What a weekend at Summer Daze 2023! It was such a great time to see old friends, meet new people, and play games all weekend. Thanks to all of you who came to the Poconos, facilitated games, helped with chores, hung out, shared food, played games, and navigated an unreliable sceptic system with us.
On Friday morning, I got to play Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands with Lilith, Scott, and Ronny. It was filled with fun, messy entanglements between my “trying to keep the peace” landowner pilot, Ronny’s entitled but not mean-spirited Bantresh noblewoman, and Lilith and Scott’s devoted-to-the-cause revolutionaries. A nice game to break the ice.
Friday afternoon, I ran a playtest of Topia Outpost Prime, my in-development PbtA game inspired by space station TV shows. Brennan, Jamie, Dave, and Jim were generous with their feedback as we played through a quick planet-side mission where a lost piece of alien technology had traveled back in time to create a society run by children with enhanced intelligence. They resolved the situation by appealing to the alien tech to remove itself from the situation before it had ever been found. It was a fun session and gave me lots of great feedback to make the game better.
Friday evening, Krin taught me some neat card games: Cat in the Box, which is a clever trick-taking game where you don’t declare the suit of the card until you play it; and Gloom, a game inspired by Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies, where you’re trying to give your family the worse life possible.
Saturday morning, I ran my Pasion de la Pasiones playset set in the Star Trek universe. I had a ball with the telenovela we created, starring Lilith’s upstanding ex-space pirate Starfleet security officer Raquel, Jamie’s handsome half-Vulcan commander Skyllam, Jeff’s scheming Romulan Nuvoth, and Michele’s freewheeling Malena, a transporter clone of Raquel, engineered as one of Nuvoth’s schemes. Any game that ends in a forbidden kiss, a stabbing, and the wrong person taking the blade is definite success!
Saturday afternoon I found myself overextended and partook in a much-needed session of Nap: The LARP.
Saturday night, I ran InSpectres, which is always a blast. Our franchise consisted of Tiffany’s tech-savvy character out to prove to her family that ghosts were real; Jamie’s ex-high school football player overawed by the paranormal; Michele’s everwoman who received answering machine messages from ghosts and saw conspiracies everywhere; Bobbi’s young boss whose phantom border collie helped her herd ghosts; and Jeff’s CEO of the national InSpectres corporation gone “undercover boss” as the 46-year-old hapless intern. Together, they managed to exorcise a haunted fire alarm and got drunk with a time-traveling grey alien at the zoo. We laughed so much.
Despite a rushed exodus on Sunday morning, Summer Daze 2023 was a great time. Thank you all!