For a period in the 90s, my friends and I all helped our former sci-fi club at college set up the gaming for the annual convention. It was fun, we were happy to help out, and it meant that we could all hang out for a weekend like we did in college. One friend developed a system for a Paranoia LARP, and for about 3 or 4 years, the convention had one on Saturday night (AggieCon, at Texas A&M, if you're curious). As the game-runners, we were the various NPCs, including the Briefing Officer, Head of R&D (Doctor Ivan-B-MAD, in most of the scenarios... well known for his popular game show, "Wheel of Symbiote"), the High Programmers, and of course, the voice of Friend Computer. In one particular game - "The Adventures of James-B-OND-007: License to Treason" - the various players were Troubleshooters sent to "assist" elite Troubleshooter James-B-OND (so elite that he had
seven clones instead of the usual six) with his mission (i.e., serve as ablative armor for him). Instead of the aforementioned Ivan-B-MAD, the R&D Officer for the briefing was Q-U-EUE (naturally). I was given that role, so it fell to me to assign experimental equipment to each team of Troubleshooters.
One of the things that the LARP designer did was give each team a theme and a weird team name, generally some esoteric word beginning with a corresponding letter of the alphabet (i.e., Team 1 was Team Apoplexia, Team 2 was Team Butyraceous, Team 3 was Team Callipygous, and so forth). Each team in License to Treason had a nominal association with espionage: one team's names were all founders of espionage agencies, one team's were all famous spy writers, and so forth. As I was walking around the briefing room, handing out experimental gear of the appropriate espionage theme - exploding cufflinks, a laser pen, the Thermonuclear Hand Grenade (I think we always had the Thermonuclear Hand Grenade; it was sort of tradition) - I came to the last team. Many of this team were friends who lived near the college and were attending rather than staffing, but were also hanging out. I stopped at the table where they were seated, took the index card with the name of the experimental device in hand and looked at my friends. They were all on the team named for all the
other movie and television spies. The one sitting nearest to me was playing "Smart-R-MAX." "Well, Troubleshooter Smart-R-MAX," I said... and then I looked down at the card and saw that I was holding the Experimental Pedal Communication Slipper (i.e., the
Shoe Phone). "
Clearly, this must be yours!"
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com
"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."