labcats | Origins in Brief (Reply)

mnemex and I just got back from Origins. In brief, reusing and annotating an old post:

Wednesday, Jun 28:

We landed about an hour late. We hooked up with

marcmagus and

shield_toad111.

ebartley was originally scheduled to land about the time we actually landed, but landed at 1 am.

Thursday, Jun 29:

8 am CoC Shuggoth Tournament Qualifier. Not the best CoC gaming I've ever had, but a good, solid game. The guy playing the weirdest of us all did a fine job of playing his character as consistently weird, but not upstaging the rest of us. I didn't advance, but that was good, given how packed the rest of the schedule was.

Much shopping.

8 pm Everway larp: Piper's Court, run by

imogena. Fun, and she gave me a PC meeting my requirements. Nicely broad, I can overact, and not too much to keep track of.

Friday, Jun 30:

8 am With Great Power: A League of Their Own, run by imogena.

A total blast. Only one other player showed up, which was good, because we created characters from scratch, and had more of a stake in all of it, and we played it all out, start to finish.

1 pm The Swing: Blood of Dionysus

No show GM. Anyone know if he made it to Origins? Still, not a bad -- I got into the Shab al-Hiri Roach session. Lots of fun, though I think we misinterpreted the rule about shedding the roach.

6 pm Artesia demo

I was dozing due to fatigue by now, but it was still interesting. The author went by on his way to the Origins Awards Ceremony as we were playing, and news trickled back that it had won. Nice compromise between pre-gens and DIY character creation. Very The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly feel.

11 pm CoC Milk and Cookies

In a moment of sanity, I told the GM that I couldn't stay up for this one.

The Batman larp was cancelled, I think. Pity

Saturday, Jul 1

9 am Strange Arcana: 1776 Demo run by Richard Iorio

This one was cancelled. There was good signage telling me this, so I didn't have to wait. mnemex tells me that Richard was at the con, so I'm not sure what the deal was. I'll probably ask him.

Thought about getting some sleep, but I ran into Mike Holmes on the way back and told him that I was now free for a HeroQuest demo. We got a couple of players and did the Develop In Play style char gen. I want more of this.

The rest of the day is the Todd Furler section of my schedule:

Yep. I'd play Phonebook: The Dialing if he were the one running it. Scary thing is, a few folks I told this to, including mnemex, got this thoughtful look on their faces and said "Hm, I've got to design that one now."

Noon Unknown Armies: Overboard

Atypically for Todd, in my experience, this one was actually set in the UA world, with half the PCs being mages. He usually does something more offbeat. Still had that nice edge. Despite the mojo, the PCs were in way over their heads, knew it, and were (to some extent) torn between survival and doing the right thing. So glad we didn't have to figure out who best roleplayer was of this really good bunch.

Somewhere in here, I learned that ebartley had taken 3rd place in the Set tournament, winning a t-shirt.

jlighton reckons he was probably fifth.

6 pm octane: The Town Eater

Absolutely delightful. Mexican wrestler. Dancing bear with bow tie. Kitty! Very smart motorcycle. Much helpless laughter and shouting.

8 pm Inspectres: No Shreiking After 10 pm

5 of the 6 of us who played octane were in this. The 6th had already played. Total of 8 players bouncing off each other, Todd, and the walls and ceiling and floor in a room where no one else was scheduled.

Near the climax, my cell phone rang. I stepped away from the table. mnemex told me that jlighton had just won the Icehouse tournament. mnemex was a finalist. I gave a mostly voiceless yelp of joy, then went back to the weird wackiness that was our Inspectres game.

I hooked up with mnemex and dragged him back to our room so he could help me back. ebartley couldn't find her cell phone charger, which added levels of stress all around, as she does not have a land line. By the time we left the hotel on Sunday, the staff had found her a couple of chargers that previous guests had left behind, at least one of which worked to charge her phone, but we're still baffled.

Sunday, Jul 2

9 am Pendragon: Some Enchanted Evening

Oh my. This was my second Pendragon game, topping my first. My first was marvellous, and was run by Peter Corless. For this one, the GM had 30 characters, and could run with any combination of knights, ladies, and mages. Well, almost. She wanted at least 2 knights. For me and one other player, the first part of the quest was realizing that we'd mistaken Marion for Morrow, the signage on the two rooms being confusing.

Next step: Pick a character. After much pondering, I went with Sir Myron, the Jewish knight. Previously an actor, good at intrigue and oratory. Then, I criticaled a religion roll for him. At that point, I thought to myself that I was playing some version of

osewalrus's SCA persona.

The game ran over by 30-45 minutes, and the GM noted she needed to trim a bit. I'm wondering if having clearer handouts explaining what went on before would help. Her verbal explanation was good and necessary to supplement the handouts, but did take some time. I gather that the scenario and notes and all were online, but Geocities did something weird, and the backup files were on a laptop that died. Some of the scenario was in hard copy, the rest longhand and in the GM's head.

By now, it was 3:40, and I made the exhibit hall in time to purchase octane.

After that, ebartley talked to a security person about the missing charger, and we unchecked our bags. At the airport, there were various delays in odd ways. mnemex and I were put onto a 6 pm flight that didn't take off till after 8 pm, which was good for us because the 8 pm flight we'd been scheduled for was running way late, as it couldn't get out of La Guardia at that time -- ground stop on incoming and outgoing flights. We met Phil Bruccato, who had the same gate, though not the same flight that we did. He'd had a good convention. I gather that the Deliria games went really well.

ebartley made her flight, and we discovered that

gaylord500 had been at Origins and was on her flight.