Intercon G, Part 1

Thursday Night, Josh and I crashed at Stephen Tihor's. Friday morning, Beth got the rental minivan and arrived at Stephen's shortly after Andrew Zorowitz. We loaded up and pulled out around 11 am.

Getting on the road an hour or so earlier than last year really helped. So did not overdoing the dramamine and not mixing dramamine and benadryl. I was still fairly miserable for the first leg of the trip, but not ill, and once I managed to sip some water, find a comfortable position, and doze, I was doing much better. Our meal stop was determined by which roadside restaurant had chairs, rather than booths. As this was Boston Market, we all ate rather well. I took a brownie and an extra pack of cranberry walnut relish for the road.

I didn't actually have a Friday night game. I was waitlisted for Intrigue in the Clouds, which, to no one's surprise, didn't have any drops. The two games that had been looking for assistant gms had found them.

This made for a relaxing evening, taking full advantage of the hotel's wireless to catch up on email, and backing up various files. I got to play a bit part for a minute in Elanthia, a soldier staggering in to report how his unit had been ambushed. Everyone clustered around me, some asking if they could get me anything, others pressing for details, which I did my best to invent. The gm who recruited me then led me off "to get some rest", and told me I'd been awesome.

I also chatted with Mark Waks, who had created the role of Dingbot Prime in the Girl Genius game because I had asked for it. He said that the game, due to run Saturday morning and again Saturday evening, was 98% done, but it was about a 500 page game, so he was scrambling to nail down that last 2%. He also noted that the first run had all the hardcore fans of the comic.

Mark gave me blank cards, explaining that I could write things like "!" or "?" on them, and then hold them up during the game. I created a nice set of these. And, I found 3 buttons in my character pack. One was a picture of Dingbot Prime ("Relax! You should be completely incapable of feeling pain."), one said, "I am very small", and the third said, "You cannot understand me".

I had a minor problem with my phone, which, on top of the major one I'd had previously, unnerved me enough to camp out outside the Deadfellows larp, the join Josh to hear the game wrap. It sounded fun. After, he fixed my phone, though the problem was a system thing.

I felt like crud on Saturday morning, but found that eating the sweet cranberry walnut relish I'd picked up from our road meal at Boston Market made it possible to eat other things. The Girl Genius larp was a lot of fun, and the cards I used most were "!", "?", and "", with the occasional use of a dark cloud on a card to represent frustration. I had a three legged massager to represent the dingbot, and it later created my other three legged massager. I also brought the snuffelufagus to represnt a mimoth. Josh and I both got a bit hoarse, me because I was making lots of noise, and him because he was shouting most of his lines in the heroic voice of Othar Trygvarsson, Gentleman Adventurer. He'd made business cards, too.

Great Moments from that game included:

-- explaining to Crosp what I knew, as Dingbot Prime could sort of talk with the cat

-- riding the Green Squishy Lizard with the Gerbil. The gm held the lizard toy, the gerbil's player held the gerbil toy, and I held the Dingbot Prime toy, making "whee" noises as some of the other players looked on in astonishment

-- asking if everyone were done with a mcguffin that took the shape of a mirror.

Gil: Not yet. (fixes his hair) Okay.

After that, Team Straightjackets Optional did a bit of hustling to find out where the heck the "private suite" we were supposed to be holding our game in was located. We got a fine room, but for future reference, what exactly was going on there? Was it just a matter of finding the person on concom who knew that we'd been given a suite, or had concom gotten the impression that we were actually running Hot Tub 2 in our own room(s)?

As Stephen Tihor said, we started off with 2 of our 3 players in the room, out of a minimum of 7 players needed. mnemex went to see if he could spot the third player or people without an afternoon game. Our female player went to see if sending a young, attractive woman would help lure in players. Just as mnemex was ready to give up and suggest we cancel the game, our third player arrived -- with another person. We told mnemex to bring back our other player. With 4 players and 4 gms, we could make this work by slotting in 3 gms.

Then, we got 3 more players, all male, all willing to admit that the recuiting tactic had worked. So, 7 players, 3 gms slotted in, and we had a viable game. Whee! And, about halfway through, another person joined in, so we had pretty much a full cast.

It was a lot more dynamic than the first run, the one which had an actual hot tub, but never more than, I think, 5 players who weren't gms, and generally only 3. (A couple of folks cycled in and out.) It was much more tense, with great reversals and last minute saves, and a guy who played a villain who lost saying he'd had a great time. Wow.

Other cool moments involved a first time larper who read her character sheet, and as soon as the game started, found me and said, "You. Keep away from my boy." Very cool. Then, there was the man we gave the role of Archon, aka Cat-Herder. He was very good at using what power he had.

Josh and I got ready for our evening game, The Dance and The Dawn, which turned out to be exactly the right choice of game for us. The pre-game dance instruction was quick and painless. The length of the dances was right -- long enough to dance and talk, but short enough not to drag on. I spent about a half hour or so of the game in tears, in a good way, as my character realized that she had absolutely no idea of what she was looking for anymore. Much good drama, and some interesting results at the end. This is one I'd like to run. Josh and I are still talking about what we really liked and what we thought should have been different and how.

Josh dragged me to the dancing for at least one post-Dance-and-Dawn dance, which was only fair, as, since both of us were Ice Lords in the larp, we weren't dancing with each other. So, we did some swing dancing, which gave one of the players from our run of Girl Genius a mental image of tiny dingbots swing dancing.

Sunday, Josh, Stephen, Andrew, and I all played in The Other Other All Batman larp. This was exactly what we were expecting. crash_mccormack was The Penguin, something I'd wondered about when he took a tall umbrella. Now, it was raining very hard, but it was just the right sort of umbrella. I got to stop hiding the whip I'd brought as part of my Catwoman costume. The woman playing The Joker was careful to drop anvil-like hints where appropriate. She telegraphed that The Joker had the scarab that Catwoman wanted, while I followed the Rule of Obliviousness so as not to notice that too soon. Then she put the scarab somewhere easy to find, especially when she cried out, "Oh, no, Catwoman, don't look in there!" Catwoman was captured, of course, but got Batgirl to let her go by appealing to her woman-to-woman, about how you just couldn't trust men.

We pulled out soon after the game, and I spent the first leg of the trip home sleeping. When I woke up, I learned that Straitjackets Optional is already making progress on our larp for Intercon H. Cool!