luckykaa

Driving to West Yorkshire seemed such a good idea a few months ago. Didn't think about the 6 hour drive.

penguin_worship drove us up to the site. The traffic gods smiled upon us and there was only one actual jam, which slowed us for about half an hour. Tomtom got us most of the way there. I navigated her through the bowels of Hell and then out the other side, only to find ourselves back on a main road. A quick phone call, and back in to the bowels of hell, and we found the site. And had a cup of tea!!

Plot was Mudders on Higgins Moon. Penguin_worship fell into role of security detail on too many of the blue pills. She and one of the other crew became the comedy double act for most of the rest of the weekend before being clobbered with sedative. I do admire that skill amongst a lot of roleplayers. Their ability to find a character and move into it so quickly.

Some of us were locked in a bank vault. Player Characters managed to get us out without killing us. They did set of every alarm in the building but that's more because the gods were fickle, evil and wanted to screw with the players. Decided to throw in some "mudder payment tokens" (physrepped by connect 4 pieces) and then we spent the rest of the event attempting to steal them when we had the time. Spontaneous Monster generated plot! Yay!

Spent most of the time playing Fess Higgins (Magistrates son from Jaynestown - Didn't look at all like my photo) which was nice because it is fun playing the warm friendly, nice character. Want another short, high drama role at some stage though. I haven't had the chance to hold someone hostage and make demands for years! Always feel semi tempted to throw some formal plot in myself. I just think I lack the fast thinking needed to deal with the realities of players.

Lots of other stuff but entry is getting long. And much of the cool stuff is player specific which would be to FOIPy* to put in a public forum.

* Find Out In Play - LARP equivalent to spoilers. Don't tell people the things their characters wouldn't know. Let them find out for themselves.

I am apparently crazy. Why else would I take a day off work, dash across the channel, make my way to a scout camp in the middle of nowhere, and sleep in a tent, in October, just to pretend to be someone I'm not? 

I do love crewing Serenity. There's something about it that I really enjoy. Well, it being Firefly based is one thing. And I rather enjoying the opportunity to play lots of characters. And I was really suffering from lack of LARP.

I do find myself dwelling too much on my mistakes though. It doesn't matter in the general scheme of things, but when I know I could have done things differently and better I let it get to me too much. The mild sleep deprivation at these events exacerbates this feeling as well.  Mistakes should just be something I should be aware of. They're something to learn from. Having slept and had time to ponder I know what not to do next time.

Note to self - don't dwell.

Also to remember the fact that I had a good time.

Looking forward to the next one.

I was sure this was going to be the last one of these events I did. I get tired and exhausted and there's so much planning beforehand. Plus it keeps happening during Hallowe'en and there are other things going on then. And I still don't quite understand the system. Then I find myself desperately wanting to know what happens next. And the WitW downtimes are amazing. None of this "You do X, Y happens".  Downtime returns have an actual narrative, and a full detailed story of exactly what's been happening, who's been doing stuff and what you hear.

So, did some stupid stuff that's a bit FOIP* and there are a few PCs that read this. Nevertheless, it was stupid but still seems unlikely to kill my character. Not that I want to kill Gune.  I would, however, like to play a hedgehog. Ignatius Jones - famous archaeologist.  Indiana Jones' extremely meek hedgehog version.

Got mauled by a mink. Poor Gune. Mrs Babbit put a bandage on his nose. Found myself in a tent with beer surrounded by stoats. Stoats are scary. And they steal hats.

Managed to suffer from complete brain failure late on day 2. This was not a good thing. But when you have a headache, and food, water, and resting in the dark for an hour or so don't work, sleep is the only option. I feel I missed some fun stuff there though. The advantage is not being absolutely miserable the next day. 

Thing about WitW is it's a really tough game. You need to spend considerable resources merely surviving until the next event. Yes, it is based n Wind in the Willows.  This in no way stops it from being in a post apocalyptic steampunk survivalist setting.

Afterwards I found myself desperately wanting to froth. So I gave some friends a lift to the station and spent an hour or so reminiscing about the past 3 days. 

*Find Out In Play.  i.e. don't ruin the plot for other players by revealing stuff that their characters don't know.

May rewrite this at some point with added coherence

Things to do for next event:

• Hobnob with other groups of natives
• Tell war stories
• Kill some Flembic
• Prevent end of the world.

Probably in that order. 

Also

• More friendly wagers
• Experiment with drugs.  I want to do this though, nit my character.  My character would quite willingly volunteer as a test subject but would only scientifically experiment with drugs
• Find more stories
• Dig out some IC songs

So, it seems that Maelstrom is ending at the end of next year, to be replaced by a new game.  End of the world...  Hmm...  Should be fun.  Don't think my character is an apocalypse cultist fun though that would be.  Will have to fight the end of the world.  Or take nayela's suggestion and try to end the world on a song.

Had a rather good time at the game, even though I didn't actually do that much, aside from preventing people from getting kille (100% success rate).  Having worked out my back story probably helped the enjoyment

Borrowed a nice flamethrower/blunderbus combo.  Attacked another camp, hobnobbed with some natives.  Told stories.  Shot at people.  It's a good group.  It's also fun confusing people by being a slightly different variant of a religion they know about.  Had some in character hot chocolate!  Yum!  Out of character decent coffee!!  Yumyum! 

Turns out the attack on Frieboden was a huge success, having clobbered a large chunk of their research capability.  Not sure if tha was the inent.  Am of the opinion that the wolves weren't used effectively.  Will have to discuss tactics.  Will have to join the Gerosos board.  Will have to find it.

Was asked to tell a story.  I gave them a bit of fanfic I wrote for the previous event.  Need more stories, especially ones about success through hard work and not cheating people. 

Gave nayela and lordofthewheel a lift home.  Horrible traffic on M40.  Where were all these people on the M40 going?  They couldn't all have been at Maelstrom!

I actually made it to Serenity this year. Would have been very upset had I missed that.  Car stuff happened and LARP stuff happened.  Food was good too.

Car stuff:

Got to the site.  Overshot the entrance.  Turned round.  There was a funny scraping noise.  Parked.  Noticed the engine undercover which had come unstuck.  Easily resolved by taking it back to the garage that did the service, and the mechanic put it back on with zip ties while I waited.  Works for me. 

Food stuff:

Okay, I'll admit, I wasn't exactly as concerned about the ethics of food as I normally am.  Thing is, normally I'll err on the side of caution.  However, I needed bacon!  And I walked past one evening and the smell of roasting pork was so delicious that I couldn't in good conscience turn that down.  The other main meal was burgers.  Since there was a choice including Roo, Ostrich, and wild boar, they were probably actually free range.

Shame there was no coffee in the NPC area.  Will have to make sure something's done about that next time even if I have to bring my own tea making stuff.  Having to go into character to get some coffee is a hassle especially if you want to chill out after doing something.

LARP stuff:

Serenity is very much a story led system.  I wanted to get some decent roleplaying in so volunteered for one of the major roles for the "Little House on the Prairie" subplot.  I was a gay rancher (Joshua from the "Wayne" family) involved in a relationship with a member of the "Eastwood" family* but was accused of being the father of the child of another member of that family.  Seemed people were a bit unwilling to volunteer for the gay rancher.  Either they didn't want such a big role or they had issue playing gay**.  There were other plots.   I was less involved with them.  I did occasionally play a member of the other family when we went onto the range looking for Joshua.  Never did find the guy.  The players did too good a job of keeping me away from the Eastwoods.  I was looking forward to a shotgun wedding.  Actually I was looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and scrapping.

It's sort of interesting the preconceptions players seem to have about the NPC characters.  Because we live on a ranch they assume we're a bunch of know-nothings.  This conversation seemed to come up a lot:

Player: "You do know where babies come from don't you?"
Joshua (My character): "I live on a ranch!"

I feel I'm getting more into the Rope-laying malarkey.  Hope I did okay.  There was a lot of stuff in the brief that I didn't quite get across.  Also it was important to get across the fact that my character was involved with another guy while also getting across that this is about family feuding, not homophobia.  Other character aspects (like bossing my brother about) seemed to get pushed to the wayside.  I had a lot on my plate. 

The whole improvising things (i.e. making shit up) on the fly is not something that comes naturally to me but I'm getting the hang of it.  It's something that requires a bit of flexibility.  Never anything important.  The key details of family background and relationships are dealt with in the brief.  It's details.  The trivialities.  Someone asks what sort of steers you have.  Well, that's obviously not in the brief, so you gotta make something up quickly.  But you need to make it sound like you know what you're talking about.  And you need to add details that don't mess with other people

The stuff that some people come up with frequently amazes me.  Just little details that they can then pick up and run with.  Like the farm hand who got injured in a fight decided she needed that hand for calving season.  It's nothing hugely important but it gives the rest of us something to work with.  Some people manage to come up with detailed stories from somewhere.

It's good to have an event I enjoy.  And I like crewing.  If things get on top of me I can take time out and go back in as a cockney geeza.

I really have a hankering to do more roleplay. 

Will have to find a game that somebody is running.

* Yes.  It is very Brokeback mountain. 
** I live in Brighton and hang out with a pretty eclectic crowd.  This tends to wear away your hangups about this sort of thing.

So I become The King.  Well not exactly.  The character I'm playing is delusional.  He believes himself to be King of the New World. 

It's not me pretending to be the character.  It's more than that.  It's not quite a split personality, but closer.  The character has his own motivations.  He acts like a separate person.  I can take control any time I like, but that's the last thing I want to do.  I can offer suggestions.  I suggest that the king visits the embassy run by natives. He thinks this is a good idea. 

"Hello!  I'm king!", he says.  This bemuses the natives in the embassy.  They start asking questions to get a better understanding.  Somehow they surround me without me noticing them even move.  The king carries on.  Despite the fact that I'm surrounded by friends, in the fantasy world, The King is surrounded potentially hostile creatures, and is totally oblivious to the danger.  I'm genuinely frightened for his life and loving every minute of it. 

Somehow he walks out of there alive.  He doesn't last much longer. 

That event was fun.  Last couple of Maelstroms I didn't really enjoy, for various reasons.  A factor was my next character just didn't give me that immersive feel. 

I want that feeling back.  Wish I knew a decent way to get it. Without that it's just not worth the effort. 

I was having a good time...  I mean it was a bit quiet, what with not having the fanatical Guided by Voices as a guiding light, but stuff happened, and I made some money and spent time hanging with the locals.  Also prayed for cooler weaher.  So I apologise for making it rain.

Then stuff happened, which was cool.  Then I got too emotionally involved and overwhelmed and ended up feeling stressed and unhappy OOC. 

I should know better than to do that. 

So in the end I found myself not quite sure how to deal with things.  For some reason it didn't occur to me to take some time out and relax for a bit. 

Maybe I should take a break from Strom. 

And to talismancer  - RIP Tac.  But I hope you enjoy your new character.

Lots of cool stuff. 

Was way too busy and stressed.  Didn't really have time to sort out all the props anbd costume I wanted to.  Also still missing the helmet I wanted to use for this costume.  Also had to work which meant I didn't arrive until late, and was somewhat stressed.  Also failed to get alchamahol but I'm not drinking much these days so not too fussed over that one.

I was playing Goldsworthy Gune  - Mole Mining engineer.  Slightly unhinged.  Good with steam.  We had the Mole union.  There were three of us.  Acquired some LARP safe tools.  I now have a hammer, wrench, screwdriver and throwable spanners. 

Things wot happened:

Some weasels dressed as prisoners dressed as washer women came in a steam car.    Awesomeness there.

Discussed steam body part replacements with a toad engineer.  A stoat stole my hat .  We found a mine.  I fell down a hole.  Crawled around in tunnels and found a locked box.  Doomed us all.  Well, I found it and delegated responsibility to a trusted elder, and the council doomed us all.  Apparently there were other goodies in the tunnel.  Didn't find them.  Did find another helmet.  It was shiny.  I built a device in my sleep.  Lost a steam part.  Also found steam powered fur clipper was gone.  And my pillow.  The machine had a lever on it.  Took careful precautions and eventually managed to try it out.  It went "bing". Lots of people asked "is that all".  No respect for science.  Also drew plans for mechanical arm and leg in sleep.  Attacked by foxes.  Wasn't expecting to get injured.  I'm a non combatant!  Just got caught outside during attack. 

Lots of cool roleplay.  Lots of humour.  All from character rather than forced funnies.  Toads were all great!  Rabbits just a little disturbing. 

Rained lots.  Was a bit dull on Saturday afternoon.  Always seems to be a problem with LARP.  Dining room was a little packed for my liking.  Not good with crowds. 

My poor fake German M40 helmet has vanished in the limbo between masterofapath and forbiddendanish .  I still want that back!  GRRRRR!

So, I acquired a new helmet for my mole.  It's pretty cool, being actual metal, and also rusty.

Alas it needs work.  There's no padding or strap inside it and no strap outside either.  And there's a sort of spike coming in from the top - a 1cm peg that presumably is used to attach the interior.  Were I at home I'd be able to find adequate bits to solve this.  I'm not at home, so I can't.  Oh well.

It seems that at least half a dozen people want a lift to WitW from me.  Sadly I have to turn all of them down on account of my not going anywhere near Brighton.

Seems that's a little too hard for everyone. 

Anyone fancy seeing Avatar on Sunday 3rd Jan instead? 

Also anyone have any interest in joining my Serenity crew for a LARP in February?