2007-06-06: JiffyCon updates
by Emily
We had our fourth JiffyCon last weekend. It was a success despite broken legs, fender-benders and plague mysteriously sweeping the Devens St neighborhood. I don't have pictures from this weekend, but I did put some from the March Boston JiffyCon up on my Flickr account. Many thanks to Eppy, John, Alexis, Mike, Ben and Tom for coming in from out of town. To our amazing last minute kid tenders: Erishkagal and Liz. And to Vincent for watching kids as well as hosting despite being sick as a dog, and Rachel, Steve, Joshua and Carrie for hosting on Saturday night. Y'all rock!
We missed Meg's playtest (since she had to travel home for another funeral :(, though our game group did play Miss Schiffer's on Thursday night before since we knew she'd be away. We also missed Poison'd and Tom's Dangerous Dungeons. But the playtest fest was on: we played Rob's Misspent Youth and Ben's Adventures in the land of 1000 Kings.
I got to play both playtests, and they were fantastic. Rob has been fine tuning his game-apparently it got an overhaul with Rob and others the week prior, and it showed. We got off the ground fast, making up a model community secretly controlled by their AI security systems, with an youth underground that showed its rebellion by genetically modifying themselves in defiance of a meritocracy based on superior genes. The mechanics hook the PCs in with relationships, and spur you to express how your character tries to break out of the confines of their place in society by means violent or expressive. I had a ton of fun playing with John, Eppy and Rob.
Adventures in the land of 1000 Kings is likely to become one of my favorite new games. Ben is writing the quintissential Narnia game. One that several conversations happening on Story Games or the Forge recently brought up the question of why this game didn't exist already. I mean, this is what we do, the hobby is essentially about entering a fantastic world where you can do things impossible in the real world. But the real heart of the game is what would make it an incredible tool for playing with kids, I'd say high school or middle school age would be best: your stats are based on memories about you shared by the other players. And as you play, the other players can help you in a conflict by sharing memories from their real world life that relate to the in game events. This might sound a little odd, or scary to have to come up with, and strangers playing with strangers offers some real challenges to the game. But experiencing it is transformative. It allows you to actually get to know the other players in a deep way, while having fun. And it will change the way you look at in-character/out of character boundaries. I had a fantastic time playing this with Ben, Alexis, Rob and Eppy. Rob wrote up the session on this Story Games thread.
Joshua ran an apparently old skul Shock: game that ended with the world destroyed, and facilitated Mechaton in the afternoon. The intrepid Evan ran Inspectres and Mortal Coil. The Mortal Coil game gave me another highlight even though I wasn't in it. In the campaign, they had a political rivalry going on: the red Alpha party vs the blue Betas and the Green (gammas?). Mike came around to the other tables and let us know we'd have the opportunity to hear the candidates and make our vote be heard. At the appointed time, we all took a break from our games and listened to the speeches. The Betas appealed to our solidarity as common folk, the Greens to our longings for nature in the blasted world, but the Red Alphas took it by promising us 365 days of circus and jello wrestling for all. What a world. :) It was great to be part of that and to get a snapshot of their game shared with us all.
2007-06-08 15:22:43 NinJ
It was a ball, Em. Thanks for making this happen!
2007-06-12 16:46:07 Emily
Thanks for making it so fun!