots left for gentleman or those ladies willing to play as gentleman, so if you haven't already, I suggest you check out this excellent game!

Intercon J weekend report

Wow. What a con.

Back from Intercon now and back to the grind of regular life. I am happy, exhausted, and very thoughtful.

Friday night was Shadow Over Babylon. Not my favorite game of the weekend, but I certainly had a good time. There were lots of fun people in it to play with, which I enjoyed. One thing that occurred to me is that, having played in quite a few Cthulhu games by now, it's getting a little tougher to not metagame when playing a character who doesn't necessarily know about any of the mythos who is confronted by signs of their activity that are easily recognizable by me, the player. For example, if I see someone with clammy skin and a fishy expression, Phoebe knows right away-- Innsmouth look! There are Deep Ones around! But my character usually wouldn't have any idea, so I need to find a way to acquire that knowledge legitimately in game. I'm pretty good at waiting to use that information until I learn it in-character, but I never really thought about how, with the frequency of Cthulhu games, this is an increasingly common situation for me.

Stayed up way too late hanging with people Friday night. I think this con I felt slightly shier than normal. It may have been my imagination, but there seemed to be a fairly high number of people who I met through events like this but don't really see elsewhere whom, when I greeted them, didn't particularly seem to recognize me. Not everyone, of course, but enough. That made me feel kind of awkward about trying to talk to anyone whom I didn't have a definite preestablished relationship with, which made me kind of sad. But I enjoyed the company of those I did get to spend time with immensely.


Dragged myself out of bed early Saturday morning to play Super Villain Academy. Jared talked that game up to me after playing it last year, so I was very excited. It definitely lived up to the hype. It is a fun, silly melodrama in a comic booky context, very clever and very funny. I had kind of a tough job of trying to find people but not let on to why I wanted to know, so I had to come up with clever ways to introduce my interests for reasons unrelated to my real ends. I love plotting, so I spent a lot of time sitting in the chair thinking, then running off to try my plan, then running back to think some more, then trying my new plan. I found all of my targets, due to my clever plans, and never got caught! I was proud of myself. I also thought my costume worked out fantastically. I highly recommend this game if you ever get the chance.

After a quick lunch Saturday afternoon, I threw on my civilian clothes and ran to my gamespace to set up for Oz with Jared. I really liked the space they gave us, two small adjoining rooms with appropriate features to represent the space station. The group of players was fantastic, including a number of awesome Chicago larpers. Many plots were advanced further and many nuances came out in this run that never progressed so far before. And it's always interesting to see how people of different larp cultures approach a given material. I was surprised that many did not seem to understand the significance of character numbers-- as in, that they were something to be taken note of because they were meaningful. I use them as representative of a character's appearence; if you know a character's number, then you recognize their face. I'm including a note in the rules about that. The game ended with the galaxy blowing up. I was sorry for most of the players who did such an excellent job playing out their stories to have it all end like that, but I was impressed that the villain managed to win for once. I guess that's just Marc Blumberg for you. :-) All in all, Jared and I were quite pleased.


Saturday evening was The Last Seder. This was the game I'd been anticipating forever. I wasn't sure what I was going to think of it going in, but I knew I had to experience it. The format is unlike any I'd ever played before, alternating between a conversation game around a dinner table and a storytelling game with mini-characters you switch into the act out smaller tales. It is beautifully written and ingeniously designed. I was also impressed with the respect and reverence with which the religious material was approached, making it an interesting and enjoyable cultural experience as well. I'm not certain however that the structure really worked for me. It was really cool to have these stories inform the direction of the game, but having to march into another room and play out another character for a moment kind of broke the flow for me. The fact that I was incredibly tired by this point, which I think inclined my roleplaying to be sadder than I might have otherwise, may have contributed to my dislike of the interruption. Jared actually suggested that it might be less flow-breaking if one set of players played the main characters and another set of players made up a horde that performed the stories for them. I find that an interesting idea that I would probably prefer from a cast-character-player and presentation standpoint, but from a larp standpoint you'd probably end up with a horde that was bored during the conversation bits. Not to mention you might lose the significance of when the cast characters actually appear in the stories. Overall, an excellent, beautifully written game in an unconventional style that may not be to everyone's taste and may not even be to mine, but one I am very glad to have played and experienced at least this once.

I went to bed pretty much right after game wrap. So very, very tired. I'm sorry I missed the social time, but I was collapsing. I'm just not the sort of person who can get by without sleep, especially when I can't have my typical source of caffeine.


Sunday morning I got up as early as I could and helped Jared do some last minute prep for GM Space. I was going to play, but they turned out to have enough players after all, and I was still not terribly well-rested, so I jumped in for a sec and then left. I had to take care of getting us checked out of the hotel room anyway. Luckily I ran into our roommate oakenguy* as he was getting ready to leave, so I gave him a hug and thanked him for being so much fun to hang around with. Seriously, we were lucky to room with him. I made sure everyone was set, then got things taken care of at the front desk, which was a load off my mind. GM Space had some issues with personality conflicts and differences with player expectations, which Jared worried over, but most of them had a good silly time and none of the issues were his fault, or anything he could do anything about, so I told him not to worry about just be pleased that so many enjoyed his game.

All in all, it was a lovely weekend that I enjoyed immensely. The negatives were only very minor. I discovered when I arrived I didn't pack quite as well as I thought I did; there were a bunch of little things I forgot to take into account, like making sure I was wearing the right underwear to be able to change in front of roommates if necessary, or having at least one pair of flat shoes so my feet could have a break from heels. I'm pretty disappointed with myself for that, especially since I thought I'd been so careful. I should write myself a packing list now to use every year so I don't make those stupid mistakes again.

Also, I have concluded from this Intercon is that I cannot cram my schedule with as much as I did this weekend and maintain an acceptable level of energy. I played in three and a half games (played in GM Space until they had enough to be up and running) in addition to GMing Oz, and all that on top of how little sleep I got, I was so very, very draggy through much of the time there. Last Festival I did something in every slot, running four things and playing one, and as exhausted as I was by the end of it, it was a little easier on me because I've always found running less intense and demanding than playing, and because for that con I was allowed to have Coke with its lovely boost of caffiene. I imagine Anna Bradley at the end of this con was like, "WHY do we have so much extra Coke left over?" because it's still Lent, which means I'm still not allowed to have sugar, which means I couldn't go through the typical six liters or so that normally support my energy level over the course of Intercon. Unfortunately I can't abide the taste of coffee, so it wasn't available as a substitute. My ideal weekend schedule is playing two things and running one, I think. I can stand running more, but I can definitely play in no more than three events, and if I'm playing in three, then I'm not sure I want to add anything else by running. Does anyone else find that being the GM is easier than being a player? Or is it vice versa for you? I think for me, it's because being a player is active-- you have to take initiative and figure out what to do yourself --but being a GM is reactive-- you wait for the players to come to you, and everything else have already been figured out in advance.

Dead dog could have gone a little more smoothly, but concerning that I must say only that captainecchi*, electric_d_monk*, and laurion* are amazing and I thank them for how sweet they were. Tiredness and unnecessary struggles got to Jared and I by the end of it, but still, we loved the con, we loved the company, and we're excited, as always, for next year.

Next year in the Waltham Westin!

Bids accepted, whee!

Suddenly remembered I had a silver polishing cloth that I got with that bird brooch, and decided to see if it could do any good to my slightly tarnished silver pieces. I was shocked at how much tarnish came off into the cloth on some of them, like my infinity earrings which didn't even look very dull. I had no idea coming into contact with me could cause such corruption. ;-) The piece that really needs it is my silver-set amber necklace, though as much is coming off into the cloth the metal didn't seem to get much shinier. Maybe it just needs a lot more work than I had time to do before needing to leave this morning. Perhaps I'll give it a shot this afternoon.

In pleasing news, our wonderful bid chair (possibly all of bid comm?) bleemoo* just informed me that Alice and Oz have been accepted and will be running this April at Festival of the Larps. Now I may commence bullying everyone I know who hasn't played into signing up. Though there are certainly more than a few experienced larpers I've yet to wrangle into my worlds, my first thoughts are April, nennivian*, and blendedchaitea*, all of whom have expressed at least mild interest. I know katiescarlett29* has reservations about trying larping, but she is of course welcome and encouraged as well.

Now that bids are getting approved, I am now intensely curious as to what else is going to be running. We're probably a ways away from a schedule being put together yet, but I'm still very interested at what the list currently looks like. I remember captainecchi* and electric_d_monk* telling me they were rerunning the awesome League of Extraordinary Hogwarts Students (with some additions that sound absolutely fantastic) and lightgamer* was looking in the gamebank for something to bid. If anyone else threw something out there, I'd love to know what it is.

Last Saturday and Sunday

Saturday I threw a "meet the new roommate" dinner at Elsinore. We now have our last roommate Miriam, while Bernie just got a new roommate RJ, so we thought we'd invite them to dinner and make nice. We did it potluck, which was easier on the ol' pocketbook, but tougher on my "I want to control every aspect of the menu so it's up to my quality standards" instinct. It came out pretty tasty anyway, with grilled steaks, brussel sprouts, bread, and other good things. And I didn't have to spend the whole day cooking. I also know Jared has been itching to do social things with all the friends he hasn't seen in three months, so I'm glad he had a good time. After dinner we ate cheesecake and watched Clue-- an excellent thing for me, since I can study it for ideas on how to write my next game. The murder mechanic may be assisted by figuring out how it occurred int he film and trying to simulate that somehow. We're still figuring it out.

Sunday I piled Jared, Bernie, and Emma into my car and drove to Lunenburg to attend an excellent board gaming party thrown by Matt and Lise. I really don't get to see them enough, so I was very excited for this get-together. I only played one game but I liked being with people even more. I had a very nice time talking to Vicky, with whom I clearly don't seem to do that enough. And Lise and Matt served delicious beef shish kebobs; I think I must get the recipe. Unfortunately Jared and I couldn't stay for more than a few hours, because he had promised to help out Hold Thy Peace at the Activities Fair.

Again, I am extremely proud of HTP's new e-board. They were right there giving their all for the entire Fair, and they roped in quite a few names on the mailing list as well as the audition sheet for Romeo and Juliet. I signed up, though I haven't decided what piece to audition with. Or what to say on my casting questionnaire-- if anything in particular. It makes me glad to see so many people going out; it increases the chances of getting real talent, and means we won't be so pressed for just the simple number of necessary actors.

So, after all that, I am tired. I think I am going to spend the evening tonight at home recharging. I need some unscheduled time for a little while. Too long without it and I start losing equilibrium.

First contradance

Went contradancing with morethings5 last night, and got to see captainecchi, electric_d_monk, natbudin, and v_cat. It's something I've been wanting to try for a while, and when Lise mentioned it recently I figured now was a good time. The dancing turned out to be really fun, and not too terribly difficult to pick up. It probably helped that Jonathan very kindly showed me how the steps beforehand, so when the caller called them out, they were a lot easier for me to follow. He was such a good partner. :-) Unfortunately, by the end of the fourth dance I got so dizzy I was slightly motion sick, which worsened with the car ride home, and didn't go away until I finally fell asleep. Blast my so very fragile equilibrium.

Still, it was fun and fantastic exercise. And Nat showed me this really cool iPhone application that helps track calorie intake and burn when you're working out and watching what you eat. I'm thinking it might be worth downloading, at least to get an idea of what sort of numbers attach. I've had weird eating habits in the last week or so, but I have been working out pretty consistently. That reminds me, I need to keep taking weekly pictures to monitor my tummy progress.

I love parties...

The rage, she is dealt with. I am myself again. :-)

I have had a lovely, action-packed weekend. Fourth of July was spent at the excellent gathering of captainecchi and electric_d_monk. A combination of good company, good food, and lovely hosts made for a wonderful time for me. Many thanks to them. I went with lightgamer and morethings5, who could not have been more fun to be with. It's funny, everytime I go to a party I think, "I love parties! I should throw more of them." So I have gatherings, and they're fun and I'm glad I did them, but they're kind of expensive and labor-intensive, so I say, "Okay, no more hosting for a while." Then I go to another good party and think "I love parties! I should throw more of them." :-) The next day was spent hanging out with Marissa, then an impromptu cookout with her, Kindness, Matt, and the Daves, and later Kindness showed a strange Swedish movie about twelve-year-old vampires. It was interesting and cool; I love weird stuff.

Had my first rehearsal for Macbeth last night. It was nice, we read through the script and met each other. Everyone seemed really nice and talented, and I think I'm going to enjoy working with them. I'm the only one who was cross-cast out of everyone, which I find interesting. I have another rehearsal Thursday night, which makes me sad because if there's BSCF I'll miss it, but whatever.

I should really throw a party... :-)

FOTL Report - Oz

I'll be honest, I cast Oz mostly by feel; I checked the casting questionnaires mostly to make sure I wouldn't stick someone in a part they'd hate, and then went with my instincts. I think by and large it worked, at least with people I got a chance to talk to afterward. I took particular care with captainecchi, seeing as I screwed up casting her for Alice in the first run and gave her a character she couldn't play. Fortunately, Oz had somebody absolutely perfect for her, and I was very pleased with the way she played it. She had a tough job in game, and came very close to getting it done.

One thing I found and will have to modify for the next run is that there is such a thing as too much gamespace. As with Alice, I had the entire building of Golding, but unlike Alice, fifteen players do not fill space in the same way that twenty-seven do. The place felt strangely empty, and I was worried it meant that people weren't busy enough. It turned out that most people felt they did have enough to do; it was just that they were so spread out that not as much appeared to be going on. That will have to be remedied; I like the feeling of bustle.

The one thing I did find useful about the space was that there was an ampitheater classroom with a projector screen in it. I made this the window of the viewing deck on the Emerald Station and had a series of slides depicting space just outside. I liked it very much and thought it added a lot to things. The game, as was pointed out to me by the lovely v_cat, who was by the way excellent in her role, turned out to be very GM-heavy, which was not my intention, but she's right, that needs to be corrected. The trouble with most things in that vein was that while I did a good job hammering out the plot stuff, I ran out of time when it came to mechanics. The first editing job required will be the fix all the stuff that was in my head but I never managed to get on paper. I'm very grateful to Bernie, not only for helping me GM, but for helping as well as he did when I didn't have time to get him as well up to speed as I should have. Another mechanic that I borrowed from Lise and electric_d_monk-- who was, by the way, exactly what I pictured for his role-- I need to hammer out a little better as well, but I liked it very much in theory and think I can get it where it needs to be. The role that had the most to do with that mechanic was played by in_water_writ, for whom the personality is just amazingly perfect.

By and large, I am pleased. Some editing I believe is all that is required to smooth out the mechanical issues. Also, there is the matter of all the people who didn't get in and would like the play. I would love to run this again as soon as possible, if there is some time and space before the end of the year.

Next-- Saturday afternoon run of Paranoia

Intercon report

Friday night - All's Well That Ends - This really was an excellent game. It was incredibly thickly plotted, and it seemed like pretty much every character felt like they were important and involved in significant things. I loved the setting, and the way the history was interpreted for dramatic effect. I was Robert Floode, a successful boy actor on the Elizabethan stage, and I very much enjoyed my entanglement in the theater world. Also, I always enjoy having the chance to interact with electric_d_monk, who had the role of Mr. William Shakespeare. I was genuinely cross-cast for the first time, and a role like mine is actually probably better suited to it than most. Additionally, it's games like these that really point out how the management of information can really affect a game. I tend to be an inveterate liar in larps, mostly to manipulate people, but sometimes you manipulate them more by telling the absolute truth. I got a fundamentally honest character to to tell me everything she knew by answering all her questions completely frankly. Amazing how one thing works well in some instances and another works better in others. AJ, the author and GM, is not only an excellent writer but an incredibly charming guy; I'd love to get the materials from him and run it myself here at Brandeis sometime, and from a quick conversation I had with him it seemed like he'd be okay with that.

Saturday morning - Muppet Purgatory - Unfortunately I did not have quite as good a time in this game. It was a horde game in which I was cast as horde, but-- obvious as it may seem --I like being horde in good hordes, I really don't like it in not-so-good hordes. The horde in this game was not written to allow a lot of interaction with other characters, and a lot of the time if someone didn't get the Muppet reference the character was making, either you had no idea how to play it or no one knew how to respond to you. Not my kind of horde. I think the cast characters must have been better, as the cast seemed to being having a lot of fun, but they were also played by some really strong larpers-- oakenguy as Fozzie, Margaret Simkins as Miss Piggy, Jim MacDougal as Gonzo, and the guy I didn't know who played Animal was absolutely amazing. Poor Nomi as Kermit had to run around herding cats trying to get us all out onstage, and Adina and Laura made a really good Statler and Waldorf. I liked the performative aspects of it, when you went out on stage with an act-- I got to play in a D&D game run by Animal, and sing the Internet is For Porn, among other things --but the horde just wasn't strong enough to stand without the context of the presentations. So not a great game, but probably some would have fun with it, and not really the game for me.

Saturday evening - League of Extraordinary Hogwarts Students - I had a blast in this game. I heard reports of Matt and Lise working on this game over the past year and grew progressively more excited for it as time went on that I couldn't not sign up for it. I loved the Victorian pastiche part of it, and they wove it very skillfully into the Harry Potter setting. I was the Cheshire Cat, and got to wear my sexy kitty costume that got more than a few approving looks. ;-) i had enough plot to give me a direction, and then the total freedom to pursue what interested me and stick my nose in other people's business. It was a very interesting character in its function and capabilities, and I loved getting to figure out how to use my situation to my best advantage. I had an ability that was both very powerful and incredibly abuseable, and I surprised myself by how much I used it during the game, but I worked very hard to not screw anybody with it. I followed around the guy who played Auguste Dupin a lot, as well as Marc Blumberg as Professor Moriarty, partly because they had interesting mysteries and partly because they were just fun to interact with. Among those that impressed me were those two, Margaret (as always) as Artemisia Black, the guy who played Watson, and Jared in his incredibly cool character that I ended up having a really fun time with. The one real criticism I had involved the deduction mechanic, which was a great idea and worked well, but there was just so much of it to get done that it tended to eat up a lot of time. I like the concept of it, though, and I'm considering asking if I can adapt it for something in Oz. Heh, as a side note, there was an incredibly cool moment right before the game that I was in my Cheshire Cat costume standing in front of Matt and Eager Mike-- my two Cheshire Cats. I am extremely amused to think that Matt was my original Cheshire Cat, and I was in the first run of his.

Sunday morning I wasn't in any game, but I did watch the second run of GM Space. It ran beautifully yet again, and I am incredibly proud of how strong that horde is. I think everyone who played it enjoyed it, even the players who typically don't like horde games. Socially I felt like I got to talk and hang with a lot of great people. Jared and I chatted a lot with David Cave, who played the March Hare in the second run of Alice, who is trying to finish a larp of his own. It was also great getting to see Marc Blumberg, who impressed the hell out of me as the White Rabbit. I wanted to talk more to Margarat Simkins, but she just kind of got away from me even though we were in two games together. One of the best things was that I got to be with Matt and Lise, who I haven't seen in a really long time and have really missed. They were excellent company, and I want to talk to them more about their game. The dead dog, organized by londo, was very nice. This weekend I also made a point of hanging with bronzite because I haven't seen him in a while, and I wanted to hear about how it was to do Iron GM. His team, I Escaped from Arkham, won the contest, and now I'm very curious about their game. I also chatted with the dude from Mystical Journeys in the black and purple cyberpunk getup, who maintains the fact that he was flirting shamelessly with me is proof positive of how he was not part of his fellow's speculation that my age was fifteen. *Grumble* Stupid Alice pants making me look like a scrawny shapeless kid. It was also really nice to just be able to just be with Jared, hanging with people, playing games, and not worrying quite so much. We both had a bit of con crash afterward, I think because we had to be plunged back into the grind of work and stress, but for the timebeing it was a really nice diversion. He busted out an impression of someone at the dead dog that cracked up those of us still lingering.

So yeah, it sucks to be back to the grind, but overall, good con, and thanks to everyone that helped make it so.