SLARPcon is over once again and I had a good time once again. I refrained from playing this year and while I did feel like I was missing out I am also happy with the decision. I’ll probably play in some one shots in the future but right now it was just good to help run a game and to run my own game over the weekend.
I spent pretty much all of Friday writing my characters up. I wanted to give everyone a chance to join who hadn’t already and I did end up with a couple other players. I’m glad they joined in but it makes the life of the person running the game so much easier if you let them know in advance that you are playing and what character you like. You might think that all he or she has to do is right up a description for your character and a few goals but it also really involves making sure your character is tied into the other characters as well. Which means changing lots of other characters on some minor level each time a new character gets added. That is my last gripe about it and I really do appreciate the players who made my game worthwhile but please sign up early next year.
Friday night I stopped by for food as I knew I would not be able to on Saturday night. I didn’t have a lot to say about the game since I didn’t play but everyone said they had a good time. I did get in an interesting discussion with Cindy at the end of the game about mechanics and the need or lack of need for them. I still stand by the comment that I would love to run a long term LARP where there are no rules and everything comes down to just the storyteller’s discretion when the players cannot decide on a result themselves.
Saturday I spent the day with Gavin prior to heading in. We did stop by to check out the costumes for the afternoon game and both he and I thought they were pretty cool. I heard the game was pretty good although the rules were a bit too intense for a one shot. Simplicity is what I like. If you can’t describe the system in 10 minutes then I think its too complicated because the players just won’t care. Long running games can (not necessarily should though) have complex rules but as soon as you put in a multiplier and comparison I think its not suitable for a one shot. I did still hear that the game was received well though so all is good.
Between the afternoon and evening game I chatted with the Postnikoffs for a bit, ate some beef jerky an apple and a lemon danish. After this I started getting the room ready for Wade’s game. People showed up and I spent some amount of time… I have no idea how long it too as it was extremely chaotic… handing out character sheets and cards to the players. I hope everyone who was listening to me gripe knew that I was doing it mostly in fun. It was confusing and chaotic as hell but I wasn’t really annoyed at anyone, including Wade who got me to do it. The rest of the evening I wandered around trying to help out as much as possible. I find assisting a storyteller to be fun and at times also challenging. I don’t want to run to the ST to find out what he wants to do for each and every question that is posed to me but I also don’t want to put something in that he would not want. I hope I achieve a good balance. The Methuselah Club game is very character based with no outside plot and when you have that many players you end up with an interesting evening.
I decided that I wanted to see if the same thing would work for a small game. When people were arriving for my game I told them they could change anything they wanted on their sheet except for things that directly affected another character. If it said you were friends with someone then you were friends otherwise things would get to weird and confusing. I had a bunch of “missing” NPCs who people could claim and then about 3 past events that effected things and 1 major thing going on. The players were great and they took the story to a place where I didn’t see it going at all from the outset. The Beast once again appeared and quickly turfed a couple of characters before being taken down. I was fine with this as I want the beast to be nasty tough. I had no say as to whether he showed up or not as it was totally up to the players. There is a short discussion going on Grymm’s blog about the fact that none of the players wanted the combat to happen like it did but after the beast being weaker last year I am content with what happened. Everything ended up good though as the ending to the game came about somewhat naturally as a result of the short combat and I stopped it before it dragged on. Overall I am happy and I discovered that as long as the players are trying and having fun it does not matter if you have a smaller game. You can rely on them to create a good story.
After the Sunday game I went for coffee with the players and a good time was had. After everyone else had left Wade, Kitty, James and I sat around chatting. I really don’t hang around with these people enough. The same can be said about the Edmonton and Regina players who came out. You were all great and wish you lived in Saskatoon so that I could hang out and get to know you better.
During the discussion with Wade, Kitty and James I mentioned I didn’t have any ideas about what I would run in the future (other than SbN). That has now changed I started day dreaming this morning on the way to work about a Film Noir style LARP where the characters were either Steam Punk or Goblin types. My original though was something along the Crime larp we ran a few years ago but it has now changed into something more along the lines of Casablanca. I’d like to know if you would be interested in joining in on such a game. I’d especially love to hear from the Regina and Edmonton people as to if they would feel that it would be worth the trip sometime. I’ve created a poll over on the SLARPA forum. Please feel free to head over there and vote.
That was about it for the weekend other than a Sunday Morning walk that I did. It was a healthy activity thing that for Saskatoon. We were invited out by one of Gavin’s classmates mom’s. It was a nice short 2k walk. I had to skip the Saturday night coffee for it but the walk was a nice break and I wasn’t totally tired so all was good.