Inheritance (morning)
Paul Beakley wanted to run some Inheritance. We barely squeaked in the right number of players. (It's a LARP that plays with 9. Only 9. No more. No less.) The premise:
Ten years ago, Daxo murdered his beloved older brother, Baldr. Exiled by his father for his crime, he’s spent a long decade wandering. But now he’s heard that his dear grandfather has died, and he’s returned home to claim his inheritance.
We played the hodge podge of people involved in the funeral and drama. We grabbed the YWCA's bigger board room, and went to it. The game is LARP which has us act out all sorts of scenes, occasionally with most of characters there, but often between 2 or 3 people alone. In theory this could happen in tandem, without all of us seeing each others scenes, but the facilitator (in this case Paul), could get everyone to stop and pay attention if something important was going on.
As it turned out, there was lots of important things going on all the time, and I'm super happy that our focus was often on each other. It was like watching a play, most of the time. Well, when you weren't in the play itself. There were scenes both hilarious, and scheming, and heart-wrenching.
I played Gefjon, the seer. Honestly, I was a little lost at times, not knowing much about Viking things, but the game mostly leads you into knowing what you need to know, but there was a lot to digest in a short time (and keeping in mind that the morning was a 3 hour slot, so we had to play tight).
After the game was over, you get to know a bunch of spoilers around many of the characters and their goals and backgrounds. It made me think that the game might not have replay-ability, but in fact the majority of the players had played at least once, if not a number of times, so I may be totally wrong there.
Once again Sean did a AP report, so I don't have to write much! Freedom!
Everyone preparing by reading their little playbooks
Final scenes... a priest and a mother, dead. A brother, poisoned. A father negotiating with a prospective daughter-in-law (or more?)
Lunch
Lunch was at the Lazy Dog Sports Bar & Grill with Alex, Andy and others. It was a chilled out affair, as were many of the outings. Lots of gluten free options for some of our members, and pretty decent grub. Because of the crazy elevation at Boulder, we were recommended not to drink alcohol to quickly. Kind of sucks when they serve full sized pints. We'd learn... eventually I'd split beer flights, or beer pints, or glasses of wine with my various compatriots.
Love Each Other (afternoon)
The next game was a playtest written by Venn Sage Wylde, including players Sean, Nadja, and April:
Queer apocalyptic story game about love and community formation in a world that reflects the vulnerable, broken, and breaking worlds of the characters we create. Will they love each other, overcome their fears, and connect? Will the community survive while the whole world falls apart? How will these characters be remembered?
Once again we have a Sean AP report! He concentrates mostly on the games mechanics and does some roses and thorns. I agree on some counts, such as the mechanics being much to mentally grasp as the tech trees started to open up. A simplified cheat sheet may assist, or something which pared down some of the rules perhaps. A way to get into the meat of the story without as much restrictions in movement?
But either way, instead I'll mention a little of the beautiful narrative that came out of this beautiful game. All characters use a they/them pronoun by default, and we created a few genders at the beginning. We had pooka and goblin, anemone, and noodle, among others. These would become a deck that would be shuffled and drawn, each time a recurring character would appear in the story (and thereby define their gender). Each had a simple definition, such as "navigating through and around other genders, watching", or "create and leave gifts for other, not looking for thanks or recognition".
We had a world of rising waters, and a grey goo that was threatening to overwhelm us all. Big Pink, which was the last dry space before the floods. Hodge Podge, the island of junk and debris floating in the ocean, where safety is now in short supply. Bly's Hall, and Chevron Skeleton where Ram's Raiders - our unfriendly neighbors - hail from, and where they're all out of food. There was Nono and Jaji, two refugees from the Floaters of Hodge Podge; Penny our little scientist with the weary face and shaky hands; Zin with the wiry frame and darting eyes.
The game had both world building, map making, and character generation all spread through in little bite sized pieces as we went round and round, and then scenes of various types of desperation. But as we wrapped up, we ended on a happy note. Penny and Jaji ended up bonded by skills, working together to prevent the grey goo from spreading. Nono found inspiration from Jaji, and reclaimed their name, once a series of words said to make them go away, to words used to prevent others from bashfully refusing help.
But my absolute favorite scenes were those with Zin (played by Nadja) pestering Penny (played by April) out on the Hodge Podge. I was in tears of joy.
Our little water world...
Yes, we loved each other.
Indian dinner at Tiffins
Stras, Andy, Nadja and I headed to an Indian joint that was around the corner from Stras' place, Tiffins, and it was lovely. Got to check out Stras' place afterwards, and got to meet some cats and bunnies.
Delicioso... we ordered way too much, which worked out really well for breakfast the next day.
The man next to the seminal poster.
Scotch party
Then it was off to be dropped back at the Big House, for a little scotch tasting party. We also at some point moved the couches together and created a sort of love boat.
That's possibly when the overwhelming feelings of dread started to sink in, in the house of Shaktilove (lowercase). You can see an innocent looking chalkboard in the background, which proclaims Love and Trust, and never say No, and other words that start to nefariously sink into your soul.
But other than that, all good fun!
My stalwart companion on a maiden love boat journey... one of many.
Gracious scotch hosts, John and Cate!