Kapcon 2014 Report
Day 1
Round 1 - Boats Against the Current
This was Anna's LARP based on "The Great Gatsby" where we were playing a bunch of 1920s socialites
who were pointedly not attending the funeral of James G. Fitzgerald. As players we were at a bit of a physical disadvantage, as the game was set during a heat wave whereas the game space was rather chilly. We still all managed to quaff plenty of "liquor" though.
The game was deliberately understated with an emphasis on internal drama rather than dramatic reveals. So the game was quite different from my usual LARP experience, as it portrayed a slice-of-life than major turning point in my character's life. I also deprived myself of some additional angst by not reading my character sheet carefully enough before the game. However, the periodic radio announcements were an elegant mechanism for dropping information into the game. I imagine several people would have been nervous about what the radio would reveal next.
Round 2 - Murder they Wrote
In this game we played four unique residents of Cabot Cove (Cabot Cove's only prostitute, teenage mother, homeless person and kiwi - that's four different characters, not all the same person BTW) attempting to solve the murdr of Jessica Fletcher. Obviously I can't reveal whodunnit, but the game was a crazy, mad-cap romp with a pretty high body count - mostly not due to the PCs.
Round 3 - The Hirelings
This is a LARP I ran with Bryn. The format is a bit different from the typical LARP as it is broken up into a number of discrete acts. Character creation involves randomly drawing a name/character class and personality cards and a random relationship with another member of the party. We had 7 out of a maximum possible 10 players and I think everyone had a reasonable time. However, the party actually ended up being unusually well-adjusted and reasonable which made it difficult to draw out the arguing over treasure phase. Bryn and I are keen to run this again some time, but there are some cards that are less interesting that we wouldn't use if there were less than 10 players.
Round 4 - Flagship LARP: Shelter from the Storm
I played Arabella Jones, a self-important busybody in the town of Rutherford, New Zealand. I was also a total mundane in a town that mostly wasn't so I spent most of my time being in denial/generally disapproving of all the strange goings on. Probably my longest running interaction was with Mack Thomson (Bryn) who spent a long time trying to convince me that he was totally on the level and I didn't need to worry about the fact that my teenage daughter had run off to his cabin in the woods. He actually did an excellent job of coming across as a nice, reasonable guy, but in my heart I knew he was a good-for-nothing Thompson and probably into drugs if not worse.
As always in the bigger LARPs there were moments when I would look around and wonder where everyone was (off in the side rooms conspiring, of course). Overall, Arabella didn't manage to achieve much (other than point out that the Thomson's had been wrong about Nora Thomson-Jone's murder) and generally be perplexed and confused about everything. Still, I'm sure she'll manage to sweep it all under the carpet tomorrow.
Day 2
Round 5 (although in my mind it is still round 4) - Monsterhearts Double Feature
This double feature involved one group of demons and one with angels (although there ended up being very little difference between the angels and demons). I ended up playing the human love interest in the angels game. This meant that I spent much of my time gazing into the eyes of my True Love, and generally being oblivious to the number of corpses that were piling up around us. Fortunately there was a plentiful supply of cheesy quotes on hand.
Round 6 - Oblivion
This round I was scheduled to run The Hirelings again, but it was cancelled due to lack of numbers. This meant that I got to select a game from those that still had spaces. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I ended up playing "Oblivion", a game that I probably would have overlooked if selecting from the full timetable as it was both an unknown game system and GM for me.
Oblivion turned out to be a very atmospheric horror game (in fact it would be perfect for Fright Night). The initial phases of the game were mostly mundane with just a slight sense of wrongness. Jason's use of description and background music also really built the tension. In the end-game the world was almost destroyed due to bad dice rolling, but we managed to pull through in the end.
Round 7 - No Choice Pal
By this stage "No Choice Pal" was an award winning game, so that was an additional bonus. The game system use was "Night's Dark Agents" which is basically spies + supernatural nasties. I'd actually be quite interested to see how this would work in campaign play when the betrayal and paranoia aspects could really be played up.
As an investigative game I can't say too much about what happened without giving away spoilers. Due to time constraints the final confrontation occurred a little earlier than it would have normally. In the end the good guys triumphed due to the big bad's inability to roll anything higher than a 1.
Conclusion
The unusual thing this year is that I actually played some reasonably intense, investigative, brain-requiring games in the final two rounds. Normally I'd go for something lightweight and silly on the grounds of exhaustion. Both games worked extremely well which must be testament to the ability of the GMs to focus tired players (or possibly the power of too much V).
Round 1 - Boats Against the Current
This was Anna's LARP based on "The Great Gatsby" where we were playing a bunch of 1920s socialites
who were pointedly not attending the funeral of James G. Fitzgerald. As players we were at a bit of a physical disadvantage, as the game was set during a heat wave whereas the game space was rather chilly. We still all managed to quaff plenty of "liquor" though.
The game was deliberately understated with an emphasis on internal drama rather than dramatic reveals. So the game was quite different from my usual LARP experience, as it portrayed a slice-of-life than major turning point in my character's life. I also deprived myself of some additional angst by not reading my character sheet carefully enough before the game. However, the periodic radio announcements were an elegant mechanism for dropping information into the game. I imagine several people would have been nervous about what the radio would reveal next.
Round 2 - Murder they Wrote
In this game we played four unique residents of Cabot Cove (Cabot Cove's only prostitute, teenage mother, homeless person and kiwi - that's four different characters, not all the same person BTW) attempting to solve the murdr of Jessica Fletcher. Obviously I can't reveal whodunnit, but the game was a crazy, mad-cap romp with a pretty high body count - mostly not due to the PCs.
Round 3 - The Hirelings
This is a LARP I ran with Bryn. The format is a bit different from the typical LARP as it is broken up into a number of discrete acts. Character creation involves randomly drawing a name/character class and personality cards and a random relationship with another member of the party. We had 7 out of a maximum possible 10 players and I think everyone had a reasonable time. However, the party actually ended up being unusually well-adjusted and reasonable which made it difficult to draw out the arguing over treasure phase. Bryn and I are keen to run this again some time, but there are some cards that are less interesting that we wouldn't use if there were less than 10 players.
Round 4 - Flagship LARP: Shelter from the Storm
I played Arabella Jones, a self-important busybody in the town of Rutherford, New Zealand. I was also a total mundane in a town that mostly wasn't so I spent most of my time being in denial/generally disapproving of all the strange goings on. Probably my longest running interaction was with Mack Thomson (Bryn) who spent a long time trying to convince me that he was totally on the level and I didn't need to worry about the fact that my teenage daughter had run off to his cabin in the woods. He actually did an excellent job of coming across as a nice, reasonable guy, but in my heart I knew he was a good-for-nothing Thompson and probably into drugs if not worse.
As always in the bigger LARPs there were moments when I would look around and wonder where everyone was (off in the side rooms conspiring, of course). Overall, Arabella didn't manage to achieve much (other than point out that the Thomson's had been wrong about Nora Thomson-Jone's murder) and generally be perplexed and confused about everything. Still, I'm sure she'll manage to sweep it all under the carpet tomorrow.
Day 2
Round 5 (although in my mind it is still round 4) - Monsterhearts Double Feature
This double feature involved one group of demons and one with angels (although there ended up being very little difference between the angels and demons). I ended up playing the human love interest in the angels game. This meant that I spent much of my time gazing into the eyes of my True Love, and generally being oblivious to the number of corpses that were piling up around us. Fortunately there was a plentiful supply of cheesy quotes on hand.
Round 6 - Oblivion
This round I was scheduled to run The Hirelings again, but it was cancelled due to lack of numbers. This meant that I got to select a game from those that still had spaces. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I ended up playing "Oblivion", a game that I probably would have overlooked if selecting from the full timetable as it was both an unknown game system and GM for me.
Oblivion turned out to be a very atmospheric horror game (in fact it would be perfect for Fright Night). The initial phases of the game were mostly mundane with just a slight sense of wrongness. Jason's use of description and background music also really built the tension. In the end-game the world was almost destroyed due to bad dice rolling, but we managed to pull through in the end.
Round 7 - No Choice Pal
By this stage "No Choice Pal" was an award winning game, so that was an additional bonus. The game system use was "Night's Dark Agents" which is basically spies + supernatural nasties. I'd actually be quite interested to see how this would work in campaign play when the betrayal and paranoia aspects could really be played up.
As an investigative game I can't say too much about what happened without giving away spoilers. Due to time constraints the final confrontation occurred a little earlier than it would have normally. In the end the good guys triumphed due to the big bad's inability to roll anything higher than a 1.
Conclusion
The unusual thing this year is that I actually played some reasonably intense, investigative, brain-requiring games in the final two rounds. Normally I'd go for something lightweight and silly on the grounds of exhaustion. Both games worked extremely well which must be testament to the ability of the GMs to focus tired players (or possibly the power of too much V).