The Aftermath of Awesome

...is that I have a hard time making a post about the awesome, apparently.

I'm back from GenCon!  Also, I'm back from the second Deeplight 2-day event, because I started writing this post like a week and a half ago, and made very little progress content-wise.  So I resolved that short post is better than no post, which apparently cured my writer's block... WTF, brain?

It was quite the adventure bringing Here At The End to GenCon...  15 people, 5 days, 3 hotel rooms, and one little post-apocalyptic LARP demo running 12 times a day.  Our one-hour demo event, called "One Man's Trash," went well.  Like, REALLY well.  We were far more popular than we could have ever reasonably expected of a first-year event.  We hit the "Evil Genius Overlord will dance naked on the roof as an expression of joy" around dinnertime Saturday, with the rest of the night and the Sunday demos still to come.

Sadly, although there was dancing, the Overlord reneged on his vow and neither nudity nor roofs were involved.

Overall, it was one of the funnest most harrowing experiences I've had in a long while, possibly surpassing the 24 Hour Project I did in college (in which a collection short plays were written, rehearsed, designed, and performed in a single day).  On the first day we realized that one of our tables was just the right size for a human to take a nap under, and we took advantage of that regularly, because otherwise we would implode one by by one.

People loved us... even the staff!  (Con AND hotel staff... we got hooked up with a sound system partway through Friday because some of the hotel staff loved what we were doing and thought we needed to take it up to 11.)  Several folks said they would be willing to travel from out of state to play with us if we ever did a multi-day event, a few approached us about volunteering to help run the demos next year, and one largish group from Philadelphia(?) emailed the Overlord a week later about starting H.A.T.E. franchise of their own.  Note: this is not to imply that said franchise will actually happen, that's up to the Overlord, but it's just so awesome that they WANT to start one.  Note 2: we all loved this group, they were loud and sarcastic and having an infectious amount of fun with life, and, oh yeah, they came to the demo because they were looking for an event that would sweat-test their Drow makeup and garb (which was just lovely, and held up to the workout rather well), and it makes me so sad that I was not able to play with them because I was about to implode and needed to take a turn under the table instead.

Here's some footage from the Costume Parade, to which we sent a representative from each PC faction and one NPC faction...also a Minecraft Creeper (the daughter of the NPC faction rep).  Creeper shows up at about 6:10, and forward progress got held up while the PC reps were RIGHT in front of the camera shortly afterward, so you get a great look at us.

I'll try to curate some of the many amazing photos, as well as find some good YouTube footage of our mascot, Buttons, and post that fairly soon, as well as do a post-Deeplight roundup after that...  But for now, I have stuff to sew!