Hopefully, we will be putting on the next run of the game in November of this year.  To do that, we’ll need a house to run it in.  If you host the game, you get a guaranteed spot in it as well as a bunch of other goodies!

Interested?  Check out the full post about it at the Alleged Entertainment blog!

Hello LARP fans!  In case you haven’t heard, my fiance Viktoriya and I are writing a LARP called “Harmony Quest.”  This is an experimental game set at a couples counseling retreat.  Most of the game will be spent in group therapy sessions, in which the characters will be trying to work out their relationship issues.

The game design candy here: we’re going to be using real past relationship issues from our players’ lives.  On the casting questionnaire, we ask you to tell us some stories about your past relationships, and we’ll be using them as the basis for characters.  You won’t get the character with your stories – someone else will.

Sound intriguing?  If so, we need players badly! We particularly need males, but we could use more people in general.

If you want to read the blurb, go see Vik’s original post about it on LiveJournal.  Or, to sign up, please fill out our casting questionnaire on Journey.  Thanks!

The weekend before last, I attended Wyrd Con One, the first all-LARP convention on the West Coast.  Joining me in my travels was fellow Alleger Greer Hauptman.

Wyrd Con was at once familiar and strange.  It was a larger convention than any Intercon in history.  It was a more diverse LARP convention than any I’ve ever heard of.  It was fun, instructive, frustrating, and fascinating.  Above all, it was, well, weird.

The con itself

Wyrd Con was held at the Hilton in Costa Mesa, California.  This is in Orange County, which for those (like myself) not very familiar with California, is a famously well-off area southeast of Los Angeles.  The Costa Mesa Hilton is a nice convention-center hotel, situated within a gigantic swath of suburban sprawl.

Wyrd Con was big.  The figure I heard was 318 attendees.  This makes it, much to my chagrin, the largest LARP convention ever held in North America.  Well, we’ll just have to beat them next year…

Intercon bills itself as a “multi-genre LARP convention,” but Wyrd Con absolutely puts Intercon to shame in that department.  Wyrd Con is extremely diverse in the LARPers it attracts: there were plenty of boffer-style players from all literary genres; White Wolf groups; Call of Cthulhu folks; theatre-style teams coming from LA, the United Kingdom, the Nordic countries, and (natch) New England; and there were LARPs I’m not even 100% sure how to categorize.

Wyrd Con had a very well-stocked vendors room.  What was most impressive to me, coming from Intercon, was that seemingly every vendor there was LARP-related.  In practice this meant they were mostly selling garb, props, and boffer weaponry.  As one might expect, most of the stuff on display was from the fantasy and steampunk genres.

Concurrent with Wyrd Con was the 2010 LARP Summit.  This was two simultaneous tracks of panels, workshops, and talks on various aspects of LARP.  It was pretty similar in content to Intercon’s Pre-Convention (nee Thursday Thing), but unlike at Intercon, the Summit was run simultaneous to the rest of the convention.  In addition to the events themselves, the LARP Summit produced a book, which you can read online.  (I wrote one of the essays in it.)

Intercon uses the con suite as a socialization space.  Instead of that, Wyrd Con had an area called the Tavern, which had a bar serving beer, wine, and cocktails.  They also had a stage for live musicians, who were scheduled for most of the con.  In theory I like this idea a lot, but in practice the sound system the musicians were using was way too loud for the space and made it difficult to socialize, so people mostly ended up hanging out in hallways.

I found registration at Wyrd Con a bit confusing.  They had an online pre-registration system for events at the con, similar to Intercon, but I found it somewhat difficult to use, and in addition, people receiving free admission to the con for running games there (like me and Greer) had to pay extra to pre-register for games.  At the con itself, you could pick up one of a limited quantity of event tickets, which were meant to be handed in at the event door.  But Greer and I didn’t find out about the ticket system until Saturday, so we missed getting into some games and ended up waitlisting a bunch.

The play-by-play

Friday

• Greer and I arrived a little bit late to the con (having come in on the Greyhound from San Francisco).  We checked into our room after some confusion at the desk.
• We checked into the con and got our extremely nice metal convention badges!  Yay!
• We noticed that there was a game called Casino Arcana running soon, organized by our buddies at Enigma Live Game Labs, so we decided to go check it out.  But the game was full when we got there.  We decided to wait around and see if anyone didn’t show up.  One person didn’t, so Greer got to play.  I decided to go check out the panels.
• I walked in halfway through a panel called LARP and Performance Art – A Crossroads.  This was a presentation by Brody Condon, an American artist with a background in performance art, and Bjarke Pedersen, a Dutch LARP designer who is the incoming chair of Knutepunkt.  This was a really fascinating look at some of the LARPs they have collaborated on over the past few years as well as their frightening and awesome-looking current project.
• After the panel, the presenters and most of the audience went to get some drinks from the Tavern and talk about the state of LARP in various geographical areas from which we all came.
• Eventually I had to set up for our 2:00 AM (!!!) run of 10 Bad LARPs: Remix! I wasn’t incredibly optimistic about getting players for this due to the time, but it turned out we were fine.  This was probably our most violent run of 10 Bad LARPs to date (and that’s really saying something).  Tons of delirious, half-drunken fun was had by all.

Saturday

• Woke up at 8:00 AM.  Ugh.  Felt hung over.  That turned out to be perfect for…
• Rock Band Murder Mystery! Greer and I got in off the waitlist for this Enigma game.  This was what we in New England call a “WYSIWYG” game, or what the Nordic LARPers call a “360 degree” game, meaning that everything in the game space is diagetically real.  The couch is a real couch, the panties draped over the nightstand are real panties draped over the nightstand, the bowl of M&Ms with all the green ones removed is a real…

  I played the band manager, Shannon.  This was a fun role that I really got into.  The game itself was a perfectly decent murder mystery, perhaps a bit unevenly plotted in places, but solidly designed.  What really made the experience special was the immersiveness – everything felt marvelously real.

• We caught the tail end of Lunch with the Queen.  This was the aforementioned LARP I wasn’t 100% sure how to categorize.  It was an unplotted, free-conversation, in-character event without pregenerated characters.  When we walked in it felt like a fairly serious, SCA-style affair, mostly centered around being in the persona of a medieval character, but the players actually joked around quite a bit.  We asked them about it afterwards and they told us that the tone of their events varies a lot depending on how people are feeling – sometimes it’s really serious and sometimes really silly.
• I watched the panel about The US Military’s LARP, which was about Fort Irwin’s training simulation, a gigantic, extremely realistic simulacrum of an Iraqi town.  A guest speaker from the Army came and gave a brief talk, then showed us part of a documentary about the site, and took questions from the audience.  It was really fascinating, and I’d love to take a tour there at some point.
• I sat on the panel about The Art of LARP, moderated by Aaron Vanek.  We talked about whether or not LARP can be classified as an art form, and what the benefits to thinking of it as one might be.  I had attended a similar panel by Aaron at Intercon J and had high hopes for this one, but I don’t think it went over as well with the Wyrd Con audience as it had at Intercon.
• I attended the talk by Bjarke on Twelve Nordic LARPs that everyone should know about.  This wasn’t simply a rundown of twelve important games as I had expected, but rather a look at the various styles of LARP in Nordic countries using these games as a means to illustrate them.  General impression: wow, Nordic LARPs are way more intense than American ones.  I need to go to Knutepunkt.
• After dinner, Greer and I set up for Welcome to Scearbridge University.  This game was way under-registered: we only ever had about half of the minimum number of players we needed to run the game.  So I had cunningly printed out a backup game as well, with the intention of probably running it instead.  That’s how we ended up running The Trial.  It went quite well, I thought.  Greer did some excellent out-in-the-hallway recruiting, so we were able to run only a few players short of full, and we had one of the more nuanced outcomes I’ve seen in that game.
• After the game, con chair Ira Ham showed up and talked with me and the remaining players for awhile.  It was really interesting to meet Ira and get to hear about the process of putting Wyrd Con together.

Sunday

• I went to the Enigma Live Game Labs brunch, where I got to talk to a bunch of cool people, including Larry Niven.  Yes, that one.  Also, I got to have some awesome in-depth discussions about LARPs past and present with two of the Brits who had signed up for Scearbridge: Hanbury Hampden-Turner and Rachael England.  Turns out they ran two games at Wyrd Con which I had managed to totally miss.  Suck!
• Greer and I were invited out to a dead dog by Fei Leung, a local LARPer who had jumped in at the last minute to fill a really important role in The Trial.  There, we got to meet some of the southern California scene, who are a really cool bunch and really welcomed us in.
• Then we went back to the hotel.  I fell asleep pretty much immediately and involuntarily.  Greer watched the Criminal Minds marathon.

Monday

• Woke up early and got my rental car.  Went back to the hotel and checked out.
• Greer and I drove to Six Flags Magic Mountain!  Woohoo!

  I realize my roller coaster geekery doesn’t really belong in a LARP con report, but I will just say that Goliath and X2 are fucking amazing, and if you’re ever north of LA and have the time, you really must go check them out.

So that was Wyrd Con.

It was fun.  It was definitely worthwhile.

Will I go back next year?  Quite possibly.  Will you come with me?

Following what seems to be the popular format amongst my friends, * means this was one of my favorite experiences playing a LARP.  % means I particularly disliked playing this game.  Breaking with tradition a bit, I’m going to separate out another mark: @ means I have a rant about this game (positive, negative, neither – this just denotes that I have a lot to say about this one).

Also note: I’ve redacted things that could be possible spoilers, but left them possible to see, by writing them in white-on-white with a black underline, so you can highlight it to see, like this: “Rosebud” was a sled.

2002

• Mont-Saint-Michel (Brandeis) – the cook
• Deep South by Daylight (Brandeis) – don’t remember
• * 6×9: Peripheral Visionaries (Brandeis) – Sumadartson
• @ The Final Voyage of the Mary Celeste (Brandeis) – Lord Thantor
• %@ Broadway’s on the Rocks with a Twist (Brandeis) – The Phantom of the Opera

2003

• Saturday Morning Massacre (Intercon C) – Inspector Gadget
• @ An Evening With Clarence (Intercon C) – Detective Nick Carter
• * Underdog’s Tavern (Intercon C) – Slicer
• Panel: The LARP (Intercon C) – Horde
• * Eye of the Storm (Intercon Gazebo) – a child whose name I don’t remember
• Og: The LARP (Intercon Gazebo) – a caveman
• * Col. Sebastian T. Rawhide’s Circus of the Spectacular (Intercon Gazebo) – Douglas Credenza aka John Bungling
• %@ Star Wars: Only Time Never Stops (Intercon Gazebo) – Thel Shaki
• Giggle (Brandeis) – Purple Tentacle

2004

• * Grimm Tales (Intercon D) – Jack
• * The School for Young Women Specializing in the Arts of Grace and Maidenly Submission (Intercon D) – The Puppet aka Guybrush Threepwood
• City Council of Hound’s Teeth (Intercon D) – Horde

2005

• Michael Clambino’s Poker Night (Intercon E) – the goon
• League of Extraordinary Breakfast Cereals (Intercon E) – Snap (or maybe Crackle or Pop)
• * TBA (Intercon E) – the pilot
• Endgame (Intercon E) – a technician whose name I don’t remember
• @ Etherlines: The Morning After (Brandeis) – I wish I could write down the character’s name, but there are people out there who would stop being my friend over that.
• Perfectly Normal University (Brandeis) – Greg Nevski
• A Night at the Dead Fern Bar (Intercon XX) – Dr. Maynard Weisel
  
• * Tempus Frangit (Intercon XX) – Raventooth
• An Iron GM Game by Deb and Del that I can’t remember the name of, sorry (Intercon XX) – an absolutely flaming man whose name I can’t remember
  

2006

• A crossover game whose name escapes me (Arisia ’06) – Frobozz
• A Question of Faith (Intercon F) – can’t remember
• Divus Ex: Greece (Intercon F) – Dionysus
• * Layover in Santa Calavera (Intercon Z at Intercon F) – horde
• Bughunt (Intercon Z at Intercon F) – team leader
• Succession! (Intercon Z at Intercon F) – can’t remember
• Return to Wonderland (LARP Weekend 2006) – the King
• Welcome to Sunnyvale (LARP Weekend 2006) – Jim Hoover aka God
• League of Extraordinary Breakfast Cereals (Intercon Northeast at Dexcon 9) – can’t remember
• Plan 8 from Outer Space (Intercon Northeast at Dexcon 9) – the QA engineer whose name I could look up if I weren’t a lazy ass
• %@ Wizards (Intercon Northeast at Dexcon 9) – a troll whose name I can’t remember
• Elanthia (Brandeis) – Sir Nathanial Dorian
• 1955: Signals (Intercon XXI) – Charles Lambwright, military advisor
• Smallgreens (Intercon XXI) – can’t remember
  
• % Mahabharata (Intercon XXI) – Karna (should be noted that the % is for a “me” problem and not a game problem, IMO)
  

2007

• Divus Ex: Convocation (Festival 2007) – THOR!!!
• Miskatonic Class Reunion (Festival 2007) – Franklin Dark
• In the Jungle (Playtest, Somerville MA) – can’t remember
• * Grimmer Tales: Arabian Nights (Intercon XXII) – Jack
• And They Were As Gods (Intercon XXII) – Alexander Carpathia aka Jesus
• Masks (Brandeis) – Harry Stein aka Der Flamende Aedler aka Breakeven

2008

• Clue Impaired (Arisia ’08) – Antonio
• *@ 10 Bad Modules in 100 Bad Minutes (Intercon H) – a bunch of characters, including Repentant Sobbing Hitler
• Miskatonic Archaeological Expedition (Festival 2008) – Dr. Armand Pabodie
• Marin County New Age Society Cocktail Party (Festival 2008) – Inspector Mudd
• *@ Torch of Freedom (RPI) – Col. Ignatius Evingast
• Blue Archangel (Intercon XXIII) – Ken Robertson
• * The Road Not Taken (Intercon XXIII) – can’t remember my number, but I had to decide whether to pull the plug on a dying parent
• % Finals (Intercon XXIII) – the janitor

2009

• GM Space (Playtest, Brandeis) – horde
• % A Midsummer Night and the Living is Easy (FestEvil ’09) – Sam Archer
• *@ Lifeline (FestEvil ’09) – Zonk
• Shebopaleleigh (FestEvil ’09) – a troupe member
• * ‘Tis No Deceit to Deceive the Deceiver (Brandeis) – Nathan Windswept
• % Tales of Pendragon (RPI) – Otho
• Martha Stewart’s Guide to Interdimensional Summoning and Basting a Turkey (Brandeis) – Mephisto
• * Shebopaleleigh (SLAW) – an audience member, then a fill-in role for a missing player
• * Bard of Avalon (SLAW) – Hollyhock
• % Chateau Ennui (SLAW) – Sam Petrasewicz
• Paranoia (SLAW) – Fea-R-Less
• Lullaby of Broadway: Episode 2 – Gary Coleman

2010

• 1897: The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee (RPI) – Bram Stoker aka Van Hellsing
• Blackout (Intercon J) – Dan Gallagher
• Replaying a Classic: Final Voyages of the Mary Celeste (Intercon J) – Capt. Briggs
• * The Sound of Drums (Intercon J) – Kasimir
• * Oz (V for Vestival) – Jubilation Lott
• % Carry On at Camp David (V for Vestival) – Elvis Priestly
• * Two Hours in London (V for Vestival) – Daniel Alexander

Some Vital Statistics

Games played: 73
Games played at conventions I was helping run: 21
Favorites: 20
Disliked: 9
Strong opinions: 9

Games in which I played screwed characters: 23
Favorite games in which I played screwed characters: 6

I had privately resolved at New Year’s to get more exercise, but joining a gym hadn’t really helped much.  I felt healthier, but I didn’t get to the gym as much as I would have liked to, and I hated doing it.  I had recently read The Hacker’s Diet by John Walker, which had given me hope that really transformative dieting – the kind where you go on it until you’re not overweight anymore – was even possible, and some ideas about how to do it.  I downloaded a calorie-tracking iPhone application and started counting everything I ate.

Much to my surprise, calorie counting actually worked.  It worked so well that since last Passover, I have lost 45 pounds.

Unfortunately, February-April is convention season.  My diet has gone somewhat by the wayside and I’ve gained back 5 of those.  That’s why I’m announcing here publicly: I am renewing my Passover resolution. Over the last year I did pretty well, but the work is not yet done.

This is a static site, meaning it’s pretty much just an informational set of pages.  Previously, I’d been using Radiant CMS for such things, and MediaWiki before that.  But both of those solutions (along with WordPress, Drupal, and other CMS-like things) mean having to deploy a whole web application, complete with a database onto your server.  That takes manpower, RAM, and is a pain whenever you migrate to a different server.

You never really need the complexity of a CMS except when the content changes.  So instead of a CMS, how about software that just regenerates all of your HTML files whenever you change something on the site?

Turns out there’s a really good piece of software called nanoc that does just that.  Using nanoc, I was able to build the web site I wanted without a hassle, and compile it to static HTML files in under a second.  (There are already pretty good tutorials, including one on nanoc’s web site, for using it.)  I do recommend using nanoc version 3.1 or greater, since it has some very major usability improvements.  3.1 is in beta right now, but should be released really soon.

But what about when you want to deploy the site to your web server?  Well, you could just copy the entire contents of the output folder over there.  That would work, but:

• It gets to be a pain when you do updates (copy it again!  now copy it again!).
• It can be hard to back out a change (oops, I accidentally deleted a page).

Well, in the Rails world, there are a couple of good tools to do this kind of thing: the venerable Capistrano and the young, awesomely-named Vlad the Deployer.  There are some big differences between these two tools, but essentially, what they both do is:

• Build a set of folders on your web server called releases and shared.
• Check out the latest version of your site from your version control repository, under a new timestamped folder in releases.
• Copy or link any server-specific stuff you’ve put in shared into the new copy of your site.
• Run some tests to make sure the new copy is good.
• Create a symlink (or change the existing one) called current, pointing to the new copy of the site.

So with this setup, all you need to do is point your web server’s root for this site at the current location, and your deployment tool will set up new versions of it with no downtime.  Plus, it’s easy to roll back to an older version if you need to – just change the symlink back to the older copy.

I chose Vlad the Deployer for this site, partly because I like the name, and partly because it’s smaller and less Rails-specific.

Here’s how I did it:

Step 1: Install Vlad

If you’ve already got nanoc installed, you’ve already got Ruby and RubyGems.  So installing vlad is easy:

sudo gem install vlad

If you’re not using Subversion as your version control system (I’m using git), then you’ll also need to do one of the following:

sudo gem install vlad-git
sudo gem install vlad-perforce
sudo gem install vlad-hg

Step 2: Edit your Rakefile to enable Vlad

nanoc already put a Rakefile at the top of your project folder.  To enable Vlad deployment, just add the following lines to the bottom of that file:

require 'hoe'

begin
  require "vlad"
  Vlad.load :scm => "git"
rescue LoadError
  # do nothing
end

(If you’re not using git, change “git” to the name of the version control system you’re using.  Vlad supports “subversion”, “hg”, and “perforce” as well.)

Step 3: Write a config/deploy.rb file

Create a folder called config in your project folder.  In there, you’ll need a file called “deploy.rb”.  A basic Vlad deployment script is as simple as this:

set :application, "my_web_site"
set :domain, "root@my-web-server.com"
set :deploy_to, "/srv/my_web_site"
set :repository, "git://my-git-server.com/myproject"

(If you want to run the deployment as a different user besides root, just change that on the “domain” line.)

In our case, we need to do a little bit extra.  First of all, we need to override Vlad’s default “update_symlinks” task so that it doesn’t try to link in some Rails-specific folders from shared.  We can do that like this:

namespace :vlad do
  # clear out everything currently in update_symlinks
  Rake.clear_tasks('vlad:update_symlinks')

  task :update_symlinks do
    # nothing
  end
end

The Rake.clear_tasks line deletes the “vlad:update_symlinks” task.  We then redefine it (so that other tasks that try to run it won’t fail), but our new version does nothing.

Finally, we need to do an extra step: once our site is checked out onto the server, we need to use nanoc to compile it.  To do that, add this inside the “namespace :vlad” block:

task :update do
  run "cd #{release_path} && mkdir -p output && nanoc3 compile"
end

This will add an extra step to the “vlad:update” task.  It goes into our timestamped folder under releases, makes an “output” folder, and runs “nanoc3 compile” (which will compile our nanoc site into the “output” folder).

OK!  The final version of the deploy.rb file looks like this:

set :application, "my_web_site"
set :domain, "root@example.com"
set :deploy_to, "/srv/my_web_site"
set :repository, "git://my-git-server.com/myproject"</pre>
<pre>namespace :vlad do
  # clear out everything currently in update_symlinks
  Rake.clear_tasks('vlad:update_symlinks')

  task :update do
    run "cd #{release_path} && mkdir -p output && nanoc3 compile"
  end

  task :update_symlinks do
    # nothing
  end
end

Step 4: Run Vlad!

OK, we’re all set to run.  In your project folder, run:

rake vlad:setup

Vlad will SSH into your web server and create all its folders in the location you told it to.  (It will probably ask you for your server password, possibly multiple times.  If you want to avoid this, you can set up SSH public key authentication.)

Now we’re ready to deploy the site:

rake vlad:update

If you go check in the web server, you’ll see that your site has been deployed to the folder you chose, under “current/output”.

Step 5: Set up your web server

You need to tell your web server where to find the files for your new site.  I’m using nginx as my web server, so here is the configuration for that:

server {
    server_name my-new-site.com www.my-new-site.com;
    listen 80;

    location / {
       root /srv/my_web_site/current/output;
    }
}

Or for Apache, do something like:

<VirtualHost *:80>
      ServerName my-new-site.com
      ServerAlias www.my-new-site.com
      DocumentRoot /srv/my_web_site/current/output
</VirtualHost>

Restart your server, and boom, you’re done.

Afterwards

Now to update your site, you just check your changes into version control, and run:

rake vlad:update

Vlad will automatically update your server and change over the symlink.  If you want to roll back to the previous version:

rake vlad:rollback

She was kind enough to find me a new one, so enjoy.

Briefly – WordPress has a gigantic attack surface.  It’s far and away the most popular web application as far as installed instances, and although the developers do a fairly good job with security, the sheer popularity means that as soon as new exploits are discovered, blogs get compromised almost immediately.

It’s not that WordPress isn’t good software – I think it is – but that running it yourself means having to constantly stay on top of security issues.  What if I go on vacation for 5 days and don’t have computer access?  Am I going to get hacked?  More importantly, are the other applications also running on my server – including Journey, which is a commercial software offering – going to get hacked?

It’s just plain not worth it.  Let someone else host my blog.

So I’ve done something I’ve been thinking about for awhile: I’ve moved this blog off my own servers and onto WordPress.com.  For anyone currently hosting your own WordPress installation, I highly encourage you to seriously consider it too.  It’s easy to do, it migrates all your comments, and it’s free-to-extremely-cheap.

Unfortunately, they don’t let you use just any WordPress theme, so I’ve set up a new one from their (fairly good) library.  I actually think this one is an improvement on my old theme.

Anyway, enjoy, and please do let me know if you see any issues with the new blog.

I’m very excited about having Intercon at the Westin.  It’s an absolutely fantastic space, and as a GM, I’m really looking forward to making use of it.  The function space at the Radisson is great for us, and I can confidently state that the space at the Westin is an improvement on it in every respect.

Even more exciting than the bigger, better function space, though, is the fact that this change lets us grow as a convention.  Last year, at Intercon I, we saw the largest registration numbers for any Intercon convention in history.  Not only did Intercon I break the records, it shattered them – we grew almost 50 attendees; about a fifth of the convention size!  This year  (not surprisingly, given the economy), the numbers are down a little, but they’re much closer to the I numbers than the H ones.  Moving to the Westin will let the convention continue to grow without having to worry about capacity.

Of course, moving to a different hotel comes with some downsides, too, and Chad did a great job covering those in his post as well.

The most important one, in my opinion, is that attending Intercon K will probably end up costing you a bit more than previous Intercons have, due to the fact that we won’t be able to provide meals at the new hotel.  This would have been true with any new hotel, not just the Westin – the deal we have with the Radisson is basically unheard of in the hotel world.  We’re actively looking into ways to keep the costs down for our attendees as much as possible, and we already have a few ideas, but I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes by speculating here.

Finally, I just want to say that I’m immensely honored to be part of the Intercon community.  I often marvel at the fact that not only do I know some of my favorite writers in the world personally, but they’ve played my games too.  We have a truly amazing, participatory LARP culture here, and now we have the opportunity to expand it and share it with even more people.  I won’t lie and say I’m not nervous about the changes ahead – but I know this community can come together and make Intercon K work.

(Click for full size.)