breakinglight11 | Entries tagged with natbudin

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.

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. 😋

So this weekend,

natbudin,

laura47, and Peter wanted to do their own personal little version of Iron GM, where you write a 2-hour, 12-person larp in 24 hours based off of a genre, a theme, and an element that is given to you at the very start of the writing period.

lightgamer and I brainstormed these for them and came up with ghost story, hunger, and nursery rhymes, which I think is a pretty interesting combination.

I joked how if Matt hadn't talked me out of it, I would have given them German expressionism, insecure masculinity, and lithopedions. But it inspired me with all these terrible possibilities for awful, awful secret ingredients for Iron GM. So, instead of sleeping or doing anything else particularly productive, I spent two and a half hours on Twitter last night brainstorming combinations of genres, themes, and elements that Nat, Laura, and Peter should be very grateful I did not give them.

( 55 #RejectedIronGM secret ingredients! )

Actually a few of those could be fun. I'd actually like to play what comes out of "Comedy of manners, sexually transmitted diseases, ornamental pastry." And I'll admit "Dating sim, gentlemen prefer skinny brunettes, Chris Evans" is me just having a bit of fun.

Maybe I should organize an Absurd Iron GM. A... Phlebotinum GM, perhaps. Where the teams sign on knowing the ingredients will be ridiculous, and they must make the best (humorous or otherwise) game possible out of them. That might be fun...

The last thing I played at Festival this year was Saturday Market, which despite the title was a light Sunday morning game written by

natbudin. I was impressed by the fact that he wrote it by himself as an unofficial entry into the most recent Iron GM competition. It's a horde game about customers coming to a California farmer's market. I'll play anything Nat writes, so even though horde games tend to not be my thing, I wanted to give it a try.

Apparently I was the only person who signed up who was willing to be a character who spends the entire game high, so I did. At first I'd planned on going lower-key with it. I pulled up the hood on a ratty hoodie, wore a pair of sunglasses, and carried in a bottle of eye drops and a bag of salty snacks. But as I probably should have been able to predict, "subtle" pretty much went out the window as soon as I started talking. I actually think I gave a pretty good performance. I kept up a virtually constant barrage of stream-of-consciousness "meep and deaningful" musings on a number of topics that mostly managed to avoid cliches. I mused on life, the universe, and everything in sufficiently vague and ultimately meaningless terms, and I did not use, in any form, the term "expand your consciousness." But as I should have guessed, eventually I found myself staring into the void of existential angst and started raving, and when I yell for extended periods, it starts to give me a headache. That, combined with the need to constantly improvise more things to say, meant I burnt out hard after only an hour. I had to go lay down after that. Ah, well. It was fun while I lasted. People laughed, which was my goal. I am a performer, after all.

It's not a deep game, but I enjoyed it. Could use a little tweaking to give it a touch more substance, but I love an opportunity to just go off on the acting like that, and it definitely delivered. And that was my Festival! A varied, interesting one indeed. I hope everybody had as much fun as I did, and that we do even better next year.

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!

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

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

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!

The schedule of games for Intercon L is now available for viewing. I'm on bid com, so I knew all of these things were going to run already, but now the schedule is available for everyone to see. As is my custom at this stage of con preparation, I will now go over my current thoughts for what my signup plan shall be.

Friday night I think my preference is for Feast of the Minotaur. It's written by Andandi Gandolfi, who has an excellent track record, and I like the Ancient Greek mythology setting based around the myth of Theseus. Also interesting to me is Colonel Sebastian T. Rawhide's Circus of the Spectacular, which is a classic I've heard very good things about. I've already played in House of the Rising Sun and I highly recommend it to those of you who are pondering your own options for Friday night. Venezia will probably have a test run at Brandeis before Intercon rolls around, and I will try it then.

Saturday morning, I'd go for Garden of Forking Paths. This is the work of my sometime coauthors

emp42ress,

natbudin, and

simplewordsmith taking the "your choices affect the nature of your game" concept touched on in Resonance to an even greater extreme, with simultaneous runs of the same scenario affecting where everyone else's scenario ends up. I'm not sure how it's going to work exactly, but I know this group does amazing, envelope-pushing work and I'm always game to play something they've written. Failing that, I still haven't gotten into a run of Concordance Station written by

readerofposts, or if all else fails I could always sleep in.

Saturday afternoon the options are not leaping out at me. I would probably go for An Evening Aboard the HMS Eden. It sounds interesting, being a pastiche of Victorian literary characters aboard a cruise ship, and even so Jared thinks he's going to sign up for it, and it would be nice for us to have a game together. I confess I'm curious about Nat and Vik's Harmony Quest, despite the fact that I've technically been spoiled on it and when I first heard about it I was certain it wouldn't be my kind of game. Still, there's a morbid streak in me that wants to know just how uncomfortable I'd be. Also I've heard it's well done for the style of game it is, and as was said by at least five members of bid com, I trust Nat. Probably won't go for it, but the thought has crossed my mind. I also have some curiosity as to how The Linfarn Run is, being an intimate Brit game, though I'm not really interested in Firefly.

Saturday evening I will be running Resonance with the aforementioned writers from Alleged Entertainment. We're quite proud of this unusual sort of game, so if you haven't played yet it might be worth your while. Of the games going up concurrently with it, I'm quite sorry I won't be able to play in Port Hidalgo, a well-regarded pirate adventure, and I've heard good things about Roanoke, a game about the Sir Walter Raleigh's colony in Virginia. I tend to like period games.

Sunday morning the only thing that particularly interested me I've already played (GM Space) and so will be observing my usual Sunday-of-the-con tradition of collapsing in an exhausted heap. I do recommend GM Space as probably the funniest larp I've ever played, however, so keep it in mind if you've never been in it.

And that's my plan. Not sure what my first signup will be; logic dictates that Garden, as the game with the fewest number of slots, should be my first choice, so probably I'll go for that. Feast is the other possibility, because although it's large I'm very excited to play it. First round signups open November 2nd, so put it on your calendars, everyone.

Now for my actual reviews of my experience of Larpercalia as a participant rather than as con chair! Spoilers are minimal.

Friday night was Prince Comes of Age, a game the production of which I had heard a great deal. It is, as you may know, set in the larger campaign setting made up by

morethings5, and in fact included larp versions of five PCs of a game he ran a few years ago. I had a blast in this one as a secretly scheming character who was playing several sides against one each other. One of my favorite things to do in a larp is weave an elaborate lie to achieve my ends that everyone buys into, and that is exactly what happened here. Great interactions included my drug-dealing ne'er-do-well date played by Michael Hyde, and speaking very very earnestly to

hazliya in ways that served me and actually did kind of help her despite the fact that I told many, many lies. :-) I highly recommend this game, written by Kindness, Bernie, and Matt to excellent collaborative effect. There is a lot going on and the writing is very well done, though I think the character sheets could stand some pruning-- there is a little over-enthusiastic background scene-setting that is a bit too verbose. And for those of you who were afraid everyone else would be supporting cast to the characters of that campaign's PCs, worry not, the storylines are well-balanced.

Here is me and my date, Ferlis, who spent most of the evening either high or facilitating the getting of others high.

Saturday morning was the second run of my newest solo game, The Stand. The game went well enough and pretty much everyone told me they had fun, but frankly I thought the Intercon run went better. The first time around nearly all the secrets came out except for maybe two, while in this there was a lot more plot that simply failed to materialize. I was especially disappointed that so little of the emotion-heavy plot that would have been

bronzite 's did not come to be, as it's some of my favorite in the game. One thing that may be to blame was that people seemed really low-energy, too tired from the late night before. Also, as solid as the game may be, I don't think anyone was really excited about the concept. They signed up for it because it sounded neat enough and probably on the strength of my name, as I've built up a pretty decent reputation by now. That's flattering, to be sure, but I don't think anyone really sunk their teeth into the concept. I confess I'm slightly disappointed, as the game is extremely full and well-constructed and I think really demonstrates how much I've grown as a larp writer, which I'm not sure really showed through in this run. Ah, well.

Saturday afternoon I played Ruins of Grandeur by Bernie, Matt, Kindness, and Michael, which I really wanted to like. Unfortunately my particular piece of it was fatally flawed in the design and could not function in the game. I'm really sorry I had such a low time, but all my tricks to get engaged failed me. I think by and large people enjoyed it, but my casting was so broken that I had very few hooks into the plot and literally zero power with which to make anything happen. I'm usually the kind of player who can make something up if her character is a little thin and find a way to have my own good time, but when I tried that absolutely no one really met me on anything I did. I wish I could speak to the overall story, but I saw so little of it that I'm afraid I can't give an opinion. I think most people really liked this game and had a good time, but my character must be completely overhauled before they ever run it again.

Saturday night I ran the most recent game I wrote with Alleged, the experimental larp Resonance, and this time it went amazing. At Intercon

natbudin and I were slightly disappointed with how things went-- we had a fairly gamist set of players who didn't seem to really get that the story is supposed to be allowed to unfold to make for an emotional experience, rather than a problem to be solved. This time we didn't have that problem at all. Our group here went with it smooth as you could be; I especially enjoyed their conversations sharing information and trying to speculate on what it meant. Among many others,

in_water_writ was amazing with a character completely against her type, and

rigel fascinatingly stepped into a leadership role. I spent much of the game watching Jared, curious for his reaction, and was pleased to see him leap into the concept wholeheartedly and beautifully act his parts. At the dead dog,

bleemoo gave us the great compliment of saying it may be the best game he's ever played. I am incredibly pleased with it this time around, and consider it proof that our concept is capable of working out the way we wanted it to.

Sunday afternoon I zonked around consuite and tried not to pass out. So, despite some ups and downs, I consider this to be a typically awesome Festival weekend, made even better by the knowledge that I put it all together. Hope you all had a great time, and will be joining us there next year!

Well, that was my first non-packed weekend in quite some time. Spent most of it doing chores, like cleaning the house, laundry, and grocery shopping for the week. It's good to have that all taken care of. It also granted me some much-needed sit on my butt time, which has been in woefully short supply lately.

Edited and sent out the character sheets for The Stand today. God, it is so satisfying to prepare an already-finished game. I have decided to permanently change the gender balance of the game after casting these last two runs. I had one character who I conceived of as male but decided was probably the only one in the game who could be flipped without altering the role too drastically. I had one more female in the first run who didn't want to be cross-cast than I had roles for, so I ended up making that "neutral" character female. In this run, it made sense to also cast that character as female. So I've just decided to keep the part that way. It makes for nine female parts in the game instead of only eight, which is good considering that the other sixteen roles are all pretty firmly masculine.

Also conferred with Nat last night about editing Resonance. We are considering this next run to be another test of the concept to see if the last group of players was the reason that things went differently than we expected they would. If it goes similarly this time, then we will know that the game needs to be altered in order to get it running the way we want. Still, my gut tells me that with a different group of players-- specifically people with a slightly less gamist approach who are willing to go with the flow of the story --things will go much more as we planned.

The last thing of note that I did this weekend was had a really good Midsummer dance rehearsal. I felt like it went really well, like I'd made some real improvement in my dancing, and I had a lot of fun. I've been practicing, so it feels good to know that it paid off a little. I like the piece so much and I really want to do Charlotte's fantastic choreography justice. I also really enjoy having Plesser as my partner for most of my pieces; he's always fun and great to work with. The way you can see him acting the character of Bottom while dancing is awesome. I need to focus more on that myself, I'm still a little too focused on getting through the steps. I intend to practice a little more every night until the performance in hopes that it will become smooth and instinctive, and I can try to bring a little of Titania's personality into it as well.

I had a dream about running The Stand last night. Only, as it always is when I dream about running larps, it wasn't exactly The Stand as it was supposed to be. I must have conflated it with Resonance in my subconscious, because I remember

natbudin was helping me run it, and I was being worried that certain characters didn't have enough to do because other characters they needed to interact with weren't among the fifteen that ended up in the game, which would only happen if you mixed the two game formats.

I remember Dream-Nat having to NPC a giant, and run an expedition into a dungeon. Don't know where that stuff came from. Also,

laurion was there, and though he was playing the character he is in fact cast as for the upcoming run, it... wasn't the character as written, so much. If I recall, Dream-Chad had gathered together a secret society and was trying to summon a demon. I don't believe it spoils anything to tell you that sort of thing just doesn't happen in this game. I mean, I guess anybody could TRY to gather a secret society and summon a demon in The Stand, but... ain't nothing going happen, partners. Ain't no vampires, aliens, superheroes, or time travelers in this here larp.

But what was interesting is that not all the dream-Stand was totally whacked. In fact, it contained at least one thing that wasn't in the game but actually was totally useable in it. The moment I woke up I knew the answer to something I hadn't quite figured out for a certain character. A plot came to me through the dream and I AM TOTALLY USING IT. That's pretty awesome. :-)

So I'm sure most of you experienced the madness that was signing up for Festival last night. The site experienced technical difficulties that infuriatingly prevented people from registering for games until they were dealt with. Fortunately

natbudin heroically stepped in and straightened things out, allowing things to proceed at 7:30 instead of 7. I am really sorry for the trouble, and I hope it didn't screw up anyone's plans too badly. I received no fewer than five phonecalls at once at one point, which I apologize I didn't answer, but I was already on the phone with Nat trying to understand what was going on and what I could do to help. And, you know. There were lots of you at once.

I was kind of upset about it happening at the time. I've been working really hard to get things going well for the con, and that felt kind of like a disaster. But you know, if I wanted to be responsible for this thing, that means I need to be ready to deal with the problems that arise as well. And I think things ended up okay, though much more thanks to Nat than to me. I hope nobody was too mad. I am feeling better about it now, but at the time I felt pretty horrible that things screwed up on my watch.

As usual, things filled FAST. Most games already have a complete roster, and in fact there are already some timeslots that are totally full. Still, there are many great games that still need players, so I encourage you to jump into those if you haven't already. I plan on watching how the schedule goes from here on to see if anything needs help, or if any adjustments should be made. For on, I just want to admire the mostly-full con and send out my casting questionnaires. Both Resonance and The Stand are good to go, so I'd better take advantage of all the advance notice we GMs have got.

Am now back from my lovely weekend of larping at SLAW. This was kind of my weekend of "games I am not sure about," since in an effort to expand my larping horizons I signed up for all games that were not to my typical inclining. By and large this tactic was a success, and I had a very good weekend overall.

Friday night Charlotte, April, and I all played in Martha Stewart's Guide to Interdimensional Summoning (and Basting a Turkey.) Fortunately Charlotte had reminded me just before the game that it actually took place at a party and not at a business conference like I originally assumed, so at the last minute I changed my costuming plan. I thought I looked quite nice, wearing my black asymmetric cocktail dress with my white gold anniversary necklace, the nearly-matching silver infinity earrings, silver pumps with the perfectly-matching silver bag, and my silver-gray pashmina over my shoulders. Though I had a good time in it, this game was not to my taste. It was a game purely about schmoozing, with most interactions conducted solely for their own sake, which is totally fine, I just tend to prefer a little bit more plot. I did end up bonding with the demon who had been my childhood imaginary friend, but I did it mostly as a favor to him-- he needed it and I didn't, which I think may have been a common thing about demons and humans in the game. Glad I tried the game, had a nice time, but it was not exactly what I was hoping for.

Saturday morning I drove Charlotte and Ryan in early so that they could play in their morning games. I had nothing in that slot, so I decided to go cruise a nearby thrift store. It was a very nice, well-organized Goodwill, and there were lots of stuff to choose from. Unfortunately most of the things that caught my eye weren't in my size, but I find it amusing how often even in the thrift stores my eye is drawn to items from Express. Very frequently I see something I like the cut and styling of among lots of random pieces on the rack, and when I check the tag, Express is the maker with surprising frequency. I ended up taking home a fantastic black sweater with a drapey fold-over collar, two dressy knee-length skirts, one with an orange and white cloudy pattern and the other with swirls in various shades of red, and the neatest thing of all, a low-sided oval pan with a copper bottom and a stainless steel interior. It needs polishing, but this pan that looks just like it is selling for hundreds of dollars, and I snagged this one for four. Score! I'm not sure what you would call such a thing-- it's oval kind of like a gratin pan but only has one long handle, and the sides are too low for a saute pan --but I look forward to shining it up and cooking with it, which will promptly require shining it again. :-)

Pleased with my haul, I returned to WPI to grab lunch and get into costume for The Sound of Drums. I wasn't sure if it was going to be my cup of tea, and I was fairly certain I would like Two Hours in London, but natbudin had highly recommended it and I trust the man's judgment. So, in the spirit of the Try New Games weekend, I went for it. My costume wasn't terrible, but it was weaker than my usual standard. Despite playing a sixty-plus-year-old, I did end up wearing my brown tribal-looking bikini with my brown pashmina tied around my waist like a skirt, and Charlotte kindly lent me her huge patterned green scarf to wrap around my shoulders. This mostly concealed all the decidedly-not-sixty-year-old body in the bikini, and I made some attempt to paint age makeup on my face, but I didn't white my hair and overall looked pretty much like the vain twenty-something I am. Also, I think I lost my brown and white headband scarf at the gamespace afterward, which I am annoyed with myself about.

But the game itself was excellent. The world is very full and well-thought-out. I loved my character and was incredibly busy throughout the whole game. I also had great interactions with Susan, who was my brilliant-but-mad younger sister, and Ryan, who was the troubled outsider with the haunting in his soul. I even got to use my badass spiritual strength to beat up a fallen god! It was awesome. The culture they built, with its ways and its norms that were so different and unusual, was really well-made. There was one small instance of "Christianity as the great bogeyman of non-mainstream living" that irked me, but otherwise I thought they did a really nice job of establishing the foreign people. There was also lots of interesting story told, which pretty much makes any game for me. Overall, I think this was my favorite larp of the weekend, and the one I was most glad that I took a chance on. Congrats to Tory and Lily for making it!

Saturday night was Clarence. By this point I was really dragging, energy-wise. This weekend marks the third week in a row of little sleep and poor eating, and I think I am reaching my limit. Luckily for me, Clarence is a game that is impossible to screw up, and I was playing an AGM so I could afford to be reactive rather than active. Fortunately, others were doing a fantastic job of pushing the game along. This run was blackbagged and carried off over the shoulder by electric_d_monk, whose portrayal of the fanatically German-nationalist GM Bucher drove the events by sheer force of personality. By the end of the run, we had vampires passing on their nationalities as well as their vampirism, resulting in bronzite's General and rigel's Carmilla being determined to be genetically perfect Aryans who of course must then go on to spawn the Master Race. With the use of the time accelerator to hasten their growth, soon we had six little Ubermensches prancing about named after the Von Trapp children singing songs from The Sound of Music. And naturally, these unstoppable German supermen went on to take over the world and some surrounding planets, leaving Brewer as Kaiser of the Earth and Mars. It was a typically insane run, but the birth of the Master Race, I think, was a uniquely amusing touch.

"Allow me to explain zee rules of Der Kriegspiel."

Sunday lightgamer was nice enough to let me ride over with him and twilighttremolo. I was signed up for In the Jungle that day, the final game of the sort I wasn't sure what I'd think of. But I like the work of emp42ress and simplewordsmith, so I wanted to see what it was like. My costume was like most of my others this weekend was a little half-assed, since I tend not to keep worn-out clothes around, but I settled on an outfit that when my parents last saw me in it told me I looked like a bum. I figured that would work. It is a game about hobos, a pure conversation exercise where we do nothing more than talk to each other in character. The game was at bare minimum cast, but it was a good one, including myself, natbudin, rigel, nyren, beholdsa, and electric_d_monk. Being in it with such good larpers helped a lot, keeping the converstion interesting and helping ease some of the awkwardness I was feeling about just having to spitball. Not something I'm certain I want to do again any time soon, but I enjoyed the experiment in this instance and I'm glad I decided to give it a try.

Now I am exhausted. I have been going at a breakneck pace for the last three weeks and I simply can't go any more. I have been kind of hoping that if I have one day where I sleep really well and eat properly it will fix my weariness and the mess my digestive system has been in, but I think I need a more consistent effort to really fix things up. Wednesday I will be going home for Thanksgiving with my brother, and I'm hoping to reset myself over that break with healthy eating and enough rest. I have things I need to get done in the near future, such as writing more Resonance characters and getting out the casting questionnaire for The Stand, but as cool as my activites have been, I think my body needs a bit more of a break before it will feel back to normal again.

Feeling unfocused and uncomfortable today. I didn't sleep well last night, my body is tense and knotted from the cold, and my stomach is all out of whack. The rainy weather is not helping me. Cannot really manage a detailed coherent entry today, so here are the broad strokes.

Signed up for Clockwork Cafe for first pick at Intercon. Surprised it didn't fill yet. The Stand has exactly one signup, and while I wasn't expecting many in the first round, I was surprised to see that one singup was natbudin. I figured all my local friends would wait for it to run around here. I'm shocked but grateful. Thanks, Nat! Though I feel in all fairness I should let you know I'm probably going to run it at this coming Festival, if in that case you want to use your signup for something else.

Having such a hard time focusing amid all the busy that I haven't worked on The Stand in a couple of weeks. Really need to get my ass on that. Certainly want to validate Nat's willingness to devote a slot to it at Intercon. ;-)

Stars of Al-Ashtara happens this Saturday. I am excited, but my brain has had trouble getting through the character sheet. I will have to make sure I sufficiently absorb the content by the end of the day tomorrow.

Stupid fogged-up brain can't remember what I did with my wallet. Hope to God's it's just out of place in my room. Heh, whenever I can't find my wallet it tends to be in its proper drawer in my desk, which I never think to look in because I assume I would never be responsible enough to put it there.

Despite everything, however, had an awesome rehearsal tonight. Got to see a lot of scenes I'd never seen before, and I am pleased and impressed. I felt pretty on my game, which surprised the hell out of me, given how I was feeling about everything else today. We're about to go into tech week this Sunday, and I think we're in damn good shape for it. We even got to load in our wood today, giving the shop a good cleaning in the process. Tomorrow I hear they got permission to start getting boards cut. This is awesome, because this means a lot will be gotten out of the way early. The show before us is a dance performance which doesn't have a set, so we'll only have to strike the lights and not the stage as well.

I am going to be ridiculously busy over the coming week. But I am always happy to have these sorts of things in my life, so I guess I can't complain.

Okay, so I didn't really follow my plan (such as it was) when it came to signing up for stuff at SLAW last night. I ended up going with Martha Stewart on Friday, The Sound of Drums and Clarence on Saturday, and In the Jungle on Sunday. I blame

natbudin,

captainecchi, and

electric_d_monk as bad influences, since I did my signing up while I was at the Fantasycraft game with them last night. I went with Sound of Drums because I'd never played a game in that sort of setting before, though I am very sad to miss Two Hours in London. Costumed Henchman was full (surprisingly one of the first to do become so) so Nat suggested I sign up for Clarence, since, as he pointed out, if I hated it, storming out because I thought it sucked would not only be acceptable but totally in character. So I figured, what the hell, why not? And Lise and I made pacts to sign up for games we weren't sure we would enjoy together, because then at least we'd have a buddy with us, and maybe we could find some way to make them fun for each other in spite of everything. Like, we're not sure we're going to enjoy In The Jungle, as we both tend not to like extremely freeform games, but we figured that we could at least get some fun out of being hobos together. :-) And I am curious how many more romance plots I will be in with Matt, as this tends to be a recurring theme. So this SLAW looks to be an interesting one!

The game last night was fun as well. I really enjoy being Ophelia, yammering on about nothing in particular and making really inappropriate observations about everything like a small child. Ophelia's exploits last night include picking the pocket of an unconscious stoner, fending off the advances of a pervy pech-fancier, pegging a fleeing assasin with my throwing dagger "like a fish in a barrel" and thereafter referring to him as "Fish," getting courted for a covert op by an elf who apparently has species-dysmorphia, and telling and retelling an acnedote involving a stolen greatsword and a barrel of pickled herring. Lise, I like this game you've got going on here. :-)

After work I will be hanging out with my family. Today will probably loosely scheduled, but I really hope we nail down what we're doing tomorrow. My parents are normally rather firm and decisive planners, but they want to spend time with my brother as well and he hasn't really gotten back to them about his availability, so they're afraid of making any plan that he wouldn't be able to go along with. :-P Hopefully we'll do something fun. I just wish we could figure out what the hell it is already.

Had a lovely dinner party last night in the charming company of

natbudin,

captainecchi, and

electric_d_monk. I settled on making Italian crusted pork chops as the main dish. I breaded them according to my mom's recipe, using a mixture of panko, parmesan, and Italian herbs, then threw them in a saute pan to brown. To my dismay, all the breading came off in the pan, probably because I forgot to flour the chops before the dipped them in the egg mixture. So when I placed the chops in the baking dish to finish in the oven, I scraped the lost breading out of the pan and sprinkled it over the meat. I then made up a new panko-cheese-herb mixture and shook it over them to create a new crust. This I finished with a drizzle of melted butter, then baked. They came out with a nice golden crust that way, and the slightly more well-done bits that browned in the saute pan complexified the flavor. I would like to try this same recipe doing it the way I'm supposed to sometime, but I liked how it came out even with my mistake. Also, the company was lovely, and did a great deal to make me feel better after the stress of the last few weeks. Must be certain to feed them well on a regular basis, to encourage them to make the long drive out this way again!

Was very productive this morning. I put the chicken for the picnic tomorrow in bags of marinade in preparation for cooking, cleaned the whole kitchen including mopping the floor, and folded and put away a load of laundry. Shortly I will be leaving for Medfield to have lunch with

bronzite before opening day of my show. He sadly cannot make the picnic, so we'll spend some time together today instead. I am looking forward to putting on our first real performance, though I am quite certain I will crash afterward. My plan is to pour all my energy into a good performance, then go home and chill, doing nothing more strenuous than chopping vegetables for potato salad for tomorrow. If I can make it through those things satisfactorily, it will have been a very good day.

It occurs to me that I haven't done any cooking in weeks now. I hope I still remember how, because I've got quite a bit to do for this coming weekend. During the weekend of Labor Wars, natbudin and I made a series of bets about what would happen during the game, with the understanding that the winner would make dinner for the loser. Nat won a fair number more of the bets than I did, so I have the happy task of hosting him this Friday evening. And, because I've been meaning to have them over for ages, I am having captainecchi and electric_d_monk over that night as well. I don't believe I've ever cooked for any of them before, so I am looking forward to taking this as an opportunity to show off. I haven't decided on the menu yet; I will do that today between work and rehearsal.

For the picnic on Sunday there doesn't really seem to be any kind of "main dish" being brought, so I think I'm going to step up and put one together. The guest list is around fifteen people at this point, so I need to figure out a dish I can make in large quantities that isn't excessively expensive. My first thought was chicken marbella, mostly because it is very delicious and requires nothing more complicated than marinating it in a bag the night before, laying it out in a pan, and baking it in the oven. Still, it requires some kind of fancy ingredients, which could push up the cost. Maybe if I can get someone to go in on it with me, it'll be a little bit more workable.

There is something on my mind right now that I do not feel comfortable talking about, but am feeling very anxious to deal with with the person in question. But I'm not sure what the most appropriate way to do it is. Phone, IM, in person? I don't know yet. At the very least, I must set up an appointment of some kind to do so, and soon. So you get random thoughts from a slightly distracted brain.

I'm so honored to have been asked by Nat, Susan, and Vito to help write the first Alleged Entertainment weekend-long game. I am now officially a member of Alleged Entertainment. I feel good about that.

I now have four games to my credit. Alice and Oz, both four-hours, I wrote by myself, under my own banner, Breaking Light. Paranoia: Research and Dismemberment, another four-hour, was written with Bernie Gabin, Joe Gabin, Matt Kamm, and Mac Magruder, under the banner of Will Not Be Denied, a reference I commend you if you get. And now one weekend-long with Alleged. I am proud of this.

I am surprised to find that in Labor Wars I was actually hoping that some of the replacement characters would be needed. I never felt that way before.

We had some fantastic players in this run. I am amused at how frequently in larps

bronzite is either the one holding back the oncoming tide of darkness, or the one bringing it. I thought

londo was going to be screwed, but he ended up more successful than almost anyone. One person I met this weekend, Shoshana, was a last-minute drop replacement who turned out to be fantastic in the part. I was so pleased with so many.

There are pictures of varying quality now up on Facebook. We should be having another run this coming fall, for those of you interested in playing.

Now I want to write another game. :-)

At long last, The Labor Wars has come into being as a game. The journey from Nat asking me in Chad’s kitchen if I wanted to help write a game has culminated in a satisfactory run this past weekend.

Overall, I feel the game went well. Players enjoyed it on the whole, and the concepts we put into place worked fairly well. If there was a major issue, it was that conflict was dealt with too easily. We wanted a major source of it to be with people with different interests, alliances, and prejudices wrangling over a limited pool of economic resources/. I believe we established proof of concept by the fact that the mechanic for determining the workings of it was very functional, but we are going to have to make some adjustments to the amount of accessible resources. It was too easy for everyone to secure exactly what they wanted, without having to fight for it with other factions or make compromises in order to gain anything. Also, I was surprised at how much players were willing to work together to come up with arrangements that were agreeable to everyone. I walked around muttering, “Fuckin’ Brandeisians,” given our circle’s tendency toward such kind and gentle play style, but then I noticed there wasn’t any actual Brandeisian in the game! Still, they were mostly part of the extended Brandeis larp circle, and they very much had that kind of larp culture. Indeed, zrealm coined the term “to Brandeis” a game, meaning to neutralize all the conflict through a tendency to compromise and work together.

We compensated for the lower than expected amount of conflict by throwing lots of events in the world that the players could affect and be affected by. I was actually extremely proud of our GM team for handling this; we came up with a lot of really good material, totally on the fly, that not only amped up the in-game struggle, it gelled with the direction that the players were taking the story, AND it felt like there was a living complete outside world that was active and reactive, and not just a series of crises that the GMs were throwing to trip up the players. They actually really surprised us with the direction they took things, necessitating us to make up so much on the fly, but we rolled with it and generated a series of events that remained true to the spirit while still meeting the players halfway.

We’ll need to make some edits, that’s for sure. Resources definitely need to be scarer. Anything to ramp up the conflict. One character may need to be completely overhauled. But we wrote a brand-new weekend long game, one of the first in this area in ten years, and it didn’t run half badly. I’m incredibly grateful to Nat, Susan, and Vito for inviting me to be part of this really cool project that they came up with.

We’ll have to get it in shape for a second run!

Labor Wars starts tonight, Labor Wars starts tonight! Our brand-new weekend-long game debuts tonight! Yaaaaay!

I helped

emp42ress with the advance cooking for the game yesterday afternoon. We picked up an enormous load of groceries including the makings of a number of delicious dishes and snacks that will be provided for the lucky players. As I told Susan, it was nice to be the helper in the kitchen for once rather than the person running it. She could be the one with the plan, who had to go to the effort of having all the necessary steps plotted out and ready in her head, and I could just be the eager kitchen monkey who does useful things when asked. :-) It was a relaxing change. Also, I really admire her ability to plan an elaborate dinner for a huge group of people, both culinarily and logistically. Usually the reason I insist on doing that job myself is because I know so few other people who can really manage it properly, and Susan is definitely great at it. It's going to be an impressive spread, and you have her to thank for it.

Stuffing later that evening was probably the easiest I've ever been to for a game. The game doesn't have lots of little bits and pieces, just paper packets beautifully designed by

natbudin, and so even with a few printing snags here and there, it was a remarkably simple game to put together. I was expecting the many-hour process that is typical of previous games I've run, but this was pleasantly quick.

All that remains is for me to assemble the pieces of my costume. We are in fact going to be semi-in character as house servants during the run, and I had to scramble to figure out what a maidservant would wear in roughly the post-Civil War South. I bought a floor-length black skirt, easily the longest skirt I've ever owned, and plan to wear that with an admittedly slightly-too-current-looking white button up blouse. It has an Asian collar and short sleeves, but it will serve. Over that I want to wear my blue-toile apron. I also have this swath of white lace that I always wanted to find an excuse to use as a shawl. It's a bit too grandma-y for normal wear and so kind of fits the style of the time, though it might be too fancy for a maid. Ah, well, we'll see. It's not going to be the best costume I ever put together, but I'm a GM and playing a house servant to boot-- I'm supposed to fade into the background!

*bounces* Just a few more hours until game!

I just finished my second replacement character for Labor Wars. That means I have completed all my sheet assignments! Yay! I am actually extremely pleased with how this last one turned out. I shamelessly stole a brilliant structural idea from natbudin (with his permission!) that he used in another sheet, and it turned out to be the perfect mechanism to convey the information. It makes for a slightly unorthodox character sheet, which has never been my inclination, but I found that my typical format wasn't really working for me.

Today will be spent in low-key pleasant things. I will be picking up crearespero around lunchtime and we'll be running some errands together, as I believe the place she needs to be is right next to the place I need to be, so that coincides nicely. And then this evening I have my hot date with blendedchaitea. Way back when she went above and beyond the call of duty helping me with To Think of Nothing, I promised I'd take her out to dinner to thank her, and now, months later, we're finally getting to do it. We'll be meeting at Tom Can Cook, and I plan to dress up pretty for her. :-) I am looking forward to spending some time with her and with Frances, and using it to relax and feel okay.

I've been a ball of stress lately. If I can't fix the source, I can at least do something to manage the effects.

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All Eyes on Me

"Do you know why heroes boast? Because it makes them brave."

Entries tagged with natbudin

October Review Challenge, #14 - Piece that got slept on

Intercon Q con report - Spring River

#RejectedIronGM

Festival of the Larps 2015 con report, part III - Saturday Market

Intercon O con report - part III, Spring River

My first Iron GM

Impressions of the Intercon L schedule

Larpercalia con report

Easy but accomplished weekend

DREAM PLOT

The aftermath of signups...

SLAW 2010 Report

Brain blah

"It's like I speared you-- like a fish!"

Busy keeps me going

Wait, I know how to cook?

Larp brain dump

The Labor Wars, accomplished

Labor Wars tonight!

Completed my sheet assignments!

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