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nishatalithaI eventually crashed out about 4.00am, but seemed to be okay on the two-and-a-half hours of sleep that I managed. Last night I got nearly seven, so while I have the larp-hangover this morning, I'm not too bad otherwise. Think I will go in earlier, have McDonalds for breakfast and be at the con on good time. We have a 9.45am start today, which feels less generous than it has in other years.
There are spoilers for all the games under the cuts, although the games on demand ones won't actually matter...
Dead Man's Chest
This is a freeform theatre game written for the non-larping masses, but equally be able to be played by larpers. There were two groups of pirates, the vips from Port Royal, the Spaniards and the natives, and we were all trapped on the same island in a nasty storm, with the local volcano making nasty sounds. Well, the natives lived there, but the rest of us were stuck. Appparently, there's a note in the handbook that says "don't worry, no one will get sacrificed to the volcano". The pirates are after Captain Flint's treasure, Flint having died about six months before the game started, which is what split the pirates into two groups.
I was Tom the ships boy of the Scurvy Knave under Cap'n Jack. Secretly, I was the Governor's younger daughter who had run away from home because I was sick of my older sister Elizabeth getting all the attention and the fun. This plan didn't quite work since Elizabeth and the Governor had been kidnapped on the same day. Elizabeth really didn't want to marry the Spanish Don, who, surprise surprise was there with the rest of us.
The end result was that the volcano was placated with the sacrifice of Captain Jack (it needed to be a dishonourable man, since it was a dishonourable event that upset the volcano, and what would it say about the rest of us if we sacrificed an honourable person?), Elizabeth married the naval officer that she wanted and I married the Spanish Don, thereby solving two problems with one stone: I got parental approval back by getting him his Spanish alliance, and married someone who would actively involve me in an interesting and dangerous life. The Spanish Don was essentially Zorro.
I feel guilty about the death of Alice Truman, the first mate of the Fury (the other pirate ship), as she and Bill Pistol defended the treasure when the Don, Salamanca and I came aboard the ship to drop it off the side. The Don didn't need it as he was filthy rich and didn't want it falling into Spanish hands. I didn't particularly care, and went along for the ride. Alice was a good woman, and it's a shame about her death. Then we stole the ship and left. The other people leaving the island got the other chest of treasure, but oh well.
I do wonder how the volcano god reacted to the return of one of the chests of treasure.
Games on Demand: Dogs of the Vineyard
For the non-Kapcon attendees, this is when you get several GMs and a large group of players and the GMs pitch the games that they want to run and you form groups based on this. I chose to play Dogs in the Vineyard, where you are young Mormons just out of seminary with absolute moral authority and no life experience, otherwise known as Dogs. God is real, demons are real, and the Dogs deliver the mail and investigate when things go wrong (as of course, they do).
We had an initial set up scene, both to help us learn more about our characters and to get a hang of the mechanics. This was one on one, each player with the GM. We used pre-generated characters. My character was an earnest young chap named Brother Thaddeus, and since the had a relationship with his older brother on it, the set up scene was with him. We decided that Joseph was jealous that I was a Dog and he wasn't. He had been sent to deliver the Dog's coat that my village (Tower Creek Branch) had made for me and wasn't particularly happy about this. Out of character, I'd decided that one of my goals was familial respect for my achievements, so the aim of this conflict was to force Joseph to come to this realisation.
As a conflict, it was far more reasoned and deliberate than I'm used to. Part of that was Brother Thaddeus was an earnest young man. Part of it was the game mechanics - you rolled as many dice as you could from relevant abilities or skills, and then matched them in pairs against the GM or whoever the conflict was against - the GM described it as poker with dice. It made for a very deliberate argument, as you put your dice down to match the other players dice and countered the argument, and then raised with a new line of thought. You could give in at any time.
This continued on through the rest of the game. Physical combat, as it turns out, is lethal. While two out of three player characters survived, that's only because one of us wasn't there at the time.
I found it really interesting playing in a game that was so mechanics heavy, although it was very strange stopping your impassioned response in order to roll dice and marshall your arguments one by one. I've been used to more immersive larping over the years; however, I found that the mechanics enhanced the verbal conflict elements of the game. The most awkward thing about those mechanics is that once combat was started, it had to be finished before someone could join in (or there was a side combat or something), and that doesn't reflect how things usually go at all.
The Yellow Peril
The Yellow Peril (or whatever it was actually called - something about the city of Carabosa?) was a Dark Ages Cthulu game. Now, the last Cthulu game I played was also Dark Ages, but at Confusion some years ago and run by Dale. This was run by (I think) Andrew Miller (AndyM on NZRag). Now, no offense to Dale intended, but his GM-ing style is hit and miss with how I play, and I don't remember that Cthulu game as being particularly brilliant.
This one was excellent. The tension was built steadily, and while it occasionally dropped a little, this was only in order to rachet it up another level. I think that one of the things that the GM did well was rather than dwell on a detailed description of what we were seeing, he described how we felt/reacted to what he'd just described. And then we had to roll a sanity check (and I usually failed).
We were a group of Normans and Saxons sent out by our lord to apologise to this old Bard for cutting down an oak tree in order to settle peace in the land again. The first horror encounter was at the first village, where everyone was already dead, apart from some wolves in the church (and we killed those). The people appeared to have died of thirst in the middle of winter. We also found a yellow symbol and a strange yellow mask stuffed with oak leaves on a scarecrow. We returned to the lord and explained what we'd seen, and found out some more information about the past in the library.
Of course, we were then sent out to another two nearby towns to see if they were okay. Neither of them were - the first one, all the humans (except one deaf old woman) were more or less animals. It was from the old lady that we heard about the Bard who read pages of the book and then people went crazy. My character firmly believed it had something to do with cutting down the sacred oak tree to make way for a feast hall. He was superstitious anyway.
The next village seemed fine, apart from a suspiciously well-prepared feast. The villagers then tried to murder us in our sleep. After we fought them off, we investigated further and discovered a human butchery in a house at the edge of town. Someone made the inevitable comment about the feast the previous night and we all felt ill. The villagers had killed our horses too, so we had to walk back to the lord's fortress.
We started seeing things on the way back, an overlap of the city of Carabosa and what was actually there. Finally, we got back, only to discover that the Saxon bard was already there and starting the summoning ritual. My general plan was to find this bard, kill him, then kill myself. If I hadn't been stopped, that would have been it for us all, but I was stopped and so the game ended with the Saxon bard (the GM) frantically chanting to send the Yellow King back, most of the players clutching hands and trying not to see or hear anything as the Yellow King came closer and closer. And while none of the party actually died, none of us were ever quite sane after that - I'm fairly sure than Renwald went off to become a crazy mink after that, maybe even a hermit.
The Al-Shimir LARP
As far as my character, one Karen Lagina knew, she was a Crown prosecutor from London going on a dessert tour with Matthew, the guy she wanted to be with. The organisers did a great job putting together our character sheets and the tour information, so we knew not to wear clothing above the knees and to bring our own food and water. Easiest LARP I've ever had to costume for.
I knew something when I'd mentioned that I was a tourist a couple of weeks ago and was told that other people weren't supposed to know that. Ooops - it wasn't clear that I shouldn't be talking about that very basic element out of character. I was certain something was going on when the other players were getting their character sheets and the tourists, ahem, the special group, was told that we would be getting them later (oh, and that we would be meeting fifteen minutes earlier than everyone else). We weren't handed out character sheets then, either.
Sophie did an amazing job as Paige, our bubbly and enthusiastic tour guide. We were taken down in the lift (the tour bus) and into the market, Paige keeping up a commentry the whole way. The vendors in the marketplace (special appearances from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mashugenah and house_monkey among others did an excellent job; they were noisy and pushy and overwhelming. So much so that by the time I was taken through the entrance (I was one of the last), I was almost ready to have a panic attack. Certainly I was having a minor freak out - one instance where an issue I have was breaking through the character. I'd forgotten that I sometimes react badly to lots of people in a closely crowded space - I haven't done that for ages. It was definitely effective, though. In the quiet of the shrouded gazebo at the end of the marketplace, by the time Ellen put the veil over my eyes and spun me around I was disoriented and vaguely dizzy. So much so that the first time I did after ending up next to Matthew was sit down!
After we started wandering around, out-of-character I was expecting some sort of reincarnation gig. In character, we thought it was a fantastic SCA type event - until Matthew was accused to murder. They thought he was a slave accused of murdering someone - who, I never found out - and sentenced to death. We managed to get around that by the fact that he didn't remember anything and didn't recognise the person who thought he was his brother. Shortly after that, I received my character sheet.
I hadn't expected that I was going to be one of the Djinni of the City! Suddenly, I had a new name, Karima, new goals (find my magic item, resolve issues from my past here in Al-Shimir, and decide whether I wanted to go back or remain here), the ability to see the dead, two minor miracles and one major miracle - and an entirely new outlook on what was happening. We've been given a bit of background in Paige's commentry about the water situation and that was what we found we were in the middle of. Of the tour group, eight were Djinni and the rest were hangers on lovers/friends/the sultan... The water in the city had dried up. It would take five major miracles to restore the water, and five to send us back to the future. There were nine of us, eight from the tour, and my brother whose magic item was broken and was so powerless.
I accomplished the first quite easily; the brother who had stayed behind basically walked up to me, asked if it was mine, and handed it over. Unfortunately, I didn't recognise him. Matthew did remember Mata, the slave-he-was, but very sensibly didn't tell anyone besides me. Back in London he was a PE teacher, he had a life, and was respected. In Al-Shimir, he had nothing.
Consequently, once Matthew and I had confessed to each other, Karima didn't really get a look in over Karen. I had spent a reasonable amount of time thinking about Karen and how she thought about things, and never really had the chance for Karima. Matthew passionately didn't want to stay in Al-Shimir, and Karen wanted both to be with him and for him to be happy, which meant going back. Also, I had a little girl I'd arranged to adopt waiting for me, and I didn't want to give her up either.
After that, there was a lot of family politics, trying to convince the undecided that they really did want to go back. Some questioning of the GMs byruthlessly indicated that we could give up our power and use that as a second major miracle, but as djinni, did we really want to give up our power? Some of us (mostly the same ones who wanted to go back) were prepared to do so, the others not so much. In the end, the water was restored and I didn't use my major miracle (I wasn't prepared to do that when I could go home instead) and I kept my magic. After game-end, the next day, we all went home one assumes.
There was a rash of poisonings going around the Merchant's guild and others, and I standing with Matthew and talking to three or four of my Djinni siblings near the end of the game, when someone rushed up to us, and:
"I've been told one of you is a Djinn?"
"Which one of us were you after?"
"How many of you are Djinni?"
I point to Matthew. "He's not."
eyes_of_winter's character stared wildly at us.
It amused me anyway.
In terms of technical notes for the organisers, it would have been helpful if a description of my item had been on the character sheet, and my the name/a description of brother who remained behind. I didn't recognise him or his name, which was unfortunate since he was the one who gave me my item back. I realise there wasn't much space, but I felt that would have been helpful.
Also, guys, don't worry about the minor freakout bit - you weren't to know and it was really effective.
The Frog Princess
The Frog Princess was one of the games that I was considering running from the SDC list, until I saw it was on the timetable, whereupon it promptly became my GM pick. I'd wanted to play it when it was first run and didn't get the chance, so I was quite pleased to be able to do so.
I was Song, a giant wolf. This was a good group of people to play with - I knew and had played with all except one before. The party was escorting a priest we'd rescued from a neighbouring country through the swamp back to somewhere safe. There was a combat straight off to get us used to it (I tried my unnatural D20 - it's okay, but not brilliant), and then we had to stop at the nearest town to get our rudder repaired.
I can't remember what I played the round after that (oh, that's right, I filled in as an NPC for the Teonn LARP), but the final round was Games on Demand again - Fiasco, which may have been the filthiest game I've ever been in.
I was pretty shattered at the end of all this, and so while I went to the after thing, when my ride wanted to leave early, I was more than happy to go. Lesson learned: seven rounds of gaming (including the LARP) is too many; take one off and stick to six.
There are spoilers for all the games under the cuts, although the games on demand ones won't actually matter...
Dead Man's Chest
This is a freeform theatre game written for the non-larping masses, but equally be able to be played by larpers. There were two groups of pirates, the vips from Port Royal, the Spaniards and the natives, and we were all trapped on the same island in a nasty storm, with the local volcano making nasty sounds. Well, the natives lived there, but the rest of us were stuck. Appparently, there's a note in the handbook that says "don't worry, no one will get sacrificed to the volcano". The pirates are after Captain Flint's treasure, Flint having died about six months before the game started, which is what split the pirates into two groups.
I was Tom the ships boy of the Scurvy Knave under Cap'n Jack. Secretly, I was the Governor's younger daughter who had run away from home because I was sick of my older sister Elizabeth getting all the attention and the fun. This plan didn't quite work since Elizabeth and the Governor had been kidnapped on the same day. Elizabeth really didn't want to marry the Spanish Don, who, surprise surprise was there with the rest of us.
The end result was that the volcano was placated with the sacrifice of Captain Jack (it needed to be a dishonourable man, since it was a dishonourable event that upset the volcano, and what would it say about the rest of us if we sacrificed an honourable person?), Elizabeth married the naval officer that she wanted and I married the Spanish Don, thereby solving two problems with one stone: I got parental approval back by getting him his Spanish alliance, and married someone who would actively involve me in an interesting and dangerous life. The Spanish Don was essentially Zorro.
I feel guilty about the death of Alice Truman, the first mate of the Fury (the other pirate ship), as she and Bill Pistol defended the treasure when the Don, Salamanca and I came aboard the ship to drop it off the side. The Don didn't need it as he was filthy rich and didn't want it falling into Spanish hands. I didn't particularly care, and went along for the ride. Alice was a good woman, and it's a shame about her death. Then we stole the ship and left. The other people leaving the island got the other chest of treasure, but oh well.
I do wonder how the volcano god reacted to the return of one of the chests of treasure.
Games on Demand: Dogs of the Vineyard
For the non-Kapcon attendees, this is when you get several GMs and a large group of players and the GMs pitch the games that they want to run and you form groups based on this. I chose to play Dogs in the Vineyard, where you are young Mormons just out of seminary with absolute moral authority and no life experience, otherwise known as Dogs. God is real, demons are real, and the Dogs deliver the mail and investigate when things go wrong (as of course, they do).
We had an initial set up scene, both to help us learn more about our characters and to get a hang of the mechanics. This was one on one, each player with the GM. We used pre-generated characters. My character was an earnest young chap named Brother Thaddeus, and since the had a relationship with his older brother on it, the set up scene was with him. We decided that Joseph was jealous that I was a Dog and he wasn't. He had been sent to deliver the Dog's coat that my village (Tower Creek Branch) had made for me and wasn't particularly happy about this. Out of character, I'd decided that one of my goals was familial respect for my achievements, so the aim of this conflict was to force Joseph to come to this realisation.
As a conflict, it was far more reasoned and deliberate than I'm used to. Part of that was Brother Thaddeus was an earnest young man. Part of it was the game mechanics - you rolled as many dice as you could from relevant abilities or skills, and then matched them in pairs against the GM or whoever the conflict was against - the GM described it as poker with dice. It made for a very deliberate argument, as you put your dice down to match the other players dice and countered the argument, and then raised with a new line of thought. You could give in at any time.
This continued on through the rest of the game. Physical combat, as it turns out, is lethal. While two out of three player characters survived, that's only because one of us wasn't there at the time.
I found it really interesting playing in a game that was so mechanics heavy, although it was very strange stopping your impassioned response in order to roll dice and marshall your arguments one by one. I've been used to more immersive larping over the years; however, I found that the mechanics enhanced the verbal conflict elements of the game. The most awkward thing about those mechanics is that once combat was started, it had to be finished before someone could join in (or there was a side combat or something), and that doesn't reflect how things usually go at all.
The Yellow Peril
The Yellow Peril (or whatever it was actually called - something about the city of Carabosa?) was a Dark Ages Cthulu game. Now, the last Cthulu game I played was also Dark Ages, but at Confusion some years ago and run by Dale. This was run by (I think) Andrew Miller (AndyM on NZRag). Now, no offense to Dale intended, but his GM-ing style is hit and miss with how I play, and I don't remember that Cthulu game as being particularly brilliant.
This one was excellent. The tension was built steadily, and while it occasionally dropped a little, this was only in order to rachet it up another level. I think that one of the things that the GM did well was rather than dwell on a detailed description of what we were seeing, he described how we felt/reacted to what he'd just described. And then we had to roll a sanity check (and I usually failed).
We were a group of Normans and Saxons sent out by our lord to apologise to this old Bard for cutting down an oak tree in order to settle peace in the land again. The first horror encounter was at the first village, where everyone was already dead, apart from some wolves in the church (and we killed those). The people appeared to have died of thirst in the middle of winter. We also found a yellow symbol and a strange yellow mask stuffed with oak leaves on a scarecrow. We returned to the lord and explained what we'd seen, and found out some more information about the past in the library.
Of course, we were then sent out to another two nearby towns to see if they were okay. Neither of them were - the first one, all the humans (except one deaf old woman) were more or less animals. It was from the old lady that we heard about the Bard who read pages of the book and then people went crazy. My character firmly believed it had something to do with cutting down the sacred oak tree to make way for a feast hall. He was superstitious anyway.
The next village seemed fine, apart from a suspiciously well-prepared feast. The villagers then tried to murder us in our sleep. After we fought them off, we investigated further and discovered a human butchery in a house at the edge of town. Someone made the inevitable comment about the feast the previous night and we all felt ill. The villagers had killed our horses too, so we had to walk back to the lord's fortress.
We started seeing things on the way back, an overlap of the city of Carabosa and what was actually there. Finally, we got back, only to discover that the Saxon bard was already there and starting the summoning ritual. My general plan was to find this bard, kill him, then kill myself. If I hadn't been stopped, that would have been it for us all, but I was stopped and so the game ended with the Saxon bard (the GM) frantically chanting to send the Yellow King back, most of the players clutching hands and trying not to see or hear anything as the Yellow King came closer and closer. And while none of the party actually died, none of us were ever quite sane after that - I'm fairly sure than Renwald went off to become a crazy mink after that, maybe even a hermit.
The Al-Shimir LARP
As far as my character, one Karen Lagina knew, she was a Crown prosecutor from London going on a dessert tour with Matthew, the guy she wanted to be with. The organisers did a great job putting together our character sheets and the tour information, so we knew not to wear clothing above the knees and to bring our own food and water. Easiest LARP I've ever had to costume for.
I knew something when I'd mentioned that I was a tourist a couple of weeks ago and was told that other people weren't supposed to know that. Ooops - it wasn't clear that I shouldn't be talking about that very basic element out of character. I was certain something was going on when the other players were getting their character sheets and the tourists, ahem, the special group, was told that we would be getting them later (oh, and that we would be meeting fifteen minutes earlier than everyone else). We weren't handed out character sheets then, either.
Sophie did an amazing job as Paige, our bubbly and enthusiastic tour guide. We were taken down in the lift (the tour bus) and into the market, Paige keeping up a commentry the whole way. The vendors in the marketplace (special appearances from
mashugenah and house_monkey among others did an excellent job; they were noisy and pushy and overwhelming. So much so that by the time I was taken through the entrance (I was one of the last), I was almost ready to have a panic attack. Certainly I was having a minor freak out - one instance where an issue I have was breaking through the character. I'd forgotten that I sometimes react badly to lots of people in a closely crowded space - I haven't done that for ages. It was definitely effective, though. In the quiet of the shrouded gazebo at the end of the marketplace, by the time Ellen put the veil over my eyes and spun me around I was disoriented and vaguely dizzy. So much so that the first time I did after ending up next to Matthew was sit down!After we started wandering around, out-of-character I was expecting some sort of reincarnation gig. In character, we thought it was a fantastic SCA type event - until Matthew was accused to murder. They thought he was a slave accused of murdering someone - who, I never found out - and sentenced to death. We managed to get around that by the fact that he didn't remember anything and didn't recognise the person who thought he was his brother. Shortly after that, I received my character sheet.
I hadn't expected that I was going to be one of the Djinni of the City! Suddenly, I had a new name, Karima, new goals (find my magic item, resolve issues from my past here in Al-Shimir, and decide whether I wanted to go back or remain here), the ability to see the dead, two minor miracles and one major miracle - and an entirely new outlook on what was happening. We've been given a bit of background in Paige's commentry about the water situation and that was what we found we were in the middle of. Of the tour group, eight were Djinni and the rest were hangers on lovers/friends/the sultan... The water in the city had dried up. It would take five major miracles to restore the water, and five to send us back to the future. There were nine of us, eight from the tour, and my brother whose magic item was broken and was so powerless.
I accomplished the first quite easily; the brother who had stayed behind basically walked up to me, asked if it was mine, and handed it over. Unfortunately, I didn't recognise him. Matthew did remember Mata, the slave-he-was, but very sensibly didn't tell anyone besides me. Back in London he was a PE teacher, he had a life, and was respected. In Al-Shimir, he had nothing.
Consequently, once Matthew and I had confessed to each other, Karima didn't really get a look in over Karen. I had spent a reasonable amount of time thinking about Karen and how she thought about things, and never really had the chance for Karima. Matthew passionately didn't want to stay in Al-Shimir, and Karen wanted both to be with him and for him to be happy, which meant going back. Also, I had a little girl I'd arranged to adopt waiting for me, and I didn't want to give her up either.
After that, there was a lot of family politics, trying to convince the undecided that they really did want to go back. Some questioning of the GMs by
ruthlessly indicated that we could give up our power and use that as a second major miracle, but as djinni, did we really want to give up our power? Some of us (mostly the same ones who wanted to go back) were prepared to do so, the others not so much. In the end, the water was restored and I didn't use my major miracle (I wasn't prepared to do that when I could go home instead) and I kept my magic. After game-end, the next day, we all went home one assumes. There was a rash of poisonings going around the Merchant's guild and others, and I standing with Matthew and talking to three or four of my Djinni siblings near the end of the game, when someone rushed up to us, and:
"I've been told one of you is a Djinn?"
"Which one of us were you after?"
"How many of you are Djinni?"
I point to Matthew. "He's not."
eyes_of_winter's character stared wildly at us. It amused me anyway.
In terms of technical notes for the organisers, it would have been helpful if a description of my item had been on the character sheet, and my the name/a description of brother who remained behind. I didn't recognise him or his name, which was unfortunate since he was the one who gave me my item back. I realise there wasn't much space, but I felt that would have been helpful.
Also, guys, don't worry about the minor freakout bit - you weren't to know and it was really effective.
The Frog Princess
The Frog Princess was one of the games that I was considering running from the SDC list, until I saw it was on the timetable, whereupon it promptly became my GM pick. I'd wanted to play it when it was first run and didn't get the chance, so I was quite pleased to be able to do so.
I was Song, a giant wolf. This was a good group of people to play with - I knew and had played with all except one before. The party was escorting a priest we'd rescued from a neighbouring country through the swamp back to somewhere safe. There was a combat straight off to get us used to it (I tried my unnatural D20 - it's okay, but not brilliant), and then we had to stop at the nearest town to get our rudder repaired.
I can't remember what I played the round after that (oh, that's right, I filled in as an NPC for the Teonn LARP), but the final round was Games on Demand again - Fiasco, which may have been the filthiest game I've ever been in.
I was pretty shattered at the end of all this, and so while I went to the after thing, when my ride wanted to leave early, I was more than happy to go. Lesson learned: seven rounds of gaming (including the LARP) is too many; take one off and stick to six.