This past weekend was Kapcon, one of NZ's biggest gaming events. As it has been for over a decade, the flagship event was a large Saturday-evening live-action game. This year it was "Fragrant Harbour", set in Hong Kong in 1899, enjoyed by 75-ish players ( Read more... )

This weekend "Hydra", Wellington's first LARP convention, was held. I went out to play in one game, The Bell, facilitated & co-written by fellow Gametimer stephanie_pegg. (The Bell is available for sale at Drivethru.) This is not a review, not least because I only saw one sliver of the whole ( Read more... )

So in some recent behind the scenes chatter, a comment was made that Gametime is currently "the lethargic zombie of NZ roleplaying discussion."  Alas for Mash, there will be no zombies in this post.  But then, that's kind of the point of it.

I've been on a larp writing jag for the last couple of years, working in the genre of domestic realism.  I ( Read more... )

Belatedly continuing from this post in a series about some games I played at Chimera 2009. Took ages to get time to set down these comments, my apologies.

Reflecting on the Dragon
There was a lot about this game that concerned me. As previously noted, I work in the cross-cultural area so I'm highly sensitive to how cultures are represented and how ( Read more... )

Sorry haven't been able to write the fifth and final chunk, life has been rather busy of late.

So in the absence of that, I will linky to this: a post by Karen Healey on cultural consultants.

Karen (who was recently interviewed right here on Gametime, part one and part two) discusses how she as a non_Maori went about trying to do a good job of ( Read more... )

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 ( Read more... )

Continuing from this post about some games I played at Chimera 2009.

Colonization and Racism: Curse of the Pharaoh

The first game of the weekend, on the Friday night "horror slot" (which was, in practice, taken over by the massively popular alternative for those not into horror games, Spy Hard) was Curse of the Pharaoh, by UK murder-mystery ( Read more... )

Continuing from this post about a Requiem game played at Chimera 2009.

Reflection and analysis
There was a lot about this game that was laudable ( Read more... )

Over last weekend I attended Chimera, the second annual Live-action roleplay convention in NZ. LARP is a form I've drifted away from in the past decade, but I have enough of an interest that travelling up to Auckland seemed worthwhile; and it did prove to be an interesting and valuable expedition ( Read more... )

At KapCon, I ran a live game called Sitting Shiva. There was no story, only the lightest of prewritten characters, and no programmed conflict. We were at a wake. Fortunately for the person who had died, he was there, too.

First, I’ll give some background. Last year, I played in a live game called Tryst by Ryan Paddy, which was over at the unusual ( Read more... )