San Jose - Alliance of GEEKS!

So... Last weekend was fun. Saturday was "game day". And no, it doesn't have anything to do with sports. As you probably know I'm a well adjusted geek who has a social life and friends and stuff... but once in a while I like to geek out. Saturday was such an occasion.

The day started out around 10am in Belgatos park. There was a bunch of kids playing in the kiddy park, some people going for hikes and bike rides and only a few gamers. Paul and Cat were sitting on the picnic table that was going to be "monster camp" patiently waiting for people to arrive. The wait is part of the game I guess, because I've never seen one of these start at the arranged time. Honestly, geeks are just as late as the rest of the world...

By 10:30 enough people had shown up that we could start what is called "logistics". Basically people get their character sheets and associated tags to play the game. If you've never heard of Alliance, it's pretty simple. It's like Dungeons and Dragons, except it's "live action" so basically people get dressed up, and then beat each other up with foam weapons.

Each player has statistics that represent who they are in the world of Alliance, the longer they've been playing, the more powerful they are. Tags are little pieces of paper that represent your spells, potions, armor, life points, pretty much anything you can do uses a tag. Then there's physreps or physical representations. These are things you wear and use. If you character is wearing leather armor, you better be wearing leather armor yourself. If you have a sword tag, you need a "real" sword to go with it. A real sword would be dangerous, so we use "real" swords. By "real" I mean something made out of PVC pipe or bamboo and then covered in insulation foam, so it's pretty soft.

So now that Paul is wearing chainmail and Cat is wearing some flowery outfit and they have their logistics package, they're ready to play. There's also Snag, an ogre, he paints his face yellow and he should have some fangs but they broke last game, so he needs new ones. There's a couple of stone elves, face painted white, black lipstick and spell bags at the ready. Oh right, if you're casting spells or shooting arrows, you need "packets" they're little bean bags that you throw at people. You say some magic words, throw the bean bag and if you hit them with the bag, you hit them with the spell.

So I'm just helping out, I'm not wearing anything except black jogging pants and a black shirt. No fancy costume for me yet because I'm an NPC, non-player character. That means I unlike the players, do not have a character. So I'm not Snag the ogre or Legatho the ranger. My job is to be everyone they meet. Once logistics is done we start up with devious plans on how to kill the players. Kinda. Well, to be honest it's not really our choice. We're the "hired" help. We're not really hired cus we don't get paid. We just play the roles of monsters as deemed necessary by the powers that be... aka. staff members.

So our first "mod" or module of the day is split into two because there's low level players and high level players. If you don't know why I would be referring to low and high levels, then you should invest in more video games. So I went on the high level module because that's where I was needed. The plan was pretty confusing actually. The staff member had to explain it to us quite a few times. I did learn something new though. Brandon is not very good at explaining things. Yup, that's about all I learned from his explanation.

Here's the plot: First we're caravan guards who fought off some bandits, but during the whole turmoil, the bandit leader mind controlled us all with magical potions. Lucky for us the potions are of short duration. Now the caravan is running late, so someone mentions this to the players who are patiently waiting in the "inn" (another picnic table in the park). The players come upon us and see us hanging around the few wagons that make up the caravan. In reality what the players see is 6 guys dressed up in varying degrees of "in period" clothing with foam weapons and bean bags in hand. No wagons in sight. Using your imagination is a requirement for this game. I had on a medieval shirt over my black t-shirt, a belt, a hand full of bean bags and a foam sword in my belt.

I was a "templar", the easiest way to explain this is... first forget everything you know about templars, it's just a name. Ok... now, imagine a medieval fighter with sword and shield... good... now add magic! Perfect! Half magic guy half fighter... with a can of whoop-ass in tow.

The plan according to Brandon was quite simple. The players would attack us, then the big bad guy that controlled all the caravan guards would run away. But before running away he would turn one of the guards into an undead zombie of doom. Then once the players have killed us and revived us (you can do that in this game), we would tell them that the big bad guy was actually with the bandits and we would tell him were the bandits were.

Even the best laid plans go awry, and this one was far from being well laid in any sense. So it went really wrong. First off, the players didn't attack us, they talked to us. We told them we got stranded and we just wanted to get back on our way. Then when Brandon (who was playing the big bad guy) noticed that nobody was fighting he killed one of the guards himself and then turn him into a zombie of doom. As the players fought the zombie of doom, we ran away. He ordered us to defend him which should lead to us attacking the players but since the players were fighting the zombie, they let us run away.

So, 8 minutes elapse, the players have cured the guy afflicted of being a zombie of doom. He's now back to normal. Our mind control potions have worn off so we went back to the caravan. Now the players are all skeptical because we ran off with the big bad guy. So they pretty much make us captives and walk us back to town. Never asking us anything. So much for the bandits... Once we get to town they turn us over to the town guards and have us interrogated. Yay, back to bandit land. Notice that at this point almost nobody has even swung a blow.

So we went to set up as bandits and we just kept the same stats and skills since we didn't really fight. I was still a templar dude. This time we went up a trail until we found some shade. Belgatos park is pretty hilly so finding a good ambush spot was easy. Again the players started by asking questions when they found us. We did our best to confuse them, telling them that we were merchants and whatnot. Very entertaining.

Then the fight broke out. "With mystic force I bind you" I yell and toss a packet at the nearest fighter. He's hit but he has a spell shield. "Spell shield" he yells back. No problem that was a cheap spell anyways. "I summon a force to shatter your shield" and hit him again. No spell shield this time, so his physical shield is destroyed. He drops his wood and foam shield to the side, as it's now useless to him. He slips behind the ranks and his friends step up. Casters this time. So there's a lot of "Spell shield! I grant you the power of a spell shield" which means that my spell was cancelled by his spell shield and he cast another one in its place. I swear we must look like idiots playing this. Two groups of grown men yelling things like "With eldritch force I build a prison" and then throwing bean bags at each other. On the other side the person tries to dodge the bean bag. Sometimes there's stuff like "What spell just hit me?" -"Flame bolt" -"Oh, uh, Resist!" -"ok". Then once the spells start to dwindle and some people are pinned, bound, confined, slept, dead, whatever. The ranks close up and people start swinging.

"Prepare to die" I say. Not because it's a cool thing to say right before you start fighting, but because that's how fighters activate their powers. Now that I've said prepare to die I can follow up with "50 slay" or "Disarm weapon" or other fancy sounding things. I open with "50 slay" which means I swing for 50 damage, and it's a slay attack. I hit a shield, so it's blocked, "50 slay" again and I hit the guy in the side. "Riposte" he says, now my attack has been turned against me so I say "Parry" and the attack is gone. I follow up with "6 normal" I swing for 6 damage and it's not magical or flame or ice damage, it's just normal damage. You have to say what you swing so that people know how to react and how much damage to take. The fight goes on for a bit and I get hit with a confine spell and all my spell defenses are exhausted so I'm stuck I can't move.

The fight finally ends and the players have won. The player I knocked unconscious is woken up and the victims of my spells are cured. They drag us into town for more information. That's pretty much how the day goes. There was also some gambling, I learned a new dice game called 421. I was a shop keep that went to the inn for a quick gambling game. I lost a few silver coins to the players but another NPC won a few gold from another game.

So more of the same, barbarians defending a cave... dark ones inside the cave. Spirits defending the tomb inside the cave. All of these with some fighting and some killing. We inadvertently ended up killing a PC because the medics couldn't get to him in time to heal him. He died too close to the monsters and we pushed the line back over his body. So basically he lay there in the grass for 5 minutes and then that was it, his character was dead. Well, he had to go to the resurrection circle and have a death marked on his character sheet. You can only resurrect so many times... didn't you know? Heh.

As a side note, the little kids in the kiddy park liked to watch us play. And the people having a picnic also found us entertaining. So really, it was fun all around. I would probably feel foolish wearing chainmail in a park by myself. But if there's 15 other guys there also wearing strange looking things, I wouldn't care much. On the flip side, if I saw one person wearing chainmail in the park I would avoid them like the plague. But if I saw a group I would assume that they're an acting troupe or they're playing a game.

All in all a great day and a good workout. Lots of fun... you should try it... really... you should! If you want to know more, apparently there's a movie called role models that came out with some LARPing in it... that's Live Action Role Play ing. Come join the geeks! You know you want to.