Dreams I Could Do Without

"Such dreams, such dreams as I dreamed last night/Such dreams can never be good." Lady Margaret (Traditional)

And they weren't good, either, more depressing really. It was one thing after another. I tried to run my next LARP but somehow hadn't finished getting it ready and even found that the parts I'd thought completed weren't usable. We were traveling, and I couldn't find either place or time to work. Then I decided to take the GRE and did so poorly that no school would even look at my application.

I understand the first part since I often have stress dreams about preparing/running LARPs. It doesn't usually happen until much closer to the deadline, however, so I'm startled by the timing. I've still got a month to get the rewrite done, and I've even started on it. If I'd dreamed about not have a definite place to run-- But this was more normal for me: Documents not written or printed or illegible. Impatient players demanding their materials NOW. Scott being wildly unhelpful.

The second part of the dream puzzles me. Going back to school isn't something I'm thinking about very seriously. It's something I'd like to do someday if I can ever justify the expense. I like taking classes and playing with ideas, and I'm good at both. I've occasionally lamented that no one will pay me to take classes. And money's really the sticking point. We have a mortgage, so taking on more debt isn't an attractive option, and I'm not able to work and take classes. I tried it twice, working on a masters in library science, and crashed and burned physically and psychologically both times (I still got okay grades; I just came close to losing my job). I've done a little desultory looking around at local schools and concluded that the U is the only place I can get to without moving to another town that includes (or even could) the sort of courses I'm interested in taking. This is particularly true if I'm looking at graduate programs.

I'm trying to start today off better than I did yesterday. Somehow, I just didn't get around to eating much. I felt pretty down and unmotivated. By evening, I was hungry but couldn't think of anything that would be worth the effort of getting up to go get it. I'm just glad that Scott's home Tuesday evenings since I needed him.

Laura and Drew stopped by in the afternoon so that Laura could ask me some questions about the Amber scenario of mine that she's going to run for her other gaming group. Drew's going to assist her by running an npc. She still considers herself new at GMing and isn't very confident about it. She mentioned that some of her players are concerned that she's planning to run something that somebody else designed, but I think she'll do fine with it. She understands the most important basic rule: If it doesn't work, throw it out or change it.

Rewrites & Updates

I've started in on the rewriting of the LARP I'm supposed to run in April. I originally wrote it in 1988 and ran it twice that fall. Since then, my brother-in-law and his wife (they weren't married at the time) have run it out in San Francisco (at least I think they did�). Sometime during the last few years, I did some playing around with the game. I can tell because the characters have been updated at least once; the originals were in MacWrite, and what I'm working from now will open in AppleWorks if I double click on the icon. The difficulty is that I seem to have decided to try to change some of the plots during one of those updates. Now I'm having to track down the discrepancies so that I can resolve them. I know that some of the characters aren't likely to be very strong, so consolidating some might not be a bad idea. On the other hand, I expect that it won't be hard to get players this time out, and I'd like to have enough characters for them.

It's a little strange looking over the game. It's been long enough that I'd forgotten a lot of the details. Rereading the characters, I'm remembering the sources I drew on. I went to the public library and wandered through the children's science fiction section taking notes on books I recognized. I worked from bits of dreams that I recalled (the entire game setting is actually based on a dream I had). Scott (who not only wasn't my husband but also wasn't even my boyfriend at the time) specifically asked for a character type and wanted to work with his brother. Then there's the character I wrote for a friend who loved impossible, angstful situations; I gave her a character who was utterly and completely screwed over.

I'm also remember where I pulled names from. Some of them are a little obscure. It's easy enough to figure out where I got "Barbara Allen," for example, but I'm not exactly sure about "Elijah Marillion." I took the former from the ballad of the same name, but the latter� I seem to recall taking the last name from a CD that one of my friends had, and I think the first name just sounded good to me. I'm actually thinking of offering some sort of little prize to whoever among the players can spot the most references in the character names.

I've gotten five surveys for the April game so far, and Laura hasn't yet notified the e-list of potential players that the game's going to happen. We haven't definitely decided on a date yet because we were going to do the 7th. Unfortunately, we could only get one of the two rooms we wanted, and the one we got is across the hall from the one we didn't get. An a capella group will be holding auditions in there. Laura and I are afraid that out game would be too noisy and cause some serious mutual problems.

Sadly the alternative date Laura originally suggested doesn't work really well either. We'll lose some people to finals and others to the Smithees. I'm trying to come up with an idea for an alternative location, but I don't really know campus the way I used to. I think the Union may not be the best way to go, but I'm not sure we've got anyone in any of the dorms to try to get us a lounge.