Hi everybody,
As many of you know, the University of Auckland’s roleplaying club AMERICA is running their annual gaming convention on the weekend of 20-21 February. There’s going to be some exciting larp games on, and here is the schedule of what’s on and what to get involved with.
19th February - Friday Night - 7pm
Bad Dreams
Written by Vanya Essin, Gareth Sandford and Porl Bowdler
Bad Dreams is a series of one off, supernatural, psychological horror games. Focusing on heavy roleplaying and being light on rules. This is a new game from the team that brought you Bad Dreams: The Hidden (Best Game, Chimera 2009) will be run on the Friday night.
You are part of the crew of Nostromo. Bound for earth. An emergency beacon has made the computer awaken you from stasis. After responding to the distress beacon something is just not quite right. The people around you cannot be trusted and all the while something has happened to cause this signal and you have a dread feeling that you’re going to find out soon enough.
Saturday Morning - 9am to 12:30pm
Orcball
Details to be established.
Saturday Afternoon - 2:30pm - 6pm
Spy Hard
Written by Tigger Brunton
An espionage adventure-comedy set at a high-society party in the swinging 60s by Tigger Brunton.
Looking for romance, thrills and adventure? It’s 1969 (oh, behave!) and your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate the party of the decade. A party riddled with secret agents, double agents, defecting scientists, super villains, henchmen and seductive sirens. Achieve your mission, seduce the double agent and save (or destroy) the world. All without spilling your martini. Spy Hard: Danger! Suspense! Excitement! It’s the party with it all. Due to the excessive dancing, adult content and sexual innuendo this event is strictly R18.
A game for 20 participants.
Costuming Requirements:
Gentlemen – tuxedo or suit + tie.
Ladies – 60’s chic or formal evening wear.
No cast list but a short questionnaire, which is coming soon.
Saturday Night - 7pm to 11pm
BREAKOUT DAY
by Morgan Davie, Zak Clark, Luke Walker, Jonathan Todd and Nate Cull.
Originally written for and run at KapCon X, January 2001
A game for up to 43 players.
It’s Breakout Day for the call centre staff of Zonix Inc, an evening devoted to training and teambuilding. But there’s an efficiency expert on site, and rumours of layoffs are pending. Secrets abound, mysteries flourish, and it might be true that the night teams are full of vampires. And what on earth is the product you sell when you make these calls?
ZONIX INC is a multinational company, but a fairly small one. The company sells products to customers by means of cold calls from a call centre. In the call centre, employees use computers to manage their calls. They cannot make personal calls, and the computer places each call. As soon as a call is answered the computer provides a simple script, standard sales stuff but with a numerical code instead of a product name. All the customers on the database know who Zonix is and what the numbers refer to, because many of them agree to make a purchase. Few of them ask questions. No-one who works in the call centre knows what the products actually are. The call centre has a high employee turnover and is not a very happy place to work.
Employees are divided up into small teams named after cities in the USA. The teams work closely together and everyone in a team is familiar with their teammates. Zonix’s local branch is run by Leonard Bracklee, who seems a perfectly typical member of senior management. It was Bracklee who announced this paid, compulsory “breakout day”, probably to counter drooping morale.
This game is the original “big KapCon larp”, running again for the first time in ten years, and is a horror comedy set in the corporate world with a rather unexpected twist, where getting fired may be the least of your worries!
Sunday Morning - 9am to 12:30pm
Jade Empire: The Rescue of Ue-Hori
Jade Empire is a heroic fantasy LARP based in an Oriental setting. There is high fantasy and heroism - bushi saving villages, shugenja holding back the hordes of Tainted, courtiers saving their Clan from disgrace - but there is also treachery and intrigue. Honour is all, in this world, and the Way of the Samurai is hard.
Jade Empire: The Rescue of Ue-Hori is an equal balance of combat and roleplaying.
In the heart of Mountain Han (Province), a village has been wiped out by a force from the evil Black Land. A Mountain Clan messenger reached Yamakuro Palace with the terrible news, calling for urgent aid. All samurai nearby have answered the call, riding out to remove the taint of the Black Land from the Empire. You have arrived at the village of Ue-Hori, ready to strike at the forces of the Black Land and save the village.
People will be able to bring their current characters, but there will pregen characters for those who don’t have them or want them. Crew are required.
For more information on Jade Empire, please visit the websiteor the forums.
Sunday Afternoon - 1:30pm to 5pm
The Final Voyage of the Mary Celeste
Written by Jim MacDougal with additional material by Mike Young
Adapted for live roleplay by Ryan Paddy. Facilitated by Anna Klein.
It is November 1872. The brigantine Mary Celeste has been at sea for 23 days en route from New York to Genoa with a cargo of 1700 casks of commercial alcohol. It is a cargo the ship’s complement is unfamiliar with. The Mary Celeste lies approximately 500 miles off the island of Santa Maria in the Azores…
A week later, the ship is found, abandoned, its cargo untouched. The crew is never found. Over the years, many bizarre theories have arisen to explain what happened on that fateful night, from aliens, to sea monsters, to time travelers. But what if they were all true?
The “Mary Celeste” is a much-loved scenario from the theatre-style larp scene in the USA. It has been run at countless conventions in the US and around the world, and is often mentioned as a favourite of players. The genre is an absurd mash-up befitting the conspiracy theories surrounding real-world mysteries such as the case of the Mary Celeste.
Characters: The game has 13 essential characters and 6 optional characters.
Name (Gender)
Essential Characters
Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs (M)
Sarah Elizabeth Briggs (F)
Lizzie Briggs (F)
The Ship’s Cat (M/F)
Albert G. Richardson (M)
Dane Andrew Gilling (M)
Seaman Johan Goodschad (M)
Seaman Johan Volkert (M)
Seaman Johan Lorenzen (M)
Seaman Johan Martens (M)
Cook Albert Head (M)
Uli Morning Song (F)
Dr. Amelia T. “Bermuda” Rangel (F)
Optional Characters
Argent (M/F)
Dorothy Enemoratta (F)
Very Special Agent Brock Port (M/F)
Able Fosdyke (M)
Captain Robert McLellan (M)
Pretense Jones (F)