The LARP: Back to the HS Prom
Jan. 18th, 2004 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexxkayThe LARP was largely a good time, though not without hiccups. I had been a little concerned about the game potentially bringing up buried HS angst, but my character was sufficently different from myself that that didn't happen.
I was playing a junior, who had a bunch of typical high school soap opera plot hooks. Or at least, that's what they looked like. In practice, they largely served as camoflauge for the one plot hook that was clearly meant to get me involved in the "main plot". I think that about half of the characetrs were structured this way, as normal people, with hooks into the Weird Shit.
But before I got hooked into that, I had to deal with my Annoying Little Sister, whom mom had insisted I take to the Prom with me. (Imagined scene: "But Mooooooom, she's just a *Freshman* And she'll be following me around ALL NIGHT!") Despite being an only child, I turned out to have an affinity for Annoying Older Sibling, and had a great time. It helped that my sister was being played by my old friend Nicolette, so she knew I was just being in character. As it was, I made her *break* character (and break out laughing) several different times, sometimes with a nasty-but-witty remark, but often with just a finely-tuned look of exasperation :-) It was, as she is wont to say when pleased "A hoot!"
My particular hook into the Weird Shit was that I had a crush on Sarah Peterson (insert lovestruck sigh here), who wanted me to write her some poetry. After I (eventually) *did* write her some doggerel, Something Strange happened. I got handed a paper by a GM that explained that many of the characters in the game (based on a hidden code in their name tags) now looked different to me, and that I was convinced that aliens were doing genetic experiments on us all.
It might have been prudent to (as most other similarly-affected people did) disguise my new perceptions of reality. But I felt it would be more amusing not to. I told people in a very matter of fact fashion that some of them now looked like demaons from hell, while others had moss and twigs growing out of them, or were glowing brightly. The school nurse (and my concerned little sis) became convonced that someone had slipped me some acid, but I insisted that that wasn't true (as, indeed, it wasn't). I eventually did "cool it" and pretend that everything was normal, but not until I had found out a bit more about what was going on.
Meanwhile, one of my school friends, Ursula (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladysprite), dragooned me into putting on a play for the Talent Show, in order to help save the school Drama Club! We did some of the play-within-a-play from A Midsummer Night's Dream. I called dibs on The Lion. Everyone wqas unrehearsed, reading from scripts, staying in their game character far more than the play's characters, and ad-libbed frequently. It was *deliciously* awful.
After talking with some of the other boys who had written poetry to Ms. Peterson, it became clear that we *all* were seeing the same things, only most of them had been more discreet about it. Further investigation yielded the information that the people who looked like demons from hell actually *were* and that the "mossy people" were Faeries (some Seelie, some Unseelie). The main plot apparently had something to do with some of the fairies being sacrificed to Hell, which some factions were in favor of, and some opposed to, for a variety of reasons that never became fully clear to me.
My shop teacher (one of the Fay as it turns out) was just trying to start "leading me down the mystic path", when a sudden magic ritual broke out in the center of the dance floor, and the Principal (I think) started summoning Giant Demons. At this point, I knew enough to knwo that there was some serious Good vs Evil going down here, but also that there was some argument about which side was Good, and that I hadn't any clue how to help them, even if I knew for sure who they were.
I opted to drag Little Sis home as soon as the Giants showed up. "If mom found out that I let you see a human sacrifice, I would be grounded forEVer." Since the game only had about 20 minutes left to run at that point, we just took off our name badges and sat out the rest.kestrell was happy to see me out of character, as our repective characters hadn't had much cause for interaction over the course of the evening. I think that she found playing the (blind) school disciplinarian to be fun at first, but not for a full four hour game.
I think my personal game pacing is still stuck back in the days when "full game" meant 48 hours, not 4. I could have beelined my way into the Main Plot much faster and more effectively than I did, but I was having more fun staying in character, and therefore missing some cues. That was fine for the first half of the game, but was less so in the second half, when the Plot had gotten into full swing. At one point, a GM, seeing that there were only three players who were actually still in the main space, as opposed to "off plotting somewhere else", sheepishly announced that we should imagine that there were still hundreds of NPC students enjoying themselves on the dance floor. Once a central plotline reaches a certain level of development, it's moving so fast tht it's very hard to jump on mid-stream. Still a fun experience overall.
One purely technical bit of feedback: the code on the name badges had a few problems. It was based on colored stars. Even leaving out color blind players (of whom there was one, it turned out), the shiny stars, though appropriate to the setting, could often be hard to distinguish behind shiny plastic name badges. I found the silver/gold and blue/green distinctions in particular to be difficult. The blue/green one wasn't so bad, since they both indicated Faeries, the difference being whether they were from the Seelie or Unseelie Court. But by seeing Silver where there was actually Gold, I misidentified at least one character as glowing who should not have been, and that made it effectively impossible for me to figure out what the "glowing" actually signified.
I was playing a junior, who had a bunch of typical high school soap opera plot hooks. Or at least, that's what they looked like. In practice, they largely served as camoflauge for the one plot hook that was clearly meant to get me involved in the "main plot". I think that about half of the characetrs were structured this way, as normal people, with hooks into the Weird Shit.
But before I got hooked into that, I had to deal with my Annoying Little Sister, whom mom had insisted I take to the Prom with me. (Imagined scene: "But Mooooooom, she's just a *Freshman* And she'll be following me around ALL NIGHT!") Despite being an only child, I turned out to have an affinity for Annoying Older Sibling, and had a great time. It helped that my sister was being played by my old friend Nicolette, so she knew I was just being in character. As it was, I made her *break* character (and break out laughing) several different times, sometimes with a nasty-but-witty remark, but often with just a finely-tuned look of exasperation :-) It was, as she is wont to say when pleased "A hoot!"
My particular hook into the Weird Shit was that I had a crush on Sarah Peterson (insert lovestruck sigh here), who wanted me to write her some poetry. After I (eventually) *did* write her some doggerel, Something Strange happened. I got handed a paper by a GM that explained that many of the characters in the game (based on a hidden code in their name tags) now looked different to me, and that I was convinced that aliens were doing genetic experiments on us all.
It might have been prudent to (as most other similarly-affected people did) disguise my new perceptions of reality. But I felt it would be more amusing not to. I told people in a very matter of fact fashion that some of them now looked like demaons from hell, while others had moss and twigs growing out of them, or were glowing brightly. The school nurse (and my concerned little sis) became convonced that someone had slipped me some acid, but I insisted that that wasn't true (as, indeed, it wasn't). I eventually did "cool it" and pretend that everything was normal, but not until I had found out a bit more about what was going on.
Meanwhile, one of my school friends, Ursula (
ladysprite), dragooned me into putting on a play for the Talent Show, in order to help save the school Drama Club! We did some of the play-within-a-play from A Midsummer Night's Dream. I called dibs on The Lion. Everyone wqas unrehearsed, reading from scripts, staying in their game character far more than the play's characters, and ad-libbed frequently. It was *deliciously* awful.After talking with some of the other boys who had written poetry to Ms. Peterson, it became clear that we *all* were seeing the same things, only most of them had been more discreet about it. Further investigation yielded the information that the people who looked like demons from hell actually *were* and that the "mossy people" were Faeries (some Seelie, some Unseelie). The main plot apparently had something to do with some of the fairies being sacrificed to Hell, which some factions were in favor of, and some opposed to, for a variety of reasons that never became fully clear to me.
My shop teacher (one of the Fay as it turns out) was just trying to start "leading me down the mystic path", when a sudden magic ritual broke out in the center of the dance floor, and the Principal (I think) started summoning Giant Demons. At this point, I knew enough to knwo that there was some serious Good vs Evil going down here, but also that there was some argument about which side was Good, and that I hadn't any clue how to help them, even if I knew for sure who they were.
I opted to drag Little Sis home as soon as the Giants showed up. "If mom found out that I let you see a human sacrifice, I would be grounded forEVer." Since the game only had about 20 minutes left to run at that point, we just took off our name badges and sat out the rest.
kestrell was happy to see me out of character, as our repective characters hadn't had much cause for interaction over the course of the evening. I think that she found playing the (blind) school disciplinarian to be fun at first, but not for a full four hour game.I think my personal game pacing is still stuck back in the days when "full game" meant 48 hours, not 4. I could have beelined my way into the Main Plot much faster and more effectively than I did, but I was having more fun staying in character, and therefore missing some cues. That was fine for the first half of the game, but was less so in the second half, when the Plot had gotten into full swing. At one point, a GM, seeing that there were only three players who were actually still in the main space, as opposed to "off plotting somewhere else", sheepishly announced that we should imagine that there were still hundreds of NPC students enjoying themselves on the dance floor. Once a central plotline reaches a certain level of development, it's moving so fast tht it's very hard to jump on mid-stream. Still a fun experience overall.
One purely technical bit of feedback: the code on the name badges had a few problems. It was based on colored stars. Even leaving out color blind players (of whom there was one, it turned out), the shiny stars, though appropriate to the setting, could often be hard to distinguish behind shiny plastic name badges. I found the silver/gold and blue/green distinctions in particular to be difficult. The blue/green one wasn't so bad, since they both indicated Faeries, the difference being whether they were from the Seelie or Unseelie Court. But by seeing Silver where there was actually Gold, I misidentified at least one character as glowing who should not have been, and that made it effectively impossible for me to figure out what the "glowing" actually signified.
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FWIW
Date: 2004-01-18 01:33 pm (UTC)Re: FWIW
Date: 2004-01-21 10:13 pm (UTC)Well, speaking as the person making the decisions: nice idea! Thanks...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-19 12:30 pm (UTC)The color-blind thing was not so bad - I could only tell who was Seelie/Unseelie (being fae myself) and
At least two...?
Date: 2004-01-19 02:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-21 10:12 pm (UTC)Hmm; I was afraid of that. Unfortunately, I didn't have anything really close to Kes' casting request, so she was tricky to cast. She did well with the role, but I'm not totally surprised that it wasn't quite perfect for her...
the code on the name badges had a few problems.
Yaas. Nice idea, but needed better reality-checking. Ought to work better with a little tweaking of the details...