News from the front.
Despite the general demographic that I fall under, I didn't spend Valentine's Day alone, aside from being on transit. Jeff and Christy, whom I know the first from White Wolf LARP events, held an engagement party, to celebrate their bliss and give out free food! Hoorah, snacks!
Their party was held out in the isolated and far away land of Langley, where the only trekking to be made out there would be for Toy Traders, or Willowbrook mall, but really only the first. I was informed to be more presentable than normal, which still consisted of wearing black, but stylish, like when dressing up for Changeling, hah.
I found it amusing how we had two seperate groups of socializing; the LARP group to the one side, and the family of both parties on the other side, divided by an invisible wall that would be crossed to bravely obtain pop or snacks, little social contact was made during these dangerous times, aside from the mutual partings of congrats to Jeff and Christy.
After deciding that being in one area of the room was getting a bit stale, and real food would be great too, we decided to go back to the main lands of Vancouver, namely New West, to obtain some. We settled on the 6th on 6th Tim Hortons, despite people mentioning real food.
I never would consider Tim Horton's to have the title of real food; there's some coffee related things to drink, donuts, bagels and sandwichs... But no matter how much of a large sandwich it is, I'd end up feeling short changed when comparing it to an actual sit down restaurant, those ones that have people being paid to write down the items we rattle off from their nicely organized menus, and heated debates over LARP take place.
I really have to hand it to Bill however, since while sitting bored at the coffee place, he suggested to run a sit down RP game based on the system of Castle Falkstein, which is one of the greatest role playing settings EVER.
It's Victorian Steam Punk, with some semi-historical events thrown in, and hey look! Fairies! The Magical Kind! I made a character that is a lot like my ideal character from Justin's pirate RP game, except without as many gadgets, but it's steam punk! I can only imagine the awesome offense abilities of a piston firing hammer, or some steam powered gauntlets.
The problem with these random ideas is that they only end up being one shots most of the time. I own a fair amount of books to do a World of Warcraft campaign, which Jeff attempted to run, but was derailed with disinterest in the mechanics, however I could see Castle Falkenstein working with WoW, but with modifications.
A quick example of how Castle works is that it requires a two decks of cards. Each player gets four cards randomly, the GM gets the same amount. The suit determines the skill that the card is used for, along with the card itself determining how much the value is by the face value. The suits have four categories: Spades - Magic, Hearts - Social, Clubs - Physical and Diamonds - Intelligence, and when each card is used, in a somewhat biased on how well you can describe situations/actions, another card is rewarded for your spent action.
I'd keep that aspect, as the main part of determining your level of skills is merely stated by three objections that you are good at, and one that you are poor at. The problem faced with WoW is the character sheets themselves, as stats would have to be modified into 4 - 6 - 8 sets, I suppose with some fine tuning it could work.
The session in itself ended pretty late, as per usual with that circle of friends is concerned, despite going to sleep at 5am as usual. I'd hope that we could manage to get everyone gathered up again, and if Bill would be willing to run it again, it'd be great.
As per the next morning, after making a questionable stir fry from some chicken that I had sitting in there for a week, it appeared delicious and it tasted alright going down, no problems with anything arising afterwards. At first, the turn out for Mage seemed fairly low, as the main concern was that nobody knew it was occuring, despite all events being listed a week back or so, people forget stuff or never check the forums to see when games are. It'd be a lot easier if they just made a group for each venue, as vampire has it's own group, and werewolf had one when it was still being run.
Frustration was abound, irritation by people's character, not nearly as mind numbing when it comes to changeling, along with the venue becoming stale with no plot to deal with. Every big event is constantly delayed, as Daniel the storyteller seems to be buying time until stepping down in April, and there's a lack of storytellers in the community in general.
I'm personally frustrated as being faced with the challenge of having to be loud and annoying to be deemed as being worthy of preforming good role playing. My character has an angle, he has objectives, none of it is to be an attention seeking whore, nor am I built to contend with the supposely strong enemies that are plotting against us, despite how the game is bogged down by a small group of people talking off to the side, while the rest of us make small talk.
Maybe that works for people that are bubbly and outgoing, not the character that has been distanced nearly the entire length of the story. People would object to this, as it merely being my choice for how I play the character but those same people usually have characters in other venues that end up getting derailed from the main plot as they are considered the official outsiders.
I don't have this kind of problem with changeling, by all means my character in that is a socialite, not a fighter or a researcher, yet I'm having to step up and put myself into those positions along with being a figure head. I, myself, see very little difference in a game that is suppose "three hours were wasted complaining about politics" when I sat through a game of "three hours of small little group talks about politics, go be bored on the couch, you're not invited." game.
Yes, the style and mechanics are not the same, but it's the same enviroment, I'm not surprised that the people that find fault in the first clique of game style have little impact in Changeling, and yet have more by default in the second game, which they don't find boring.
Morale of the story - People are pissing me off for so many OOC reasons, but I like how awesome my character, Vincent, in Changeling is.
Not for selfish reasons of having IC power falling into my lap, which for the record I may have stated claim to obtain it such as being Winter King, but after being shot down the first time, I never strived for it and I was perfectly fine with being the "ambassador" of the Winter Court.
The big factor is Vincent is COMPLETELY different of a character that I've ever had in any other venue, and oddly enough, with the very few amount of power characters, he is *gasp* given respect! I'm getting sick of people being pat on the back for playing characters that could easily be retired, just so the play field can be level, which isn't in nearly all existing venues.
I shouldn't have to make a certain set of a character to fit in and get along with others, but it's a crappy reality when faced with the dynamics of LARP.
Their party was held out in the isolated and far away land of Langley, where the only trekking to be made out there would be for Toy Traders, or Willowbrook mall, but really only the first. I was informed to be more presentable than normal, which still consisted of wearing black, but stylish, like when dressing up for Changeling, hah.
I found it amusing how we had two seperate groups of socializing; the LARP group to the one side, and the family of both parties on the other side, divided by an invisible wall that would be crossed to bravely obtain pop or snacks, little social contact was made during these dangerous times, aside from the mutual partings of congrats to Jeff and Christy.
After deciding that being in one area of the room was getting a bit stale, and real food would be great too, we decided to go back to the main lands of Vancouver, namely New West, to obtain some. We settled on the 6th on 6th Tim Hortons, despite people mentioning real food.
I never would consider Tim Horton's to have the title of real food; there's some coffee related things to drink, donuts, bagels and sandwichs... But no matter how much of a large sandwich it is, I'd end up feeling short changed when comparing it to an actual sit down restaurant, those ones that have people being paid to write down the items we rattle off from their nicely organized menus, and heated debates over LARP take place.
I really have to hand it to Bill however, since while sitting bored at the coffee place, he suggested to run a sit down RP game based on the system of Castle Falkstein, which is one of the greatest role playing settings EVER.
It's Victorian Steam Punk, with some semi-historical events thrown in, and hey look! Fairies! The Magical Kind! I made a character that is a lot like my ideal character from Justin's pirate RP game, except without as many gadgets, but it's steam punk! I can only imagine the awesome offense abilities of a piston firing hammer, or some steam powered gauntlets.
The problem with these random ideas is that they only end up being one shots most of the time. I own a fair amount of books to do a World of Warcraft campaign, which Jeff attempted to run, but was derailed with disinterest in the mechanics, however I could see Castle Falkenstein working with WoW, but with modifications.
A quick example of how Castle works is that it requires a two decks of cards. Each player gets four cards randomly, the GM gets the same amount. The suit determines the skill that the card is used for, along with the card itself determining how much the value is by the face value. The suits have four categories: Spades - Magic, Hearts - Social, Clubs - Physical and Diamonds - Intelligence, and when each card is used, in a somewhat biased on how well you can describe situations/actions, another card is rewarded for your spent action.
I'd keep that aspect, as the main part of determining your level of skills is merely stated by three objections that you are good at, and one that you are poor at. The problem faced with WoW is the character sheets themselves, as stats would have to be modified into 4 - 6 - 8 sets, I suppose with some fine tuning it could work.
The session in itself ended pretty late, as per usual with that circle of friends is concerned, despite going to sleep at 5am as usual. I'd hope that we could manage to get everyone gathered up again, and if Bill would be willing to run it again, it'd be great.
As per the next morning, after making a questionable stir fry from some chicken that I had sitting in there for a week, it appeared delicious and it tasted alright going down, no problems with anything arising afterwards. At first, the turn out for Mage seemed fairly low, as the main concern was that nobody knew it was occuring, despite all events being listed a week back or so, people forget stuff or never check the forums to see when games are. It'd be a lot easier if they just made a group for each venue, as vampire has it's own group, and werewolf had one when it was still being run.
Frustration was abound, irritation by people's character, not nearly as mind numbing when it comes to changeling, along with the venue becoming stale with no plot to deal with. Every big event is constantly delayed, as Daniel the storyteller seems to be buying time until stepping down in April, and there's a lack of storytellers in the community in general.
I'm personally frustrated as being faced with the challenge of having to be loud and annoying to be deemed as being worthy of preforming good role playing. My character has an angle, he has objectives, none of it is to be an attention seeking whore, nor am I built to contend with the supposely strong enemies that are plotting against us, despite how the game is bogged down by a small group of people talking off to the side, while the rest of us make small talk.
Maybe that works for people that are bubbly and outgoing, not the character that has been distanced nearly the entire length of the story. People would object to this, as it merely being my choice for how I play the character but those same people usually have characters in other venues that end up getting derailed from the main plot as they are considered the official outsiders.
I don't have this kind of problem with changeling, by all means my character in that is a socialite, not a fighter or a researcher, yet I'm having to step up and put myself into those positions along with being a figure head. I, myself, see very little difference in a game that is suppose "three hours were wasted complaining about politics" when I sat through a game of "three hours of small little group talks about politics, go be bored on the couch, you're not invited." game.
Yes, the style and mechanics are not the same, but it's the same enviroment, I'm not surprised that the people that find fault in the first clique of game style have little impact in Changeling, and yet have more by default in the second game, which they don't find boring.
Morale of the story - People are pissing me off for so many OOC reasons, but I like how awesome my character, Vincent, in Changeling is.
Not for selfish reasons of having IC power falling into my lap, which for the record I may have stated claim to obtain it such as being Winter King, but after being shot down the first time, I never strived for it and I was perfectly fine with being the "ambassador" of the Winter Court.
The big factor is Vincent is COMPLETELY different of a character that I've ever had in any other venue, and oddly enough, with the very few amount of power characters, he is *gasp* given respect! I'm getting sick of people being pat on the back for playing characters that could easily be retired, just so the play field can be level, which isn't in nearly all existing venues.
I shouldn't have to make a certain set of a character to fit in and get along with others, but it's a crappy reality when faced with the dynamics of LARP.