Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Memoriam: Tales of the Rising Star

2013 was the start of my career in running larps. It was the start of my first DexCon, the first time I had ever been to a gaming convention that did not have the letters M. E. or S attached to them. I was there primarily for the Dresden Files larp being run by Phoenix Outlaw productions. The outlaws, I realized, don't do anything by halves. They were also responsible for part of the BattleStar Galactica Larp alongside Eleventh Hour Productions.

I didn't realize that until maybe five minutes between Dresden and BSG. I made a rookie mistake of not saving any fuel for the trip back, so I was running that game on fumes. I acted mostly as a runner between the STs, and adjudicator for a few challenges. Most of my job was spent in the operations room making sure the STs had what they needed.

So to describe what Rising Star is like. We suborned the Hyatt's learning center and with a lot of garbage bags, pvc and electronic, we made it feel like the deck of a ship. Computer monitors showed an interactive DRADIS system reporting damage, energy loss and incoming ships. We had an engine that the engineers could fix and tweak. We had a crew that knew what they were doing or could make it up on the fly. 

We were ready for business.

That night, we reenacted the "33", the first official episode of the BSG reboot series after the miniseries. Every 33 minutes after jumping, Cylons would appear to attack the fleet. after days of this, people were raw, the ships were being overworked, and somewhere something bad was going to drop. Walls had clocks with tape to denote the 33 minute mark from jumps, and prayed that the DRADIS didn't go off during that time. We also had them in the Operations room, outside of game, and I remember Shoshana and I sitting in there waiting for the inevitable panic, and then hush as the speakers blasted the sounds of the ship jumping to faster than light travel, and then the panic again as everyone needed to check to see how frakked the ship was. Meanwhile the officers and civillian government were ready to pop off at each other. Their last jump lead them off the radar of the rest of the fleet, and in to uncharted territory.

Four years and five games (I came in at the second) later, and we have just held our final BSG game at DexCon 2017. We went in with a plan. Not the Cylon's plan, because boy did that go nowhere. What happened was something that I find to be nothing short of the next best thing to primetime television. 

We saw a coup d'etat in the early minutes of the game. The pregnant former president thrown in to the airlock with the two Cylons she was accused of collaborating with. I saw the confusion and outrage descend as Martial Law was declared on the ship. I saw the Cylons beg the humans to remove the president from the airlock, if nothing than to save the child. I saw them offer to space themselves to do this. The guilt and frustration on the faces of the guards and the engineers preparing for a rough landing on a planet's surface visible. 

I saw the crew crash land on the surface, and then have to decide what systems they could cannibalize to maintain the other systems. I saw guards running around, officers trying to maintain some semblance of order. I saw the civilian government politick and deal with the new regime, ultimately getting the former president reinstated. I saw the crew encounter captured humans and the resistance, and linking up with both of them. I saw one crew member realize what she truly was, and excepted her status as one of the Sharon Cylons as she hooked herself to a machine that would send a repulse signal to the rest of the Cylon fleet. I saw her crew salute her as she died in sacrifice and carry her back on the ship. I saw the president be reinstated and resign in the same breath in order to find what might be Earth. I saw her successor be shot by the same man who usurped her. I saw the crew settle down with the notion of living forever on this planet, and then I saw the attempt to jump one more time averted by blowing up the engine, forever making their stand where they were.

I'm very honored to have been a part of the storytelling staff of this game, because I got one of the best seats for a show that's been off the air for years. The players knew their work, and went to work doing it. It had the air of desperation and hope in everything, all the tension in the air unsure of whose agendas would fly. That's the players putting the work in to it, investing themselves in it. This could have been a chuckle fest filled with tongue in cheek references, but the players kept the tone and beat and I am forever thankful to see such dedication.

I am also honored to work with a crew that made this whole thing possible. There was a lot of planning involved in this process, and then game happens and we run with it. The amount of backstage stuff to coordinate between groups was tremendous and if not for the love they had for the game and the group, this would not be possible. 

Before game, I had heard people asking why the need to end the campaign. I don't have the information or the authority to speak in an official capacity, but I am of the mind that this is not a game that could go on indefinitely.  BSG is always been about surviving the odds and rolling the hard six when you needed to. Eventually, that builds up, eventually, you start running out of lucky streaks and all of the little things you miss catch up. And the stakes keep getting higher and higher that eventually, you just wouldn't win. So we gave it the ending it deserves, a clusterfrak that ended in cliffhangers, tragedy, comedy, and a bittersweet sense of hope in the future. 

So when I hear 'All Along The Watchtower', I think more about the Rising Star than I do the Galactica. And I thank you all for that. And maybe this isn't the end. As the woman in red said: All of this has happened before, but will it happen again? 

Take care, so say we all.





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