These are just some of the weird and wacky notes that I discovered, or
interesting tidbits that may be useful for you to think about...
- Flippy the Wonder Spatula should figure in here somehow. I've been
playing with the idea of a Flippy-napping.
- There was an idea for a con game at 12.5(?) which never materialized.
It was the "Planet of the Greg Crowes". They could be another group.
(It's also Greg's birthday on Friday the Thirteenth, so we should make use
of that.)
- I have this vision of some total chaos breaking out at the party about
1:30 AM. It would be really cool if we could synchronize all of the
climactic rituals/attacks/bomb-threats/Flippy revelation at the same
time.
A long time ago, I ran a superhero tabletop adventure that the players didn't
realized was based solely on music by R.E.M. until the evil Dr.
Aurium and his magic henchmen broke out in It's the End of the World As
We Know It (and I feel fine)... That would be a great trigger for
everything to go off...
- I am Toreador in nature. When it comes to Vamp games, I've played some
flavor of Toreador the last three years running. Valjean Guy was a human
Servant (Ghoul) to the Toreador Primogen. Archer Steel was the Toreador Primogen
the next year. He ended the game as Prince of Worcester, a position he did
not want to be in. This year, Matthias Peterson is a human Servant to another
Toreador (Kathy Journeay).
Valjean was a painter, a Poseur who discovered real talent only in the
end. Archer was a true Artiste, a sculptor, but known for in-game
poetry. This year, Matthias is a poet who believes his work to be crap.
Another motive for murder is P-5, the Psychopathic Poets Preventing Poor
Poetry. I've inflicted my works in game two years in a row, now. I also
added some of them to Treaty of Berlin at 12.5. I've
collected all the works in one place. There's about forty pieces.
They range from things like Black Ice
Life (recited during Berlin) and
Night Sky to less
serious pieces like Words and
Ode to a Suicidal Cow.
There are a few others that I really like.
- FYI, Archer was very much in love with Ivo, the Nosferatu Primogen. He
wrote Ode to a Suicidal Cow to her,
along with several other works. Tara Halwes played Ivo, and she'll be at
the con. (Tara and I have this chemistry that always seems to show up in
games. We always seem to end up somewhere close by, for all sorts of
strange but reasonable reasons. Besides, she's fun to play against.)
- Archer was a character that just spilled out of me. In a week, I wrote
about sixty pages of background, covering 530 years. There was a love
story I wrote into the character (other than Ivo) that I never figured
would come out, about Archer's love for a woman in Paris. It was one of
those things that completely changed the direction of the character.
She was a human who saved him from depression and suicide, that woke the
love in him, and started him creating again. It led to his resurgence as
the Prince of Paris. It led to a wild affair. It was magic - and it was
a love that broke the bonds that had hidden her Fae nature from herself.
She was transformed, in one magical night. So, who was to know that there
were going to be Fae in the game?
Now, I was writing up the description of one of these games, where the Fae
and the story of this love figured prominently in everything I did. I
stopped to take a break, because the role-playing experience had been
really intense, and writing it was a challenge. I turned on the TV and
VH1. There was a video of this ethereal woman singing this wonderful
song, and, as I listened to the words, I realized that they could very well
be telling the story of Archer's love from her side.
The love of Archer's life was named Celine, which I had taken from the
moon. The singer on VH1 was someone I'd never heard or seen before. I
figured it was cosmic when I learned it was Celine Dion. Now go listen
to It's All Coming Back to me Now, the first track on her
Falling Into You album, and, well, it still freaks me out.
Listen to the second song on the album, and that's the story of Archer's
feelings for Ivo, one of the other great loves of his life. Sometimes,
role-playing is spooky.
- One of my handwritten scrawls about the game says Night Court (of
the Apocalypse). Don't ask me how it relates, because I don't have a
clue now... It made sense once.
So did The Invocation of the Inflatable Women, but that one's even
scarier!
- The Enfield family has been a consistent set of villains in all of my
games. There's an Enfield somewhere in the mix. I have the family tree
going back to the 18th century.
- I figure that the volume of postings I've made certainly qualifies me
for a visit from the Internet Spam Troopers. I have this picture of
Imperial Storm Troopers as the base for them...
- When Gail Peck, Doug Freedman, Sean Butler, and Dirk Parham ganged up
on my character in Ben Llewellyn's Paddlewheel, it was because of a
frog. My character had been poisoning Gail's with medicine, designed to
keep her a paying customer. They fed some medicine secretly to a frog.
The word went out to all of the GMs over their walkie talkies as "Attention:
the frog has died. Repeat, the frog has died." or some such. If Sean is
coming to the con (a strong possibility), I'd love to give him a green
plastic frog in some kind of arrival kit...
- Terilee Edwards-Hewitt is going to DJ at the party. She knows there's
certain music I want played. She doesn't know why.
- At Intercon 11.5, which really started the whole series of parties, a
whole bunch of us (Gail, Ryan Smart, Terilee, Sandy Antunes, Bruce Glassco,
Mary Ann Russillo) made up a story-telling card game about pirates called
Jolly Roger. With a liberal amount of port flowing, we actually
worked together to tell a very complex, interwoven, and really racy pirate
story out of randomness. Ryan and Terilee were particularly suggestive,
giving new meaning to "oranges and limes".
- At 11.5, the post-game partying really took off. The Vampire game
there had really tanked. (Read the blurb for Flog-A-Thon, which
takes a pot-shot at it.) To try and revive it, they decided to have a
Toreador Dance Party, inviting the rest of the con to it as backdrop.
Well, a bunch of us brought our favorite characters. I came in as
Archer. Gail and Dig did Vinny and Lisa from My Cousin Vinny, and
just cracked a couple of us. Before long, we'd kicked the Vamps out. I
cracked open some port, someone put some music on a stereo, and we started
dancing.
- Drinking port post-game is a tradition Gail and I have each had
separately for a long time. (pre-Intercon) There have been several
occasions that the two of us old farts have outlasted all of the youngsters.
- Gail and I are each a Vortex of Chaos. Our lives have some
very interesting parallels. That we're only about a week apart in age,
both do murder mystery games, have two kids (one of each), started and
ended our divorce proceedings about the same time, are only some of the
similarities in our lives. Being a Vortex means that life usually sucks
pretty bad, and if something can make it worse, it will. (Now read
Black Ice Life again...)
The gaming has been one of the few bright spots.
- I came to Intercon because of
The Treaty of Berlin. Not because I'd run it,
but because talking about it on the Internet brought me in contact with
Gail, with Jesse Sanford and Christine Carpenter, and with Mike Young.
All three of them independently suggested that I come to Intercon XI.
I'd wanted to meet Gail, had played in a game of Jesse and Christine's
(The original incarnation of Conjunction, actually.), and Mike was
con-chair.
Ryan and Jonathan were also going to the con, and they volunteered a
ride.
The con started on my 38th birthday. I'd been separated for about six
months, and needed something social in my life. XI was an amazing con. I
met Becky Schoenberg, Keri and Eric Reuss, Eric the Lighter Golovchenko,
Terilee Edwards Hewitt, John Corrado, Gordon and Stephanie, Ben Llewellyn,
Steve McCann, Moira Parham, Sandy Antunes, and so many others.
With Terilee, it was magic - like we'd known each other our entire life.
We played opposite each other in Gail and Dig's Til Death Do Us
Part. We're actually quite angstful that someone else is going to
play us at 13.
What can I say about meeting Gail and Dig in person? Gail and I started
a long tradition of staying up way too late drinking immense
amounts of port and talking. Dig fell asleep, as usual.
Less than six months later, I was chair for Intercon the Thirteenth. XI
was an amazing con.
- IMPORTANT NOTE: I had never been much of a drinker. A
glass of wine was a rare occasion. Yet, when Gail and I get together, the
port just vanishes in prodigious quantities. Then we turn right around and
get up the next morning for gaming. I don't know how or why it happens,
but it does. We usually look at each other in amazement over the emptied
bottles.
At 12.5, the stress of doing Berlin back to back kept me awake all
hours preparing. I didn't have enough to eat before the game.
Consequently, I was the one who fell asleep on Saturday night, quite
drunk from port. Gordon, Jose Manuel de Cunha, and at least one other
person had to carry me into my room on a table. All I remember is the
voice of G.O.D. speaking to me as they moved me.
- Most of my games have a pretty standard format for their character
sheets. It looks something like this mockup
of the intro I made for the program book a while back.
- I've been doing tabletop since 1976. My Dungeons and Dragon campaign
ran for twenty years before going on hiatus eighteen months ago. (Another
reason for a killer, I suppose.)
I started LARPing by writing my own game back in 1986. I found out about
a murder mystery game that was full, and with a long wait list for future
events. Not having a clue, I wrote
Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll. So
far, I've written:
Sex..., Berlin, and Idol Hands have been run several
times each. (I ran Berlin twice, simultaneously at 12.5!!!)
A significantly expanded Club Ivory will run again at 13.
- Cameron Betts and I wrote the original version of
A Night at Club Ivory in a week as a playtest for
Archon Games. It was playtested by the I13 staff, plus three others.
- Two summers ago, I drove, by myself, from here to Champaign, Illinois,
to run The Idol Hands of Death for Gail and Dig.
It was definitely a vortextual experience. Ask me to tell you the
story about the bed and breakfast where we ran the game.
Last summer, I flew out there to run Sex, Drugs and
Rock & Roll for Gail, Dig and Philip Kelley. Gail was still
unpacking the apartment the night before the game.
BTW, Christine Carpenter drove from Tennessee both times to play in the
games. I have some amazing friends.
- So whatever happened to that kid who used to sing "Oh, I wish I were an
Oscar Mayer Wiener"? If he vanished under mysterious circumstances, he
might be a saint by now. Who is it at the con, and why did they vanish?
- Jeanie Whited checked the Oscar Mayer Wiener box and added a note that
said she'd costume. I say it's about time we called that marker in...