The Past, Present and Future of Foam Brain Games - Part 1
Andrew Zorowitz
Hey folks – I know I haven’t communicated with y’all in a while, and I promised a nice long email, so here it is!
For those of you who haven’t heard, things are changing a bunch around Foam Brain Games these days. I quit my day job several months ago to focus on FB as a full time project, and I’m really excited – we’re starting to become a regular on the convention circuit (if you haven’t seen us at a con, you’re missing out!). I think every time things change, it’s a good time for some introspection and to look at how you got here, so before I talk more about the present and future of Foam Brain, I would like to spend some time talking about the past and how we got to where we are now.
It’s almost impossible to believe Foam Brain has only been around six years, given all that we’ve accomplished in that time. Six and a half years ago, Matt McNally and myself were sitting around talking about how to get more LARP events at RPI, to keep up the excitement that had occurred post-TMA, and had decided to run Marin County New Age Society Cocktail Party. A few months later, I came up with the idea of running a second game that I had played years earlier, Mary Celeste, immediately after the student activity fair (in an attempt to get new freshman involved with RPI Games Club and LARPing before school started consuming their lives). A week later, I was talking to a friend of mine, and he mentioned he was running a LARP at a con in Maryland the same weekend and asked me to come and help GM. Funny enough, he was ALSO running Mary Celeste, and so, in a single weekend Foam Brain ran its first LARP and I travelled for the first LARP we would ever help run at a convention.
Needless to say, such a crazy start (Mary Celeste – 3 times in 2 separate states within 6 days!) would help form the way Foam Brain has operated since then. In the past six years, we’ve run over 225 LARPs, including 12 weekend-long games, a nearly unprecedented number. We’ve run games at conventions in a variety of states, RPI, Brandeis, WPI, Intercon, Intercon Mid-Atlantic, and elsewhere. Heck, at one point at Intercon I, we were running 3 games at the same time.
There are a lot of people that were important parts of what we’ve done:
· Kevin Sadvari, Doug Hoover, and Dan DiTursi – these 3 people were sources of advice and help when putting together our first game, Mary Celeste, all the way back in the Fall of 2004. At the time, I had almost no experience with LARP running and I am absolutely certain I could not have pulled it all together without their influence
· Matt McNally, Nicole Smith, Jenn Mitcalicek – my original co-conspirators in crime. Myself, Matt, Jenn Mitcalicek and Nicole Smith were the first four people to try and pull together this crazy thing. They also coined the term Foam Brain Productions (after a prop we had purchased for one of our early games), and Jenn even did the embroidery on the original red (and now extremely rare!) polo shirts.
· Alex Gord, Alex Cheshire and Mark Hawes – 3 of the original active FB staff, It was not surprising at many of our early events to see the four of us wearing the familiar black polos and leading groups of LARPers through yet another crazy adventure
· Nat Budin – creator of Journey, and the person who helped set up our first weekend-long game outside of RPI. Myself and Nat actually go way way back, to the days when we were kids (if you believe such a thing is even possible) at the same summer camp. It was pure chance that our paths would cross again almost 5 years later, and that in doing so we would be able have such an impact on the New England LARP community.
· Steve Balzac (SILWest) – In many ways, despite the fact that I only had the opportunity to meet Steve in person last year, he was one of the most important influences in the direction of Foam Brain. Without him, we would never have been able to run weekend long LARPs, nor would we have gained such a keen understanding of LARP mechanics and how they interact with players.
· Jenny Blanchard – Our first staff artist, Jenny has done tons and tons of the artwork you’ve seen at games, including the badges for Torch of Freedom, most of the recruitment flyers we’ve used, the banners we show off at events, and more.
· Everyone who has ever given us run rights to a LARP –A lot of what has made us unique in the world of LARPing has been made possible by the generous and unprecedented contributions of games from other authors.
· Everyone else who has ever helped GM a game for us – Without our GMs, we would of course be nothing. It is always a privilege and an honor to work with the well-prepared, well-considered, thoughtful and intelligent people who are willing to give up their free time to help us all make cool things happen.
· Gordon Olmstead-Dean, Mike Young, John “Fuzzface” McMahon, Tom Vorheis, Adina Schreiber, Nyren Knapp, and countless others who have gone above and beyond in their involvement with Foam Brain.
Of course, even more than any of these people, the Foam Brain Board of Directors has time and time again gone beyond what anyone could possibly have expected of them in the name of LARP.
· Nathan Perelman – it is without a doubt in my mind that there is no one in our community who gets less of the immense respect that he is due than Nathan. For those of you who weren’t around during our first few years, I cannot even begin to count the number of times that the two of us made up the GM team for a game. Or that the two of us would be training new GMs in how to run LARPs. Or reformatting cards and reworking mechanics in order to make sure people had a fun experience. Or driving to Walmart at 4am because we absolutely needed some crazy and unanticipated thing that we simply could not live without for a game the next day. Nathan was also responsible for balancing the economies and spell systems in our first two weekend long games, massive projects that we had almost no background in. Without Nathan, I am certain that we wouldn’t have been able to accomplish many of our early games, including Nexus and Secrets, and I honestly and genuinely think LARPing at RPI would never have become the vibrant modern community that it is without him.
· Jennifer Ash – If there is anyone who was almost as prolific in early LARP running as Nathan, it would certainly have to be Jenn. It would take until our ninth weekend long game, Torch of Freedom, to have the first RPI game where all three of myself, Nathan and Jenn weren’t GMs. Including heading up our recruitment efforts for several years, including the year we did a NRB event, Jenn was responsible for helping make a lot of our events a success.
· Carol Young – Carol is both the most prolific LARP writer on the Foam Brain Board, having been responsible for several major games over the last few years, and a fantastic GM. Additionally, she was responsible for many of the early decisions made as part of transitioning Foam Brain Games to a stable organization, something that I don’t think would have been possible without her.
· Zachary Cross – Zach has been an essential part of both our last few weekend long games, and forming future plans. He’s a calming opinion in the sea of chaos that is often our events.
And there you have it. The hard work and dedication of the many people above, and no doubt the many people I’ve missed, has made Foam Brain what it is. There are many LARP groups out there, but I’m proud to say this one is mine – we set out to accomplish things no other group had, in a way and for reasons different than any group before us, or I suspect any group after us. Yes, we’ve had missteps along the way – games that didn’t go as well as we expected, games that didn’t exist or come together at all, runs that we couldn’t fill, and conventions that just didn’t work out well, but I think we’ve accomplished a lot.
Tomorrow we’ll follow up with part 2 – the part I know everyone is really excited about – the present and future of Foam Brain (including how to make money and get to come to conventions with us). But I’d like to say one last thanks before I wrap up today’s email: thank you all for participating in our events, and being involved. In the end, this community can only exist because all of you are involved with it. And heck, thank you all for reading through this email, I know it was kind of long but I think every once in a while reflection is good for all of us.
In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments find me on skype (zrealm), AIM (wizofawz) or email. Or use telepathy – I’m always in favor of telepathy J
Andrew Zorowitz
CEO
Foam Brain Games