Next week, I’m off to Consequences, the freeform larp convention. I went last year, and you can read about that here.
I’ll do a post-con report after Consequences, but I thought I’d start things off with a pre-con preview covering some of my thoughts, hopes and fears. Hopefully, there won’t be spoilers.
Consequences this year in the Lakeside Holiday Park in Chichester. So there’s a bunch of logistics in getting there that I’m not covering here. I’m just talking about the games.
So the games, in order.
Thursday
Spellbound (Bjergtaget)
Written by Maria & Jeppe Bergmann Hamming and run by Mo Holkar, Mike Snowden and Quinn D.
According to the organisers, “Spellbound (Bjergtaget) is a non-verbal black box larp for 10-30 participants. The participants play either humans or creatures of the Underground. Through symbolic gestures and movement to music, a night in the world of the Undergrounders is played out. The humans are lured by and bonded to an Undergrounder, and in a series of scenes, the relation between the human and the Undergrounder is explored. Through workshops the participants learn the symbolic gestures and how to move to the music, before we all enter a world of magic and myth.”
I really have no idea what to expect. It’s a long way outside my comfort zone I have no sense of whether I will love it or hate it. (Tune in next time to find out!)
Happily, there are no costuming requirements, other than comfortable clothing with pockets. They suggest wearing contact lenses rather than spectacles, but given that if I wear contacts, then I need reading glasses to read anything, I suspect I’ll just stick with glasses. Or maybe I won’t – I haven’t decided yet.
Friday
Three games today. There’s a risk that’s too many, but I’m running the first one (and I find running games less tiring than playing them), and the middle game doesn’t need any prep.
The Stars our Destination
Written and run by me!
This is part 5 of my first contact saga (is currently called The Dark Forest). I’ve got everything printed out and ready to go, I just need to remind myself of what’s going on before I get started. (I’ll do that a couple of days beforehand.)
This is its second run – the first was online, back in June. As it’s the second run, that means it’s Timeline 2 (as I think of it), which means some of the things that were true in the first run are not true in this run. (For example, this timeline has vat-grown host bodies for one of the aliens!)
I haven’t really talked about The Stars our Destination here yet. I’m not sure why. I suspect I’ll have more to say after this run.
All You Need is Love
Written and run by Laura Wood and Ruth Trenery-Leach.
I had originally planned to have a break in this session, but this game was struggling to fill, and it didn’t look like it needed a lot of homework (or costuming), so I thought I’d give it a try.
“The larp will explore themes of music, fame, and relationships of all kinds. The setting is an alternative 1960s without sexism or queerphobia. If you have any 60s-inspired accessories, feel free to wear them, but they’re not required. On the day, you’ll be able to choose from skeleton characters, which we will workshop together before we begin.”
So it’s another larp that’s outside my usual comfort zone (skeleton characters and workshops), but it does involve singing Beatles songs, so that’s a plus.
The Koenig Dead
Written and run by AJ Smith and Tony Mitton.
Phew – a “regular” freeform with 20 pages of detailed background and character stuff and 13 other characters with their own agendas.
This is part of a series of games set aboard a spaceship in a universe that seems suspiciously similar to Joss Whedon’s Firefly. I’m playing Alix Orban, the captain of the freighter Kestrel. I fought on the losing side in the war, which makes me Mal from Firefly. Except I’m not, there’s more to it than that.
In The Koenig Dead, we’re taking the Kestrel to the Koenig base where, hopefully, I can get my uncle the medical attention he desperately needs. What could go wrong?
Interestingly, I haven’t been given character objectives/goals – instead, I have a list of suggestions to roleplay my character, help others have fun, have fun myself (and then two game-specific suggestions – one a GM note and the other a reminder that I need to get my uncle the medical attention he needs). Was that a spoiler? I don’t think so, as my uncle’s condition is not a game secret.
The Koenig Dead follows The Linfarn Run, which is the first in the series featuring the Kestrel and many of the same characters. I’ve not played The Linfarn Run, and the character pack (character background, recent events, basic history) felt a little disjointed as it referred to events in that game before explaining them properly. I’m sure if I had played in the previous game, it would make more sense.
I notice this sort of thing because I’m taking a similar approach with my first contact series (such as The Stars our Destination, above). Hopefully, my character sheets flow – but I’m not the best person to judge. (Nobody has mentioned it as an issue, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got it right.)
There are some nice ideas in the background – I particularly like the idea of warp sinks, which affect FTL and make it harder to travel away from some stars. I have no idea if it’s inspired by anything, but I like it. (I’m pretty sure it’s not in Firefly, although it has been many years since I’ve watched that.)
I haven’t worked out costuming yet. I think I just need to look different, and captain-y.
Saturday
Do You Hear The People Sing?
Written and run by Alex Helm.
Remarkably, I think this will be the first time I’ve played in one of Alex’s games – and I’m playing in two of them this year. Alex often writes games set in the Warhammer 40K universe, and while I gather they are splendid games, I don’t know anything about 40K, and it doesn’t really appeal.
Do You Hear The People Sing is not a 40K game. Far from it – it’s a mashup of Noises Off and Les Miserables (and inspired, I gather, by this year’s West End Lullaby, where Alex played Javert.) It sounds fabulous.
I’m playing Frankie Jackson, who plays Monsieur Thenardier in Les Miserables. So I get to perform some great songs as Thenardier – but I’m also playing several minor characters and get to perform other songs as well.
The game takes place both backstage (where the character stuff happens) and on stage (where the performances happen – miming or karaoke or whatever). I’m not sure how the balance is maintained between the two (if, indeed, balance is the right word), but I’m looking forward to finding out.
Do You Hear The People Sing has the best advice on gender, race and age I’ve seen. In short, none of the actor characters are gendered – everyone chooses their gender. And the in-game amateur dramatic society’s casting policy means that anybody can play any role regardless of gender, race or age. So that means we will have a crazy range of people just playing the parts – and that will be great.
Batukh Hungers!
Written and run by Alex Helm.
Two Alex Helm larps in one day! In Batukh Hungers, devoted followers of Batukh the Hungering God gather to conduct the holy rites and ensure their deity is appeased for another year. But times are hard for this dark cult – membership is falling, willing sacrifices are ever harder to come by, and internal plotting and divisions could spell the end. And if Batukh is not satisfied, the current age of humanity will end in blood and flame.
I’m playing “Coyote” (we all have code names), and from what I can see, it’s going to be interesting choosing a sacrifice.
Sunday
And two games to finish off. The closing ceremony happens shortly before my second game – and Sunday evening is spent unwinding.
Hillfolk
Hopefully I’ll remember my revelation about dramatic poles!
The Roswell Incident
And finally, I’m running The Roswell Incident. This will be its third outing and will be the start of Timeline 3. (So if all goes well, next year I will run All Flesh is Grass, and the year after that, Children of the Stars, and so on. So that’s me committed to Consequences for the foreseeable future!)
Interestingly, a couple of players who have signed up for Roswell have played in later games (in Timeline 2 last year). I suspect there has been enough of a gap for it not to matter, but I am looking forward to finding out how that worked for them.
Monday
And on Monday I drive home.