mllelaurel

I played in the Festival Fast Forward - four different short games, one after the other.

Demonic Performance Review
Out of the four, I think this is the game I did best in, goals and performance-wise. Having a full costume helped. About halfway through, I realized that the best way to achieve my personal goals was to spectacularly fail the main game goal. Trick was, I had to do it in a non-obvious way. Figuring out how to acomplish that was fun.

A Brief Journey Home
I definitely had one of the most innocent/idealistic characters in this game, even if he was fairly grounded about it. Some of the choices we made in that game may eventually lead to disastrous consequences, but there's no chance I would have gone in the opposite direction, in-character. That, and the decision in question probably saved our lives for the time being.

Dalen - the character I played - wound up pretty real in my head. Some of the relationship dynamics he wound up developing with the others weren't on the character sheet at all, though they were very reasonable developments from same.

(Note that a number of the characters, including mine, were gender neutral. I tended to think of Dalen as male, so that's what I went with.)

Ephemera
This wasn't the sort of game I'm good with, since I like having time to sink into my character and the way it worked, we had next to no information prior to the game itself and had to change personas multiple times on the fly. Consequently, I wound up going way more gamist than I normally do. I was useful in solving the puzzle, but didn't have as much fun as I'd have liked.

Mathew 1914
To make up for the gamist approach above, I went entirely simulationist here. Basically, I spent an hour being physically frail and lost, and clinging to another character. Getting into the headspace of a ten year old took a little time, and if I ever play a child again, I'll make sure to watch my vocabulary a bit better, but once that snapped into place, I was well-immersed into the role.

Out of all the games, I think this is the one that could have used more time. It ended right as the characters began to trust one another enough for their stories to come out. Other players have noted this as well, and I add my vote to theirs.

My morning game was Snaf U, and never let it be said that I didn't have enough to do. I found myself running around all over the place, getting wrapped up in a number of plots and generally having a blast. My only regret was this being a morning game - I'm pretty low-energy in the mornings and I wish I could have played my character in a more manic and gleeful manner. Some of it came through, but more would have been nice.

I'd also like to note that we had some truly awesome players in this game. The guy who played the biologist, Moray, in particular, was wonderfully creepy, especially since my character had a lot of mixed annoyance and guilt in regard to him. Apparently, making me twitch was one of his goals, which was good because he succeeded. ^_^;

(The same character was carrying a cat and a rat around with him. The cat was freed relatively early in the game, but he retained the rat. Every time he was around, one of the GMs -

zapf, I believe - kept making squeaky noises for said rat. It was both hillarious and heartbreaking.)

Regarding another character, I would like to explain why the phrase "FOR GREAT CLEANLINESS!" makes me crack up and fall off my chair as much as it does, but that would be somewhat spoilery, so I'll just mention it. Thank you, Matt.

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In the afternoon, I GMed Kind Friends Together, which went well, though I'm sad I didn't get to be as evil to my players as I had planned, due to the game going in a different direction from the previous two runs. (I'd participated in the first run as a player and heard a great deal about the second.) The game was small enough that I was able to see and hear everything that was going on, so I was never bored even if I didn't have to do much.

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I was likewise a GM in my evening game, helping

rigel run One Life. We'd both been in the original run at Intercon MidAtlantic and found it and interesting experience.

Can I just say that the players/characters were much more cooperative in this run than they were in the run I played in? *g* Again, a lots of differences between the two runs, especially with some of the spins people put on their characters. I think it went well, personally.

Lastly, I played Willow Rosenberg from BtVS in the Sunday afternoon run of Clue, Impaired, a Clue parody with media characters. (This was fifth season Willow, so no, I didn't go off the deep end.) I wound up involved in other people's plots and much of my skills and knowledge came in very useful, however, I wish I had a direct emotional involvement in the plot myself. Since I was one of the characters not actually being blackmailed, my main investment was in helping others. None of the range of annoyance to rage others experienced.

The best moment, I think was when I accidentally let down my mental shields around River Tam (played by

nevacaruso) due to exhaustion from having performed two major magical rituals in a row. In my timeline, this was right after Glory'd fried Tara's brain, so wow, with the parallels and the breakiness.

I also got to work closely with Jack Harkness and have him flirt with me, as well as find myself speechless in hero-crush, when faced with Susan Ivanova. No bad there. ^_^

Oh, and! Remember the stuffed cat I mentioned in my Snaf summary? That cat got airtime again, this time playing Crookshanks for our Hermione. Good kitty!

And now, I r ded by LARP.