Dresden Lives

I've mentioned before that I've been honored with a position with Phoenix Outlaw Productions, a larp development company run by my friends Shoshana Kessock and Josh Harrison. While I'm more or less a general staff member, my primary focus is directed towards storytelling for Dresden Lives. Dresden Lives is the live action role play adaptation of Evil Hat's Dresden Files RPG, a developed by Phoenix Outlaw and produced by Evil Hat.

For those of you that don't know, the Dresden Files is an urban-fantasy noir series written by Jim Butcher. The series is narrated by Harry Dresden, Professional Wizard (seriously, he's in the Chicago Yellow Pages, under 'Wizard'). He finds lost items, helps the fledgling magic users as much as he can to hone their craft, and is sometimes contracted to consult with the Chicago Police Department's Special Investigations office when something that can't be easily written into a report is presented before them. Fifteen books in, and Harry has defeated countless bad guys and made allegiances and rivalries with some of the most powerful moral and supernatural forces in the modern world. There's magic, creatures of great beauty and terror, and enough sarcasm and wit to make it all very humble and self deprecating.

Dresden Lives is an expansion of Harry's World, where the supernatural forces deal in the dark places while Wizards and the few mortals in the Know get embroiled in each others schemes and plots. Depending on the gamerunners, the actions of Harry and Chicago (especially in some of the later books) may affect the storylines of those games. The players and characters get to explore the themes of the Dresden Files: Order Versus Chaos, Temptation, Predation, Faith, Hope, Love and the balance between Humanity and something Other.

I've mentioned before that I've been a long time fan of the Dresden Files series, was a main fixture of the Jim Butcher forum for a long while (under the name Uilos, in case anyone is asking), was blessed with being friends Priscilla Spencer and Richard Shealy, two of Jim's beta readers and Matthew Merbeck, who is the star and driving force for the Dresden Files Fan Films. So working with making the Dresdenverse a living thing for others to explore and play in is a major and amazing thing. So when I was given the chance to do a playtest for Phoenix Outlaw and Evil Hat, I jumped to do it.

The system for the game is based on the Fate system by Evil Hat. It is, by it's very core, a narrative experience that values role play over dice rolls. Character creation involves giving your character some flavor (it even helps in dice rolls) and by listing a very basic skills like Physique (physical strength and endurance) Shoot, Fight, Will and Discipline to name a few others. You can do magic with a straight Discipline pull, and then narrate the action with the rest of the group to respond to. This is in contrast where every magical power in the White Wolf games has clearly spelled out powers. My copy of the Fate corebook is currently in the mail, and I intend to do a full review on it. The short gist is that you and the storytellers and other players are in a game where collaboration and role play aren't just suggestions, they're kinda the central core concepts of play.

So I gathered a handful of players, got them to read the beta-test material, make some characters while I made up a setting and got a studio in the City and played a game. It's actually not that difficult to find studio space for a larp game in New York? Potentially expensive as all hell, but worth it if you have enough support from your friends and players. The game itself was set around an auction, and the various parties and factions in New York sent delegates (the players) to bid on the items. Not everyone there was what they seem, and not everything there was what it seemed either.

I've been storytelling for the MES games for nearly three years in some capacity or another. Dresden lives was hands down the most fun I've had doing it. I'll admit, I was in a room full of people I knew and trusted and who understood what the core of the game was about. But I got to do a combat scene, which I never get to do, and got to do a good one that put some people down and gave them consequences. I got to do a story that, by the end of it, had the characters eyeing each other suspiciously and having a full on conflict pop off. The general consensus was that the book needed to be more clear on a few things as to what they can do. It's an odd paradox when the choices are left open to a player. It's like the book has to spell out "no, really, you can create these on your own". 6 of the 8 were White Wolf/MES veterans. 1 was a new larper and 1 has actually played in the Dresden Larps that Dresden Lives is built on. So a lot of the issues with mechanics were just unlearning what we've spent years doing. I've had several players wanting to play more games and I've had at least one person who hadn't read the series (I wanted some people to focus on the game and not the series) tell me they were now going to read the book.

I consider that a victory.

After the playtest, I was hired on by Phoenix Outlaw to help narrate for their future Dexcon games. Dresden Lives, which started as an unofficial larp based on the RPG and is now gaining legitimacy and publication, has grown in size. We had well over 50 participants at Dexcon this year, playing everything for Wizards, to Sorcerers, to Fae and their Changeling counterparts and White Court Vampires tempting emotions on which to feed. The game was set in medias res, requiring the players and characters to figure out what the hell had happened before they got to that point, leading them to a dark hospital that carried dark secrets. In the end, I got to play a Warden, the soldiers and cops of the Wizard government, and things got very interesting very quick.

The game was played in the conference center's learning annex, where some of the rooms were transformed into the evil Hospital (which let me tell you, took a while to build it right) and the Night Market, an area of St. Marks where the magical can congregate and purchase whatever they need. There was also the Cold Room, a space in the annex where the ventilation is nil but the AC is blasting, making it a perfectly chilly space. Turn off the lights and this is the area where characters who are so inclined to talk to Spirits or Gods or Powers get the chance to talk to them.

Watching the game from a detached perspective of a narrator allowed me to watch the spirit of the game. The players were responding to the world around them, creating ties with each other and the world they were in, including an antagonist that hadn't gone off yet. This lead to a series of comments between Shoshana and I where she finally went "Wait...they haven't KILLED him yet!?" They wanted to see where it went.

Which leads to a critique of the game itself, a lot of the information the players were basing their actions on were based on the books over the game they were in. The books are told from the perspective on one man who consistently has his notions of things rocked. It's also a perspective that has experienced a lot of things out of the norm and therefore knows more about the ground game of the supernatural, most people don't speak across the aisles, making known information about groups and types of people all the more difficult. The next game, I think that there should be a general announcement going "Focus on what your character would know. Harry's casefiles aren't public knowledge and he's just one poor shmuck from Chicago whose mouth gets him into more trouble than is worth."

That's what's the problem with games based around published media. You run the risk of playing what you've read and not what your character should know. This is true of the White Wolf games, which have all of the antagonists and histories written out. One of the things that we, as storytellers and game runners have to do is note what the limits of knowledge are, or else where is the discovery in a thing? Some people have argued that that gets rid of the suspense but telling us we don't know there's something out there. Suspense isn't being revealed a bomb, suspense is knowing there's a bomb and waiting for it to go off.

But now that I've seen the games, worked through their system and seen people play it. My next question is "Well, when do I get started?" There are ideas I have forming in my head for what I'd like to do, modules and NPCs I'd like to introduce and some side plots to give some of the characters. Oh, I have ideas. Right now, my copies of the Fate corebook and the Dresden RPG are on their way, and I'll be thumbing through them to get my foundation going. I intend to do a full review of Fate once I'm done with the book, there's talks of doing something by the autumn for another game and then we'll have a few more things set up.

Until then, Later, and Dresden Lives.

Dexcon 2014: The Bigger World of Gaming

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

My Resume

Recently, I was hired on as a storyteller by Phoenix Outlaw Productions, the game designers responsible for developing Dresden Lives. I'll be assisting them at DexCon this week.

For those of you who have been keeping tabs, why yes, I have been dancing like a fool. Why do you ask? I've told the story before, but Dresden is (in a convoluted way) how I got into larping, so to have this rebound back to me means so much. This will also be my first non-MES gaming convention. For the good part of a week, there will be gaming 24 hours a day, with a bunch of larps doing one shots. Chris Amherst is doing Prison again, which I played at the Living Games Conference. The people at Eschaton Media have unleashed their Chronos card system for theater larps, and with it their games Ex Arcana, a steampunk Mage game; and Devil Days, a 1950's game about greaser demons corrupting a world of squares. They'll also be using the system for the College of Witchcraft, a Harry Potter themed game set in the Sleepy Hollow school in the US; and finally, for the Pacific Rim Larp 'Rise of Tiburon', which I'm already slated to play and have just gotten my characters profiles.

All of this has made me think about myself as a gamer and a storyteller. How do I identify as a gamer, what's my style and type? So I started thinking of it as a resume, or as a job interview. So here's what I've got.

As a player:

Game Experience: 

- Mind's Eye Society 2010-Current
   - Vampire The Requiem: 2010-Current
      - Vincenzno Taglia D'Venezia, Mekhet Priscus, Ordo Dracul, 2010-2013
      - Owen Asteria, Mekhet, Circle of the Crone, Prince of New York, 2013-Current
   - Mage the Awakening: 2011-Current
     - Rhys, Acanthus House of Ariadne, 2011-2012 (Retired)
     - Ides, Thyrsus Silver Ladder, Keeper of the Covenant (Inactive)
   - Changeling the Lost: 2012-Current
      - Declan Loch, Wizened Author, Spring Sovereign, 2012-2013
      - Jin, Wizened Soldier and Smith, Western Emperor, 2013-Current
   - Combined The Accord: 2013-Current
     - Rhys, Acanthus House of Ariadne, Curator of New York, 2013-Current

- Dystopia Rising: 2012 (Inactive until funds improve)
   -Ruh, Rover Tinker, September 2012 (retired)
   - Jacob Rude, Retrograde Tinker, June 2013 (retired)
   - Walker Blackforest, Accensorite Priest of the Final Knights, In Development
   - Carter Wall, Yorker Jones, In Development

Play Style:
- Favors Narrativist Explorer approach, experiencing the game world and experiencing the Meta Story of the game.
- Somewhat favors emotional and immersive scenes but only in settings and with people he trusts.
- Favors support characters. Information gathers, crafters.
- Prefers being engaged in roleplay or plot.

Problem Areas:
- Learning curve with Mechanics.
- Doesn't like combat.
- Characters tend to take a similar form of sarcasm. Hard to maintain stoic PCs
- If not engaged, often slips out of character. Needs to focus more.

As a Storyteller:
Mind's Eye Society
 - Vampire the Requiem
   - Assistant Venue Storyteller 2011-2013
- Mage the Awakening
  - Venue Storyteller 2012-2014
 - Mage Regional Storyteller 2013-Current
Phoenix Outlaw
- Dresden Lives: Empire State Chronicle
   - Battlegrounds (DexCon 2013)

Storytelling Style:
- Favors Narrative/Immersionist stories: Focus on creating moments that players can explore the setting and their characters.
- Specialties in World Building, NPCs, Meta-Plot.
   - Chekhov's Gun style of storytelling, with the guns being hidden in the landscape. Like's mysteries, conspiracies, and interconnecting plot points
- Promotes Player generated plot and worldbuilding
- Likes to work with players.
- Likes mediation and phys. reps over pulling chops
- Able to Improv plot

- Can write scenes and descriptions very well.

Weaknesses:
- Risk of railroading if player enthusiasm is low
- Has a hard time with combat.
- Low experience with personal plot, would like to improve
- does not take kindly to games lawyers and munchkins
- Sometimes is a better writer than talker.

NERE 2014: Emotional Immersion

This article is about two experiences I had during NERE. These experiences I'd actually rate high on my "moments that remind me why I fucking do this" list. I figured I would share them with you all.

I should preface, Combined the Accord is a game set in an Alternate World of Darkness, the New World, not Classic World of Darkness...though the Vampires from Masquerade exist here because they jumped ship when their universe got et by the big nasty. The Big Nasty is called The Truth, a Reality Scorching Eldritch Abomination that upon the moment of learning and witnessing it's existance, you are immediately infected by it. When you die, you will not pass go, you will not collect 200 dollars. Your soul is eaten by the Truth and makes it stronger. The parts of the World of Darkness that have been exposed to this infection and all it's monsters and mortals have banded together in a silent war against the Truth and those that serve it.

It's not my favorite game, and I originally started playing it because I was storytelling for Mage and couldn't actually play my favorite type of character in the World of Darkness. So the Accord was where I could play my Mage, Rhys. Rhys is an Acanthus, a wielder of Fate and Time magic, also part of a subsect of Mages whose magic revolves around the City, all Cities, and they can speak and learn things from the collective history and fate bound together in the city, making him an adept investigator and overall common sense man. He serves the Cell (the local organization of Accord members) as their Curator, the keeper of their histories and records. He rarely leaves New York, being intimately attached to the City on an emotional and spiritual level.

In April, Rhys (and I) went to Boston for their game. He interacted and learned a lot more about what was going on outside of the New York, and more about a major operation in May. During that time, Rhys proved to be influential in the research of some of the problems plaguing Boston. Not bad for a die hard New Yorker, right?

So the game at NERE was an operation called "Old Peculiar", it seems the Truth and it's Servants, most of whom serve a Church who worship said Eldritch Abomination, have been tainting the water the feeds into most of the Northeast Region. Multiple cells came together for this, including a large swath of people from New York and Boston. This is a recounting of that game from both Rhys' perspective and my own. To differentiate, anything out of character will be in parentheses and everything in character will remain normal.

Thursday Night

Thursday night began with moving all of our stuff into a ski lodge in Connecticut (In truth, we were in one of the convention rooms in a Ramada Hotel in Albany New York, standard set up with tables and chairs for gatherings). Rhys was already agitated as the operation was in or near the backwaters of the NorthEast, effectively cutting him off from his first line of magical tools. That was fine, for the most part. Eventually, Rhys wanted to get moving on the operation and offered to use his magic to scry and see into the future...he did, and the Enemy-Rhys doesn't ever call it the Truth-was waiting, and what he saw infected him with the distinct feeling his life was in immediate danger.

This was the first hour of a three night game.

Unhinged, cut off from his connection to New York or any other City for that matter, the second hour was spent trying to ground himself in non-insanity. He was a New Yorker, he walked the streets at night, rode the subways when only those without homes or no good reason to be out that late would be awake.  It was around that time that he reconnected with Twice Spun, a Boston Changeling who he had gone out with while up there. Twice Spun, and Rhys' friends, helped keep him stable. Then Rhys did something dumb again and looked for safe places for the away teams to hunker down...and his paranoia became worse.

By the end of the night, Rhys had vowed not to use his magic again, which just left his abilities in the Occult. To cleanse the area, a major ritual had to be performed. Rhys, heavily vetted by members of his team, volunteered to be the head of the ritual.

Tired, and needing to sleep, Rhys took to just relaxing and trying to shore up his mental reserves. It's around this time that John Harkin arrived. Harkin and Rhys have a very odd friendship. Rhys sees the history of a City. Harkin, who is the offspring of  a mortal woman and Lucifer, is over a century old. Rhys came into contact with the Truth when he kept following Harkin's history, watching all of the good and bad and necessary taking place. Harkin, in turn, abducted Rhys and read him the rules of the Reality War and what it meant to be infected by the Truth.  Since then, Rhys has acted as sort of a Jiminy Cricket to John, as he's one of the few people who objectively knows what Harkin has done in his life. More often than not, Rhys is just shaking his head at all of John's dalliances and trying to be a sounding board for his emotional life.

So it's at this point where John tells Rhys he just came back from Miami, and at that point Rhys stops the conversation. In Miami is a body with a Demon Possessing it, that Demon and John have been lovers and have had one son (now an adult and a member of the Accord himself) together. Rhys has never met her, but he knows exactly that she represents a vicious cycle of self destruction for John and is usually where Rhys draws the line for his friend. The rules changed the moment John tells him that Roux, the demon, is pregnant. Rhys, paranoid and exhausted, knows that this is not going to end well somehow and someway, and because he's friends with John, he swears to help raise that child.

The night ended when a member of the High Council, the ruling body for the entire Accord, teleported in and transported everyone to a wooded area inside a quarantine zone. A quarantine zone is put in place when the metaphysical footprint of the truth becomes too much for an area. The High Council can take that space and remove it from Time and Space, effectively striking it from memory as never having existed and reality causing ripples to accommodate itself. This was a simple message: we either succeed, or this place will never exist.

The Accord members immediately struck camp. Rhys, exhausted and afraid, finishes his wardings of the area and goes to sleep next to Twice Spun.

Friday Night.

(A lot of the set up is written in my previous posts. The entire convention space was darkly lit, with woodland camo tarp and tents and boxes with the operation stamp on them, giving the feel that we were in the woods in an encampment)

The next night saw Rhys helping with the ongoing operations. Part of the problem in the area were the presence of Reality Crystals, each one was corrupted and needed to be attuned. The ritual called for 32 crystals, and we needed to get them fast. So teams went out to multiple sites and started doing them, from smash and grab, to dance and baking contests, to poker contests. Rhys stayed at base camp, doing whatever needed doing. He would often buff the skills of others (one of the purviews of Fate magic is increasing or decreasing the effectiveness of items, people and places) and more or less prepare for the ritual itself. More often than not, he was interacting with the rest of the base team. He also spent time checking in on Twice Spun, whose own magic put him in the same position Rhys was in the night before.

As the night went on, and more crystals kept coming in, someone mentioned how these crystals were attuned, and why there were so many babies being brought into the camp. It seems that the only way the crystals could be attuned was to sacrifice the soul of an innocent. This doesn't sit well with Rhys, at all. Mages magics have everything to do with the soul. Their souls are connected to the very fabric of creation, spanning realms of existence and being both physical and metaphysical. The core belief of almost every Mage is 'thou shalt not disfigure the soul'.

And there they were, infusing the souls of infants into these crystals. He began to realize that his friends were mentioning how many they've attuned, 4 crystals here, 4 crystals there. His own friends. And there were 32 of them, and he was expected to perform a ritual with these things. What was worse was that Rhys, who doesn't interact with the national email list for the Accord on account of he'd rather not have any more reasons to drink, had not been told this was a thing for expressly this reason.

As all of this went on, attacks by the Truth on the camp were well underway, including on the tech center where Twice Spun was working. Rhys used vulgar magic to remove the incoming Abomination (creatures created by the Truth, this one in the form of mailbox-sized sea urchin that exploded in poisonous gas and spines) for a short while, allowing Twice to get back and other to diffuse it. Frayed emotional, mentally and spiritually, and with the operations concluded, Twice and Rhys went to sleep in the tech center.

Saturday Night

(after a full day of gaming, I purposefully did not rest between games. This was the long stretch and I wanted to portray it accurately.)

Rhys woke up and started prepping for the ritual, a member of the High Council, Son of Wolf (played by Jerry Spaulding, the national storyteller and creator of the Accord) taught Rhys how to do the ritual. Rhys and his team performed the ritual again and again (There was an actual, physical action we had to take, some of us multiple times.) whilst the rest of the operation took on the Abominations and Servants of the Truth around the area. During that time, Harkin began to act weird, and then everything began to go straight to hell. It became clear that the Truth had infected Harkin, and he began to attack the ritual as a 20 foot tall demon. Son of Wolf transformed and joined in size while the rest of us held off to keep the ritual going.

Eventually, the ritual was done, and the crystals were fused into one large crystal. The others took the crystal to the major battlefield and Harkin and Son continued their fight...

Interlude

It was at this point where my friend Alain, who was playing in the Changeling game across the way. Asked if I could roleplay as Jin for the game for a few minutes. Needing the break, and noticing a massive combat rush going on, I ran out.

Jin is one of those characters I have a hard time playing, in that I've realized is that he doesn't do anything small. When he moves, it should have clarity of intent and a definitive impact. It gets really hard to roleplay that character and sometimes I plan to sacrifice him for something spectacular.

The day before, I had played Jin during in Changeling, and we'd discovered the Changelings who had lost their sanity to quell the force of a thing required us to traverse into the Underworld in a bid to quell. Unfortunately, I was given the ritualist job for Accord, and the two conventions conflicted, so I gave the storytellers of Changeling Jin's sheet, with the direction that he would be willing to sacrifice himself if it meant the difference between victory and defeat.

Well, Alain had asked me to come and resolve that. It seems that the force that needed quelling was a Tree, grown from the seeds of a pomegranate that had fallen there eons ago by Persephone. For those of you who know your Greek Mythology, you know that this tree symbolizes Persephone's yearly cycle of marriage with Hades as well as the Seasons (a major motif for the Changeling). To get rid of it, we had to sacrifice a major portion of our lives to it. The Storyteller's were allowing us to play that out cinematically. Alain plays Tinder, a member of the very rare Dusk Court, whose core emotion is Fatalism. Jin and Tinder are both warriors, they've both, in their own ways, accepted the fact that they will die and have developed an odd relationship built on that understanding.

So in order to accomplish their sacrifices, Tinder let Jin shoot him in the chest with arrows. In return, Tinder took out his sword, an old and blood stained relic. Jin removed a flask of sake and doused the blade in it, took a swig and spat it out upon the blood. He took a deeper swig and knelt of both knees, his right arm extended. An audible groan could be heard as he did this and it was clear what was about to happen. With a massive swipe, Tinder struck off Jin's arm. The tree died from the collective sacrifice of those present and Jin and Tinder were restored back to health.

Aside from one other night, this was the closest to what I'd always imagined for Jin. His story is about full committal to his actions and taking it to their ultimate resolution with open acceptance. That's something hard to do every month and for downtime scenes, but when it works, dammit, it works.

Accord's Conclusion

I returned to Accord and witnessed the ending. The members of the Operation engaged in brutal and bitter war while the Pope of the Church that worships the Truth births some unspeakable Abomination. The Pope was killed by Michael, an friend of Rhys' and the Abomination destroyed by VIRGIL, the Promethean High Councilor.

Meanwhile, Harkin and Son of Wolf continued their war, but soon Harkin was overcome. Though it was clear that he was corrupted and now a Servant of the Truth. His body was lying before Rhys, his back towards him. There were special conditions, and only one person could be the one to do it (it was one in an ooc auction, but no one knew this at the time), Rhys didn't know he wasn't the one and took out his gun and placed it to the back of Harkin's head. He'd known Harkin, and known this was what he'd have wanted. But the person who was destined to kill did shoot him. As soon as that happened, people swarmed to Harkin's body, in an attempt to save him. But no, his body was healed, but his soul was gone.

Hearing that, and after all of what had gone on in those three days. Rhys broke down, he (and I) sat at Harkin's body, sobbing. He wasn't alone, and there were many others that night who shared in. The next hour was spent in a haze of emotions as Rhys both grieved and spoke with those who grieved.

It's amazing when you, as a player, are so invested in the character's moment that you let their emotions take over. There was an odd sense of Rhys' emotions and my control. It gave me a better appreciation for actors who are able to go to that level so easily. There was a lot of good and raw roleplay that night, and I count it as my best experience larping. It's amazing how some moments just click together. It sets a rather high bar for future experiences and I hope to be able to reach that level again at some point.

I'm going to end with a massive shout out to Chris, Kat, Abby, Ilan, Alain, Steven, Kevin (especially you, you bastard) and a ton of others for being fantastic sports. It's great working with you guys there and back in New York. Thanks Guys.

Later

NERE 2014: Suspending the Veil

In my last part, I spoke on the convention as a whole. There were several things though that struck me in it's play.

Friday morning was Changeling the Lost, changeling is a game of sanity and traversing the inbetween places in the world. Changelings deal mainly with the Hedge, the wild space between the mortal realm and Arcadia, abode of the alien and cruel Gentry. Before the game, Changelings from around the region were called to Ward 16, a Hollow (Changeling stronghold connecting the Hedge and the Mortal Realm) that housed Changelings driven to insanity after taking on Something from the Underworld (later revealed to be The Pomegranate Tree that grew from the seeds Persephone didn't eat, and that subsequently began the Seasons). Jin and his companions visited the Ward, only to discover that amongst the mad were friends of theirs from New York, bordering on the feral and clinging to their Clarity by a thread.

Normally, when walking to a scene, the Storyteller tells us what is going on and we imagine it and run with it. If you've ever seen or performed a show in a black box theater, it runs on that principle. It's not physically there, you just tell yourself it is, suspend the veil of disbelief.

But walking into the game space at NERE, you didn't need that much to suspend.

The game was designed and developed by Matthew Dobson. Dobby designed the convention space with camo-vines, lights, chains, and sticks to make the cages and cells. The Cells were filled with NPCs, including one in a cell litered with scribbled notes written and ripped out, another cell filled with a mortal that was from New York, and another with a friend of Jin's, a skeleton looking changeling who was sharping her fingers into shivs, and took a swipe at Jin's throat in an attempt to kill him. Chains of Cold Iron, the bane of the True Fae, littered the walls and doors. Several of the Characters coming in to witness this horror carried with them intricately detailed scribblings from the same mad man in the paper covered cell.

Acting with terror, horror and the belief that there were mad men about was not that hard to do. You could see it around you, it informed your understanding of the world instead of having to imagine it fully. You don't need to narrate doing something, you just do it.

Case in point, the players characters were tasked with hunting down two escapees. One of the PCs, a comrade of Jin's, grabbed some of the chains that were lining the walls and handed him a set. It would have taken time to desscribe taking it down from the wall and handing it to someone else, here we just did it. It changed the way we carried ourselves knowing we were carrying chains and bringing Changelings, who were by default the escapees of the Fae, back into captivity.

Through Dooby's work with the props and the sets, there was stuff to react to, to work with, to feel. He damn near did everything but add scent to the situation. It was amazing, and one of the things that stuck out to me.

I've written before about designing props for larps as a means of storytelling. It's a commitment. You put so much detail into it and work so long, you just hope that the players are willing to mirror that commitment and run with what you've got.

Similarly, for Accord's Saturday and Sunday Night game. Accord is about War against the World of Darkness and all those touched by the Supernatural within it against a being breaching it's dimensions. It's different in that where other games may certainly employ stories of war, Accord's entire backdrop is focused on the fact that each person is a member of this war effort, with most major events taking place during Operations in the war.

NERE held Operation: Old Peculiar, where members of several Cells joined together to stop the contamination of The Truth (the name of the Eldritch Abomination) in the NorthEast's water supply. Long story short (which I will elongate in Part 3) we were playing our game in a base camp, complete with tents, depots and a full blown command center. Plants and Netting served as a stand in for trees and plant life. The med bay had two stretchers for people to lie down in and Gauss bandages. The depot had boxes stamped "OPERATION: OLD PECULIAR" On them and the tech bay had computers (and a very ornate chess set). The command center had a white board and maps of the area the game was set in to.

This set up made it very real to a lot of us, especially in terms of combat and command. In most black box games, you really just find a central location and attempt to maintain some sanity. You look more for the people rather than the place  In this setting, if you needed something, you go to where you need to go. It caused more order, more realism. It also supplied a backdrop for a lot of wonderful set pieces. The commanders scanning the map and adding tallies to the board of completed mission objectives. It reminded me of boffer larps, like I was actually in the setting and could interact with the environment. The fact that one of the players present was the game runner for Dystopia Rising Massachusetts probably helped (it was her tent that served the command center).

It added to the level of drama, leading up to very dramatic scenes. My character, Rhys, and a Changeling have been dancing around a relationship. At points during the game, Rhys would run off and go to their station in the tech bay to check in with them. It's implied strenuously that both of them slept in the tech bay. My friends have a tradition while playing in Accord that their PCs sleep underneath the table in the command center. After a year of playing and almost a dozen operations between them, this was the first time they were ever actually able to do that live. Finally, when one of our PCs died, they were somberly brought to the med bay where their body (the player played dead for a long while) laid while people broke down in tears around them.

Immersion is one of those things that I've said is often sacrificed in most theater larps. It's usually due to one major thing: funds and control of the space. But when it works, I think it has a lot to offer in terms of allowing for emotions to come out. Walking into Changeling and Accord reminded me of how I'd love larping to be at a regular level.

Much respect to Matt Dobson for his design for Changeling, and Tyler Brown for his design for Accord. Because of you two, I can honestly say that I had one of the best larping experiences of my life.

Next up, the Cinematic Experience at NERE, and a damn good long look at Bleed

NERE 2014 Part One: Do You, Boo Boo.

I was initially going to do one long report, but that would have been dumb. So instead I'm going to split it in three parts. Part One will be about the convention itself. The Second Part will be about Larp Prep and how making the game space into what you want it does nothing but help roleplay. Part Three will focus primarily on Accord and Changeling, and the emotional and cinematic experience that took place for quite a lot of us there.


I just got back from NERE, the North East Regional convention for Mind's Eye Society. Last year's convention was...overwhelming was a mild word for it. My first gaming convention, a bunch of faces I hadn't seen before, being in a place that I had no knowledge of the surrounding area, no knowledge of how to properly pace and I was running one of the games against the star attraction of the club.


This year was a bit different. It was held in Albany, NY, just a few minutes south of where I went to undergrad. I knew the area, I was familiar with protocol, I knew most of the people by face, if not by name. My characters had something to do, something that I will go into more detail with later. I didn't have a game to fuss about running. I was surrounded by friends who I have developed a rapport with both in and out of character.

I was ready for this.

First off, a big thank you to Margaret and Greg for bringing me up there and giving me crash space. I rode up with them, my friend Ephraim, and roomed with them and my dear friend Chris. It was four days and three nights of hectic running around pretending to be other people while being a bunch of smartasses in between.

The games took place from Thursday Night to Sunday Afternoon, I only played the Thursday-to-Saturday Games, specifically Requiem, which was being played Friday Night and Saturday Afternoon; Changeling the Lost, which was being played Friday Afternoon and Saturday Night, and Combined the Accord (or just better known as Accord) which was played Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. They ran for six hours per session.

It was a subdued convention, for the most part. Unlike last year, where we had roughly the entire run of both floors of the hotel we were in, we were scattered about the entire floors here.This gave way for a more planned out course of discussion, with many people deciding to just hang out after hours in the convention spaces and chat, talk and catch up. I live an hour away from game spaces, so I normally miss out of Afters. So being able to sit down and talk without a curfew or time limit where my bed is literally right down the hall. Add a liberal amount of honey-based alcohol and it becomes a very relaxed session of hang outs. A lot of people were tired by the end of game, and there was a lot of intimate and intense conversations between the player about gaming and life in general. I personally experienced conversations about Fish Malks, cinematic storytelling, the erasure of some cultural/lifestyles for the sake of following labels, religious stories, relationship foibles and intimate outtakes.

Larping isn't just about being other characters, building stats and putting on a show. It's doing something with a group of people and enjoying their company. I think that's at the heart of everything we do here.

There was a very strong focus on charity this year, with a lot of the items seen in game being up for grabs to the highest bidder. From player assistance, to plot points, to physical items. Auctions are always fun. I think, for two different games, I was part of two major items won: a party sized submarine and the key to a Changeling's Hollow that the True Fae could not touch. While the sub is fun, the Hollow is tied in with National Plot.

However, there were certain elements of the games that were being played that restricted refueling either of Mana/Blood/Glamour/whatever fuel your character uses, to being something you refilled through buying it. While I actually thought it was an interesting concept, I didn't think that restricting all other things BUT that did anything positive. It rewarded players who had money and left those of us who were running a little light on cash in the wind. Note: This isn't a condemnation, charity is charity, but if you're going to do that, inform us all at the outset next time.

Overall, I thought it was a blast. Where last NERE drained me of my joy in gaming, this one enhanced it, enforced it, bettered it. Part of me thinks that, primarily, it was because I had something to do for each game. Last year I just coasted, not really sure what I was doing (running Mage notwithstanding). This year, I had stuff to do, I was being engaged and was able to engage, and that makes all of the difference to me as a player and a performer. Things changes and rules altered, and all of my characters are going home different than when they went in.

Which brings me to the title of this part. It was sort of the unspoken theme at game, perpetrated mostly by Chris. One time, during a game in New York, one mouthy player kept going on about all of the things he could do as his character. He was doing this while in the middle of game, which resulted in a form of wank. Chris, while in character, replied with "Do you. Do you, Boo Boo." The phrase kept popping up this weekend in different fashions, and it sorta stuck with me. You do what you gotta do, just go ahead and do it.

Next up, I'm going to talk about how some of the games used the space to make it real, and how Changeling and Accord were the highlights of my experience.

Later.

The First Principle

As I begin to develop Kensei, I've begun thinking about the kind of game I want to play in. You see, Kensei is a larp about competition, about being Number 1. As much as I, as a storyteller, like that, I as a player have an issue.

I've noted before that, in other games and groups I've played with, there is a decided undercurrent of wanting to win inherent in the game. We've all heard stories of Vampire games devolving because the political backstabbing was going on out of character just as much as inside, people working more for their own sake than for the game as a whole. I've been witness and party to several episodes of drama that frankly take the fun and flavor out of games, and there are entire articles of literature about horror stories of larping where someone or someones just had to get what they want, and damn the rest.

And then there is the subtle stuff. Small groups of a larger club forming into cliques that tend to only work with each other, even in other games. Where does the line get drawn when you just decide to stop playing with the larger group and branch off and do your own thing?

I think, one of the things that has always drawn me to larping is the most basic thing that separates it from most other forms of performance and gaming. It is, by it's very nature, a collaborative effort. Larps cannot and will not work if the greater body performing in it is not in some way working together. This was evident in my Mage game, where people were showing up simply because there was a game to play. There was no real drive to interact or really do anything there, which resulted in lopsided gaming and what was in effect a table top that no one really wanted to go through, least of all the person playing it.

Larping is one giant study in Group Dynamics. I swear to God, I have professors who would have mental breakdowns trying to map our interactions with one another. We are the audience to our own performances, the characters of a story that we are all writing. That's not prosaic, that's what's happening. My friend Chris, one of the best roleplayers I've ever known, told me once that larping was a social contract. You agree to a degree that you are in a room with people doing a thing. When that works, it works. It's bumpy and it needs recalibrating at all times. When it doesn't work, you fucking feel it at every step of the way.

In short, people need to be on deck for what is going on in this game. They have to agree that they want to be part of the collaborative whole, they don't all have to have the same agenda or the same methodology, but they all need to accept that they are all in this together and that each and every one of them brings something to this. They also need to acknowledge that their Characters do not equal The Players. I think a lot of the drama that goes on is when we forget that I am not He and He is not Me. As someone who supports the concept of Bleed, where you experience emotions and feelings of your characters (and vice versa) you'd think what I just said would be contradictory. It isn't. Bleed is fun, Bleed is great, Bleed is the best parts of the experience. However, when things go bad in game you have to remind yourself that this isn't happening to you, it's happening to your character. You have control of your character, you are not your character completely. I think that when we don't keep that in mind, it's easy for something In Character to be taken personally Out of Character, especially in some of the darker games.

I find this is difficult to maintain in larger, public clubs like Mind's Eye Society. You're guaranteed to get different personalities and concepts about how the game is to be played when the only major requirement for membership is to be a paying member of the club in good standing. I've seen people who, in any privately run group, would have been thrown out on their ass and/or beaten to crap for the amount of abusive drama they've leveled to a people. I'm not just saying they there are levels of disagreement. I'm saying that these are people who Do Not Care For Anything But What They Can Do and Get. They don't collaborate, and that becomes a dead stop in gaming.

I would also like to point out that this is not just people with Malicious Intent (though God Help Me, there are those out there). Let's be honest, we're nerds. We're all of us dorks to the outside community and for most of us, social interactions aren't our forte' for whatever form or reason. I'm not saying that those of us who aren't good at social mechanics should exclude ourselves from gaming, because I'd be one of the first people thrown out the proverbial window, but I'm saying that in a culture that promotes collaboration, these things would be balanced out both in and out of game. There would be more discourse before the player joined the game as to what was expected of them and what they expected of the game. There would be more dialogue. In the culture of a public club, that becomes difficult because there is a sense of "well, I'm here because I paid to be here, so I'm here to do what I paid to do." In a private game, where the player pools are smaller, more intimate, and more often than not know each other, the gaming becomes more communal and honest and open. In a club that is more public and paying (key word), I've found people more closed off to collaboration. The irony is captivating in a depressing matter.

We need to all be aware that we, as players, are in this process together. It's one of the reasons I was initially drawn to Dystopia Rising. The DR New Jersey game, began at 9pm on fridays with a gather up of all the players and game runners, lead by Michael *He-Who-Swims-In-Tears* Pucci would run down the general rules and regulations for the game. This is necessary because it helps bring the players together and no one gets to say "well I wasn't told". He also, as I recall, would finish off his ranting announcements by reminding us, each and everyone of us, that we are all nerds and what we're doing is geeky beyond belief. It's a unifying call, a rallying cry, and while it doesn't guarantee that everyone will all play in the sandbox nicely together, it does mean that the cultural expectations of the group have been set.

And when the Man setting the rules down is literally responsible for the world you're playing in, it is not wise to fuck with him. Especially at 4am and he has killer-ninja-zombies on deck.

And that's what I think it is a problem of, ultimately. A cultural expectation. I think that it's easy to view larping as just a hobby, just a game, and not what it really is: a sub culture. We meet at appointed times on a regular basis, have our own language, meetings, tomes and core beliefs. We're a community of people of various backgrounds united because we like this kind of thing. If we consider it like that, how can this not be a collaborative effort. We can't survive on our own, we need community.

We also need a language, and something I learned recently touched a nerve for me. I was trying to build Kensei as a Player vs Player game, but I was trying to keep it as an IC thing without it becoming an issue with the Players. So a PvP game without OOC PvP. Aaron Vanek, whom as I write this is currently being awesome in Wyrdcon (damn him) introduced me to a term that cuts the confusion out of that sentence. Character vs Character. This was something of a revelation to me because it never occurred to me to think of it that way. It states, right there, that the characters are in conflict with one another, not the players. It sets up, even for those who value the Letter of the Law over it's Spirit that this is a game where the drama is for the characters and not for the players. So is making the rules favor roleplay over statistics, because instead of focusing on just raising numbers, you have to interact with the pool at large, seeking out others and creating something within the game. It doesn't have to be a large thing, but it's a great thing.

Talking with Aaron and some of the Nordic Larpers that I have met over the past year, they have managed to pull off a level of intense play that I've not experienced yet. And they are the ones who really drive home the phrase: Play to lose. During our discussions, it's become a stereotypical sort of notion that the US larps are more focused on the individual because the US as a cultural focus on the individual's needs and attaining them while the Nordic games are more communal because their culture values communal.

To close, there is nothing I can really say to really answer "What can we do?" I think that being open about what we want, and how we want it is always a good thing. We're playing in different worlds, in different mindsets. We need a place we're safe in, with a group that is on track with each other, that can, at the very least, trust one another to maintain that world and support each other in their own process. It doesn't seem to make sense to me any other way. I can't say that this thinking is the right way to go about larping, but it just makes too much damn sense that in an activity that requires the interactions of other people we need to accept that we need other people to make it work.

Or else, what the hell are we doing here?

Later.