Interconz!

[hazliya]

Typical Intercon recap.


Friday, I hurried from work to home, changed, picked up elenuial, and bolted for Chelmsford. We were there just in time to get the room key, transfer stuff from the car, and pick up our character sheets for Story Wars. I was glad to see so many familiar faces right off the bat, and playing Kaylee Frye was a plus, even though her character was so much more messed up than I had ever intended. xD

All through the game, she kept getting approached for things repeatedly, and everyone wanted a piece of her abilities. Or love. Or both. So, by hour five, Kaylee had pretty much had it. Between being in love with a brain slug whose host loved someone else and being owned by an evil corporation, she had a lot to deal with without outside help. So she focused on helping her friends (she spent a good chunk of game walking around carrying a giant axe), and by the end of the game, she was so frustrated with people that she joined up with the one person who hadn't pawed at her for attention the whole game.
Captain Jack Harkness.
So Kaylee ran off with Captain Jack into the sunset to become a time agent.

The hilarity of that (and "Behold! My pants!") was short-lived, however, as I was panicking over my own game. I got some reassuring words from some vet GMs, and many were there to offer advice and confidence-boosters.

Although I did want to punch a good few of them in the face on Saturday morning, when I was letting myself slip into panic-mode. I had some not-so-help from GMs who could keep a straight face while telling me that my debut was my one and only chance to impress people, and that if the game didn't go well, I'd be done in this town.
Jerks.
You know who you are.

So I went through my morning game, Supervillain Academy, meeting an adorable brit who was a magnificent bastard of a love plot. To break it down:
I played Siren, a villain whose power was to make men obey her when she sings. A few years after she graduated, she met the Midnight Reader, who had as much in brains as she had in beauty, and they hit it off. He ran a group of villains, and during one of their heists, the two of them were the team out in the van, but got distracted and ending up doing what it is that teenagers do. Then the group inside was ambushed and they didn't notice, so the Reader got angry and they argued. For the first time, she used her powers on him, ordering him to stay in the van so that she could go sulk. He was supposed to follow her and apologize when it wore off, like men are supposed to do when they argue with Siren, but as soon as she got a few feet from the van, it exploded from a stray energy blast, and she's been wracked with the guilt of inadvertently killing the man she loved for the last fifteen or so years.
So, she goes to the graduation of her alma mater and has a lot on her agenda, but I decided to play her a bit sympathetically. She approached the headmaster in his office, letting him know that she was embarrassingly wealthy and wanted to establish a scholarship. She called it the "Scholarship for the Appropriate Use of Unfortunate Superpowers," after an accident in her own past. He asked what it was that prompted such a generous act, and she spilled completely. I think I spent about ten minutes in a long, sappy missive about how guilty she's felt and how she's never loved anyone else, how she never intended to use her powers on him, how everything was her fault and if only she could take it back, etc. He listened patiently and gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, and she went on her way.

As soon as I'd left the office, a GM approached me to let me know that the hour mark was about to hit, and that I could open my contingency envelope in a few minutes. So I did, and nearly dropped it.
"The headmaster looks surprisingly like your ex-boyfriend! But it couldn't be him...could it?"
I looked back at the headmaster, who smiled and waved, and I noticed his villain name tag.
The Librarian.
I think I pretty much flushed red like a cartoon.

And so, for the rest of the game, whenever they talked, he added details of the story that she hadn't provided, but excused them away. It was infuriating. He didn't pull her aside and reveal himself to her until the GMs called ten minutes, when he asked her to follow him into his office, where he put on his old name tag. So she hit him. Hard. But he just laughed, so she had to throw herself into his arms.
"Why did't you tell me you were alive? You ass."
"Because I thought you were still angry with me!"
"So why tell me now?"
"I would've been happy to let you continue to think of me as dead. But when I saw you again, and heard what it is these years have made you say, I couldn't. Please say that there's still... something, anything, between us."
And saying that, in a british accent and wearing a mask, I just couldn't keep being angry. Thus, my love plot was resolved, even though he'd been a twit the whole time.

More panicking as soon as I was out of character, but managed to change into more casual clothes for the Iron GM games, where I got to break londo a bit. I was cast as pretty much the same exact character in both games, but I had more fun in the first, where my job was pretty much "Hey! Look what I can do!" and "Cake!" and then providing a major clue to solving a murder mystery.

More panicking. As soon as the second game was done, I ran back to the hotel room and fussed over everything. My appearance, the name badges, every single thing had to be perfect. I drew gears on my cheek, threw on some rhinestones, and made myself sparkle. Then the high really kicked in. elenuial still hadn't read any character sheets, and I had this strange sense of anxiety over that. These characters were the product of my hard work - I loved every single one of them. What if he didn't? Luckily, he only found minor typos, and even though we had a drop pretty late in, all of our players and replacements found their way to the room for their name tags and character sheets.

It was pretty freaking epic.

The costumes alone told me which demons were which (I didn't have to ask for most of them), and a lot of humans had managed to personalize their costumes to their characters as well. And as soon as I let the two groups interact, magic happened.

I really wasn't needed, though some of the initial pairings broke me. If anyone playing saw that after seeing two people talk I had to go stop laughing in the corner, that's why. Some of the more social characters were everywhere, like nyren and jingsaw, while watching them cruise (and sometimes tag-team) the room was like watching hawks in a room full of baby bunnies.

You broke me, players. I love you all. You had me at "six penises."

I've also decided to retire Martha. It's hard, since people tell me that they want to play in/run such a great game, but I think that ultimately, it won't work nearly as well as with this group. I wrote the characters specifically for the players, so without them, a lot of that magic is gone.

After that, I stayed up until Stupid o'Clock talking with spiritseeker and, later on, jingsaw. Gamespace was discussed with the first, headspace with the latter. I had a lot of brain food from both.

Also, for anyone interested, I've sent out the source materials to the game to all of the players. Even today, I'm still getting emails of "wow, that was awesome, thank you for being alive to write this game." And throughout the rest of the con, I'd heard nothing but praise for it. So, my first game seems to be a crazy success, and if anyone wants to run it themselves, shoot me an email.

Here are a few of my favorite shots from Martha. To see the whole album, just click on any of the photos.







So, that was my Intercon. I have months and months to decide whether or not to run a game next year, but I think that I've garnered myself a little GM cred this time around. =)