Intercon O con report - part I, The Dying of the Light
Home from Intercon, and as I feared, put-off responsibilities are crashing down on me, but I had a lovely weekend. Intercon really is one of the high points of my year, and this was no exception. I will now write about it in pieces, out of order, beginning not with the Friday night run of Brockhurst, but instead about the first game I played, The Dying of the Light.
About the right balance for me at a larp weekend is to run two things and play two things, preferably equally distributed across the weekend. I wanted to play The Dying of the Light because of the writer team- wired_lizard, mllelaurel, staystrong62805, and bleemoo -and because they beat Agent Bobo of the Resistance in the Iron GM of two years ago by something like a third of a point. It’s a high weirdness game, the sort where nobody is what they seem, which doesn’t usually interest me anymore, but this was a particularly well-done example.
Without spoiling too much, I was a chaos character, working to bring about the end of the world, and I believe, unless I’m mistaken, to have been the first player to actually make that happen. I love characters that give me an opportunity to have a socially acceptable outlet for my deeply-ingrained desire to lie and manipulate that I usually have to suppress in order to not be a terrible person. I told hideous untruths to my son with a monster inside him in order to enrage him enough to bring out his beast, then set him against my enemies, and then turned away any attempts to subdue him out of feigned motherly concern. At last, when everyone learned they had to execute him in order to save the universe, I told him to run and not look back, while using my shape shifting powers to impersonate him and die in his place. When they believed he was out of the way, they would think everything would be okay when in fact I had beaten them. Thusly, I lied and screwed my way to the end of everything, and it was very fun. I love being villains and manipulators, and it pleases me when I do a good job of it. I do not to be that person in real life, but frankly I get a little charge knowing I can pull it off when I want to. I also got to exchange bitchy bon mots with my ex-wife, and if there's anything I can do besides lie, it's be a Mean Girl. ;-)
As for how it compares to Bobo, the two games are honestly apples and oranges. DotL is a beautifully executed example of a larp form that is very difficult to keep from being tired at this point in the development of the form, while Bobo is experimental and innovative. Both are very well-thought out and provide an engaging play experience, but it is very possible to hate either of them if the form is not to your taste. But I was impressed at how well they made that larp style work, and I definitely had a good time in the game.
About the right balance for me at a larp weekend is to run two things and play two things, preferably equally distributed across the weekend. I wanted to play The Dying of the Light because of the writer team- wired_lizard, mllelaurel, staystrong62805, and bleemoo -and because they beat Agent Bobo of the Resistance in the Iron GM of two years ago by something like a third of a point. It’s a high weirdness game, the sort where nobody is what they seem, which doesn’t usually interest me anymore, but this was a particularly well-done example.
Without spoiling too much, I was a chaos character, working to bring about the end of the world, and I believe, unless I’m mistaken, to have been the first player to actually make that happen. I love characters that give me an opportunity to have a socially acceptable outlet for my deeply-ingrained desire to lie and manipulate that I usually have to suppress in order to not be a terrible person. I told hideous untruths to my son with a monster inside him in order to enrage him enough to bring out his beast, then set him against my enemies, and then turned away any attempts to subdue him out of feigned motherly concern. At last, when everyone learned they had to execute him in order to save the universe, I told him to run and not look back, while using my shape shifting powers to impersonate him and die in his place. When they believed he was out of the way, they would think everything would be okay when in fact I had beaten them. Thusly, I lied and screwed my way to the end of everything, and it was very fun. I love being villains and manipulators, and it pleases me when I do a good job of it. I do not to be that person in real life, but frankly I get a little charge knowing I can pull it off when I want to. I also got to exchange bitchy bon mots with my ex-wife, and if there's anything I can do besides lie, it's be a Mean Girl. ;-)
As for how it compares to Bobo, the two games are honestly apples and oranges. DotL is a beautifully executed example of a larp form that is very difficult to keep from being tired at this point in the development of the form, while Bobo is experimental and innovative. Both are very well-thought out and provide an engaging play experience, but it is very possible to hate either of them if the form is not to your taste. But I was impressed at how well they made that larp style work, and I definitely had a good time in the game.