Intercon O Report
This was a really great Intercon, and thanks to all the volunteers and GMs who made it happen!
I had a great time seeing people at Precon. The biggest thing I get out of Precon is always the chance to sit around and chat and talk LARP with so many great LARPers and writers.
As for panels:
LARPing beyond the gender binary was a really great experience. There were lots of great topics raised, and it was really fun to hear various people discuss their person gender journeys. There were definitely some points raised in the panel that are going to affect how we write casting questionnaires and possibly even games in the future.
Physical disability in LARP also taught me a lot. I was disappointed at low attendance for this panel. I think this a conversation that we really need to be having. As a GM, I learned a lot about how to help players access our games. There was also a lot of great conversation about the fact that not all games are for all players, but how to bid it in a way that makes it clear what is required for the game, and to allow people to self-select what they can and cannot handle.
Author Improv was amazing. Kittens forever! Thank you so much to Brad for making this happen. Writing the sheet was a lot of fun, and I was amazed at how much fun the audience also seemed to be having. Brad did a great job of entertaining people while the actual writing was happening, and the prompts from the audience were wonderful. I was particularly amazed at how coherent the sheet wound up being in the end. Add a dozen more and this would actually be a pretty good Sunday morning game.
And on to games:
Group Date was a really useful experience. Given that we were running Spring River later in the weekend, it was really valuable to see what someone else had done in a broadly overlapping exploratory space. It was really cool to see how the characters came together and to explore the effects of these attributes on the perception of our experiences. I played Lust, Optimism and Empathy at different times, with a brief period of Doubt within the character (although I didn't play it when interacting with the other character). Interacting as these different facets was an interesting experience, especially seeing the impact of which facet of the other character I was interacting with. Even more so than many of our games, it felt more like an acting exercise than like a LARP, but I don't necessarily consider that a bad thing. The character is a complete blank slate when you start, so designing who "Jesse" was made for an interesting part of the experience. On the other hand, I'm glad it wasn't more than two hours. That's about as long as I usually want for games that are as detached as that one.
A Respectful Calm was the highlight of my weekend as a player. I played Mayor Jeri Ferdinand, and it was exactly what I was looking for out of the game. It was a serious deep immersion game, with a lot going on and messy politics. Jeri was an interesting balance: I've played the character in charge, desperately trying to hold things together in a messy situation and I've played the politician, trying to woo voters and make deals. Oddly, I've never played both roles at the same time, although it makes perfect sense, and it's a very realistic situation. This was a very busy, intense role with a lot going on, and gave me a chance to really play the politics, which is something I love, and easy to miss in the cool experimental and immersion games that tend to draw my eye.
Hello, You Must Be I can't say too much about this game, because it's very hush-hush. Overall, this was a good game, and I had a really good time, but the blurb was terrible. I think there is quite a bit more information they could include to adequately set expectations without spoiling anything and I very much hope they do so in the future. I enjoyed this game, but with all the options of Intercon, I probably wouldn't have chosen it if I had known more about what it was. None of which should discourage anyone else from playing it, the game is great, it just wasn't what I went in expecting.
Stars Over Atlantis was a lot of fun, and had a lot going on. I enjoyed figuring out all the weird shit that was happening and there is a lot of complexity to this game. However, to be honest, I had the most fun in this game before and around the weird shit. I loved the character I was given and the situation in which they found themselves, and I wish I had a little more time to focus on that. On the other hand the weird shit did provide some fascinating RP opportunities.
Spring River was very experimental and a little bit of a gamble, and we were ecstatic to see how well it seemed to work. This was definitely the overall highlight of the weekend. It's so much fun to see run a game for the first time and see it all come together. It was absolutely amazing to watch the story that our players told and to see the development of the characters over time as the traits learned to work together. Thank you so much to our players for taking a chance on this and jumping in with so much enthusiasm. We have some minor changes to make, but I'm really looking forward to hearing how things go differently at Festival.
Her Eternal Majesty's Privy Council for the Continual Funding of the Mad Arts & Sciences was ridiculously fun to watch. The best thing about running out horde games is just sitting back and watching the crazy things that our players get up to.
Thank you to all the GMs, players and volunteers who made this con great!
I had a great time seeing people at Precon. The biggest thing I get out of Precon is always the chance to sit around and chat and talk LARP with so many great LARPers and writers.
As for panels:
LARPing beyond the gender binary was a really great experience. There were lots of great topics raised, and it was really fun to hear various people discuss their person gender journeys. There were definitely some points raised in the panel that are going to affect how we write casting questionnaires and possibly even games in the future.
Physical disability in LARP also taught me a lot. I was disappointed at low attendance for this panel. I think this a conversation that we really need to be having. As a GM, I learned a lot about how to help players access our games. There was also a lot of great conversation about the fact that not all games are for all players, but how to bid it in a way that makes it clear what is required for the game, and to allow people to self-select what they can and cannot handle.
Author Improv was amazing. Kittens forever! Thank you so much to Brad for making this happen. Writing the sheet was a lot of fun, and I was amazed at how much fun the audience also seemed to be having. Brad did a great job of entertaining people while the actual writing was happening, and the prompts from the audience were wonderful. I was particularly amazed at how coherent the sheet wound up being in the end. Add a dozen more and this would actually be a pretty good Sunday morning game.
And on to games:
Group Date was a really useful experience. Given that we were running Spring River later in the weekend, it was really valuable to see what someone else had done in a broadly overlapping exploratory space. It was really cool to see how the characters came together and to explore the effects of these attributes on the perception of our experiences. I played Lust, Optimism and Empathy at different times, with a brief period of Doubt within the character (although I didn't play it when interacting with the other character). Interacting as these different facets was an interesting experience, especially seeing the impact of which facet of the other character I was interacting with. Even more so than many of our games, it felt more like an acting exercise than like a LARP, but I don't necessarily consider that a bad thing. The character is a complete blank slate when you start, so designing who "Jesse" was made for an interesting part of the experience. On the other hand, I'm glad it wasn't more than two hours. That's about as long as I usually want for games that are as detached as that one.
A Respectful Calm was the highlight of my weekend as a player. I played Mayor Jeri Ferdinand, and it was exactly what I was looking for out of the game. It was a serious deep immersion game, with a lot going on and messy politics. Jeri was an interesting balance: I've played the character in charge, desperately trying to hold things together in a messy situation and I've played the politician, trying to woo voters and make deals. Oddly, I've never played both roles at the same time, although it makes perfect sense, and it's a very realistic situation. This was a very busy, intense role with a lot going on, and gave me a chance to really play the politics, which is something I love, and easy to miss in the cool experimental and immersion games that tend to draw my eye.
Hello, You Must Be I can't say too much about this game, because it's very hush-hush. Overall, this was a good game, and I had a really good time, but the blurb was terrible. I think there is quite a bit more information they could include to adequately set expectations without spoiling anything and I very much hope they do so in the future. I enjoyed this game, but with all the options of Intercon, I probably wouldn't have chosen it if I had known more about what it was. None of which should discourage anyone else from playing it, the game is great, it just wasn't what I went in expecting.
Stars Over Atlantis was a lot of fun, and had a lot going on. I enjoyed figuring out all the weird shit that was happening and there is a lot of complexity to this game. However, to be honest, I had the most fun in this game before and around the weird shit. I loved the character I was given and the situation in which they found themselves, and I wish I had a little more time to focus on that. On the other hand the weird shit did provide some fascinating RP opportunities.
Spring River was very experimental and a little bit of a gamble, and we were ecstatic to see how well it seemed to work. This was definitely the overall highlight of the weekend. It's so much fun to see run a game for the first time and see it all come together. It was absolutely amazing to watch the story that our players told and to see the development of the characters over time as the traits learned to work together. Thank you so much to our players for taking a chance on this and jumping in with so much enthusiasm. We have some minor changes to make, but I'm really looking forward to hearing how things go differently at Festival.
Her Eternal Majesty's Privy Council for the Continual Funding of the Mad Arts & Sciences was ridiculously fun to watch. The best thing about running out horde games is just sitting back and watching the crazy things that our players get up to.
Thank you to all the GMs, players and volunteers who made this con great!