Tale as old as time

I went and saw the stage show of Beauty and the Beast last night after consuming a large and satisfying Turkish meal (why do I always plan to be adventurous and try something new and then at the last minute go for the tried and true chicken eskendar?). Dinner was fun and filled with much Kapcon-fuelled enthusiastic banter with Matt, L and S. Overall, I would say I liked B & B rather than loved it. Partly I suspect it is because I adore the Disney cartoon so much and so many of the really funny or cute scenes could not be recreated (or weren't attempted) on the stage. Obviously, the inventor's horse couldn't easily be on the stage but I was still disappointed not to have the fantastic moment when he is considering the options of which path to take through the woods - the dark, creepy one that leads to the Beast's castle or the safe-looking and well-lit path. Obviously, the oblivious human insists on taking the dangerous path but the horse's expression at human craziness brilliantly captures equine attitudes towards being forced to do something scary "You want me to go THERE?! Why? Can't you see it's SCARY?!" Rather like Tango's expression when he is expected is go on a horse float. "What the…?! You want me to go in that dark box thing?! The wobbly stable? I don't think so. I'll walk thanks. Just give me directions, I'll meet you there. Don't really need transport. I'm rather good at walking myself, being a HORSE!!! Seriously, I don't need someone to carry my big butt all over the place unlike some people I could mention! . Sorry, that was personal. I didn't mean it. I'll walk, no wait, I'll gallop there. It'll be faster, I promise. Just don't make me go in the dark, wobbly box thing!!! ARRRGGHHH!" Or at least that is the inner monologue his expressions and snorting seem to suggest. Back to the Beauty and the Beast. Gaston was awesome and by far my favourite, although Lumiere was also very cool. They had added songs (none of which were as likeable as the original ones) and some lines of unnecessary dialogue. So a 90 minute movie became a 2 and 1/2 hour stage show without really adding much to either the characters or story. We did have a very cute little girl sitting near us. She was all dressed up in her princess outfit and was obviously a big fan of the movie. She will, I suspect, pursue a lucrative career as a critic in the future judging by her commentary during the show. She had the art of harsh but not inaccurate criticism ("But she's fat!" - when Belle first appeared on stage) and plot spoilers ("He's not really dead!" - the climatic scene when the Beast has been stabbed after fighting with Gaston). Some aspects that disappointed me were the lack of charm or romantic chemistry between the leads. Belle's voice sounded pre-recorded and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that she was an animatronic Belle that had been stolen from a Disneyland ride as she moved really stiffly and unnaturally. The Beast actor and make-up was good but I guess they can't make anyone as loveable and cute as the cartoon character. I was wanting to see the scene where they give The Beast a makeover before his big date with Belle and they didn't put him in curlers or anything. They just changed his jacket. And that's one of the funniest scenes in the movie!!! Also there were no wolves actually attacking Belle when he went out to rescue her in the woods. He flailed around a lot and then fell over but there were no wolves there - not even a chorus member in a grey leotard. Matt's theory is that he was performing a modern interpretative dance of the economic and political fluctuations in Germany in the early 20th century. Thus when Belle thanks him for saving her it was a metaphoric saving from her uncultured, provincial upbringing in which she had never been exposed to interpretive dance. The cuts on his hand that he also had in the following scene were due to scraping himself about some sharp branches when thrashing around to represent Hitler's dramatic rise to power. There were, however, some fantastically lovely moments. One of my favourites is when Lumiere is giving advice to the Beast on wooing Belle when she enters the room. Lumiere] (Whispering) Say something about her dress. Beast] (To Belle) It's pink.

Part 2 - Memoirs of a Geisha

We went and saw Memoirs of a Geisha last night - a movie I have been hanging out to see for a long time. I was pretty impressed. It was a beautifully shot film, with costumes and set both equally stunning. I was truly drawn into the emotional drama of the story. It had a strange sense of reality to it - the story was both a moving historical drama and also very much a fairytale. The film-makers cleverly realised that for this story there was no conflict between gritty historical reality and the heightened reality of a Cinderella tale. The world of the Geisha is so strange and built on mystery, beauty and artifice that Chiyo's story is both a historical drama and a fairytale. Hatsumomo is one of the more frightening villains - I found myself both intensely disliking her and getting really upset by some of the things she did but also understanding her motives and where she was coming from. Her cruelty seems more horrific because she is beautiful and cunning but also deeply sad and tragic. I realised when I was talking about the film with Matt on the way home that Talula's game system for Mean Girls could fairly effectively be used to run a game about Geisha in the Okiya - the sniping, backhanded compliments and petty cruelty that reaches levels of evil that would make Beelzebub shiver. I adore Ken Watanabe - in this film he is essentially a Japanese business version of Prince Charming but his character has depth and is very much taking his own journey and has his own choices to make and conflicts as well. He is a brilliant actor and very swoon-inducing when he is being lovely and kind yet enigmatic or brooding. Lovely, lovely film.

Superheroes and Geisha

The title may sound like a bizarre concept for Matt's next SDC roleplaying game, but in fact I shall be talking about two things. One Kapcon related, the other not*. Part 1 - Superheroes Firstly, the fantastic Superhero game ran by Dale round 6 at Kapcon. The players were fantastic and well-cast in the roles of the Elite Superhero team. Talula as the most sensible** member of the team, Professor Eternity, her only mistake seemed to be her betrothal to the dim-witted Captain Hope which was justified on several ocassions after his intellect was less-than-superhuman by "he's very charming". Luke was the aforementioned Captain Hope who by his own explaination "brought hope to the hopeless." He had several unforgettable moments of ditziness which I later found out to be the result of an exhausted player rather than the insightful roleplaying I had thought. Early on Captain Hope was handed a briefing of emergencies and the GM starting talking at the same time. "Hold on!" he instructed the GM "I'm trying to read." The briefing was handed over to the Prof not long after. Later in a scene when the Secretary-General personally phoned Hope to plead for his assistance with rescuing his wife, Hope confusedly referred to him as 'General' for the whole conversation. Matt played their love child Danny who despite his mother's best efforts did take after his father and thus his grades weren't what they should be. Panda Pitt was playing, true to type, the bad-ass loner of the team called Salvo. In a bid to rescue the secretary-general's the team had their emotions altered by a shadowy supervillain, and several members of the team had been sobbing their heart out (Zia and Zero had become angered). After the carnage and explosions that occured in our attempts to rescue the wife and defeat the villain, many of the team were injured, bloody and several spandex outfits were ruined. When told he could clean himself up and remove the blood from his face, Salvo replied, "I'm more worried about the tears!" The much-missed Morgue played the Ground Zero was all the deep-voiced strength of a wrestler. He was Captain Hope's ever-loyal best friend. Unfortunately he exploded whenever he became angry - which meant when the shadowy villain made him enraged, he blew up. With us all in the lobby. After the debris had settled, Hope confronted Zero about endangering his family. What ensued was one of the most entertaining arguments ever to be held in a crater. Hope fired Zero as his best man and despite Professor jumping up and getting between them to calm them down, the inevitable happened. Ground Zero exploded. Again. Several police cars and ambulances were overturned but this time none of the Superhero team were hurt. Valiantly Zero offered his clothes to the others. "It's OK. I'm used to going in speedoes." However, the rest of the team rejected the proferred spandex. The traumatic argument had a bad effect on Danny and in the next encounter he pulled out a gun and shot wildly at the villains shouting Salvo catchphrase, not his father's. This made Hope realise he needed to be a fatherly rolemodel and prompted the touching reconciliation between Hope and Zero - "Zero, I was bad to you." I played Zia the Magnificant, a vain Vegas-style magician who due to unfortunate over-due tax debts had to make money on celebrity reality TV shows. When the team were transported into a alternate universe where they were supervillains, Zia was the one most able to adapt to the dark side. She teleported to a coffee shop and seeing the public's fearful reaction to her, demanded a orange-chocolate frapaccino. Then realising the full power she had recosidered. "No! Make that TWO orange-chocolate frapaccinos! And those muffins there..." Ah yes, the allure of the dark side was strong. However, Zia did return to the normal dimension with the team in a cunning invention made by the Professor, but she told the fruits (well, muffins) of her evil with her... I can't remeber nearly enough quotes or scenes from this game but I was lauhging until my sides hurt pretty often which is always good. * I'm trying to wean myself off my Kapcon obsession slowly. It is scary how the hours fly by when you lurk about the NZRAG site waiting for new posts to pounce on and blog-surf desperate for fresh comments and posts. ** Where most sensible = the only intelligent one.

LARP Photos

Robert was kind enough to take a whole bunch of photos of the Kapcon 15 Larp. Here are just a few of those awesome photos. Hopefully he'll make the rest of them available some time soon:

Post Kapcon Post

Approximately 63 hours since the Kickoff of Kapcon (Drinks and social chatter at Southern Cross) on Friday night, I am still buzzing with Kapcon hype. So much in fact that I am actually posting on this blog*. I generally find that Kapcon is the most fun and simultaneously exhausting and invigorating gaming experience I have each year. It is the fountain of RPG enthusiasm for me. It keeps my passion for roleplaying fresh and renews my enthusiasm for some games and genres, and is also responsible for introducing me to brilliant new systems and types of gaming. Also the catching up with old friends, making new ones and reminding yourself again why you are lucky to be able to game with the range of talented people you do, is a pretty emotionally satisfying experience. With RPGing, as most other hobbies, you can fall into the trap of of thinking that it is becoming a bit stale or that you aren't as keen or inspired by your own personal gaming as you used to be. I know that now, as a person with a job and adult stuff to worry about, I'm only able to squeeze about one game a week into my regular life, as opposed to the 3 or 4 weekly games plus being able to eagerly jump into whatever one-offs and LARPs I could when I was a student. I'm very lucky with my regular group in that we all work together to cram as much quality roleplaying into the short amount of time we have each week and also that our GM(s) keep things fresh by changing games and systems. I think that we are very lucky to have an interest like Roleplaying, that has so many clever and creative people at the game design, GMing and player levels ensuring that each game you play is unique and you keep getting something new out of each experience - even after over 20 years of roleplaying. As I get older I find that books, movies, TV shows seldom surprise me. I generally am easy enough to entertain and enjoy and appreciate the storytelling or crafting but few strike me as original or unique. All too often they are formulaic and predictable. I virtually never have that experience at Kapcon. I am all too often blown away by the spontaeous, caffeine-fuelled quotes or actions of genius that flow from fellow players and the skills the GM have at pacing, setting up and crafting interesting stories in only 3 hours. It can also be amazing to see how well they allow players the freedom to go crazy and manage to get some pretty bizarre player actions to shape and enhance their stories rather than derail them. I guess what made this year's Kapcon different from the usual euphoric combination of "I love these people and RPGing" warm fuzzy feeling and the gluttonous orgy of gaming (and sugar), was being involved in the more stressful role of organiser rather than participant. I only played in one game, Dale's 6th round Superhero game (a game so awesome it requires its own separate post to do it justice). I feel a huge amount of relief now that it is over (especially the LARP because I was very stressed that it would, in spite of hundreds of hours of work, be a disaster, or people would be disappointed and people who spent hours and money on amazing costumes would lynch me - probably some kind of re-enactment of the KAPCON 13 LARP where I was disembowelled). Yet in spite of the stress, lack of sleep and tired blurry eyes making it difficult to read some handwriting and spreadsheets on the computer screen, I had an immense amount of fun. I am hugely amazed at how much fun it is to watch other people roleplay, hear war stories and read other people's accounts of games or nominations for funny or inspired moments. I thought the joy came from doing the roleplaying but now I know that it can be fantastically entertaining to simply see or hear about the roleplaying. The important thing is that the fun and the amazing experiences happened. It doesn't matter if you personally did them, or saw them, they are rich moments that should be shared and enjoyed by us all. I strongly encourage everyone who went to Kapcon to make the effort put their stories out there. Every moment that made you laugh, cry or drop your jaw in wonder/horror is worth sharing. That way we may all share in the joy and the legends of Kapcon 15 will be consolidated in the memories of everyone who went or read about it. * A fact that will be surprising to the many who have noted that my blog has of late** become an abandoned, cobweb-infested basement - barren and starting to reek of the musty odour of desolation. ** Ok, I admit it, it's probably over 3 months since my last post.