Intercon P con report, part III - The Inversion of Me and My Room

The only game I actually played this Intercon was a game by wired_lizard on Saturday night, The Inversion of Me and My Room. I admire her larp writing so much she is on my short list of GMs whose games I will always sign up for regardless of what they're about. This is a tough game to talk about without spoiling it, so I'll do my best.

You know very little about this game going in, so you just kind of need to be ready for it to wash over you. I don't think it gives anything much away to say that it's basically traveling through various stages of a dream state, where hidden meaning slowly rises to the surface and the world is highly symbolic instead of literal. It's structurally on rails, with various phases you pass through with more information being revealed at each point. You also cycle between characters through the phases, at least on the surface, in a way that's related to the meaning of each stage.

My only struggle that I tend to have with Tory's games is that the plot usually relies on a lot of complicated metaphysics that make up the rules of the world. I am NOTORIOUSLY bad at keeping stuff like that in my head, and unfortunately that has put me at a disadvantage to playing in the past. This time, however, the metaphysics were much simplified, and not hard to absorb the necessary information about quickly and in the moment. I appreciated that.

It's hard to really explain what's going on, as you don't know until very late what the real deal is. But I enjoyed the ride of the game, and I recommend players go through it experientially, just taking things as they come. I enjoyed seeing the layers of meaning slowly become clear, and found it interesting to see how the writer chose to represent the ideas that were surfacing in the dream. I also admired Tory for allowing it to run the amount of time it needed in each moment, without artificially pushing it along or trying to stretch it out. Overall, a very good and interesting game that was outside of my typical narrative box. I recommend it.

New post on Mrshawking.com -- "Creator interview on Radio of Horror"

In the course of our productions for Arisia 2016, I gave an interview on the plays with Dr. Chris of Radio of Horror about what makes the story interesting and where we hope to take it.

To hear this ten-minute interview, catch this recording of our conversation on YouTube.

tubeembed

This was given in anticipation of our performances this past January, but it's also a good primer on the series if you're interested in catching us at the Watch City Steampunk Festival this May. For more of Dr. Chris's Radio of Horror show, check 91.3 FM WCUW in Worcester, MA.

Mrs. Hawking and Vivat Regina will be performed on May 7th as part of the Watch City Steampunk Festival 2016 in Waltham, MA.