jducoeur: (Default)
[personal profile] jducoeur
Every LARP-running experience features some lessons to learn. This one was no exception. The lessons included:
  • If someone says they really, really, really want to play a Jaegermonster, let them. The Jaegers in both runs were *extraordinary*, a major highlight of the game. (The trio in the second run were reportedly novice LARPers, and were better than most veterans I know.)

  • Do not try to move eight-foot-long tables of uncertain stability by yourself. Especially, do not do so by shoving them. Dropping the end of a table on the arch of your foot is not an ideal way to start a day of GM'ing. (Ow, ow, ow...)

  • Dumb casting luck can strike twice. I never thought I'd have a re-run of the Ozma case, but it did almost repeat. The player who was going to play my favorite character of the game (a high-angst, high-romance character with a 15 page character sheet) had to drop on the evening before game run. I almost just ran without the character, but [livejournal.com profile] dervishspin stepped up to the challenge. From getting that 15-page sheet 11 hours before the game and knowing nothing about the comic, she came in the next morning, costumed just right, and *nailed* the role. It was a delight to watch.

  • Rocket-powered golf clubs do *not* make a wise demonstration example for Spark mechanics. The universe is listening, and has a wicked sense of humor.

  • Mostly, I determined that not only are adaptation games a bit harder than normal ones, adapting an ongoing, non-episodic story is quite a bit harder still. Oz might have been using other peoples' characters, but at least we had the entire L. Frank Baum corpus in front of us, and knew exactly how much freedom we had to embroider. (Quite a bit, given how internally inconsistent Oz is to start with.)

    But you have to fit a Girl Genius game inside an ongoing story, one where only the Foglios really understand the details. Worse, all evidence is that they *do* know many of those details, and just haven't told us yet. So I had to start with three months of simply evaluating everything that we knew, to figure out where my opportunities to invent were. And it's still likely that at least 80% of the guesswork in the story is just plain dead-wrong. (Although I still hold out hope that my Skifander backstory is at least partly correct -- that was pulling together lots of hints, so I think it's plausible.)
Overall, a good experience, and the game will probably get cleaned up and re-run at some point down the road. But it's good to get to the end of the process, and let out all the steam that's been building up and driving me forward for the past couple of months...

Skifander

Date: 2007-03-05 01:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cvirtue.livejournal.com
Is "the priestess" from Skifander? It would make sense....

Spawning an instant fascination.

Date: 2007-03-05 02:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dervishspin.livejournal.com
...curse you... now I have years of comic back story I have to read so I can get a handle on just what happened in the game.

Re: Spawning an instant fascination.

Date: 2007-03-05 02:21 pm (UTC)
tpau: (Default)
From: [personal profile] tpau
heehee. oh but it is an awesoem comic :)

Re: Spawning an instant fascination.

Date: 2007-03-05 02:34 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] msmemory.livejournal.com
Get ahold of the omnibuses - there are five, and I read through about one per evening before starting to proofread game materials. Really enjoyed them, too.

Details

Date: 2007-03-05 02:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] metageek.livejournal.com
only the Foglios really understand the details. Worse, all evidence is that they *do* know many of those details, and just haven't told us yet.

Yeah, I love the hints that keep cropping up, where you can't tell whether they're true or not. For example, I think the mechanical Lucrezia is herself from the future; but then why was Lucrezia-in-Agatha so surprised to hear Klaus had taken over?

And then there's the one that got dropped last Wednesday: "She made the Baron drink the Jägerdraught!" We know that's not true; but does the Jägerdraught actually exist? It could be a real brew that turns humans into Jägers; it could be a folktale that people in Mechanicsburg use to scare their children. Or it could be both: some ancient Heterodyne created Jägers the normal way (well, normal for a Spark, anyway), and later the folktale sprang up and some other Heterodyne thought, "Hey, great idea!".

Re: Details

Date: 2007-03-05 05:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rickthefightguy.livejournal.com
Yeah, I noticed that one too! I think the Jaegerdraught sounds far more Sparky than a decades-long breeding program. And remember Phil is the grandson of a Jaeger, and he doesn't have Jaeger characteristics.

Re: Details

Date: 2007-03-05 06:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] metageek.livejournal.com
I think the Jaegerdraught sounds far more Sparky than a decades-long breeding program.


Mmm, the question is whether they need breeding programs. Can a Spark create a construct that will reproduce its own kind? If so, then the original Jägers could have been constructed in the lab. They might have taken a while to produce a large enough population to use in battle, but there would've been other uses for them earlier. (It helps that, according to some hints, Jägers are apparently very long-lived; one of the wild ones mentions hunting with the Heterodynes about 200 years ago.)



And remember Phil is the grandson of a Jaeger, and he doesn't have Jaeger characteristics.


Except one: he always wears a hat.



Maybe Phil's a hybrid (or adopted, for that matter). Or maybe most Jägerkin are hybrids, and the blood thins out over the generations—that would explain why their appearance varies so widely. (Note that Phil's grandfather looks a lot more human than most Jägerkin.)



Here's a hypothesis. Hundreds or thousands of years ago, an early Heterodyne created the Jäger generals. They're big and tough, and don't grow old; but they're hideously difficult to create in the first place. So, they were created fertile, so that they could make more Jägers the usual way. Their half-human children turned out to be less, er, Jägerlich than they were, but still useful. Today, there are thousands of Jägerkin, all of them descended from the original generals. Those that have too much human blood are indistinguishable from human, and don't get conscripted into the Jägermacht. Hence Phil.



One problem with this: it doesn't explain the reference to "the ancient contract". Perhaps some other spark created the generals, and a Heterodyne suborned them—perhaps by offering them the ability to reproduce.

Re: Details

Date: 2007-03-05 07:28 pm (UTC)
mneme: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mneme
The Jagerdraught (or, if you like, Jagermeister) definately exists -- it's now canon (as per the recent strip) but it was specfied by Kaja, like, ages ago -- that the Jagers were created by "here, drink this" rather than by any other mechanism.

(Surprised the GGgame team didn't know this, actually, but then, not everyone follows the yahoo group and Kaja's blog).

Re: Details

Date: 2007-03-05 10:59 pm (UTC)
mneme: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mneme
No, they've never said anything about the hets -- it's clearly a piece of Jaeger culture in the comic, (and has graduated from "running gag" to background with the most recent hat dialogue), but the reasons, if any, have never been explained.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-03-05 02:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] metahacker.livejournal.com
tables of uncertain stability

"TOUSes? I don't think they exi--" POW! "Ow!"

(no subject)

Date: 2007-03-05 03:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gyzki.livejournal.com
If someone says they really, really, really want to play a Jaegermonster, let them.

I am a little surprised. Duzzen eferybudy rilly, rilly vant to pleh a Jæger?

(no subject)

Date: 2007-03-05 03:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] etherial.livejournal.com
Not effreywun owns a goot enuff hat.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-03-05 04:07 pm (UTC)
keshwyn: An anime woman with pigtails and a book. (butch)
From: [personal profile] keshwyn
Ja, gettink holt uf goot het took much verk, vas verth it, but vas bat stress. Must eat spleen uf USPS. That vill make better.

Spleen

Date: 2007-03-05 06:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] metageek.livejournal.com
Dot's a lot uf spleen. Dun forget der zalt.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-03-05 05:24 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rickthefightguy.livejournal.com
Pictures of Costumes!!!! Ve vants to see eevidense.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-03-05 05:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] goldsquare.livejournal.com
Are you going to share your results with the Foglio's?

(Really, REALLY, not interested in the comic - would happily read a sub-plot with a character based upon you. From what little I know of the tale, a character just like you would fit in there like syrup goes with pancakes.)

(no subject)

Date: 2007-03-05 07:31 pm (UTC)
mneme: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mneme
Thank you for running the game (and for letting me play Othar, iffen if he could have been a bit more relevant). 'twas a blast!

Hopefully, the game will get cleaned up and re-run at some point (and...maybe boxed and lent out?)

(no subject)

Date: 2007-03-05 11:00 pm (UTC)
mneme: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mneme
Heh. With technology as it is, "boxed" pretty much never means a physical box; far easier to have a zipfile that allows someone to run a game without bugging the original GMs every five minutes (or at all). (course, you don't get that level of boxing in one go; you get it by sending the game out, and then dealing with all the things you'd forgotten to mention or include the first time; but you know all this)

Quite understandable that you're not working on it right away, really -- first, it's pretty draining to finish a game (much less then run it twice), and I know we always want a break afterwards, and second, I have it on very good authority that you've also got another project you want to put some attention into.


(no subject)

Date: 2007-03-07 02:40 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] alethea-eastrid.livejournal.com
I'm not sure if this will have filtered back to you, but walking past Jagermonsters plotting in corners on the way to breakfast, while half aleep, redefined surreal in my book. Though I do count myself lucky not to have passed through a half-hour earlier, and been pressed into service as a squid.

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