breakinglight11: (CT photoshoot 1)
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— [livejournal.com profile] wired_lizard, [livejournal.com profile] mllelaurel, [livejournal.com profile] staystrong62805, and [livejournal.com profile] 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.
breakinglight11: (Default)

I've been tossing an idea around in my mind and wondering whether to go with it or not. I've begun preparations in earnest for going to Intercon, and there's been some working out dates for Festival lately, and that's got me thinking about larp. I've not been able to devote much attention to larping lately, and I really miss it. I haven't written anything new in a while, but I'm nervous about committing myself to a long project when there are so many other things I need to be writing.

It got me thinking about when I participated in Iron GM on a team with Nat, Vik, and Andrew, wherein we produced our odd little gem of a game called Agent Bobo of the Resistance. It was a great experience, for many reasons. This team was great to work with. We made a game like nothing else any of us has ever done before. And it enabled some new work made in a very short period of time, so I could help write a new game without occupying myself too much. It makes me think that it's worth doing again, at least in some form.

I don't think I want to participate in the official one this year. I don't have a team, and I'm more interested in doing something solo right now. The only real trouble with it for me is that I have a really hard time with the all-night aspect of it. I felt bad during the Agent Bobo process that I ended up sleeping more than anyone else just because I COULDN'T keep myself awake.

That's why I'm toying with the idea of challenging myself to Iron GM conditions. Pick a day when I can just stay at home and write a two-hour twelve-player game in a twenty-four hour period. I could choose the start and end hour that worked for me (as in, around my personal sleep schedule) rather than just be stuck with 6PM to 6PM, and I wouldn't have to feel bad if I needed to sleep. I might even have somebody else choose three secret ingredients for me, and act as my challenge-master. They would hold me to my strictures and monitor my progress.

Something to think about. It could be fun.

breakinglight11: (CT photoshoot 1)
triskaidekafestival

Another lovely Festival of the Larps has concluded at Brandeis. This con is one of my favorite weekends a year, so I am always delighted when it goes so well.

Friday night I helped run The Prince Comes of Age, personally my favorite game that [livejournal.com profile] morethings5 [livejournal.com profile] lightgamer and Bernie have ever written. I NPCed a guard outside the archives who'd had a really bad couple of weeks, who more often than not players bribed with cake. Not exactly complaining. This was an odd run; while players seemed busy and like were they happy and engaged, they did not seem to get as far along in their plots as I expected. In a game with three or so "climaxes" written in, I think we only saw one actually come about. Still, I thought the player interactions were interesting and fun. I was particularly happy that Sam and Aaron, two of our newest larpers, did so well. Aaron in particular was really cunning and came up with some great strategies in game, which is one of my favorite things to see in a larp. Other highlights included [livejournal.com profile] nennivian as the prince's closest friend, nobly sacrificing her own hopes to be with in for the good of the nation, and the epic battle with the dire magpie on the palace balcony.

Saturday morning was the second run of our third-place-winning Iron GM game, Agent Bobo of the Resistance. This game went a bit differently than the first run. We designed it so that players would spend some time identifying the issues at hand (as in, those of the little boy that they, the toys, belonged to), then making a plan to address them. This run had things be a little more amorphous, and it struck me more as a series of individual interpretations and ideas coming together rather than a totally collaborative effort. But the majority of the players seemed to be engaged in the concept, particularly the childlike fun moments, and I am always amazed at how many people are enthusiastic about this idea of this game, so I'll say it was a success.

In the afternoon I helped [livejournal.com profile] natbudin run the newest AE Game, A Garden of Forking Paths. I loved this game when I played it at Intercon this past March, so I wanted to help if only to watch it run and see what happened. It is a very simple, human, emotionally compelling story that the players went with nicely, and it seemed that they even followed tracks that were not usually chosen in previous runs of the game. There's a lot I love about this game, particularly watching people play their characters at different life stages, and I enjoyed the GM's eye view of seeing all the possible destinations of the story from behind the scenes and comparing how they worked. I also like how the player of the mother character eventually becomes her own granddaughter over the course of time, that speaks to something in me.

Saturday evening was hanging out, eating cupcakes, chatting with friends. Also, [livejournal.com profile] londo demonstrated one of the reasons I love larpers and larp, when he approached me to ask if I could help him look more genderqueer and wrap him in a cocoon.

Sunday was Break a Leg, and it was as silly and crazy as I'd hoped. This was the first run to include the new characters of the Writer and the Ingenue. I think they worked, although they had one or two consequences I hadn't planned on. I will need to test them in at least one more run before I can determine if those consequences are an issue or not. Of course, since this was admitted students' weekend at Brandeis, we had tour groups walking through our gamespace. If it hadn't been such a silly game, I would have been bugged, but as it was, whatever. I wished they had all walked through [livejournal.com profile] shadowravyn's Sailor Moon game instead, seeing as they were about half of them men in Japanese schoolgirl uniforms, but it turned out that a few of them had asked for pictures with the players!

This was also the best Dead Dog festival ever had. [livejournal.com profile] lightgamer organized a buffet at New Mother India, which had good food, plenty of space, and no stupid "no-speech-making" rules like the Chateau did. :-P Congrats to him as con chair, and congrats to [livejournal.com profile] inwaterwrit for getting to head up Festival next year!
breakinglight11: (Tired Fool)
Today marks the beginning of one of the busiest weeks I've had in ages. All good things, I'm happy to say, but still, it's going to run me ragged.

Today I drove to the Berkshires to have the rehearsal for my staged reading of The Triumph of Law, my ten-minute play. Tomorrow I will go back in the evening to film the reading itself for presentation on a local public access TV show called PlayCafe. The lady who runs the show was really good to me and found me a great cast, and the rehearsal went really well. I'm looking forward to the recording tomorrow night. The only downside is the driving, which I hate. Williamstown, MA is three hours away by car, and I had to go there and back today, and will have to do it again tomorrow.

Wednesday is our last rehearsal for our staged reading of Mrs. Hawking with Bare Bones. Then on Thursday the 11th we have our real performance, which begins at 8PM at 6 William Street, Unity Church in Somerville, MA. I really hope you can make it, because this is a cool piece that I'm very proud of, and I'm really honored to have this cast and crew representing it. There will be a talkback afterward, for discussion and feedback! Way cool!

Then this weekend is Festival of the Larps, one of my favorite weekends of the year. For the first time ever, I am not playing anything, but I am running lots. Friday night I will be there for The Prince Comes of Age, a wonderful game I loved when I was in the first run. Saturday morning is Agent Bobo of the Resistance, our award-winning Iron GM game, probably unlike anything you've ever played before. Saturday afternoon I'll be assisting natbudin to run A Garden of Forking Paths, another game I had a fantastic time in. And finally, on Sunday I'll be running Break a Leg, my funny short game about the dysfunctional theater troupe.

All good things. Here's hoping I don't collapse. 
breakinglight11: (Easy Fool)
interconm

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.
breakinglight11: (Unsteady Fool)
festivalschedule

We now have a schedule of games for Festival of the Larps 2013, Brandeis's very own home larp con! Go to the website, take a look at the schedule to see what you'd like to play, and registered for the con if you haven't already. Then you'll be ready to sign up for your first game at 7pm on Monday when sign ups open.

I myself am running two games-- Break a Leg, a two-hour humorous game about a dysfunctional theater troupe loosely based on my one-act play Merely Players, and the Iron GM game we just wrote for this year's contest. I can't tell you too much about that one yet, but I can tell you it's highly experimental, with a standard-larp first half and a Jeepform-style second half. Break a Leg is light silly fun, and if you're willing to take a risk on such a weird game as our Iron GM offering, we're happy to have you.

Yaaaaaay Festival! Come and roleplay with us!
breakinglight11: (Joker Phoebe 2)
What's a swamped graduate student to do when she's hankering to write larps but swore she wouldn't take on a project that would take her focus away from graduating? Join up with an Iron GM team at the last minute and bang out a game in a weekend!

I got a call from [livejournal.com profile] natbudin the weekend before last asking if I wanted to be on their team after they lost somebody at the last minute. I figured, what the heck, I've been meaning to try this at some point, why not help out now? The other members of the team were [livejournal.com profile] v_cat and Andrew Sheingold, neither of whom I've written with before, but I was eager to give it a try.

The process was pretty interesting. We got the secret ingredients at 6pm on Saturday, and immediately started brainstorming. We made some progress with an idea, then Vik made the suggestion that before long we should put that thread on hold and spend some time developing a second idea. Not because there was anything wrong with the first thought, but just to see what we came up with instead. And you know what, we ended up going up with our second one. It was more unique, more cerebral, less like your standard "pop larp," as Nat and Vik called it. I can't describe it yet, as I believe the games are confidential until they run at Intercon, but it is like nothing I would have written on my own.

Our writing went pretty damn well. I struggled a bit with the all-night aspect of it. I'm much more of a morning person. I couldn't deal with less than four and a half hours or so of sleep, which was more than anybody else got. But at least I managed to stay up enough to get my share of the work done. Everybody was really contributing, coming up with good material and good writing, and we had a good working dynamic where we could debate ideas and criticize constructively. I was proud of us. We even handed our final product in over an hour before the final 6pm deadline Sunday night.

This game is a weird game, not only the weirdest I've ever written, but the weirdest Nat has ever written, which is saying something! We decided that Iron GM was a good opportunity to do something really experimental, something with a good chance of being a spectacular failure because of the players not getting it, not getting into it, or it just being too difficult a story to represent in the form of a larp. The fact that Iron GM games have pretty much random players and random casting likely won't help. But I've written seven successful games at this point, most of them fairly safe in the sense that if I wrote them well, they were guaranteed to turn out. I was ready for an artistic risk.

We'll see how it goes. If we're lucky, it'll get scheduled in the earlier slot on Sunday at Intercon and I will be able to be present for the running of it. (Break a Leg is running in the later slot.) I shall be fascinated to see how it goes. We also bid it for Festival, where people will be able to self-select into it and we'll be able to send out casting questionnaires, so I think that will be a slightly more representative run of how it really works. But here's to my very first time as part of risky game concept! We'll see how spectacularly we fail!
breakinglight11: (CT photoshoot 1)

My larp resume, updated as of April 2013.

Played:
Perfectly Normal University - Shannon Gellar - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs - '06
Welcome to Sunnyvale - Candi Apple - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs - '06
Nexus - Fidd - Brandeis - '06
Requiem for Vitae - Intercon MA - '06
Smallgreens - Ingrid Winn - Intercon MA - '06
Welcome to Scearbridge - Hannah Lozen - Brandeis - '06
Elanthia - Victoria Worthington - Intercon G - '07
The Awful Truth - Iriyam - Intercon G - '07
The Trial - Beverly Dahl - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs -  '07
Divus Ex: Convocation - Bast - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs - '07
Miskatonic Class Reunion - Gloria Preston - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs -  '07
Fire on High - RX - Brandeis - '07
MASKS: Superheroes Have it Damned Tough - Yellow Rose - Brandeis - '07
Game of Empire - Uwagi Inari - RPI - '08
Railways and Respectability - Lady Helen Broughton - Intercon H - '08
Paradox Rides - Eleanor Rice - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs - '08
Marlowe 2020 - Pat Hamada - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs - '08
Miskatonic Archaeological Expedition - Dr. Wendy Noyes - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs - '08
Time Travel Review Board - Horde - Brandeis - '08
The Morning After - Computer - Brandeis - '08
GM Space - Lily - Brandeis - '09
Unconventional Odyssey - Jessie - Brandeis - '09
All's Well That Ends - Robert Floode - Intercon I - '09
Muppet Purgatory - Horde - Intercon I - '09
League of Extraordinary Hogwarts Students - Cheshire Cat - Intercon I - '09
Miskatonic Class Reunion 2000 - Dr. Wendy Noyes - Brandeis Festival of the Larps - '09
A Midsummer Night and the Living is Easy - Cadence - WPI Gaming Weekend - '09
The Bard of Avalon - Lord Aspen - SFS Live Action Weekend - '09
Chateau Ennui - Jordana Feinberg - SFS Live Action Weekend - '09
Redemption: High Noon at the Devil's Luck - Rose Miller - Brandeis - '10
Shadow Over Babylon - Veronica Miles - Intercon J - '10
Super Villain Academy - Nose Job - Intercon J - '10
The Last Seder - Andrea Skala - Intercon J - '10
Diamond Geezers - Fuse - Brandeis Festival of the LARPS - '10
Nepenthe a Surcease of Sorrow - Lenore - WPI - '10
Stars of Al-Ashtara - Isra - Brandeis - '10
Martha Stewart's Guide to Interdimensional Summoning (and Basting a Turkey) - Olivia Kelly - SFS Live Action Weekend - '10
The Sound of Drums - Rushlight - SFS Live Action Weekend - '10
An Evening With Clarence - AGM Dolores Cooke - SFS Live Action Weekend - '10
In the Jungle - Sarah - SFS Live Action Weekend - '10
Like Putting a Leash on a Rocket Launcher - Tallulah - Brandeis - '10
Clockwork Cafe - Mistress Xuan - Intercon K - '11
Snaf University - Mona Marquette - Intercon K - '11
Two Hours in London - Winifred Rutherford - Somerville - '11
The Prince Comes of Age - Lily Ascot - Brandeis Festival of the Larps - '11
Epoch's Waning: Ruins of Grandeur - Michel d'Alcee - Brandeis Festival of Larps - '11
Stars Over Atlantis - Rhiannon Sinclair - Fitchburg - '11
The House of the Rising Sun - Rose - Bridgewater Larp Day - '11
Venezia - Girolamo Savonarola - Brandeis - '12
Feast of the Minotaur - Ariadne - Intercon L - '12
An Evening Aboard the HMS Eden - Irene Adler - Intercon L - '12
Last Night in Jesriah - Eleni Flint - Brandeis Festival of the Larps - '12
Folding the River - Natalia Kaminskaya - Brandeis Festival of the Larps - '12
A Crown of Hearts - Leira - SLAW - '12
The Dance and the Dawn - Viridian - SLAW - '12
Cracks in the Orb - Esaline - SLAW - '12
The Serpent's Spiral - Eliza Murphy - Intercon M - '13
A Garden of Forking Paths - Virginia/Lily - Intercon M - '13
Desperadoes Under the Eaves - Carmelita - Intercon M - '13
The Other Side of the Glass - Whisper - SLAW - '13
A Single Silver Coin - Rianne Fynn - SLAW - '13
A Turn on the Radiance Rose - Eleanor - Intercon N - '15
The Bloody Harvest of Pomonoa - Livia - Intercon N - '15
Midsummer Mischief - Aunt Constance - Festival of the Larps - '14
The Dying of the Light - Arianna Wolfe - Intercon O - '15
Spring River - Noah's Hedonism - Intercon O - '15

GMed:
Welcome to Sunnyvale - AGM - Intercon MA - '06
Alice - GM - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs - '07
Last Stop - AGM - Intercon H - '08
Alice - GM - Intercon H - '08
Alice - GM - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs - '09
Oz - GM - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs - '09
Paranoia: Research and Dismemberment - GM - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs - '09
Unconventional Odyssey - Horde GM - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs - '09
Oz - GM - Brandeis - '09
Alice - GM - Chicago Fete Fatale - '09
Oz - GM - SFS Live Action Weekend - '09
Paranoia: Research and Dismemberment - GM - SFS Live Action Weekend - '09
Oz - GM - Intercon J - '10
League of Extraordinary Hogwarts Students - AGM - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs - '10
Alice - GM - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs - '10
Oz - GM - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs - '10
The Labor Wars - GM - BCOS - '10
The Stand - GM - Intercon K - '11
Resonance - GM - Intercon K - '11
The Stand - GM - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs - '11
Resonance - GM - Brandeis Festival of the LARPs - '11
Resonance - GM - Fitchburg - '11
Oz - GM - Bridgewater Larp Day - '11
Resonance - GM - Intercon L - '12
The Stand - GM - Festival of the LARPs - '12
Paranoia: Research and Dismemberment - GM - Festival of the LARPs - '12
Break a Leg - GM - SLAW - '12
Agent Bobo of the Resistance - GM - Intercon M - '13
Break a Leg - GM - Intercon M - '13
The Prince Comes of Age - AGM - Festival of the Larps - '13
Agent Bobo of the Resistance - GM - Festival of the Larps - '13
A Garden of Forking Paths - GM - Festival of the Larps - '13
Break a Leg - GM - Festival of the Larps - '13
Paranoia: Research and Dismemberment - GM - SLAW - '13
Brockhurst - GM - Festival of the Larps - '14
Resonance - GM - Festival of the Larps - '14
Break a Leg - GM - Festival of the Larps - '14
Brockhurst - GM - Intercon O - '15
Her Eternal's Majesty's Privy Council - AGM - Intercon O - '15

Written:
Alice - '07
Oz - '09
Paranoia: Research and Dismemberment - '09
The Labor Wars - '10
Resonance - '11
The Stand - '11
Break a Leg - '12
Agent Bobo of the Resistance - '13
Her Eternal Majesty's Privy Council for the Funding of the Mad Arts and Sciences - '14
Brockhurst - '15

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