I know, I know, it’s been a while. I’m sorry! October is always completely crazy for me because we’re gearing up hardcore for Nekocon. In the event that you’re somehow unfamiliar, Nekocon is the anime convention in Hampton Roads, VA, that I’ve been attending and staffing at for the past EIGHT YEARS. (o.m.g.) Yeah, that’s basically forever. What do I do on staff at Nekocon? Well…..

I’m the Assistant Department Head for the Live Action Role Playing (LARP) department.

Yeah cool, I know, but what does that meaaaan?

To start, Live Action Role Playing at Nekocon is a one-shot weekend long campaign in an original setting with a unique plot, both of which are written by our staff of 9 for each year. We have one department head who is in charge of all of our crazy, and then another Assistant Department Head (affectionately known as my “co-ass-head” and “the second cheek” and other incredibly pun worthy things), and six other staffers. All of us, regardless of official title to the convention, are GMs, or Game Masters, to our motley crew of approximately 150 players every year. For 2013, we also had four assistant GMs, who help out at the convention with fun little side tasks. Our core 9, however, do so much work, you’d think we got paid.

How do we create a plot, a world, and the characters who play in it (in addition to all kinds of cool add-ons that we think of every year?) in a weekend? Well…. we don’t. Nekocon itself occurs the first weekend in November every year. Starting in January, the work begins.

My role in department management is essentially a project management situation. I build out our schedule for the year, deadlines, document requirements, meeting schedules, agendas and minutes. Herding cats? I do that here too. Gamers are just as bad as programmers, if not worse! Somehow though, every year we manage to pull it off and get a great game together for our players. The weekend of Nekocon is always a perfect storm of organized chaos, if you ask me. Our players are trying to break through all of our carefully constructed plot arcs and we’re trying to keep them having fun and moving along at a pace that isn’t too fast and also isn’t too slow. It’s really kind of amazing that we manage it every year.

On a personal note, I entered the whole LARPing sphere as a player back at Otakon 2000. When I was 13. Yes. You read that correctly. That makes this year’s Nekocon the marker of me having LARPed for HALF of my life. Yep. That’s a thing.

There’s just something about the LARP community that has always felt like home to me. Since that first OtaLARP, when I met the people who I now consider family, I’ve only continued to meet wonderful humans who open their community to new players, regardless of pretty much any difference between them.

For me, that’s really a huge thing for an entire group to do. I personally don’t think I’m the best field GM (someone who you come to during a game and try to get to materialize the world for you and interact with the plot and setting with). I struggle with making sure that I’m not somehow doing or saying something incorrect in respect to the year’s content, while still wanting my players to enjoy what’s happening. However, because I know this amazing group of people so well, I feel like they cut me slack and don’t throw rotten fruit at me when I have to pause an interaction, go look something up, run to the plot guru of the year for help, or any of the plethora of random actions I’ve taken when trying to run a scene for them.   The past few years I’ve felt like I’ve gotten more and more confident in scene-building and bringing our players an even better experience. The fact that they’ve let me grow from a girl who only really knew how to hand out pre-registration folders and play cute, typecast magical girl characters into someone who is more confident in her field GMing skills, albeit who did play a cute magical girl again this year (ok, at least she was sarcastic and older than 11!), means so much to me.

Part of the reason I continue on staff, aside from the fact that for some reason unbeknownst to me regarding enjoying exhausting the life out of myself in the name of amusing my friends for 4 days straight, is to try and make sure that the family and experiences that I’ve been so privileged to have, are there for others.

There are so many things I could say about how amazing NekoLARP13 was, and how epic NekoLARP14 promises to be (regarding an upcoming teaser, what we said at the closing meeting still stands: because. no.), but I think I want to just leave it here for now:

Here’s to many more years of kittens who win it all, praying to shark gods, premium cable, daraXree competitive in-character shouting matches, epic settings and plots, someone else getting proposed to or married at Neko, doing something, somehow, that will inadvertently cause Feldman to hate us just a little bit more, and of course, the amazing community that has become a family.

NekoLARP 2013: ALL THE FEELS