Journal of No. 118

Twas Maxicon and the slithy toves did gyre and role-play in Santa Clarita.

I showed up for just Sunday, and despite aggravation on the 405 (incidentally, it was only recently I learned that people in other benighted regions of the world look askance at the local usage of 'the' 405 or 5 or what have you.) I made it there with time enough to fret fitfully until my game was up: Movie Mashup. I promised that characters from various movies I liked would interact in situations drawn from other movies. I had some grand idea, but in the full light of day I later discovered that it just didn't work, but I managed to put together something that at least provided some light amusement.

Starting in the cantina in Mos Eisley, our six protagonists turned out to be Jake and Elwood Blues, Willy Wonka, Tank Girl, The Dude, and Dante Hicks. They were approached by some farmers in black & white outfits... er, rather, they were entirely in B&W (as was Dante). Their village was under attack by bandits, and they were in search of Seven Samurai to protect them. They agree and join the fourth Samurai, who, being a droid, had to wait outside the cantina.

On their way to the Maltese Falcon, they were accosted by a bounty hunter in robes and a mask with a phased plasma rifle in a 40 watt range. It turned out to be Princess Leia, who had a few words for Jake: "You contemptible pig! I remained celibate for you. I stood at the back of a cathedral, waiting, in celibacy, for you, with three hundred friends and relatives in attendance. My uncle hired the best Corellian caterers in the state. To obtain the seven limousines for the wedding party, my father used up his last favor with Mad Pete Trullo. So for me, for my mother, my grandmother, my father, my uncle, and for the common good, I must now kill you, and your brother."

While Captain Sam Spade and Navigator Joel Cairo got the Maltese Falcon off the planet, they soon ran into problems since the planet they were approaching was "an ugly planet; a Bug planet! A planet hostile to life as we know it!"

Shot down by bug butt cannons, our heroes tried to get into the escape pod. Except Willy Wonka, who figured with fizzy lifting drink he could just evacuate himself into space and come to no harm. The rest had some problems opening the escape pod door when HAL decided, "I'm afraid I can't do that, Jake." But fortunately, Tank Girl was around to draw an ass on the door and kick that ass.

On the planet, the were saved by Rico's Roughnecks and finally made it to the village, where some piss-poor plans were made for defense, while Tank Girl and Jake Blues had a threesome with one of the local Japanese maidens washing clothes at the riverbank.

Eventually sleep came, but they woke up in color in a Mexican village that had gotten its seven gunslingers to protect it against bandits. Tank Girl takes out most of Calvera's bandits. But that's not the only threat. A new army was brewing to wipe out the town with a whoopin' and a hollerin'. But The Blues Brothers (accompanied by somewhat less expert musicians) put on a pretty good show that soften the hearts of the Klansmen, cholos, and other reprobates waiting to be inducted into the army by Hedley Lamarr. Tank Girl succeeded in stealing Hedley's froggy.

A bit later, Mongo is foiled, not initiallu by Willy Wonka's candygram, but digging deep Mr. Wonka emerged victorious.

Then Governor Vizzini appeared. 'You have defeated Hedley Lamarr, so you must have studied. You have defeated my giant, so you must be very strong. Now you must beat me in a battle of wits....'

Tank Girl challenged him to a game of Battleship, which she managed to win. Rather than pushing them all through the Matrix or Toontown, I decided this was a good place to stop. It was a short game, but I think it was good light entertainment. Brian was good enough to run a mini game based on some of the remaining characters I had, and then we wandered away to have some time to mingle and schmooz with folks.

Got to sneak in some Rock Band, and then it was time for Aaron's run of Dockside Dogs, a Cthulhu adventure that riffs off of Reservoir Dogs, written by the same bloke who wrote Gatsby and the Great Race. I can't say much without spoilers, but it was entertaining that basically the other characters were the most dangerous things on the scene.

After that broke up, I said my goodbyes and made a rapid return home.

Yays to popepat & familia for opening up their house again to scores of gamers, and keeping the house from exploding or imploding. I saw Mrs. Pope slaving away fairly constantly, but at least people were lending a hand as and when needed.

I zipped up Saturday night for citizenbrown's RPG set in Iain Banks' Culture. It was a little unfortunate that I was the only player with a strong grounding in the universe, but I think it all worked out reasonably well. Chun had put together a diceless system that started with a fairly rapid character creation round in which we drew cards labelled with... attributes, let's say. These cards gave us some role-playing hooks and could be played during the adventure for improvements in success. Since I had the best understanding of the universe, Chun allowed me to play a Ship (and associated avatar). One of the attributes I drew was 'Hilarious' - "You're hilarious, but people don't always get your jokes -- the first time you make everyone (including the GM) at least chuckle, you get [a token used to improve results]." Anyway, I chose (for my 'hilarious' Culture ship name) N Objects Walk into a Bar. Now, I wonder if N Bodies Walk into ħ would be an improvement.
I can't remember what I said to first make people crack up, but I managed to do it a few times. When a drone was about to do something I considered foolish, I liked my deadpan Wonka "don't. stop. come back." More in the nature of a malicious prank was when rizwank demanded a weapon of me -- admittedly, in the middle of a battle -- and I displaced a board with a nail in it into his hands. Suffice to say, our diplomatic Contact mission got a little out of control, but I think we managed a nice success.
I chatted with a few people afterwards, but pretty quickly hit the road back, returning for my game on Sunday:
Session 38: Big Band Wolf, a rules-light adventure set in the world of Cowboy Bebop, with the players being the five crewmembers of the Bebop.
( Dullness Alert: TMI RPG war story theater )
After my game, Dab ran his goth RPG, where a group of club habitués tried to collect signed copies of some goth/industrial albums for a dying friend. Lightly plotted and more an excuse for Dab's acquaintances from the scene to show up as the PCs and NPCs, but there were some fun scenes as we riffed on the setting and the oddball characters. It ran short, which was actually nice, since then I could spend some time drifting around socializing with various peoples, and managed to hit an opportune moment to snag one of the Louisiana hotlinks I'd brought off the grill that the Pope manfully manned to feed the horde. Played some Rock Band, schmoozed a little more, and then headed back. Unfortunately, there was a two car injury collision on the 405 at Santa Monica that blocked the two left lanes and was not too far ahead of me. I almost made it over to get off at Wilshire, but didn't. I did get into the Santa Monica exit lane, but pretty soon everyone was at a standstill. I expect they towed the wreckage off down the SM offramp and so stopped all traffic. I was stuck there maybe 20-30 minutes -- long enough for me and a number of other people to switch off our engines. Crummy, but one of those situations where you know some other people are having a far crummier night.

Maxicon is still going on at popepat's house, but I packed all my Maxiconage into Saturday. All hail Pope Pat.
I ran a mutated version of Casino Arcane. My main personal goal was to get prepared for Casino Arcana at WyrdCon. See what needed to be tweaked (maybe a couple of powers) and to get my eyes retrained to spot Tarot poker hands without staring at them forever.
The added mutation was that the players came as characters, famous wizards from books or other media, and that part of the game was to guess the identity of the other players. Guessing someone's identity gave you 2 spell points, while having your identity guessed gave you 1 spell point, so that you had an incentive to have your secret identity guessed (and to force you to do a little role-playing). I think that worked much better than I feared, and maybe better than I expected, to add a little party-game atmosphere to the proceedings.
Ultimately, Sabrina the Teen Witch (mewatson) wound up with the victory, having defeated Ron Weasley, Dr. Strange, Byron Orpheus, Elminster, and Tellah.

Then Maxicon turned into Dresdencon for me, which is kind of funny since I'm a bit ambivalent about the first two books (but of course everyone keeps telling me that things really get interesting in book 3... or maybe book 5 at the latest). Anyway, Ken ran the new Dresden Files RPG. It's kind of a neat system that has elements that help promote group storytelling. We finished off the character creation, which was sort of a group storytelling excercize -- it took a bit too long for a con game, but was still an interesting process in itself. But there was still enough time to do a little investigation, kick some ass, and save the day.

Finally, Graydon & notjenschiz ran a DresdenLARP. ( war stories )

Battle of Titans

I spent Sunday at Maxicon, and had a great time in the silly-RPG trifecta. In Brian's Ogg-prentice, the Donald had brought 6 cavemen into the future to battle it out Apprentice style. Our first task was to sell hotdogs. Brian had helpfully provided buns and hotdogs and we sidled into LARP. I managed to make fire in the kitchen, and using some sharp metal sticks thrust through the hotdog, I cooked it. Then we had to sell the hotdogs to the other con attendees using only our 12 word Ogg vocabulary (the usual caveman nouns augmented by business-school buzzwords). I project managed our team into an overwhelming victory, not least due to some creative strategems and fisticuffs. The next project was a bit more difficult for my all-caveMAN team. We were to design an advertising campaign for cross-branded Vera Wang/Serta mattress. The product managers emphasized the feminine nature of the product, and how capturing female appeal would be important. We couldn't think of anything more feminine than 3 hot naked chicks cavorting on the mattress. The focus group seemed to prefer the more highbrow effort from the other team, although our "Wang Bang" tagline tested well in most demographics.

My own RPG came next-ish, and various droids, borgs, muties and eaties (and 1 human) assembled to take place in a treasure hunt sponsored by the oligarchs of a planet on the ass-end of human space. In character creation, nobody chose any skills in driving or piloting, so there were certain difficulties in the team getting anywhere. But they more than made up for it with moxie and pluck. Brian and I split the majority of a bottle of Macallan 18 during this, so I don't remember too much, and what I remember was mainly of the you-had-to-have-been-there kind, so I'll spare you. Except to say that the final treasure they sought was a time capsule with 1957 Plymouth Belevedere inside. Sadly, much as was the case in Tulsa, the time capsule was not really designed well to withstand the ravages of time.

Then hagdirt's dragon egg hunt. My grizzled dragonslayer came through crowned with success, but (as often happens) the most dangerous element of the job was my fellow adventurers.

A little bit of Rock Band, and then I was headed back down the freeway toward home.

THANK YOU popepat and Mrs. Pope! And GM's and players and food bringers and drink bringers.

Pat (and Eleanor and Tanya) once again opened their house to hordes of gamers for Memorial Day weekend. Rebecca and I showed up on Saturday evening and immediately got involved in helping Kirsten with dinner, namely setting up the grills so veggies and meats could be heated for use in the construction of burritos. We had also brought along some chopped jalapeno, serrano and habanero peppers with a helpful sign outlining their relative hotness in Scoville units.

( the Maxicon continues )

Lessee...
( Read more... )

( LONG Maxicon3 review )>