The ACUS recap
P.S. at the beginning: This is one of my few public posts, which I do so that people can find my LJ if they so desire. :)
Wednesday:
As per the usual, we got up early to get to Michigan at a reasonable hour, because it's a LONG flight and we lose 3 hours on the way out there. Of course, someone didn't think "huh, 7:30 a.m. flight means getting up REALLY early." But it did. Painfully early. One should not see that side of 3 a.m. unless one has not slept...
But got there we did, and found Kindred, and I successfully drove in Michigan for the first time ever, and also DID NOT GET US LOST EVEN ONCE! Go me! Granted, we did find the liquor store of choice purely as a fluke, because I knew it was near the Trader Joe's, and also because it happened to be on the way from Trader Joe's to 7-11.
We got to Jarrod & Patrick's on the early side, but that was okay with them. And then there was food and drinks and conversation, and then there was the realization that I had been up since 3 a.m. Seattle time, which is early no matter how you look at it. Luckily, I got us to the hotel before completely pumpkin-ing out. (And actually stayed up to finish reading the last 1/4 of Catching Fire, because it was addictive.)
Thursday:
We didn't sleep in horribly late and even got to have breakfast before we went to Zingerman's for lunch. Because there really is only one day a year when I'm willing to spend almost $40 for lunch at a deli, and that is the day that ACUS starts. Jeremy winces at the total every time, and I just pay it gladly, because it's much cheaper than the trip to New Orleans that would otherwise get me the sammich of great happiness.
Then we went to hang out with James and Flavia for a bit, and then off to the airport to retrieve Andi. Then back to the hotel to putz around for a bit, and then we went down for the opening reception.
First game of the con for me was my All the Myths are True game, which was the fourth session, but only the third at ACUS. I'm planning to take the number off the title for next year, because that's confusing. :) Any rate, I opened up the game by informing Jeremy that his character was dead. Then he came back to life, and that sort of ate the plot for a little while. But we got back to it, and got through part of the rest of the plot. The PCs had a semi-showdown with the big bad, and definitely put a big crimp in his plans. But he's still out there, so ... sequel it is! (subtitle: A Hel of a Place to Make a Fortune. And yes, that is intentionally Hel with one L.)
Friday:
Friday is the day of three games, and the day when I play all day (and don't run anything).
So first up was: Last Best Hope of Earth: "A Sad and Terrible Day." This is a Civil War game, and the GMs moved it to slot 2 so that Tymen and I could play in it. I ended up on Team Research, which was alternately referred to as the Scoobies, though I never did figure out which of the Scoobies my character would be. After a lot of not getting very far, the GMs pulled me aside to check on what exactly my character's "power" was, and then used that to help get the game back on track. After the 4 official hours of game time were up, they unleashed me on the group. My character may or may not have killed 3 other PCs, and she may also be dead. We won't know for sure till next year. :)
Second was: A Double Dozen Seas, in which I was a returning player. At the end of the game, my character (the ship's doctor) ended up with Prince Brand in her care. The rest of the crew wanted to get rid of him, but she didn't. So I spent a lot of time early on plotting with the GM. By the end of the game, we had all gone to Brand's personal Shadow. Someone made a comment something along the lines of: "she's just going to sleep with Brand and stay here." My response: "I'm not going to stay here!" Everyone caught the unspoken part of that. :) (Though the thought did occur to me that my character probably can't really get what she wants out of Brand. He'd have no reason to marry her, and she needs to be married to get her inheritance.)
The final game on Friday was: Bedlam Wails. I played another doctor in this game, and discovered with the way that I wrote my background, that she was not really prepared to cope with craziness. But I had a fun time playing her, even if she was getting phone calls from her dead twin sister. The game was suitably creepy, and everyone had a good amount of camera time. And the co-GM thing worked really well for this game!
Saturday:
Saturday morning was the next game I ran, which was The Desire of Gain. This was my first real, actual, grown-up Amber game that I had run, and I think it went pretty well. No one seemed utterly fed up with it, at least. I'm not going to say too much else about it, though, as it is a setting and a scenario that I may use again, since it fit well into the time slot.
Saturday evening, we had the return of Ashworth Academy. Yet again, we had an awesome time! I had a few freak outs, because I've read the comic that was the original inspiration for the game, so when Jeremy used a bit from the comic, I thought I knew what was coming. I was wrong though. And we've started cracking into the Amber connection, which has also inspired waves of freaking out. But in the end, we are the best armed students in the school, and we know what needs to get done. Now we just need to figure out how to reassemble the Jewel of Judgment and clean up the big huge mess that exists after its shattering.
Sunday:
Sunday was all Hogwarts, all the time. First was my Heathers of Hogwarts game. This was the first time I ran it systemless, and I'm not sure I'm thrilled by that. So I started working on a Hogwarts-specific system. I'm also kinda sorta thinking about pulling that game from my ACUS repertoire, as it only drew three players this year. I'm not completely decided though (and I'm going to keep it going at ACNW regardless, because it does seem to draw players there).
Sunday night was the Familiars of Hogwarts game, which was so much fun and silliness that our faces hurt from laughing. I got to play Corah, the red panda. Amanda used a modified Best Friends system that worked pretty well, in my estimation. I was able to build the character I wanted, and I think most people were pretty pleased with how the stats all shook out. Of course, it did mean that there were certain blocks of stats. C.J. and I sort of hoarded all of the Cute, so four of the characters had none. All of the Smart in the whole game was also split between only four characters, leaving the other three with none. So we spent a lot of the game very distracted by shiny things (and Corah even had Smart 1!). We also may have already spawned this into a trilogy, because of random places where my brain goes, plus C.J.'s warping of those ideas. Because finding a ring means that we need Frodo, and to throw it into the fires of Mount Doom... or Mount Broom, when C.J.'s ferret character became obsessed with not getting hit with Filch's broom ever again. :)
Monday:
Monday involved getting up really early for our flight, and then getting back to Seattle in time to do laundry and grocery shopping. I also managed to tear through Mockingjay, and only resisted crying because we were on the plane and Jeremy was only semi-conscious. Waking him up to sob for a while would probably have freaked him out a wee bit. :)
I think the con crud may have caught up with me, but I don't have it half as bad as Jeremy did. He went to the doctor this morning, and I think ended up calling in sick to work. He felt better on the plane, but his coughs always sound really bad, whether he's just a little sick or a lot sick. So I'm taking DayQuil and trying to take it a little easy while I'm back at work.
Wednesday:
As per the usual, we got up early to get to Michigan at a reasonable hour, because it's a LONG flight and we lose 3 hours on the way out there. Of course, someone didn't think "huh, 7:30 a.m. flight means getting up REALLY early." But it did. Painfully early. One should not see that side of 3 a.m. unless one has not slept...
But got there we did, and found Kindred, and I successfully drove in Michigan for the first time ever, and also DID NOT GET US LOST EVEN ONCE! Go me! Granted, we did find the liquor store of choice purely as a fluke, because I knew it was near the Trader Joe's, and also because it happened to be on the way from Trader Joe's to 7-11.
We got to Jarrod & Patrick's on the early side, but that was okay with them. And then there was food and drinks and conversation, and then there was the realization that I had been up since 3 a.m. Seattle time, which is early no matter how you look at it. Luckily, I got us to the hotel before completely pumpkin-ing out. (And actually stayed up to finish reading the last 1/4 of Catching Fire, because it was addictive.)
Thursday:
We didn't sleep in horribly late and even got to have breakfast before we went to Zingerman's for lunch. Because there really is only one day a year when I'm willing to spend almost $40 for lunch at a deli, and that is the day that ACUS starts. Jeremy winces at the total every time, and I just pay it gladly, because it's much cheaper than the trip to New Orleans that would otherwise get me the sammich of great happiness.
Then we went to hang out with James and Flavia for a bit, and then off to the airport to retrieve Andi. Then back to the hotel to putz around for a bit, and then we went down for the opening reception.
First game of the con for me was my All the Myths are True game, which was the fourth session, but only the third at ACUS. I'm planning to take the number off the title for next year, because that's confusing. :) Any rate, I opened up the game by informing Jeremy that his character was dead. Then he came back to life, and that sort of ate the plot for a little while. But we got back to it, and got through part of the rest of the plot. The PCs had a semi-showdown with the big bad, and definitely put a big crimp in his plans. But he's still out there, so ... sequel it is! (subtitle: A Hel of a Place to Make a Fortune. And yes, that is intentionally Hel with one L.)
Friday:
Friday is the day of three games, and the day when I play all day (and don't run anything).
So first up was: Last Best Hope of Earth: "A Sad and Terrible Day." This is a Civil War game, and the GMs moved it to slot 2 so that Tymen and I could play in it. I ended up on Team Research, which was alternately referred to as the Scoobies, though I never did figure out which of the Scoobies my character would be. After a lot of not getting very far, the GMs pulled me aside to check on what exactly my character's "power" was, and then used that to help get the game back on track. After the 4 official hours of game time were up, they unleashed me on the group. My character may or may not have killed 3 other PCs, and she may also be dead. We won't know for sure till next year. :)
Second was: A Double Dozen Seas, in which I was a returning player. At the end of the game, my character (the ship's doctor) ended up with Prince Brand in her care. The rest of the crew wanted to get rid of him, but she didn't. So I spent a lot of time early on plotting with the GM. By the end of the game, we had all gone to Brand's personal Shadow. Someone made a comment something along the lines of: "she's just going to sleep with Brand and stay here." My response: "I'm not going to stay here!" Everyone caught the unspoken part of that. :) (Though the thought did occur to me that my character probably can't really get what she wants out of Brand. He'd have no reason to marry her, and she needs to be married to get her inheritance.)
The final game on Friday was: Bedlam Wails. I played another doctor in this game, and discovered with the way that I wrote my background, that she was not really prepared to cope with craziness. But I had a fun time playing her, even if she was getting phone calls from her dead twin sister. The game was suitably creepy, and everyone had a good amount of camera time. And the co-GM thing worked really well for this game!
Saturday:
Saturday morning was the next game I ran, which was The Desire of Gain. This was my first real, actual, grown-up Amber game that I had run, and I think it went pretty well. No one seemed utterly fed up with it, at least. I'm not going to say too much else about it, though, as it is a setting and a scenario that I may use again, since it fit well into the time slot.
Saturday evening, we had the return of Ashworth Academy. Yet again, we had an awesome time! I had a few freak outs, because I've read the comic that was the original inspiration for the game, so when Jeremy used a bit from the comic, I thought I knew what was coming. I was wrong though. And we've started cracking into the Amber connection, which has also inspired waves of freaking out. But in the end, we are the best armed students in the school, and we know what needs to get done. Now we just need to figure out how to reassemble the Jewel of Judgment and clean up the big huge mess that exists after its shattering.
Sunday:
Sunday was all Hogwarts, all the time. First was my Heathers of Hogwarts game. This was the first time I ran it systemless, and I'm not sure I'm thrilled by that. So I started working on a Hogwarts-specific system. I'm also kinda sorta thinking about pulling that game from my ACUS repertoire, as it only drew three players this year. I'm not completely decided though (and I'm going to keep it going at ACNW regardless, because it does seem to draw players there).
Sunday night was the Familiars of Hogwarts game, which was so much fun and silliness that our faces hurt from laughing. I got to play Corah, the red panda. Amanda used a modified Best Friends system that worked pretty well, in my estimation. I was able to build the character I wanted, and I think most people were pretty pleased with how the stats all shook out. Of course, it did mean that there were certain blocks of stats. C.J. and I sort of hoarded all of the Cute, so four of the characters had none. All of the Smart in the whole game was also split between only four characters, leaving the other three with none. So we spent a lot of the game very distracted by shiny things (and Corah even had Smart 1!). We also may have already spawned this into a trilogy, because of random places where my brain goes, plus C.J.'s warping of those ideas. Because finding a ring means that we need Frodo, and to throw it into the fires of Mount Doom... or Mount Broom, when C.J.'s ferret character became obsessed with not getting hit with Filch's broom ever again. :)
Monday:
Monday involved getting up really early for our flight, and then getting back to Seattle in time to do laundry and grocery shopping. I also managed to tear through Mockingjay, and only resisted crying because we were on the plane and Jeremy was only semi-conscious. Waking him up to sob for a while would probably have freaked him out a wee bit. :)
I think the con crud may have caught up with me, but I don't have it half as bad as Jeremy did. He went to the doctor this morning, and I think ended up calling in sick to work. He felt better on the plane, but his coughs always sound really bad, whether he's just a little sick or a lot sick. So I'm taking DayQuil and trying to take it a little easy while I'm back at work.