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Currently, I'm listening to the first Blade Runner soundtrack on the way back home from Göteborg trying very hard not to cry too openly. What a roller coaster... It was one of the most intense things I've ever done. Because the story was so, so sad, the game was very intense, but also because the themes of the game are so deeply relate-able to the events happening currently in the world. Xenophobia leading to genocide, privilege leading to all kinds of violence and suppression, not being able to be who you are, etc. It will take a long while to process all of it.
I played Grim, the scientist/geneticist of the android modifier shop (character descriptions here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pPj-P9QF0rHstcQuyr7SB55HMDjwC1x5JuK9Ml24pT8). The shop was a shady, grimy place where you could bring your android to get (illegal) upgrades. She was selfish, privileged and a basterd in the first act (more on 'acts' below). She was also completely alone. In the end, she tried to do the right thing, but only got pain (mentally and physically) in return. I'm bleeding badly (having your characters feeling stick around after the game), but not as badly as I feared. I'm mainly just very, very sad about the unavoidably of it all. The effect is still the same: a lot of crying. I'm very happy I decided to stay in Göteborg two extra days; even though it was not nearly enough, it took the sharp edges of.
This is my in-game story: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RuIWtqMuvCemdmR2xMfeHZKFeO-m80X8bCxBASQF9xo (TW: torture, violence and a lot of bad shit)
Bleed and crying
The loneliness of Grim has gotten to me, a lot. Recently loneliness has been a big theme in my own life again and ending the event this way just hit really close to home. Ignored and betrayed might not be a real thing, but it is a big fear. Every time I even only briefly think about it, I just start crying. Staying around and getting a lot of compliments (yikes!) and making some really deep new friends helps a lot with this feeling of not worthy I've been having recently, but I haven't found a place for all of it yet. Especially now in the train back, I seem to need to keep pushing where it hurts. And I really need to change something in my life in Umeå to get some more meaningful people close to me too. I'm sure it would help with the feeling of not only going away from something now, but also going back somewhere. Didn't I write this also after Lotka? Shit...
Helping to clean was a very good thing to do. Saturday I really couldn't take the afterparty. Looking back I realize I should have pushed myself to be there, but I really didn't have the energy and mainly: the loneliness bleed was just too much. I felt pretty unwanted and alone and demolishing the set both gave me something useful to do and a way to proces it all.
I had promised to help clean on Monday too, but I just felt slightly sick at the idea of going back there. So instead I spend almost the entire day with Fire's player. We only met once before, at Lotka, and already I would call him a super close friend. Grim and Fire had a pretty intense thing going and it was great to just be normal together, exploring the real city where he has lived. And afterwards just to cry together on the couch, exchanging stories and being there for each other. If possible, I'm going to plan this after-time more often, because at least the biggest hurt was gone after Monday. The feeling of being alone and the feeling of being crazy for crying so much was pretty much faded.
Yesterday I did manage to go back to clean the last bit. By now it was a totally white unrecognizable room. It gave me time to put things in perspective. I spend some time sitting on the stairs in 'the Company tower'. It was the place where I first really started crying Saturday and a good place to check in with myself how I was doing. Also, casually cleaning up the blood stains from the genocide got to me on a bigger level. Because this is how it goes. This is what happens after a ton of people get killed. Somebody just doing their job comes to clean up the mess. They are all people too. I'm not sure how I feel about that yet.
Where Androids Die was my first international event, with so many design choices that I've never played with before, or even considered possible before. So I thought to write a bit about a few of them.
The set
The biggest reason why I subscribed was probably the set. I saw pictures of the previous events and it all looked so amazing! A complete rainy city in a warehouse room. Basically it was a big 'box' transformed with two story scaffolding, plastic and neon-signs into a complete city, including an ever dripping rain gutter. When I helped clean it was absolutely amazing to see actually a pretty small room come out from under what was a very believable big city. Every 'building' was in a different part of town, so you had everything from the fancy club to the noodle bar, the (android-building) fancy Company tower to slums. Every bit had it's own distinct feeling, lighting and entrance and because of it, it felt like you really were miles away.
Being able to hear what was going on in the entire town added a lot to the feeling of a big city. The screams from people getting beat up, the loud music from the club, people living.
The metro
Coming from the Dutch scene where meta-gaming is the worst there is (knowing things off game and using it) and what you see if what you get is our mantra, this was the thing I was the most surprised about. It added a very important deep layer of play to the game to me that I didn't see coming.
To get from one part of town to another, you needed to take the metro. In was a tiny 'room' with two ropes as handrails where you could stand, connected to the round-street on both sides. It called the different stops where you could get out. Especially when you were in a hurry, you really felt the sense of distance being stuck in the metro until your stop arrived, increasing the sense of it being a big city. So far so good.
But in the metro, you were encouraged to hold your own monologue. Either to share your story, commit to what you were going to do (it's harder to chicken out of something if you know people know, I used this a lot to push myself further) or to share some secret of your character to your fellow players so they could act on it (I used this even more). Also, you could 'shadow' people: you could be their conscience, the angel/devil on their shoulder and ask them questions, respond to their monologues etc. I LOVED the metro. On Friday it was still a bit awkward, because not that many people were using it, but by Saturday evening, it was such a great place to be. You saw so many different angles of the story that you would otherwise not see (decreasing FOMO), you could make sure people knew what questions to ask and the shadowing brought some marvelously horrible things. I could spend an entire event just riding the metro I think. It was such a powerful tool and I'm completely in love with the system.
Transparency and acts
Everybody could read everybody's characters before, except a few people had some secrets that you were not allowed to read. We knew how the larp would end and what the pacing was. The game was divided into four acts. The first was establishing the base-line, the second for a feeling of unease, the third for escalating and the fourth for dying. Between the acts there was time to talk to people what you wanted from your game and each other. In game there was anything from a few days to a few hours between the acts.
It all sounds like spoilers and lack of improvisation, but it actually brought me a lot of good things. I had a few negative relations in game with people I didn't know and it was very nice to have time to check in with each other to see how it was going. Also, you had a lot more agency about where your characters story went and if something wasn't working or you were bored, you could change it more easily. And still so many things were a big surprise. I planned the clash with Penta in act three, but all the things that came out of it with Phantasm for example were a total surprise and very intense, because we knew each other off game a bit too by that time. Phantasms player also didn't know off game that he was an android so that made planning a bit hard, but by then we didn't need it anymore that much.
And two people always come up with more great scenes than one. A lot of the good stuff that happened, was because I could brainstorm with somebody on how to go about.
The only thing that I really would've like to have differently is not being able to have coffee afterwards with everybody I wanted to. There are a few people of whom I only realized too late how important they were for my game and how I'm feeling (Yuen, Rowan, Simon the Cop, Micah for example). I just have to back to Göteborg and try to find a way to have coffee with them later. Because I genuinely want to know the people behind all them too so much. Luckily the slight bleed-crush for Yuen is almost gone and even though I hate calling, who knows. Called last night for a while and it was very nice.
I'll get there. It's been a hell of a ride and it's still not over, but I learned a lot and have no regrets. Feel free to ask about anything. I might not answer right away because I can't yet, but it helps to give it a place. Now it's high time to stop crying (the people in the train are looking really weirdly at me).