Oh wow, such a good time!  I love AmberconNW so much!  The gaming, the socializing, the drinking, the conversation.  And the Edgefield added a big long soaking pool.  It was amazing.  We all invaded Sunday night and soaked and talked and splashed.

Thursday night, got there, got checked in, had the intro meet-n-greet sort of thing.  Then played in Thaddeus’ “Between Venus and Mars” game.  Set in the 1970s glam rock scene, we had to stop someone from assassinating Bleys, the lead singer of Bleysing Star, THE glam rock band.  We had Monroe Breckinridge the famous Photographer, Melodie Carole the up and coming singer, L the avant garde artist, Virgil White DJ of “White Noise,” Eddie Newton another musician and alien, Sidney Goldman Vietnam Vet, Michael Heron man of the scene, and Violette Skye fifteen year old call-girl/scene queen.  A complete blast.

Friday morning I played in an Amber Noir game, “Down these Mean Streets” run by Madeline.  I did not realize it was part of an on-going game, but loads of fun.  We had to stop Mandor from completing a trap created by the sacrificial mutilations of half-demon half-human crossbreeds.  We survived and succeeded!  Culminating in my character getting reprimanded by Gerard for telling him to tell his stupid brother to the King to listen to me when I advised him.

I took Friday afternoon off to nap and soak in the new incredibly awesome soaking pool with two friends and their sprogs.

Friday evening was the Pooh game, which is a long-running Amber/Hundred Acre Wood crossover game, and I could give you the plot of the game, but it would make no sense whatsoever.  Just know that the GM now takes special delight in outraging or making my character wail.  Ticketyboo the Trump Artist hedgehog.

Saturday morning we ran “Loose the Blood Dimmed Tides” a 17 player 6 gm LARP.  We made some mistakes, only had one major continuity error, and Ogre kind of sidetracked the plot.  But we did manage to keep 17 people entertained for six hours with it, so it went pretty good.  We’ve learned a lot from the experience, especially me since I’d never GM-ed a LARP before, or even co-GMed with anyone before.  The plot was that the Moonriders of Ganesh had returned to take Amber.  They succeeded in surprising the elders, and we began the game with Benedict, Caine and Dara crucified in the courtyard, Benedict with his arms cut off, Caine with his eyes missing.  Fiona came through a trump with a massive head wound.  And then it was chaos.  Woot!!!!

Saturday evening, I ran the Hogwarts/Amber crossover game “Wands of Avalon.”  It’s primarily returning players.  I’m running them parallel to the Harry Potter plot.  It is a blast with plenty of laughter and giggling.  At one point one of our players was conscripted by another game to play Gerard, trumped in to settle a dispute, so her having NO idea what was going on there was perfect.  I’m sure I’ll post more about it later.  But I did get to include a scene where Hagrid was wailing over the death of a stray chaos beast that he’d been feeding outside his cottage.

Then Sunday, I ran “The Keep” again.  This is the first time I managed to get them out of the bloody castle.  We had Gerald Fiona’s son, Vrazda Caine’s daughter, Linka Random’s daughter, Marcus Gerard’s son, and Byron Brand’s son.
After being stuffed in the bolt hole, they came out to find everyone gone, the Unicorn Shrine destroyed and the priest mutilated on the altar.  Gerald found some trumps but they didn’t know how to use them.  They saw something small and black spying on them, then the closed the gates, and Vrazda saw a man in green and black watching them from the trees.  They fled out the garbage/manure shoot and fled down the mountainside.  They captured the chaos critter that was tracking them, and Linka named it Blackie.  They got it to answer questions by nodding and carried it bound with them.  They happened across some shepherds, one of whom wound up being an agent of Caine.  They were attacked by more werewolves.  The shepherd shouted at them to “Call Julian!” and started killing wolves with a spear.
I’d let them get some inkling of how to use trumps earlier, so they finally managed to pull some elders through, and while the elders dealt with the werewolves, the kids faced down Dalt.
It was a blast.

So, yup.  I’m all excited about what I’ll be running next year now.  The Hogwarts game is a given.  And it looks like we’ve learned enough from this year’s LARP to make running another much more smooth.  And we’ve already come up with a great idea.  Also, I’m contemplating running “Amber Family Therapy,” wherein the players play elder Amberites in therapy with each other.  It’s something Ogre and Deb Donahue came up with a couple years ago. “Julian, can you use a feeling word to describe your sisters?”  “I don’t know, is ‘bitch’ a feeling word?”  This could be absolutely fantastic, or it could crash and burn.  We will see.

So, yes, a fantastic time was had.  There was gaming and soaking and drinking and giggling and laughing, and loads of inappropriate!  Yay!!!!!

So looking forward to next year.  Also, I’m contemplating trying to get back east for AmberConUS next April.