Queen Bees And Me

This past weekend I was up at the new-style Megaroleplaying Weekend.
The old version of this weekend had a bunch of people descending on a lovely small beachside holiday house (known in this part of NZ as a ‘bach’) to play a bunch of roleplaying games, hang out and talk, run around on the beach, and occasionally actually sleep.
The new version had us up at another coastal spot – the homes of Matt/Debz and Sam/Luke. There were about twenty bods, and we did the sunshine thing, the frisbee in the park thing, the barbecue thing, the hang out and talk thing (including a too-short politics chat with idiot/savant) and even the sleep thing. Of course, there was a lot of the game thing.
The games were amazing. I was lucky enough to be roped into Jenni‘s high-school girl clique game I Know, Right which was an absolutely terrifying experience. It lands you in the heart of a five-strong group of best friends, whose internal power politics are inevitably vicious. I started off in the ‘banker’ spot in the clique, knowing stuff and being able to stay in the good books of the Queen Bee by filtering information through to her. A power play later landed me in the coveted Queen Bee position, which I immediately discovered was even more stressful. I was completely out of my depth, and I soon found myself plummeting down to the awful position of ‘target’. I got a huge amount out of this game – I understand the dynamics of girl friendship cliques a lot better as a result. But, man, it’s harsh, harsh stuff. Fellow players were Debz, Giffy, Sam and Matt. Matt’s writeup. Debz’ writeup.
The other big game was ‘Phoenix’, which used the lovely Primetime Adventures system. We together hashed out an imaginery story structure for a TV series, and then played through a couple of episodes. It was really intense stuff, with play focused on two levels – the protagonist character’s experience inside the story, and the story-creation discussion happening around it. I was impressed by the way in which the system encouraged us to keep finding the crucial moment in scene after scene, and it resulted in an incredibly engaging game and story, although one far removed from more traditional roleplaying styles. This was run/managed by hix, and fellow players were Luke, Debz and Svend. An account of it is being developed here.
I also ran some game about crab truckers, which I wrote about on my LJ.
Overall, it was a splendid short weekend, and I look forward to the next one!