Geek Girls Rule! #106 – Sorry about the radio silence there.

Wow!  Life has been nuts.  Some good, some bad. 

Last Wednesday we had to put the Elderly Cat to sleep.  Ronin was 14, and when he started exhibiting the symptoms of kidney disease we did what we could to make him comfortable and then took him in once he wasn’t.   After going through heroic measures with Punkin 3 years ago, we decided that it would just be better not to.  Ronin wouldn’t have stood for subcutaneous fluids, and it just would have made his last days even more miserable than they already were.  He got his extra special elderly cat gooshy food, and lots of loves and the heated kitty bed, and last Wednesday when he started having trouble walking, we took him in and held him until the end.  The last couple of days I carried him with me everywhere and prayed we could stave it off, but really when it comes to kidney disease in cats, all the treatments do is rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic until the water hits your neck.  We just couldn’t do it again. 

Also, at work, we’ve been going through Accreditation.  Accreditation is the process by which the powers that be decide if you should be allowed to grant degrees in your field or not.  It is a long, painful, agonizing process.  And, it has occupied the majority of my brain for about the last 6-9 months. 

Now, the big fun oh boy! news of the month is that the weekend before last was Ambercon NW!  Ta DA!  Brilliant, as always.  Many thanks to Simone, Guy and everyone else who works so hard to make that weekend so awesome and such a freaking success!

Thursday night was the Porn Game, in which I played professional dominatrix Martina Votkanova.  The porn game is usually really light and fluffy, and as we started one of the players, Joe, laughingly said, “I bet there’s really a ‘save the pattern, save the universe’ plot in here, but we’ve just been having so much fun with the smut that we’ve never found it.”  Well, we found it.  The game climaxed (pun intended) with an orgy to save the Serpent in Chaos and the Universe. 

Friday morning, I took off to hang out with my friend Karrin, affectionately known as the Keeper of the Other Half of my Brain.  Friday afternoon Karrin, myself, and our friend Madelaine, who are apparently known as the Trifecta of Female Gamer Evil, played with several other folks in a game called the Hooded Men run by Jules, and using a system written by Ben Lehmann.  We played bandits in Arden during the time of the Black Road, charged by Julian with destroying a terrifying monster or being eaten by his hounds.  Of course, Madelaine, Karrin and I decided that we were a lesbian bandit love triangle, and hilarity ensued.  Ben Lehmann came up with the idea, as a shaman, to essentially hit the reset button on Arden by sacrificing himself to the forest at it’s heart.  I got to sacrifice myself for true love, by dying in flames with Karrin’s character, while Madelaine looked on and said, “Wow, glad I got out of that relationship.”  Much fun was had.

Friday night, after a freakout brought on by concern for the elderly cat, I ran Attack of the B-Movies, using the 2-die or Bridge System written by Jordan, Chris and Ogre.  I had my four players play elder Amberites as horror movie tropes.  We had Dierdre the Cheerleader, Corwin the Sexy Outsider, Brand the Accidental Hero and Benedict the Hyper-Competent guy.  They killed Werewolf Julian.  Brand was attacked by Vampire Fiona.  Corwin got suckered into a trap by Flora tied to a bed.  And ultimately they faced down Vampire Master Caine with Corwin tied to an altar, Fiona and Flora crouching at Caine’s feet.  A lot of fun, very silly.  I described the scene of the final conflict as “Caine, as painted by Frank Frazetta.”  Having been bitten by Fiona, Brand had to obey Caine, but Benedict killed Caine just as Brand lunged, and so Brand stopped up short in his attack, dusted off Benedict’s lapels and said, “Good job.”

Saturday morning I played in Nursery Crimes PDX game run by my friend Jen.  Again, a blast.  This was based loosely off Jaspre Fforde’s Nursery Crimes books.  I played a vet who had developed an allergy to cats and dogs, who signed on with Nursery Crimes because she could still deal with talking bears, horses and lions.  We faced off against the Evil Mayor and Shere Khan from the Jungle Book, helped by Bagheera and the Lion from either Daniel in the Lion’s Den or Androcoles and the Lion, not sure which.  Lives were saved, man-eating tigers were caged, Evil Mayor was arrested.  Truly epic. 

Saturday night I ran the Amber/Harry Potter crossover game for the fourth year running.  This year the players decided that it was time to wreak some havoc on canon.  Usually I’m pretty careful to run them parallel to the books, but not intrude on canon.  Oh, not this bunch.  They got to save the day.  And I got introduced to the wonder that is the Bourbon Furnace.  Oooo, amazing drink. 

Sunday morning I ran Amber Family Therapy.  This is an idea that Debra Donoghue and Ogre came up with at our first Ambercon, and I got tired of waiting for her to come back and run it.  Ogre asked me if I were going to play the therapist as “the one true family therapist, or some poor clueless therapist out of Shadow?”  I opted for choice two as I found it far funnier, and Oh it was, therapist Harmony Stone.  I had Karrin as Brand “There’s always room on Team Destroy Them All, Harmony.”  Also a Corwin (sleazy), Martin, Fiona, Llewella, Merlin, Gerard, and Julian.  Oh, Julian.  My buddy Craig played the creepiest most fucked up Julian ever, with repressed homosexuality and incest issues, an unnatural attraction to Morgenstern and REALLY inappopriate crush on Flora.  Craig won the game.  One moment both Karrin (out of character) and I just wanted to hug him because he was so pitiable, and then he’d say something just… WHOA! and we’d recoil in horror.  Everyone else was awesome as well, but Craig went the extra distance.  After about two hours of that we declared Craig the winner, and then just talked about sex, Karrin and I performed dramatic readings of bad porn from the internet, and laid around the room nursing our hangovers. 

I now have a request to run Amber Family Therapy up in Seattle for people up here, and I’m considering banning Craig.  I don’t know if I’m up for that much more icky in my life.  Kidding.  I love sharing the wrinkles in my brain with everyone else. 

Ok, that’s about it.  Sorry again about it taking so long to do stuff, but damn has life been crazy.

Geek Girls Rule! #64 (For Reals) – AmberconNW 2008 Post-con report

Oh wow, such a good time!  I love AmberconNW so much!  The gaming, the socializing, the drinking, the conversation.  And the Edgefield added a big long soaking pool.  It was amazing.  We all invaded Sunday night and soaked and talked and splashed.

Thursday night, got there, got checked in, had the intro meet-n-greet sort of thing.  Then played in Thaddeus’ “Between Venus and Mars” game.  Set in the 1970s glam rock scene, we had to stop someone from assassinating Bleys, the lead singer of Bleysing Star, THE glam rock band.  We had Monroe Breckinridge the famous Photographer, Melodie Carole the up and coming singer, L the avant garde artist, Virgil White DJ of “White Noise,” Eddie Newton another musician and alien, Sidney Goldman Vietnam Vet, Michael Heron man of the scene, and Violette Skye fifteen year old call-girl/scene queen.  A complete blast.

Friday morning I played in an Amber Noir game, “Down these Mean Streets” run by Madeline.  I did not realize it was part of an on-going game, but loads of fun.  We had to stop Mandor from completing a trap created by the sacrificial mutilations of half-demon half-human crossbreeds.  We survived and succeeded!  Culminating in my character getting reprimanded by Gerard for telling him to tell his stupid brother to the King to listen to me when I advised him.

I took Friday afternoon off to nap and soak in the new incredibly awesome soaking pool with two friends and their sprogs.

Friday evening was the Pooh game, which is a long-running Amber/Hundred Acre Wood crossover game, and I could give you the plot of the game, but it would make no sense whatsoever.  Just know that the GM now takes special delight in outraging or making my character wail.  Ticketyboo the Trump Artist hedgehog.

Saturday morning we ran “Loose the Blood Dimmed Tides” a 17 player 6 gm LARP.  We made some mistakes, only had one major continuity error, and Ogre kind of sidetracked the plot.  But we did manage to keep 17 people entertained for six hours with it, so it went pretty good.  We’ve learned a lot from the experience, especially me since I’d never GM-ed a LARP before, or even co-GMed with anyone before.  The plot was that the Moonriders of Ganesh had returned to take Amber.  They succeeded in surprising the elders, and we began the game with Benedict, Caine and Dara crucified in the courtyard, Benedict with his arms cut off, Caine with his eyes missing.  Fiona came through a trump with a massive head wound.  And then it was chaos.  Woot!!!!

Saturday evening, I ran the Hogwarts/Amber crossover game “Wands of Avalon.”  It’s primarily returning players.  I’m running them parallel to the Harry Potter plot.  It is a blast with plenty of laughter and giggling.  At one point one of our players was conscripted by another game to play Gerard, trumped in to settle a dispute, so her having NO idea what was going on there was perfect.  I’m sure I’ll post more about it later.  But I did get to include a scene where Hagrid was wailing over the death of a stray chaos beast that he’d been feeding outside his cottage.

Then Sunday, I ran “The Keep” again.  This is the first time I managed to get them out of the bloody castle.  We had Gerald Fiona’s son, Vrazda Caine’s daughter, Linka Random’s daughter, Marcus Gerard’s son, and Byron Brand’s son.
After being stuffed in the bolt hole, they came out to find everyone gone, the Unicorn Shrine destroyed and the priest mutilated on the altar.  Gerald found some trumps but they didn’t know how to use them.  They saw something small and black spying on them, then the closed the gates, and Vrazda saw a man in green and black watching them from the trees.  They fled out the garbage/manure shoot and fled down the mountainside.  They captured the chaos critter that was tracking them, and Linka named it Blackie.  They got it to answer questions by nodding and carried it bound with them.  They happened across some shepherds, one of whom wound up being an agent of Caine.  They were attacked by more werewolves.  The shepherd shouted at them to “Call Julian!” and started killing wolves with a spear.
I’d let them get some inkling of how to use trumps earlier, so they finally managed to pull some elders through, and while the elders dealt with the werewolves, the kids faced down Dalt.
It was a blast.

So, yup.  I’m all excited about what I’ll be running next year now.  The Hogwarts game is a given.  And it looks like we’ve learned enough from this year’s LARP to make running another much more smooth.  And we’ve already come up with a great idea.  Also, I’m contemplating running “Amber Family Therapy,” wherein the players play elder Amberites in therapy with each other.  It’s something Ogre and Deb Donahue came up with a couple years ago. “Julian, can you use a feeling word to describe your sisters?”  “I don’t know, is ‘bitch’ a feeling word?”  This could be absolutely fantastic, or it could crash and burn.  We will see.

So, yes, a fantastic time was had.  There was gaming and soaking and drinking and giggling and laughing, and loads of inappropriate!  Yay!!!!!

So looking forward to next year.  Also, I’m contemplating trying to get back east for AmberConUS next April.

Geek Girls Rule! #64 (Sorta) – Leaving for AmberconNW in the morning

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All I have to do now is pack:  clothing, gamebooks, characters, notebooks, pencils, dice, erasers, knitting…

Tomorrow morning we drop the hedgepig off at his grandparents’.  And then we head down to Oregon to game all weekend long with 120 of our closest friends. I’m running two games myself and co-gm-ing a third with five other people and 18 players.  It should be interesting.

Go us!

Also, after reading all the The Devil’s Panties, I have decided I miss DragonCon and will find a way to get back there in the coming year.

Now I have to do go do some last minute game prep.  Talk to you all later!!!

Geek Girls Rule! #54 – I Run Games

I GM fairly frequently, well at least once a month with the Girl Game, but pretty often outside of that.  This weekend, I’ve set myself up to run two games.  Tonight (Friday) I’ll be running up to Stax’s place to run one of three choices I emailed her earlier today, all fantasy-based, for her and one or two others.  Tomorrow, I’ve issued an open invite for anyone who wants to swing by, grill stuff and game out on my lawn.

Frequently, usually on messageboards, people will tell me I’m the only Female GM they know.  And I find this bizarre.  I mean, I know more girls are getting into games every day.  But even in the Story Games community, women who run games are a definite minority.  Now, AmberConNW does have quite a few female GMs, seeing as it’s about a 50/50 split along gender lines, ok, maybe 60/40, and everyone is encouraged to run at least one game.  I usually run two.

Now, I have to say that as a Female GM, regardless of where I’ve been running, I don’t think I’ve run into problems any different from my male GM-ing friends.  I don’t find that the players are any less respectful of me, or my rules-modding, than they are to male GMs at all.  Maybe it’s the company I keep, I don’t know.  I highly encourage women to GM if it interests them.  It may not, I mean, not everyone wants to run games, regardless of gender.  It can be a lot of work. 

In the past I’ve run several games in the Harry Potter universe, both at AmberconNW and for local groups.  I’ve run GURPS vampire games, GURPS Fantasy.  I’ve run Little Fears, both locally and for ACNW.  I’ve run Teenagers from Outer Space.  And oodles of Bridge System games for people just on a pick-up basis.  And, of course, Amber.    The Mister is also trying to convince me that I need to run a Harry Potter LARP for the kids of people we know.  I say that I have no especially deep self-destructive urges right now, but will take it under advisement.

Tomorrow, I’m hoping to have enough people to run a game I’ve been itching to run for months.  Essentially, the players will be the children of people in a Medieval Keep out in the middle of nowhere, a way station in the wilderness, if you will.  The game starts after they come out of hiding after an attack of some sort, and realize that all the adults are dead.  I’m going to have them playing kids ages 9-16, and their character concepts will be built around what their parents/foster parents/trades masters did.  You know, concepts like “Son of the Blacksmith,” or “Daughter of the Brewer” or vice versa.  I figure in a small environment like that, gender lines do tend to break down, because you don’t have the luxury of gender segregation, every hand is needed.  Historical accounts of medieval villages tend to support this.  Gender segregation has, in western lands, largely been a trait of the upper classes.  I’m considering there may have been a very minor noble in attendance, and allowing someone to play his child.  But we’ll see what people want.

I can’t remember when this concept first started percolating in my brain, but I’m very excited about it.  I could have sworn I’d discussed it with Mr. Geek Girl What Rules, but he swears that last night’s drive home was the first time he’d heard mention of it.  I’m pretty sure I discussed it with someone previously.  If it goes well this weekend, I’ll probably run it at AmberconNW this fall. 

For tonight, two of the choices take place in a world I’ve been writing stories in for a while.  In this world, a civil war in the Summerlands leads to a Fae Diaspora into our world, and the Fae become the new immigrants, everywhere.  During a PTA game at a Story Games meet-up we explored the possibility of Fae Enforcers for Al Capone in prohibition era Chicago.  That game, “Guns & Glamour” was so freaking much fun.  Hopefully we can get those same folks again for another episode.  We left with some pretty hefty cliff-hangers going on.  Tonight’s options are, again, a Gangster-Fae sort of thing, or the Fae in Weimar Germany.  Can you just imagine? 

EEEEEEEEEE!!!!

So, other girls who run, share your stories with me.  Have you had any difficulties with gamers of either gender because of YOUR gender?  What’s your favorite system?  Your favorite game?