Well, I managed to run Evil Bilbo’s Game at The Smoke. It was ok, it needs de-gendering a bit more, hadn’t noticed quite how gendered the names on the family tree were until right at the end when my lovely experienced players had to go with it. Got almost all possible endings out of the group of nine which I wasn’t expecting (I was expecting base fail and pass on the ritual). They mostly had a good time – The Pirate and Swedish Meta were wonderfully kind which helped.
I was mostly nervous all day and less than stellar company. Mystery Girl ran What We Do At The Funeral which I am so glad I got into, the last time I played it was at Beautiful Lute & Bunni’s joint birthday. It is an excellent escape and so proved today as well. BBF was playing too and a few London based players who had full on costumes – including the only other person who’s been wearing as much Christmas tat as me… ok actually he had a Christmas jumper on on Friday… I may be wearing bells on my nipples and have everything other than my underwear in a Yuletide style…
I think my relaxed briefing style was mistaken for inexperience by at least a couple of people who pre-empted my laying out timings and such. Not sure what to do with that, it happens with usually Type-A women some of whom have been known to apologise if they do a course with me and realise how I lead things. I thought I’d modified my tutoring after working with autistic individuals who need to know where you’re leading them but clearly I just slid back into, I’m going to get you somewhere and you’re going to feel like you go there on your own.
To be honest I want to take something much gamier back next year because I do want to come back next year, I had a great time with little one off games, much more so than I’ve been having with the endless roleplaying of Empire. Which is its own thing of course.
Had a weird thing that I noticed about myself, The Smoke is obviously full of poly people and not so poly people having snuggly fun on sofas. I absolutely did not want. It’s not like I wasn’t happy enough to kiss the Pirate or hug but I wasn’t into the snuggle pile scene. Which felt a bit strange because I’m usually pretty free with my affections. I’m pretty sure I’d have been welcome too or at least by some of the participants but I just wasn’t up for it. I don’t know if it’s just that I’ve been stressed this weekend or if this is some kind of post nervous breakdown reformation of self. Mostly I’m just trying to observe and poke at this new oddity about me, this weird still slightly disconnected me that I’m still finding new things to not recognise.
Managed to get more conversation in with Radio Phil before he left, so I had a chunk of LARP theory to mull over. Ended up talking about roleplay, my vag, death , rotting corpses and all sorts which was fun. I’m looking forwards to maybe putting together a Jack the Ripper LARP if I can figure out how to do it with some kind of integrity. Next year though I’m taking Cluedothulhu Live to The Smoke if The Blue Cat and FJ are ok with it.