All Eyes on Me

Signal boosting, from a message passed on to me by denimskater:


Arisia LARP Town Hall
Thursday May 7th from 7-9pm at MIT in the Whitaker Building (Building 56), room 154.

Help shape the future of LARP at Arisia. This Town Hall style event will be an open discussion on the challenges and rewards of running LARP content at Arisia. Can Arisia do LARP well? If so, what needs to change? If not, should Arisia do LARP at all? Open to all of the Arisia community (attendees, volunteers, participants, and those who've never been to Arisia before, but are interested!)

Kris "Nchanter" Snyder, the Arisia 2016 convention chair, will be available prior to the meeting starting at 6pm for people to chat with her informally on any topic pertaining to Arisia

Topics covered at the town hall are likely to include:

* Ideal blue-sky LARP scene at the convention. (E.g. what would the LARP community want to see at a January convention in Boston, and what is a realistic LARP presence that could happen in the next 2-3 years.)
* Space and time constraints that Arisia has.
* Boffer vs Theater, One Shot vs. Campaign, Cast vs. Horde games – How to get more diverse game styles involved
* Support for more experimental LARP layouts, like multi-room things / across the hotel.
* Setting expectations for what is expected of the LARPs that participate at Arisia

Hope to see you there!

-Kris "Nchanter" Snyder
Arisia 2016 Convention Chair

The first of the two games I played at Festival was Sky No Longer Blue, a science fiction amnesia game by laura47, ocelotspots, and Peter Litwack. There's not a ton I can say about it without spoiling it, but I was very impressed with it.

It takes place on a spaceship (well, not actually in space, but it has that kind of feel) with a high level of attention to making the space feel diagetic. The ship has workings and dimensions, often that need to be interacted with and maintained in order to travel from place to place. It had a lot of atmosphere, kind of like the Alien movies-- there was a sense of threat coming from somewhere, but you didn't fully understand where it was or what was causing it. I was impressed that they were able to achieve that.

I liked my character, and I very much enjoy having an in-game challenge where I need to manipulate others and lay groundwork so that I can do the thing I need to do. In life it's not acceptable to be like that, but I kind of get a kick out of knowing I'm capable of it in a safe context. I liked that they gave you enough information in the environment to make deductions and get information; that aspect was very well designed. The beginning of the game was a touch slow for me, as the ship required fixing, but I had no relevant skills. Also I knew what I needed to do but needed to wait for certain things before I could do anything. That was a bit frustrating, waiting for other people to do things so I could act on my ideas. But other than that, the game is well-designed, really atmospheric, and I enjoyed it.

The first round of signups for Festival of the Larps opens at 7PM this evening! I am excited to see how players make their choices. Remember that you have to sign up for the convention before you are allowed to sign up for individual events.

I hope some of you will consider playing in either or both of my two games, Brockhurst on Friday night or Woodplum House on Saturday morning. Brockhurst is a story-heavy narrative game of fairly standard form, set in a great house in Yorkshire during the First World War. Woodplum House is a light, frothy two-hour comedic game in a fanciful 1920s setting like Blandings Castle or the Jeeves and Wooster stories.

It occurs to me that other than the stark difference in tone-- Brockhurst, like most of the greater Breaking History universe to which it belongs, is a period drama, while Woodplum is a silly absurd romp --there is no reason why Woodplum could not be part of that same world. Heck, Woodplum takes place in 1922, less than ten years after Brockhurst, and in Shropshire like the Blandings stories, making it not difficult not to contradict anything in Brockhurst's Downton-Abbey-inspired Yorkshire. And nothing in the nature of the universe is all that different from anything that's possible in Breaking History. Again, other than the rather ENORMOUS tonal difference, there is theoretically no reason why Woodplum couldn't be devolving into freewheeling absurdity while Josie Jenkins is cutting it up in Chicago, or while the next generation of the Bellamys is working out their place in the changed world.

What am I going to sign up for, you ask? Well, I think I'm going to try not to take up too much space as a player, since the counts this year are a bit lighter than they've been in some years. But I would like to play Sky No Longer Blue on Saturday night, since I've never had the chance before. So that will likely be my action for tonight. Other than that, I may play nothing, or maybe I'll help fill a game that needs a player. We'll see how it shakes out!

Saturday night I played in Spring River, the newest from Alleged Entertainment, written by natbudin, emp42ress, simplewordsmith, and v_cat. I always try to play their stuff, at least when I'm not on the writing team myself, as they do some excellent innovative stuff with the form of larp. I was actually invited to be on the team for this one, which I regretfully had to decline due to other commitments, but the upside was I got to play in it.

The premise of the game is that every player is one personality trait within a complete character, so four of you make up one complete person who must battle it out to figure out what decisions your shared person will make. While not on rails, there are few secrets in the game, and you are actively encouraged to temporarily drop out of character to plan what the most dramatic trajectory for your person. By the end your character will have lived a mostly complete life as determined by how the various personality traits determine their choices.

I was cast as Noah's Hedonism, a role that I was not immediately sure how to approach. I didn't want to go creepy or gross, and I didn't want to box myself into something repetitive that wouldn't be applicable in all situations. Like, if I chose to interpret it as fixated on, like, animal appetites, like always wanting to go off and have sex or eat or something, it would get old fast and I wouldn't have much to contribute to actual conversations. So I decided to go with the idea of "I want what I want when I want it," with no ability to suck it up and deal in situations I didn't want to be in. Being obsessed with pleasure, in this case, meant always wanting to do the comfortable, pleasant, easy thing, rather than ever work, struggle, or suffer. I found this to be a workable perspective in the context of the game.

It was clear from the beginning that I was the worst part of Noah-- the weakest, the most immature, the most wrong. I believe I existed, from a game design standpoint, as the force of conflict in Noah's brain, as the others were his Idealism, his Nuturing, and his Competitiveness. I played it like a self-centered teenager, and whiny, loud, and actually pretty funny, advocating for the easy, fun, impulsive choices. This had the effect, I think, of establishing me as both really absurd, and always wrong. I think that made sense, as I knew I was the shoulder devil of the group. All that seemed to work, and I think I did a pretty good job of it. I even think I was the only person to make in-character use of the fact that we were all tied together at the wrist. When they were having a boring conversation I didn't want to be in, I pulled as far away as I could and slumped on the floor so that they couldn't forget my deadweight pulling on them; when I wanted them to go my way, sometimes I tried to pull them over towards me by it. But I have to say, I ended up having probably the strangest moment I've ever had in a larp because of it.

There was a moment where my team seemed inclined to go down a path that I as Hedonism felt was not just a pain, but CATACLYSMIC for our character. We'd become too workaholic, our stress was huge and we weren't really enjoying our life, our family, or anything. Since this was such an extreme moment, I decided that was the point that Hedonism would throw a fit. I mostly had just whined and made demands up to then, so I thought the time had come to escalate. And that's where the strangeness started. They literally ignored me. They didn't just tell me they weren't going to do what I wanted; they started talking to each other and paid no attention to me at all. So I escalated. I actually started yelling things like, "I NEED YOU TO TAKE CARE OF ME." And they STILL ignored me, despite the fact that I had, albeit in a whiny obnoxious fashion, descended into nakedly begging to be addressed. That was the moment that Phoebe was yanked outside of the character of Hedonism for a moment and became really aware of the circumstances. And believe it or not, I experienced my first-ever moment of bleed in a larp.

I'm pretty much ninety-nine percent bleed-proof in larps; I am a technique actor, not method. But, if you know me at all, you probably know that about half of everything I do is influenced by the desire to prove to the universe that I am not lazy or needy-- basically trying to avoid anything that could ever be construed as hedonism. Not that it's exactly the same, but I never want to be the kind of person who imposes on other people for their own comfort. As Hedonism in that moment, I was doing exactly that. It was totally in character for Hedonism, but not only would Phoebe NEVER demand to be taken care of, but she's fairly convinced that it's the fastest way to give people contempt for you. So they'd never actually indulge that. So Phoebe had a weird moment where she saw people ignoring Hedonism's BEGGING for care and it confirmed for her that deep-set fear and belief of, "Wow. Even if you're desperate, you really can't expect help from anyone. They won't be there." And that caused that weird emotional bleed through where Hedonism's situation made Phoebe have a little moment of upset.

Now, it totally made sense for my scene partners to act that way. As I said, my performance taught them to regard Hedonism as both absurd and always wrong. And while it made sense to me that Hedonism wanted to be heard in that moment, I was not feeling like other players were being unfair in any way; I certainly didn't care that I wasn't getting my way. Ultimately, Hedonism pointed out that they NEVER gave in to what Hedonism wanted, and it was about damn time. It led to the other characters realizing that they'd never fed their desire to feel good and have fun and it had boiled over. I think it's notable that while many traits, such as Nuturing/Overbearing in Noah, had both a positive and negative aspect specified to them. Hedonism only had the negative, but it occurs to me that the positive side of it could be considered to be "Self-care." And that part definitely got neglected in Noah! And you know, having that be a crisis point actually gave an interesting turn to our character's story. He NEEDED to struggle through this problem, and that conflict shaped our arc. As natbudin pointed out, it led to a startlingly diagetic representation of a midlife crisis.

So I really liked this game. While I'm not really in larp for bleed, I prefer to just tell compelling stories, it was interesting that this happened to me. And I loved the acting challenge the strange role offered. So I highly recommend this game, which will be running at Festival this April!

Home from Intercon, and as I feared, put-off responsibilities are crashing down on me, but I had a lovely weekend. Intercon really is one of the high points of my year, and this was no exception. I will now write about it in pieces, out of order, beginning not with the Friday night run of Brockhurst, but instead about the first game I played, The Dying of the Light.

About the right balance for me at a larp weekend is to run two things and play two things, preferably equally distributed across the weekend. I wanted to play The Dying of the Light because of the writer team— wired_lizard, mllelaurel, staystrong62805, and bleemoo —and because they beat Agent Bobo of the Resistance in the Iron GM of two years ago by something like a third of a point. It’s a high weirdness game, the sort where nobody is what they seem, which doesn’t usually interest me anymore, but this was a particularly well-done example.

Without spoiling too much, I was a chaos character, working to bring about the end of the world, and I believe, unless I’m mistaken, to have been the first player to actually make that happen. I love characters that give me an opportunity to have a socially acceptable outlet for my deeply-ingrained desire to lie and manipulate that I usually have to suppress in order to not be a terrible person. I told hideous untruths to my son with a monster inside him in order to enrage him enough to bring out his beast, then set him against my enemies, and then turned away any attempts to subdue him out of feigned motherly concern. At last, when everyone learned they had to execute him in order to save the universe, I told him to run and not look back, while using my shape shifting powers to impersonate him and die in his place. When they believed he was out of the way, they would think everything would be okay when in fact I had beaten them. Thusly, I lied and screwed my way to the end of everything, and it was very fun. I love being villains and manipulators, and it pleases me when I do a good job of it. I do not to be that person in real life, but frankly I get a little charge knowing I can pull it off when I want to. I also got to exchange bitchy bon mots with my ex-wife, and if there's anything I can do besides lie, it's be a Mean Girl. ;-)

As for how it compares to Bobo, the two games are honestly apples and oranges. DotL is a beautifully executed example of a larp form that is very difficult to keep from being tired at this point in the development of the form, while Bobo is experimental and innovative. Both are very well-thought out and provide an engaging play experience, but it is very possible to hate either of them if the form is not to your taste. But I was impressed at how well they made that larp style work, and I definitely had a good time in the game.

Hey, larp fanatics! It's come time again to bid games to build the schedule for Festival of the Larps 2015!

The festival is going to be on Brandeis campus from April 17th-19th. And we need games! So go to the Festival website to put in your bids. Personally I recommend larger games of around twenty players, but of course games of every size have a place.

I personally am bidding a NEW game-- because I'm a nutter --called Woodplum House that I mostly wrote this weekend! It's a small silly 2-hour, 10-player comedy of manners! The blurb:

"The English countryside, 1922. Welcome to Woodplum House, the ancestral home of the prestigious Lilywhite family in the charming rural village of Stoke-on-Stump! Lord Nigel Lilywhite is hosting a lovely garden party preceeding the afternoon wedding of his only daughter Emmeline, with only a few choice intimates in attendance before all the guests show up for the ceremony. But in this silly comedy of manners, the polite social occasion will be turned upside down by lovers' quarrels, raffish pranks, and scandalous secrets of misspent youths. There may even be a mystery or two to solve! Join these genteel aristocrats as what should be a civilized afternoon tea erupts into high-spirited comedic escapades!

A 2-hour light, comedic game in parody of the works of P.G. Wodehouse, with no actual characters harmed. Expect roleplay-heavy gameplay with a high reliance on schtick and absurdity, with some interpersonal puzzle-solving."

DOESN'T THAT SOUND LIKE A CRACKING GOOD TIME? Also I'm incredibly proud of naming the village Stoke-on-Stump. It's perfect and hilarious.

I also want to bid at least one other game. But which one? The obvious choice I think is my most recent large game Brockhurst, the Downton-Abbey inspired one that ran last year and will run at Intercon this March. It's 19 players, and since it would only be third run I think it would fill again.

What does everybody think? Anybody have any votes? What should I run? What would you like to play in?

As I've mentioned, I costumed a production of She Kills Monsters at Dana Hall this semester. One of the coolest set properties in the show were the heads of the Tiamat, the final boss in the story of the play, made by Mr. Peter Watson, the technical director at Dana Hall. They were dragon heads on long poles, each individually operated by actors.



As they didn't see the need to keep all five, Mr. Watson very kindly gave me one of the heads after the show. They were so cool-looking I really wanted to keep one. I thought maybe I could find a use for a dragon head prop, given all the theater and gaming stuff I do. I chose the silver one-- nicknamed "Ben" by Eva, the girl who operated it --because I thought it might take best to repainting if I ever wanted to alter it to another color or look.



It's currently sitting in the trunk of my car, like a grisly dragonslayer's trophy. :-) At some point I'll need to write a game I can use it in. I don't know what it might be or how it might be used-- now is certainly not the time to be thinking about such things --but I think it's too cool a prop not to reuse.

I almost forgot in the flurry of activity surrounding my show, but tonight Intercon O signups open at 7PM! Here is my current plan.

I am running Brockhurst, mine and Bernie's Downton Abbey-inspired WWI-era historical larp, set in the Breaking History universe that also contains Mrs. Hawking and The Stand, on Friday night! I hope you'll sign up if you haven't played. Or, if you have and nothing else appeals to you in that slot, I'm looking for GMs to help me run it! Let me know if you're interested.

I am also running Her Eternal Majesty's Privy Council for the Continual Funding of the Mad Arts and Sciences, the council-style horde larp parodying the steampunk subculture I helped write with AE Games, on Sunday morning. A very funny, silly game, which I never saw the first run of it, so it will be fun to finally witness how it goes!

I would like my first signup to be for Spring River, the latest offering from AE Games. I always enjoy their work, so I'd be excited to play it. Unfortunately I may not be able to be near a computer at 7PM when things open. I've asked Bernie to help me if he's able, but we'll see. Fingers crossed that I can get in one way or another!

That might be it, I'm not sure yet. I wouldn't mind a light Intercon, but I'm open to the possibilities. :-)

Don't forget to sign up! What are you hoping to get?

Bernie and I celebrated our first anniversary of dating this week. Our real anniversary is in May, but my mom died like the day before and I forgot all about it. So we finally remembered and decided to celebrate. We went out to Forum, the restaurant where my brother Casey works, and had a wonderful dinner. We don't go out very often, especially not to fancy places, so it was fun to get dressed up and have such a special meal. Casey took good care of us, and it was really nice of him to make sure we had such a nice time.

Bernie's gift to me was a Sherlock Holmes-themed game where you explore London to solve a murder mystery. We played it for the first time last night, with lightgamer morethings5 and Sam, and it was a blast. Your objective is to find the solution in fewer steps than Sherlock himself did, which encourages choosing your information sources strategically, but also to learn enough to get the full picture of what was going on with the victim and the crime. I loved the conceit of figuring out where to go and who to talk to in the city to gather information, plus examining newspapers for possibly relevant stories. It made me want to write my own mystery using the rules of this game-- I'd set it in the Hawking universe, and maybe change the conceit to the players all being members of the Hawks and learning their craft from the master. Mrs. Hawking is more of a spy than a pure detective, but she definitely uses the techniques of deduction, so I think it would be easy to adapt her sort of capers into the form. I'm very grateful to Bernie for finding this game and I think we're going to have a lot of fun with it.

I still can't get over how happy I am to be with Bernie. I feel like I can share all the aspects of a relationship with him, from the fun exciting parts that you enjoy together, to the mundane everyday parts that are improved by the other person's presence, to the difficult unpleasant parts where you need strength and support. There is honesty and genuineness, and even when things aren't perfect, I always feel respected and valued, and like we have methods to deal with the problems. There are no red flags I have to ignore or get past. Maybe it's silly how that still seems so miraculous to me, but even though things finally feel like I'm in the right place, I still can hardly believe it.