All Eyes on Me

Got my second Intercon casting, which means I have all my characters and sheets for the con. This second casting is for Snaf U, which is a Brandeis clasic I have been wanting to play for a long time. I see that I got the "tough cast" character, which Nat talked to me about beforehand. That always makes me smile. The role seems to have a pretty difficult job ahead, so we'll see how I do. I enjoy a challenge. :-) Costuming for the role is just going to be regular clothes from my closet, which is nice because it means I don't have to buy anything more. Still, this Sunday at 1PM ninja_report and I are going to be going to the Garment District to try and take advantage of the sale. If anyone wants to join us there, it could be fun to meet up and shop together. I don't need anything more for Intercon, but I have a Groupon worth twenty dollars, so I'm planning on looking for stuff I like anyway. Can always get stuff for later, and God knows I love thrifting.

laurion

Jesus, did yesterday turn out to be lousier than I would have guessed. Bad day at work, all my chores turning out to be six thousand times tougher than I thought they'd be, and spending money on a lunch that it turns out I couldn't eat because I didn't realize it wasn't kosher. Bah.

But fortunately, the trouble was worked through. I finally got Frances's dress in order, and it looks very nice. The diorama is just a few touches away from being done. I also hit the thrift store and with literally with the loose change in my desk bought a fairly nice black blazer to wear for Shadow Over Babylon. That character really demands the wearing of a plain, official-looking suit, and I just didn't have what I needed for it. So I bit the bullet and bought something. It's a nice enough blazer that I can probably wear it in real-life dressy situations, and helps me at least simulate the plain black suit that Allie of Wardrobe Oxygen advises most women to keep in their closets. Heh, though I must say this game is the first time I regretted not having one. ;-)

The game of Small World played at BSCF later that evening also helped chill me out. It was nice to see so many nice friends, (and nudge them about attending the play, heehee) and I really must thank laurion for introducing me to that most excellent game, and being willing to bring it and play week after week. ;-) I am not a hardcore board gamer by any stretch, so just how much I'm into Small World is a testament to how really great a game that is. I'm slowly getting better and better at it, I've had several games in a row now where I've averaged around ten points a turn, which is pretty good for a five-player game, but still somebody always does just a little bit better than me and I've never been able to win yet.

So yeah, yesterday really kind of sucked, but I got through it, accomplished what I needed to accomplish, and ended the day nicely and with friends. I guess things could have gone worse. 

Gah, busy weekend. Jared and I tried to go to a Red Sox game Friday night with Steph and Walter, but it was unfortunately rained out. I actually did enjoy the trip and the company, so it wasn't a total loss, but I am kind of disappointed about the fifty bucks I spent on the ticket.

Saturday was helping laurion move furniture to his new place. I really enjoyed this day, as it was spent doing helpful productive things that were incidentally also good exercise with lots of people I wanted to hang out with. I also spoke to Nat about the game he is working on with Susan and Vito, and agreed to be part of the writing team. I'm incredibly flattered to be asked; I think this could be a really great learning experience to try working in a group of people who have lots experience working this way and generated a lot of good games with it. We are working on scheduling a meeting. I must get myself up to speed on all the materials now.

Sunday was spent about half moping and feeling yucky and half solidifying the session of Burn Notice I would be running that evening. I actually really love the plot for this "episode" that we're going through now. My GMing style is to do as much prep work ahead of time as possible, so I'm not scrambling to come up with things, and I am always able to keep the story moving. I know as a player I strongly dislike when the action drags and the players just sort of don't do anything because there's nowhere to go. So I always try to keep things as fleshed out as possible beforehand, so the players always have something to move toward. I think it's worked pretty well so far.

Also, the working scripts my brother got me from the Burn Notice set arrived in the mail. One of them was to the third season premiere, which was pretty damn cool. The second one, however, is from an episode that HASN'T EVEN AIRED YET. How awesome is that? Thanks to Casey doing me a favor, I got a sneak preview of a brand-new Burn Notice! It's a pretty good one, too. I'm having him over for dinner tomorrow, and now I am especially happy to feed him in thanks.

I really had a good time at last night's BSCF. It was really interesting to have that interviewer there; I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to talk to her. But I got a serious case of the warm fuzzies when I happened to be walking by Matt's interview and the interviewer asked him about his favorite combat system in a larp, and he mentioned the one in Alice! Thank you, Matt, you're very kind, and it means a lot to hear you say that. Though, for the record, it was technically Jared who designed it. I told him I wanted a system that combined random and deterministic elements, so that the stronger character would usually win but the weaker one still had a chance, that somehow involved playing cards. He took those requirements and made the incredibly easy, effective system that I plan on using for all my games. :-D We're such a good team.

Then Sheena ran Unconventional Odyssey for a really fun group. I confess, I was not totally sure I'd enjoy it because I'd heard reports that it was really random and zany-- I thought it was just going to be a lot of random weird things thrown together. That can be fun, but it's not always to my taste, so I just had to trust Sheena that this game would work for me. Sure enough, I was pleasantly surprised to find that all the crazy elements were actually quite well thought out, and planned in such a way that the craziness steadily climbed rather than just be all over the place. The Vampire parody aspect of it was spot-on, so nicely done that I was a little disappointed that the game wasn't all that conducive to actually playing your character's Vampire character. It was have been interesting to see how the parody actually played. I was in the cast role of Jessie, who I joked to Sheena was a mean casting because it made fun of me. In reality she actually is just incredibly fragile and particular to the point of being too prissy to live. I think I may have interpreted that a little too far into bitchiness territory, which may not have been exactly the right note, but it more or less worked and I had a fun time doing it. I got punched out byrigel so I must have been doing something right!

The horde for this game did a fantastic job too. It had a significant number of newer larpers in it who weren't really familiar with the experience of horde, but they all just jumped in and came up with some really great performances. Also, bleemoo was hilarious as the phone player, and I was cracking up over the various phone calls he came up with. I kept wanting to call him with stuff, but the horde kept us so busy there was just no time. Jared ended up as horde as well. In the past he's always expressed a slight trepidation with horde, as he was never sure he'd be good enough at creating multiple characterizations to really enjoy the experience. That is the challenge of the horde from the actor's perspective, and I myself often force myself to ask for horde just to give myself some practice at being very different people. It's quite hard, really. But Jared didn't have to worry; I was really impressed by how varied and strong all his various roles ended up being! It makes me kind of sad I've never seen him in a significantly different double casting on stage; I know he can absolutely embody two separate people at once. I asked him not to try to make Claudius and the Ghost all that different in Hamlet, in the service of making a point, but now that I know how well he can do it, I want to put it to good theatrical use!

Afterward, there were lots of good conversations. I always like talking about larping in a theoretical sense with laurion. He has some really interesting insight, and I remember him giving me a couple of the most helpful pieces of advice when I was writing Alice-- most of all, he clued me into the all-important idea that if you want something to happen in a larp, you need to make the characters want it to happen.

There was a bit of negative business happening as well that I got tangled up in, but I like to think I helped a little bit of resolution happen, so it ended more of less okay. I hate it when two people who I both really care about are just so different that they piss each other off without meaning to by not understanding how the other interprets things. This is complicated when one of the parties is not inclined to acknowledge that they've done anything wrong. For those of you who witnessed this behavior, I will say in that person's defense that they are not trying to be pushy and dickish, they're just not very good at picking up on the fact that people are made uncomfortable by that sort of behavior, and don't understand why people are suddenly angry at them, and so gets angry at that. I think it's okay now, and I hope everyone can forgive and let it go, but that was the one dark spot of the evening. Still, overall, I had a fantastic time with my fantastic hobby with my fantastic friends.