Travel Blog break for Kapcon Review Part the First
Once again, I wander away from my account of my travels to talk about something more recent. I plan to go back to my travel log (but last time it didn’t happen… oh well we’ll see how it goes). Instead, I bring you a brief account of my Kapcon Weekend.
It started off promising with a nice evening at Syn. I was glad to see that in spite of not being able to rent the room, we soundly occupied our regular room without too much trouble. It’s always nice to try to catch up with people in our once a year gathering, even if most frequently I don’t manage to get beyond hang out with the old Dunedin crew. Managed to meet a few new faces so that was nice.
I had fairly major family issues later that evening which meant I wasn’t able to run my game first round as advertised (sorry again to the people involved, but I think got to talk to most of you and explain). However, with family issues sorted (may post about that later) I was able to attend the rest of the Con without interruption.
2nd round I was in Angus’ Re: Ducks game. I’m never sure how much to talk about games in these reviews (especially in twist based games) but the basic premise was one of revolving characters. We had really interesting in-character fun people playing the same characters quite differently every time; with the pregnant woman oscillating between complete denial and excited wedding planning. Got to play with Jonathan, which is always a treat and once the game got rolling (slow start but then it rocketed) it was huge amounts of fun. Ran a bit over time (which ended up meaning I didn’t eat anything till after the LARP).
3rd round I ran the game I wrote for last years Con, the Long Lost Boys. I had written this game up with the intention of submitting it to the SDC but I never got around to doing a final edit; but at least it meant that this time I had extensive notes to refer to as required. The people in this game came to the table ready to get straight to the business of explosive creativity and the game hit the ground running. Great crew of people who got on well and a great mix of ideas about the stuff going on the game. I was really glad because apart from Sam, I didn’t know any of the players and I always worried that the game only ran well because the other two times I ran it with mostly people I knew.
The game was full of goodness but the confrontation and unintentional stabbing between two of the players was amazing and changed the feel of the end of the game dramatically. Only issue was I didn’t stick brutally to my time keeping enough and we had to finish up a bit quickly, but we had resolution for all the characters so that was good.
LARP: I played Max “Mr Charisma” Romero, head of the NeoMafia. I was pretty happy with my character to begin with, firstly because I was flattered that the GMs had thought of me when they were handing out their characters and secondly, when I was reading my character background, I had set myself certain goals for the game and was pleased to see that they were the same as the goals the GMs had chosen for me when I flipped the character sheet over. I was a bit nervous about being the head of one of the factions because most of the time in KapCon LARPs I play fairly minor characters. The game itself was awesome for me, the only down side to the game was that I was too busy and having too much fun with my wheeling and dealing get involved in other peoples plots (I also had trouble making myself available to people who needed to talk to me for their own plots). As I said to Mash at the afters, for about the first 120 seconds I had the leisure of choosing who to speak to and after that it was just lines of people waiting to speak to me.
Anyway, in the end not only did I manage to get the NeoMafia legitimized as part of the Mafia organisation, Max Romero also managed to become the Don of the City. I found this interesting from an in/out-of-character POV, because when it became apparent that the Irish Mob wanted to cut a deal that would destroy the Italians and neither side would accept a Don from the other side, I quickly realised that the solution with the least bloodshed would be to put my Mafia forward as the peacemakers. Mob wars are not profitable for anyone except freelancers and stopping the mob war was what Big Tony (the guy who the funeral was for) had came to do; so for Big Tony and for the sake of the city, Max put himself forward as a nomine for Don. For an OOC perspetive I though, “Hmm, this’ll be fun trying to take over the city.” But from an IC POV, I thought, “Holy crap! I don’t what to be Don! I’ve just got my shit together and tonight I’m finding out that I can’t even trust my best friends!” Anyway, it was good fun and as I said to Jenni, it seems like lots of people had fun playing a very different LARP to me, which is probably a true sign of a great LARP.
Maybe I’ll break this into 2 posts…
It started off promising with a nice evening at Syn. I was glad to see that in spite of not being able to rent the room, we soundly occupied our regular room without too much trouble. It’s always nice to try to catch up with people in our once a year gathering, even if most frequently I don’t manage to get beyond hang out with the old Dunedin crew. Managed to meet a few new faces so that was nice.
I had fairly major family issues later that evening which meant I wasn’t able to run my game first round as advertised (sorry again to the people involved, but I think got to talk to most of you and explain). However, with family issues sorted (may post about that later) I was able to attend the rest of the Con without interruption.
2nd round I was in Angus’ Re: Ducks game. I’m never sure how much to talk about games in these reviews (especially in twist based games) but the basic premise was one of revolving characters. We had really interesting in-character fun people playing the same characters quite differently every time; with the pregnant woman oscillating between complete denial and excited wedding planning. Got to play with Jonathan, which is always a treat and once the game got rolling (slow start but then it rocketed) it was huge amounts of fun. Ran a bit over time (which ended up meaning I didn’t eat anything till after the LARP).
3rd round I ran the game I wrote for last years Con, the Long Lost Boys. I had written this game up with the intention of submitting it to the SDC but I never got around to doing a final edit; but at least it meant that this time I had extensive notes to refer to as required. The people in this game came to the table ready to get straight to the business of explosive creativity and the game hit the ground running. Great crew of people who got on well and a great mix of ideas about the stuff going on the game. I was really glad because apart from Sam, I didn’t know any of the players and I always worried that the game only ran well because the other two times I ran it with mostly people I knew.
The game was full of goodness but the confrontation and unintentional stabbing between two of the players was amazing and changed the feel of the end of the game dramatically. Only issue was I didn’t stick brutally to my time keeping enough and we had to finish up a bit quickly, but we had resolution for all the characters so that was good.
LARP: I played Max “Mr Charisma” Romero, head of the NeoMafia. I was pretty happy with my character to begin with, firstly because I was flattered that the GMs had thought of me when they were handing out their characters and secondly, when I was reading my character background, I had set myself certain goals for the game and was pleased to see that they were the same as the goals the GMs had chosen for me when I flipped the character sheet over. I was a bit nervous about being the head of one of the factions because most of the time in KapCon LARPs I play fairly minor characters. The game itself was awesome for me, the only down side to the game was that I was too busy and having too much fun with my wheeling and dealing get involved in other peoples plots (I also had trouble making myself available to people who needed to talk to me for their own plots). As I said to Mash at the afters, for about the first 120 seconds I had the leisure of choosing who to speak to and after that it was just lines of people waiting to speak to me.
Anyway, in the end not only did I manage to get the NeoMafia legitimized as part of the Mafia organisation, Max Romero also managed to become the Don of the City. I found this interesting from an in/out-of-character POV, because when it became apparent that the Irish Mob wanted to cut a deal that would destroy the Italians and neither side would accept a Don from the other side, I quickly realised that the solution with the least bloodshed would be to put my Mafia forward as the peacemakers. Mob wars are not profitable for anyone except freelancers and stopping the mob war was what Big Tony (the guy who the funeral was for) had came to do; so for Big Tony and for the sake of the city, Max put himself forward as a nomine for Don. For an OOC perspetive I though, “Hmm, this’ll be fun trying to take over the city.” But from an IC POV, I thought, “Holy crap! I don’t what to be Don! I’ve just got my shit together and tonight I’m finding out that I can’t even trust my best friends!” Anyway, it was good fun and as I said to Jenni, it seems like lots of people had fun playing a very different LARP to me, which is probably a true sign of a great LARP.
Maybe I’ll break this into 2 posts…