KapCon 2008

[mundens]

Yes I know, I'm late. But life is full, and this Wednesday morning sitting in seraphs_folly's cottage while she sleeps on, is the first real chance I've had to record my experiences.


Kapcon started on Friday evening when I turned up at Syn early and found that Syn expected us to be using it from 5pm. Next year maybe we should advertise as starting at 5pm anyway? People like me go there straight from work regardless. So sat with the early-birds and chatted, Got my pizza and wedges order in before the rush. It was a good evening, though I took it easy due to still needing to do many things. Great to catch up with people, and the best part of the night was realizing that I was in a bar completely filled with people I knew, who were having fun.

Drove in in the morning with panda_pitt feeling much more relaxed and organized than is usual on the first day of a KapCon, perhaps because I actually got up in time and had most of the stuff ready to put in the car. Even had enough time to make some filled rolls and have coffee before leaving.

This year I was lazy, and apart from sitting on the desk during the fifth round I didn't do anything to help the con actually on the weekend, no running of games or anything.

First round I got to play the oldest boy in Marcus Bone's Fear of Dreaming. Have to thank Marcus for coming in and running it even though he had to rush off to a wedding afterwards. The difficulty for me was trying to balance playing my character to the hilt ("I'm in charge"), and allowing other players more spotlight. Still with James P as a younger brother who idolized me, and fraser_by_proxy as the youngest girl, complete with a five-year-old's confidence in their own rightness and indestructibility,and all the other great players combined with Marcus' haunting script, it was a wonderful start to the day.

This was followed by Ivan Towlson's "It's a Gargle Past Threep". I don't think I quite got into the spirit of this one though it was a fun romp playing the bimbo time police. I was privileged to see Ian Bayard's performance as Vicki, the really dumb one. His IC statements and actions had us cracking up because they were so apt. IMO he certainly deserved the award he won later. My character succeeded in mating with my ancestor, and in figuring out how they were going to kill Pope Gregory.

Third round I played in exiledinpn's One Crowded Hour, a classic Traveller adventure, where we played the crew of a star-liner, as Things Go Wrong. I think that considering what was thrown at us, we did remarkably well at keeping both paying passengers and crew alive. I was most proud of my chief engineer continuing to give instructions on how to recover helm to the second engineer whilst drifting off in to space, having lost his grip on the ship while EVA, when an asteroid or chunk of ring destroyed the bridge. .

Then it was LARP time I played Polaris, the "king" of the "seafarers". Here is a picture (thanks to Glock) to show why those words are in quotes :

For me it was an extremely busy and exciting LARP, I spoke to empresses, kings, princesses, and high priests, finagled trade deals, and most importantly helped a goddess achieve her destiny. This was also the first LARP I've been ini which involved my in-character wife and I making love. See, we had this issue that she had never been able to bear me children (although I knew I was capable of it, having had a bastard son, which was a plot line that didn't get fully resolved because of lack of time), and the aforementioned goddess had blessed us and made us feel really healthy, and well, we didn't want to lose the feeling... :)

I think the LARP team did an excellent job this year, and it was probably one of the best LARPs we've had. I think the questionnaire was a great innovation for casting, the set dressing was wonderful, and the writers did a great job at making what was a pretty basic and heavily-used concept very enjoyable.

The only down-side was next morning when several of us suffered a "LARP hangover", like we'd been drinking all night even though we hadn't. Sunday morning I had to get real coffee from the station stand when we picked up James P.

First-up was jenni_talula's Fruit's Basket game, which as she said, suffered from the LARP hangover's and general sleepiness, though I think Jenni did better at characterizaion and keeping things moving than I could. But it was a lot of fun to play and Chong's Ayame helped the silliness considerably.

Next I helped eyes_of_winter and Scott a bit and I was surprised when I got mentioned in the list of prizes.

Finally I played in Kill Bargle mr_orgue's FRUP game which was a lot of fun, though not something I'd do often. I was most impressed with mr_orgue's portrayal of NPC's and the interactions between him and Ivan.

After pack-up I headed off home rather than going tot the after-party, as I was flying out to see seraphs_folly the next morning and still had to prepare things and pack (there will be posts about that later!).

Overall it was great to catch up with old friends including some with babies), meet new people with the similar interests, and be impressed at how much skill is out there.

Comments

[wyldcard.livejournal.com]

Nice one. Never too late - I haven't seen that many Kapcon posts...

[exiledinpn.livejournal.com]

First round I got to play the oldest boy in Marcus Bone's Fear of Dreaming.

Snap! Though I had Scott as the kid brother, and Nasia as the youngest girl, and we worked together well. It's an excellent story; unfortunately I can't talk about it for fear of giving it away.

I was really pleased with your run of One Crowded Hour - the group seemed to be more in the mood and went with the heroic options. But next time, I'm keeping a "bodycount" tally.

[(Anonymous)]

I always enjoy reading people's posts about Kapcon and it was interesting especially reading your account of Fear of dreaming. It's annoying I think our group clicked so well and we all had so much fun but I can't talk much about it as I hope Marcus runs it for others.

And glad you enjoyed the con, you deserved to have one off from running anything. You still bought heaps of stuff to help out and did lots before the con.