Dreamation recap, without my notes in front of me. This is super long!
tl;dr - everything was amazing. I cried twice, was horrified at least once, and used a threat of religious violence to affect global politics!
Thursday 8PM: Lovecraftesque with Misha B : Can Mr. Giggles Come To Dinner?
-- A lovely starting game. GMless Cthulian horror. No character ownership, as playing the victim (err... witness) rotates, as do the other positions. Really great! in our game, a single mom deals with a daughter who has an imaginary friend who ... isn't so imaginary. Horrifying and delightful!
I choose games as much for GM as for content: Misha B is fantastic! And, as my starting game, this got me really well situated and feeling like I was among friends. It helped that I knew half the people playing, of course.
Friday 9AM: The Starlit Kingdom with Anna Kreider
-- This was the start of my accidental "Anna Track." I got to play a mysoinist, in a world where women are much, much more powerful than men. Also GMless, this one had a bit more character ownership; the main characters are owned by a player, but the supporting cast moves around.
Friday 2PM: Apportment with Jason Morningstar
-- I played the Exarch: the leader of the largest religious organization, which is supported by the largest ethnic demographic. I was the pope! Apportionment is all about drawing a line down a map to make countries. Only 3 people get to decide this; the other 10 of us can talk to them and have to live with the consequences.
Playing pope is a bit of a stretch for me, because organized religion. Still, I think I got into it pretty well. Those deciding things made it plain early on they would not give me a religious state; instead, I manipulated Lizzie Stark's maybe Hitler-esque President character into letting me make sure all presidents of her country are of my religion, and giving me control of some holy sites.
I was really pleased with how: I noticed the President wasn't getting a particular city she wanted from the Deciders. The Pope has a super power to get the faithful of a particular city to have religious demonstrations. I had a nice chat with her, explaining I could have the faithful in that city have a nice little religious demonstrating, making the Deciders have to deal with religion. She quickly threatened to send her military to my holy sites; I revised how I was stating the demontration to be also pro her government.
Then, I had a nice chat with the Deciders, explaining that I didn't really care how they draw a line, I just wanted to be the official religion of Lizzie's country. I'd get it if they did Y, and if they didn't do Y, I'd drop the religious bomb. They were moved, and it worked!
Hooray for threats of sectarian demonstrations changing the political landscape! Oh, wait ....
Friday 8PM: The Watch with Andrew Medeiros and Anna Kreider
Imagine a world where men are likely to succumb to violence, so women have to take up arms to defend themselves. All PCs are women, and "Cis" is rarely the first option.
Friday 12AM+: The Forgotten with Andrew Medeiros
kickstarter here: (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1287928832/the-forgotten-a-live-action-game)
So good! The game plays out in days as turns, where you send people out of a bunker to search for food and supplies.
The last night, my lover, played by Misha B was sent out. The only people left were wounded; I told Jay Treat I was pretty sure they weren't coming down. That they were leaving the wounded to die.
Just as this happens, they come back. Misha B is mortally wounded, but got food for all of us. We wait there, and die together as everyone else escapes to safety. Broken by love at 2 AM.
Saturday 9AM: WAR BIRDS; "We Were WASP" with Patty Kirsch
-- The first time I wept at Dreamation. We cried over a plane.
Patty was a brilliant facilitator, from character assignment onwards. In this, you play badass american women pilots from WW2. And no, it isn't related to Night Witches.
Character assignment is "here's a fictionalized short biography of a real person". OMG. It was me and three women; Patty right handed me the character who ignores gender roles the most; the instructions even say "if there's one man at the table, hand this one to him". Hooray!
Everything else is fantastic! This is great.
Saturday 2PM: War Birds; "Keep the Candles Lit" with James Stuart
Mo Jave is the goddamn devil -- the highest praise I can give.
The game content is a family of jewish women --- grandmother, mother, and daughter -- trying to survive the holocaust and maintain their religious traditions.
This game ended in weeping, uncontrollably.
Saturday: Dinner time slot got canceled, the last run of The Forgotten was too full. Ah well ...
Sunday: Ditched out on anything organized. Talked about Intersectionality, con experiences, and privilege. I'm going to do an entirely different post later on organization, accessibility, etc.
Absolutely glorious!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1287928832/the-forgotten-a-live-action-game
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Praise St. Arpan, you were a bigger bastard as the Exarch than I knew! Wheels within wheels.
ReplyDeleteYou mean James Stuart rather than myself :)
ReplyDeleteSorry! Does that happen a lot?
ReplyDeleteI could not summon any more envy if I tried.
ReplyDeleteRyan Good next year!
ReplyDeleteJason Morningstar These games are helping me discover a mile-wide manipulative streak. I hope it is usually kept in check by an overwhelming sense of morality, developed by taking a crapload of ethics and philosophy classes. Still, introspection remains relevant!
Occasionally, but enough that I know exactly what's happened when I get name checked randomly. I'm just jealous he gets a lot of praise :-)
ReplyDeleteI should just pretend to be him and take all the roleplaying kudos ;)
I'm so happy we got to hang out and chat, William.
ReplyDeleteRobert Bohl yes! I adore that the first thing we did was hug.
ReplyDeleteWhoot! I'm the devil!
ReplyDeleteMind if I ping in the two designers of the War Birds game to share the love?
Oh, and I forgot to say that I LOVED that in your Epilogue you narrated that you left Vladimir. That was awesome.
Wait, the rest of us escaped to safety in The Forgotten? I thought the whole "war's over" thing was just a lie by Jason Morningstar's character so that you could be alone with Misha B while she died.
ReplyDeleteNO, the war was really over. I died on the final night.
ReplyDeletePlease do ping, Mo Jave !
ReplyDeleteOn Vladimir: I was thinking about how only one can survive, and it takes cashing in two traditions -- sacrificing them! -- to keep that person alive. There was absolutely no way Miriam (Daughter) was going to sacrifice the traditions her dying mother and grandmother had entrusted her with for that hot bastard.
+1000
ReplyDeleteAnna Kreider and Shoshana Kessock there is praise for your games in this thread. :)
(It's cool Jay Treat let's say I lied, that is sadder)
ReplyDeleteMadame President was going to let the Exarch be the chaplain of the Parliament, but planned to make the religious influence tradition, and not legal law, at best. ;)
ReplyDeleteLol - Vladimir WAS a hot bastard
ReplyDeleteLizzie Stark I adored how you always prefaced any statement with "As the democratically elected President..."
ReplyDeleteWell, I did speak for the people more than anyone else there. I mean, they chose me! To lead! For life!
ReplyDeleteAnd that's why I mostly hated you from afar, Lizzie Stark.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I hated more to his face, and he was puzzlingly polite about it. Polar scum.
Lizzie Stark Yeah, you absolutely kept hammering that home. This would probably be a fight that destroys the country. Eventually.
ReplyDeleteAlso pinging Ann Eriksen for We Were WASP, even if she rarely checks G+.
ReplyDelete