Intercon M con report

Friday night was The Serpent's Spiral. It had a very engaging description and a neat historical setting, the nineteen teens in an Ireland torn apart by war. I noted with amusement when I arrived that most other ladies were as unsure of the proper costuming for the period as I was, and most either decided to go with something more late Victorian, which was a bit too early, like I did, or more markedly 1920s, which was a bit too late. I did get a ton of compliments on my hat, which was my black ostrich feather derby bonnet with my handmade fascinator stuck around the brim. I was having a good time in the first two hours of the game, but my character ran out of plot hard about then. Also two of her biggest emotional hooks are NPCs that no one else seems to know about. The game as a whole has a slight problem in that a strange uberplot begins to take over after that point, and if you have no connection to it, you get a bit shut out. I had a little bit of information in regard to it, but once I threw it out there, most characters had no further use for me. Also, personal plots become harder to pursue when people are busy trying to save the world. But I think the game has good bones, just needs a little restructuring to be sufficiently inclusive.

Saturday morning was A Garden of Forking Paths by Alleged Entertainment, my favorite game of the con. This has the interesting structure of presenting a series of binary choice points that play out in very short scenes and lead to branching timelines of action. There are three groups of the same four characters that create three versions of these people's lives, and by switching the various fillers of each role around in the three groups, you get three different timelines for comparison at the end. The emotional journey was so well-written that it was very compelling, and the choice points were sufficiently binary and the scenes short enough that they felt like they reflected player agency rather than cut it off (which I usually feel like it does.) My favorite part was playing characters who aged over the series of scenes and even died to be replaced by her own granddaughter, so I got to be a mature mother, an old woman, a kid, a teenager, and a young woman all in the course of the game. I was pretty proud of my acting there, as I think I did a good job differentiating each life stage in a believable manner. Alleged Entertainment scores again; I highly recommend this game.

Saturday night was Desperadoes Under the Eaves, based on the songs of Warren Zevon. I was more plot-light than I tend to prefer, but the regular old roleplaying opportunities in this game made up for that. I had lots of fun conversations with lots of people, through most of which my character was high off her ass. I confess my boring goody-goody lifestyle makes it so I have only the vaguest idea how high people act, and I may have been no more than a hilarious caricature, but it was silly fun and I think I got the point across.

Saturday morning had two games for me. The first of which was our Iron GM game, which I can now reveal to be titled Agent Bobo of the Resistance! It's a two-hour game about ten-year-old Billy Oberlin who's having trouble adjusting to all the changes in his life, new stepfamily, new school, new everything. He's become a bit withdrawn, so he acts out his issues with his toys. The players in the game play those toys who, after experiencing how angry and difficult Billy's fantasy games have become, must put their heads together to tell a new story in Billy's playtime to help him deal with his problems in a more constructive way. It's a very odd game, but we got really lucky with our players, who bought into the concept and ran with it really well. We even won third place in the competition! I was happy and proud of us. We'll be running this again at Festival if you'd be interested in stepping into Billy's troubled little world.

In the second Sunday slot, I ran my new silly two-hour game, Break a Leg. It was a very successful run, and it actually went a lot more like I'd originally expected the game to work than the first run did. They did lots of fun silly things, but they pursued the "put together a show" plot as much as I had planned for them to. Whatever, the game works either way! Everyone was extremely funny, and the game is flexible enough to accommodate whatever kind of humorous play style you prefer. Highlights include hanging a dusty old skeleton from the fly system to use as a marionette, and the finale of the show being the entire theater burning to the ground. It is running at Festival as well, and is already full. I'd be willing to throw a second run in there somewhere if it's needed, and I'm even considering adding some more characters if I can figure out who they should be.

And those were my games! Thanks to everyone for playing and running! It's the community that makes everything strong.

New characters for Break a Leg?

As I mentioned in my Intercon M con report, I'm considering adding new characters to Break a Leg. I felt a pretty big weight off my shoulders when I submitted my second packet of assignments for school on Tuesday, so I think two short little character sheets for a silly larp wouldn't be too big a burden to take on. The question is, who would they be?

Most of the characters in that game are drawn from the play they are based on, Merely Players. Cornelia the director became Cornelia/Cornelius Finch. Audrey the stage manager is Audrey/Aubrey McCaffey. Malcolm the leading man became Malcolm Standish. Dionyza the diva became Diana Caruso. Arcite became Nicholas/Nicolette Arcite. Orlando the lover became Oliver Hollyhock. There is no analogue to Sylvia the ingenue, because she served as straight man in that play and I was afraid that might not be a fun role in a silly larp. The three techie characters in the show, Valeria, Cressida, and Charmian, were not used for similar reasons, and were instead replaced by Winky, who is instead the techie stereotype of "inscrutable weirdo." ;-) The eight character is wholly original, the fast-talking producer Stella/Stellan Moreau.

So that leaves the question of what the theoretical new characters could be. I suppose I could experiment with including a Sylvia character, try to figure out a way to make her funny to play in this context and just consider her inclusion a test to see if she works. If she doesn't, I could always cut her back out. Or I could brainstorm what positions in the theater I haven't created a character to represent yet and see if I can write a character around the heretofore unused job. There are also a couple of NPCs in the game that could theoretically be turned into PCs. As it is, most of the those are designed to be time-released, or only present intermittently, and I'm not sure how they would work if they were present all the time. But maybe there's a way to rework them--

Oh. Just thought of how I could make one work. Ha. That could be funny. Ha.

Okay, there's something to this. I can think of at least one new character I can include. I'd like to have at least two, but I guess there's no rule.

Second round sign ups open tonight. It might depend on whether or not I get a waitlist. If I get one or two more people, I might say what the hell and just up the player count to let them in.