(no subject)
Mar. 6th, 2003 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oakenguyThe possibly-awaited, long-overdue Intercon report! Includes spoilers!
First, for non-gamers, the FAQ:
Q: What is Intercon?
A: Intercon is a marathon of fairly short (1-8 hour) larps disguised as
a convention.
Q: What is the difference between a larp and improv?
A: Larps are so diverse that this is a hard question to answer. However,
there are usually three distinctions: 1) Larps have no audience; 2)
Larps have better costuming; and 3) there's a tiny bit more stigma about
larping than there is about improv. Not much--on the 0 to 100 scale,
100 being Bono talking to the United Nations about the AIDS crisis in
Africa and 0 being Bush, naked in Baghdad, reading erotica about his
encounters with plushy toys, larping would be about a 64, and improv would come
in, oh, at 67.
(For the Faekats keeping track at home, someone doing a stand-up routine
involving jelly jars and masturbation would be about -3).
Anyhow. Intercon. Larps. Everyone on the same page. Coolness.
Friday night was "Her Majesty's Parlour Adventurers Present an Evening
of Indian Intrigue". Meta, meta, META. We were Victorians getting
together to play a larp set in India...good actors playing stuffy Brits
who were *bad* actors, in other words. I played a pompous old fart of a
banker only doing this 'make-believe night' to get in good with the
host--in other words, I got to be the world's worst newbie! Loved it!
Everyone was having a great time driving the player portraying the GM of
the Indian game utterly mad, while the *real* GMs got to hang out in the
corner, watch, and crack up.
Performers, jocks, you know that feeling you get when you set
something up just perfectly for a partner to spike the ball? At
one point my character was harrumphing OOCly, complaining about how the
East End was spoiled "by all them damned crowds of dirty whiny poor
folks, wot? Why, half of 'em're IRISH!" And the woman I was talking to
just got this *glow*. And in the split-second before she started
talking, I remembered, "Wait, this is Polly O'Rourke, the social
activist..."
She tore me a new asshole. It was a beautiful thing.
After that was "Zombies on Ice", zombies waking up in the morgue and,
well, being zombies. There was some confusion over just how verbal and
intelligent we were--my character sheet mentioned that I talked a LOT,
but other zombies seemed to be in the one-syllable-a-minute school.
When a 0 IQ character faces a 20 IQ one, it's bound to end in tears.
Saturday started out with "Humans vs. Monsters: Diplomacy". A small (6
person!) game, very verbal: the goblins wanted cows, the trolls wanted
to fight, the humans wanted the goblins and trolls to stop eating THEIR cows and soldiers, and the dwarves just wanted everyone to leave them the hell alone. At any point we could’ve given up and just started hacking each other, but I think the 9AM start time and our comfy seats kept us talking. The UN should take note.
What we came up with to satisfy everyone was a) creating a trail of cows that led to the neighboring country; and b) Cow Day. A holiday several times a year where condemned human prisoners would be dressed up as cows and set loose in the monster-infested woods. The humans would have watchtowers and an organized betting pool; possibly even action figures and other merchandise for the most popular trolls and goblins.
The afternoon was “Colonel Sebastian T. Rawhide’s Circus of the Spectacular”, where melodrama ruled! It helped that both Col. Rawhide and Our Villain, John Bungling, were extremely gifted actors who could sweep us along in their wake.
AGAIN, SPOILER WARNING:
This was the sort of larp where everyone is Not What They Seem, and half the fun is trying to figure out exactly who’s what and why. At one point I was sitting with a latent sorceress (the Strong Lady) and the Queen of the Flower Sprites (a clown) having our fortunes told by a time traveller (our fortune teller), trying to ignore the confrontation behind us between Baba Yaga and an alien hivemind (the Flying Credenza Brothers). And I got to be all angsty, as couples were marrying on all sides but I only had a few more years of humanity left before I had to transform and leave this plane, while the woman I had a crush on wanted more than anything to be normal and have a quiet life in Bangor, Maine!
In the evening I played the producer of a sleazy tabloid show come to Chelmsford to investigate (and make up, if need be) a story of a strange artifact in “Buried Secrets: The Chelmsford Incident”. Good roleplay abounded; unfortunately, I don’t think much of it came from me, as the sleep dep was kicking in and my brain was frying. Here’s an example:
8:10 Wow, those construction workers are crabby.
8:45 Huh, these construction guys know a lot about gambling.
9:30 That construction guy just roughed me up! And tried to bribe me! How much do these guys get paid?!
10:10 How is it that all the construction guys have guns?!? What sort of crazy town arms it’s construction crews?!?!?
11:20 He shot me in the leg! To cover his getaway! Fuck! Construction foremen are ruthless!!
Post-game wrap-up: You’re kidding. You were a mobster?? Get out!
This was the point in which I decided to scoot home before I got so sleepy-stupid that I injured myself.
First, for non-gamers, the FAQ:
Q: What is Intercon?
A: Intercon is a marathon of fairly short (1-8 hour) larps disguised as
a convention.
Q: What is the difference between a larp and improv?
A: Larps are so diverse that this is a hard question to answer. However,
there are usually three distinctions: 1) Larps have no audience; 2)
Larps have better costuming; and 3) there's a tiny bit more stigma about
larping than there is about improv. Not much--on the 0 to 100 scale,
100 being Bono talking to the United Nations about the AIDS crisis in
Africa and 0 being Bush, naked in Baghdad, reading erotica about his
encounters with plushy toys, larping would be about a 64, and improv would come
in, oh, at 67.
(For the Faekats keeping track at home, someone doing a stand-up routine
involving jelly jars and masturbation would be about -3).
Anyhow. Intercon. Larps. Everyone on the same page. Coolness.
Friday night was "Her Majesty's Parlour Adventurers Present an Evening
of Indian Intrigue". Meta, meta, META. We were Victorians getting
together to play a larp set in India...good actors playing stuffy Brits
who were *bad* actors, in other words. I played a pompous old fart of a
banker only doing this 'make-believe night' to get in good with the
host--in other words, I got to be the world's worst newbie! Loved it!
Everyone was having a great time driving the player portraying the GM of
the Indian game utterly mad, while the *real* GMs got to hang out in the
corner, watch, and crack up.
Performers, jocks, you know that feeling you get when you set
something up just perfectly for a partner to spike the ball? At
one point my character was harrumphing OOCly, complaining about how the
East End was spoiled "by all them damned crowds of dirty whiny poor
folks, wot? Why, half of 'em're IRISH!" And the woman I was talking to
just got this *glow*. And in the split-second before she started
talking, I remembered, "Wait, this is Polly O'Rourke, the social
activist..."
She tore me a new asshole. It was a beautiful thing.
After that was "Zombies on Ice", zombies waking up in the morgue and,
well, being zombies. There was some confusion over just how verbal and
intelligent we were--my character sheet mentioned that I talked a LOT,
but other zombies seemed to be in the one-syllable-a-minute school.
When a 0 IQ character faces a 20 IQ one, it's bound to end in tears.
Saturday started out with "Humans vs. Monsters: Diplomacy". A small (6
person!) game, very verbal: the goblins wanted cows, the trolls wanted
to fight, the humans wanted the goblins and trolls to stop eating THEIR cows and soldiers, and the dwarves just wanted everyone to leave them the hell alone. At any point we could’ve given up and just started hacking each other, but I think the 9AM start time and our comfy seats kept us talking. The UN should take note.
What we came up with to satisfy everyone was a) creating a trail of cows that led to the neighboring country; and b) Cow Day. A holiday several times a year where condemned human prisoners would be dressed up as cows and set loose in the monster-infested woods. The humans would have watchtowers and an organized betting pool; possibly even action figures and other merchandise for the most popular trolls and goblins.
The afternoon was “Colonel Sebastian T. Rawhide’s Circus of the Spectacular”, where melodrama ruled! It helped that both Col. Rawhide and Our Villain, John Bungling, were extremely gifted actors who could sweep us along in their wake.
AGAIN, SPOILER WARNING:
This was the sort of larp where everyone is Not What They Seem, and half the fun is trying to figure out exactly who’s what and why. At one point I was sitting with a latent sorceress (the Strong Lady) and the Queen of the Flower Sprites (a clown) having our fortunes told by a time traveller (our fortune teller), trying to ignore the confrontation behind us between Baba Yaga and an alien hivemind (the Flying Credenza Brothers). And I got to be all angsty, as couples were marrying on all sides but I only had a few more years of humanity left before I had to transform and leave this plane, while the woman I had a crush on wanted more than anything to be normal and have a quiet life in Bangor, Maine!
In the evening I played the producer of a sleazy tabloid show come to Chelmsford to investigate (and make up, if need be) a story of a strange artifact in “Buried Secrets: The Chelmsford Incident”. Good roleplay abounded; unfortunately, I don’t think much of it came from me, as the sleep dep was kicking in and my brain was frying. Here’s an example:
8:10 Wow, those construction workers are crabby.
8:45 Huh, these construction guys know a lot about gambling.
9:30 That construction guy just roughed me up! And tried to bribe me! How much do these guys get paid?!
10:10 How is it that all the construction guys have guns?!? What sort of crazy town arms it’s construction crews?!?!?
11:20 He shot me in the leg! To cover his getaway! Fuck! Construction foremen are ruthless!!
Post-game wrap-up: You’re kidding. You were a mobster?? Get out!
This was the point in which I decided to scoot home before I got so sleepy-stupid that I injured myself.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-03-11 12:24 pm (UTC)Sounds like it was a lot of fun though.