Chimera Aftermath (4)
Continuing from this post in a series about some games I played at Chimera 2009.
Anxiety and Intrusion: Evicting the Dragon
My first game on Sunday, the second-last of the convention, was Evicting the Dragon. This was a stand-alone game written and produced by a small team (two people?) of Aucklanders - Patrick Cummuskey is credited as writer and was the prime mover but he had some help. It was set in an alternate New Zealand that had fallen to a Chinese invasion; the game would depict an attempt to force the occupying Chinese out.
In the near future, China and its allies have unleashed its military might to invade and occupy countries throughout Asia and Oceania, triggering in essence World War 3...
Now, as the Coalition forces have finally got the upper hand, a secret meeting has been arranged of the resistance leaders in Auckland to finalise a plan to strike at the Chinese occupiers and deal them a crippling blow.
Pre-game experience
The first set of content that came to the players was a background sheet explaining what had happened in the alternate reality of the game. Essentially, China had launched a multi-front war, sparking a global hot conflict with China and allies on one side and the USA and allies on the other. New Zealand itself was invaded and overwhelmed, with China asserting direct authority over the urban centres and fending off resistance from the rural areas.
Characters were assigned prior to the game, and character sheets were distributed just prior. I was given the role of Peter Greenway, "an engineer involved in the secretive Sirius Group of scientists and engineers". I dressed in civvies, a mix of clothing that felt right for Peter - nondescript, ready for going rough. Other people turned up in camo; one, notably, in a suit of "power armour". We were all shepherded to the game environment, where the GMs explained some things about the background, about our shared understanding, about how the game would play out. The GMs offered camo outfits to anyone who wanted them, but stated that probably the characters would be unlikely to wear such a motif - in the game, a resistance wouldn't want to be marked as such. The GMs both positioned themselves within the fiction - they would have roles to play in-game.
I was cautious about this material, to say the least. There were several reasons. This was a game with a strategy component - such games have never been much to my preference. More importantly, this was a game in which China had occupied New Zealand. A big chunk of my life right now is engaging closely with issues of diversity and discrimination in New Zealand, and the experience of NZ's Chinese communities (NZ-born and migrant, and their various subsets) is a significant chunk of that. I am unsure about an entertainment that has Chinese soldiers walking the streets of NZ cities, killing the locals. But I was ready to take everything on its own merits; my experience is that people I meet through gaming-type communities have almost always thought beyond the surface. To an extent I'd find that to be true here; but in some other important ways, I walked away from this game concerned.
The game itself
This game began with one of the most audacious and interesting maneuvers I've ever seen in a LARP; I think this moment by itself justified my trip up to the convention. The main GM, at the front of the room and apparently stepping into character, asked that we begin the game by turning to face the flag and singing the national anthem. Sure enough, the hall we were in was equipped with an NZ flag, and the GM held a salute and began to sing. It was an instantly challenging moment.
For overseas readers, particularly from the U.S., I should point out that our national anthem is not a strong symbol. It is little-loved due to its dirge-like character and because it's straight hard to sing. Its prominent appeal to God sits oddly with the mostly-secular NZ society. Going beyond the specifics of the anthem, it isn't a huge part of our culture in a participative way; we hear the anthem performed before sporting fixtures, and sometimes on certain crucial national days, but singing it yourself is pretty unusual for anyone out of primary school. It just isn't hugely important here. So bringing out the anthem is a dramatic move and instantly raises a whole mess of issues - principally, about citizenship and nationhood, especially in a time of strife.
Personally, I'm deeply suspicious of nationalisms of all stripes, and I think a lot about issues of identity, including national identity, in this country. I don't think God Defend New Zealand is the right anthem for Aotearoa NZ. So I haven't sung our national anthem for a long time, and don't mean to change that any time soon. But there I was, on the spot with moments to decide whether I would participate or not. Around me, voices quietly joined to sing the anthem as we all stood and regarded the flag. And in one of those moments of inspiration, I fixed on something that would completely change the game for me. I didn't want to sing the anthem, but I understood from the character sheet I'd been given that Peter Greenway loved his country. In my play, Peter did not sing - instead, he prayed. There is nothing on his character sheet that suggests he has any faith at all, but something really chimed for me in the idea. While the others sang, Peter stayed silent and spoke to God. It would prove a fateful direction in which to take Peter.
Usually when the anthem is sung in public here, the first verse is sung in either English or Maori, and then repeated in the other language. However, our GM character kept going from first verse in English into the rarely-heard second verse, whereupon one of the other players (playing a Maori gang leader) launched singlehandedly into the Maori version of the first verse, representing strongly. The GM continued further into the third verse which I don't think I've ever heard sung before. This persistence was fascinating; the other players, like me, did not know the words to these later verses and so everyone soon fell silent and watched the GM persist alone. One of the other GMs approached him and whispered in his ear, but he shrugged the guy away and kept going, all without even looking at any of the other players. It was a great moment; we were forced to confront and address a whole confusing mess of issues at the heart of being a New Zealander, all engaged through a perfect bit of theatre that transitioned us from "briefing" to "in-game". There's heaps more I could say about the anthem, but I'll leave it for now - as far as I'm concerned, however, it was a hugely successful moment. Kudos to the GMs for this.
When that was done we moved into the planning room that would be the scene of almost the entire game to come. A big table was laid out with a laminated map of the region, while in an adjoining room a communications setup was delivering and receiving secure messages. And we began to talk.
I won't go into specifics - don't want to spoil this for anyone who plays again - but the talk mostly consisted of people trying to identify key objectives and to note important resources, mixed in with some paranoia about spying and counter-plots. It was wildly unstructured, with the loudest voice usually holding the room's attention, and little ability evident around the table to focus on specific issues or adopt a methodical approach. We wouldn't have won any awards for meeting-room efficiency, put it that way. This, in turn, fed into the conception of Peter that was building for me; I found him turning more and more inward (also helped by another metafictional factor, namely that at the big game the previous night I'd been intensely voluble and sociable, so this game probably caught some rebound into silence). Several times I kept my mouth shut when I knew I had useful information; not to be spiteful or because I wanted people to fail, but because I/Peter was becoming increasingly furious at the failure in the room to provide some authority and structure and to act swiftly on the things I did speak about, and above all to engage with the situation strategically rather than tactically. Peter, described on his sheet as "pessimistic and determined", more or less gave up during the game; in fact, I think I realized my version of Peter had given up a long time ago, and his determination was not directed towards victory. I could go into greater psychological detail, but I won't because it will swiftly get into spoilers territory; suffice it to say that we could have fared better at our stated goals if I'd played Peter in a more generous way. Sorry, fellow players!
As that note above suggests, we did not achieve a shining success by (for example) minimizing civilian casualties, but we did achieve our main objectives. The game ended with a short dramatic scene and then a general debrief about the strategic and tactical decisions we'd made, about what certain maneuvers had meant, and how we could have done better than we managed. We left the game area and mixed back into the main crowd of Chimera-goers and all started making ready for our next game.
Next: probably the last post in this series - reflecting on the Dragon
Anxiety and Intrusion: Evicting the Dragon
My first game on Sunday, the second-last of the convention, was Evicting the Dragon. This was a stand-alone game written and produced by a small team (two people?) of Aucklanders - Patrick Cummuskey is credited as writer and was the prime mover but he had some help. It was set in an alternate New Zealand that had fallen to a Chinese invasion; the game would depict an attempt to force the occupying Chinese out.
In the near future, China and its allies have unleashed its military might to invade and occupy countries throughout Asia and Oceania, triggering in essence World War 3...
Now, as the Coalition forces have finally got the upper hand, a secret meeting has been arranged of the resistance leaders in Auckland to finalise a plan to strike at the Chinese occupiers and deal them a crippling blow.
Pre-game experience
The first set of content that came to the players was a background sheet explaining what had happened in the alternate reality of the game. Essentially, China had launched a multi-front war, sparking a global hot conflict with China and allies on one side and the USA and allies on the other. New Zealand itself was invaded and overwhelmed, with China asserting direct authority over the urban centres and fending off resistance from the rural areas.
Characters were assigned prior to the game, and character sheets were distributed just prior. I was given the role of Peter Greenway, "an engineer involved in the secretive Sirius Group of scientists and engineers". I dressed in civvies, a mix of clothing that felt right for Peter - nondescript, ready for going rough. Other people turned up in camo; one, notably, in a suit of "power armour". We were all shepherded to the game environment, where the GMs explained some things about the background, about our shared understanding, about how the game would play out. The GMs offered camo outfits to anyone who wanted them, but stated that probably the characters would be unlikely to wear such a motif - in the game, a resistance wouldn't want to be marked as such. The GMs both positioned themselves within the fiction - they would have roles to play in-game.
I was cautious about this material, to say the least. There were several reasons. This was a game with a strategy component - such games have never been much to my preference. More importantly, this was a game in which China had occupied New Zealand. A big chunk of my life right now is engaging closely with issues of diversity and discrimination in New Zealand, and the experience of NZ's Chinese communities (NZ-born and migrant, and their various subsets) is a significant chunk of that. I am unsure about an entertainment that has Chinese soldiers walking the streets of NZ cities, killing the locals. But I was ready to take everything on its own merits; my experience is that people I meet through gaming-type communities have almost always thought beyond the surface. To an extent I'd find that to be true here; but in some other important ways, I walked away from this game concerned.
The game itself
This game began with one of the most audacious and interesting maneuvers I've ever seen in a LARP; I think this moment by itself justified my trip up to the convention. The main GM, at the front of the room and apparently stepping into character, asked that we begin the game by turning to face the flag and singing the national anthem. Sure enough, the hall we were in was equipped with an NZ flag, and the GM held a salute and began to sing. It was an instantly challenging moment.
For overseas readers, particularly from the U.S., I should point out that our national anthem is not a strong symbol. It is little-loved due to its dirge-like character and because it's straight hard to sing. Its prominent appeal to God sits oddly with the mostly-secular NZ society. Going beyond the specifics of the anthem, it isn't a huge part of our culture in a participative way; we hear the anthem performed before sporting fixtures, and sometimes on certain crucial national days, but singing it yourself is pretty unusual for anyone out of primary school. It just isn't hugely important here. So bringing out the anthem is a dramatic move and instantly raises a whole mess of issues - principally, about citizenship and nationhood, especially in a time of strife.
Personally, I'm deeply suspicious of nationalisms of all stripes, and I think a lot about issues of identity, including national identity, in this country. I don't think God Defend New Zealand is the right anthem for Aotearoa NZ. So I haven't sung our national anthem for a long time, and don't mean to change that any time soon. But there I was, on the spot with moments to decide whether I would participate or not. Around me, voices quietly joined to sing the anthem as we all stood and regarded the flag. And in one of those moments of inspiration, I fixed on something that would completely change the game for me. I didn't want to sing the anthem, but I understood from the character sheet I'd been given that Peter Greenway loved his country. In my play, Peter did not sing - instead, he prayed. There is nothing on his character sheet that suggests he has any faith at all, but something really chimed for me in the idea. While the others sang, Peter stayed silent and spoke to God. It would prove a fateful direction in which to take Peter.
Usually when the anthem is sung in public here, the first verse is sung in either English or Maori, and then repeated in the other language. However, our GM character kept going from first verse in English into the rarely-heard second verse, whereupon one of the other players (playing a Maori gang leader) launched singlehandedly into the Maori version of the first verse, representing strongly. The GM continued further into the third verse which I don't think I've ever heard sung before. This persistence was fascinating; the other players, like me, did not know the words to these later verses and so everyone soon fell silent and watched the GM persist alone. One of the other GMs approached him and whispered in his ear, but he shrugged the guy away and kept going, all without even looking at any of the other players. It was a great moment; we were forced to confront and address a whole confusing mess of issues at the heart of being a New Zealander, all engaged through a perfect bit of theatre that transitioned us from "briefing" to "in-game". There's heaps more I could say about the anthem, but I'll leave it for now - as far as I'm concerned, however, it was a hugely successful moment. Kudos to the GMs for this.
When that was done we moved into the planning room that would be the scene of almost the entire game to come. A big table was laid out with a laminated map of the region, while in an adjoining room a communications setup was delivering and receiving secure messages. And we began to talk.
I won't go into specifics - don't want to spoil this for anyone who plays again - but the talk mostly consisted of people trying to identify key objectives and to note important resources, mixed in with some paranoia about spying and counter-plots. It was wildly unstructured, with the loudest voice usually holding the room's attention, and little ability evident around the table to focus on specific issues or adopt a methodical approach. We wouldn't have won any awards for meeting-room efficiency, put it that way. This, in turn, fed into the conception of Peter that was building for me; I found him turning more and more inward (also helped by another metafictional factor, namely that at the big game the previous night I'd been intensely voluble and sociable, so this game probably caught some rebound into silence). Several times I kept my mouth shut when I knew I had useful information; not to be spiteful or because I wanted people to fail, but because I/Peter was becoming increasingly furious at the failure in the room to provide some authority and structure and to act swiftly on the things I did speak about, and above all to engage with the situation strategically rather than tactically. Peter, described on his sheet as "pessimistic and determined", more or less gave up during the game; in fact, I think I realized my version of Peter had given up a long time ago, and his determination was not directed towards victory. I could go into greater psychological detail, but I won't because it will swiftly get into spoilers territory; suffice it to say that we could have fared better at our stated goals if I'd played Peter in a more generous way. Sorry, fellow players!
As that note above suggests, we did not achieve a shining success by (for example) minimizing civilian casualties, but we did achieve our main objectives. The game ended with a short dramatic scene and then a general debrief about the strategic and tactical decisions we'd made, about what certain maneuvers had meant, and how we could have done better than we managed. We left the game area and mixed back into the main crowd of Chimera-goers and all started making ready for our next game.
Next: probably the last post in this series - reflecting on the Dragon