ACUS 2005

[zdashamber]

ACUS rocked. I played in great games, I talked to excellent people, I sorted out my life. Somewhat like Simone, I'm inspired coming off it. (Unlike Simone, I had to get some sleep first. Maybe she had a direct flight. ;) )

You might want to check the games I was signed up for, at my previous ACUS entry.

The flight: Eric T said, "When you sent me the flight info, I thought, 'Why did they pick such strange times?' And then I looked at what was available..."

Eric and Cliff W (obadiah) and Silent E and I were all on the flight together; E was going to visit UMich and crash in the hotel room for a couple of nights. E and I woke up at 3:45ish to catch the first BART to Oakland Airport; flight left at 6:30 AM. Cliff had hamentaschen left over from Purim, which were excellent for breakfast. The Kansas City airport was really nice. Unexpected stop in Chicago (well, I guess I'd known at one point that the plane wasn't going from Kansas City to Detroit directly, but I didn't really learn it until we met Eric that morning). We got to the hotel around 6:00 PM and scattered like dry ice hit with a hammer.

I went down to the hotel restaurant and blew my $20 of food coupons on a perch dinner, which was really bad, but all praise to Joe S (tlatoani) I was able to get it in time to make it to my first game. Also thanks to Joe I was able to mooch a drink off, I think, Carla A, who had gotten it free at the free drink thing, and found that it was about 80:20 gin:something else, which was more than she was up for. That part is sorta foggy. Who knew gin didn't necessarily suck?

My first game was satisfying from a coming-along-in-the-genius perspective, in that after about 10 minutes I proposed a hypothesis as to what was going on, preached it throughout the game while embroidering it with uncovered evidence, and was proven to be almost completely correct in the end. Mwa-ha! In general, a good game.

After about 3.5 hours of sleep the night before, I got a whole 5-6 hours of sleep that night, because I needed to wake up early to do last-minute stuff on my own game. (I was sortof a fool to sign up to run Buffy for the first time the Sunday 3 days before ACUS.) Snuck off to the lounge, and was undiscovered for the couple hours I needed. Then, ran the game. I think it went pretty well. Ended up I ran Caine more as "ADHD" than "smarmy" as requested, but I had a lot of fun doing that. The revenges generally came off as planned, and hopefully there was enough interesting other stuff going on. I was quite pleased when three of the players got together and came up with their own plan to enact; it's neat when the players start changing things you've got set up.

Then, James A ran "End of All Roads", a coming-to-Amber thing. I had a lot of fun interacting with the cabbie from New Leningrad that I accidentally picked up as my character wandered from Earth into shadow. "Heeey, comrade, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore..." Flying into space ("Whooooo!") on a rocket-powered hang glider with the poor furry-hatted guy strapped in and blanching... Or later, as a recovered Piotr rambles, "This reminds me of that episode of Star Trek where Captain Chekov..."

For dinner I hooked up with Leslie L and went to the Bonfire? grill with a big group of other people, where I had excellent fancy beef, and nearly made it back in time for the slot, but failed due to the bathroom being in use by one of the 4 people besides me who were sharing the hotel room. I had to get in there to get my green makeup. Dressed as Llewella for the LARP:


The green makeup was a bit more obvious in person, I think. Did some shading of the cheeks with dark blue-green eyeshadow, green highlights and undertones using concealer... The lipstick was concealer in stick form. I lucked out; Tuesday or Wednesday morning I'd stopped by Longs Drugs to find some green makeup, and the concealer was the only thing there. It kind of stung my lips a bit and it wasn't quite the right color, but it was still good. Hopefully the vague militaristic bent of the costume is apparent; I was playing a Llewella from a universe where Rebma had risen up and grabbed Amber (thanks to a lot of engineered assassinations) a bit after Corwin's cenotaph was dedicated; Llew was leading the armies of occupation versus Benedict's guerilla liberation front. I quite liked the idea.

Anyway, the LARP, with James A again, turned out to be relatively non-LARP-y and more tabletop-y, which was fine by me; I signed up for it despite the LARP-ness. James, chewing it over after the game ended, was talking about how he'd been a bit aghast when he saw he only had 5 players. For how it went, Paul V (who I'd met in slot 1, thoroughly splendid fellow) and I basically glanced at each other in the beginning and leapt in to doing things, and that was fun. Dammitalltohell, I wasn't able to rewrite Amber into the one my Llewella had come from, though. The guy who played Corwin did a great job of making Corwin a believable machiavellian dick.

After the game ended we sat around talking about how it had gone, what was up with Ambercon, all sorts of stuff. It was quite fun, and was the first of other deep neat talks, which is probably the theme of my ACUS.

Lessee... And then I got a full night's sleep! Oh, it was beautiful!

And then on Saturday came the best game of the con, oh it was wonderful!, "Mars Ascending" run by Kristen G (drusni) and John S (well, ok, it's Kristen S now, but I tend to think of him as John G, because her last name is easier to pronounce and she posted more on the list). Set in space, a very Firefly vibe, perfect! I particularly loved the walkie-talkies. There were two rooms and a hallway; the two rooms were the bridge/fore-part of the ship, and the engine room/cargo hold. The hallway was space. The only communications between were on comms: the walkie-talkies. Thoroughly fun. Excellent pace of revelation of plot; everyone I saw had fun stuff to do pretty much all the time... I was out in the hall nearly the whole time, which lead to great bits like, "Um, the engine room... Has some issues." "What?!"

Interesting thing: 10 players: I was the only female. Odd. I was also the one who got out of the "Pit of Vipers" stage smelling the most like a rose (and I gather it was an unprecedented rosiness). Hopefully that was due to the fact that I was playing the engineer. Like one of the guys in the group said years ago, "It's one of those great cross-game truths: Suck up to the healer." On a Firefly-class ship in the middle of space, it's wise to make sure the engineer knows what she's doing...

The character auction was also a lot of fun. I looked it over in advance and plotted out my strategy; basically, 9 stats, 150 points, I could put 10 in everything to be rather good across the board, and have some left over to be extremely good in a few things. Strength and Endurance are generally cheap, and if I picked up Science or Engineering, too, there'd be a good reason for the people who went for Warfare and Position to keep me alive. And that's just how it worked. Shiny.

So, I ended up basically playing Kaylee, crossed with Simon Illyan and some tinkerer geek (Buckaroo Banzai?). Anyway. I'd hoped for a lot, and it was even more than I'd hoped for.

Then I went out to dinner with Kristen and John and many other people, and made it back again in time for the next slot, where the game I was in had been cancelled. I crashed the game that was still open that had the best description, and I think I made a good choice; met some neat new people. It turned out to be a game where the players invented the story as we went along, sort of Baron Munchausen-y. Much laughter. We finished up a vaguely silly but well-knit plot around 11:30, and then I bowed out.

Then followed another full night's sleep! I suppose I should've been hitting the consuite to party and hang with people, but the sleep really was nice.

Sunday morning Mark MacKinnon of Guardians of Order spoke about how the new edition of Amber is coming along. Looks like GoO will survive until the summer, and then depending on sales of Game of Thrones and BESM 3.0, they'll decide whether it will continue as a company, or as a hobby press. Neat discussion of what Amber should be. Then, on to tragic_glass Kindred's game, which I was in with Joe and Ian and various other vastly cool people. There was an unfortunate focus on milking goats in the game. Side-splittingly funny, yes, but as the goat... ;)

Missed the mixer party thing while playing in Kindred's game (worth it!), and arrived downstairs just in time to grab a couple drinks at the free bar, taking both down in rapid succession. I mean, because thinking about it, I think that hotel is built with the exact floorplan of an enormous dessicator. Next year, if I go, I'll bring mushed strawberries along, and make fruit leather. :)

Anyway, at that moment, news arrived that in my hotel room was all the food in India, praise be to Kevin. I went up, and indeed, all the food in India was spread over every flat surface, which was glorious, hit the spot dead-on. Collected food, was located by my GM for the next slot: his game was cancelled. We all went down to look at the wall o' games, and the rest went off to another one that sounded serious. However, since I didn't want it to look like I was stalking Paul V, and I was too tipsy and Whee!, I went with my second-choice game in the signup stage, "Corwin and Random go to White Castle." Oh, yeah.

Arriving with food and another drink, I made up a character in a couple minutes (Gerard), and then Kris F (a2macgeek) arrived. "No way! You're in this game?" "Dude!" she replied gladly. "Dude!!" I confimed broadly. Turns out Gerard and her character, Random, were main instigators in the prequel to the game, and together I had one of the most hilarious games of the con.

We ordered in room service to use up all the food coupons of the people who didn't buy hotel restaurant food, so I got basically free carrot cake, all good. Game ended early so the GM could join Kindred's game; Kindred tried to lure me in, too, but I merely stole his booze, for which I feel deeply regretful (and would I lie? Heck no). Ended up talking with Kris in the back for hours. Then Cliff and I were actually awake at the same time for once, so I talked to him for hours in the hotel room. Then there was a tiny amount of sleep.

Checked out, figured bill using algebra (yes, I do use it in the real world, so I suppose it's something I should mention to myself if I ever go back in time), nice bit of math skillz. Went to a "whoever's still here" lunch for the first meal of the day. Very good meal; have forgotten name of the restaurant. Finally got to talk to Liz T some. Neat discussion on how we consider what games we're going to be in and what characters we're going to be playing when picking out what clothes to wear. Apparently it's not something that's ever occurred to Joe.

Then to the airport, where, early, we played a bit of rummy. Flight bounced through Chicago Midway, where I got a good taco salad at the food court, and thence to Oakland. Cab back home with Eric, dropped Eric at his place, came back to internet. 161 e-mails; 40 were non-spam.

Good food, good talking, good people, good games. And inspiration? I was thinking Tuesday morning, "How could I blend 'Plastic Jesus' with Amber? Oh!" Heh heh heh heh... You'll see it at ACNW, if not sooner.

Comments

[cochese.livejournal.com]

Have to finish getting ready for work, so I'll have to finish reading this later, but: Carla = moonspiralz.

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

DISCLAIMER: No goats were actually milked during the production of this game.

[kit-kindred.livejournal.com]

only because the team wasnt trapped in the wilderness long enough. At least now it can always be counted among the team's assett's as emergency food supply and morale officer. :-)

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

Morale officer? I suppose watching the Sergeant get kicked repeatedly by a goat would make spirits bright...

[drusni.livejournal.com]

And then on Saturday came the best game of the con, oh it was wonderful!

*beam* thank you!! I had a lot of fun too. :-)

"Mars Ascending" run by Kristen G ([info]drusni) and John S (well, ok, it's Kristen S now, but I tend to think of him as John G, because her last name is easier to pronounce and she posted more on the list).

*giggle* Yeah, he gets teased with that a lot. I joke with him that I married down in the name department...

As for the only female player thing, I don't get it either. You were one of a whopping two female players in my 3 games, with a total player list of 22. My only guess is that most of the women at the con like a lighter game than I usually run.

[a2macgeek.livejournal.com]

Well, I would have signed up for "Inheritance," but then you invited me to playtest it, so.... :)

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

I'm all for picking the best last name no matter which party it's attached to... With his, when you walk into a room and catch valley girls doing evil things, they can say, "It's Schleick, oh my god!"

And honestly, baffled at the distribution of women. Hm. I bet they were all hanging out with Kindred. ;)

[kit-kindred.livejournal.com]

You know, as the owner of what may be one of the best last names at an Ambercon, I still find a surprising lack of women looking to claim it as their own :-)

[kit-kindred.livejournal.com]

"And honestly, baffled at the distribution of women. Hm. I bet they were all hanging out with Kindred. ;)"

I can only claim responsibility for five of them: Kris, Jill, Lucya, Stephanie, and Deborah.

course, that is a fifth of the women attending the con.

Alas, though, there was a quite noticeable and quite disturbing lack of women hanging out with Kindred unless a game was running. Sigh.

Son of a B**** Must Pay

[tymen.livejournal.com]

I had a good time in your game, Madeline. And I discovered at the end that I was more Caine, than Caine turned out to be. Which was cool in and of itself. Sometimes its fun to play a son of a b****.

Re: Son of a B**** Must Pay

[tymen.livejournal.com]

Sorry about the name thing. I fixed it.

Re: Son of a B**** Must Pay

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

Naw, it's my fault. I mean, it's not like I warn people anywhere. Thanks! :)

Re: Son of a B**** Must Pay

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

Cool! I'm glad you enjoyed yourself! I was quite pleased with you as a player.
:)

Also, pleased to see you on LJ! Nothing like a con for connecting people to each other.