Day 3:
Saturday. The third real day of GenCon. Was I boardgamed out yet? Nope.
The day started like any other. We played a few games. I don't remember what exactly anymore. It's all a blur.
But then...the best thing of Gen Con:
At noon, we went downstairs (it was conveniently located inside our hotel!) for "Helix and Helix: Cabin Fever." Or, "Our Zombie LARP" as we called it.
So...LARPing. Live Action Role Playing. Probably would not call this my thing. I don't really like acting as some character and whatnot. But this seemed different.
Here's the idea for these zombie LARPs, put on by Ozarks Rising: There is a small group of players, who get to choose their specialization. Warriors specialize in (foam) swords. Marksmen specialize in (nerf) guns. And Medics are good at healing people when they (inevitably) die. Your team enters some zombie-infested scenario, played by some (scary) volunteers. You play out the scenario, it's dark and scary, the zombies attack you, you try to kill them before they kill you.
Combat involved light hits with the foam swords or shots with nerf guns. Rule number 1 was "no crotch shots." I suppose that's fair.
I chose to be a marksman. Marksmen have a choice of having a small sword and nerf pistol, two nerf pistols, or a heavy nerf battle rifle. I chose the rifle because it did more damage and looked badass. I also was wearing a lot of clothes, so I had more armor then everyone else (long pants, long sleeve shirt, hoodie, all extra bonuses over shorts and short sleeves. I came prepared. Forgot my totoro hat, though).
Our team also had a father-daughter pair of medics, who do this every year together. Super cute. And as veterans they had some nice leveled-up skills that are super handy when us noobs are dying.
Our scenario consisted of a cabin in the woods, where there was a party, but then there were zombies so there was no party and we had to kill the zombie. Bad cliche writing, just like the best horror movies.
So we entered the first room. Not too scary yet. The lights were on. Then zombies appeared. Like, flooded the room. I tried to shoot, but my gun was jammed. So I basically ran around for 5 minutes dodging zombies with no means to attack back. Luckily, these zombie were slow.
We made it out alive, I unjammed my gun, and we moved on. Then things got really scary. From then on, the lights in the cabin were out. We fought in a room with a bunch of cubicle dividers which, not surprisingly, spawed zombies from behind. With no warning. And some of them were fast. And some of them had giant clubs. And one of them had a banjo.
My strategy was to run around, not get hit, and go for headshots (stand in place without moving, call out "1,2,3 headshot" then fire and hit. Does extra damage). This works fine, until you over commit to the headshot and the fast zombie with the bloody club hits you and does a ton of damage. I died there, but one of the medics saved me and I was all better.
I actually felt pretty worthless. I did kill one zombie that dropped a key. I felt special, I had the special item. It was supposed to open a shed we needed to get into. But then the crazy undead tree next to the shed got a bit overzealous and knocked the shed down, so my key was worthless :(.
We all got out of there alive. It was just awesome. My heart was pounding the whole time.
Despite LARPing probably not being my thing, I enjoyed this immensely because
1. I didn't have to do any acting. It was just me, shooting the scary things with my nerf gun. And me being terrified wasn't acting either..
2. A combat LARP seems way awesome. It's like playing a first-person shooter for reals.
3. Zombies.
I would do this again. Like, next time we go to GenCon, I will sign up for multiple of these. So much fun. I just wrote a ton about this, because it was THE HIGHLIGHT OF GENCON for me. Great. Highly recommended.
Sadly, I have no pictures. The zombies stole the camera to take selfies.
Here's my best attempt at recreating the scene:
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| This is pretty accurate. Drawn to scale. |
We chilled a bit after our zombie encounter, which was pretty exhausting. Played some more games. Ate some snacks. Etc.
That evening, we went to do our True Dungeon Adventure, which we were looking most forward to. Bascially, True Dungeon is a live action Dungeons and Dragons themed dungeon walkthrough. There is a full environment you walk through that is very dark and, honestly, pretty cool. We did the puzzle version, meaning that we had a puzzle to solve in each room to get through, with less emphasis on combat. Combat works by shooting a little shuffle board disk with your weapon token in it towards an outline of a monster, with the monster taking damage based on where you hit it, how strong your weapon is, and some randomness that only the dungeon master of the room knows.
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| Awesome starting bag of goodies. |
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| My shuffleboard weapon. |
Thoughts:
1. The environment was cool. It was really dark.
2. The puzzles were lame. There was only one good puzzle in the bunch. The others were either solve-able but way too hard for the time limit or weren't really puzzles so much as "flip all these little switches at random until you get the result you need." Dumb.
3. The final boss battle against dragons had animated dragons on a video screen. I've been told in past years they had an animatronic dragon for these types of things. Dumb.
4. Combat is hard. And we, doing the "beginners" version of the dungeon, were upset that the first fight we had was against a tornado that didn't take physical damage. Dumb.
This was the most expensive thing we did at Gen Con (other than our steak dinner) at over $50 apeice. It was also a huge disappointment. I'm glad I did it in terms of getting the experience, but I wouldn't do it again. I would do more Zombie LARP stuff.
At least we made it out alive.
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| Commemorative survivor pin. |
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| I love us. |
On our last day, we played a few games in the morning. Then we hit the dealer hall again looking for last minute deals while they tried to sell off stuff they didn't sell during the other days. Didn't find anything worthwhile. So after lunch, we headed home. Made great time.
Had a great time.
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