Infernational Travel

So, this weekend... It all started on Friday. I went to hire a car that I'd booked at Hertz. pre-booked. Found the place. All seemed good, if a little slow. Hertz then did a check that I exist. According to the credit agency they use I don't! Gah! So they wouldn't give me the car. Useless lot.

Thrifty were just around the corner. They were nice. Also pretty cheap. Except I couldn't drop it off at the airport. I could have coped with that. I asked to drop it off on the Sunday. They're closed Sunday.

Looked for other places. Phone decided to stop behaving. Reset phone. Found out where Europcar was. Finally got a car! Yay!

Europcar: "So that will be £lots for 3 days and you're covered for damage with a £1000 excess"
Me: "Erm... can we reduce that excess at all?"

So I get a £250 excess which I paid another £loads for but I really didn't want to take that risk.I was now feeling a lot more stressed, and I was an hour behind where I wanted to be. Still, I got the car. Finally! So I ended up with an Astra.

Called Hertz to arrange a refund. They told me there would be a cancellation fee. Uhm... No. You cancelled. I didn't. Rubbish lot. Will never use them again. Or at all.

Drove to LARP. Had lots of joy of traffic because of broken down car in the middle of the road where they're doing work on the M25. LARPed. Will get onto that in another entry. Drove back. Drove to the airport. Where the hell do I return the car? Lucky for me, the chap in the Shell garage gave exact directions. And so I went to the airport.

More stress as the check-in machine refused to print a ticket for me. Realised I left a knife in my pocket (Swiss Army card. I lose a lot of them at airports). Bought an envelope and posted it home. Flight gate wasn't announced until 10 minutes before the gate was apparently closing. It was on the other side of the airport. Flight was actually late. Journey was shorter than expected although did land on the Polderbaan. Schipol's 7th runway that's actually closer to England than Amsterdam. There is a nice plane drive through Holland as the plane makes its way to the terminal.

Got to hotel.

Collapsed.

Reaver Fever

All that stress of hiring a car and whizzing 130 miles, and sitting in traffic for a good 40 minutes of the journey,  just so I could run around a field growling at people.

It was time to LARP again. Serenity. This time at Tuddenham Airsoft. So I arrived on site. bigbadg was very pleased to see me. Mainly because he's a nice guy and he hadn't seen me for a while, but also because there were, at that point, just 3 crew. I think we had about 6 for most of the event. Fortunately a lot of players were out of action for one reason or another at various points so we had some extras. Was a shame missgadget wasn't there, but she's passed the torch to G, and he's very capable.

It's really a very good site in a lot of ways. It has buildings. With windows we can dive through. I was also very pleased we had a kettle for the crew. This was a serious problem last event. The only tea making facilities were in the IC area. Creating a character just for a cuppa was too much hassle. Downside is there are no facilities. No power and no running water.

Fun little plot. Survival horror with zombies (well , proto-reavers). Also drugs, a friendly neighbourhood drug pusher, rebel slaves, captive ex-mine bosses with exploding bomb collars, reaver babies and people turning from perfectly reasonable pirates and revolutionaries into psycho zombies. Brief appearance from a handful of people with replacement body parts.

Got to play a group of religious fanatics. Our preacher preached fire and brimstone. We had two players join our congregation! One sitting attentively paying rapt attention (she was really sweet, and we all felt very bad about killing her later). Fortunately she didn't die from her wounds because the system doesn't let you die from hand to hand combat. She didn't realise this though so the time she spent being dead was retconned to an out of body experience.

Had a lot of fun playing against type by getting angry and violent for no reason. Also had a lot of fun playing a reaver and coming in through windows, sneaking up on people and attacking them from unexpected directions.

Other coolness - defence drones and combat robots. And an NPC telecommuting in .

Just wish I could have managed more sleep. Adrenaline is not conducive to a good night's sleep. Neither is the midsummer dawn at about 4am. And the cold wind attacking my tent.

Had so much fun though. I was so upset to have to leave so early on Sunday. I missed the frothing with players that happens after the event.

Am always a little concerned about getting newer players involved when crewing. Ultimately it's the players' responsibility to be proactive, but being somewhat shy and reserved myself I'm aware that some people aren't quite sure exactly how to get involved, and are a little reticent about making this known. It's nice to give them some opportunity to grab at plot without dumping plot on them. I do wonder if there's a way we can be more helpful.