Space Cadets: Guardians of the High Frontier

[essentialsaltes]

First the thank yous. This ain't my job, but I'm doing it anyway. These are some of the contributions I know about. There is plenty I have no idea about.

aaronjv: He led the team. He was always steadfast. He worked on it more than anyone in preparation. He worked on it more than anyone during its execution. Despite a number of trying circumstances, he was always a leader. I can almost guarantee that he is, at this very moment, still moving things from the hotel to... someplace other than the hotel.

David K: He built so much stuff, up to and including our rocket. He let us store stuff at his house. He let us use his house as storage and a rallying point. He is aces.

obishawn: He built and adapted so much other stuff. And did some voice work for us.

David M: He built so much other other stuff. And slaved on the derelict ship. And someday soon, I'll teach him base 4 mathematics if it kills me.

Stephen T: He came from across the country to help us out. For no reward apart from helping fellow Larpers, he manned our registration desk for two days. Aces in my book.

casketgirl: another mostly unwitting volunteer offering selfless help to us all. From the physical labor of sewing sashes to the complicated work of GM'ing missions. She also makes a good pirate.

hagdirt: I would be surprised if she didn't do about ten times as much work as I personally witnessed. What I personally witnessed was plenty.

popepat: Whatever Shawn and the Davids didn't make, Pat loaned to us. He was also active in so much of the early planning.

Tom as our sergeant; always in character, always ready for more. notjenschiz as a fellow GM. Richard's input in the planning was not always exactly welcome, but it needed to be said. And despite his misgivings, he did everything we needed him to do during the run, and more. And I want to strangle the little shit that threw that ball at him.

I've already thanked too many people, and yet there's still Nick and Morgan and Karen and Ray and Riz and Graydon and Rachel and I could go on for a long time.

AND THE PLAYERS. We had not as many as we would have liked, but the whole thing would've been pointless without them. It was great to see people new to LARPing get a taste of it in our game and enjoy their time at the academy. It was cool to see the LARPers come by and give us a try.

As for the game itself, I'm too weary to give a blow-by-blow. Mistakes were made. Nevertheless, fun was had. I'm sure there will be long discussions about every aspect of this, but I have no desire to start it all here. I worked a lot and had some fun with my friends and some (mostly) strangers who were willing to come play in our sandbox for a while.

Comments

Re: Cadets onwards!

[hagdirt.livejournal.com]

I believe my comment was amended to "boys in packs" as opposed to "boys." I had a lot of bad experience with boy-packs when I was a kid in school; they'd all get together, act like shits, and then try to out-do each other in acting like shits. (If only that stopped after grade school.) That being said, there was some evidence that the lack of control exhibited by these young cadets was learned, early, at home, because those kids weren't any younger than the well-behaved ones.

Re: Cadets onwards!

[rizwank.livejournal.com]

Fair point, and you're right. If I recall, the bad ones are just rude and loud, and the good ones tend to become 'tiring.' (I'm sure that while I wasn't nearly ever as loud or rude as those little ones, I sure was 'tiring.')

Did we just end up becoming babysitters for those boys, while their (father?) did something else?

Re: Cadets onwards!

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we wound up as de facto babysitters for them.

Re: Cadets onwards!

[rizwank.livejournal.com]

Whats funny --- did the possibility of that come up at ALL during our meetings? I hadn't even thought of that until it happened.

Re: Cadets onwards!

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure we specifically considered the idea that we would be used for daycare, but we did think about kids in the game. Originally, kids under 13 had to be accompanied by a responsible adult. See Aaron's later comment about how that rule was later bent and broken.