The charismatic Peter Franklyn attending Queen Victoria's Silver Jubilee. Panda Pitt looks quite the stunner - no wonder he won best costume. :D
Saturday
Kapcon opened with a bang for me, straight into running Flight of the Aristola I was given what could almost be called the dream team of first session players - Celeste, Jarrod, Jenni, Nick, Giffy and Nick Beach. There were aliens, runemages and madness! Jenni was a disturbingly convincing Indiana Jones and Nick was, no surprises here, a Bad Ass Lone-elf who lived by his own rules. (But that's why we love ya Nick! :) ) With such a cool team of players, I felt bouyed and positive about the first session and ready to take on the second.
I ended up running Aristola all three sessions - mostly because I stupidly forgot to print out some vital character sheet info for Snow and Thunder, the Weapons of the Gods game I intended to run. And I forgot the beads that it used. :)
In the second round we had more craziness - with a crowd of players who provided me with much entertainment - especially our mad axe throwing Neolli, and heroic Rand who kept telling tales of his mad exploits. It is interesting that out of three players over the Con, two chose the machine gun option for Rand. lol
Interspersed with all this, we had pizza and I got a chance to catch up with Morgue, Jon B. and many of the other Wellingtonians that I only ever get to see during KapCon. :)
The third session really brought things to a rollicking fun close - with a massive air chase courtesy of the only person I know who seems to secretly live the code of the swashbuckler - Johnathon T. :)
After everyone had finished up the third round, we started to get ready for the LARP.
The costumes were amazing, and everyone really made a fantastic effort to get the most out of the game. Which is really what helps to make a LARP successful. Everyone was keen to help each other have a fun evening, and from all accounts it worked.
I played Oscar Wilde - which was an exhausting role to play. Honestly, it is damn difficult to be that witty for three hours straight. :) I thought I had only pulled off a passable part, so imagine my surprise (and delight) when I ended up winning second place for best LARP player.
I've provided a picture of Nick, who was playing a mysterious and charismatic young man, Peter Franklyn. He won best costume for the LARP - what isn't readily visible in the picture are his subtle prothetics. He had tiny little horns which were almost impossible to notice until you had been talking to him for a while, and his ears were slightly pointed. This was because Peter was actually the faerie Puck. I had it on my character sheet that Oscar was verging on obsessed with Peter, and hey, when he looked that good I think everyone was obsessed with him by the end. :D
Luke and Sam also were Fae, Oberon and Titania - and arrived in shocking white make up and their eyebrows drawn further up their heads. Sam was stunning in her almost gothic appearance - a grey victorian dress, her hair in ringlets and a dark black veil across her face. Luke managed to be disturbingly menacing. He was trying to offer people their wishes, but his manner was so frightening, a lot of them simply avoided "the rude foreign man with the creepy face." :)
The best LARP Player was so convincing in her role I almost believed she was in fact a French opera singer. Admittedly, she was an opera singer - but that simply made it all the cooler when she and her fellow singers got up and gave us a recital of two songs. It made the whole game have a sense of authenticity that I feel really helped the players get into the game. Unfortunately, I can't remember her name. :(
Another highlight of the evening was the poetry competition. Jarrod has to get special mention for the impressive "BLOOD!" poem that Ambassador Dracula recited. Mash gave a Tennyson poem, that Lord Tennyson promptly derided as "interesting" (lol) and Emma Darwin read a truly appalling piece of poetry to her husband. Props to her for screaming "RIGGED!" when Chastity won the competition. :)
Sunday
So after a successful day of fun and frivolity, Sunday was a bit of a challenge to show up to - I was exhausted and feeling a bit tired when I showed up. But, naturally, that didn't last long. I'm a real morning person, and so I do my groggy start at about 7am and I'm perky and ready to hit the day by 7:01am. Much to Mash and Ivan's annoyance. :)
I was initially disappointed to have not gotten into Bebop or A/State when I dragged my heels into Hugh's Normality game. That sunk further when I saw the character sheet - rather than anything that remotely resembled rational sense, the sheet was mix of discordian comments and weirdness. I remember thinking when I looked at the sheet - "It is WAY too early in the morning for this!"
Still, I soldiered on because I was intrigued in the game and had heard good things about it. Within the first twenty minutes we were skipping school in a chillingly distopian future and slowly the words on the character sheets began to make a disturbing sense. By the end of the session we were all truly enraptured with this surreal tale of symbolism that ended with us bringing back the creatures of myth to the world.
Morgue made a very interesting comment at the post-Kapcon drinks about Normality - that while it was working on one level as a con game full of symbolism, he soon realised that there was another level to the game that was almost intuitive and hard to describe. I have to agree - at some point that is hard to pick, the group suddenly clicked into this strange second level and even though we seemed to be acting individually, our actions were all connected. It was a very strange experience. And very cool.
After a quick trip down to Subway with Giffy, Hix, Jenni et al it was on to the next round where I finally ran Snow and Thunder. The guys in that game were fantastic - and we all had a ball, especially Jarrod, I suspect, who had great fun being Plum Blossom Xi - the plump kung-fu matriarch who had come out of retirement to find her three missing sons. :)
Then it was the prize giving - where I was surprised to win second place for the LARP. Hix won best GM and Jon B. won best Player. Luke won the Scenario Design Competition and Nick won best costume for the LARP.
Now I'm really keen to get an opportunity to play in a game of Hix's. I've read his Buffy write-ups and he's really a talented GM. We had a chat about gaming, and he strikes me as quite an insightful guy. Hopefully next year we can convince him to enter the SDC as well. Maybe next year I might actually get off my own lazy bottom and write a scenario for a change as well. :D
In the final session - which is really the point where you can relax and have some fun - I got to play in Nick C.'s Firefly game. We had an absolute ball! Of course the stand out performance has to go to Jon B. who proved why he won best player by literally becoming Jayne off the show. He was hilarious. Frank P. was great as Zoe - if somewhat frightening at times when he flirted with his "husband" Wash across the table. I got to be Kaylee - which was so much fun. She's exactly how I like to be - always cheerful and happy. Norman was Mal - and he got some very cool lines off.
I felt a little intimidated - I'm not always good at coming up with the snappy lines, despite appearances - but I had such a good time, that it ended up being the true highlight of the entire con for me. Which I think is kind of a good thing, because it meant I left KapCon on a complete high.
After helping Matt and Debbie clean up, we went back to Norman's place to bask in the afterglow of the convention and share our favourite moments and thoughts. It was a lot of fun and a bit of a shame to go home and realise that it was now all over.
I got a text about one am just as I was about to go to sleep. It kind of summed up my feelings about the con - the happiness and the sense that I was sad to see it gone. Oddly enough, getting that text made me feel good about letting the weekend go so that I could wrap myself up in the memories of it and sleep.
Of course, I then had a lot of dreams about roleplaying last night. Go figure. :D
One last thing before I leave for now -
THANK YOU MATT AND DEBBIE FOR A VERY VERY VERY COOL KAPCON!
Love and Huggles
Conan
Currently Reading: D6 Fantasy
Mood: Content, warm and full of love for everyone. No, really. :) Hey, I'm in a good mood - that's what I'm like when I'm in a good mood. Get over it. :D HUG!
No comments:
Post a Comment