mythicfox | Kind of in an 'off' mood.

Well, first off, I just want to say that I can't believe that it's almost time for GenCon... it'll rock to meet my longtime arch-nemesis Mythdude and a bunch of other folks that I only know from the net. Is anybody else who reads this going to be there?

Anyhow, I'm a little melancholy tonight. Sunday morning an old friend of the family died. His name was Jimmy Arcure[1], and he was my late grandfather's business partner at the Budweiser distributor (and with all due respect, Jimmy treated me a lot better than my own grandfather did). Tomorrow (Tuesday) I'm attending a viewing and Wednesday morning I'll be at the funeral. Yeah, I thought it was pretty quick, too. It's the end of an era, though. Between my grandfather's death last year and now Jimmy's passing, Valley Distributing Inc. is now officially out of the hands of the original ownership.

Also, while I was looking at my daily ration of webcomics, I started reading through the Sabrina Online archives on a whim (I mostly wanted to revisit the strips where Sabrina first wound up working for ZigZag). Reading them wound up reminding me of my ex-girlfriend, Jessica. Around the time she and I started dating, she'd 'dabbled' in being a Furry fan (although just enough that she was trying to use me as leverage to pull me out of the fandom) and was a huge fan of the comic because she acted and looked a lot like Sabrina herself (of course, this is before Jessica became a supreme bitch). I'd print out the Sabrina comics for Jessica each month because her computer sucked, and she'd occasionally read Sabrina's dialogue out loud just because it sounded natural coming from her.

Jessica made my life miserable after the first couple of months, and I toughed it out, but that doesn't change the fact that she and I did have a few fun times together. Anyhow, seeing the comic strip again made me remember the times when I could tolerate being around her and it did depress me a bit to think back to that.

Anyhow, now on to the LARP write-ups.

The game's population has slowly started to recover from the dip we had when Bobby started his game. This is probably because the college students are coming back, as classes are picking up soon.

The game started off with the usual batch of semi-random socializing. Chaz wasn't able to make it, so Doug was in charge for the night. Doug was there, playing his Samedi NPC (who is also a Priscus, as we all know that every ST has to be playing a member of IC authority), Papa Branscum.

After a long conversation with Krimson that the local Cainites were bored, Branscum set things up for a little friendly competition. We met in one of the other college buildings with a now-emptied pool. Two team captains were picked (Krimson and a Serpent of the Light named John "The Stranger" Doe), and they chose their teams schoolyard-kickball style. Then the captains were taken into another room where Branscum and his childe, Malcom (the new character that Phillipe's player is playing) sucked their souls out. They were brought back and put in the opposite corners of the pool. It was the objective for each team to get their captain and bring them back to their corner of the pool.

The rules were as follows: No invisibility, leaving the pool would disqualify you (the player, not the team), and throwing the other team's captain out of the pool would disqualify you (again, the player, not the team). And there would be no Final Death caused during the game.

Sadly, Sean's new character that he's playing on the side, a Bratovich Revenant, wasn't allowed to participate in the game although he wanted to because he wasn't a vampire. It just so happened that Sean's character had latched onto someone who only shows up once every two months or so and without his 'chaperone,' he was only marginally allowed to be there. More on this later.

So the game started. Before all hell broke loose, we pulled off an interesting little trick. Y'see, Bishop LaMonte was on my team. He used Vicissitude (yes, even though he's a Ventrue antitribu, he has Vicissitude) to change Stranger's face to look like himself... and then used Mask of a Thousand Faces to make himself look like Stranger and he planted himself in the corner next to Stranger's soulless body as a decoy. My packmate Nim was on the other team, and knowing what he was capable of the first thing I did was use The Haunting on him-- inflicting him with schizophrenia (which, actually, I was planning on doing at some point anyhow so Freddie could practice his powers). Sadly, as the presiding ST obviously didn't want to have to deal with a freaky derangement during combat-- or he just didn't think it would kick in yet or something-- The Haunting really didn't help at all. At the same time, one of our teammates was Dread Gazed out of the pool and over the course of the next couple of turns another was physically thrown out of the pool.

I don't know if the other team just had their shit together more, or what. Anyhow, Malcolm then used his bastardly necromantic powers to seperate Freddie's soul from his body (as well as another of his teammates) and then animated our bodies. He wound up not needing us, though, or so he thought, and just let the bodies drop. Their team went out of their way to throw 'LaMonte' (actually their own team captain) out of the pool, bringing 'Stranger' (actually LaMonte) back to their side. Then LaMonte actually woke up and started unleashing some mental and social smackdown via Dominate and Presence.

I missed most of what was going on, as I wasn't paying attention (wandering around outside my body and all), but in the end, their team still wound up winning-- I think part of it involved Krimson's body accidentally getting thrown out of the pool as well. What it came down to is that the game was a test of teamwork more than anything else-- it didn't help much that the other team had more physically-oriented characters than mine (my team included Freddie, Natalie Black-- a Ravnos, and LaMonte, while they had a Brujah, a Ventrue, and one of the city's more powerful Lasombra).

After the game, things started to wind down. I wound up having to run a short scene with Doug off to the side because Freddie was going to do a little favor for the Giovanni, Constance. Constance has been working like hell to manage a ritual where he takes the eye of someone who became a Wraith and replaces one of his own eyes with it. At that point he gains the abililty to see into the Shadowlands at will and gets a bonus against Dominate attempts. He'd been working on a project for a while through IC posts about it, but that didn't work out as well. So he had his Wraith retainers keep an eye on the heart problems floor of the hospital to see if someone became a Wraith (playing the odds, really-- it would happen eventually, right?). Then Freddie was to help obtain an eye from the guy's body so Constance could handle this ritual. In return, Freddie is now getting to more or less borrow one of Constance's Wraith retainers for a little while.

Also, Sean's going to get his Revenant Embraced by one of the fine folks in Legion. Y'see, while Sean liked the idea of playing a Revenant, he hadn't realized that he'd still be running a character who's getting shut out of official Sabbat meetings and such, so he's going to be completely 'initiated.' Florian's going to embrace his Bratovich, which means that Sean is now going to be running a 9th-generation Tzimisce. Ninth generation. Who got 5 Backgrounds points at character creation (which Sabbat members don't usually get). Sure, he doesn't get any free Discipline levels (but he does keep the Disciplines he already had, which just means two levels of Animalism), but he's going to be pretty fucking powerful. Oy. I helped design an initiation ritual-- y'see, being a Bratovich, Sean's character has a severe beastiality problem. So he's going to be chasing cars for his intitiation. *grin*

Sadly, I'm going to miss the actual Embrace and ritual, as it's this weekend and I'll be at GenCon. Similarly, I'll miss the choosing of the new Bishop and some possible smackdown that Natalie's going to lay down on Shane (Natalie's player pointed out to me before the game that Shane's character has just pissed off a Ravnos with Horrid Reality).

In the Sunday game, things have been picking up. We were going to be building a Caern in Morgantown, we'd brought the Camazotz back to life, and there was a new alliance between the Garou and other Changing Breeds. If we got the Caern building done early enough, we were going to have a moot and a massive Renown-fest.

I gathered up the shapeshifters, including Sean's new Red Talon Ragabash, 'Skins-His-Prey' (great story behind that name, by the way-- this Talon is a member of Whelp's Compromise, more or less, and is trying to find proof that there are worthwhile humans in the world; he grew up in an all-Red Talon sept and when they heard of his quest they tried to name him after the human expression "Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" but didn't translate it right into the Garou tongue) and hauled them to the site where we'd be building the Caern. Our job was to keep the site safe while the ritual was being performed-- and, of course, contributing Gnosis and so forth.

As some of you should know, building a Caern gets the attention of a huge stack of Wyrm creatures. Thus, we had to deal with a pack of Black Spiral Dancers and a squad of Pentex soldiers. We all got in some really good hits and other moments (like Sean's new Red Talon essentially performing a 'Matrix jump' using Hare's Leap in Hispo form onto the rooftop of the building we were in to take out some Pentex soldiers on the roof). After the first wave, we spent Gnosis and a bunch of folks were picked to make a bunch of tests. After all of this was done, we were informed that we'd successfully somehow created a Level 5 Caern of Unity.

Now here's where things went all to hell. Direct servants of the Wyrm I can understand showing up to try and ruin a Caern-building. But out of nowhere Eric had five particularly-low Generation Lasombra show up out of nowhere and start attacking (I can understand the whole 'overwhelming odds, major battles' stuff-- but why should a vampire give a shit?). We pound on them, they pound on us, we know how that goes. At one point my character wound up having to retreat from the battle because I was almost completely out of Physical Traits to bid (and I'd already used my Willpower refresh for the evening) and I was one solid hit (two at most) away from Incapacitated or Mortally Wounded, and there are limits as to how many folks can try to pound on a single target in LARP combat. So rather than take up space, Ken backed off while trying to recover from the beating he'd taken.

Now, I've argued before that Vampires just don't work in crossover LARP. But either we have some Mages that just do not fucking know when to quit or it's more than just that... I've been considering the possibility that maybe it's Werewolf that just doesn't work in crossover.

Why do I say this? Well, the first part was that just when the battle against the Lasombra vampires was going our way, something the Mages did in a scene on their half of the game resulted in the vampires being temporarily granted access to True Magick. Among other things, this allowed them to neutralize a couple of Gifts we'd been using to even the score. But we came back from that setback.

What royally elephant-dildo-fucked things up was when the Mage and Vampire players, who'd completely finished up things on their end, got bored and just barged into our combat, wielding demons or spirits or something of some sort. Rather than sit there another 5 or 10 minutes and let us finish up, they had to just charge in and try to take over. One of the other players, Zac, damn-near just walked off at that point (we just barely managed to talk him into sticking it out) and it had gotten to the point that even I was about to speak up.

He didn't say anything, but the Garou ST, Eric, did a bunch of stuff to try and clear things up without just adding a third dimension to the battle (which in of itself just barely worked at keeping us all from ripping each others' throats out OOC). As Ken was rendered unconscious by something going on, I just kind of phased out the battle. All I know is that somehow the Garou and Fera came out on top and managed to get everyone else the hell out of there.

Because things took so long, though, the moot is going to be at the next game. While I'm at Gencon. Which means that I'm going to get absolutely fucked on Renown. If I'm lucky, Ken won't be penalized for not being able to make it to the moot and I'll just have to settle with getting absolutely no credit for playing a pivotal role in restoring the Camazotz as well as my own efforts at the Caern-building. That on its own I can handle. But then the Mages had to get bored and barged in because they and the Mage ST thought it would be fun to just get involved and unintentionally make things as difficult as possible.

But then, isn't that what Mage is all about? Going out of your way to fuck with the way things are working because you can't handle the idea of it running smoothly? I'm not an advocate for the Technocracy, but at this point I'm damn close.

Okay, yeah, I'm bitter. It's just that the game was really disappointing towards the end, and because I'll be at GenCon there'll be nothing to show for it other than the 3 experience points I earned this past Sunday. I'm reasonably sure that there are going to be folks rising in Rank and achieving new levels of badassitude. It doesn't help much that there's a house rule that as long as your character makes it above Rank 1 before getting killed, he can get a fair bit of bonus experience points on his next character.

I know I'm going to enjoy being at GenCon and hanging out with some cool folks. But that doesn't change the fact that because of the way it's all set up with the moots and everything, that I'm being cheated out of some genuine character advancement (and I openly admit that it's partially due to the fact that in our game you get bonus experience points to add to your next character if your previous character dies above Rank 1). I just feel that I have nothing to show for all the stuff that's been going on in the game. Theoretically, one could argue, I could bring all this up at the next moot and get some delayed Renown. But the impression I've gotten before is that if you don't show up at the moot, you don't get shit.

So yeah. GenCon's gonna rock, and I am definitely going to be there (just to assuage the fears of a couple of you) but I'm not going to deny that at least once I've asked myself if it's going to be worth missing out on this weekend's LARPing. If it was Origins, I'd say it probably wouldn't be worth it. But since it's GenCon, I figure it can redeem itself.

Later. I'll probably post between now and then. But if I don't, I'll see some of you in Indianapolis.

[1]-- Just so you folks know, this is not, I repeat NOT the same person as Cousin Jimmy. I know someone will automatically think that, and I'm saving myself and you all some trouble.