All Eyes on Me

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 morethings5 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 inwaterwrit for getting to head up Festival next year!

Thanks so much to everyone who offered supportive words the other day, I'm really grateful to everyone for reaching out. I'm still feeling discouraged about my thesis, but I'm taking a little mental break from it to see if I can buck myself up. Still, always plenty of writing-related chores.

Besides my thesis, which I will return to in some form shortly, I also have to outline my seminar. It's about taking the practical concerns of theatrical production in mind when you're writing a play, or, in other words, being aware that actors can't change clothes in zero seconds and if somebody carries a prop on, somebody's going to have to carry it off again if you don't want it to stay onstage. These things are less obvious than you might think if you're not thinking too hard about it while writing.

I need to finish the character sheets for the two new PCs in Break a Leg. Also I need to add in references to those characters in the other sheets. Then they need to get sent out. Castings and costuming hints have already gone out, so people have plenty of time to prepare, but sheets need to get done too.

I'm also going to be helping run The Prince Comes of Age at Festival, so I'm reading the sheets to familiarize myself with the game. I've gotten through a few, and they are fun to read, but I've got a lot left.

I've also scheduled the second run of The Bloom of May. I've got to cast it and get the sheets out for that too. Shouldn't be too hard with only five players and just using my best judgment rather than questionnaires. I also want to write out a complete GM's guide for this at some point, but of course there's no rush on that so it's not a big priority.

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.

Reposting this from our lovely Festival con chair lightgamer:

"Hey everyone! I know it's still months away (and on the other side of Intercon, to boot) but as your friendly Con Chair I would like to get a final Festival of the LARPs schedule up in the somewhat-near future. We've had a bunch of great games bid that I'm really looking forward to, but it's not yet a full schedule. So, if you love Brandeis' annual free LARP convention, consider bidding a game. There are lots of great games by local authors that we'd be thrilled to have, and if we don't have a full schedule, the con just doesn't happen. There are games available to be run by people who don't want to write their own, too - easy, fun games that make a great introduction to GMing or easier con prep for experienced GM's.

Bidding a game is SUPER EASY, you guys. Just go to the Festival website and click the link to fill out the bid form. It will probably take you five minutes or less."

I am running Break a Leg, and could possibly be conned into running something else. Especially if you've got something you'd like help running, talk to me and I might be willing to GM with you.

Intercon M is finally at open signups. I am currently in every game I wanted to be in-- The Serpent's Spiral on Friday, A Garden of Forking Paths on Saturday morning, and Desperadoes Under the Eaves on Saturday night. I was originally waitlisted for Spiral, but the GM added three new roles and I got in. I wasn't too worried, though, a few years ago I was waitlisted for everything and still got into every game I wanted.

Also Break a Leg is full, with three people on the waitlist. I sent out the casting questionnaires today. I plan on editing the game a bit before the run, but I'm taking a nice rest before I bother. At the moment the biggest thing it needs is the theatrical sides. I want to write things specifically for the game, and I ran out of time last time.

I am delighted at how much this Intercon has grown. According to the website, 387 people are signed up to attend, as compared to the 327 as listed for last year's Intercon L. I do wonder how the Radisson is going to accomodate everyone, but mostly I'm just happy that the con is so popular, and that so many people are getting into a hobby that means so much to me.

I also just got mine and Jared's hotel room. Wanted to get that out of the way early, especially given how many people will likely be rushing for them. If anyone would like to room with us, we're looking for two others to split the cost of the suite. Drop me a line if you'd be interested!

I did not attend SLAW last year due to being busy, tired, and not terribly impressed with the schedule of games. But this year Sarah Judd put together an excellent lineup for the con, and I was incredibly glad I came. Exhaustion and everything!

Friday night was A Crown of Hearts, by wired_lizard. She is a phenomenal larp writer, and when I heard surdayhe had written a fairytale game, I couldn't wait to play. It did not disappoint. She reinterpreted classic stories in a fascinating way, and really utilized fairytale tropes in such a way as to feel familiar and fresh at the same time. One feature of the game I particularly liked was the quest mechanic, which enabled certain groups of characters to go on quests that would encounter interesting things that fed new plot into the game. A really cool idea. I liked my character, and since I looked like a peasant girl, I finally got to wear that crinkly tan shift, that was Steph's prisoner dress when she played the duchess in Margaret, that I knew would come in handy someday. The only problem was that somehow I ran through all my plot extremely fast, about an hour in advance of the end of the game, and I was too tired from everything I've been doing lately to dig up something new to do. But I thought it was an excellent game, I highly recommend it.

Saturday morning I levered myself out of bed to play The Dance and the Dawn. While I wouldn't say I exactly had a bad time in this game, I think if I understood what it would be like better going in I wouldn't have signed up. It is extremely low plot, intended to be totally about character interaction, but in my opinion the characters were a little too thin to support that for four hours. I also didn't particularly like the rigid "you must dance twenty-one dances" structure, which got repetitive after a while. Moreover, the game has some assumptions, such as how no matter what your trouble a relationship is the answer to your self-fulfillment problems, that I found rather problematic. I mostly made it work, and I actually did like having a character who I could talk about religious concepts as without coming off as a total nut, but I wasn't impressed with the game. At least I got to wear one of my prettier thrift store formal gowns.

Saturday afternoon was Break a Leg. As I said, it was an insane and hilarious maiden run. Needs a little smoothing out, but I was very happy.

Sunday was the new game from captainecchi, Cracks in the Orb. The setting didn't super-appeal to me, so I was a little concerned if I would be able to get into the game, but I really had fun. Lise is a beautiful writer, and it was packed with interesting plot, as I prefer my larps to be. I LIED LIKE I BREATHED in that game, which is one of my favorite things to do in larps, and I came up with some pretty clever ruses if I do say so myself. Also, through deduction I figured out who two of the three secret identities were, which made me very proud of myself. There's probably a bit too much to read for a four hour game, but it's a very rich piece with plenty to do and lots to explore. I imagine the second revision will be even better. I highly recommend this game the next time it runs. Congrats to Lise for this!

So I had a very nice SLAW. This is the first larping I've had the chance to do since Festival in April, so it was nice to be back in the saddle again. Thanks to everyone who made the event so much fun!

You know, I kept telling myself once November hit, things were going to ease up for me. But I realize it's not really like that at all. I have to finish writing Break a Leg for SLAW this coming weekend, and then get prepared to shoot the images for my graphic novel Lame Swans. I meant to get all the sheets for Break a Leg completed by last night, but as SO OFTEN HAPPENS, as soon as I RESOLVED TO SPEND ALL WEEKEND WORKING, I came down with a killer head-splitting migraine. Probably due to my stress over getting things done, I get a migraine, which prevents me from getting things done, which increases my stress over getting things done. And so I become more prone to migraines.

I have only three more sheets to go, and they're all pretty short for a short game, so I know I will be able to finish by tonight and send them out. They'll be quick reads, and they got costuming hints weeks ago so they should have been able to prepare. It'll be okay.

I'll just have to power through, as I am ready to switch gears. I don't have time not to. Shooting for Lame Swan begins this Wednesday night, and I still have a lot of prep to do. I have to make my shot list based on the models I will have present, which will take time, and gather the last few costume pieces I need. Hopefully without spending any more money. I have poured too much into this already, so I'm going to scrounge for what I can borrow and fake. Fortunately my models and assistants are being incredibly accomodating, so thank God for them. Every little bit helps.

My stress level is high. I am accomplishing a lot of cool things, things I'm proud of, but there's been no respite, no release of all the tension. I have to keep going, but I've also got to find some way to chill out. I don't know how much longer my system can take all this cortisol before I crack.

I just realized this weekend that I have THREE MAJOR PROJECTS due this month.

I have to write the second half of my full-length play Mrs. Hawking. I have started but I have a ton left to do.

I have to finish the script for my graphic novel Lame Swans. I have a decent chunk, but I'm nowhere near done.

And I have to finish my larp for SLAW Break a Leg. I am just nowhere near done.

Trying not to freak out and melt down. But if I'm overly scheduled and unreachable and TOTALLY STRESSED OUT this month, you'll know why.

Jesus help me.