"Ah, how you promised, and ah, how I lied"

[clauclauclaudia]

I NPCed for a second run of thekinginyellow's The Dance and the Dawn LARP (from locke61dv's RPG) and it was just as much fun as the first time, though harder to photograph (because tighter quarters). New pictures and old are up. It's quite possible to scrutinize them for plot points, so if you aren't spoiled for it and might want to play it at Vericon, well, don't scrutinize them like that!

Seeing the same scenario played twice with different players was really interesting. saxikath and I did that with Live-Action Clue once upon at time, but that was partly a way of debugging the rules of the game. Given that some of the characters are heavily based on Utena characters, thekinginyellow noted early on that it was like watching the TV series of Utena and then movie of Utena. Variations on a theme.

The players are mostly trying to find their true loves by the end of the game. Unless they're just trying to screw things up for potential true loves. I am simply fascinated that essentially the same pairings ended up happening this time around, though in some cases for different reasons. Emergent TDaTD behavior? If it happens a third time I'll be inclined to suggest that the GM is wrong about who should end up together. ;-)

Now I dissect the end games some. LARPfic! No, no, not really. That would be truly scary.


So, the Lords except for the Prince have no choice in the end game. They can woo the Ladies, but in the end the Ladies choose. I can *almost* reconstruct the sequence of choices for each game from the photos and knowing which flowers I delivered. If anyone can fill in the gaps, let me know.

In the first game, Lady Kassirin chose Lord Selle first.
Then two things happened, I'm not sure which first: Lady Clara chose Lord Kieron, and Lady Viridian chose Lord Samangelov. Between them, Lady Elia chose Lord Armster. (So either Kieron, Armster, Samangelov or Samangelov, Armster, Kieron. Given the characters, I expect Clara got to choose Kieron first.)
Then Lady Gedra chose Lord Mirabilis.
Lady Jade chose the Prince, and he accepted.

[EDIT: or not... lemme check my notes again]

[EDIT May 27]In the second game, Lady Elia chose Lord Armster.
Lady Kassirin chose Lord Selle.
Lady Gedra chose Lord Mirabilis.
Lady Clara chose the Prince, who rejected her. (Burn!)
Lady Viridian chose Lord Samangelov.
Lady Jade chose the Prince, who accepted her.

I'm not certain where in this sequence Lady Viridian's choice came. But you'll see that all the player couples in game two are the same as in game one!

In both games, all the ladies successfully avoided Lord Tachrymon. But in one game Clara and Kieron got the happy ending, while in the other they were left lonely--but took over the Isles as the Queen and Duke got their happy ending. So even there there's some symmetry. Clara is probably the best qualified to take over the Queen's job, but I fear for the tender hearts of ladies entrusted to the care of Duke Kieron! In each case the Prince chose the same lady and left his mother at last.

I think that if you leave aside the Utena-related mappings, then Prince & Jade works perfectly well. Why *shouldn't* she have a Prince? And why shouldn't a Lady who demands respect and a peer work her way through the Prince's facade?

Or at least, reasoning somewhat circularly, any Prince who would say yes to Jade works as a partner for her. This is not at all what I thought initially after seeing the character sheets, but it's what makes sense to me after watching some of the game play out. And Gedra and Mirabilis was my early guess, and still makes more sense to me than Gedra and the Prince. I don't see how a fragile thing like Gedra can get the Prince to break through his emotional armor, basically. Whereas it makes sense to me that Jade can demand an equal from him, and, after some tussling, get one.

So, suppose Jade / Prince and Gedra / Mirabilis. I think I buy all the other intended pairings, though: Clara / Kieron, Viridian / Armster, Elia / Samangelov -- and those last two pairs just got swapped in each game. I'd love to know what their players think of the "correct" pairings versus the ones that happened in game.

Unfortunately that leaves Lady Kassarin with either Lord Selle or Lord Tachrymon. I'll say this--I don't think Kassarin would bore Selle very quickly. ;-)

Comments

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

LARPfic! No, no, not really. That would be truly scary.

I haven't written LARPfic, but I've written Salem Pirate Faire fic. It's, er, scary, yes, scary.

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

What's TDaTD? I'm drawing a blank, and the acronym dictionaries give a meaning that I'm pretty sure isn't your intended one.

[occultatio.livejournal.com]

I think the Jade/Selle matchup makes much more sense if you look at it from Selle's perspective than Jade's. She really is just about the ideal lady for him. The confusion on Jade's part comes from the fact that the bits of Selle's personality which make him good for her are also, largely, present in the Prince. But then again, that's sort of the Prince's job description.

And yeah, I totally want a third test run of this. I'm powerfully curious now. Maybe at Vericon...?

(although I hope to have a sequel/second edition game written by the end of the summer.)

[dumble.livejournal.com]

You've got your order of choosing for the first game somewhat mixed up. I (as Elia) was the second to last to choose. Jade was last. I don't remember the order before that, but I know that my only choices were Armster, the Prince, and Tachrymon.

I don't particularly understand why I was supposed to end up with Samangelov. I'm certainly not supposed to end up with Armster, though. I/Elia knew that: Armster told me that he was looking for someone who he could talk to about his experiments, and I obviously wasn't that person. But I also knew that I wasn't supposed to end up with Tachrymon or the Prince, and I knew that Armster and I would get along Just Fine, so I figured he was the best of my four options (the fourth being not to choose).

I think the Armster/Viridian pairing makes perfect sense. I didn't quite figure it out ingame because I didn't recognize the religious aspect of Armster's studies, but as soon as I heard more about Armster out of game, I figured out that pairing without being told.

So, Armster/Viridian is perfect. Elia/Samangelov could use some work to make them fit better.

[thekinginyellow.livejournal.com]

Just so it's out there, this was the GM thinking that went into the (controversial) pairings:

Prince/Gedra:
1) The Prince is used to playing off of Ladies' weaknesses and expectations. It's what he's been doing his whole life. For all that Jade is strong-willed and likeable and awesome, she has simple character hooks, and that means that she's vulnerable to his standard manipulations.
("Oh, sure, I'm not like those *other* horrible men--I respect you and your desire to go play with swords. Aren't I just wonderful?")
This means that she's as much a toy for him as the others are, and as easily crushed.
The thing about Gedra is that he can't actually do anything to her that hasn't already been done. He can't play with her expectations, because she doesn't have any. The idea is that she can actually force him to be genuine through sheer passivity.
2) Gedra is really far more the anti-Queen than Jade is. Jade is loud and willful and has an agenda, while Gedra is weak and shy in all the ways that the Queen is loud and manipulative.

Kassarin/Mirabilis:
In both games, Mirabilis has been played as a Parsifal figure whose naivete just underlines his moral perfection. If you read his character sheet, that's really not what he's supposed to be. He's a romantic, but part of the baggage there is that he has Expectations: he needs a Lady who wants all the tremendous attention and affection that he has to give. On some level, he really is a stalker. Gedra, with her horrible history, would be traumatized by it.
Kassarin, on the other hand, wants exactly that. For all that she's outre and sexual and scary, she has one of the most traditional desires: she needs someone to love her tremendously and unconditionally. Mirabilis is really the only one who can do that for her, given what she is.

[zdenka]

I'm going to say the most irrelevent thing first: You know saxikath?? (I've been in MITG&SP shows with her.)