This weekend, I began my employment as Storyteller for Phoenix Outlaw Productions working at Dexcon. Dexcon, run by Double Exposure Inc and located at the spacious Morristown Hyatt Hotel and Conference Center spanned five days. Five days of games from board games, war games, card games, video games, role playing games and, inevitably, larps.
So okay, I've been to big conventions like New York Comic Con, which spans a wide ground and a broad number of topics. I've been to Jeff Mach events like Wicked Faire, Steampunk World's Fair and GKE where they've taken over the entire hotel, and I've been to the regional conventions of the MES where everything from sun up to sleep is non-stop gaming. Dexcon has elements of all of these things.
The hotel's conference center takes up several floors and has dozens of small panel rooms, it's also attached to a learning center, various other offices and even an AMC theater. So when I say we had run of the full conference area, we had run of the full conference area. All of the genres of play weren't on top of each other. I was rooming with Phoenix Outlaw Productions: Shoshana, Josh, Abigail and fellow recurring henchmen Nicolas, Sean and Justin. The room we were in was large enough to room all of us, our luggage and most of the gear for two different larps. There was just enough room to be comfortable without being on top of each other. We were all familiar with the tetris system of sleeping in a hotel room together, and things fell into place pretty evenly. We had a pretty decent command center.
What struck me was how many people I knew at the convention. I walk in and suddenly I know at least five people. Hell, the first person I saw Thursday was Michael Pucci talking with several people in the lobby. Most of the people were faces and names I'd known from my brief experiences at Dystopia Rising, or those I'd seen at the Living Games Conference. Most of the event I didn't spend working the larps I spent getting to know most of them. Shockingly enough, I was amazed by the one or two people who knew who I was without meeting me.
Friday was the crunch time. Phoenix Outlaw worked from 7am to 2am to put together and run two larps: Dresden Lives, the Dresden Files larp. I'll talk more about it in it's own blog, as some of you may suspect that I have a lot to say about it. We also worked on Battlestar Galactica: Tales of the Rising Star. I didn't work as much on BSG, mostly as photographer, but I was consistently amazed by the setup and the roleplay of the game. The game itself was based on the episode '33', the first episode of the series where the fleet had to constantly jump for five days to evade the Cylons. No sleep, everyone on alert and everyone still grieving the deaths of their families. Everyone looking at the clocks. From what I got to see, the tension was high in the room as the military kept their oppressive might against the engineers and civillians while several of people in the room were not what they seemed. There was a level of cynical "why yes it could get worse" going on, which was at the very core of the show.
As a first timer, this gave me a lot of great ideas about some of the larps I want to pull off. Now that I've been to one and can see one, I can create a six hour Kensei game (assuming I can write the rest of the materials) and also gives me ideas for other larps and experiments I'd love to pull off. At this point, Kensei is one of those ideas that has to be born. I'd love for it to work, but right now I just want to see it manifest. A few people gave me tips on possibly debuting it at Dreamation or Metatopia, with everything going on Dreamation in february would be the most likely time to aim for.
One of the things that was consistently marked upon was the prominence of larps, and how the convention has been prominently showcasing larps in their events and giving a multitude of larp groups tables for display and promoting their games I know that larping is seen to many in the Geek Hierarchy to be just one or two steps above (or to some, right next to) Furries at the bottom of the geek totem pole. Meanwhile, we're putting on larps where people get the chance to experience what it's like to be in their favorite scenarios or to give them the chance to make their own. Of course, I'm biased and stopped giving a damn about how geeky I am since I was 12. The punchline is that larping in the US is making strides in their production, execution and attendance.
The weekend also made me think of the Mind's Eye Society. There wasn't much of a presence there, aside from one current player and some former players. It's amazing how isolated some groups are. There's a whole world of games and resources to talk to and discuss with at these kinds of conventions and I don't really see that from the MES. I'm not discussing "we should all pitch in" but I think that limiting ourselves to one mode of play is silly and dangerous. In an isolated system, entropy can only increase. We need new ideas, and this is definitely a place where ideas can come from.
I think the most important thing I'm going to take from this weekend isn't as such the games, though lordy lou these games are worth remembering. But my favorite times were sitting in the lobby with the folks from the various groups and just jamming out ideas for the next string of larps they wanted to run. This isn't just a small group of tribes, these are collaborators, friends, loved ones. This is a community of blessed lunatics who like to make, run, and play in what amounts to make believe games that run the gamut between whimsical to maudlin. And while we're clearly working to the breaking point and right up to the last minute, the first word that escapes our lips after is done is "So, when's the next one?"
I'm very lucky to be able to work with and be associated with such talented people, and I'm looking forward to doing more work in the future.
The next couple of articles will be focused around Dexcon, including a review of Dresden Lives, of Pacific Rim: Rise of Tiburon, The Fate System and a discussion on Aftercare at larping conventions.
Later
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