Time to finish my report up as I finally have some free time (although that yard is looking scruffy, time to mow after this).

Saturday morning everyone pitched in and we transformed the set of the Halifax Bonaventure into that of the HMA Badger. Juliette G. got the mini-games and craft projects underway and I went to listen to Jon K perform as Eli August at Harmonic CONvergence. After a great show he and his girlfriend needed to motor back to Madison and we had a mystery to run.

( Here's how it went... )

We are all back safely from Bloomington. What a wild weekend! This was the one year anniversary of Steam Century's first event and what a great group of people to share our big day with.

I should say 'days' as we had the party room open from Thursday to Saturday evening. This is the second year that CONvergence has been a four day convention. I am used to 4 day conventions, but then the first convention I ever attended was GenCon. The extra day is a bit of a challenge for CONvergence because the stars of the show are the room parties. The cost of hosting an extra day in addition to all of us having to watch every penny this year was unfortunately a terrible coincidence. A good portion of the cabana rooms on the 1st and 2nd floors were dark on Thursday night this year.  Even worse, upon arrival we made the bittersweet discovery that the reason we were able to get a second floor cabana room was because one of our favorite parties, Dystopia, was not there. We were also sad to see that Willy Wonka was not back. Thankfully the room hosts were still at the convention and they made a point to stop in and say hello. I do hope they will be back in future years.

The room was wonderful. We had lovely neighbors: Toast below, Deadly Delights to one side, and Mos Icee on the other.  Heather Luca, Samantha Rei and our own Sarah M. teamed up to host our room on Thursday night for us. Having the locals pitch in was so great. I didn't think we realized how nice it was to have a night off until we dragged ourselves across the finish line in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

So how did the mysteries go? Well....
( Read more... )

We had load out tonight at the shop. We leave for Bloomington, MN at 6am tomorrow, we're the first car to leave. See you there!

For all you Illinois and Wisconsin steampunks who were looking for upcoming events:

The members of Steam Century will be attending the Midway Village 1900 America Chautauqua on June 20th. We will be coming from Madison, WI and would love to meet other steampunks from IL and WI. We will be attending as guests, which is a nice change from us being the hosts all the time.

We will be at Midway Village from 11am to 4pm (with a break for lunch some time in that). We will do our best to have a banner out in the parking lot around 11am as we change out of our traveling clothes into something a bit more appropriate.

I have an invitation from the educational curator for a private tour. If you would like to be a part of that, please let me know if you are coming so I can give him a rough number to expect. He knows that we are a steampunk group and therefore not period correct. When I spoke to him on the phone he specifically welcomed any and all attire that will add to the festivities.

The charge for a one day pass is $8.

The 1900 America Chautauqua flyer: http://www.hmabadger.com/MV-Chautauqua_poster-3-1.pdf

The website for the event is here: http://www.midwayvillage.com/event_calendar.cfm?id=1006

The webpage for Steam Century is here: http://www.hmabadger.com

You can contact me through the webpage contact form or at historian227ATyahoo.com

We'd love to have you with us!

(posted on Brass Goggles, Steam Century and Steamfashion as well))

We have been confirmed for a party room since January, but it feels official now: We have been assigned Cabana room 230!

For those of you who know the layout of the Sheraton Bloomington, we will be on the second floor, closer to the CONvergence Bridge than the Con Suites. Everyone is very excited and our events will be flowing out into Cabana 101 and (hopefully) onto the main courtyard space by the pool.

Our plan for the steampunk takeover of the Midwest continues apace!

Since Convergence takes place in one of the fictional countries created by Steam Century, I thought we would give you a sneak peek of our thought process as we develop its culture and politics. Now as a note, I should say that much of this is for player enjoyment and our own use. We don't have any required reading for players to participate in a mystery!

( Read more... )

Hopefully she will, at least. I just dropped a sizable chunk of change on fabric today. I will be getting some help making a civilian outfit for steampunk events. The deadline is pretty tight, we have some new uniforms and other sets of civilian clothes that need to be done by Convergence on the weekend of July 4th.

I have high hopes. Here is a picture of the fabric and buttons. The purple is the skirt, the gray is the lining, the stripe is the vest and if I am lucky, a jacket.

I am very pleased to say that our first mystery event of the year went off beautifully. We had 36 players making up 16 teams. Our maximum was 50 players or 20 teams, so we judged our materials about right. The number of players is dictated by the number of medals we have prepared and the number of teams is set by the number of team packets. Extra medals are awarded to our volunteers who hold clues for us and at NBC we also gave a special medal for a staffer who went above and beyond his normal duties to help us with hotel lighting controls in the rooms.

As you may know from earlier posts, we had several new features:

-A daily newspaper for both days of the Con in which we were performing. These contained minor clues but mostly set the stage for the world of Steam Century. We will have those up on our website as PDFs this week.

-Team packets. This included a "cash advance" for investigators to be used at future events as well as a Crew Associate Card that allowed players to get extra help from one crew member. Teams also received one copy of the Abridged, Pocket Sized edition of the Book of Uncommon Prayer. This allowed them to ward off one Curse! trap card.

-We had one large scene and one small vignette scene this time. The large scene was a seance held at 5pm in which players could ask questions of the ghost of the murder victim (the ghost was at the event but could not speak to players outside of the seance). The small scene was held between the two murderers. When the ghost saw players, she would bring them to the murderers to allow them to secretly listen in on their conversation. The murderers implicated themselves and then dropped a clue as they walked away.

It was a great start to the year and we are very excited about using these new features at the double mystery events at Convergence in July!

We held our second and last full rehearsal for the No Brand Con mystery this past weekend. We are trying several new things this season and I'm very excited for the April event to see if they work as well as we hope.

Some new features of the Steam Century events:

-Team Packets: Last year we just issued the teams a solution ballot. This year we will be issuing the teams packets. These will include the solution ballot and helpful items that players can use themselves or trade with other teams for items or information.

-Vignette Scenes: At many cons space is at a premium. In order to make use of all the space, watch for interactions between cast members, even in the hallways. You might learn something.

-Large Cast Scenes: No Brand Con will be the first in which players can -witness see the crime-. We will be holding a large cast scene on Friday night before the bands come on stage. The mystery game will then start on Saturday morning. In addition, we will be offering another large cast interactive scene on Saturday.

-Newspapers: Come read the news of the Steam Century world! We will have news broadsheets available on both Friday and Saturday. The broadsheets are designed to give players and congoers some insight into the Steam Century alternative history. Also, you never know what important information you can glean from the news.

Also, for our veteran players, we have some features returning and some that are returning in a new form:

-Trap Cards: The trap cards are returning! Traps have become a player favorite. We have several standard traps like the Wound card, and we also incorporate original traps in some events. Trap cards are hung around the neck of a player and that player's team cannot get any further in the mystery until they have the trap card removed. After all, Captain Brennan and the crew of the Badger would be remiss in their duties if they did not insist that a wounded individual receive medical attention before anything else!

-Scavenger Hunt: The scavenger hunt is also a popular feature. The trouble with the hunt was that it was not part of the mystery. Although the separate hunt may return as a minigame for ConVergence, the scavenger hunt now yields clues instead of tokens.

Artists! Pilots! Steam Century is looking to create an airship spotter’s guide. We would like to make this a collaborative project of the steampunk community.

 

Cross posted to several communites

The 2009 medals have arrived. Player in each event receive a unique medal and ribbon combination. We did have to plan ahead this time, as our supplier now asks for a minimum order of 300 instead of the 200 from last year. Our saving grace is always that we go with oodles of medals to ConVergence as we give out medals to the volunteers in the party rooms who hold clues for us. Last year I think the people in the rooms were more excited about the medals than the players were!

We need to pick the ribbons for each event this year and attach them. It takes awhile to make 50 to 100 medals, but we get an assembly line going to streamline the process.  We do try and pick colors that are part of the convention's official logo.

Here is a picture of last year's Geek.kon medal:

For anyone who might like to join the Steam Century universe in the future and host events like ours, I thought it might be worthwhile to get a peak at the significant amount of work that goes into these events. The first stage is the writing phase. This year we have an outline for the entire year's story arc, from the first to the last event. The challenge is to keep the world continuity while allowing new players to come into the story in the middle and feel comfortable. I have never felt so much sympathy with TV screenwriters as I do now that I write Steam Century scripts.

Tonight was a two hour meeting with the No Brand Con writing team. The team consists of four people. We have already gone through two drafts before tonight. Those meetings ran even longer, as it takes time for a nebulous idea to take shape. So at this stage there are 6- 8 hours of work already invested into our first event. This of course does not count all the informal times we end up talking about Steam Century at parties and bars with each other.

Each mystery writing team has a list of things they must do:

-We must be accessible to all con attendees over 14 (any players under 18 must play with their parents).
-There must be enough physical clues to answer all three of the solution ballot questions.
-There must be enough information for the crew to know to explain these physical clues.
-Every cast member has to have something to do.
-Each clue must be redundant in case a team misses it.
-Each cast member must know the information for at least one other cast member in case they cannot attend.
-We must have space within the convention to set up and break down the bridge/wardroom and various clue rooms.
-The writing team must generate the props list for the building teams.

It takes time and thought and if there is a reason why they say many hands make light work, this is it. Now our props list goes to the mechanical and electrical minded people who lead our build team. Many of our moving and working props are handmade, so anytime something goes "buzz" or "whirr" or lights up at a Steam Century event, one of our members soldered those wires or built that circuit!

We are very pleased to announce our 2009 Con schedule. We will be hosting mysteries at four conventions this year. This year we are featuring a supernatural theme!

You can find more information on our website and see reveals to previous games: http://www.hmabadger.com/

Our season schedule for 2009:

No Brand Con: April 24th & 25th
Eau Claire, WI
Full Day game (Saturday) $7
(there is a free narrative introduction on Friday night)


Website

ConVergence: July 3rd & 4th
Bloomington, MN (just outside the Twin Cities)
Steam Century will be hosting one of the famous room parties. There will be two games offered, one on Friday and one on Saturday. These games are free.

Website


Geek.kon: October 24th & 25th
Madison, WI
Two Day Game: $10
This will be a progressive game in which players affect events that happen during the day.


Website

DaishoCon: November 21st
Stevens Point, WI
Full Day Game: $5
The conclusion of this year's story arc.

Website

For all those of you who have always thought Star Trek could be a little more Steampunk...



Enjoy!

In order to wrangle various conversation threads, we now have forums on the HMA Badger site. You can find them linked to the main page:
http://www.hmabadger.com/

I have posted the reveal for our first event on the brand new website: http://www.hmabadger.com/
 
I am collecting comments from everyone in the crew about their favorite or most surprising part of the game, as this was a learning experience for us as well. We already have a list of things to improve next time and ideas for next year's story arc.

Our first event is finished here at ConVergence and we believe it was a hit. We had about 50 people sign up and about 20 winners. A number of really great room parties helped us out by giving out clues or scavenger hunt tokens. Some of the people running the rooms were a little bit worried at first, since they didn't know what they were getting into. We think they had a good time giving our players a hard time. In fact, Willy Wonka was so disappointed that he ran out of tokens to give out, he stopped by to see if he could get more.

Once we get back home, I'll post the reveal and all the inner workings of the ConVergence game.

Well, I am not sure if I am at the excited stage or just at the exhausted and nervous stage. Probably both.

-Costumes are as done as they are going to get. Spats will have to wait until Geek.kon.
-Clues are done and printed, deck officer watch schedule is printed, maps are designed and waiting to be printed.
-Solution ballots are printed, I need to cut those today
-Information posters are done, they just need their maps glued on them
-the last 18 prize medals need to be finished, we will have 100 on the freakish off chance we get 100 players
-I need to write up lecture notes for the orientation (don't be scared, just as a academic I have a personal distaste for people who lecture off the cuff)
-flyers are done and printed. Our two members who are driving up on Wednesday will be posting those early on Thursday morning
-The base set is printed. There is a slight chance we will be skinning the entire room, but Men of the Cloth was swamped with orders this week as customers realized they needed to have everything shipped on Thursday if they wanted it this weekend. Even if we can't, we have the main observation windows printed.
-The website is being redone and our feedback survey will get linked today.
-Business card file is done and needs to be printed.
-Last Sunday we rehearsed parts and characters. For many of us, this is our first time doing any LARP or improv work. Considering I last did theater of any kind in high school in 1994, it has been awhile.

Yikes! Should be a crazy time, I hope all of our players have a ton of fun. I imagine I won't stop shaking with nervous energy until 2am on Saturday morning. Wish us luck!

It was a very productive meeting today, which is good, considering that we only have one more large meeting before Convergence.  We had a number of concerns this time. One was, can we maintain our characters for a three hour meeting? The other: How are these clues and us going to come together to let (most of) the players get the right answer.

We are facing a number of things that can go wrong (of course):

-Players might not realize they are supposed to play the game intermittently over the course of the 6 hours they can play.
-Players might get distracted by events at other parties and forget to ask those rooms (if they are participating) for clues.
-Players are too confused by the alternate history to follow the political implications of the story.
-Players might solve the mystery too easily (which is not really a problem for the first game)

So our goals need to be to mitigate any of these problems as best we can. Of course, we will encounter problems we won't have thought of, but we'll deal with them as they arise.