Intercon Gaslamp
So, this weekend I went to Intercon G.
It was an excellent con. Like I said for Intercon Mid-Atlantic, I can't really enjoy a con alone, without at least one familiar face who's willing to hang out and plan with me, and this con had several. In fact, the only reason I was willing to go all the way to Massachusetts was I had a posse to go with, not to mention that running a game meant the con was free for me. (I really like the fact that the Intercons are catered -- that means if you GM, you save on food and con costs and only pay for hotel and travel.)
The con suite was cool, and the company was excellent. I think it helps that I'm starting to get to know more people in the East Coast LARPing crowd, as it were. (Drink Deep 3 helped there, I think.) And there wasn't a single game I was in I didn't enjoy.
On Friday I was in World's End, which was a nice low-key game to be in on a Friday night.
It was based loosely on a similar storyline from Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic, involving a reality storm and people from all sorts of times and places taking refuge in a magical tavern. Yeah, cross-genre games can suck, and the tavern is particularly cliche in gaming history, but this wasn't really cross-genre -- everything in the game was based on Gaiman, and Gaiman is virtually his own genre. The "plot", such as it was, involved Desire splitting itself into two, and many of the characters represented aspects of the Endless, thematically. However, it was really an excuse for an interesting set of characters to sit together and get drunk in a private suite while telling stories.
A game like that is very dependent on the characters, and they were well-written and detailed, and none would have seemed out of place in an actual Gaiman tale. I played one of the few non-humans in the game, an Unseelie fae named m'Alice (Malice). I had a lot of fun with my alien perspective, which was very "neutral". Like it said in my packet: "You do not understand why silly humans need to categorize everything... black and white, love and lust, etc... What about gray? Why not have both?"
Favorite moment: After a long, depressing story where a character talked about his participation in the burning of Atlanta during the American Civil War, my response was: "But wasn't the fire pretty?"
Saturday morning I ran the cyberpunk Shakespeare game, Marlowe 2020, that mediaprophet and I wrote. It went very well; the player who was the head of the American faction was actually half-Japanese, so he felt comfortable bringing out the racist and jingoist attitudes, talking about the "smelly Nips" and decrying the Romeo/Juliet plot because he didn't want "no halfbreed grandchildren." There was a lot of tension, and the android emancipation plot finally got off the ground, with the androids getting a fiefdom in Italy. However, to my surprise, there was no violence, only two failed poisoning attempts.
That afternoon I played in Smallgreens. I'd been curious about the game, as it had been entered in the same contest at Marlowe 2020, but lost a lot of points for being entered late. Which is a shame; the game was easily, hands down, the best game I played all weekend.
The premise was simple. There were two major plots. The overt, mundane plot was a group of protesters trying to prevent a park from being destroyed. The other plot involved the fact that the park was going to be the site of a cosmic conjunction, and any occultist who finished a proper ritual on-site would temporarily become god. Occultists on-site included a fluffy bunny Wiccan, a demon, Adam Weishaupt of the Bavarian Illuminati, the Primordial Woman, and Adolf Hitler.
I played Adolf Hitler. Yes, you read that right. But it was a good, reformed version of Hitler, with a touch of the pulp hero about him. He'd faked his own death and fought a saber duel with Adam Weishaupt in the Antarctic before giving up and becoming a vegetarian chef in Argentina. Over the years, his life extended by Nazi super-science, he'd come to regret his old way of doing things, in part because of the relationship with his young, kindly caretaker, a woman named Carmen who was ignorant of his past and was played very well by kaytebell. He wanted the power of the cosmic conjunction so he could engage in what I called a "Blitzkrieg for Peace", world conquest based on love and tolerance rather than hate.
Of course, it wasn't all sweetness and light. See, the game had this clever "sanity" system, involving hopes and fears for the characters. If you achieved your Hopes, your Sanity went up, and if your Fears came true, your Sanity went down. If Hitler's Sanity was positive when he got the cosmic power, he'd actually do the right thing, but if his Sanity was negative, he'd revert to the "classic", hateful Hitler.
In addition, because of all the magic energy around, if any character reached +10 Sanity, they had a contingency envelope to open and something cool happened to them. Mine was I ceased to be an old man, becoming 18 years old, getting a true second chance at life. Since I achieved +12 Sanity, by revealing myself to Carmen, the Wiccan and Weishaupt and getting forgiveness from them for being who I was, I didn't mind getting thwarted at grasping the cosmic power, as I just opted to marry Carmen instead, which was her major character goal. (Yes, this means that once I revealed who I was and she forgave me for my evil, her goal technically became "marry Hitler". The Wiccan got the cosmic power -- she used it pretty well.)
Two best moments, for me:
1. Working my way up to telling Carmen who I was. I did it in steps. "So, you really believe anyone, no matter how evil, can get forgiveness from God? And would you forgive such a person?" "What if I did bad things during the war?" "What if I was a guard at a concentration camp?" "What if I was one of the people who helped organize the camps?" "What if I wrote this book called 'My Struggle' while I was in prison..."
2. My alias was "Adam Hill". One of the other PCs, a member of a band that was playing in the park, was also a historian. He had a contingency envelope to be opened "after talking to Adam Hill for more than five minutes". He was straightedge; we talked about this for a while, with me talking about how I was a vegetarian, etc.
He opens the envelope, and all it it says, in 64-point bold type, is:
THAT MAN IS HITLER
BEST. CONTINGENCY. ENVELOPE. EVAR.
That evening I played in Contracts, as a necromantic reporter. I found out a lot of information fast, which seemed to allow the heroes to do their thing, though my character didn't benefit much from it. The game was written by zombie_dog, and seemed to go quite well.
Sunday morning was The Other, Other* All-Batman Game, which was based on the 1960s Batman show. It was the perfect Sunday game: silly and brainless.
The Premise: Batman has fallen off a bridge and is possibly dead. Concerned citizens decide to dress up as Batman to stave off a crime wave, while the villains all dress up as Batman to get him blamed for their crimes. Also, many people had other disguises as well, from concerned citizens dressed as villains to steal stuff so the villains didn't get it first, to villains disguised as well-known citizens.
The disguise mechanic was simple: Everyone had badges to show who they looked like, with a photo from the TV show and a description. Disguises are 100% perfect -- even if Batman is giggling like the Joker, if the badge says Batman, it's Batman. The only time you could doubt a disguise was if there was more than one of a person in the room, and even then there was no doubt ONE of them is the genuine article.
Of course, Batman wasn't dead. We later found out he'd gotten amnesia and didn't remember he was Batman anymore, washing up at the Country Club. The Country Club had had a "come costumed as your favorite hero" party the night before, so Bruce Wayne thought his Batman outfit was just a costume.
I was playing Dick Greyson, aka Robin, the Boy Wonder. Favorite moments:
1. I come up to Wayne Manor from the Batcave with Bruce Wayne. There's Batman. I know it's not Batman because I know Bruce is really Batman. So there's some confusion, until the person reveals that it's not really Batman, but Batgirl in disguise.
My response: "Holy Brassiere, that explains it!"
2. Before the above, I see Bruce Wayne and Batman at the children's hospital. This doesn't bug anyone but me, since only I know Bruce's identity.
So I take Bruce aside. "Holy Doppleganger, Batman, who's that dressed as you?"
Bruce is confused. He doesn't know what I'm talking about. Obviously he's an impostor!
So, of course, I take Batman aside and say Bruce isn't Bruce, because he doesn't know he's Batman. But Batman is actually Bruce's Aunt Harriet, who doesn't know Bruce is Batman!
Luckily, the player acts appropriately confused, and lets me know who she really is. I cover myself by saying I know it's not Bruce because he didn't recognize me. (I was there as Dick Greyson.)
So, she, Alfred, and I attack the "false" Bruce and try to unmask him... But it's really Bruce Wayne! It's not a mask! There is much apologies, but in the process we've hit him on the head, and he now remembers he's Batman, so we go off to the Batcave and he explains to me what happened to him.
So, every single game was a lot of fun. Plus, socializing was fun, too. I particularly enjoyed sophistbastard telling me about a game from the previous year that really sucked ass...
It was an excellent con. Like I said for Intercon Mid-Atlantic, I can't really enjoy a con alone, without at least one familiar face who's willing to hang out and plan with me, and this con had several. In fact, the only reason I was willing to go all the way to Massachusetts was I had a posse to go with, not to mention that running a game meant the con was free for me. (I really like the fact that the Intercons are catered -- that means if you GM, you save on food and con costs and only pay for hotel and travel.)
The con suite was cool, and the company was excellent. I think it helps that I'm starting to get to know more people in the East Coast LARPing crowd, as it were. (Drink Deep 3 helped there, I think.) And there wasn't a single game I was in I didn't enjoy.
On Friday I was in World's End, which was a nice low-key game to be in on a Friday night.
It was based loosely on a similar storyline from Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic, involving a reality storm and people from all sorts of times and places taking refuge in a magical tavern. Yeah, cross-genre games can suck, and the tavern is particularly cliche in gaming history, but this wasn't really cross-genre -- everything in the game was based on Gaiman, and Gaiman is virtually his own genre. The "plot", such as it was, involved Desire splitting itself into two, and many of the characters represented aspects of the Endless, thematically. However, it was really an excuse for an interesting set of characters to sit together and get drunk in a private suite while telling stories.
A game like that is very dependent on the characters, and they were well-written and detailed, and none would have seemed out of place in an actual Gaiman tale. I played one of the few non-humans in the game, an Unseelie fae named m'Alice (Malice). I had a lot of fun with my alien perspective, which was very "neutral". Like it said in my packet: "You do not understand why silly humans need to categorize everything... black and white, love and lust, etc... What about gray? Why not have both?"
Favorite moment: After a long, depressing story where a character talked about his participation in the burning of Atlanta during the American Civil War, my response was: "But wasn't the fire pretty?"
Saturday morning I ran the cyberpunk Shakespeare game, Marlowe 2020, that mediaprophet and I wrote. It went very well; the player who was the head of the American faction was actually half-Japanese, so he felt comfortable bringing out the racist and jingoist attitudes, talking about the "smelly Nips" and decrying the Romeo/Juliet plot because he didn't want "no halfbreed grandchildren." There was a lot of tension, and the android emancipation plot finally got off the ground, with the androids getting a fiefdom in Italy. However, to my surprise, there was no violence, only two failed poisoning attempts.
That afternoon I played in Smallgreens. I'd been curious about the game, as it had been entered in the same contest at Marlowe 2020, but lost a lot of points for being entered late. Which is a shame; the game was easily, hands down, the best game I played all weekend.
The premise was simple. There were two major plots. The overt, mundane plot was a group of protesters trying to prevent a park from being destroyed. The other plot involved the fact that the park was going to be the site of a cosmic conjunction, and any occultist who finished a proper ritual on-site would temporarily become god. Occultists on-site included a fluffy bunny Wiccan, a demon, Adam Weishaupt of the Bavarian Illuminati, the Primordial Woman, and Adolf Hitler.
I played Adolf Hitler. Yes, you read that right. But it was a good, reformed version of Hitler, with a touch of the pulp hero about him. He'd faked his own death and fought a saber duel with Adam Weishaupt in the Antarctic before giving up and becoming a vegetarian chef in Argentina. Over the years, his life extended by Nazi super-science, he'd come to regret his old way of doing things, in part because of the relationship with his young, kindly caretaker, a woman named Carmen who was ignorant of his past and was played very well by kaytebell. He wanted the power of the cosmic conjunction so he could engage in what I called a "Blitzkrieg for Peace", world conquest based on love and tolerance rather than hate.
Of course, it wasn't all sweetness and light. See, the game had this clever "sanity" system, involving hopes and fears for the characters. If you achieved your Hopes, your Sanity went up, and if your Fears came true, your Sanity went down. If Hitler's Sanity was positive when he got the cosmic power, he'd actually do the right thing, but if his Sanity was negative, he'd revert to the "classic", hateful Hitler.
In addition, because of all the magic energy around, if any character reached +10 Sanity, they had a contingency envelope to open and something cool happened to them. Mine was I ceased to be an old man, becoming 18 years old, getting a true second chance at life. Since I achieved +12 Sanity, by revealing myself to Carmen, the Wiccan and Weishaupt and getting forgiveness from them for being who I was, I didn't mind getting thwarted at grasping the cosmic power, as I just opted to marry Carmen instead, which was her major character goal. (Yes, this means that once I revealed who I was and she forgave me for my evil, her goal technically became "marry Hitler". The Wiccan got the cosmic power -- she used it pretty well.)
Two best moments, for me:
1. Working my way up to telling Carmen who I was. I did it in steps. "So, you really believe anyone, no matter how evil, can get forgiveness from God? And would you forgive such a person?" "What if I did bad things during the war?" "What if I was a guard at a concentration camp?" "What if I was one of the people who helped organize the camps?" "What if I wrote this book called 'My Struggle' while I was in prison..."
2. My alias was "Adam Hill". One of the other PCs, a member of a band that was playing in the park, was also a historian. He had a contingency envelope to be opened "after talking to Adam Hill for more than five minutes". He was straightedge; we talked about this for a while, with me talking about how I was a vegetarian, etc.
He opens the envelope, and all it it says, in 64-point bold type, is:
THAT MAN IS HITLER
BEST. CONTINGENCY. ENVELOPE. EVAR.
That evening I played in Contracts, as a necromantic reporter. I found out a lot of information fast, which seemed to allow the heroes to do their thing, though my character didn't benefit much from it. The game was written by zombie_dog, and seemed to go quite well.
Sunday morning was The Other, Other* All-Batman Game, which was based on the 1960s Batman show. It was the perfect Sunday game: silly and brainless.
The Premise: Batman has fallen off a bridge and is possibly dead. Concerned citizens decide to dress up as Batman to stave off a crime wave, while the villains all dress up as Batman to get him blamed for their crimes. Also, many people had other disguises as well, from concerned citizens dressed as villains to steal stuff so the villains didn't get it first, to villains disguised as well-known citizens.
The disguise mechanic was simple: Everyone had badges to show who they looked like, with a photo from the TV show and a description. Disguises are 100% perfect -- even if Batman is giggling like the Joker, if the badge says Batman, it's Batman. The only time you could doubt a disguise was if there was more than one of a person in the room, and even then there was no doubt ONE of them is the genuine article.
Of course, Batman wasn't dead. We later found out he'd gotten amnesia and didn't remember he was Batman anymore, washing up at the Country Club. The Country Club had had a "come costumed as your favorite hero" party the night before, so Bruce Wayne thought his Batman outfit was just a costume.
I was playing Dick Greyson, aka Robin, the Boy Wonder. Favorite moments:
1. I come up to Wayne Manor from the Batcave with Bruce Wayne. There's Batman. I know it's not Batman because I know Bruce is really Batman. So there's some confusion, until the person reveals that it's not really Batman, but Batgirl in disguise.
My response: "Holy Brassiere, that explains it!"
2. Before the above, I see Bruce Wayne and Batman at the children's hospital. This doesn't bug anyone but me, since only I know Bruce's identity.
So I take Bruce aside. "Holy Doppleganger, Batman, who's that dressed as you?"
Bruce is confused. He doesn't know what I'm talking about. Obviously he's an impostor!
So, of course, I take Batman aside and say Bruce isn't Bruce, because he doesn't know he's Batman. But Batman is actually Bruce's Aunt Harriet, who doesn't know Bruce is Batman!
Luckily, the player acts appropriately confused, and lets me know who she really is. I cover myself by saying I know it's not Bruce because he didn't recognize me. (I was there as Dick Greyson.)
So, she, Alfred, and I attack the "false" Bruce and try to unmask him... But it's really Bruce Wayne! It's not a mask! There is much apologies, but in the process we've hit him on the head, and he now remembers he's Batman, so we go off to the Batcave and he explains to me what happened to him.
So, every single game was a lot of fun. Plus, socializing was fun, too. I particularly enjoyed sophistbastard telling me about a game from the previous year that really sucked ass...