Whew, It's Been A While

Man, look how happy I am about the first game of UnMasqued! (Plus, I apparently suffer from the infamous "internet disease.")

Anyway, seriously: I'm really happy about our first game of UnMasqued. There was lots of great roleplaying all around, the new characters showing up were all hits, and everyone I've talked to had a great time. We even had an unexpected visit from Chloe (OC '06), my former housemate, providing wraithly NPC duty. Plus, the Sebau was kickass. Rumor has it the Sabbat may even show up next time!

I think I have good reason to be proud of all the hard work our new crew has done up until now. The improvements to the game (and obviously the website) are rapidly becoming apparent to all, and more improvements are yet to come. Not only that, but we've moved past the loss of long-time crew member Kevin Glasow, and introduced new Storyteller LG, and the new group is really gelling nicely.

There were only two things missing from this first game: our normal rooms (which we'll have starting next game), and new players. As such, I'm putting out a call to UnMasqued players: Please, help us recruit! I've run a college LARP long enough to realize the importance of getting new LARPers, especially freshman, introduced to the game early in the semester. Without them, the game will die, and the later they join, the less likely there are to stick around once midterms, finals or major campus parties hit. So if you want to see the game continue down the path to awesome, please spread the word!

On another note, as you can probably see by looking at earlier posts, the ChipIn fundraising experiment has ended. We raised a little bit of money, but not nearly $170. I wasn't expecting that to be a huge success, though, and I have many other ideas brewing about how to raise some cash so UnMasqued can cover costs (like printing sheets, appearance tags, item cards, and web-related things, among others). Look for sodas and candy to be on sale in the green room again. You can even bring the sodas to Club Sebau, where drinks won't be out of place. Also, I've been thinking about designing an UnMasqued T-shirt, to be sold through Cafe Press, or a similar service. And, starting next game, there will be a donations box. Every other LARP in the Cleveland area that I know of charges a site fee, usually $2, but UnMasqued does not do this for several reasons. However, contributions towards the administrative costs (currently paid for out-of-pocket by the STs) would be very appreciated.

In other news, the STs of UnMasqued have been invite to be guest-storytellers at an upcoming convention, hosted by the Ohio Gamers Alliance (or possibly Association, not sure which.) Unfortunately, this falls on an UnMasqued weekend, but fortunately, the invitation was for a three night LARP (Fri, Sat and Sun). We are currently checking to see if they would be amenable to making it just the weekend, because we are unwilling to cancel UnMasqued. We'll find out about that soon. However, the STs are busy people, and not all of us will be able to devote an extended weekend to storytelling (and as I know from experience, running a con LARP is no joke). Therefore, I am putting out another call to the players of UnMasqued: If you have any storytelling experience, interest, or optimally both and think you might like to help us run a convention LARP, please fire off an email to the storytellers, or to me personally.

Finally, a Dreamblade update. The Dreamblade $1K event in Wilder has been approved, and will definitely take place. Local fans of the great new game, rejoice! Also, I have passed my online exam, and am now a Dreamblade Rules Advisor (WoTC's initial pass at creating a core of certified Dreamblade judges) so if you have any questions about the game or would like to try it out with someone elses figures, you can contact me (in addition to stopping by Matrix).

And... that's it. Man, longest entry ever. Seriously.