for those with an interest in LARPs

My friend mikevonkorff has been doing a series of posts about live-action roleplaying games -- their design and execution, what players look for in a game and how they pursue it, etc. Chewy stuff, especially since a lot of his commentators are part of a circle that has played a bunch of games together, but I'm coming from a totally different gaming community. Makes for some very enlightening comparisons.

I'm taking a particular interest in this because kniedzw and I are likely to be running a one-shot LARP based on Changeling: The Dreaming in a few months. (If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, will be around Memorial Day weekend, and think you might like to play, drop me a line.) I haven't done a lot of LARP-running, so it helps to watch other people talk about the stuff you need to consider, and the different ways those topics can be approached. Especially when those people do things very differently than I do.

Anyway, if you have any interest in the topic, check his posts out. And feel free to jump in, even on the older posts; the more perspectives, the merrier.

Last call for Onyx Court letters

February is nearly over, and with it, the Month of Letters! You have a few days yet in which to write a letter to the Onyx Court; I promise to answer anything mailed to me before the end of the week (to give a few days' grace period).

And then we'll have the fun of seeing how long it takes the inkstains to fade from my fingers. :-) (No really, that trope of bookish types in fantasy having stained fingers? It's totally true. I just wonder if there's some trick I'm missing for not leaving little inky fingerprints on other parts of the page, because nobody every mentions that bit.)

con updates

First of all: I regret to say that I will not, after all, be going to ICFA this year. It's the week before FOGcon, and doing both back-to-back last year was really draining. Add in the fact that I'm already heavily booked for cons and other appearances this year -- not to mention that it costs a lot more time and money both to get out to Florida, now that I'm on the West Coast -- and I'm just going to have to pass this year.

I'm delighted with my schedule for FOGcon, though. They haven't posted the panel descriptions yet, so all I have to share with you are titles, times, and panelists, but these look pretty good:

• Judging a Book by the Girl on Its Cover - Friday, 3:00 p.m. (Jaym Gates, Marie Brennan, Jean Marie Stine, Elsa Hermens)
  
• Equal Time for Non-Vampires - Friday, 4:30 p.m. (Mickey Phoenix, Anaea Lay, Marie Brennan, Jaym Gates)
  
• Roll 1d6 on the Plot Hooks Table - Saturday, 8:00 p.m. (Marie Brennan, Steven Schwartz, Gary Kloster, Alec Austin, Alyc Helms)
  
• Mutations/X-Men - Sunday, 1:00 p.m. (Ian Hagemann, Katie Sparrow, Marie Brennan, Naamen Tilahun)
  
• Reading - Sunday, 1:30 p.m. (Marie Brennan, David Levine, Phoebe Wray)
  

Plus the writers' workshop, which I'm doing with David Levine and Cassie Alexander.

I'm particularly looking forward to the "Plot Hooks" panel, which is about the relationship between gaming and fiction: Alec and Alyc are both in my writers' group, Alyc is running a Pathfinder game Alec and I are playing in, and the gaming history between me and Alyc . . . it goes back twelve years, if you count the jerry-built Changeling game she ran during Castell Henllys field school, which led to me playing in the Bloomington Changeling LARP, which led to me running Memento, which led to the Onyx Court series. To name just one example.

Think we'll find anything to talk about? :-)