So all the places where tomorrow lies bleeding
Hello, antediluvian journal site now eclipsed by even-more-social media! I still like you, actually. You and I have a well-established relationship in which I use you to give the (to an extent accurate) impression that all I think about is gaming. Accordingly I will now write a post about a game I just played in.
Man. This last session of Aralis: yay, in fact. In-game it was astonishingly grim, though it did include one rather impressive-feeling Hail Mary move, planned by jameyhasnolj and conspiratrix, that I got to be in on. That scene was a marvelous, and to my mind worthwhile, indulgence by the GMs-and it really came off as a scene. Desperate, exhausted, livid-faced gambling in flickery pretend-candlelight . . . it really reminded me of the gambling scenes in Barry Lyndon, a movie I should really watch the first half of at some point.
Another big satisfaction was the music, about which lots has already been said with great kindness. I really, really, appreciate the NPCs' excellent work on that-minervaish and indeed everyone involved, I realize that I was just straight-up giving you more pre-event homework than you already had, and you guys just went to town on it.
As for the, uh, big giant Saturday night thing . . . I don't even know what to say about that, except that it was astonishing and well-handled and full of amazing dark drama. The grim and brutal and miserable and treacherous culmination of a several-year arc. I hear that some staff people were wondering if I'd be so OOG-miserable afterward that I'd want to walk-and I guess it's interesting that I totally didn't, and in some crazy way instead thought it was great. Because it is true that I hate, hate hate hate, PvP as a rule-I deeply dislike being in competition with people, screwing people over, being screwed over by people. I don't even much like most kinds of angst, particularly when it's of the "you screwed up, you are at fault, you have hurt people" variety.
Was it just the relief of the other shoe actually dropping? Since the very end of the April event, I'd been waiting for something about this bad to happen, waiting to see what the hell I'd do when the moment came-this certainly answered that question. Was it that things fell out in an interesting and terrible way (instead of just a terrible one), including the development of a weird instant relationship with a character I'd studiously avoided henceforth? Or the fact that this was one of those events that fell together into an interesting arc-shape? (Ugh, more lamely, was it just that I got to get lots of attention?)
I mean, I was pretty satisfied with my own characterization and play (which isn't always true!), and that did help. I think I did an OK job this time out, playing somebody who was trying to be a good person but who broke humiliatingly, who had and confessed a shameful fear for his own skin (hi, tressum and jameyhasnolj), who fought against that fear and won for just a moment, who was a suitably human mix of nobility and snivelling, who succeeded in solving some tangrams after unlocking Easy Mode.
I don't know; I know I'm very hard to predict in this game, and I do kind of wish that weren't true; LARPs being all about the planning, I realize it's important to be able to actually predict players. It's funny how little self-insight I have as a game-player, given how self-obsessed I get. I sweartagod I don't do it out of deliberate perversity.
But blah, anyway. So much good play from PCs and NPCs! I loved, for example, Hadrian's little monolog-I mean, that was genuinely moving. I loved there being new players. I loved the NPCs' commitment to their roles.
Man. This last session of Aralis: yay, in fact. In-game it was astonishingly grim, though it did include one rather impressive-feeling Hail Mary move, planned by jameyhasnolj and conspiratrix, that I got to be in on. That scene was a marvelous, and to my mind worthwhile, indulgence by the GMs-and it really came off as a scene. Desperate, exhausted, livid-faced gambling in flickery pretend-candlelight . . . it really reminded me of the gambling scenes in Barry Lyndon, a movie I should really watch the first half of at some point.
Another big satisfaction was the music, about which lots has already been said with great kindness. I really, really, appreciate the NPCs' excellent work on that-minervaish and indeed everyone involved, I realize that I was just straight-up giving you more pre-event homework than you already had, and you guys just went to town on it.
As for the, uh, big giant Saturday night thing . . . I don't even know what to say about that, except that it was astonishing and well-handled and full of amazing dark drama. The grim and brutal and miserable and treacherous culmination of a several-year arc. I hear that some staff people were wondering if I'd be so OOG-miserable afterward that I'd want to walk-and I guess it's interesting that I totally didn't, and in some crazy way instead thought it was great. Because it is true that I hate, hate hate hate, PvP as a rule-I deeply dislike being in competition with people, screwing people over, being screwed over by people. I don't even much like most kinds of angst, particularly when it's of the "you screwed up, you are at fault, you have hurt people" variety.
Was it just the relief of the other shoe actually dropping? Since the very end of the April event, I'd been waiting for something about this bad to happen, waiting to see what the hell I'd do when the moment came-this certainly answered that question. Was it that things fell out in an interesting and terrible way (instead of just a terrible one), including the development of a weird instant relationship with a character I'd studiously avoided henceforth? Or the fact that this was one of those events that fell together into an interesting arc-shape? (Ugh, more lamely, was it just that I got to get lots of attention?)
I mean, I was pretty satisfied with my own characterization and play (which isn't always true!), and that did help. I think I did an OK job this time out, playing somebody who was trying to be a good person but who broke humiliatingly, who had and confessed a shameful fear for his own skin (hi, tressum and jameyhasnolj), who fought against that fear and won for just a moment, who was a suitably human mix of nobility and snivelling, who succeeded in solving some tangrams after unlocking Easy Mode.
I don't know; I know I'm very hard to predict in this game, and I do kind of wish that weren't true; LARPs being all about the planning, I realize it's important to be able to actually predict players. It's funny how little self-insight I have as a game-player, given how self-obsessed I get. I sweartagod I don't do it out of deliberate perversity.
But blah, anyway. So much good play from PCs and NPCs! I loved, for example, Hadrian's little monolog-I mean, that was genuinely moving. I loved there being new players. I loved the NPCs' commitment to their roles.