"Yeah, We're Rockstars...",
quoth Staley, as we sat outside during the barbeque desparately trying to finish our LARP. We had just been approached with the "Hey, I hear you guys are running a LARP for your third round. Can I be an NPC or just watch or something?" for about the tenth time in the last hour. It's Sunday. It's about 6 o'clock. We had just finished the Double-Blind a few hours earlier. Neither of us had slept more than 3 hours since Friday. Our respective conciousnesses (?) were being carefully maintained through various chemical supports, mine being nicotine, caffiene, taurine, and "other."
We had each run 14 hours of game each so far, with 6 more to go. Making a grand total of 40 GM hours between us for the weekend. And we're a bit punchy. So our responses are invariably "Sure, if you wanna come hang and watch that's cool. We may even have something for you to do, maybe."
Every slot of every First Round filled, plus alternates, even the one right at the opening of the con and the 8am game. People who weren't even in the Tourney were coming up to us and telling us stories about the game, and what they heard people talking about afterword, and asking to watch.
And those that showed up to play were the cream of the crop. Making the descisions on who to advance was so damned difficult. When the dust cleared in the Indian Round I had Bob Johnson, Kurt, Candice, Gnat, and John Kaufman left and had to drop two. How the hell do you make that call?
And they stood around talking about the game afterward. This is probably the most gratifying thing that happened to me all weekend. We're at a con and people are running from one game right to the next. The fact that not only did people stick it out to the end, but stood around talking about it afterwards makes me believe we did our job well.
By the time the LARP started, the entire Pit was cast with "gamblers in a gambling hall," whether they knew it or not, Becky was playing piano in the Piano Lounge (read: manning the front desk in the Lobby), and we had a limitless supply of random plague zombies and/or victims. Evil Ben sucessfully boarded the riverboat about 6 times and was gunned down each time.
We had a blast, and I think those that played, even those that didn't make it to round 3 had a blast too.
At the Auction I tried to thank everyone, but I was so sleep deprived at that point I could barely see straight. So here's a few quick thanks to those that I missed:
Staley - I came to you about six months ago with an idea and you said "great!" and we planned to work on it every week... Then about a wek and a half till the con we actually sat down and started hashing things out. You are the master of pulling gold out of your ass. It was truly a privelege.
Joe - The second we decided to make the third round a LARP, you were instantly cast as the villain, even though we didn't even know who the villain would be! I can't think of anyone else I would throw singlehandedly at 6 PCs who could give them the challenge they deserved. Thank You for bringing you own little brand of evil to our game.
Kurt, Candice, Gnat - who all played in the tourney, didn't advance, but got recast as NPCs in the LARP. Thank You for taking what little we gave you and running with it to often suprising (for the PCs and us) results.
Eric - aka John Redshirt. The NPC who died to establish the danger of the situation. Who should have been sleeping, but hung out till 3 in the morning just for us. Thanks for being a good sport.
In 2 months I'm off to the Big Apple, not to return for a long long time, so this will probably be my last Polycon for a goodly while and all I have to say is thank you to everybody, really, everybody for making it one to remember. For making me feel like a rockstar.
We had each run 14 hours of game each so far, with 6 more to go. Making a grand total of 40 GM hours between us for the weekend. And we're a bit punchy. So our responses are invariably "Sure, if you wanna come hang and watch that's cool. We may even have something for you to do, maybe."
Every slot of every First Round filled, plus alternates, even the one right at the opening of the con and the 8am game. People who weren't even in the Tourney were coming up to us and telling us stories about the game, and what they heard people talking about afterword, and asking to watch.
And those that showed up to play were the cream of the crop. Making the descisions on who to advance was so damned difficult. When the dust cleared in the Indian Round I had Bob Johnson, Kurt, Candice, Gnat, and John Kaufman left and had to drop two. How the hell do you make that call?
And they stood around talking about the game afterward. This is probably the most gratifying thing that happened to me all weekend. We're at a con and people are running from one game right to the next. The fact that not only did people stick it out to the end, but stood around talking about it afterwards makes me believe we did our job well.
By the time the LARP started, the entire Pit was cast with "gamblers in a gambling hall," whether they knew it or not, Becky was playing piano in the Piano Lounge (read: manning the front desk in the Lobby), and we had a limitless supply of random plague zombies and/or victims. Evil Ben sucessfully boarded the riverboat about 6 times and was gunned down each time.
We had a blast, and I think those that played, even those that didn't make it to round 3 had a blast too.
At the Auction I tried to thank everyone, but I was so sleep deprived at that point I could barely see straight. So here's a few quick thanks to those that I missed:
Staley - I came to you about six months ago with an idea and you said "great!" and we planned to work on it every week... Then about a wek and a half till the con we actually sat down and started hashing things out. You are the master of pulling gold out of your ass. It was truly a privelege.
Joe - The second we decided to make the third round a LARP, you were instantly cast as the villain, even though we didn't even know who the villain would be! I can't think of anyone else I would throw singlehandedly at 6 PCs who could give them the challenge they deserved. Thank You for bringing you own little brand of evil to our game.
Kurt, Candice, Gnat - who all played in the tourney, didn't advance, but got recast as NPCs in the LARP. Thank You for taking what little we gave you and running with it to often suprising (for the PCs and us) results.
Eric - aka John Redshirt. The NPC who died to establish the danger of the situation. Who should have been sleeping, but hung out till 3 in the morning just for us. Thanks for being a good sport.
In 2 months I'm off to the Big Apple, not to return for a long long time, so this will probably be my last Polycon for a goodly while and all I have to say is thank you to everybody, really, everybody for making it one to remember. For making me feel like a rockstar.