Kapcon 21 and "Achaean"

Once again, an impressive contingent of Aucklanders made the annual pilgrimage to our capital city for Kapcon - a full on affair starting with precon drinks on the Friday night through to the wee hours at the afterparty at Norm’s house. Wellington welcomed us with fantastic hospitality, and I’d like to thank all the amazing Wellingtonians that offered accommodation and lifts to those of us that came down, and made us feel so welcome. Thank you to the Kapcon organisation team, the Achaean larp team, the GMs and all the other players.

If you’ve never been to Kapcon, you should consider going down next year. It’s a really welcoming convention with top notch tabletop games and a larp stream that grows in size and strength every year. Folks who went this year should post some of their highlights to show how awesome it is, and to commemorate the event :slight_smile:

(I’ll post mine tomorrow, I need sleep now…)

Thanks everyone for a great weekend, and great to see so many people down from Auckland (and other regions).

I managed to play in six larps, all of which were fantastic. I really enjoyed crewing in Sophie’s Kin is Less than Kind Larp, which had some of my favorite scenes of the weekend. Oh and not being able to breathe for laughing in Steph’s ‘A Stiff One’ means I’ll never look at a laminator the same way again.

I’d recommend anyone who’s thinking about coming down next year to register early if they want to get into the larps as they tend to fill up quickly.

The convention itself has an early bird discount, and a generous discount for GM’s which means I think you could have had a whole weekend of gaming for $15! Plus we can usually find beds/sofas/floor space for people looking for a place to crash. So it can work out a pretty cheap weekend away.

Counting down the days to next years con, I’m already excited about the pitch for the flagship game http://www.nzrag.com/nzrbb/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=422

Very quickly. The larps were among the first games to fill in rounds one and two, and many of the later round larps filled very quickly after registration was opened for them in mid-December. So, sign up early, and offer to run a game to ensure you go to the head of the queue.

Not sure if this is the place to put my writeup/notes/thoughts but I’ll take a stab in the dark :stuck_out_tongue:

Argonautica-I’m forbidden to reveal plot twists, but:

something harrowing happens/someone has a serious emotional outburst

someone: “the cameras are off since the end of filming, right Tim?”

me: “oh yeah, definitely” (lying though teeth)

was recurring excellent fun
also, I’ve just found out from talking to others that apparently the thing my character did before going on the sub may have contributed a lot to what happened during the game :open_mouth: I had NO IDEA, OH GOD! :stuck_out_tongue:

The Discarded-MUCH more intense and grim than I’d expected, and we were all at in tears at least IC at one time or another, the reenergising exercise Tigger put us through at the end during the debrief was very welcome. I do hope that humanity actually wanted to make amends for what they put us through. Awesome roleplaying all around.
there was a genuine moment of hilarity when Nik’s (alcoholic) character expressed despair that she was unlikely to ever have a relationship or children due to her mutations, to which Russ’ character responded “oh Taylor, any guy would be lucky to have you give his children Fetal Alcohol Syndrome”. Also, Brynn played the ship’s de facto councellor just right with an element of slightly irritating motivational seminar leader :smiley:

Kin Is Less Than Kind-I was a little uncertain during this game and tried to make things turn out well, then I remembered toward the end that I was in a Shakespearean-style Tragedy and refocused to cause as much drama as possible before the bodies started piling up, and pile up they did… :slight_smile:

Between rounds on saturday-mainly spent sitting next to a powerpoint in the corridoor with Mel applying latex and string to my flesh and then heating it intensely with a hairdrier to form my Hephaestus scars on my left knee and my arms and torso, time constraints meant no scars on my neck climbing up to my jaw but I loved the look I ended up with. Absolute full credit to Mel for her work making me look fearsome and disfigured. Also, I got a prize for that costume :smiley: very happy with my Reunion tee and glow-in-the-dark D6s

Achaean-I found myself less despised for my ugliness and crippledness than I’d thought I’d be but a reassuring mutual hatred permeated my relationship with Aphrodite (I think her real name is Rowena, she was awesome to RP with), something it took half the LARP for us to finally admit to one another. The confrontation between her and Eos (played by Randy) over the former seeing me and the latter talking intimately was the most fun I had the whole night, because while Aphrodite couldn’t stand me and slept with any guy that moved, I was HERS :stuck_out_tongue:. Thankfully she gained a genuine interest in Theseus and finally let me get a divorce from her in order to court Hestia (Bex).

Cool moments from Achaean:

-Mortal (can’t remember who, sorry) ascends to Olympus to petition Zeus for help getting revenge on Dionysus for sleeping with his aunt while shapeshifted, other gods and I supress giggles at his choice of ZEUS to petition, given the offence involved.

-Of the six children of Cronus, only Zeus (Norm) has any enthusiasm at all for voting Herakles (Paul) into the dodekatheon, Zeus is mystefied by the others’ lack of enthusiasm as expresses this at a quick council toward the end of the evening… the other five struggle to find a tactful way of telling him his favorite son is… a bit wild and irresponsible, and a moron.

-not going to brag about it after this but I have an evil sense of pride about it, I broke Randy by outflirting her, shortly before the abovementioned confrontation with Aphrodite, in fact.

Round 4 Games On Demand-I played Silver Kiss for the fourth time, with Jess, Nick and Nasia, this time as a demonic entity with an addiction to snorting kitten souls. As usual I ended up wanting to nominate everyone but what really made the session was that Sophie was running another Silver Kiss game in the same room and things became rapidly and escalatingly competitive between her and Jenni. Their smack-talk and crossovers between our games, including a previous romantic rejection between the football coaches they were playing, came dangerously close to breaking all of us :smiley:

Round 5, more G.O.D.-Monsterhearts this time, another excellent session run by Steve Hickey, who I’ve played the game with before, it was another excellent session this time, though my roleplaying got dictated early on by a spell that got put on my character. Freya was an awesome fey lothario and Jess made a cool Chosen One.

Round 6-… what can I say about round six? I played in A Romantic Mystery (Hot Guys Making Out) with Mike Foster, Russ and Steph. It played as episodes of an anime set during the spanish civil war about 16 year old Gonsalvo, taken from an orphanage to be the ward of the enigmatic Honore at his manor house in the mountains, where many brooding gazes off into the distance, and much innuendo ensues. I played the maid, Maria, Mike was Olivier the butler, Russ fell oddly naturally into the role of Gonsalvo and Steph was Honore. We had an absolute blast playing out two episodes, the first featuring Gonsalvo running out into a storm and being caught in the forest with a pack of wolves basically because the plot demanded it :smiley: and the second involving the return of Honore’s ex-lover, now a NAZI!, to try to win him back. Everyone was awesome again and I liked Frank’s GMing style, as this was my first experience with it. Steph in particular was clearly relishing the chance to put her years of spanish study to good use and Mike’s accents are always great, this time he played Olivier as a native of cornwall or liverpool, alternately. :smiley:

Oh, and the afterparty at Norm’s was pretty awesome as well, I loved hearing everyone’s highlight moments.

So, did I have a good kapcon? Yes, yes I did, actually this one had some of my favorite moments of any con I’ve been to. I’m especially thrilled that awesome people from uni and games club came along to it and loved it and want to come to more events, because logistical nightmares (I’m sure) aside, this community only gets better as it gets bigger.

TL:DR: Thanks everyone I played with, all the GMs who ran the games I was in and organisers for making things work. Also thanks people for the nominations for my costume, though it was Mel’s effort as much as my willingness to endure minor latex burns that brought it all together :smiley:

So now that I’ve got back from “other stuff” I finally had time to upload the LARP photos last night.

Thanks to Susan for taking them since I was busy being all Zeus and stuff…

picasaweb.google.com/1059246833 … Kapcon2012

Thanks Norm (and Susan)