TC13 : Conbericht und Bilder

  • DAY ONE : THURSDAY


    The first day started with a bang: we woke to the blare of a night-time alarm as Novara appeared on the fleet´s DRADIS. All hands rushed to their respective stations; Viper pilots flew a sortie as our team and Iason´s Marines boarded a Raptor and headed for Novara. There were armed civilians aboard who immediately fired at us and refused to lay down their guns; in what the media later lamented as excessive use of force, we took them out with grenades and rescued a hostage, Ms Ellen Green. She had been placed where we had to find her, with a sign around her neck saying „I AM A TRAITOR“, and evidence in a satchel lying nearby that implicated her in the leaking of the fleet´s assault plans on a Cylon resurrection ship. My team was quick to notice that this was way too easy, and we figured that Ms Green was being framed – however, as my Lieutenant pointed out, that was for Iason´s Master-at-arms to decide.


    Just as we bundled Ms Green towards the Raptor, we were attacked by Centurion battle robots, which forced us neatly into a corner until the Marines came up to support us. Together, both teams managed to take the Centurions down. Then the Marines stumbled upon the remains of Novara´s bridge – with a Cylon hybrid in a tank full of milky goo wired to the controls! After some frantic three-way radio communication using the Raptor´s comm as a relais, we were told to guard the hybrid until it could be disconnected by the civilian expert, Dr Cyprian Eldar, and taken aboard Iason. No one was exactly happy with the prospect of sharing a deck with the creature – or with Dr Eldar, who was obviously not the most likable of persons either.


    Back in Iason, the Marines and we sorted out the pecking order. Our Special Forces-issued egos didn´t sit all that well with the seasoned Marines aboard, who all had had their share of dangerous missions and resented being treated like second-line soldiers. Gunnery Sergeant Boötes Drake of the Marine detachment, three hundred pounds of compact musculature (played by a salty 20-year veteran combat-branch infantry NCO), smoothed over some of the difficulties by openly supporting our Lieutenant, Coraline Fort, who, on the other hand, realised that she had to defer to Drake´s greater tactical expertise.


    Lunch in the mess saw a confrontation of another sort: when LT Fort had left the Tauronian Ha´La´Tha mob to join the military, her sister Amber had remained behind and risen in the ranks of that organised crime syndicate. Amber was now aboard Iason in the entourage of journalist Andrew Bent, and the moment she saw her estranged sister, she flew into a rage. Four SPECFOR soldiers were needed to defuse the situation and keep the two apart. (Despite my Lieutenant being a SPECFOR veteran, something in her sister´s bearing suggested I couldn´t be exactly sure who would have won the fight if the two had attacked each other.) I stood up to Ms Fort, and during a conversation in which she repeatedly came close to attacking me, I learned about the sisters´ history. That elegantly-dressed lady was a frighteningly intense player and pretty intimidating; it took all my off-play courage to stick the conversation out. Well, my character description said I was a demolitions and disposal expert hooked on taking risks, and Ms Fort fit the definition of a dangerous explosive charge right away.


    I also had to admire Ms Fort´s own courage in coming to Iason: as an open supporter of Venton Hamza, a Ha´La´Tha mobster who (at a prior convention) had taken hostage and tortured a number of civilian dignitaries, it was a miracle she was not killed outright by the people who had suffered at Hamza´s hands.


    The rest of the day was spent with fleet maneuvers and mock boarding practice, as well as guard duty at the laboratory where the Cylon hybrid was held. Dr Eldar´s stock with the crew was less than high; he was viewed as a loose cannon, a dangerous egotist, and more than half a Cylon sympathiser, although the latter accusation had no substantial evidence to back it up. He definitely had an unhealthy interest in the Cylon mindset, and a total disregard for consequences. When he hooked up the hybrid to the ship´s systems, Iason´s FTL and life support glitched, and there was frantic action to restore power and scrub the systems of Cylon viruses. If Dr Eldar noticed the daggers everyone was glaring at his back after that little stunt, he didn´t show it.



    Ms Green, the rescued hostage, was placed in the brig. The Master-at-arms relayed the evidence to the ship´s commander and XO, LTCOL Kalliope Sellars and CPT Robert Hayes, who wore rather grim expressions when they came out of the briefing room. Our plans to capture and destroy a Cylon resurrection ship had been leaked in all detail to the enemy; we were already committed to the attack and just had to hope the Cylons weren´t ready to ambush us. The MARDET was nervous, but a brilliantly played LTCOL Sellars stiffened our backs, and after her speech, we were ready to succeed or die trying. The fate of all the humans in the fleet depended on Acheron and Iason; we had to board the vessel to get the vaccine for a Cylon-engineered virus that was afflicting the majority of the civilians and spreading through the fleet.



    Later that evening, LTCOL Sellars called a tribunal hearing the case of the Human Race vs. Ms Ellen Green. Despite the former hostage admitting to open treason and the leaking of the plans to the Cylons (her motive was that she was in love with a known Cylon infiltrator, and the destruction of the resurrection ship would have deprived her of the chance to meet him again one day), and despite her cool acceptance of the demise of her fellow humans as collateral damage, the tribunal failed to invoke the death sentence. Ms Green was sentenced to solitary confinement aboard Acheron, with her mail censored and her visitors carefully chosen. There was outrage among the spectators, and the Marines (who would be on the receiving end of any Cylon trap that could be laid using the leaked plans) needed some serious calming down by Gunny and the Lieutenant.



    My team´s second-in-command, SSGT Richard Ianus, was a rabid Cylon hater, and he found that he could not bear the sentence. Late at night, he stole into the brig and shot Ms Green. He then reported to the Master-at-arms, and claimed that Ms Green had grabbed his sidearm through the bars and tried to shoot him. That cover story was rather flimsy, but the SPECFOR team supported our comrade, and SSGT Ianus was placed in the brig while MAA Yacovelli deliberated whether to put him up on charges of murder or criminal neglect.

    CPL Séan Briar (Scorpia), Team Gold, Colonial Special Forces, Battlestar Acheron

    SPC Aristides Grayme (Canceron), Deckhand, Battlestar Acheron

    PFC Sergei Benjet (Sagittaron), Marine Detachment, Colonial Defender Iason

    CPO Isaiah Virgil Russom (Aquarion), Team Ares-7, New Caprican Special Forces, Intelligence Directorate

    A-386738, Centurion der A-Serie, im Einsatz auf New Caprica

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von Horned Owl () aus folgendem Grund: Namen und Teams farblich codiert zur besseren Auffindbarkeit

  • DAY TWO : FRIDAY


    The MARDET and SPECFOR had a busy day with mock drills for boarding actions. Since the plan to board the resurrection ship – dubbed Operation Charon – would involve multiple entry points, GYSGT Drake, as deadly serious as I had ever seen a drill instructor, had us run practice ops for keeping radio contact under fire and joining up at the objective without firing at each other by mistake. Everyone was nervous and had different ways of coping with it; we realised the mission would be a tough piece of work even if the Cylons didn´t lay a trap.


    At lunch, Ms Fort´s demeanour toward her sister still hugged 0°K, which made the LT pretty distraught and the whole team uneasy. I realised that we needed Coraline at her best during the operation, and made a last attempt at reconciliation when I encountered Ms Fort alone in front of the sickbay. I told her that her sister had made a courageous decision in leaving the Ha´La´Tha, that she was going to place her life on the line for her fellow humans, that it was very probable that she wouldn´t be coming back. Did Ms Fort want her last words to her sister to be full of hate? She asked me why I cared, why I took that risk for the LT, and I told her, because Coraline has friends. Do you have friends? She didn´t answer and left abruptly. I felt that I had failed, and dreaded going into action with the LT in that condition.


    But when we assembled in the Raptor bay, Ms Fort came to me and pressed a pearl bracelet into my palm. She whispered, „Tell her to come back alive“. I understood with a surge of relief: she was under observation from her fellows in the Ha´La´Tha, and could not openly reconcile with her traitorous sister. I was strangely elated: that simple accomplishment of bringing the sisters together felt more important than battling the Cylons on their home turf and retrieving medicine to save the remnants of the human race. It is the small things that matter, I guess, because the large things are too abstract for the mind to grasp.


    SSGT Ianus had been released from the brig for the duration of Charon; Iason needed all available combat-ready personnel for the operation. He never accompanied us inside the Cylon ship, though; when Iason was hit by missiles that made it through the Viper screen, he suffered third-degree burns shielding the ship´s chaplain with his own body from the flames. (Missile impacts were represented by a countdown on the ship´s PA, „missile impact in five... four... three... two... one...“, and a huge explosion sound, at which everyone threw themselves against the next wall, and hazers and rotating orange crash site lights came to life to simulate fires.)


    We received last-minute orders: Dr Eldar was to ride with the Marine team and install the captured hybrid in the resurrection ship´s „bridge“, which was somehow guaranteed to get the ship to self-destruct. The SPECFOR detachment would escort Flight Lieutenant Victoria „Birdie“ Anatol to the Cylon ship and ensure her survival at all costs. A tall, slender dark-haired woman with a ramrod-straight posture, „Birdie“ was pretty personable but refused to talk about her orders. We figured she was a desperation back-up, ordered to place and activate Iason´s last nuclear warhead in case the hybrid thingie didn´t work out. Having volunteered for that kind of one-way assignment won her our respect despite the low opinion the Marines usually afforded the cocky Viper pilots.


    LTCOL Sellars honoured us with a personal appearance just before we left. She was everything a leader was supposed to be: reassuring, decisive, straightforward, inspiring – and when she addressed us, looking everyone in the eye, one got the lasting impression that she really cared about her men. That was a very powerful moment which left us with a warm glow of pride.


    Then we boarded. The Raptors flew. The Vipers did a good job keeping the Cylon Raiders (fighters) away from us, but we had some heart-stopping moments regardless, crammed into the Raptor´s tiny hold with our full kit, the attached deckhand SPC Moebius, and an extra pilot with a nuke. Then we were there, the hatch opened, and we were inside alien territory.


    Blue fluorescent bands bathed the scene in an eerie light as we penetrated deeply into the ship. We were met at every turn by Centurions, and the air was thick with bullets. (Small arms were simulated by NERF dartguns which fired soft-foam darts. The players who took the role of the Centurions had very limited fields of vision and were further hampered by the red light that rotated within their vision slits, so we were told to avoid hand-to-hand combat, and each Centurion was accompanied by an „invisible“ referee.) Specialist Moebius, braving the robots´ steady stream of bullets, tried to weld open a door for us, but had to reposition, and we were pinned by Cylon fire. My gun jammed. In a desperate attempt to keep the team from being pinned, I moved ahead to take out the Centurions at close range with my sidearm using explosive ammunition. I didn´t get very far: two darts struck my face, and I dropped dead.


    My sacrifice had bought the team time to regroup, and they took out the Centurions and joined up with the Marines carrying the hybrid. I missed the rest of the action, with the hybrid being installed, heated discussions, technical difficulties, and eventual success (to the relief of everyone who had grown to like LT Anatol). The position where I was lying dead had to be defended from Centurions several times, and finally a stray dart struck the C4 explosive on my vest – not enough shock to produce an explosion, but hot enough to ignite it, and it began to burn. After a while, the heat cooked off the rest of my ammunition (which my comrades had thoughtfully placed right on my vest), and a bullet hit and wounded Master-at-arms Yacovelli who happened to stand next to my body.


    There followed a hasty retreat under fire, and the grim realisation that the team would have to leave my body behind. LT Fort collected my dog tags, and had a rigidly blank face when she patted my smouldering vest for a last farewell. Emotions had to wait.


    Being dead, I missed a lot of what happened afterward. The mission was a success, but casualties had been high. The Vipers were pretty shot up, but had carried out their own task successfully. The wounded had been evacuated and taken to the sickbay. (There was an impressive array of „interactive wounds“ like those used in paramedical training, with pumps that spurted artificial blood, broken bones that needed to be set, and embedded metal shards and bullets that needed to be extracted.) The civilian experts were put to work on the vaccine. There was talk of getting the notoriously anti-pharmacy Sagittarians forcibly vaccinated. The Forts continued to quarrel in public in order to avoid repercussions for Amber, but found a few unobserved moments to speak much more friendly with each other.


    I took the opportunity to „invisibly“ roam the corridors and take a few photographs before getting back into my new role. I also got to be present at my own funeral: my comrades from the SPECFOR team placed my photograph on the wall with the thousands of pictures of of lost loved ones. Even the severely wounded SGT Natalie Kyriakos was ferried back from the hospital ship and carried up the stairs in a wheelchair to participate. I was toasted, and they swapped stories about our time of service together. It was moving.


    Amber Fort was present. She said a few words: she didn´t know me as the others did, but I was the only man on board Iason that she had come to respect when I had stood up to her. There were dubious looks from the team because of her well-known affair with the journalist Andrew Bent, but she said, „I sleep with Mr Bent. I don´t respect him“, and that was that.


    Then the team spotted a small, unobtrusive picture of Ha´La´Tha mobster Venton Hamza that had been placed on the wall. Coraline was livid and tore it down, which led to a renewed argument between the sisters. Hamza had been a criminal, a torturer and a murderer, he was denied a place among the honoured dead. To Amber, though, he had been a father figure, someone who looked after his subordinates. She had furtively pasted the picture there to honour his memory.


    Later that night, the two returned to the wall and put the picture up again, together. They had overcome their differences. Whatever Hamza had done in his life, in death he had become one of us. Another powerful moment that left me stunned.


    Afterwards, SGT Penelope Ryback and CPL Berry Hawkeye were formally introduced to the SPECFOR team – as an initiation, they were required to down half a liter of Ambrosia, spun around rapidly and then asked to shoot a Triad playing card held up by a team member. Ryback´s shots went wide, but then she drew a knife and hit the center of the card on the first throw to the cheers of the team.



    Before going to bed, I changed into the role of a Centurion for a little scene on a Cylon ship. The player of the killed character, Ms Green, was led blindfolded into a room and placed in a vat – to wake up being greeted by herself and other Cylons as a sister. The player hadn´t known her character was a Cylon „skinjob“; the whole scene was very intense as both player and character slowly realised what this meant.

    CPL Séan Briar (Scorpia), Team Gold, Colonial Special Forces, Battlestar Acheron

    SPC Aristides Grayme (Canceron), Deckhand, Battlestar Acheron

    PFC Sergei Benjet (Sagittaron), Marine Detachment, Colonial Defender Iason

    CPO Isaiah Virgil Russom (Aquarion), Team Ares-7, New Caprican Special Forces, Intelligence Directorate

    A-386738, Centurion der A-Serie, im Einsatz auf New Caprica

  • Hätt ich mir denken können. Aber: better safe than sorry.

    CPL Séan Briar (Scorpia), Team Gold, Colonial Special Forces, Battlestar Acheron

    SPC Aristides Grayme (Canceron), Deckhand, Battlestar Acheron

    PFC Sergei Benjet (Sagittaron), Marine Detachment, Colonial Defender Iason

    CPO Isaiah Virgil Russom (Aquarion), Team Ares-7, New Caprican Special Forces, Intelligence Directorate

    A-386738, Centurion der A-Serie, im Einsatz auf New Caprica

  • DAY THREE : SATURDAY


    Freshly kitted out as deckhand SPC Aristides Grayme, I was rushed into my first assignment when an unknown Raptor claiming to be from the destroyed Defender Mercury approached the fleet. Pilots rushed to their Vipers to escort the Raptor in. Docking was a nervous experience, because this might have been a Cylon trap – what if the Raptor was loaded with explosives, or fitted with a signal beacon that would enable the Cylon fleet to track us? Behind the deckhands, SPECFOR and Marines had taken up positions with weapons loaded and ready – not the most comfortable of places to be in.


    The hatch was opened, and out came – Ms Green and one other known Cylon infiltrator model, the "Lady in Red"! There was confusion as the Marines held the arrivals in check and the deckhands frantically checked the Raptor for traps. Orders were barked and weapons levelled. Then the LTCOL´s chief of staff Octavia Skenes, a petite, quietly efficient lady, saw the Cylons and flew into a frenzy. She shouldered four burly Marines aside and opened fire with her sidearm, wounding both Cylons. She was finally subdued by the Marines and placed under arrest, and both skinjobs were rushed to the sick bay.


    None-too-gentle interrogation of the two Cylons revealed that they were survivors from a battle between „Letters“ and „Numbers“ (two rivalling factions of Cylons) and had fled in a captured Raptor trying to find refuge aboard Iason; they had not realised that their models were already known in the fleet.


    The rest of the day I spent alternately doing maintenance and repair on the badly shot-up Vipers with Chief Perrin Walzer, SPC Moebius, PO „O.C.“ Overcrombie and SPC Chloe Kadmos, and checking the engine room where the coolant valves were giving us trouble. The deckhand characters were a good-natured and sociable lot, unlike the aloof prettyboys and -girls from the pilots´ section or the hard-bitten men and women of the MARDET. We barely had time for a card game of Triad between assignments, then we were rushed back to the hangar to fit a Viper with an extra seat – which necessitated enlarging the cockpit and moving the engine back. Reporter and former councilman Andrew Bent was the passenger. The CAG (commander of the air group) was going to take him along for a little tour of the fleet. Since Mr Bent was none too popular with us, we half-jokingly made plans to install a remote-controlled ejection seat, but the deck chief vetoed the project (spoilsport!), and that was that.


    I paid my mandatory visit to the Master-at-arms and turned in my sidearm – my character background said my former section on the Battlestar Acheron was suspected of assaulting a comrade in a „Code Red“. There was no evidence, but Acheron´s MAA had decided to disband the suspected team and distribute its members among the fleet´s ships. Anyway, I never got around to have my hearing, as the MAA was being kept much too busy by events to ever enter his office.


    Since LTCOL Sellars was pretty much dependent on her administration skills, Skenes continued to conduct the CO´s business from her cell – to the aggravation of the MARDET´s armourer, CPL Marka Nalim, who had to commute between the armoury´s phone and the brig for every query and answer. (Skenes was in-play the CO´s chief of staff, but also off-play the orga team member responsible for plot book and timetable, an eminently practical combination.)


    SSGT Ianus, the SPECFOR soldier who had shot Ms Green in her cell, was released from custody, after the charges were first changed from „manslaughter“ to „criminal negligence and damage of property“ (Cylon skinjobs weren´t people, after all), and then dropped altogether. MAA Yacovelli meted out his own punishment by slamming Ianus´ head on top of his desk and breaking his nose to ensure he learned his lesson.


    SGT Kyriakos chafed at being confined to sick bay, and continued to roam the corridors in a wheelchair. The team accepted her restlessness uneasily. They knew that Kyriakos was endangering her own chances of recovery (and she should know better, since her specialty was combat medic), but they had already lost a team member, and that experience made them huddle close together. In the end, they took her wheelchair with them to every debriefing and MARDET staff meeting, and the Marines never questioned that decision.


    The evening saw friendly games of Pyramid (a complex form of basketball played on a triangular field, involving „charging“ or „grounding“ the ball before hitting a target to score points). Teams were open to everyone, but friends tended to stick together, so the final line-up saw teams strictly segregated by branches: deckhands vs. Marines and pilots vs. bridge crew. A very good time was had by everyone, with several „innovative“ modes of play; in one instance, a tall Marine simply picked up a tiny deckhand and carried her on his shoulders for several minutes to prevent her from grounding the ball. The games were declared an unqualified success by Iason´s sports and leisure officer, LT Dannie „Nuke“ James. (I learned that she had, at a previous convention, used her Raptor in what everyone agreed was a tremendous feat of piloting to place a nuclear warhead in a Cylon basestar´s bay, and lived to tell the tale.)


    Late at night, Dr Eldar´s head made repeated contact with a fire extinguisher in a disused lavatory on Deck 3. Resentment against him had been rising for some time. Nobody liked his recklessly arrogant manner; he had injured a Marine and appropriated her weapon to shoot a captured Cylon infiltrator just to prove a theory; and he had taken a lot of other actions that had aggravated the crew. Endangering all hands aboard Iason by patching the hybrid into the ship´s systems had been the last straw. Eldar wasn´t badly hurt, and it was suspected that the MAA and Command would be rather phlegmatic in the search for the culprits – while the CO desperately needed the man for his expertise on Cylon technology and mindset, she also seemed to feel that the little unfortunate incident might serve to cut his inflated ego down to size. Which was all the better for SSGT Ianus, who, after all, was still on probation for killing Ms Green.

    CPL Séan Briar (Scorpia), Team Gold, Colonial Special Forces, Battlestar Acheron

    SPC Aristides Grayme (Canceron), Deckhand, Battlestar Acheron

    PFC Sergei Benjet (Sagittaron), Marine Detachment, Colonial Defender Iason

    CPO Isaiah Virgil Russom (Aquarion), Team Ares-7, New Caprican Special Forces, Intelligence Directorate

    A-386738, Centurion der A-Serie, im Einsatz auf New Caprica

  • DAY FOUR : SUNDAY


    Again, the blare of alarms interrupted breakfast for those who had been last in line for a second helping. The engine room´s reactor was leaking coolant: the valves that had played up the last few days had finally decided to quit on us. All hands rushed to the scene. The engine room was shrouded in superheated steam from the coolant valves, and the rescue teams had to suit up, losing precious minutes. They plodded through the haze to find Chloe Kadmos and me unconscious and severely scalded. Chloe also had a valve handle half embedded in her abdomen that had been catapulted through the room by a jet of steam. In a dramatic scene, we were stabilised and carried several decks up to the sick bay while the crew struggled to put out the fires and seal the cooling system. In the end, though, all they could manage was to shut the reactor down before it melted.


    Emergency power clicked in, with electricity for the CIC and sick bay, but the ship was more or less dead in space, and without ship-wide life support, the air would get stale pretty quickly. The commander decided to use the remaining energy for a controlled atmospheric entry on the neighbouring gas giant´s marginally habitable moon. Outside my room in the sick bay, there was a flurry of activity as all non-essential personnel were evacuated by the overworked Raptors and their crews. Some hands refused to go unless ordered personally (I heard that Gunny knocked one stubborn Marine out and bundled him into the Raptor), and there were those (like SGT Kyriakos and me) who were too badly injured to be evacuated. The bearded jovial Dr (??), now very grim underneath his jocularity, opted to stay with his patients, and so did the ship´s chaplain and Ms Fort, who calmly volunteered to care for the wounded. Again, points for courage.


    As I lay there, half unconscious, with a tube down my scalded throat, a wounded Marine recruit called Aguilar held my hand and kept me awake and alive by telling stories of his home planet Canceron – which happened to be my own home, and I was moved to very real tears with sentimentality to hear him speak with such love of our world, now destroyed and gone.


    Finally there came the call for „all hands to assemble in the hangar bay“ for the closing of the convention. To a dramatic fanfare, we stood at attention for the commander and the rest of the orga team, and there were tremendous rounds of applause for every participant, the NPCs, galley crew, referees and planning group. We embraced, shook hands, hugged, kissed – all practised aloofness fell away from the pilots, deckhands slapped Marines on the backs, bridge officers hugged recruits – and then we stood at attention again for one last photo of the whole crew as the dramatic music played. What an experience!

    CPL Séan Briar (Scorpia), Team Gold, Colonial Special Forces, Battlestar Acheron

    SPC Aristides Grayme (Canceron), Deckhand, Battlestar Acheron

    PFC Sergei Benjet (Sagittaron), Marine Detachment, Colonial Defender Iason

    CPO Isaiah Virgil Russom (Aquarion), Team Ares-7, New Caprican Special Forces, Intelligence Directorate

    A-386738, Centurion der A-Serie, im Einsatz auf New Caprica

  • CONCLUSION


    The action described above was only a tiny part of what was going on everywhere on the ship. Everyone had their own plot that kept them busy up to the final klaxon. Several times, I would have given my right arm to be able to be in several places at once.


    What is there to say? I am a monstrously spoiled LARPer, a harsh critic, and this was the one convention I wasn´t able to find any substantial fault in. Believe me, I tried. TC 13 may have been in any number of ways the best con in my twenty-six years of LARP. I am hooked now, and I will definitely return for the 14th installment.



    THE PLAYERS


    Most of the players were in their thirties, so the average age was older than at most other LARP conventions. This fact showed in a very mature, thoroughly respectful and deeply immersed style of play. There was an even ratio of female to male players, which was also very different to the 10% to 20% usual in LARP. I also noticed a deep sense of community and togetherness, which was balanced by a genuine readiness to accept new players into the fold. The lines between NPCs and player characters were pretty blurred, with players always ready to support plot elements and NPCs acting freely within their given backgrounds.


    Officers and NCOs, whether players or NPCs, always had an eye on the needs of their subordinates, both in- and off-play, ordered them to get food or rest where necessary, and kept them busy with interesting tasks before they got bored. In theory, the differences in rank should have created some (off-play) resentment, but they utterly failed to do so, because all officers and NCOs seemed to have been chosen for their responsibility. There was little discrepancy between in-play rank and off-play ability to project authority, which was really fortunate. The most impressive example of this was the woman playing LTCOL Sellars, whose powerful presence would have stood her out as the commanding officer even if she hadn´t worn insignia.


    In fact, all players seemed to fit their respective slots more or less perfectly. The pilots were tall, spare, fit, good-looking, and superbly self-assured. The deckhands were jovial, good-natured and pudgy. The Marines had broad shoulders and a grim attitude. The civilians were a diverse lot, but they also fit their respective bills. There was Tauronian gun moll Amber Fort, a beautiful, lean, mean, impeccably dressed knife-blade of a woman. There was Mr Bent, who was the archetype of the meddling newshound and could either bulk threateningly or smile like a serene Buddha. Dr Eldar was the supreme egotist, with an immense self-confidence that his slight frame could hardly contain. The psychological counselor was an (off-play!) blind man who negotiated the maze of corridors and stairs with the same ease as the seeing players did. There were many others just as impressive.


    Characters, both NPCs´ and players´, had immense depth of personality and were wonderfully flawed, interesting and unique. (I marvelled at the ability of the referee team to come up with a new, colourful character background story at a moment´s notice.) Scratch a character, and they would spill a lot of hooks to start a conversation and interact. All had their little secrets and hidden sides to their personality that were a delight to discover.



    THE ACTION


    The setting was deeply immersive and atmospheric, and there was precious little slack – I felt like neither of my characters had had a single minute to think before the next turn of events overtook them and forced them to act. The „flow“ was always there. Even chowtime at the mess was filled with tension or action, with the right mixture of physical confrontation, emotional stress and interaction. There were plenty of moral grey areas and insightful scenes that had me second-guessing myself.


    Military LARP, I realised, made a strict timetable of events possible, because the ship´s official schedule and „orders from above“ could be cited to make things happen at exactly the right time. This made TC 13 one of the most structured LARP conventions I ever attended.



    MINOR FAULTS AND GENERAL NITPICKING


    The „steerage deck“ was never a problem. Players were so swallowed up in their respective plot that I felt nobody really noticed the conditions. The NERF guns, with their candy colours, somewhat distracted from the optical effect of the uniforms and surroundings, but that could not be helped: since parts of the outdoors area could be seen from the outside of the fence, guns needed to be recognisable as toys, or a passer-by might have called the police. More of an issue was the tendency of the electric NERFs to jam, which was a constant nuisance in heavy combat. I realise that NERFs are probably the best solution at hand, but they appear to be far from ideal. I hasten to add that this didn´t detract from the playing experience in the slightest.



    SO WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH TRAVELLER?


    I believe that the TC pattern could easily be adapted to the Traveller setting. In fact, during play I was reminded at every turn of Traveller tropes. Much of the action could have taken place during any of the Frontier Wars, with Consular Guard infiltrators replacing the Cylon skinjobs and Zho battle robots the Centurions. The interactions between bridge crew, MARDET, pilots, civilians and deckhands were hardly all that different from what they would have been between Navy, Scouts, Marines and tramp freighter crews, and the different racial and planetary backgrounds were also there, with Gemenians, Sagittarians, Tauronians and Scorpians in lieu of Zhodani, Vilani, Sword Worlders, Solomani and Jonkeereen.


    Traveller has a similarly canonised background to Battlestar Galactica, but would, obviously, offer a bit more freedom of venue since the con´s setting could be a civilian trade vessel, a scout cruiser, a space station habitat, or a starport – and if the area has an outdoor component, even an alien planet to explore. What a Traveller LARP would definitely need is a dedicated orga crew and a community-fed website for SOME fixed and agreed-upon standards, such as Naval, IISS and Marine uniforms and insignia.


    In any case, the TC cons prove that, with the help of an enthusiastic community, it is possible to find the right area and create a believable science fiction LARP.


    So say we all!

    CPL Séan Briar (Scorpia), Team Gold, Colonial Special Forces, Battlestar Acheron

    SPC Aristides Grayme (Canceron), Deckhand, Battlestar Acheron

    PFC Sergei Benjet (Sagittaron), Marine Detachment, Colonial Defender Iason

    CPO Isaiah Virgil Russom (Aquarion), Team Ares-7, New Caprican Special Forces, Intelligence Directorate

    A-386738, Centurion der A-Serie, im Einsatz auf New Caprica

  • Das ist in der Tat ein ziemlich beeindruckender Bericht. Gefällt mir extrem gut und ist kurzweilig und spannend zu lesen. Chapeau!


    Bärtige Schiffsärzte haben wir drei:

    Dr Cole (der Zivilarzt), der bei der Außenmission dabei war

    Lieutenant Mithran (in der schwarzen Uniform), war leider erkrankt und daher kaum anwesend

    Captain Minden (in der blauen Uniform), blieb auf der Iason zurück.

    Dr. Daniel Jorgensen - Lebensmittelchemiker - CFD Iason

    Sergeant Aidan Thain - Colonial Special Forces - Battlestar Acheron

    Captain Richard Mortimer Minden IV. - Chief Medical Officer - CFD Iason

  • Danke schön! Ich geb mir Mühe. Der Arzt, den ich suche, ist untersetzt, mit schwarzem Bart und Brille, nie um einen gelassen-humorvollen Spruch verlegen. Nicht uniformiert. Dr. Cole? Könnte hinkommen.

    CPL Séan Briar (Scorpia), Team Gold, Colonial Special Forces, Battlestar Acheron

    SPC Aristides Grayme (Canceron), Deckhand, Battlestar Acheron

    PFC Sergei Benjet (Sagittaron), Marine Detachment, Colonial Defender Iason

    CPO Isaiah Virgil Russom (Aquarion), Team Ares-7, New Caprican Special Forces, Intelligence Directorate

    A-386738, Centurion der A-Serie, im Einsatz auf New Caprica

  • Sehr gut, danke!

    CPL Séan Briar (Scorpia), Team Gold, Colonial Special Forces, Battlestar Acheron

    SPC Aristides Grayme (Canceron), Deckhand, Battlestar Acheron

    PFC Sergei Benjet (Sagittaron), Marine Detachment, Colonial Defender Iason

    CPO Isaiah Virgil Russom (Aquarion), Team Ares-7, New Caprican Special Forces, Intelligence Directorate

    A-386738, Centurion der A-Serie, im Einsatz auf New Caprica

  • Wouh Cool geschrieben..Bringt spaß beim lesen...Jürgen (Dresscode) hat unterm Spiel glatt vergessen das er zu dem Zeitpunkt noch NSC war . Ich musste ihn daran erinnern ... und Patches hatt sich nur zu eine Breefing im Rolli bringen lassen. Sie ist recht schnell (vielleicht zu schnell 8o) auf ne Krücke umgestiegen

    SGT Natalie Kyriakos - Special Forces „Team Gold“ - Battlestar Acheron

  • Fiel nicht auf, Chap. ^^

    CPL Séan Briar (Scorpia), Team Gold, Colonial Special Forces, Battlestar Acheron

    SPC Aristides Grayme (Canceron), Deckhand, Battlestar Acheron

    PFC Sergei Benjet (Sagittaron), Marine Detachment, Colonial Defender Iason

    CPO Isaiah Virgil Russom (Aquarion), Team Ares-7, New Caprican Special Forces, Intelligence Directorate

    A-386738, Centurion der A-Serie, im Einsatz auf New Caprica

  • Aber dein Blick, als du begriffen hast, warum ich dich nicht ausfliegen lasse - unbezahlbar ^^

    Dr. Daniel Jorgensen - Lebensmittelchemiker - CFD Iason

    Sergeant Aidan Thain - Colonial Special Forces - Battlestar Acheron

    Captain Richard Mortimer Minden IV. - Chief Medical Officer - CFD Iason

  • Aaach was ein wunderbarer Bericht!


    Ich danke für die reichlichen Erwähnungen, wie auch die herrlichen Anfeindungen ab Minute 1 unserer Bekanntschaft. Das Team Gold hatte mich wohl wirklich gefressen :saint:


    ich habe wirklich nur marginale Ergänzungen. LT Anatole schreibt man mit einem "e" am Ende.


    Und.. ich habe den Fehler oft genug selbst gemacht am Anfang... Mr. Cyprian Eldar ist ein Genie, nahe dem Wahnsinn, eine Autorität im Bereich der FTL Technologie, aber er ist KEIN Dr. ;)

  • Ah, danke! Wird korrigiert!


    Mein LT hatte Dich gefressen. Da bin ich einfach solidarisch gewesen. War vielleicht so ein Familiending... wo Du schon mit ihrer Schwester schläfst.

    CPL Séan Briar (Scorpia), Team Gold, Colonial Special Forces, Battlestar Acheron

    SPC Aristides Grayme (Canceron), Deckhand, Battlestar Acheron

    PFC Sergei Benjet (Sagittaron), Marine Detachment, Colonial Defender Iason

    CPO Isaiah Virgil Russom (Aquarion), Team Ares-7, New Caprican Special Forces, Intelligence Directorate

    A-386738, Centurion der A-Serie, im Einsatz auf New Caprica