You hear that, Mr Andersen?

Kapcon, Paper, Medicine

My previous entry was number 250! Crazy!

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So, this weekend was Kapcon, a two-day roleplaying convention -- there are generally six gaming slots, and a live game on the evening. I was involved in setting up the live game last year, but other than a vague promise of "something with monkeys", I didn't do anything until the day before Kapcon started.

(Well, that's not entirely true. I did find a copy of Jared Sorenson's Amazing Monkey Adventures and Zak Arntson’s Monkeywrench, and I went through a playtest of AMA with my Tuesday group. But that's about it.)

Anyway, I volunteered to run a game at the end of the first day, and beginning of the second (they went well, but not spectacularly); I played in the other four sessions, and was talked into the playing in the live game. (I swapped roles with superlate, and ended up playing Clark Gable, with a natty little moustache pencilled into place by the inimitable Norm.) The first game was an old-school 1st-edition AD&D game, the second was game where everyone played wizards familiars (and we broke the GM with crazy); then it was my pair of monkey games, and then the live game. (It turns out that being a Nazi sympathizer was less of a problem than killing someone in a hit-and-run, and having a powerful ally covering it up.) Anyway, it was back the next day to run another session of monkeys, and then off to Jenni's based-on-Pride-&-Prejudice game (where I was the youngest bratty sister, and we had too much fun sniping to get anyone engaged), ending with a fairy game where the gamemaster forced all of us to wear fairy wings and have wands. (In retaliation, my Pooka broke Jenni's brain by changing into a custard pudding with legs, and singing a song about the experience.)

All in all, good fun -- I bought far too much at Conan's stall, some good people won prizes, and I'm glad that I went. :) I might write some notes about what I learned about running both monkey games soon; and maybe next time, I'll run something that's slightly less freeform. :)

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I'm not sure I'm a computer geek -- but does thinking that Logic Goats are a cool idea count? There are actually quite a few cool things to buy at this "paper animation kits" site, Flying Pig. Ooh, and there's an Agreeable Sheep for free!

Speaking of handicrafts, some of you may not have seen the Battle of Helm's Deep rendered in candy. Interestingly, I saw a news article pointing at Movie Body Counts, mentioning that Return of the King has highest body count of any movie, beating out the third-placed movie (Hard Boiled) by more than twice. It didn't seem fair to compare it to the second-placed movie, which was Two Towers.

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A theory that explains the apparent fan-service appearances of some of the original characters in the latest Star Wars movies? Well, it's better than the theory (based on "evidence" from screen-captures) that Leia slept with both Luke and Han in A New Hope. I may have come up with Cheese Man theories for Buffy, but I think that this is going above and beyond. ;)

There were a few other media-related things that I thought might be interested in. I know some of the people who worked on Black Sheep, for example; I'm not really a horror film buff, but -- carnivorous sheep? Maybe I'll see it after all.

Oh, and while we're youtubing, there's the first and second episodes of "God, Inc.", an "Office"-inspired take on divine bureaucracy. I could easily imagine superlate or I running a game like this. :)

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Speaking of doctors, Beerman mentioned the BMJ Christmas issue, and who could go past the multicolour chart to aid diagnosis (made by a doctor's five year-old), or an analysis (by Danes) about why Danes are smug.

Oh, and there's a fairly funny "Effects of drugs on spiders" short.

Posted by svend at January 23, 2007 4:25 PM