Alison Drinks Alone

Scene 1: Sawyer (#5)

Scotch, neat. Is there really anything else to drink? You've heard that the Brits may have some scotch with them, but the majority of them have port instead. Why? And why will it take ten minutes to pour some scotch and make something approximating tapas. Didn't the hotel plan for dealing with a full house of drinkers and diners — with an emphasis on drinkers?

You like Alison a lot, and you also like to drink. The challenge is that you like to drink with a bunch of other people, too. So why is it, in this hotel with LARPs in every nook and cranny, that you always seem to see the same dozen or so people. Oh, they look familiar, and you've LARPed with each and every one of them — but they're not the people you want to drink with. They say there are over 450 LARPers in the building. Where the Hell are they? Where are their good bottles of scotch?

You've heard Alison has sworn the players of Consensual Pirate Sexy Throne Time Games to secrecy, so that they won't spoil the LARP for those who haven't been able to play it. Like you. Dammit, you were there at 7 PM, ready to click on the link to the game at signups. You did, but it was too late. You were sixth on the waitlist. WTF?

You ended up playing in You Won't Believe This One Weird Trick..., a LARP about all the odd Internet memes out there. It was a strange, amusing, unexpectedly deep game. Still, you'd rather have played Consensual Pirate Sexy Throne Time Games.

Look, you get it. More than 450 people are trying to get into games, where a large fraction know and love Alison's games. They're an army, charging to their goal — take a slot in Alison's LARP. Not everyone is satisfied. It's not like you can clone Alison and run another instance of her game in parallel. That way is even further madness, and Alison's work running games for the con is madness in itself. You just wished your smaller LARPs filled as fast.

That 'sworn to secrecy' bit had better work. You want to play. You also want to sit down with Alison and chat for a bit. Maybe you can pry a little bit about her whizzy new secret mechanic she invented for the LARP. More likely, she's going to be surrounded by her players, who will babble adoring stories about their play in Consensual Pirate Sexy Throne Time Games. You never get that about your LARPs. It makes you kind of sick to see it when it happens to other GMs, their players fawning over them like people around a movie star. So why the hell doesn't that happen to you?

You'll just have to play the LARP at the Brandeis Festival of LARPs. Alison always does the second run at Festival. It's much easier to get into her LARPs there.

The way this is going, having to wait for a stupid glass of scotch, is probably a sign for how the rest of the night is going to go. You might be forced to drink passable port. As if such a thing was possible...

There are a couple of people who've caught your eye over the years, who might be somewhere in this apparent desert of LARPers. You're not getting younger, and dating is really hard when you try to explain LARPing to a potential partner. You'd just like one, really, who LARPed or understood what LARPing meant. Where are all the people at this convention?

It's not 'a Satanic ritual kind of thing' as one not-LARPer person replied, before they left the restaurant and date alone, running in fear. Trying to explain it to people with surgically removed senses of humor investigating to see if you could get a security clearance was just as difficult. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

You should have ordered a double.