Game History

The Credits page talks about the development of this LARP.

Intercon R, February, 2018 (v3.0)
aka A Nightmare of Club Ivory

I made a terrible mistake. I bid the game without having reviewed it to understand the state of the LARP. There were many good reasons why v2.0 ran strangely. The game was badly broken. Some characters had no agency. Some characters had nothing to do. Some characters didn't make any sense. I am embarrassed that I bid the game, because it clearly required a complete rewrite. I'm even more embarrassed that I ran v2.0 and thought it was good.

Since Across the Sea of Stars, I've lived by one simple rule:

Clearly, this situation requires a new rule:

But, the bid was in, and the team promised that we could make it work. People we know and love had filled the game slots.

In a project like this, there has to be a shared vision of where we were going, and we didn't have that. I sort of saw where to go, knowing that I was going to do the vast majority of the writing. We didn't have the time to discuss, merge, and edit, and one proudly suggested plot would get us (rightly) flayed by the community. It took precious time to edit that plot and its various unpleasant tentacles out. The team melted down as I did.

Working long and stupid hours, in the middle of a major migraine flare, I failed to pull the bid at three clear decision points - three times where I should have said no more. It is my fault that I didn't do so. Instead, I wrote around the clock, in a mental fog, while the room spun and blurred. There were eldritch things moving in the darkness around my laptop. I chatted with Tim throughout the nights, as we frantically tried to finish the game. I couldn't edit - some characters turned into novellas - but that's how I had to get it out of my brain, down on paper. Everyone else was furious with me.

Some of the medical tests and migraine symptoms suggested I could be losing some of my faculties. This is not something you want to hear, especially when you're in the middle of a stupid creative project with now ludicrous deadlines. Was pulling the game equivalent to giving up and giving in to the diagnosis? (A year later and the migraine is in its 26th month. I seem to be keeping up. Mostly. There are some things I can't do any more.)

Julie and Jordan Diewald helped where they could.

The game was finished enough to run, despite the swath of destruction left by the creative process. It seemed to run reasonably, but nowhere near the quality production I work hard to create. I think the game needs at least two more characters to fill in some holes. I am not certain that I can do the v4.0 rewrite needed to get to a reasonable, fully playable state, even now, more than a year afterwards.

The Intercon the Thirteenth Run, March, 1998 (v2.0)

This was the twenty-four player version of the game. We were full, with a strong cast of players, scheduled for Saturday afternoon. There was a bit of Murphy's Laws at work during the game, which challenged our skills as floor GMs, but we survived. The players took the game in new directions. I'll never forget the look on one player's face when he was sure he'd solved his problem, had the right person to strong-arm into giving him what he needed, and was completely and absolutely stunned to see himself abruptly looking down the barrel of her gun. A classic noir scene!

The Chelmsford Run, June, 1997 (v1.0)

This was a treat for the fabulous Intercon the Thirteenth staff. It used the original thirteen character version of the game. It was supposed to be a playtest of a LARP system, but because we all detest mechanics and love to role-play out situations, there was only one actual use of the system in the entire game. The characters all came alive, and we had a blast.