Sea Dracula. Sea Dracula Run.

October 14, 2009 2 comments

Blame Paul Tevis for that title.

How legendary was the Sea Dracula game at RinCon ’09? So much so that in Ryan Macklin’s “One Cool Thing at RinCon ’09″ video (below), in amongst praise for John Wick’s Houses of the Blooded LARP and various things Wil Wheaton did, three people mentioned Sea Dracula.

If you don’t know what Sea Dracula is, follow this link and download it. It’s free, and it’s two pages long. You can also read my synopsis at Examiner.com. I did change the rules slightly. Due to the large number of players, I did not participate as an attorney, but took the role of Judge (Sea Dracula himself!) so that I could better wrangle the players and spectators and facilitate the game.I also ruled that if an objection was over a witness, the witness got to pick the dance for the dance-off. This helped to get people to participate, especially when we started calling people playing other games at other tables to be witnesses. Making Sea Dracula players dance was their reward for going along with us.

Our biggest cheering section came from the Privateer Press guys, who were all the way on the other side of the room playing a miniatures game. One of the players (Kevin Hayward) introduced his character and stated his name, the Pustulent Platypus of Pleasure in Pleather, who was of course a baboon. He say the name, I said ‘WHAT?”. I made him repeat the name until he was screaming it. that’s when the Privateer guys started cheering, and we had the attention of the room.

At the next table Jason Corley, who is the best GM in Tucson if for no other reason than he’s a good sport, was running a Feng Shui game. Jason is also a lawyer in real life, and a district attorney at that. I told the players they would get extra lawyer points for incorporating him into the game and/or otherwise disrupting his game. I only did this, as I said, because I knew Jason would be a sport about it. One of the players actually wrote “Jason Corley” as a witness name. He was called as a witness eventually, stopped his game, came over, recited the oath, and confessed to the crime (although he did contradict himself several times, for comic effect). Well done, Jason.

My personal favorite moment was when Kynn Barlett called one of the Laughing Moon Girls to be a witness. Just about every player wanted to cross-examine the witness, and with all those objections she made them do a conga line. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the camera ready in time to capture her taking the Sea Dracula Oath.