Intercon

[jducoeur]

Before I forget it all, time for the post-Intercon diary entry.

I continue to love the new hotel, and hope that it continues to be our home for many years to come. It does have some fascinating quirks, though. When I checked in on Thursday, I found that my room was not only on the first floor, it was on the main corridor, right across from many of the game spaces. And it was the size of an aircraft hangar, with a king-sized bed positively dwarfed by the floor space. (I have officially recommended that we rent it for parlor games next year: I strongly suspect that room 135 used to be function space that got converted to a guest room -- it even has double doors at the entrance.)

While I was wandering around, musing, "So what do I do with all this space? Seems like a waste", I ran into Kendra. She was supposed to be rooming with Tom and Wren, but their reservation had gotten lost, and they were desperately looking for people who had room for them to split off into. After musing on this for a few minutes, I decided it was clearly Kismet, and offered to put them all up. With Tom sharing the bed, Ren getting a cot and Kendra using the Kendra-sized chaise, the room felt a good deal more lived-in, but still by no means crowded.

Friday was pretty mellow. I attended some roundtables on subjects I knew a bit about (eg, repairing problematic older games) and some that I didn't (eg, Boffer games at Intercon). In the evening, I wound up pinch-hitting a bit for Kendra, who was running her new game Eclectic Dream Summit -- I got to play the not-very-nice-and-all-powerful AI Eve at game opening, threatening Doom and Destruction at everyone and hopefully spreading a bit of havoc with a bunch of conspiracy theories (some written into the game and some made up by me on the spur of the moment). And then I went off to build some Spooky Cyberspace with black light bulbs for the game.

And then I did a couple of hours of Ops. It is deeply weird how quiet Ops now is on Friday mid-evening. That used to be pure crazy time, with folks arriving at a rapid clip all evening. But nowadays the large majority of the Con has arrived by 8pm Friday, and many of them have already played a couple of games. Intercon has become solidly a 3-4 day convention, just as Arisia has become solidly a 4-5 day one.

Saturday was busier, but I still deliberately only played two games. (I value my sleep-in time, and am happiest at cons if I don't have to dash up.)

The afternoon was Into the Silent Sea. This all-amnesia game (I am still boggled that that has become a genre unto itself) was Tory and Lily's Iron GM game from last year, and is solidly fun. It's not quite as All The Feels deep as some of their games, but it is still a fine bit of weirdness, with all sorts of identity confusion, very distinct characters, a lot of hard exploration of how we are affected by the world around us, and difficult choices to make at end-of-game. Amnesia games aren't everyone's cup of tea, but if you don't mind that approach, this is a good one to try.

In the evening, I managed to get into Project Ouroboros. This game is from Alleged Entertainment, and is every bit as much of a structural experiment as I've come to expect from them. It's actually half of two games that are joined at the hip. Project Ouroboros is a science-fiction game about a team of scientists in a time loop, trying to solve a bad situation. It runs hand-in-glove with the fantasy game The Roots of Yggdrasil from Paranoid and Crotchety, which ran next door. Yes, the two games turn out to be deeply entwined; no, I can't tell you why, on grounds of spoilers.

Project Ouroboros is of the "here's a bad situation that you need to resolve" category, and was a solid entrant in that. My character needs a bit of work -- far as I can tell, it was written to have relatively few direct goals, with a lot of other people pointing to it, but in the high-pressure environment, much of that didn't come out. But it was still a good ride, and I chatted a bit with Nat about how he might beef up the character. (I only got to see a bit of The Roots of Yggdrasil, but that seemed to be much more of an emotional roller-coaster -- the players looked pretty wiped out from it by the end. Which is kind of what I expect from Paranoid and Crotchety.)

Thence off to the dance party, which was the same as it always is, but it's always a highlight of the convention for me -- the time that I feel comfortable just going out onto the floor and letting loose, dancing as the music moves me. (Some time, I really ought to find somewhere else where I have that level of comfort, because man is it good for my head.)

Sunday morning, I played in Second Annual Mad Science Awards, which was simply a hoot -- the sort of Sunday-morning lunacy that I always enjoy to finish off my weekend. You have an Id (I was "Nervous"), and a Drive ("Get them to listen to you!"), and are attending the Awards of the name. As of game start, they were about to announce the winner -- and then Something Happened, and everyone switched brains. So you have an Ego (a brief character sheet), but about every ten minutes, everyone switches character sheets.

Needless to say, it is a very high-chaos game, where you do have goals at any given time, but don't get too attached to them. It's somewhat like a horde game in that respect, where you throw yourself briefly into a very elemental, rather extreme character, and then move on to the next. It's a great deal of fun, if you can turn your suspension of disbelief up to 11 and just throw yourself into it -- one of those great kid's-playacting LARP experiences. Highly recommended if you like that flavor of game.

Comments

[danabren]

(Some time, I really ought to find somewhere else where I have that level of comfort, because man is it good for my head.)</>

Depending on your type of music, just ... go club and dance. Or make a playlist and crank it up in your living room. Just dance :)

[laurion]

We also had a double door aircraft hangar. The double door thing is actually to ensure rooms with full accessibility. I've heard that other conventions use that hallway for a dealers row or party rooms, etc. If Intercon ever grows large enough I can see using those the way we did some of the suites at the Chelmsford Radisson.

And I remember when one of the recurring complaints was 'Games should not start before [7/8] on Friday night!', because we were very much still a weekend long con but trying to figure out how to cram as much game time into the weekend as was practical, and there was a friday night line 20 or 30 people deep at Ops. *grin* Ops was a different experience then, and with -everyone- coming in at the same time, and the con smaller, you could work Ops on Friday night and greet -everyone-. Now I can go all con and not see everyone there.

If it runs again (and I think it likely), Tihor's Evil Magic Academy Faculty Breakfast is a great lightweight pur roleplay way to kick off the weekend.