Cons in 2017:
-- Dreamation
-- Camp Nerdly
-- Washingcon
-- Quarterly Larp Day (not really a con, started after Washingcon)
-- Epiphany
Expected cons, 2018:
-- Dreamation
-- Camp Nerdly, which I have the honor of running this year
-- WashingCon
-- Quarterly Larping
Games that affected me personally in 2017:
-- Shoutdown to Launch, which readied me for a promotion.
-- Dream Askew, which always reminds me of what is possible
-- Bedlam Beautiful, which scared me
-- Strange Gravity, which taught me I can be a Captain
-- Epiphany, but ask me in a month.
Games played in 2017, for more than a few sessions:
-- Urban Shadows
-- Stranger Gravity
-- SpaceWyrm versus Moonicurn
-- Apocalypse World
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"Epiphany, but ask me in a month" is pretty much the answer everyone I know who was at Epiphany is giving.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to try, if you wanna hear it, Brand.
ReplyDeleteI would!
ReplyDeleteIt needs to be. I can tell you things, I think. You and Mo may understand it, assuredly better than most.
ReplyDeleteThere were about 30 people. Three storytellers (Sarah and friends), who were also initiates. Maybe 6-8 mentors. The rest were initiatives.
I was a mentor. Which means I was responsible for a few people, and for the game at large, really. This was where I needed to be, both because I'm in leadership positions in my own life and because I needed to experience more with that.
The first ritual was an awakening. Small groups. Mine was me, another mentor, and 4 initiates. The other mentor was Order of Hermes, which is very strict and stringent in how they do things. I was Cult of Ecstacy, which is quite the opposite. The initiates were 2 Hermes, an Ecstatic, and a Virtual Adept. I let the Hermetic lead (for a bunch of reasons), and when the Awakening didn't quite give the Ecstatic and Adept needed, I took them outside.
To the cold. With the wind. And the darkness. Intensely feeling our bodies, and how the ground and air affected us.
I helped them awaken. With my voice, I built worlds that modeled to their paradigm. I asked questions and built on the answers: "What do you see in the room?", "A laptop", "What is on the laptop?", etc.
That sounds trite and, of course, it is some fairly standard issue MC work. Due to previous work done, it moved both of them. The Ecstatic leaned in, and lost herself in my voice before Dancing away (hint: her name was Dancer). The Virtual Adept closed her eyes and accessed the internet through her mind.
And that was night 1, ritual 1.
Ah, see, trite is a word to be wary of using. Because what is trite in one context is not in another. MCing when you're also playing, and close to the bone, is a different thing. Doing things that are rote in one place can be magic in another.
ReplyDeleteI have many thoughts about this, but I'll save them for now. Please, continue as you can.
That night before bed, cuddles. Then I go to the single bed, and sleep very poorly. I'm not used to sleeping alone with other people in the room, and never do it well. I have a couple night terrors, and apologize to my roommates.
ReplyDeleteSomeone makes me coffee. Pretty sure it was Dancer, but if you've seen me before coffee you'd know I have essentially no recollection. Breakfast is delightful.
First ritual of the day is a meditation. I go as a seeker, basically. Not as a mentor to watch it and make sure it is safe, but to do the meditation. Meditation in character is new for me. The characters give just enough of an alibi.
During the meditation, we forgive ourselves. During the meditation, my character forgives himself. During the meditation, I forgave myself for past transgressions.
You're right that trite is the wrong word. It wasn't trite. It was powerful and fraught and powerful and I am grateful for how well it went. I only hope I operated ethically and responsibly given the responsibility given to me.
.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to hear what you are thinking, Brand Robins
ReplyDelete(Or Patty, for that matter!)
ReplyDeleteI'm curious about epiphany, what you've posted so far is pretty evocative, I don't want to miss it if you post more ;)
ReplyDeleteProbably before the meditation is an hour set aside for playstyle calibration. I have a couple of good out of character talks about that. Everybody is really good about asking for what they need. I come away with a couple of win conditions for the day:
ReplyDelete-- Get a particular virtual adept to talk to their avatar, and to realize that the world is much more complicated than they realize.
-- Bring up all the difficult personal issues I'd worked out with another player thorugh pre-game emails, and PUSH THERE AND HARD
-- Break a particular Order of Hermes, who has asked me to play his avatar. He's got two people as his avatar, and has asked me to be all TOXIC MASCULINITY. ok, I can do that in a (fairly) safe way.
-- Push the relationship with Dancer. This character is highly embodied, but shows somewhat limited personal awareness. So, push there to see what happens. This is more nebulous than the other two, I admit.
I figure if I hit any two, I'll be happy. I hit all four. More in a bit.
I suppose I'll talk to those win conditions.
ReplyDeleteAfter the initial meditation, I'm feeling great. Toby, my character, is riding on a wave of love and forgiveness.
Side note: My body language is different when I'm Toby. Squared shoulders, never looking to the floor. Exuding confidence and ability. Toby cares about others, and works to help them. He is a new version of a person I could be, but am not. I liked him, and I greatly enjoyed playing him.
Anyway. Promise this matters.
Next up is a shadow meditation. We'll meditate, and open the door to our character's shadow. Have a conversation, then put them back in. We get into small groups. Mine is three, which I think is common. In my group is one of the people I've planned a bunch of character relationship stuff with.
We envision our mind. For Toby, this is a city. Walled. We shut down the mind that protects us so well, let it take a break.
[ Side note: I know this MC trick. It is incredibly effective. ]
We envision our bodies. For Toby, this is the surrounding desert.
We envision our hearts, where the shadow has been pushed. For Toby, this is a D&D-style dungeon in the desert. Locked.
We open the doors, and look inside. There's the Shadow.
I don't feel comfortable talking about other people's shadows, as it was intensely personal. For Toby, this was the buried egotistical, arrogant part of himself. The part that advocates for Toby, and not for others. I think of these from the character sheet, which listed traits like this. I smile, and let that take my face and voice.
And The Shadow rips into the character to my left, who has a big-ole crush on Toby. I tell her that Toby doesn't know, that he cannot see these things. I say it with a very mean affect, and she cries. I tell her just to tell him and stop being a coward.
As I'm doing this, I'm also watching her. I know I'm at the boundary, and then stop. The other two thank the shadow, say his feels are OK. Toby leaves him in the desert, deciding that advocating for himself is OK so long as it can be watched.
As we reassert the mind's watch, Toby starts building zepplins to watch the Shadow.
As a result of the Shadow Meditation, I have conversations with at least two of the characters and hit two of the win conditions. The character to my left? She overcomes the fear and says how she feels.
ReplyDeleteAnd Dancer and Toby decompress together for like two hours trying to understand what just happened. This gets personal, for sure on my side, as we talk about the very real shadow self it brought up.
And I know -- I KNOW-- that this sounds dangerous. It worked. I'm not sure how dangerous if it, or if the alibi is exactly what was needed for it to not be dangerous.
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds amazing. Thanks for all the sharing
ReplyDeleteA few hours later, the following things happen:
ReplyDelete-- The Order of Hermes guy who I've been avataring for gets into a paradigm fight with Dancer, the ecstatic I helped awaken. The two of them are arguing on metaphysics and ethics -- and how the two relate. It is really beautiful.
I'm playing the Hermes' guy's avatar, right? Which is him, all grownz up, looking down at what he is now and telling him to improve. And omg.
Dancer makes an argument resting on if magic is distributed out randomly. Hermes guy thinks this is unimportant, and says something like "Granted that Magic is random ... "
I pause. I look at him. I think for a minute, and when Dancer is talking, learn over and bird in ear:
I AM NOT RANDOM.
He stops moving. Gets real quiet.
Back in character, I look at him quizzically -- are you ok? In character, he and dancer stop moving.
Out of character, he hands me, dancer, and his other avatar a stone representing wanting to do a black box scene.
The four of us head to the blackbox. Dancer's avatar is spectacularly unavailable, and we setup the rules of the blackbox that the two of them are in an ethereal realm shifting from dimension to dimension while they argue. Dancer cannot see or hear the Avatars unless she thinks it spectacularly important.
The two avatars walk the room, getting between the two of them, insulting Dancer and continuing to tell the Hermes guy to step up and take what is his. To be the powerful mage he knows he can be. To do magic.
In the end, they come to almost terms. They shake hands, and the magic ends.
We head back to the house. Go back to where we were. Dancer and he come out of it, and tell the other characters what just happened.
I broke him in exactly the way I wanted, forcing a shift of paradigm and conceptualization of the world.
That's 3 out of 4 victory conditions.
Who wants to hear about the last victory condition, with the VA?
ReplyDeleteStill here. Still interested!
ReplyDeleteLast victory condition, the VA. Both the player and the character are agender and take "they".
ReplyDeleteDuring the Awakening, they didn't quite summon their avatar nor quite do any magic. I felt like this was a personal challenge., and Toby -- my character -- took it as something to get done. Because if you are at Epiphany then YOU CAN DO THIS.
At some point, we realize that my avatar is played by them, their avatar is played by the Hermes guy, who in turn plays their avatar. It's a nice triangle that we setup on night 1 and didn't quite realize. In real life, both of them work together at a certain only occasionally evil megacorp.
Anyway, the three of us go sit on a sofa, and have a chat. We pull in another virtual adept. So, there's the four of us.
I walk them through the mental exercise to go back to a mental place of power. There's a laptop. I ask about what data sets would be interesting, and they tell me. I tell them to look for them on the laptop.
Over protestations of impossibility, they do. And the data set is there. They wanted to do some ML algorithms to it, and so do. The result is stunning, but there's nothing to compare it against to prove it isn't a figment.
Their avatar is snarky, but helpful! I get comments from mine about how this could be done better, and I give ones to the Hermes dude saying, essentially, that he should be the one running this. Everybody loves to hate their avatars.
The other Virtual Adept points out that phones are a thing. He pulls his out, describes an article from Forbes. the VA we are helping closed their eyes, summons forth the article. Reads it in their minds, compares against the one on the phone.
They are the same. The VA has summoned an article through the internet using only their mind. They've heard from their avatar, and know there is more to the world than dreampt of. And they've proven to themself that this is actually what is happening.
Later, we discuss what they can do with this power. Have a talk about bro coder culture and how to change it. Namely, forming a start up with a healthy culture. I invite them to join the Cult of Ecstacy.
There's a section of the debrief on what our characters go on to do. Theirs regards the things we'd talked about. I start crying, and tell them how proud I am.
I'm a little teared up. Thank you.
Sounds like brilliant fun. Glad I got to read. Wish we had gotten a chance to link up and I could hear it all in person.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing! Would you be interested in me compiling this report for the Epiphany group to read? If not, no problem.
ReplyDeletePlease do, Sarah Lynne Bowman!
ReplyDeleteBut, I have one condition: While I think I've represented everyone well, and largely anonymously, if you post there please make sure that you feel comfortable with all of it.
There's a lot I haven't even mentioned, like the only time I've ever felt comfortable dancing during the Ecstatic dance. Lily made a very safe space, and while I had some concerns about running into people, somehow managed not to. That was ... a moment of perfection.
Can you unpack that moment for us?
ReplyDeleteok, so, talking about the Ecstatic dance is going to be reasonably difficult. I'll do it as I've done the other moments.
ReplyDeleteThe only ecstatic ritual on offer was an ecstatic dance by Lily, a very good friend of Toby's. They caught feelings together, which is relevant.
A bunch of things were going on for me during the dance:
Because I, William, can't dance and have little coordination, a bad knee, and some other issues going on, I am scared of this. I go to it because I see the fear, and know I can deal with it.
Toby -- unlike William -- is not afraid of the Dance. He can revel in it, in a member of the Cult of X shining and bringing everyone together in a way that he wasn't able to do -- because I, William, got super work busy.
I do a little meditation as the dance starts, mostly just focusing on breathing. I watch as others get up, and listen to the scared voice telling me that I'll make a fool of myself, or hurt myself. Then I stand up.
My movements are, assuredly, not really in time or rhythmic. But that doesn't matter. They are what I need them to be, representing both what I can do, act as a response to others, and as an expression of Toby's joy.
The music speeds up. At times, I need to sit down (because my knee hurts and a medical problem would be catastrophic). I feel no judgement from anyone when I do, and notice others doing the same. Sometimes, the dance floor is mostly men sometimes it is not. No matter who is on the floor, Lily is guiding them and the music is moving them.
At some point, I get just damn warm and walk outside. I found it really hot in most of the spaces during most of the larp, and by this point know most others do not feel that way. While I'm outside, there's some kind of in character conversation, and I go back in as things are ending. I sit on the floor with others, and watch as Lily exhaults in what she has brought us.
Later on, Toby catches Lily outside and they share a moment. The shared moment, the shared understanding and experience between the two of them coalesced everything that had happened during the ritual, and echoed the time they spent together during the weekend.
Thank you! If there is more you'd like to share before I post it over there, let me know, and I can wait <3
ReplyDeleteI think I'm good for now. Oh, can you also post a link on the fb group to this post?
ReplyDeleteAdd me on Facebook and I'll add you :) It's a Secret group.
ReplyDeleteIf I were on fb, this'd be easier. Just please when you reference this, include a link back here (https://plus.google.com/u/0/+WilliamNichols/posts/K7A8jhMScrz?cfem=1) should do it.
ReplyDeleteplus.google.com - Cons in 2017: -- Dreamation -- Camp Nerdly -- Washingcon -- Quarterly Larp Da...
I saw this thread before but didn't realize how much it expanded!
ReplyDeleteVery cool to read about "I am not random" from the other side.
Playing as your avatar really let me stretch my MC muscles, Eric Willisson. Thank you.
ReplyDelete