Kapiti Roleplaying Weekend 2

Well, I had an awesome weekend of gaming. What a way to end the holidays! It very nearly took the sting out of term starting up again. Today has been a blur of work stuff, so I'm super glad to be home again and able to reflect on the weekend past. Debbie and I got started early with a game on Friday afternoon, which was champion. We'd tidied the house earlier in the week, so apart from some last minute recycling and picking up firewood, we were able to chillax and enjoy a game of Princes' Kingdom with Hix and Conan. It was just as good as I had hoped it would be. The premise is that you play young princes and princesses, sent out by your father the King to travel the islands of the Kingdom, learning about the Kingdom, yourselves, and how the King's laws operate. We encountered an island filled with mistrust and prejudice, with the indigenous peoples suffering at the hands of their colonizers. We'd established a tone of British colonialism during character generation (the way you describe your characters helps set the details of the kingdom). It was fantastic - confrontational and intense and emotional. We managed to resolve the problems on the island by showing that the King loved all his subjects, and by installing an outsider to rule impartially. There were some powerful scenes, and I totally loved the game. In the evening we watched Darkplace and played the board game Cleopatra (and the society of architects?) with Luke and Sam. It was very nice indeed :) On Saturday I ran We Have the Technology, my very silly game chef game. The first scene was a fantastic parody of 80s cold war hysteria, set inside the missile silo 'Mount Doom'. It was hilarious, and filled with moments of genius. As more people arrived and were assimilated, the game got more and more out of hand, until an injury occured and we decided to call it quits. I did get to see Fraser as a monkey chasing Malcolm around the house trying to steal his muffin, Conan and John as 50s gang leaders having a dance-off, and Jarratt as an agnry father jumping in to the last 5 minutes of the game and scaring the pants of Norman (who then ran out and attempted to blind someone to prove himself to Jarratt's character). I'm pretty sure there was some genius somewhere in the madness. I then got to help Debbie run Evil Genius Summer Camp, which may in fact have a snazzier name than that. It was a really fun game with awesome players, and is just such a great concept for a game. It was all very very cool. One highlight was the nerdy evil genius players managing to get the Hydra to eat its own team members in the dastardly game of field hockey. Dinner, and then Decade, run by Donna. You play out a series of scenes at a New Year's Ev eparty (you're supposed to play it 10 times, a decade of parties with the same charcters). The game has a theatre-sports feel to it, and was really, really good. We discussed setting for a while, and were split between superhero and normal characters. We went for normal in the end, but there were quite a few odd characters in there. During the first part of the game, you play out a normal party. You can give other characters traits by making statements about them, such as "Hey Matt, are you still homeless? How are you handling your terrets' syndrome?" and "How are you coping out of prison? You've been arrested, what, 5 times?" and "Have you burned any more houses down lately?" We had sham marriages, mob connections, B grade movie stars, homeless writers, bestiality, arson, smuggling. All the things you'd expect at a new year's eve party. We returned to Luke and Sam's for some Rapidough and Compatability, before retiring for the night (with a few guests taking advantage of our pull-out sofas). Sunday was gloriously sunny, so we went to the park and played with a flying disc (including a kind of bullrush game) before heading to Luke and Sam's for one last RPG. Debbie and I both played in Wuthering Heights the RPG, run by Jenni. It was a mad-cap adventure of impropriety and darkness, played on the deck in the bright sunshine. It was enormously fun, and goodness the sun was nice. Debbie and I returned home to get a little bit of work done at around 4pm. We watched the first 2 episodes of Heroes, which looks to be a fantastic show. Then, sadly, it was time for the end of the holidays. Only 9 weeks to go until the real holidays begin!