------------ Forwarded Message ------------ Date: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 1:06 PM -0500 From: SuperFRED <superfred@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: rabbit-support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [Event] Some of Our Rabbits Are Missin by Nimrod Jones This is an auto-generated report from SuperFRED regarding an event that Nimrod Jones has submitted. http://rabbits.looneylabs.com/?RabbitUserID=zencadet ======== Title: Some of Our Rabbits Are Missin Location: Conception 2007 Date: 31st Jan - 4th Feb The very first time I went down to Conception back in 2000-and-whatever-it-was is a journey that's particularly ingrained in my memory. It was, indeed, the very first odyssey and I unintentionally started as I meant to continue. What should have been a three and a half hour train journey turned into a nightmarish seven hours. Although my back split on me in the morning, thanks to a little emergency Reiki it was as though I'd downed a large dose of ibuprofen and thankfully could completely forget that just a couple of hours before getting on the train I could barely walk. Not only was the train running late due to no end of problems, including a landslide in Keynsham, but I also missed my connecting train and had to wait for the next one. Deranged with hunger and on an unfamiliar route, I managed to miss my stop and ended up at the end of the line, worried as to whether I'd ever make it I ended up catching a taxi which cost me more than my return train ticket. Finally, I turn! ed up with just enough time to buy some food before they stopped serving and grab a pint with only half an hour before closing. Fortunately, it was a fantastic convention and immediately became my favourite con. The following year I also travelled by public transport and this time I got off at the correct station but then found that I had no idea how to get to the convention centre. There were no taxis at the rank so I figured I'd walk. Hey, how far could it be, right? Well, it was only about a mile or two, but when you've just been travelling by train and you don't know where you're going it seemed like a painful eternity. Especially since I found myself wandering all over New Milton trying to find street signs before I finally found someone to point me in the right direction. The following years I drove down and they became whole new adventures all on their own. For the first time since those first two years attending I found myself travelling on public transport again. This time I knew what I was in for as far as getting to the venue was involved and arranged to be picked up from the station. Having pre-booked tickets (with reserved seats) I almost missed my train leaving Cardiff. I'd been trying to figure out a way to transport some character sheets for a game I'd half-promised to run for two years in some format so as I could get to run it. However, my printer's dead, my floppy drive seems to be unrecognisable recently, I don't have any blank CDs, and I don't own a pen-drive. Messing around all morning with stuff meant that when I caught the bus it arrived at the station with the train already standing at the station, only minutes to spare. The rest of the journey, however, went disturbingly smoothly and on time. I turned up when expected, but then found myself without a ride. I couldn't get through to Jenny's phone (which either! meant she was already there; the venue has a notoriously bad signal in and around the main hall) or they were running very late. After about an hour waiting, to allow for the fact that they may have got my text message and been on their way I set off and walked. This time I had a better idea of the way and quickly stopped to ask to be pointed in the right direction and, this time with an mp3 player, the walk seemed to go a lot quicker. Jenny & co. had only shortly arrived by the time I got there (and had yet to receive my texts) with, in mirror to our experiences getting down to Dragonmeet, another accident and big delay on the motorway. However, this time I'd got there early enough to relax and enjoy myself. Impressively (and somewhat scarily), the snack bar got through 10 kilos of spicy curly fries (which I'm convinced is laced with crack cocaine) before the end of the night! A fun and loose game of Baron Munchhausen, 1d24, a birthday party, several drinks, much discussi! on, and only a little sleep later it was time to start demoing! . This year, however, we were somewhat understaffed as two of our regulars were not able to attend, unable to get the time off work. Also (unintentionally) absent was our Cthulhu Bunny mascot overseeing the demo table. Knowing this (and freed somewhat of our servitude to Cthulhu Bunny), it was decided that rather than working nine-to-midnight as was the norm we set ourselves to have the table open only nine to six, leaving the evening slots to keep for ourselves. Of course, Are You A Werewolf? would keep its usual slot at the end of the night between 11pm and midnight. Still somewhat heavy with alcohol I was woken up at the ungodly hour of before the morning time reached double figures in order to take part in a shopping run for the chalet. Despite my morning rituals to attempt to summon sobriety and some semblance of life I was still amongst the walking dead and therefore quite thankful that there wasn't room in the car for me. I crawled back into bed and tried to catch up with what sleep I could before the actual start of demoing. The Full English Breakfast (or, in my case, a vegetarian equivalent) is by far the best 'cure' for a hang-over ever. There are three schools of thought on this: first, like me, those who agree, knowing either instinctively or factually the alcohol absorbing properties of fat; the second, unlike me, who cannot stomach even the thought of eating that much on the morning of a hang-over; and, finally, the third, which I got from mostly the Dutch Belgians along the lines of how can you eat that much for breakfast!? But, I swear, it works! The only thing it doesn't do is cure tiredness, alas, and neither did the crap, overly-priced coffee they were serving up. What happened to the coffee machine they had serving espresso! Don't they know gamers need an appropriate amount of caffeine? They couldn't even remember to get in enough spicy curly fries for the first night! Things did not bode well on the food front. After setting up, things got moving quite quickly and we got to demoing. In the past I didn't usually end up demoing Cosmic Coasters, myself, it mostly ending up being Jenny or Alex, but with people expressing an interest in playing it, and being on the table alone it was quickly time for me to refresh myself with it. I had a nice few games of giant Cosmic Coasters in which I got eliminated once, reduced to one ship once and finally (and I think for the first time ever) actually won the game. I also got to play, for the first time, Martian Coasters which I've quickly come to enjoy. This took up most of the morning along with some Treehouse and then I was relieved to relax a little and catch up with friends, but, more importantly, to prepare a Call of Cthulhu scenario from scratch to run in a few hours in lieu of my twice-postponed intended game. One successful game, yet more drink and more late-night discussion later and it was time for demoing. Again. Friday, it turned out, was my day. No sooner had I sat down than the request for a cookie from another table was made. Yes, this year Jenny was baking again for charity. As with last year a price wasn't set, rather we simply asked people to put as much as they felt was appropriate. This year, in total, we raised £50.02 (approx. $98.48/€75.99) - more than last year, and without any baked goods on Sunday. The morning started slowly, which gave me an opportunity to play Volcano - a game I don't often get to play properly very often, yet immensely enjoy. Some more Cosmic Coasters, and as the morning and afternoon pressed on lots of EcoFluxx, Treehouse, Martian Coasters, and more. The evening was time for lashings of ginger beer! Jenny's "Five Go Mad in Innsmouth" Call of Cthulhu game has to be the most fun I've had for quite some time in a game and a wonderful chance to be irreverently reckless and silly in a Call of Cthulhu game. Putting on our best Enid Blyton voices, lashings of ginger beer on the table and a dog more intelligent than any of the players' characters (yes, Timmy was a playable character!). After that I ran some Are You A Werewolf? in which I had some fun playing around with settings. For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the game I ran a default theme set just after the case of Peter Stubbe, tried in the 16th Century as a werewolf in Germany and providing some nice story context for roleplayers. The following game I tried a radical change of setting for some real fun: adrift on a cruise ship terrorised by some form of horrible Cthuloid creatures from the deep, the players were the last survivors of the ship fighting for their lives and trying to get themselves rescued. Instead o! f deciding who would be lynched it was a matter of deciding who would be thrown overboard into the sea either to be torn to pieces by tentacles or transform and swim away. Each night would involve them locking themselves away in single cabins, fearful of each other, to find each morning who was still alive. Saturday was my day off on account of my having done Friday almost solo. This was where things really turned around. Despite previous years having had more Rabbits it seems somewhat strange that this year when we had less I managed to get more gaming done. I spent the day playtesting and playing games which was something I hadn't done for a long time at a convention. So, as to what Looney Labs games were demoed on Saturday, this Mad Lab Rabbit has no idea as I only stopped in the morning to play a little Martian Coasters before disappearing for the day. Alex had put up an impromptu poster informing people that, yes, Are You A Werewolf? was happening. Over multiple A4 sheets he wrote "Are. You. A. Were-. Wolf?" followed by the times and place of where we would be playing. While I was playing a game of Cursed Empire, Alex came over to me and said: "Your fame has spread. Someone has added to the Are You A Werewolf? sign, 'No, but Nimrod is.'" Immediately to my left was someone who I thought was being suspiciously quiet on the subject. I turned to him and said: "It was you, wasn't it." An accusation he did not deny, nodding enthusiastically at his mischief. Yes, even on the first night we played during the first night phase, when asked to point to who the werewolves would like to kill, one of the werewolves pointed to me. "No, werewolf, you can't eat me." And in the past it's not been unknown for the villagers to try lynching me as moderator - simply for the sake of upholding tradition. While I was still roleplaying, Alex ran some presumably default Werewolf games but as soon as I finished we put into action an idea he'd had with a Werewolf vs Mafia game. Werewolves, Seer and Alchemist in the same village as the Mafia, Detective and Doctor. The Seer could not see the Mafia, the Doctor could not protect against Werewolves, etc. But, of course, Werewolves could kill Mafia in the night and vice versa. Due to the added complexity, me and Alex co-moderated with me taking the Werewolves and him taking the Mafia so we only had to remember our own factions. A bullet-ridden werewolf, a dismembered mobster, a mafia hit on the local witch, it was a lot of fun. The basic Are You A Werewolf? game is always fun, and is always run when I have players who have never played before, but I do enjoy throwing in the occasional alternative setting to vary the games a little, especially with experienced gamers. This proved to be a lot of fun and interestingly this year (at least ! in the games I was involved with) the villagers were always victorious. In the past the werewolves have often been the winners, so either the players are getting smarter or the werewolves are getting worse at hiding themselves. Sunday at Conception is always a half-day of sorts because at 2pm the awards, raffle and so forth is in the main hall which makes for continued gaming at the Looney Labs table usually quite difficult. That said, as I didn't have any raffle tickets this year, once they got onto doing the draws I managed to demo Aquarius and, again, Martian Coasters. Despite not having enough people to run any promotionals in quite as organised a manner as we normally do, we still managed to give away lots of Trees and Forests, German Cake and one of the few remaining Flowers.
From a personal perspective this was a more rounded Conception than I've
had for some time with roleplaying (both GMing and playing) in addition to the usual demoing. I don't think we really lost anything from not demoing in the evening, since other demo tables only seemed to demo two out of three slots of the day, yet we've always aimed for 100% demoing. Yet, despite being understaffed it worked out wonderfully that we sorted our time in such a way that we managed to play and demo (although the system wasn't wholly perfect). In addition to a lot of the regulars (who were still yet to play all the games on offer), there were a lot of people completely new to Looney Labs. One couple, arriving late on the Friday were concerned that they wouldn't find anything to play. The guy over on the Having A Larp stall pointed them over to our table and they, like others, went away happy. And, as usual, Jenny's baking was as popular and delicious as ever! ---------- End Forwarded Message ---------- Carol ========= Carol Townsend Rabbit Wrangler and Con Schnook http://rabbits.looneylabs.com/?RabbitUserID=CarolT and The Looney Labs Rabbit Team http://www.looneylabs.com rabbit-support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (301) 441-1019 (main office) (630) 448-4946 (Chicago office) (301) 441-4871 <-- FAX