2 posts tagged “terrorwerks”

Terrorworks: a live-action first-person shooter game with airsoft rifles. Players choose to be one of several different character classes: space marine, engineer, executive, medic, synthetic, etc., and then go on a mission to investigate what's happening at a mining station. Who knows what kind of alien or supernatural life forms they may run into! Actually, it was great fun playing an NPC in the simulation.

1) Dressed to "kill" for Cthulhu Live: Ride of the Valkyrie, set in 1938 on a German airship. That was fun. Most of the players dressed in period. I had the Cthulhu Live book, but had never played the game before. It has a very different dynamic than TerrorWerks (the only other LARP I can compare it to.) However, they gave me a character I could really sink my teeth into---a famous actress/former burlesque dancer. Basically, my motivation was to be the center of attention, and flirt with everyone. Not a huge stretch for me. 2) Posing with Mac, in our space marine loadouts; Mac is one of the authors of Cthulhu Live III and he is an awesome guy.

Even more awesome: I got to meet Feedback!!! Winner of season one of Who Wants to be a Superhero?

"Lily" character from Ride of the Valkyrie. She was hot.

Looks like one of the Byakee on his break...

I didn't expect to enjoy myself quite as much as I did at MegaCon, and what I liked most was being a part of the TerrorWerks simulation. It's an immersive LARP, first-person shooter type of game, where you go into a scenario with a team of players and you have some sort of mission, like liberate the space station from the aliens before the reactor meltdown, and so on. I got to play an NPC in the simulation most of the weekend, and then I ran through the simulation as a player once. Eventhough I knew all the "monsters' secrets" by that time, it still wasn't much of an advantage, as my group failed the mission. Teamwork is required to "win" the scenario, and I think I got stuck with a team of morons that time (with a few exceptions). It was fun anyway. As an NPC, I got to attack unsuspecting players. As a player I got to shoot things. I also got to be a greeter at the reg table. All the people I got to hang out with---the MindGame Productions staff and helpers---were just awesome. I would gladly do that again.

Going into this little adventure, I had mixed feelings about guns. I grew up with them, as my father was an avid sportsman and lifetime member of the NRA. He taught me how to shoot when I was a kid, but since his death about 20 years ago, I haven't thought much about "taking up arms" again. I even developed a fear of guns and supported gun control for a while. However, this airsoft thing is fun without being too dangerous. It's like paintball but less messy, and there's more role-playing and costuming involved. They had me at costuming!


I ended up paying very little attention to the other stuff going on at the convention. I saw a few really great costumes, but a lot of anime stuff that I didn't recognize, lots of duplicates, and some really awful costumes as well. I'm a Robotech fan from back in the day, and I'm not familiar with the newer stuff. I walked around the dealer room a few times, but didn't want to spend a lot of money. I blew my allowance on the fake Glock.

I got to meet Gil Gerard (Buck Rogers). There were lots of other celebrities there, but he was the biggest one I'm familiar with. Geez I'm old. That series was 30 years ago. Someone should remake that, but do as good of a job as they did with Battlestar Galactica. I saw a couple of good BG uniforms as well.

I'm not a video gamer, and I was never a huge fan of the Resident Evil movies, but I loved all the Umbrella Corp. stuff that I saw. The fans were very cool. I am inspired to put together a SWAT-style load out now. Speaking of which, I think I just opened the flood gates to a whole new world of costuming. I already spent many years doing historical period stuff, but now I'm suddenly fascinated by military uniforms and more scifi-fantasy stuff. I have enough SCA garb anyway, and I needed a new challenge.