All Eyes on Me

I just remembered something that kind of made me laugh.

Years ago, I was writing a small, short, funny larp that was supposed to capture the feel of the Blandings stories of P.G. Wodehouse. None of his characters, but that kind of silly rich people in that kind of Interwar British country world. In that vein, I wrote a character kind of like the Honorable Freddie Threepwood, a good-natured but stupid posh ne'er-do-well, whom I named Gavin Alaric Post II-- in honor of his mother's beloved late bichon frisé, whose portrait still hung on the manor wall, to remind the second Gavin of all he could never live up to.

(That is, in my opinion, the second best joke in the game. The first is, of course, the reason why the earl's prize show pig Persephone is currently unable to compete, having come down with a case of porcine ennui.)

Anyway, one of Gavin's current problems, as shiftless Wodehouse gentlemen of his station are wont, is that he has fallen in love with a chorus girl, but already has a history of romantic entanglement with her sister. I decided to name his current lady love Bonnie Day as a bit of a cute pun, "bonne ideé" being the French for "good idea." It struck me then, that it might be equally amusing to call his former paramour "Molly Day," as my schoolgirl French led me to remember that "mal" is often the word for "bad".

I was feeling quite pleased with myself until, out of an abundance of prudence, I happen to actually look up how you say "bad idea" in French-- which as it turns out, is not "mal ideé" but actually "mauvais ideé". Yet again, I fail my many, many years of French education! I was quite put out, since I was feeling so smug in my own cleverness.

I can't remember if I used it anyway. Heh, I probably did. Even if it may have made me look dumb rather than clever! But I just laughed so much at the idea, I don't know if I could resist...

October Review Challenge, #14 - "What’s a piece of yours you feel got slept on?"

Oh, Christ. All of them.

Okay, kidding. Though I wish people would pay more attention to the stuff I've made. People are really resistant to trying new media. GO OUT AND WATCH AND READ MY STUFF, OKAY? IT'S REALLY GOOD AND I WANT THE ATTENTION ON IT.

Anyway, for real. Among my pieces that I always felt were better than they generally got credit for, I would have to say my cowboy larp, The Stand. I finished it back in 2011, after playing in a western game that I thought had potential but didn't quite live up to what I wanted it to be. I've always liked westerns, even though I think the genre needs updating to tell meaningful stories in the modern day, and I put in an effort to do so in this game. I had been writing larp, alone and in groups, for some time by this point, so my sensibilities were fairly well honed. I came up with some fun mechanics— the way you could travel to various locations to investigate in the surrounding terrain, the little mini game where you could wrangle wild horses. And I wrote some really meaningful story.



The game is set in the late 1840s, during westward expansion and just before the Civil War. There was a lot of interesting stuff about how people use power in a situation where authority and law was what you made it, and how people interacted with war and injustice. I did my best to meaningfully include characters who were Native American, Mexican, and black instead of allowing it the history to be whitewashed, especially given the big political issues of the time period. I had a resolution that one third of each racial group present in the game would play a heroic role, one third would play a villainous one, and one third would be a shade of gray. At the time that seemed fair to me, a way to hold myself accountable, though these days I am very, very cautious about villainizing characters from marginalized groups. And I know I am more educated about racial representation now than I was a decade ago, so I'm sure I made mistakes. If I were ever to run it again, I'd make sure it was carefully edited for any possible failures on that count, but I do recall trying my best. Still, there were a lot of really rich characters in the game, with interesting conflicts, relationships, and mysteries to unravel.

I ran it three times. It was kind of a big game, so I worried about it being hard to fill after that. And while I got a fair bit of positive feedback immediately after, it seemed like it kind of immediately left everybody's mind. Nobody much talked about it afterward, and I don't think anybody ever heard of it by word of mouth. I guess the experience didn't stick, which makes me sad. I'm not exactly sure why. The best I can come up with is that the style of larp was very conventional for narrative "secrets and powers" games, to use Nat's term, and the western genre didn't exactly light a fire under anymore.

Still, I'm quite proud of the game. And I have good memories of it. Haz Harrower-Nakama and Ada Nakama were legally married during one run of it, playing characters who were romantically involved. I got such a kick out of that. And natbudin wrote a song called "Stand and Deliver" from the perspective of central character Malcolm Royce, who was called upon to make a stand against a gang of bandits that were threatening the town. It's a really good song, available now on Blue Sky, Nat's latest album on Bandcamp. Those things are pretty serious honors, so I guess I should count my blessings. It means a lot when people emotionally engage with one's work in any way. It's basically the thing I want most in the world from people.

Festival of the Larps 2017 happened this past weekend, and I wanted to note down a few things.

I very much enjoyed my time there, like I always do. I've never had a bad time at Festival. It's a very special weekend for me, as it's Brandeis's home larp con and I've not only been attending it for over ten years now, I've been involved in its organization for a lot of that time. I really love larping at this event.

But this time around I was so tired that I didn't get quite as much out of it as I usually do. I had periods where I would mentally check out of my games where I was a player just because I was so exhausted. I liked everything I played, but wasn't quite as sharp and on the ball as I usually am. Still, it was all good, and I don't think I ruined anything for not being at my best.

Friday night I played Alleged Entertainment's The Day We Came Home. I generated a handful of character sheets for this game, but I knew little enough (remembered less) that I could play without being spoiled. It's basically examining issues around immigration in a sci fi setting with the format of a political game. Not my usual style of larp, but it's a good example of its genre, and I'm glad I gave it a try. Also Tegan, one of the writers and GMs, totally blew my mind with her advice for how to address missing PCs due to drops: "If you need something from someone who isn't here... get it from someone else." A revolutionary and practical shift in mindset when cast issues arise!

Saturday afternoon I played Primal Spirits, where everyone is the innocent avatars of animal creatures in the early days of the world. I was Rabbit, which pleased me, as I applied a lot of my theory of rabbithood from my favorite novel, Watership Down. All the world was my enemy, and when they caught me, they would kill me-- but first they must catch me. I had a rather primitive sense of justice and had to come to terms with my children's status as ultimate prey animal. Again, my tiredness curtailed my play a little, but in collaboration with Peter Litwack I came up with a pretty clever trick to make myself come out on top in a race with Horse-- the winner would be the fastest to reach an apple, which I buried in the ground at the other end of the track. Because I was the faster digger, I won! Frith, a rabbit trick!

That night I ran the larp version of Silver Lines. I love, love, love that game. It's a very solid mystery, and physicalizing the various in-game locations with props translates it nicely from the tabletop form to the live-action one. I missed having Jenn as my co-GM, like I had at Intercon, but it's manageable with only one person; you just have to play all the NPCs. It really makes me want to write more games in this style, set at other points in the Hawking story timeline.

I did have one problem post-game that I didn't handle well. I had one player who had a stronger than usual emotional reaction to her journey in the game. I should have just shut my dumb mouth and listened, but she kept relating it back to how the game was written. Even though I knew better, I kept trying to interrogate her to see if she had legitimate criticism I needed to incorporate into an edit, but I think it just made her feel judged. I should have just listened and let her express herself. As it was, I felt kind of like a bully.

The last thing I played was supposed to be a cowboy game called Once Upon a Time in the Wild West, a prepackaged game from a professional larprunning company called Questoria. Sadly they had a lot of players not show up, so they had to sub in a short, smaller parlor game in its place. That was actually fine by me, because being so tired, I didn't mind a quicker larp. The new one turned out to be a murder mystery set at a seance, which I enjoyed enormously-- not least because I was the only one who solved it correctly! I love mysteries; I've been studying them and writing them a lot lately, so I'm actually glad the game turned out the way it did.

So yeah, overall, good weekend, though I was sorry my overall dragginess, particularly mentally, made me less sharp than I usually am. Thank you to everyone, particularly con chair Adina Shreiber, for all the hard work to make it happen!

As most Intercon attendees know, the snowstorm over the weekend made it so a lot of people were unable to make it-- including the main chunk of Alleged Entertainment. That meant without Nat, Vik, Susan, or Vito, the entire GM team of Spring River couldn't arrive. So in order to keep the game from having to be cancelled, I joined Dave Kapell and contradictacat in stepping in at the last minute to run the larp.

It did mean having to cram some information at the last moment, but fortunately the game is not that hard to run. It requires periodic action on the GMs' part, but a lot of it is scripted, and as long as you follow the schedule in the runtime notes, it's easy. And I've played it before, so I knew the shape of it and what to expect from the players. It's an unusual game, where every PC is playing one defining personality trait within a handful of larger characters, and must navigate through life's journey making important decisions by committee. As Nat told me, the players ask a lot of clarifying questions in the first hour or so, then mostly they get wrapped up in trying to work things out with their fellow personality traits and trying to communicate between groups. I actually made some incorrect calls about the larger world outside the main characters, but fortunately it doesn't really affect the trajectory as long as you run the life decisions according to plan.

Dave and Diana kindly let me leave a little early, because I had an hour drive home from the hotel, I missed the game's debrief. Apparently sometimes people have strong emotional reactions to the game and find it useful to talk it through with the GMs afterward. I didn't find it necessary in my own experience, though I will say I did have one of the strongest and strangest experiences of bleed when I played in my run that I'd ever had in a larp role. But the players seemed to be really enjoying it most of the time, so I was very glad to be able to contribute to that. I'm glad that I could report back to Nat that his game not only ran, but ran successfully to PC enjoyment. It takes a village, I guess, to raise a larp con. 😋

This was the only game I was playing this Intercon, and I was excited for it. I am most interested in period storytelling these days, and the clashing of ethnic gangs around the time of the great migration while fighting for women's rights sounded great to me.

I was able to costume quite easily-- I could tweak the Victorian stuff I've collected for the Mrs. Hawking plays --so I looked pretty on-point. I liked the character I got cast as too; I think I was one of the more villainous roles, an upper-class society girl who was out for herself. I love playing villains and having an excuse to be awful, so that was fun for me. I also had a lot of friends in this game with me, which always improves a larp experience, partially because of enjoying the company, and partially because it makes it easier to give yourself over to being a character with people you're comfortable with.

I had a solid conception of myself and my goals, though if I had any critique of the game, was that it could have used more thought as to what pursuit of those goals would mean for in-game play. All the ideas were definitely there, but I wasn't finding a ton of avenues to pursue the things I was supposed to be interested in. But I was okay with it, as I had fun with pure interactions, and I managed to find more things to do. I actually received a compliment from another player on my ability to actually be racist and classist, which a lot of players shy from due to squeamishness. That's understandable, I guess, but it sure takes a lot of tension out of a situation where the villain doesn't want to actually be bad. So I'm always happy to play that role.

I will say that players that didn't have much to do with the gang war "boardgame" aspect of it didn't have a ton of agency to affect the goings-on, which made me slightly disappointed, even if I tend away from mechanics-driven storytelling in games. I know the larp as a whole suffered because the GMs, the excellent Haz and Ada, had some personal issues that made it so they were not able to spend as much time putting it together as they might have otherwise. But the premise and concepts are solid, and with the time to rework some of the in-game function it'll be excellent, I'm sure of it. I'm glad I played and had a good time.

I realized I never posted about how signups fell out for me at Intercon Q. So here's a bit on the current future of my larpy life.

I always like to have a game Friday night, so I signed up for Suffragette Slamdown, a fun period piece about the first wave of the women's right's movement set in the context of rival women's gangs clashing. It's by Haz and Ada Nakama, so I think it will be fun, though I confess it makes me a bit wistful, as I'd planned on taking a picture of myself dressed as a suffragette to celebrate if Clinton won the election.

My game, Silver Lines, is going to run on Saturday afternoon. It filled first round, the first time that's ever happened for a game I wrote other than Resonance, but in fairness it's only five players, so it was an easy thing to do. It's going to be interesting, as it's an experimental game in blending the party dynamic of a tabletop game with the physical activity of a larp, but I'm excited to see how it works.

My last game was picked rather on a whim, A Wolf by Any Other Name on Saturday night. It's a fantasy game about a clash of different kinds of werewolves. Not exactly sure what made me pick it, but I think it will be fun. It's been a long time since I played a true fantasy; lately I've been more inclined (as in other things) to historical fiction.

Also, Silver Lines filled at SFS Live Action Weekend 2016 on December 2nd-4th at WPI. That will be the first run of the game, so I'm considering that the test for Intercon. I sent out the casting questionnaire today. It will also be an exercise in seeing how the cast stands gender-flipping, as it's a very female game and most of the signups are male. I think some games still need players at SLAW, so please head to the website if you'd like to sign up.

Had the urge to experiment with other game forms recently. I didn't really want to get into a new game, as I decided to take the week off from writing as a break. But since my summer is ending and the new semester beginning, I felt driven to take advantage of the little remaining free time. So I messed around with a game I've already written, Silver Lines, a four-hour RPG I wrote for inwaterwrit's bachelorette party. Set in 1889 in the Hawking universe, it is a mystery story for five players done purely by roleplaying; there are no formal mechanics of any kind. I experimented with putting the story in different forms.

One of them is Twine, an online program for building text adventure games. I am slowly adapting the story to the text adventure form, with one central protagonist moving through the story by choosing from among options. I'm not very far along, but I'm learning the interface slowly. It's based in a programming language, of which I know nothing, but I'm using trial and error and googling the questions I have when I run into a problem. My one concern is that it'll probably turn out to be the sort of game where you just explore all the options exhaustively, when I'd prefer the player have to use some cleverness to figure things out. But the form may not support it. I'll have to investigate further to see if the capability exists to make it so you can't just redo any old choice you make to see what you gave up.

The second form is turning it into more of a traditional theater-style larp. The challenge there was the fact that it's designed for a small party of PCs who can travel to basically any location they deem necessary, like in a tabletop game. So I redesign the mod to translate that stuff to the larp form. It will entail the GM teams taking on a number of NPCs, and making what the players experience a combination of the GM-talks-you-through-it, like in a tabletop game, and some pre-designed representations (with props and the arrangement of the "set") for the players to physically examine and interaction with. The more thought I gave it, the more I thought it would be an interesting experiment in blending the tabletop and larp form. So I bid it for Intercon, and they're debating it now. I think some people are a little thrown by how that blending will work, but I am deliberately interested in it as a test of game design, and I really like some of my ideas for physicalizing specific events.

The one thing is while I know I can run it alone, it would be really nice to have another GM. They could help with the setting up and the transitions within the space, as well as taking on certain NPC roles. Anybody who's played before, it would be great to have another person's help, so let me know.

We are SO CLOSE to being able to release the first issue of Game Wrap Magazine, the publication I'm on the editorial board of that is devoted to analytical/semi-scholarly articles on the art and craft of larp. I'm incredibly pleased with this publication; the issue is going to have some really excellent, though-provoking articles in it, one of which is by me! I wrote about how larp designers and writers can support the narrative role of villain PCs in a game, and I think I did a very good job taking all the angles into consideration.

We're also accepting submissions for Issue #2, so if you have an idea for examining some accept of making and playing larps, I encourage you to send us an abstract! You don't need to have the whole article planned out, just know what subject you want to tackle and what perspective you're going to take on it. I sent in my bid for Issue #2 yesterday. I should have copied my abstract to repost here, but basically this time around I want to talk about the tension between narrative arc design and player autonomy. Constructing a sound narrative arc takes management, but in larp that can lead to railroading of players, who usually expect to have some input on how the storyline is shaped, so how do we go about balancing the progress and direction of the story while still allowing all the players to feel like they have some control over the direction of their journeys. I'm a pretty hardcore narrativist, so I really enjoy mulling over issues of building narrative in the larp form given the other needs, features, and challenges of the medium.

I'll keep you posted as to when Issue #1 is out. And in the meantime, you should totally bid us an article for Issue #2!

Signups open for Festival of the Larps 2016 TOMORROW!

Sign up for a total of 1 game at 7pm on Tuesday the 8th!

Sign up for 2 larps total on Wed the 9th!

Open signups on Thursday the 10th!

Here is our awesome schedule of games so be ready to join!

Friday night was the debut run of the newest larp I worked on with natbudin, emp42ress, and twilighttremolo under the banner of Alleged Entertainment. Pub Crawl, as it’s called, takes place on New Year’s Eve in a dying former industrial town as many of its residents celebrate by traveling around the local bars. It’s supposed to be an exploration of new beginnings and possibilities for the future centered around an interesting mechanical design— it’s made entirely up of horde characters. There is no consistent cast of any kind, instead intended for the players to swap out their horde roles between leaving the previous pub and arriving at the next. I’d never seen a game with only horde characters, so I was interested to see if it would work.

I had an odd experience of this one. Though it seemed out design was functional, as a GM I was not particularly engaged with the game. I had some interest initially in seeing how the characters we wrote would work, but I found it difficult to follow who was who. All roles are designed to be gender neutral and as such are given only last names, but allowing the players choose what to call themselves made it tough to keep track of who they were playing. I usually really love listening in on player conversations, but through no apparent fault of the players, I found myself checking out on them. I had some fun playing a drag queen NPC who was the bartender at the gay club location, but honestly, overall, I was kind of bored.

I’m not exactly sure why. It could just be that, as a modern, mundane-setting, low-stakes game with no consistent characters to follow, it just didn’t spark my interest. That tends not to be my cup of tea; I probably would not sign up to play a game like this if I saw it on a con schedule. But I’m concerned the failure is on our end, in the writing of it. The players cycled through the characters a LOT faster than we anticipated, which indicates to me that they were too thin, not substantial enough to sustain playing them longer than one pub. I know a number of players had fun with the game, but I think others probably were bored, or at least not really getting the experience they hoped for. I am one of them, unfortunately.

I’m not sure how to approach editing something like that. We may need to poll more players to figure out what the problem is. It might be possible to fix up and improve, but at the moment I can’t really put my finger on the issue with it.