Dice Bubble 2013...
... was as awesome as RPI events usually are. Also rather strange.
Friday night, I ran Cracks. It went very well, despite the amount of stress leading up to it, and last minute drops and threaten-to-drops and printer snafus. Many thanks go out in particular to offside7, who had played in the first run as Noima, but ended up filling in as Thalela.
I had some panic at the beginning, because I royally botched up the first dance, but lo and behold, the darling Peter F. (who was playing G'aereth) stepped in and called the dance for me, like the true 17th century gentleman I suspect he really is. That there is something hilarious about G'aereth teaching and calling dances, I will ignore.
I got pictures! Everyone is surprised! Even Dzurlords!
Everything went incredibly well from then on! The Cycle turned! Bills got passed! No scandal happened :( Fornia and Rollondar had an epic showdown of epic destiny! The new characters mostly worked!
And my players, omg. Wash was a total likeable douchebag Fornia; Randy G was perfect as a "I have issues with emotional expression!" Rollondar; Peter F was a total badass G'aereth; Peter C was a totally decadent Morvyn (and to see him asking advice from anthropicmoose, who had played the role before and was observing!); Sarah J and robalan11 and Izzy had lots of delightful oblivious conversations as Bryara and Adron and Kathana; shadowravyn and k1ttycat and in_water_writ became Seodra and Esaline and Erna; Kevin Munn was a delightfully foppish Fotheringil.... oh man. A wonderful, wonderful cast, in most respects.
And, slightly more spoilery:
* Fornia and Rollondar's aforementioned epic showdown might not have been so epic if they hadn't been waiting forever for G'aereth to finish putting his orders in and come be one of their seconds in a duel. So while they were waiting, they were shouting insults at each other. It was intense. Things like, "You would have been a dead little boy in a coffin if it weren't for me!" "Your mother was such a kind woman, why are you such a bastard?" "YOU SHUT UP ABOUT MY MOTHER," and the final coup, Rollondar saying, "Are you really a Dragon?"
Naturally, this made Fornia ignore the pretext of a duel and just attack Rollondar.
The fight was broken up--by Trentram and Seodra, who decided they didn't want to piss off the Empress, and so worked together to basically make the hilt of their weapons so hot they would drop them. And then I seem to recall Rollondar used his powers of levitation to put Fornia's head through the ceiling. Somehow they both ended up unconscious.
Better yet was when Bryara and Jehan, as the two arbiters, looked at each other to decide if this was scandalous. Bryara was all, "NUP THEY'RE JUST BEING DRAGONS" and Jehan was all, "... okay."
* Apparently, at one point G'aereth was considering sending Morvyn out into the city to get some battle experience. He ended up saying something like, "No, you'll probably just die." To which Morvyn replies something like, "As long as I can die in your arms!" It was meant to be flirtatious, I suspect, but given G'aereth's unique history, it just kind of made him all "I am going to leave the room now or I might kill you myself."
* Noima apparently hired Orayn to find her a gigolo among the Jhereg to complete her sexual education. Well, then.
* Seodra and Esaline devised an excellent way for them to talk to each other without looking suspicious--Seodra would pretend to have something wrong with her dress, and Esaline, as the accommodating Issola steward, would come along and pretend to fix it.
* Kathana shanked nearly no one this game--but she did decide to use her sorcery skill to summon mood lighting to propose to Adron. Actually--amazingly--he ended up proposing to her... at about the same time Bryara and Rollondar wandered over to whisper encouraging words to the couple. Too little too late, guys.
Then there was an amazing after-party until 5am whose details I am going to elide here because I have feels about them and ohgawds, when did I start using that term in all earnestness?
Then, crazy-hyped on adrenaline from the success of my game and the party, I woke up at 9:30 the next morning, like an idiot.
That afternoon, I played in Imperial Mining Outpost [random numbers and letters] Epsilon. This was the alpha run of a new game by Sean McC (who I think was the main writer), Wash, and Peter C., and was... to be honest, much better than I was expecting. But I was expecting hand-written item cards and last-minute everything, which has happened with some alpha runs at RPI I've seen. Instead it was in a reasonable state of doneness, and had some interesting mechanics. The mining mechanic could have used some streamlining, and the characters could have been a little meatier, but it went fairly well. Definitely will recommend to folks who like the Star Wars setting.
I was cast as Zam Evoros, a Togruta, and was apparently Force sensitive, and had some interest in the artifacts that were being excavated, because I believed they were Force artifacts that my mother--who might have been a Jedi escaping from the purges--had been protecting/keeping away from the Empire.
Zam was one of the drug addict characters, as she had taken to using drugs to enhance the Force powers she couldn't really control. The drug mechanic was interesting, although I think there needs to be a longer period you need to go without a hit--it was 15 minutes, which is waaaay too short. I spent a lot of time euphoric! It was also not really hard for me to get drugs, as my boss, a Zabrak crime lord (played by Matt), started game with a fuckton of them.
In any case, things were a little slow at first--there was a big rush for the mining GMs, and those who weren't in the vanguard of that kind of got left behind. No one seemed to have any reason to trust the aliens with anything (that the aliens were all part of the local mafia did not make it any better).
Then I met up with staystrong62805's character, and we discovered that, hey, I was the melee combat monster, and she was the ranged combat monster. We should, like, beat shit up. Shit included the rock monsters that were making mining difficult, so we went mining, found some plans and crystalline items... and, I dunno, somehow we ended up putting together a holocron that taught us all how to make our own lightsabers.
And then we left the planet.
And now we are a Force-using alien mafia.
Lesson the GMs probably learned--don't put me and Kat on the same team, or we will STEAMROLL.
I didn't play in anything Saturday night, but I needed the rest, as I was crashing hard.
Sunday morning, I was scheduled to play in The Devil's Brood--a 9-player, dialogue-based larp based around The Lion in Winter--and that... did not quite work out as I expected.
So... it became quickly apparent to me that this was not a type of game I was going to love. I like history, but the flavor of history I like in larps tends to bend the facts enough to give female characters some agency. This was... less the case, I would say. It was also lighter on mechanics that I typically play--not that I really LOVE mechanics or anything, but sometimes the structure is needed.
At the same time, it was readily apparent that the GM, Sarah J, was getting very very sick. There were still some players who wanted to play, however, so I handed my character sheet to Kiara (who didn't have a game; she is a new WPI larper who I drove out to the con) and filled in as GM for Sarah while she laid down in the consuite.
It went pretty well, I think. There wasn't much I had to do as a GM, and the game only lasted an hour or so. Most of the game seems to boil down to "wait for Henry to decide who his heir is," and so the pacing really depends on him. I actually think most of the players had not seen the movie (I had not), and I don't know much about this period of history, and so it was probably not as dramatic as it could have been. Ah, well. People had fun, and that's all that matters.
I ended up not going to dead dog, because Sarah was still kinda sick, and Matt and I had to drive her and Kiara home, and we were all feeling tired and cruddy.
Instead I went home and slept for three hours and now I am awake. Poop.
In conclusion, I love RPI larpers. They are awesome, and make the trip worth it. It would be wise for me to remember both this awesomeness and the ennui leading up to this week in my future plans.
Friday night, I ran Cracks. It went very well, despite the amount of stress leading up to it, and last minute drops and threaten-to-drops and printer snafus. Many thanks go out in particular to offside7, who had played in the first run as Noima, but ended up filling in as Thalela.
I had some panic at the beginning, because I royally botched up the first dance, but lo and behold, the darling Peter F. (who was playing G'aereth) stepped in and called the dance for me, like the true 17th century gentleman I suspect he really is. That there is something hilarious about G'aereth teaching and calling dances, I will ignore.
I got pictures! Everyone is surprised! Even Dzurlords!
Everything went incredibly well from then on! The Cycle turned! Bills got passed! No scandal happened :( Fornia and Rollondar had an epic showdown of epic destiny! The new characters mostly worked!
And my players, omg. Wash was a total likeable douchebag Fornia; Randy G was perfect as a "I have issues with emotional expression!" Rollondar; Peter F was a total badass G'aereth; Peter C was a totally decadent Morvyn (and to see him asking advice from anthropicmoose, who had played the role before and was observing!); Sarah J and robalan11 and Izzy had lots of delightful oblivious conversations as Bryara and Adron and Kathana; shadowravyn and k1ttycat and in_water_writ became Seodra and Esaline and Erna; Kevin Munn was a delightfully foppish Fotheringil.... oh man. A wonderful, wonderful cast, in most respects.
And, slightly more spoilery:
* Fornia and Rollondar's aforementioned epic showdown might not have been so epic if they hadn't been waiting forever for G'aereth to finish putting his orders in and come be one of their seconds in a duel. So while they were waiting, they were shouting insults at each other. It was intense. Things like, "You would have been a dead little boy in a coffin if it weren't for me!" "Your mother was such a kind woman, why are you such a bastard?" "YOU SHUT UP ABOUT MY MOTHER," and the final coup, Rollondar saying, "Are you really a Dragon?"
Naturally, this made Fornia ignore the pretext of a duel and just attack Rollondar.
The fight was broken up--by Trentram and Seodra, who decided they didn't want to piss off the Empress, and so worked together to basically make the hilt of their weapons so hot they would drop them. And then I seem to recall Rollondar used his powers of levitation to put Fornia's head through the ceiling. Somehow they both ended up unconscious.
Better yet was when Bryara and Jehan, as the two arbiters, looked at each other to decide if this was scandalous. Bryara was all, "NUP THEY'RE JUST BEING DRAGONS" and Jehan was all, "... okay."
* Apparently, at one point G'aereth was considering sending Morvyn out into the city to get some battle experience. He ended up saying something like, "No, you'll probably just die." To which Morvyn replies something like, "As long as I can die in your arms!" It was meant to be flirtatious, I suspect, but given G'aereth's unique history, it just kind of made him all "I am going to leave the room now or I might kill you myself."
* Noima apparently hired Orayn to find her a gigolo among the Jhereg to complete her sexual education. Well, then.
* Seodra and Esaline devised an excellent way for them to talk to each other without looking suspicious--Seodra would pretend to have something wrong with her dress, and Esaline, as the accommodating Issola steward, would come along and pretend to fix it.
* Kathana shanked nearly no one this game--but she did decide to use her sorcery skill to summon mood lighting to propose to Adron. Actually--amazingly--he ended up proposing to her... at about the same time Bryara and Rollondar wandered over to whisper encouraging words to the couple. Too little too late, guys.
Then there was an amazing after-party until 5am whose details I am going to elide here because I have feels about them and ohgawds, when did I start using that term in all earnestness?
Then, crazy-hyped on adrenaline from the success of my game and the party, I woke up at 9:30 the next morning, like an idiot.
That afternoon, I played in Imperial Mining Outpost [random numbers and letters] Epsilon. This was the alpha run of a new game by Sean McC (who I think was the main writer), Wash, and Peter C., and was... to be honest, much better than I was expecting. But I was expecting hand-written item cards and last-minute everything, which has happened with some alpha runs at RPI I've seen. Instead it was in a reasonable state of doneness, and had some interesting mechanics. The mining mechanic could have used some streamlining, and the characters could have been a little meatier, but it went fairly well. Definitely will recommend to folks who like the Star Wars setting.
I was cast as Zam Evoros, a Togruta, and was apparently Force sensitive, and had some interest in the artifacts that were being excavated, because I believed they were Force artifacts that my mother--who might have been a Jedi escaping from the purges--had been protecting/keeping away from the Empire.
Zam was one of the drug addict characters, as she had taken to using drugs to enhance the Force powers she couldn't really control. The drug mechanic was interesting, although I think there needs to be a longer period you need to go without a hit--it was 15 minutes, which is waaaay too short. I spent a lot of time euphoric! It was also not really hard for me to get drugs, as my boss, a Zabrak crime lord (played by Matt), started game with a fuckton of them.
In any case, things were a little slow at first--there was a big rush for the mining GMs, and those who weren't in the vanguard of that kind of got left behind. No one seemed to have any reason to trust the aliens with anything (that the aliens were all part of the local mafia did not make it any better).
Then I met up with staystrong62805's character, and we discovered that, hey, I was the melee combat monster, and she was the ranged combat monster. We should, like, beat shit up. Shit included the rock monsters that were making mining difficult, so we went mining, found some plans and crystalline items... and, I dunno, somehow we ended up putting together a holocron that taught us all how to make our own lightsabers.
And then we left the planet.
And now we are a Force-using alien mafia.
Lesson the GMs probably learned--don't put me and Kat on the same team, or we will STEAMROLL.
I didn't play in anything Saturday night, but I needed the rest, as I was crashing hard.
Sunday morning, I was scheduled to play in The Devil's Brood--a 9-player, dialogue-based larp based around The Lion in Winter--and that... did not quite work out as I expected.
So... it became quickly apparent to me that this was not a type of game I was going to love. I like history, but the flavor of history I like in larps tends to bend the facts enough to give female characters some agency. This was... less the case, I would say. It was also lighter on mechanics that I typically play--not that I really LOVE mechanics or anything, but sometimes the structure is needed.
At the same time, it was readily apparent that the GM, Sarah J, was getting very very sick. There were still some players who wanted to play, however, so I handed my character sheet to Kiara (who didn't have a game; she is a new WPI larper who I drove out to the con) and filled in as GM for Sarah while she laid down in the consuite.
It went pretty well, I think. There wasn't much I had to do as a GM, and the game only lasted an hour or so. Most of the game seems to boil down to "wait for Henry to decide who his heir is," and so the pacing really depends on him. I actually think most of the players had not seen the movie (I had not), and I don't know much about this period of history, and so it was probably not as dramatic as it could have been. Ah, well. People had fun, and that's all that matters.
I ended up not going to dead dog, because Sarah was still kinda sick, and Matt and I had to drive her and Kiara home, and we were all feeling tired and cruddy.
Instead I went home and slept for three hours and now I am awake. Poop.
In conclusion, I love RPI larpers. They are awesome, and make the trip worth it. It would be wise for me to remember both this awesomeness and the ennui leading up to this week in my future plans.