¡Fiestaval! recap

[lisefrac]

This was a low-key Festival of the LARPs for me. I ran one game, Midsummer Mischief, and played in one game, breakinglight11 and Bernie's game Brockhurst, and so was only around on Saturday of the convention.

I played in Midsummer Mischief on my first trip to Consequences in 2012-- you can read about my experience here. It takes place in a hazy 1920s/1930s of the

Comments

[offside7]

I thought the number of drops and loss of characters mid-game seemed high this year, but I wasn't certain if that was actually the case, or if I just happened to know about more of them, so it only seemed high. I wonder if there's any value in trying to track these sorts of things from events like Intercon, Festival, Dice/Time Bubble, and SLAW and trying to find out if there are any patterns and what factors might be helping or hurting.

I think we had a number of new players this year -- which is totally awesome. (I feel like the Brandeis community has been shrinking, and I wish we could do as well as RPI seems to be doing with recruiting new people.) But I also think one or two of them, being unfamiliar with LARPing, weren't aware of cultural expectations. (One new player, for example, was not responding to GM emails, and asked for the GM to provide costuming last minute. This strikes me as problematic even outside the context of LARP -- if you get a bunch of emails from someone, it's a good idea to give some kind of response! I wonder if the player was feeling overwhelmed?) And maybe the high number of new players was part of the cause of the high drops?

Also completely agree with you about taking care of ourselves -- I'm always really happy to see veggies and fruit and non-soda drinks (especially coffee!!) in the con suite, because constantly eating junk food (and nothing else) for a full weekend leaves me feeling gross.

[pokedigimaniac]

RPI went through a year or two of severe shrinkage and has had to deal with some new players not being aware of similar cultural expectations - I had a player who never responded to a single email or filled out a casting form, and then showed up at game surprised that he was dropped. I think the college-tied segment of the LARP community as a whole might be just starting to come out of an ebb period, perhaps?

[offside7]

I was under the impression RPI had turned that around. The last few events I went to (Dice Bubble, Time Bubble, Lime Shirts weekend longs) all had a pretty good number of first and second time players.

[pokedigimaniac]

Oh, absolutely - the last few events have been on a major upswing! The point I was (poorly) attempting to make is that the phenomenon Lise and you describe might be a similar minor ebb that will correct itself in the next year or two.