All Eyes on Me

My first game of the weekend was Saturday morning, Midsummer Mischief run by captainecchi and electric_monk.

I had a lot of fun in this game. I played Constance Keeble, the horrible sister of Lord Emsworth, and it was a perfect cast. I am by nature a mean, nasty person, and I was carrying a lot of rage and frustration from the previous week, so the opportunity to be the bad guy who was awful to everyone was very welcome. I wore a slightly outdated costume that was more of a look for the teens rather than the twenties, with a big hat and a horrible mink stole I found in a thrift store.

I had goals and things—mostly about controlling my unruly, embarrassing family so that they wouldn’t marry poor people — but I was much more interested in simply being this character. So I stomped around ranting at people, criticizing their behavior, and loudly bemoaning the distinct vein of idiocy that ran inexorably through the Threepwoods. I’ve been reading the Blandings books quite a bit lately, so I knew the tone, and was particularly pleased to see people nailing the portrayals of their characters. Favorite people to interact with included were oakenguy as my dear brother Clarence Threewood, ninth earl of Emsworth, who got his Lordship’s pleasant vagueness exactly; witticaster’s hilarious nailing of the Honorable Freddie’s unique speaking cadence; Hyde’s perfect and slightly creepy Efficient Baxter; zapf’s mix of loyal devotion and acid bitterness in Beach; lightgamer’s getting Galahad Threepwood’s accent and biting wit dead-on. Favorite moments: detailing the fate that awaited Beefy Bingham if he married my niece; to wit, that he would forever commingle his bloodline with the Threepwood font of idiocy. Telling Gally that his monocle gave his face the nastiest expression, to hear in return that he preferred it to my hat with the aspect of a runaway fruit stand. Backhanded sniping with my sisters played by in_water_writ and ninja_report. Forgetting the names of the nobodies my blasted nieces and nephews were marrying, and so referring to them as Shiftless Peasant and Backalley Slattern. I also enjoyed instructing Huxley, the horrible little boy hilariously played by Nick, to find the air gun and shoot one of my irritating relatives, I didn’t care which.

I had a lovely, light, silly, frothy time, and it helped raise my mood from the exhaustion and frustration brought on by all the work to get Brockhurst ready to go for its first run. Thanks to Lise and Matt for being so good as to run it for us!

Wow. What a con.

Back from Intercon now and back to the grind of regular life. I am happy, exhausted, and very thoughtful.

( Shadow Over Babylon on Friday night )

Friday night - All's Well That Ends - This really was an excellent game. It was incredibly thickly plotted, and it seemed like pretty much every character felt like they were important and involved in significant things. I loved the setting, and the way the history was interpreted for dramatic effect. I was Robert Floode, a successful boy actor on the Elizabethan stage, and I very much enjoyed my entanglement in the theater world. Also, I always enjoy having the chance to interact with electric_d_monk, who had the role of Mr. William Shakespeare. I was genuinely cross-cast for the first time, and a role like mine is actually probably better suited to it than most. Additionally, it's games like these that really point out how the management of information can really affect a game. I tend to be an inveterate liar in larps, mostly to manipulate people, but sometimes you manipulate them more by telling the absolute truth. I got a fundamentally honest character to to tell me everything she knew by answering all her questions completely frankly. Amazing how one thing works well in some instances and another works better in others. AJ, the author and GM, is not only an excellent writer but an incredibly charming guy; I'd love to get the materials from him and run it myself here at Brandeis sometime, and from a quick conversation I had with him it seemed like he'd be okay with that.

Saturday morning - Muppet Purgatory - Unfortunately I did not have quite as good a time in this game. It was a horde game in which I was cast as horde, but-- obvious as it may seem --I like being horde in good hordes, I really don't like it in not-so-good hordes. The horde in this game was not written to allow a lot of interaction with other characters, and a lot of the time if someone didn't get the Muppet reference the character was making, either you had no idea how to play it or no one knew how to respond to you. Not my kind of horde. I think the cast characters must have been better, as the cast seemed to being having a lot of fun, but they were also played by some really strong larpers-- oakenguy as Fozzie, Margaret Simkins as Miss Piggy, Jim MacDougal as Gonzo, and the guy I didn't know who played Animal was absolutely amazing. Poor Nomi as Kermit had to run around herding cats trying to get us all out onstage, and Adina and Laura made a really good Statler and Waldorf. I liked the performative aspects of it, when you went out on stage with an act-- I got to play in a D&D game run by Animal, and sing the Internet is For Porn, among other things --but the horde just wasn't strong enough to stand without the context of the presentations. So not a great game, but probably some would have fun with it, and not really the game for me.

Saturday evening - League of Extraordinary Hogwarts Students - I had a blast in this game. I heard reports of Matt and Lise working on this game over the past year and grew progressively more excited for it as time went on that I couldn't not sign up for it. I loved the Victorian pastiche part of it, and they wove it very skillfully into the Harry Potter setting. I was the Cheshire Cat, and got to wear my sexy kitty costume that got more than a few approving looks. ;-) i had enough plot to give me a direction, and then the total freedom to pursue what interested me and stick my nose in other people's business. It was a very interesting character in its function and capabilities, and I loved getting to figure out how to use my situation to my best advantage. I had an ability that was both very powerful and incredibly abuseable, and I surprised myself by how much I used it during the game, but I worked very hard to not screw anybody with it. I followed around the guy who played Auguste Dupin a lot, as well as Marc Blumberg as Professor Moriarty, partly because they had interesting mysteries and partly because they were just fun to interact with. Among those that impressed me were those two, Margaret (as always) as Artemisia Black, the guy who played Watson, and Jared in his incredibly cool character that I ended up having a really fun time with. The one real criticism I had involved the deduction mechanic, which was a great idea and worked well, but there was just so much of it to get done that it tended to eat up a lot of time. I like the concept of it, though, and I'm considering asking if I can adapt it for something in Oz. Heh, as a side note, there was an incredibly cool moment right before the game that I was in my Cheshire Cat costume standing in front of Matt and Eager Mike-- my two Cheshire Cats. I am extremely amused to think that Matt was my original Cheshire Cat, and I was in the first run of his.

Sunday morning I wasn't in any game, but I did watch the second run of GM Space. It ran beautifully yet again, and I am incredibly proud of how strong that horde is. I think everyone who played it enjoyed it, even the players who typically don't like horde games. Socially I felt like I got to talk and hang with a lot of great people. Jared and I chatted a lot with David Cave, who played the March Hare in the second run of Alice, who is trying to finish a larp of his own. It was also great getting to see Marc  Blumberg, who impressed the hell out of me as the White Rabbit. I wanted to talk more to Margarat Simkins, but she just kind of got away from me even though we were in two games together. One of the best things was that I got to be with Matt and Lise, who I haven't seen in a really long time and have really missed. They were excellent company, and I want to talk to them more about their game. The dead dog, organized by londo, was very nice. This weekend I also made a point of hanging with bronzite because I haven't seen him in a while, and I wanted to hear about how it was to do Iron GM. His team, I Escaped from Arkham, won the contest, and now I'm very curious about their game. I also chatted with the dude from Mystical Journeys in the black and purple cyberpunk getup, who maintains the fact that he was flirting shamelessly with me is proof positive of how he was not part of his fellow's speculation that my age was fifteen. *Grumble* Stupid Alice pants making me look like a scrawny shapeless kid. It was also really nice to just be able to just be with Jared, hanging with people, playing games, and not worrying quite so much. We both had a bit of con crash afterward, I think because we had to be plunged back into the grind of work and stress, but for the timebeing it was a really nice diversion. He busted out an impression of someone at the dead dog that cracked up those of us still lingering.

So yeah, it sucks to be back to the grind, but overall, good con, and thanks to everyone that helped make it so.