Costuming arrived!

My costume for Clockwork Cafe came in yesterday! I am very pleased with it. It's a gray knee-length Asian-style dress with a lavendar floral pattern over it that fits just perfectly. The dress was actually made by a Chinese company, so I am glad I thought to check the sizing before ordering. I went for the medium instead of the small or extra small I wear in American sizing, and thank God for it. (Damn, they must be little in China.) It clings a little tightly to my boxy ribcage (probably my least favorite physical feature, grumble, grumble) but otherwise looks good. With its arrival, it means I am totally ready with costuming for Intercon.

It also occurs to me that since my only other game as a player is in the morning on Saturday, and my costume is regular street clothes, I will be able to get dressed to go to the con and not have to worry about changing for the rest of the day. That is convenient. It might be fun to dress cowboy to run The Stand, but I don't think I'm going to worry about it. Well, maybe I'll wear a hat. I like cowboy hats.

Finished the rule sheet yesterday and sent it out this morning. Now all that remain are the last few sheets. Gotta buckle down and get 'er done.

Stand blah

So in The Stand, a lot of the plot in the game is driven by what dead people or distant characters or otherwise NPCs did in the past that has had strong consequences on the PCs. There's this one NPC who I knew when I originally conceived of it would be the author of some troubles in game due to some personal issues. But as the game developed, I discovered that this character could create even more plot if I made it have even worse issues. I keep making the character more and more twisted because it develops more storyline with every twist. But it's really funny to me how screwed up this person has become given my original plan, and especially given the outward persona the character had. Twisted for my convenience!

Why is that I write a larp, then don't write a larp for a year, then write TWO LARPS AT ONCE GAH DYING OF WRITING... then I write a larp, then don't write a larp for a year, then write TWO LARPS AT ONCE GAH DYING OF WRITING again? I am not sure this is the healthiest pattern. It does mean, however, that by Intercon K I will have been an author for six games-- Alice, Oz, Paranoia, Labor Wars, Resonance, and The Stand. Four four-hours, one six-hour, one weekend-long. Three alone, three in groups.

One kind of game I've been wondering about lately is the conversation game-- the sort of game where there isn't really plot, but the whole point is to just roleplay out interpersonal relationships. Generally I perfer games with more narrative than this kind, but I have had fun in them in the past. I wonder if I could write one that was sufficiently engaging to be fun even without much plot. It feels like not having to worry about plot so much would be a welcome break, but probably creating enough substance to just make the interpersonal relationships interesting enough to carry the conversation would be just as hard. It would be an interesting challenge for me. Maybe at some point I'll try to write one. Something short, like two hours, just to see if I could do it.