Intercon F: Part One

INTERCON F WRITE UP: PART ONE

This was a larp convention. Team Straightjackets Optional, aka me, Josh, Stephen Tihor, and Beth, went to run two larps and to play in as many as seemed practical.

Thursday Night

Josh and I burned out a bit on Must Dos for our larps. General tips about writing larps:

Tips for Larps

• If you know you're going to be adding extra characters, and that a bunch of stuff logjams until you've done it, write the dang'ed characters ASAP.

• If you say you aren't going to be working on X, and then you decide to work on X, make sure that no one else has done anything on X. Friggin' check this. If someone has, make sure that what you do works and plays well with what the other person did.

• If one of your major vectors of communication is email, check your email. Check it in a timely fashion. If you cannot do so (you are at work, you have connectivity issues, whatever), tell your fellow GMs through another vector, asap.

• If you are planning to do something that will cost you time, money, or other resources, or if it is something you will be really annoyed at having to re-do or at discovering you didn't need to do it or shouldn't have done it yet, check with everyone before you do it, whether that is printing, running to Kinko's or Staples, or buying a ton of props.

• If you are starting to get cranky, stop. I don't care how critical the next phase is; you will fubar it if you try to push through the building frustration.

• Microsoft software is evil.

• Non-microsoft software is evil, too.

• Don't overcomplicate for prettiness' sake. If you are going to complicate something, make sure to consider your options and find the simplest way to do the complicated thing that will net you the results you desire.

• Task managment is vital. Have an agenda for meetings. A general timeline is likely to be a good thing as well.

• It is often good to have someone who is the tyrant. This doesn't have to be the same person all the time, and likely shouldn't be, but at any given time, it is useful to have one person who can say, "We are going with this option and no other. This is the next task we must do." That said, mileage varies. What is appropriate at one point may not be appropriate at another.

• There are advantages to running games where players start off knowing nothing about their characters. You can recast right up until game start.

• There are advantages to procrastinating on telling people how they've been cast. This will net you fewer re-casts. This is especially useful at a convention where several folks add and drop larps.

• Coming up with gender neutral names is easy. Writing character sheets to avoid the third person singular is the difficult part.

• "It can go in the larp kit" is an excuse to buy anything.

Friday

Josh, Stephen, and I did several Good Idea to Dos while Beth got the rental SUV. It was a bit small for us plus stuff, though I note I overpacked by at least one small bag of props.

Travel tips:

• 3 dramamines over a 6 hour trip is a bit much, especially if you also take a benadryl. Net result was sinus pain and sore throat for the next 24 hours.
• Gloves are a good idea in winter. My hands were cracked and bleeding on Saturday.

Arrival

We got our stuff into the room, ate, did some organizing for the games we would be running, and changed for our first larps. Beth was in Crisis at Candyland Castle, which is far more mature and disturbing than it might sound.

Buffy Larp

Josh, Stephen, and I were in the Buffy larp. Josh played Lindsey the Lawyer, I played Blond Bloodsucking Bimbo Harmony, and Stephen played Lorne, complete with horns and green skin.

The occasion was Jonathan's Birthday Party -- you know, THE Jonathan. Characters were from various Seasons in the Buffy and Angel shows.

Lindsey, Oz, and, I think, Giles each started with inflatable balloon guitars, which was cool.

Items were a bit wonky. It's traditional to scatter item cards around, forcing players to wheel and deal for the items they need. I would still like some explanation of how got some of these:

• Chicken feet: I presume someone might have needed them for a ritual, but why would Harmony happen to be carrying them? Josh says she probably just took stuff she thought would be useful in the Buffyverse. That's a fine explanation, and a sentence to that effect in my character sheet would have sufficed.

• Necklace: I checked to make sure I was supposed to have this, as it was coded with an Item Number. My sheet listed the items I'd recognize, and this wasn't one. I'd have liked some idea of how I got it, as people were trying to keep track of various necklaces, some of which came from Ethan Rayne. This wasn't one of those, at least as far as either Ethan or Harmony knew.

• Amethyst: This proved useful later in the game.

• Feather: Ditto

• Sex Pistols Album: This was confusing. It was a numbered item, but the number was supposed to belong to Harmony's mirror. The GM assured me that I could keep the item card as it was and created a new one for the mirror. I assumed that the album had originally been Spike's. As my character sheet said, Harmony had tossed all his Sex Pistol albums away when he left her. I guess she held on to one, for some reason, and I tried to play accordingly.

The mirror I mentioned was Harmony's prized possession, for it showed her reflection, even though she was a vampire. When I saw that I had a Sex Pistols album instead of the mirror, I wondered if the mirror had been stolen by another character. It hadn't been, and the gm wrote me a new item card. I stipulated that Harmony used it; then I tucked the item card in my badge holder with the rest of the cards I had.

About halfway through the game, I remembered the mirror and found reasons to mention it. I figured that someone must need it, and whoever it was should learn where the mirror was. If so, I don't think anything came of it. Then again, I was talking to the evil people, mostly. But, my instinct says that the mirror should be something more useful than a trinket for Harmony's vanity.

The strength and weakness of the game was that all the plot threads were lifted fairly intact from the shows. Sure, the timing was different, as everything was happening at once. But, basically, there were no player-level surprises from the set up. If you thought you knew what was going on, you were probably right.

It's interesting comparing this larp to the Buffy larp run by Todd Furler and friends and to the Star Trek larp A Good Day to Die. The other Buffy larp was more original, but not as fun for me. It was set after the final episode of Buffy, and it had slightly crunchier mechanics than the other two. The only characters from the show who appeared in the larp were Ethan and Willie the Snitch.

The Star Trek larp had all original characters and rang changes on several plots. One could run into a great deal of trouble if one assumed that a plot thread apparently drawn from an episode was exactly what it seemed. It was delightful.

All of that said, the Intercon Buffy larp was fun, and the gms did game wrap when things wound down, rather than attempting to stretch a 3-hour larp to fill the 4-hour block. Quite sensible.

Jonathan's Party

There was a pop quiz which was easier if you had a copy of Jonathan's autobiography, represented in game as a one-sheet bulleted list summarizing the highlights. We broke into groups to take the test, and here was some confusion on whether one could use out of character information. I think it was all right to do so.

After the pop quiz, Harmony hooked up with her old high school chum, Cordelia. Cordelia's player knew that Harmony was a vampire, but I don't think the character ever found out. Cordelia praised Harmony's alabaster skin. They performed the first karaoke number, an earsplitting duet version of "Flashdance", with more enthusiasm than talent.

A lot of people sang that evening. The three characters with guitars had to. "You Must Sing" was a built-in constraint of those characters. Hm, the questionnaire had nothing on it asking how people felt about singing. I have no idea if the gms ever had to deal with someone in one of those roles who was vehemently opposed to singing.

In addition, Lorne could use You Must Sing" 5 times, and each person he used it on could use it on one other, making the other sing -with- him or her. I don't think Lorne had to use it much. I wonder if the Harmony-Cordelia song, the first of the evening, in all its ear splitting glory, made folks realize that the bar was not that high.

Josh-as-Lindsey did Tom Smith's Hellraiser. Riley and Faith did Love Shack. Darla and Anya, who, I think, were mother and daughter out of game, did YMCA, with Lorne and Harmony doing the hand movements.

I wore a pink dress with my black net cape over it, and I smoked (chocolate) cigarettes. After all, I -am- a villain now. I also had a bat hair stick.

There were 2 game locations, the club Caritas, where no violence could take place, and the alley outside, which had no such magical prohibition. The alley is where Harmony took Riley, as he was addicted to having his blood sucked. I hadn't realized I had to go vamp face to drink his blood, which cost a point, so I should've been drinking 2 points worth. OTOH, I was breaking even and only used one point elsewhere in the game, so no harm done.

Riley was fairly contemptuous of Harmony.

Riley: Don't talk while you're doing this.

Still, after Harmony was done, he was in a much better mood.

Riley: Thanks!

Harmony: Sure! Any time!

Riley: I may take you up on that.

He tried to do just that after his duet with Faith, half dragging her toward the alley. Alas, that was when a contingency envelope went off. Contingency envelopes are given to players at game start, with instructions on the outside such as "Open if X happens" or "Open when you see Y". Those are the basics.

There's also "Give this envelope to Character A if X". Thus, I and most other players had an envelope to give to Stephen-as-Lorne to open if we sang. Most of Lorne's contingency envelopes gave him information that Stephen already knew, i.e., basically gave him permission to use his out of character knowledge. Admittedly, if Lorne weren't played by someone who knew all the background, those envelopes would actually have surprising information.

I had an envelope to give to Faith's player at 9:30, and she had one for me. What on earth had the Bloodsucking Blond Bimbo and the 2nd Slayer in common?

A 10-minute love spell, as it turned out. Each envelope said that we'd just now realized how sexy Xander was and we -had- to be near him. This happened when Riley wanted Harmony in the alley. Oops.

A lot of other women got the same envelope. So, Harmony, Drusilla, and Evil Willow converged on Xander, who fled to the alley with Buffy, Buffy, and Faith protecting him. Riley and Evil Xander got swept into this. Drusilla and Evil Willow decided it would be great to turn Xander into a vampire, something that

• hadn't occurred to Harmony
• sounded like a good idea to Harmony
• wasn't possible without Xander being willing -- that's how the mechanics worked

That was the last straw for Buffy, Buffy, and Faith, who attacked the vampires. Now, combat was the last thing Harmony wanted, but she did surprisingly well. There were 3 stats, and I increased them twice, first by putting on a vampire face, and then by using my minions. I also won the Rock-Paper-Scissors contests, so Harmony, or her minions, did actual damage to one of the Buffys, the "real" one, I think. The woman playing her was great. I later learned that the other one was Robot-Buffy and had been created by Spike.

Buffy: I don't believe it. I'm fighting Harmony!

Harmony: It's because I'm your arch-nemesis!

Buffy: If she says that one more time -- !

After Harmony's minions were killed, I used her Dumb Luck to avoid taking damage, then fled, as Riley advised. He wanted Harmony intact because he got sick if she didn't drink his blood once an hour. I don't think Buffy ever learned this. Both in and out of character, I wasn't eager for combat, partly because I didn't realize that it was basically impossible to kill anyone in game, and partly because I tend to find larp combat annoying, though this went reasonably smoothly.

Harmony got along with a lot of people. She did her best to make sure Darla-human got hooked up with Evil Willow and Evil Xander. She warned all the vampires she knew about the slayers and the scoobies were talking about pre-emptive stakings.

Evil Xander: Nobody ought to stake anyone!

Harmony: I know! That's why I'm telling you!

Ethan gave Harmony a drink. It would have turned her into a demon if she hadn't already been a vampire.

Ethan: Oh well.

Harmony: Hey, it's a great drink!

This quickly proved useful to Ethan when Buffy confronted him about the drinks he was serving.

Ethan: She's drinking them.

Buffy (to Harmony): And you're okay with this?

Harmony: Sure! It's a good drink.

Harmony later asked if Ethan were also Buffy's arch nemesis. He said that he thought that he was everyone's arch nemesis. Harmony said that she had no problem with Ethan. He said that she was right -- he wasn't her arch nemesis. She was special. Harmony was delighted.

At one point, Ethan and Angel had a body swap. The guy who had been playing Ethan now did a fine job of singing badly, actually reciting the words to "Feelings" Shatner-style -- so that Lorne could confirm that he was Angel.

Harmony (later, to Riley): No one else sings as badly.

Later, Harmony went up to the guy.

Harmony: Are you Ethan or Angel?

Guy: Which is it to my advantage to be?

Harmony: That's a smart answer! You must be Ethan!

Ethan: Ah, you found me out.

Harmony had quite a few plans. First, she had been slipping cocaine into Angel's blood, pre-game. Well, having a minion do it. This was because, pre-game, Ethan had told her that cocaine made souls go away.

Jonathan: So that's what you wanted the cocaine for!

Harmony: You didn't think -I- was using it?

Jonathan: I wasn't sure what you were doing with it.

Harmony: Drugs are for losers. Duh! I've seen your Just Say No commercials!

I was proud of that line. Of -course- Jonathan would have done anti-drug commercials.

Jonathan was supplying Harmony with cocaine because she was blackmailing him. She knew he'd done a spell to become what he was, because she'd seen him doing it, and she was immune.

Jonathan was trying to collect the ingredients he needed to renew the spell that made him what he was, and he asked Harmony for some of them, claiming, falsely, that the cocaine suppliers wanted them. Harmony wouldn't have minded the truth; it was convenient to have a top of the world Jonathan in debt to her. Regardless, she gave him one ingredient, the amethyst, and she gave him her necklace, even though he didn't need it. After all, it was his birthday, and he didn't like the Sex Pistols. She did eventually pass the album on to Spike.

Harmony: No running away again!

Spike: Harmony, I would never run away from you.

Quite true. He'd walk or take the bus.

And, to my complete surprise, when Angel did, briefly, become Angelus, it was because of the cocaine in his blood. Spike had been stealing some of Angel's blood supply, although he was already evil.

Spike's Player (at game wrap): That's why it tasted so good!

Harmony also did some trading with Lorne for something Jonathan needed. I forgot that I could use one of my abilities to make a male help me, assuming Lorne didn't have a counterability, but I think it was better that I didn't. It was more pleasant for both Stephen and me, and it was sort of implicit in how I was playing Harmony.

After the fight in the alley, Harmony loudly complained that vampires needed an anti-harassment group. I mean, there she was, minding her own business, when she got hit by a love spell, making her have to be near Xander. Yuck! And suddenly, it's out with the stakes and the fighting! She wanted a lawyer!

As I'd hoped, Lorne pointed her at Lindsey and Lila. They later decided to leave Wolfram and Hart together, and go under Buffy's protection. Right then, they listened to Harmony and agreed with her.

Lindsey: You didn't kill anyone, right?

Harmony: No!

Lindsey: Good. That's the right answer.

The Mayor was also sympathetic.

By now, I'd remembered about Harmony's mirror and wanted to get the information about the mirror out there. So, Harmony had another idea. She would open a vampire boutique! Several people brought up the mirror problem, and she boasted of her prized possession. No one was more than mildly intrigued, though it was good flavor text for the game. I still don't know if the mirror was of no use beyond showing a vampire's reflection, or if I just never connected with the right people.

As for Lindsey, Josh told me that he'd put his cards on the table and kept them there. Lindsey wanted Darla. Darla wasn't interested in him, and then Angelus turned her into a vampire, breaking Lindsey's heart.

So, Lindsey approached his other romantic interest, Lila. She told him to get lost. Maybe 15 minutes later, she was back.

Lila: Sorry, I was under a love spell. I'm better now. What were you saying about being able to fall in love with me?

Lindsey had been told by Lorne that there was no way he'd find true love while working for Wolfram & Hart. So, he and Lila switched sides.

The world did not end. Jonathan renewed his spell for another year. The game ended, and we began game wrap.

I opened my unused contingency envelope to see what it might say. It was for Event Alpha, which was Jonathan's spell failing. The note explained that the reader realized the deception Jonathan had perpetrated and felt betrayed. Puzzled, I asked the GMs about this and was told that all female characters had that note, but it didn't apply to Harmony, who already knew Jonathan's secret.

IMAO, I shouldn't have gotten that envelope. Had I opened it, I wouldn't have been sure if

a) despite knowing about the spell, Harmony was still a bit affected by it

b) if Harmony knew the spell had ended

Josh agreed, saying that Harmony should be told that folks were acting oddly, and she didn't understand why. He also thought that there should be something for each character saying how the PC felt about Jonathan. For example, did Lindsey like Jonathan? Idolize him? Or did he just want to be friendly with the Great Jonathan because of how important Jonathan was?

Saturday

We dragged ourselves up, to breakfast, and to our function area to set up for Jamais Vue, which we thought would be running by 8 am. At 8:10 am, seeing that no one had shown up, I checked my printout from registration, and saw that start time was 9:00 am. I am not sure at what point this became the case, as we are all sure we remember an 8:00 am start time from the website, but the website says 9:00 am. The shift forward an hour was very annoying on Sunday, but reasonably useful on Saturday, as we had more time to set up than we'd expected.

Jamais Vue

I don't have a clear idea of what happened, but the game seemed to go well on the whole. Usually, I stress out at the beginning, but this time it was Josh. He calmed down as the game progressed and things clicked, but I had more tips to add to my JV notes:

I had thought there was one version of the rules for one particular segment of the game. There are two versions, one for the GMs and one for the players.

The clear plastic folders for GM material work fine for transporting the material and not losing it, but are lousy for finding any given item during the game. Next time, use binders with indexed tabs. Use either a 3 hole punch or paper with holes in it. I think the 3 hole punch is best.

I need to be clearer on who can do what before a certain condition is met.

We need to have a way of indicating who can get into which rooms. This may be combinable with some ideas we have to automate certain parts of the game that currently require heavy gm intervention.

One part of the game involves exploring the area, and is what we refer to as "the dungeon crawl". There's a 10-minute time limit on expeditions. If we do not change this and automate the process, a timer is vital. The first couple of expeditions ran longer than planned, but once the timer was used, that stopped being an issue.

People who look unusual should have a card or badge to display at game start indicating this.

We may be able to automate the return of memories. This would be good, as it would involve less gm intervention and it would give players an idea of how much of their PCs' memories they are waiting for.

Certain players tried to retrieve memories by performing tasks they had reason to believe their characters had done a lot. This is a good idea, although it does require a bit of gm attention to work.

We currently have all but 3 players wearing name tags at game start. One of the remaining three should have a particular piece of identification.

One player didn't seem to understand a particular aspect of his character's mindset, but I think this indicates a less than perfect casting, not a problem on the sheet. I will double check the sheet, and, as far as I can tell, the player didn't have a problem with the role.

One player didn't show up, as he'd left the convention the night before. Fortunately, someone knew this and told us, and, even more fortunately, it was one of the least critical roles. The player was a last minute addition, and we cast him into the available spot.

I am curious to know why a couple of players made a particular decision, and perhaps I should email and ask. They seemed well cast, even, or perhaps especially, if their interpretation of their roles was not what we had expected.

One woman wound up giving away information that she didn't realize she shouldn't, but she seemed to have a good game. She also pointed out an important typo on her character sheet -- we have "do hurt" where we should have "do not hurt". I'm glad she checked!

There are a couple of pieces of information that need to go into either someone's memory envelope or into an item envelope, but the items worked fairly well, once we fixed some version control problems before the game.

Dashing Between Games

Beth and Josh had two larps each. Beth had It Happened This Way and The Greater Trumps. I know she enjoyed the latter, where she played The Sun. Josh had Grimmer Tales, which was inspired by the comic book Fables, and he enjoyed it. He also had The Nightmare Before Saint Patrick's Day. Great proppage, costuming, and player investment and buy-in. But, as the gm said, everything else went wrong. I'll let Josh describe the game if he wants, or I can supply urls to places where it was discussed.

Stephen and I were in a ten hour larp which I will not try to write up two days before deadline. It was fun.

Sunday

We dragged ourselves out of bed, packed the SUV, and brought what we needed for the Roman Baths larp to the pool. We had several no shows, most of whom either showed up to say that they couldn't play, or contacted us before the larp. The woman who played Cordelia was one of these, which was a pity. I'd have loved to see her as Pandara, our brothel owner. I took that role as an NPC role.

We also lost Miles Gloriousus, but that wasn't a big problem. We didn't have Agitonia, which was a problem, and I ought to have re-cast the woman playing Porca as Agitonia. Porca, we discovered, wasn't quite meaty enough to be a full PC. She worked fine as a horde or NPC character. The woman playing Porca left early, partly because things weren't clicking for her and partly because she was on a tight deadline.

The person we cast as Hippus didn't really enjoy the game. I know that the role is viable, as I've seen it played well before, so I think we miscast him. I am not sure what a better cast would have been, and I think we need to expand our questionnaire a bit.

Josh pulled in two people who hadn't signed up to play, and that helped. And, we had Wacky Roman Hijinks.

There was a plot involving fake statues, and the famous orator was trying to make sure that the Vestal Virgin (uncast) wound up with a genuine statue. The person selling the statues went to his, ah, helpers, Pseudala and Hysteria, and they came up with a convoluted plan involving buying what the seller was convinced was the actual statue from the person he'd sold it to, a judge (uncast), and then having the two women do a substitution.

Pseudala and Hysteria were like the dynamic duo of crime -- or, perhaps, the Dirty Pair. The explanations of what was going to happen with which statue got convoluted enough that I lost track of where the real statue was. Ultimately, Hysteria explained that she'd had it all along, and that she was going to pretend she'd substituted the judge's for the vestal's, but not actually do the swap, as both were fakes. I think that the player is incorrect in terms of what we had intended, but I couldn't find anything indicating what we had intended, and it sounded like fun, so we went with this.

I decided that Pandara should also have a wacky plot involving trying to make a fake statue that a senator had fallen into look real. Nothing ever came of this, but everyone else had wacky plots, so I wanted one, too.

The priest of an Egyptian mystery cult managed to get his sacred artifact back despite Pseudala's work of making copies. As the priest did this without magic, he had one spell he could use. He decided to use this to rescue the captured Pharoah. Stephen played the pharoah, and the two vanished just as a senator was about to agree to let a rival marry the woman he was to marry. The senator immediately changed his mind in light of what was clearly a bad omen. The bath house manager will sue him for breach of contract if he doesn't return to remove a curse from the man she wishes to marry.

The vestal's statue was brought in. This was played by Stephen, who whispered to the art expert -- the same character as the seantor mentioned above -- that the statue wasn't even made of marble. The player did a fine job of pointing out the statue's flaws, with Stephen doing a subtle, but hilarious, pantomime illustrating his points.

Finally, there was the chariot race. I had written odds on a piece of paper on an easel at game start. Josh had to correct some of the odds, but this did succeed in having people care about the race and bet on it. Pseudala raked in a lot of money, as did the charioteer who had bet privately against himself, and decided to retire after this race.