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My Weekend at Intercon
Mar. 5th, 2012 05:17 pmHad a pretty darn fabulous time at Intercon L. For me there were lots of stand-out games and moments over the course of the weekend, and in trying to list them all I just know I'm going to miss several, but I'm going to try anyway.
I know I say this a lot this time of year, but damn I love Intercon. Maybe there's a better way to spend a weekend than playing make-believe with 300+ people you know and like and who know and like you back, doing things that entertain both you and them, but I don't know what that would be. I realized with some surprise that this was my seventh Intercon, meaning this is by far the most involved I've been with any kind of non-family anual event in my life, and the scene is so vibrant that there were both people who have been going for twice that long and a fair number of new faces, including a gaggle of teenagers. Speaking of new faces, it was also![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
preraphaelite's first Intercon, but I'll let her tell that part of the tale (her writeup includes a list of things she's finding she does and doesn't like in games, and I'm curious if it gives anyone ideas for recommendations).
Over the course of the weekend I...
- Ran Power Point Karaoke withlediva
- Played "The Gentleman Underhighwayman" in a game about an undead wedding
- Played a really bad wannabe hiphop star in a game about group therapy for pookahs
- Played a six year old in a game that takes place at a daycare center
- Played Caligula at a roman orgy (yeah...)
- Played The Joker... I mean Batman... I mean Brett Reed... in a very confusing game
- Got lots of QT with dear friends
Here's an attempt at a more verbose rundown, in roughly chronological order:
Powerpoint Karaoke
During the pre-con events,lediva and I ran Power Point Karaoke, and it went better than I'd dared to hope. This shouldn't have been surprising since, as londo put it, I was working with a group "highly experienced with collaborative bullshit", but hey, I worry about things. It's what I do. Anyway, everyone seemed to have a great time, and I literally fell off my chair, crying with laughter at least once. If you missed it, no worries; we will definitely be doing it again. Lessons learned: expect presentation of an 11 slide deck to take about 3 minutes instead of 10, unless you're laura47 in which case you will somehow manage to involve singalongs and Klingon lullabies for a full 12 minutes. Also, we're toying with the idea of doing a potluck format next time, where others can contribute decks. Stay tuned. Also, videos will be posted soon! :)
Unhallowed Metropolis: Parliament of Ghouls (Fri night)
I think this was a pretty solid game, with interesting characters and situations, set in the universe of the Unhallowed Metropolis tabletop system. I say I think this was a good game because even if it had been bad, I still would have enjoyed it because I had a great bantering partner in Chris M. We played a father/son pair of omnisexual adventurer dandies, and basically split the game between stressing about how the wedding around which the plot centered was falling apart and making catty comments about each other and whichever of the other characters we'd just slept with. The line of which I'm most proud from that game: "Oh yes I think I made a good impression on him... well, I know I made an impression on him, but I think he likes me too". So, while I think I would have enjoyed the game anyway without that, sometimes interactions with another player make the game fun on a level that's almost independent of the quality of the materials, and that was the case for me.
The game led directly intoshadowravyn's birthday party, where I wish I could have stayed longer, but I just had to go to bed, to which I finally made it around 2. Sorry, Nu!
...also, after goofing off from writing this for a sec, I see that according to Facebook,nyren and SarahB got engaged on Friday Squeeeeeeee! Congrats to the both of them!
Ok, where was I... Right.
Pookah Support Group (Sat am)
I pried myself out of bed Saturday morning for this game, the first writing effort byfaerieboots and rustycoon. This is one of the games I would recommend most highly of everything I played at the con, getting major points for originality and innovation. The premise is exactly what the title says: a group therapy session for pookahs from the Changeling: The Dreaming universe. For those unfamiliar with that setting, the schtick about Pookahs is that they are natural pranksters and, in general, cannot tell the truth. They don't have to lie per se, but telling the whole truth requires an exertion of willpower. Now imagine a three-hour group therapy session wherein everyone, including the moderators, are pookahs. Yeah.
See, the thing about "everyone sits in a circle and talks for three hours" games is that IMO they are very hard to make interesting, but when they work they work really well because there's a volume of dialogue and intimacy that you're less likely to get in a more active setting. The combination of an all pookah cast, some very clever mechanics which I'll get to in a minute, and the group therapy setting makes this game work despite the fact that it really is just people sitting in a room talking for three hours. The game includes actual therapeutic exercises like art therapy, role-playing (in this case meaning playing your character RPing someone else's character-- tres meta), etc which gives just enough structure to ensure that everyone has something to talk about, or at least watch/listen to, and if things ever wind down, the moderator can always introduce a new activity.
And then we get to the lying mechanic. The best mechanics are ones that are simple and integrate seamlessly into roleplay, and this one succeeds wonderfully. Recall that in order to tell the truth, a pookah has to spend some spoons. No, literally, every player is given a handful of plastic spoons, and in order to tell a full truth you have to dramatically toss one of your spoons to the ground. When you're out of spoons, you just don't have it in you to tell the truth any more, and must resort to something else, be it evasion or straight up bullshit. Further, the in-game conceit is that pookahs get pookahs, and when you throw a spoon to the ground (or don't), the others are aware of the effort (or lack thereof) and can infer whether or not you're lying. This has the effect of providing this fascinating new form of... punctuation, which for us had an instant and significant effect on how everyone in the cast communicated. Suddenly there was no need for oratorial tricks to be persuasive or sarcastic. If you tossed a spoon while making a statement, everyone knew that you meant it, and the reverse was true if you didn't. So when one character had a heart-to-heart with another, tossing precious spoons left and right in the process, it was moving, and on the flipside, when the moderator concluded an exercise with "well, I think we all learned something from that" but didn't drop a spoon, no one could help laughing, even though there wasn't a hint of sarcasm in his voice (it didn't hurt that the players in both of these cases, like all of the players in the game, did a fantastic job of roleplaying). The players got really into this mechanic, to the extent that we ended up with exchanges like "Moderator, how much time is left in the session?" "Umm, about an hour... damn it. *spoon*", and in a reading of bad poetry, "Sidewalks slippery when dead flowers fall / Concrete... very hard. *spoon*".
Anyway, highly recommended. My biggest suggestion to people who play in this game is to be sure you have lots of sleep and/or caffeine ahead of time, because creatively lying 90% of the time for three hours is exhausting.
Playground (Sat Afternoon)
The biggest appeal of this game was that from the description it looked like Naptime, a game about which I've heard lots of great things. From what I've gathered, it is like Naptime in that the premise is you are all kids in a daycare and there are plenty of opportunities to be rambunctious, play with crayons, and basically just be silly. However, unlike Naptime, it's an MIT game, which means that there are a lot of mechanics. Boy howdy do those MIT kids like their mechanics. I was surprised to learn that apparently preraph hates invasive mechanics even more than I do, which maybe points to a broader cultural reason behind Harvard games having an "oh, mechanics... how gauche" reputation. Anyway, I think the GMs might have gotten more than they bargained for running this game at Intercon, because it didn't take long for people like preraph, me, andbleemoo (who I can only imagine was doing a spot-on impression of himself at that age, which if you know him should terrify you) to basically ignore the mechanics where we didn't feel like it and just cause chaos instead. And oh boy, such chaos. I kind of feel bad for the hotel that this game was run in two rooms adjacent to the lobby. The few non-congoers checking in really didn't know what to do with the sight of bleemoo wearing overalls and a cape fashioned out of an Australian flag being chased down the hall between rooms by me yelling "Heeeeey! Gimme back! You said I could be king of Australia!!". So, did I have a good time? Yes. Would I recommend it? Well, you have to either like MIT-style games, or be willing to make your own fun for a while and hopefully have patient GMs, which we were fortunate enough to have. I also think it would have fit better if they'd trimmed an hour or so off of the running time.
Orgia Domi Lomaximus (Sat night)
This game had run twice before and I'd heard... legends. It takes place at a Roman orgy, and while there is a mechanic for the actual sex (a very amusing one, I should add, involving rods, rings, and the exchange of beads, so that after game you can tally up just how much syphilis you now have), how other... activities up to that point are represented are based entirely on player preference. Everyone puts a letter on his or her name badge to represent comfort level, from A for "no touching at all, let's just describe what our characters do" to DD for "anything that's legal in public" (with, of course, the option to veto anything regardless of what's on your badge). A few years ago I probably would have been a B who wished he had the nerve to be a C. Nowadays I would be either a C who wished he had the nerve to be a D or just a straight-up D, depending on who else was playing and my assessment of their comfort levels with me. Thing is, preraph and I can get... competitive sometimes, and we're not always the best influences on one another. Suffice to say one thing led to another and we ended up effectively daring each other into DD status without ever exactly doing so explicitly. Nothing more hardcore than kissing actually ended up happening (which, frankly, I'm just fine with), but there was a heckuva lot of that, and, well, erm... yes I had a lovely time. Thank you for asking. *blush*
Did I mention I was playing Caligula?
Not a crazy, despotic Caligula, but a young man juuuuust starting to go nuts, and very excited about the evening's festivities. I felt kind of intimidated going into this role, not just because it entailed stretching my boundaries a bit hedonism-wise, but because the two previous Caligulas (Caligulae?) were both larpers I admire: the afore-mentioned Chris M, and Andy K, who regularly amazes me with his energy and creativity, so I was stepping into some big shoes (togas?), so to speak. In addition to that, I just really wasn't sure how I was going to handle the characterization for this role, even as the start of game approached. I knew he needed to be both funny and able to be scary at the drop of a hat, but I wasn't really sure what either of those should look like. I spent time before the game figuring out some scary/serious bits that I could drop, my favorite of which being a discussion I had with a man who'd been tasked with making a statue of me: "it must be carved from the purest white marble, none of those little black specks! For every speck I find, I'm going to have to cut off one of your ears. Now, the good news is that if you end up with two specks, well then you can go to town and have as many specks beyond two as you like! But really, I recommend keeping it less than that, because you have such pretty... pretty... ears". So ok, I basically channel Cartagia from B5 when I want to be creepy, but what about the default face, the one having a great time at the orgy? That actually came largely from a last-minute costuming decision. After asking around for a roman-style laurel, I ended up getting this thing from @blueathena that was more like a full-circle wreath of big ivy leaves. Right before game I was about to decide that it was just too goofy looking to use, but preraph suggested that maybe goofy was appropriate; I responded "nah... not unless you think of this thing as sort of the ancient Roman equivalent of a lampshade on your head... ooooooh!", and that was that. At the start of game I walked into the room purposefully, and in my loudest, happiest, craziest voice proclaimed "OK everyone, the party may now commence. Look! I made myself... a new hat!!!", producing the "laurel" and perching it jauntily atop my head where it stayed, albeit at increasingly precarious angles, all night.
The other thing that really clicked that character into place for me was a conversation I had with Andy K on my way to game. I noticed him hanging out in con suite and asked for confirmation that my reading of the character sheet was correct, specifically that I really had little personal plot and was more there to provide some "very loud color" to the game. His response was "Everyone else has these sneaky and involved plots going on. Your job is fuck with them. Literally". And that's just what I did. :)
I love characters like this. Not the sexual/hedonistic part (though that bit was fun too), but the over-the-top, high-energy gadfly. I will take adding "color" to other people's plots over having plot of my own any day, and based on the feedback I got after game, people like it when I do, which is super gratifying. That said, I also feel a little bad about it because it kind of feels like cheating. Here were all these other people engaged in, you know, actual nuanced roleplay and I'm getting all of the "you were amazing!" comments after the game because my superpower is the ability to act loud and obnoxious for hours at a time. Don't get me wrong, I love that the role was a hit, and it's super, super nice to know that other peoples' experience of the game was enhanced by my... color, I just sometimes wish it weren't the case that the character who is written to go "look at me! look at me!" all game tends to get the lion's share of the positive feedback.
So this brings me to the question of whether I would recommend Orgia to others (you can probably guess that, yes, I enjoyed it). That's actually a rather difficult question to answer because, while I can highly recommend Caligula, which may go on my list of favorite characters ever, to people who like that sort of role, I think my experience of the game its self was pretty fundamentally different from everyone else's. I definitely know people who really enjoyed their characters, and some who had issues with some of the content in their backstory (in addition to the overt sexuality you've got a bunch of other stuff going on that was part of Roman life, like slavery etc), and with only finding out about the badge-labeling system at the start of game, when they had to make a very important decision very quickly. I will say this: I recommend the game, but suggest asking around a little if you have any doubt whether or not the setting is going to be your cup of tea. Mmm... tea.
Addendum: I have just learned via an email from the GMs that Caligula can expect no fewer than 12 contenders for the throne in about nine months. That is going to be one complicated line of succession...
After Orgia I went to the Intercon dance party. The difference between my outfit for the game and my outfit for the dance: shades. You would totally have done the same.
...and with this image ends any chance I may have ever had to enter politics. Probably for the best.
The Other Other All Batman Game
There is a term used at Intercon: "Sunday morning game". A Sunday morning game is a game that is just pure, cracktastic, zany fun, aimed at about the level of brainpower one is expected to have on the Sunday morning of a weekend-long con. This is the quintessential Sunday morning game, and as such there's not much to say other than that I loved it, I may run it at a future con, and that if your idea of a good time involves every character having at least three disguises they can change at will (identities are represented by badges on a lanyard, so there's no need for extra costuming if you don't want), one of which is always a Batman costume, leading to massive all-batman battle royales using a combat system that involves yelling "Bam!" "Pow!" "Zowie!", etc a lot, then you will enjoy this game. Two hours of delicious, delicious crack.
Ooookay... I think that's it. Actually, I'm pretty sure that's not it, but I've got to quit writing some time so I can get back to Real Life, sad as that seems in comparison. So there we are. Thanks to everyone who came out to the con, and for the con staff who made the whole thing happen! :)
I know I say this a lot this time of year, but damn I love Intercon. Maybe there's a better way to spend a weekend than playing make-believe with 300+ people you know and like and who know and like you back, doing things that entertain both you and them, but I don't know what that would be. I realized with some surprise that this was my seventh Intercon, meaning this is by far the most involved I've been with any kind of non-family anual event in my life, and the scene is so vibrant that there were both people who have been going for twice that long and a fair number of new faces, including a gaggle of teenagers. Speaking of new faces, it was also
preraphaelite's first Intercon, but I'll let her tell that part of the tale (her writeup includes a list of things she's finding she does and doesn't like in games, and I'm curious if it gives anyone ideas for recommendations).Over the course of the weekend I...
- Ran Power Point Karaoke with
lediva- Played "The Gentleman Underhighwayman" in a game about an undead wedding
- Played a really bad wannabe hiphop star in a game about group therapy for pookahs
- Played a six year old in a game that takes place at a daycare center
- Played Caligula at a roman orgy (yeah...)
- Played The Joker... I mean Batman... I mean Brett Reed... in a very confusing game
- Got lots of QT with dear friends
Here's an attempt at a more verbose rundown, in roughly chronological order:
Powerpoint Karaoke
During the pre-con events,
lediva and I ran Power Point Karaoke, and it went better than I'd dared to hope. This shouldn't have been surprising since, as londo put it, I was working with a group "highly experienced with collaborative bullshit", but hey, I worry about things. It's what I do. Anyway, everyone seemed to have a great time, and I literally fell off my chair, crying with laughter at least once. If you missed it, no worries; we will definitely be doing it again. Lessons learned: expect presentation of an 11 slide deck to take about 3 minutes instead of 10, unless you're laura47 in which case you will somehow manage to involve singalongs and Klingon lullabies for a full 12 minutes. Also, we're toying with the idea of doing a potluck format next time, where others can contribute decks. Stay tuned. Also, videos will be posted soon! :)Unhallowed Metropolis: Parliament of Ghouls (Fri night)
I think this was a pretty solid game, with interesting characters and situations, set in the universe of the Unhallowed Metropolis tabletop system. I say I think this was a good game because even if it had been bad, I still would have enjoyed it because I had a great bantering partner in Chris M. We played a father/son pair of omnisexual adventurer dandies, and basically split the game between stressing about how the wedding around which the plot centered was falling apart and making catty comments about each other and whichever of the other characters we'd just slept with. The line of which I'm most proud from that game: "Oh yes I think I made a good impression on him... well, I know I made an impression on him, but I think he likes me too". So, while I think I would have enjoyed the game anyway without that, sometimes interactions with another player make the game fun on a level that's almost independent of the quality of the materials, and that was the case for me.
The game led directly into
shadowravyn's birthday party, where I wish I could have stayed longer, but I just had to go to bed, to which I finally made it around 2. Sorry, Nu!...also, after goofing off from writing this for a sec, I see that according to Facebook,
nyren and SarahB got engaged on Friday Squeeeeeeee! Congrats to the both of them!Ok, where was I... Right.
Pookah Support Group (Sat am)
I pried myself out of bed Saturday morning for this game, the first writing effort by
faerieboots and rustycoon. This is one of the games I would recommend most highly of everything I played at the con, getting major points for originality and innovation. The premise is exactly what the title says: a group therapy session for pookahs from the Changeling: The Dreaming universe. For those unfamiliar with that setting, the schtick about Pookahs is that they are natural pranksters and, in general, cannot tell the truth. They don't have to lie per se, but telling the whole truth requires an exertion of willpower. Now imagine a three-hour group therapy session wherein everyone, including the moderators, are pookahs. Yeah.See, the thing about "everyone sits in a circle and talks for three hours" games is that IMO they are very hard to make interesting, but when they work they work really well because there's a volume of dialogue and intimacy that you're less likely to get in a more active setting. The combination of an all pookah cast, some very clever mechanics which I'll get to in a minute, and the group therapy setting makes this game work despite the fact that it really is just people sitting in a room talking for three hours. The game includes actual therapeutic exercises like art therapy, role-playing (in this case meaning playing your character RPing someone else's character-- tres meta), etc which gives just enough structure to ensure that everyone has something to talk about, or at least watch/listen to, and if things ever wind down, the moderator can always introduce a new activity.
And then we get to the lying mechanic. The best mechanics are ones that are simple and integrate seamlessly into roleplay, and this one succeeds wonderfully. Recall that in order to tell the truth, a pookah has to spend some spoons. No, literally, every player is given a handful of plastic spoons, and in order to tell a full truth you have to dramatically toss one of your spoons to the ground. When you're out of spoons, you just don't have it in you to tell the truth any more, and must resort to something else, be it evasion or straight up bullshit. Further, the in-game conceit is that pookahs get pookahs, and when you throw a spoon to the ground (or don't), the others are aware of the effort (or lack thereof) and can infer whether or not you're lying. This has the effect of providing this fascinating new form of... punctuation, which for us had an instant and significant effect on how everyone in the cast communicated. Suddenly there was no need for oratorial tricks to be persuasive or sarcastic. If you tossed a spoon while making a statement, everyone knew that you meant it, and the reverse was true if you didn't. So when one character had a heart-to-heart with another, tossing precious spoons left and right in the process, it was moving, and on the flipside, when the moderator concluded an exercise with "well, I think we all learned something from that" but didn't drop a spoon, no one could help laughing, even though there wasn't a hint of sarcasm in his voice (it didn't hurt that the players in both of these cases, like all of the players in the game, did a fantastic job of roleplaying). The players got really into this mechanic, to the extent that we ended up with exchanges like "Moderator, how much time is left in the session?" "Umm, about an hour... damn it. *spoon*", and in a reading of bad poetry, "Sidewalks slippery when dead flowers fall / Concrete... very hard. *spoon*".
Anyway, highly recommended. My biggest suggestion to people who play in this game is to be sure you have lots of sleep and/or caffeine ahead of time, because creatively lying 90% of the time for three hours is exhausting.
Playground (Sat Afternoon)
The biggest appeal of this game was that from the description it looked like Naptime, a game about which I've heard lots of great things. From what I've gathered, it is like Naptime in that the premise is you are all kids in a daycare and there are plenty of opportunities to be rambunctious, play with crayons, and basically just be silly. However, unlike Naptime, it's an MIT game, which means that there are a lot of mechanics. Boy howdy do those MIT kids like their mechanics. I was surprised to learn that apparently preraph hates invasive mechanics even more than I do, which maybe points to a broader cultural reason behind Harvard games having an "oh, mechanics... how gauche" reputation. Anyway, I think the GMs might have gotten more than they bargained for running this game at Intercon, because it didn't take long for people like preraph, me, and
bleemoo (who I can only imagine was doing a spot-on impression of himself at that age, which if you know him should terrify you) to basically ignore the mechanics where we didn't feel like it and just cause chaos instead. And oh boy, such chaos. I kind of feel bad for the hotel that this game was run in two rooms adjacent to the lobby. The few non-congoers checking in really didn't know what to do with the sight of bleemoo wearing overalls and a cape fashioned out of an Australian flag being chased down the hall between rooms by me yelling "Heeeeey! Gimme back! You said I could be king of Australia!!". So, did I have a good time? Yes. Would I recommend it? Well, you have to either like MIT-style games, or be willing to make your own fun for a while and hopefully have patient GMs, which we were fortunate enough to have. I also think it would have fit better if they'd trimmed an hour or so off of the running time.Orgia Domi Lomaximus (Sat night)
This game had run twice before and I'd heard... legends. It takes place at a Roman orgy, and while there is a mechanic for the actual sex (a very amusing one, I should add, involving rods, rings, and the exchange of beads, so that after game you can tally up just how much syphilis you now have), how other... activities up to that point are represented are based entirely on player preference. Everyone puts a letter on his or her name badge to represent comfort level, from A for "no touching at all, let's just describe what our characters do" to DD for "anything that's legal in public" (with, of course, the option to veto anything regardless of what's on your badge). A few years ago I probably would have been a B who wished he had the nerve to be a C. Nowadays I would be either a C who wished he had the nerve to be a D or just a straight-up D, depending on who else was playing and my assessment of their comfort levels with me. Thing is, preraph and I can get... competitive sometimes, and we're not always the best influences on one another. Suffice to say one thing led to another and we ended up effectively daring each other into DD status without ever exactly doing so explicitly. Nothing more hardcore than kissing actually ended up happening (which, frankly, I'm just fine with), but there was a heckuva lot of that, and, well, erm... yes I had a lovely time. Thank you for asking. *blush*
Did I mention I was playing Caligula?
Not a crazy, despotic Caligula, but a young man juuuuust starting to go nuts, and very excited about the evening's festivities. I felt kind of intimidated going into this role, not just because it entailed stretching my boundaries a bit hedonism-wise, but because the two previous Caligulas (Caligulae?) were both larpers I admire: the afore-mentioned Chris M, and Andy K, who regularly amazes me with his energy and creativity, so I was stepping into some big shoes (togas?), so to speak. In addition to that, I just really wasn't sure how I was going to handle the characterization for this role, even as the start of game approached. I knew he needed to be both funny and able to be scary at the drop of a hat, but I wasn't really sure what either of those should look like. I spent time before the game figuring out some scary/serious bits that I could drop, my favorite of which being a discussion I had with a man who'd been tasked with making a statue of me: "it must be carved from the purest white marble, none of those little black specks! For every speck I find, I'm going to have to cut off one of your ears. Now, the good news is that if you end up with two specks, well then you can go to town and have as many specks beyond two as you like! But really, I recommend keeping it less than that, because you have such pretty... pretty... ears". So ok, I basically channel Cartagia from B5 when I want to be creepy, but what about the default face, the one having a great time at the orgy? That actually came largely from a last-minute costuming decision. After asking around for a roman-style laurel, I ended up getting this thing from @blueathena that was more like a full-circle wreath of big ivy leaves. Right before game I was about to decide that it was just too goofy looking to use, but preraph suggested that maybe goofy was appropriate; I responded "nah... not unless you think of this thing as sort of the ancient Roman equivalent of a lampshade on your head... ooooooh!", and that was that. At the start of game I walked into the room purposefully, and in my loudest, happiest, craziest voice proclaimed "OK everyone, the party may now commence. Look! I made myself... a new hat!!!", producing the "laurel" and perching it jauntily atop my head where it stayed, albeit at increasingly precarious angles, all night.
The other thing that really clicked that character into place for me was a conversation I had with Andy K on my way to game. I noticed him hanging out in con suite and asked for confirmation that my reading of the character sheet was correct, specifically that I really had little personal plot and was more there to provide some "very loud color" to the game. His response was "Everyone else has these sneaky and involved plots going on. Your job is fuck with them. Literally". And that's just what I did. :)
I love characters like this. Not the sexual/hedonistic part (though that bit was fun too), but the over-the-top, high-energy gadfly. I will take adding "color" to other people's plots over having plot of my own any day, and based on the feedback I got after game, people like it when I do, which is super gratifying. That said, I also feel a little bad about it because it kind of feels like cheating. Here were all these other people engaged in, you know, actual nuanced roleplay and I'm getting all of the "you were amazing!" comments after the game because my superpower is the ability to act loud and obnoxious for hours at a time. Don't get me wrong, I love that the role was a hit, and it's super, super nice to know that other peoples' experience of the game was enhanced by my... color, I just sometimes wish it weren't the case that the character who is written to go "look at me! look at me!" all game tends to get the lion's share of the positive feedback.
So this brings me to the question of whether I would recommend Orgia to others (you can probably guess that, yes, I enjoyed it). That's actually a rather difficult question to answer because, while I can highly recommend Caligula, which may go on my list of favorite characters ever, to people who like that sort of role, I think my experience of the game its self was pretty fundamentally different from everyone else's. I definitely know people who really enjoyed their characters, and some who had issues with some of the content in their backstory (in addition to the overt sexuality you've got a bunch of other stuff going on that was part of Roman life, like slavery etc), and with only finding out about the badge-labeling system at the start of game, when they had to make a very important decision very quickly. I will say this: I recommend the game, but suggest asking around a little if you have any doubt whether or not the setting is going to be your cup of tea. Mmm... tea.
Addendum: I have just learned via an email from the GMs that Caligula can expect no fewer than 12 contenders for the throne in about nine months. That is going to be one complicated line of succession...
After Orgia I went to the Intercon dance party. The difference between my outfit for the game and my outfit for the dance: shades. You would totally have done the same.
...and with this image ends any chance I may have ever had to enter politics. Probably for the best.
The Other Other All Batman Game
There is a term used at Intercon: "Sunday morning game". A Sunday morning game is a game that is just pure, cracktastic, zany fun, aimed at about the level of brainpower one is expected to have on the Sunday morning of a weekend-long con. This is the quintessential Sunday morning game, and as such there's not much to say other than that I loved it, I may run it at a future con, and that if your idea of a good time involves every character having at least three disguises they can change at will (identities are represented by badges on a lanyard, so there's no need for extra costuming if you don't want), one of which is always a Batman costume, leading to massive all-batman battle royales using a combat system that involves yelling "Bam!" "Pow!" "Zowie!", etc a lot, then you will enjoy this game. Two hours of delicious, delicious crack.
Ooookay... I think that's it. Actually, I'm pretty sure that's not it, but I've got to quit writing some time so I can get back to Real Life, sad as that seems in comparison. So there we are. Thanks to everyone who came out to the con, and for the con staff who made the whole thing happen! :)
