bluegargantua

Hey,

So this weekend I was in a LARP about peace negotiations over the Darfur region in the Sudan. A game like that has a lot of potential to really explore a thorny issue. It also has the potential to go really, really badly.

The game was...problematic.

Here's the deal. I was the Chinese ambassador. In real life, the Chinese give money/weapons to the Sudanese government in exchange for lucrative oil deals and they generally support the status quo. They do this both to maintain their lucrative oil deals and because they've got their own human rights issues so they're touchy about the idea of a sovereign nation being "interfered" with by outsiders.

That right there is more than sufficient to be a base on which to portray a character and present a viewpoint. But apparently not enough for the author. So things got..."juiced up".

So now the Chinese are running a pair of top-secret projects in the Darfur region. The first is an autonomous robot drill that can dig a pipeline into neighboring Chad and steal their oil. The second is a mind-control device.

Yeah. A mind-control device. Which we're testing out in Darfur.

And this project is so top-secret that lots of people know about the mind control device and probably the robot drill. Oh, and the robot drill achieved singularity thanks to a virus piggy-backing on some porn downloaded by a research scientist and the robot made a cyberwar attack on China and...

Yeah. Problematic.

I haven't even mentioned the rebel leader who was hit by mind control and thought he was Klatuu from "The Day the Earth Stood Still", or the Janjaweed leader who was a psychotic cannibal or the Russian official who was a super-spy with a stealth jet pack and a space laser and....

Yeah. Problematic.

And then there's the thing I'm not even going to mention.

I do think there's a very good game to be had out of this. People game out all kinds of crisis situations and they can be useful in better understanding something that gets glossed over. This just wasn't that game.

later
Tom

Hey,

So I'm in a LARP this Friday. I'm the first mate of a British steamship from 1876. I need some sort of basic costume. I've got a dark grey suit and I'm thinking about wearing it, but it's not quite "quasi-military" enough. Any suggestions or ideas from the peanut gallery?

later
Tom

Hi,

So the other day I'm watching my Sesame Street DVD (as you do), and they discuss the fact that Sesame Street is shown in other countries and that it often uses muppets who are "local" to the country they're working out of.

"Heh, wouldn't it be great if the Seasame Street muppets went to the UN and encountered all the foreign muppets from the Sesame Streets around the world."

No.

That's not a great idea for a show...

...that's a great idea for a LARP!

All I need is some sort of Cooperation Mechanic and I'm good to go...
Tom

Hi,

This is odd. Normally after I run a game I don't want to think about running another LARP for at least six months.

Maybe it's just 'cause my game was so short or maybe it's because there are all ready games being bid for Intercon H (Intercon Hell), but I think I've got a doozy of a game. The only problem is that it'll be a tough sell to the Intercon committee.

Here's my pitch:

Highway to Hell -- It's Damnation Alley meets Mad Max meets Convoy meets Smokey and the Bandit meets Battlestar Galactica. It's a weekend-long game. The heroes are trying to drive from one end of the country to the other. Of course, America is mostly an apocalyptic wasteland filled with mutants and other crazy hazards. On the other side are the Muties lead by the evil Lord Kang. He's trying to track down the heroes and stop them.

There's a large map of America with a network of possible routes and destinations. The heroes have to pick a route across the country and deal with hazards on the road (usually a Mutie attack) and then accomplish some objective at each of the destinations (usually finding resupply or information or picking up new allies). Lord Kang has to decide how to divide up his forces to track down the heroes (and he gets to toss in some "bad luck" effects here and there too).

There has to be a core of people who will be in the game for the long haul but other people can drop in. Either they get picked up along the way, or they sacrifice themselves, or they "go to sleep" in one of the vehicles. If anyone gets left behind, they get killed, so pick your sleeping quarters carefully. Muties are generally run as a horde with only one or two lieutenant types to provided a "named mook" opponent.

I think we could work it out so that most people could play for some or all of the game but weekend-long games are a hard sell for Intercon because the joy is that you can play a wide range of different games over the weekend. Still, it's something to consider.

later
Tom

Hi,

So I went to Intercon this weekend. Had a great time:

• I got to catch up and interact with loads of people I see rarely, not at all, only at cons. That's always nice.


• I ran a short 1-hour game called The Westington Game about 8 people at the reading of a Will who hoped it was their forgery of the Will that would get read out at the end. It was a short silly game and even if the rules were a bit borken for the endgame, people seemed to have a pretty good time.


• I played in a short 1-hour game called Om. I was given a character sheet and then I meditated in character for about an hour. The character (well all of them apparently) had a serious life issue they were trying to work through and the GM was eerily capable of matching players to characters life issues that were oddly appropriate to the players. It was an odd experiment but it was fun.


• I played in Orgia et domus Lomaximus (i.e. The Roman orgy game). I was Lomaximus, the host. I got to make out with hot, hot people all evening long. I win.

On Sunday I was very sleep deprived so I went home, took a nap, and then had a very long and very pleasant coffee/tea/dinner conversation with naweiner. After that, I went home, started to dig into a very intriguing book and then went to bed.

I'm still maybe a little sleep depped, but it was a good weekend.

later
Tom

Hi,

So, while back home, I read an article about Cowboy Action Shooting (CAS).

CAS is basically a shooting competition that includes elements of role-play. As you might guess, the time period is the Old West. Participants are expected to dress in costumes contemporary with the late 1800's. They use weapons from that time period as well.

These are fully-functional weapons so obviously players don't shoot at each other. Instead, there's a target range where shooters are expected to hit targets with pistol, rifle and shotgun. These events are timed and there's usually a strict order of weapons and targets. So each shooter runs through a pre-set "script", that may include non-shooting elements such as rescuing a dummy from being hung by cutting them down or retrieving a weapon from a chest.

Although the early google hits on the subject are a bit lacking in web savvy, I did think the subject was kind of neat and present it for general web dissemination.

later
Tom

Hi,

Check it out:

A boffer stone golem. It's really spiff. There's some text on the side describing how it was built. Said to have sent 20 adventurers fleeing when it first appeared and I don't blame them.

later
Tom