This was my eleventh straight year going to AmberCon NorthWest (ACNW), my favorite American convention. There remained a good crowd of about a hundred-twenty-something, with various newcomers along with stalwarts. My full list of events were:
Slot #1: Within the Jade Throne
Best moment - After a 24-hour, city-devastating martial arts fight, Mike's character Huan leapt 50 feet up after Aiden's shapeshifting escaping in gargoyle form, and missed. Dawn's character then leapt Huan's shoulders and leapt further onto the gargoyle, but fell through him as he turned into living shadow form - and then finally managed to take him down with a chi blast.
Slot #2: Short Larps by Jason Morningstar
No best moment per se because it didn't run, but I had a great time chatting in the soaking pool with Mickey.
Slot #3: Court/Ship
Best moment - My seemingly-innocent maid running weeping to Jarrod's captain of the guard, "Oh, monsieur. It is so horrible. One of your men was killed!" ... After having killed the soldier in question.
Slot #4: The Play's The Thing
Best moment - During casting, cackling with glee after Amy Edwards telegraphed that she really wanted Hamlet, but then got last pick on the part - so everyone had a chance to mess with the character before she got to take it. I made Hamlet "Pawn of Polonius".
Slot #5: For Love of Loot
Best moment - After having been secretly given a blood-bird to direct us to the hidden warship, our Chaos pirate crew were being interrogated by Julian about how we were going to find it. My character - Captain "Mad Eye" Shen - finally announced, "Alright, crew, I guess we'll just have to give him the bird."
(Alternate best moment - "What are we going to do now, captain?" "What do you think? Destroy all realities!")
Slot #6: Night Witches
Best moment - When Katt's pilot character went alone to confront the mechanic who harrassed her, and she successfully got him to apologize.
Slot #7: The Sundial
Best moment - There were many points where my character Prince Keolakameha demonstrated just how useless and pathetic he was. I particularly liked one of his first, when he met the photographer abandoned in the Lost World and his saurian-man companions in full-body cloaks, and his question to them was, "Do you know how I can find a tailor?" (He proceeded to get a full-body cloak, as that seemed to be the latest fashion.)
GM John Kim
Thursday - 7pm to midnight
This was the third year of this game - my first continuing campaign. It is a re-imagining of Zelazny's Amber around a Chinese theme, where all civilizations and universes are merely reflections of the great Jade Empire, and the Pattern is housed deep in the Forbidden City within the capital. There are many relatives since the first emperor long ago, and those in whom the imperial blood runs true are superhuman - able not only to walk the Pattern, but to leap to the tops of buildings and engage in fantastical swordplay. It merges Amber with the Chinese wuxia genre. My players the their characters were:
Important NPCs included:
This episode began with Mimi ramping up to her new role as the regent's spymaster. Meanwhile Junbao wanted mainly to wander and study philosophy, but he was assigned the largely ceremonial post of imperial tax collector (under protest). As the closest available connection to the regent, he was approached in a city on the Golden Circle by "Fighting Melon" Huan, who pitched how he should be introduced to the regent. Zak, in an unstable episode, ordered Seven to attack Huan. The resulting fight was epic, lasting nearly 24 hours and devastating a quarter of the city.
In the end, Seven almost escaped by flying away in his demon form, a gargoyle. Huan jumped fifty feet and missed him, but Mimi showed up and jumped onto his shoulders and leapt further onto the gargoyle. Seven briefly escaped by changing from gargoyle into his avatar form - a living shadow - but Mimi brought him down with a chi bolt. With a few hours of effort, she found a way to bind the unconscious shadow into a lantern and brought it to the capital. Meanwhile, Junbao pursued Zak for another day in a Hellride chase, and eventually brought him down.
Regent Sanniang gave the living shadow Seven to her brother Wang to secure, who trapped him in a sort of pocket trump prison and questioned him. However, while left alone, Seven was contacted by a mysterious voice and disappeared from his trump prison. The others then questioned Zak, and did not get very far - though they found out about the Knights of Heavenly Purity. The strange voice then spoke to Zak and offered him leadership within the knights, and revenge against those within the knights whom he opposed. He accepted, and was granted power to break free of his prison and find his way to the Forbidden Garden where the Pattern is. Huan then found himself hypnotically drawn to the Pattern, along with Seven - and others followed.
A fight then ensued by the edge of the Pattern, mainly Zak assaulting the others aided by his left arm brimming with Pattern energy. Sanniang tried to control the Pattern to protect it, but was sucked into an alternate reality through it - along with Mimi who tried to help her. The others then fought Zak to a standstill as the palace guards surrounded everyone - and Junbao took him out by breaking his left arm - which caused his arm to explode, disabling both Zak and Junbao. The guards then took orders from Junbao - who was uncomfortable with leadership, but as imperial tax collector was the highest ranking person still conscious. He secured the prisoners, giving some latitude to Seven who had not fought with Zak and also whose blood was burning as it sapped from a small wound he had gotten touched by Pattern energy. They then went to "Shining Star" Wang for help, who found a way to send them into the psychic reality that Sanniang was trapped in, and promised to help pull them out. (Except for Zak, who was imprisoned again.)
In the psychic Pattern realm, Sanniang and Mimi were attacked by Pattern ghosts controlled by the First Emperor, who was evidently the force behind this. Each were faced with dead people from their past. Mimi refused to fight her brothers who had died saving her as a child, and was badly beaten as a result. Sanniang fought against her dead rival Ninghong, and was hard-pressed until others arrived to help. Soon they had their own ghosts to deal with, but by switching off and fighting each others' ghosts, they bought time for Sanniang to use her Pattern mastery to switch the setting to the Emperor's tomb. There they confronted the emperor, who was evidently desperate and angry, refusing to accept death and demanding that he be respected. They opened the sarcophagus, and started a Pattern fire which burned the emperor's remains, destroying the ghost. However, they then had problems getting the fire out - which could potentially spread and destroy the Pattern and all of reality. Wang suggested that some sort of sacrifice was needed - and then sent a Pattern ghost, the ghost of Sanniang's childhood friend Guangli, who had disappeared some time ago, and it turned out was going to propose to her. Sanniang tearfully accepted his sacrifice, and the fire was stopped - with both the emperor and Guangli wiped out of reality.
Best moment of the game for me was after the 24-hour, city-devastating martial arts fight, when Mike's character Huan leapt 50 feet up after Aiden's shapeshifter escaping in gargoyle form, and missed. Dawn's character then leapt onto Huan's shoulders and leapt further onto the gargoyle, but fell through him as he turned into living shadow form - but then finally managed to take him down with a chi blast. Classic wuxia action!
GM Seth Blumberg
Friday - 9am to 1pm
This was a planned as a run of one of a few short larps: "Juggernaut" (set in July 3rd, 1950, in a lab in Washington, DC); "Out of Dodge" (set in the present day, in the getaway car from a heist gone wrong); and/or "The Climb" (set in the present day, in the course of the first ever summit attempt on the Himalayan mountain Gangkhar Puensum).
Unfortunately, the slot did not run - but I had a nice relaxing time in the soaking pool instead, so it worked out.
GM Charity Lechuga
Friday - 2pm to 6:30pm
This was a game set in the court of Versaille, using the FATE Accelerated system. The characters could be anyone spending time in the court, with a hint that there would be some sort of alien contact. To be specific, we were in the summer of 1754 in the 39th year in reign of King Louis XV ("the Beloved"). The king is 44, having ruled from age 5, and is known for his excess and parties, while the crown prince (the Dauphin) is 25, and is known for being more pious, and at present his wife is pregnant. The players and their characters were:
Events began after a shooting star came down close to palace, widely considered to be a bad omen. King Louis asked his mistress to arrange for a party themed after the shooting star, to show everyone that their fears were unfounded. She sent the captain to retrieve what could be found of the meteor, and went with the other mistress and maid nearby to a hotel in Versaille village to audition entertainers. The alien threat manifested as a strange buzzing, followed by darkness, after which the people engulfed were possessed.
The characters were all fun, and the concept was great, but I felt the aliens were less threatening than I expected, and the characters weren't pushed as hard as they could be.
In all, good light fun.
GM Jason Giardino
Friday - 8pm to midnight
This was a run of the excellent messing-with-Shakespeare game by Mark Truman. The players have characters as actor types - such as The Ham, The Ingenue, The Lead, and the Villain - and only after that are cast as parts in a Shakespeare play. They then run through of the play, durign which the actors can make changes to characters and plot by spending story points and rolling dice. We collectively decided that our actors would be in a 1950s setting, where they were putting on an avante-garde film adaptation of Hamlet, with an Italian director. With Jason as the Playwright, the other players and characters were (in order of casting):
Amy made the mistake (?) of saying that she really wanted to play Hamlet, but then by the order of bidding was last in the bidding for the character. Thus everyone had a chance to mess with the character of Hamlet before she got it. I added "Pawn of Polonius" first, someone else added Brother/Sister, but she still took it. Then the part of Polonius came up, and it was down to me and Robert, but I had first pick, and I was too tempted and took the juicy part. After that, highlights of play included the romantic sparks between Hamlet and another character (Laertes?), Polonius being fought over in the .
GMs Ben Bernard and Michael Hewner
Saturday - 9am to 4:30pm
This was a game of Amber Diceless where the PCs were all space pirates plying the skies around the realm of Chaos.
Highlights included:
GM John Kim
Saturday - 7pm to midnight
This was my experiment playing out a newly-released story game by Jason Morningstar about Soviet airwomen in World War Two.
I only had two players - Mary A and Katt F, which made the game pretty personal. I didn't keep good notes on this one, but the actions was pretty engaging - including various flying runs and setbacks as well as the expected clashes with the army. In particular, there was a touchy run-in with a harrassing male mechanic, where the pilot surprisingly (to me) defused the situation rather than getting revenge.
GM Kai Mayfield
Sunday - 10am to 4:30pm
This is a continuing larp-like game, a steampunk game about a group of explorers from a British society. In the previous game, the explorers had accepted the surrender of the villain Dr. Bzggnartski, after which he directed them to an underground realm below Siberia where a civilization of bipedal dinosaurs were supposedly threatening all of humanity.
A big part of this game was the stereotypically Victorian characters - mostly with hugely inflated egos and booming voices saying ridiculous things. There is a critical mass of players who can riff hilariously for ages about given topics. My character, Prince Keolakameha, had been a classic useless aristocrat who mostly spent his time talking down at the lower classes - and then when things needed to be done, ordering his bodyguard Mae to do it. i.e. "I'll take care of this." (pause) "Mae, subdue this creature!" However, this session, his bodyguard Mae wasn't around - possibly because she had run off for a romantic getaway with the American detective Jackdaw. He was therefore mostly hopeless and desperate about trying to do any real-life things. We joked about him starving from being unable to get his wallet open.
The episode began with some characters spotting cloaked figures going around London, with the photographer who disappeared in the Lost World under Siberia. Prince Keolakameha concluded that full-body cloaks were the new fashion, and tried to get a tailor to make him some. He eventually ran into the photographer who helped him find a tailor. Meanwhile, the others were mostly gathered at the Explorer's Club, where they were lecturing and bantering.
This was great campy fun, a nice matchup of peculiar steampunk plot - largely ignored by players in favor of their own overblown personalities and ideas.
ACNW remains my favorite role-playing convention. The community is a big part of that, which is helped by the shared culture - and also by pre-convention organizing.