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The Smoke 2023
Mar. 27th, 2023 09:22 amThis was the first year that The Smoke, the London international freeform LARP festival, was under new management. It was a bit of a bumpy ride, which is to some extent attributable also to the usual venue moving (same organisation, different Location). On balance I feel the new venue is not as good as the old one in that there simply isn't the same social space available which made everything feel a bit more disconnected. There are still problems with the studios having adequate facilities, but this was true at the old venue. It was also a bit disappointing that they were no longer providing food, which I felt added to the communal feel, but I remain massively grateful to the new organisers for stepping up and making sure that it carried on.
While there may have been some organisational teething troubles, I think it's fair to say that everything that was important worked. I'm pretty sure that every freeform which was able to run did run despite the usual difficulties with drop outs. I know I had a lot of fun, and it seemed as though many others did too. All the froth will be on Facebook, and thus invisible to me, but I can froth here.
This year I decided to "take one for the team" and just play whatever freeform needed players. This turned out to be a great decision, firstly because it meant that I did not have to spend a couple of hours working out which games I wanted to play, but also because I got to play games I would not have necessarily selected. I can honestly said that the time I had was no worse for the decision to use it as a random freeform generator. So here then is my potted review of each game.
1) Batukh Hungers
I actually played this at my last Smoke, but as a game with relationships between players, it does require a full house to run, so I stepped up. The premise is simple. Stick a bunch of terrible people with no tendencies towards altruism into a room, and tell them that one of them has to willingly sacrifice themselves by the end or humanity will be destroyed. Let chaos ensue. It's a very fun diversion, and the character I played was quiet different from the one I'd played last run, but I don't feel I really got anything out of it that I didn't get out of the first run (which is no criticism of the game, it's replayable, but not necessarily designed for replayabiity). Also, I wonder how wise it is to get me to play someone who is an asshole. I know I am annoying when I do this - it's hard to be an asshole without being annoying - but I sometimes worry about whether I am spoiling people's OC fun by being a dickhead in game. I did have fun tying people in philosophical knots though, and even got to tell people about "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula LeGuin, which is one of my all time favourite short stories.
2) Devil in the details
Art freeform! Something I am super unlikely to take on if I'm picking games for myself. A story about an entire family doing a Dorian Gray style deal with the devil. I played the occultist who had discovered the ritual, and had great fun being consumed by the anger and self-loathing of having sacrificed her own (willing) father to save the family's hide. The drawing bits were interludes where the daemons summoned by the ritual got to modify the family portraits. My art tended to the symbolic (and of course the execution was all you'd expect from someone whose art teachers had told them that art was easy, anyone could do it, and they just weren't trying), but really did I think help to frame the character's descent into isolated indifference intended to mask a burning inferno of anger and self-loathing, which of course burst forth spectacularly in the final act. For bonus points I got to be demonically possessed during a seance at one point, which is always fun. Favourite line: "I'd rather spend eternity in hell than another five minutes with you lot."
3) Perfect Sense
I had no idea what this freeform was about going into it, and again I probably wouldn't have signed up had I known. I hate the feelings of hopelessness that an apocalypse gives you. For the first 45 minutes or so, I thought it was going to be a fairly dull slice of life freeform, with the most interesting part being the mornings with my husband, where we were both strangers living in the same house. I don't want to be too spoilery as it's a strong game which I'd recommend others play, but the way in which the apocalypse arrived somehow short-circuited my usual reaction to such things of frantically trying to avert disaster, and instead to just accept what was happening. Suddenly all the things that separated me from my husband stopped feeling so important, and I was just left with him and me at the end of the world/game. Really very moving.
4) Inside
This game has run before at The Smoke, but I did feel in the right frame of mind to play it this time and was pleased it needed players. It's billed as an edu-larp about the US inpatient mental health system between 1940 and 1985. I'm not going to deny it was a rough time, but so very worthwhile. It seemed to me realistic in that there were no real villains and the staff were overworked and under-resourced people trying to do the best that they could within their own frame of reference. I got to watch my character's brightness and humanity be eroded by the system into depression and resignation and have my life wasted. I was aware in broad strokes of some of the history of inpatient mental health care but definitely learned some new stuff. Definitely a game you would need to be in the right frame of mind to play. I think this sort of game is hard to explain to someone who isn't in the freeforming hobby. To an outsider it seems like it might be just an unpleasant experience that no person would willingly subject themself to. The thing is acting is a performance art. To embody a character, you have to engage emotionally with them, and the learning you take away is different from that you'd get reading a book, or watching a film. It's about empathy, and understanding (at least a bit) on a more visceral level about what it means to have those experiences. I got huge value from it.
Really looking forward to next year now.
While there may have been some organisational teething troubles, I think it's fair to say that everything that was important worked. I'm pretty sure that every freeform which was able to run did run despite the usual difficulties with drop outs. I know I had a lot of fun, and it seemed as though many others did too. All the froth will be on Facebook, and thus invisible to me, but I can froth here.
This year I decided to "take one for the team" and just play whatever freeform needed players. This turned out to be a great decision, firstly because it meant that I did not have to spend a couple of hours working out which games I wanted to play, but also because I got to play games I would not have necessarily selected. I can honestly said that the time I had was no worse for the decision to use it as a random freeform generator. So here then is my potted review of each game.
1) Batukh Hungers
I actually played this at my last Smoke, but as a game with relationships between players, it does require a full house to run, so I stepped up. The premise is simple. Stick a bunch of terrible people with no tendencies towards altruism into a room, and tell them that one of them has to willingly sacrifice themselves by the end or humanity will be destroyed. Let chaos ensue. It's a very fun diversion, and the character I played was quiet different from the one I'd played last run, but I don't feel I really got anything out of it that I didn't get out of the first run (which is no criticism of the game, it's replayable, but not necessarily designed for replayabiity). Also, I wonder how wise it is to get me to play someone who is an asshole. I know I am annoying when I do this - it's hard to be an asshole without being annoying - but I sometimes worry about whether I am spoiling people's OC fun by being a dickhead in game. I did have fun tying people in philosophical knots though, and even got to tell people about "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula LeGuin, which is one of my all time favourite short stories.
2) Devil in the details
Art freeform! Something I am super unlikely to take on if I'm picking games for myself. A story about an entire family doing a Dorian Gray style deal with the devil. I played the occultist who had discovered the ritual, and had great fun being consumed by the anger and self-loathing of having sacrificed her own (willing) father to save the family's hide. The drawing bits were interludes where the daemons summoned by the ritual got to modify the family portraits. My art tended to the symbolic (and of course the execution was all you'd expect from someone whose art teachers had told them that art was easy, anyone could do it, and they just weren't trying), but really did I think help to frame the character's descent into isolated indifference intended to mask a burning inferno of anger and self-loathing, which of course burst forth spectacularly in the final act. For bonus points I got to be demonically possessed during a seance at one point, which is always fun. Favourite line: "I'd rather spend eternity in hell than another five minutes with you lot."
3) Perfect Sense
I had no idea what this freeform was about going into it, and again I probably wouldn't have signed up had I known. I hate the feelings of hopelessness that an apocalypse gives you. For the first 45 minutes or so, I thought it was going to be a fairly dull slice of life freeform, with the most interesting part being the mornings with my husband, where we were both strangers living in the same house. I don't want to be too spoilery as it's a strong game which I'd recommend others play, but the way in which the apocalypse arrived somehow short-circuited my usual reaction to such things of frantically trying to avert disaster, and instead to just accept what was happening. Suddenly all the things that separated me from my husband stopped feeling so important, and I was just left with him and me at the end of the world/game. Really very moving.
4) Inside
This game has run before at The Smoke, but I did feel in the right frame of mind to play it this time and was pleased it needed players. It's billed as an edu-larp about the US inpatient mental health system between 1940 and 1985. I'm not going to deny it was a rough time, but so very worthwhile. It seemed to me realistic in that there were no real villains and the staff were overworked and under-resourced people trying to do the best that they could within their own frame of reference. I got to watch my character's brightness and humanity be eroded by the system into depression and resignation and have my life wasted. I was aware in broad strokes of some of the history of inpatient mental health care but definitely learned some new stuff. Definitely a game you would need to be in the right frame of mind to play. I think this sort of game is hard to explain to someone who isn't in the freeforming hobby. To an outsider it seems like it might be just an unpleasant experience that no person would willingly subject themself to. The thing is acting is a performance art. To embody a character, you have to engage emotionally with them, and the learning you take away is different from that you'd get reading a book, or watching a film. It's about empathy, and understanding (at least a bit) on a more visceral level about what it means to have those experiences. I got huge value from it.
Really looking forward to next year now.
