Two weeks and two missed Thursdays. Admittedly, I feel like I have a good excuse. Last week, I had a lot going on between work and making final preparations for the final Endgame. This week...yeah, I got nothing. Other than yardwork at home, excessive files and stress at work, and a desire to just sit at home and blow stuff up on the computer.
An Endgame Endgame
I've been a LARPer since...1990? Mostly, it's been fantasy-based LARPs. Endgame was a post-apocalyptic Earth where several humans broke the mystic barrier that kept Earth from being noticed by the rest of the universe. And by "noticed", we're talking "Old Ones" and "Magical Beings". For 6 years I was on staff for this game, not as a player, as a former Massachusetts National Guardsman named Sgt. Julian Cross. I was the "PC Liason"; essentially it was my job to ferry issues from the players to the folks running the game about problems with the event and any NPC issues that arose (folks being jerks, not taking hits, unsportsmanlike conduct of that nature). I was also the operator of the resurrection mechanic, and would get woken up at all hours to get dead PCs back into play.
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| Captain America throws his mighty shieeeeld...! |
I got burned out in the middle of my tenure, and was looking forward to the game ending. Most of staff was starting to get burn-out, and it was decided to end the campaign before it "jumped the shark". It was a good call, and it was a hell of an event.
I even got to make a prop for one of the PCs who had a lifelong quest to retried Captain America's shield from the Marvel offices in New York (which was also known as "Zombie Central"). The act of retrieving the shield turned it into a magic item, and became a rallying symbol for humanity. Got a saucer sled, and layered on coat-after-coat of primer and paint. The bottom of those sleds are very slick, and the paint would just peel off it. My wife had the idea of clear-coating it in poly-urethane spray to give it several sealing coats. Seemed to work, as there were only pockmarks on the paint scheme at the end of the event.
Endgame was fun, but over the years I've felt like I'm not "built" for LARPs anymore. I'm pudgy, slow, not as good a fighter as I used to be (not that I was a phenom before). I dislike camp beds (most LARPs take place at boy scout camps or the equivalent). Hate plot-staffs that run encounters until 3 AM or even later. I feel like I get more enjoyment from a solid 8 hours of tabletop gaming and then being able to sleep another solid 8 hours in my own bed with my hot wife. I work all week, getting up at 6am to get to work. The weekends I need to try to catch up on sleep but with your average LARP schedule that doesn't happen.
I don't know, I'm bitching and complaining a lot, but some of this might come from my jealousy for those players of Endgame. I was in-play most of the weekend, and made some great friends and had some neat interactions with the PCs, but they got to go off and affect plot. They got to "change the world", and have that experience. I was basically support, and plot-directed support at that. Maybe if I could have been as involved as the player base was, I might have enjoyed it more. Looked forward to Endgame more. Been as sad to see it go as others.
Then again, I'll be 41. Maybe I'll be in better shape and hankering to show the young-ins how it's done.
Lightsaber Footwork
I'm making significant progress on my Lightsaber forms talent trees. I really want to do a post about them, but most of my time is being eaten up by me working on them.
The "Fast Forms" tree is turning out to be the hardest. With the "Balanced" and "Strong" forms there's a lot of overlap; a lot of lead-ins from one to another. Makashi, Ataru, and Soresu are all almost stand-alone, with very little in common between them.
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| Ataru vs. Juyo...well, it mostly worked out in the end... |
...although, now that I think about it, Kenobi was an Ataru duelist before watching Qui-Gon's death at the hands of Darth Maul, when he changed and went to learning Soresu. Hmmm...that gives me some clues as to where I can link the two forms in the tree.
Another problem I have is the inevitable power creep. I have tried...TRIED to use the talents we've been given already, but there are just some things that need to be cut from all-new cloth. The trick making unique talents that aren't too good, that also don't require half a column of text to adjudicate. I like the simplicity of the talents in Edge of the Empire already. As Sam Witwer said about them "If you can describe your talent in a small 1" box, you're doing something right". Some of my talents are pretty wordy in their writing. Somewhat clunky too.
It's a work in progress, for sure. One I might get to writing up next time.
That or I might finally go into my notes on converting some characters over to EotE from Saga Edition.
Ah, copious free time....what's that again?
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