The Pioneers of Wonderplace: Show Up Early, And Help Us Prepare

Dearest friends, foes, admirers, and tenured assassins,

We are tempted to present ourselves as an enterprise so massive that when you arrive, you will see a city which would shame Atlantis, erected through the force of our imaginations and a budget sufficient to purchase one or two of the less-popular suburbs of London.

The imagination part? That we’ve got.

Would you like to help us get the space ready? Would you like to show up 2-3 days early, hang out with our crew, and help us set up? And we’re not proud…if you’ve got ideas, if you’ve got decorations, if you have other ways you want to help, we’d love to meet you and get ready with you.

We’re workaholics, so doing extra work to get ready for the show IS our idea of fun. If that doesn’t sound crazy to you, you might want to meet us.

Drop us a line! Email jeffreypetermach@gmail.com.

There’s no such thing as Cyberpunk.

Cyberpunk.

So stay alert,
trust no-one,
and keep your laser handy.




(Cyberpunk postulates a far-off future, like the year 2014. Postulate a world where people wear exaggerated corporate suits and ties to imagine being powerful executives at planet-shaking megacorps; hackers lead stainless-steel-rat lives between the cracks of society, dressing like scifi punk rockers because anyone who laughs at them finds their credit card numbers posted to the gigantic billboard which replaced the state of Maine; cyberwarriors are busy, not arguing with people, but fighting very, very deadly bots to get past very real electronic defenses at the ever-present risk of electrocution…)

Granted, we’re a marketplace, so you’re not all THAT likely to need to hide a murder.

Well, not more than, say, two or three murders.

Five or six, tops.

Intrigue & Back-Alley Deals

Oh, sure, sure, sure. Some people, SOME people, when you say, “This link doesn’t do anything”, the first damn thing they do is CLICK ON THAT LINK.

You conniving, untrusting so-and-sos…

Now, Wonderplace Alpha is not primarily a game, which means you don’t have to worry about ‘winning’ it. (It also means that instead of having a big reveal on Saturday night, we have an extra-big, very weird party instead. Can you live with that?)

That means the ‘Intrigue’ section is not essential to the game…sorry, did we just say it wasn’t a game? We meant, ‘event’. Intrigue isn’t essential to the event, and as people putting together a Marketplace where all manner of beings interact, we have a vested interest in our patrons, friends, and stoneholders being happy and getting along.

Most of the time.

But you will find, especially if you look for it, that there are a number of characters who do have larger stories if you want to dig. You aren’t likely to do battle with axes more than once (like most people, really)…but battles of wits happen not infrequently within our walls. So bring your wits with you; you’ll want and need them.

I wouldn’t know.

I get by on good looks, myself.

EVENT SUGGESTIONS:

DO: Participate in our BBS to discuss some of the possible intrigue between our Elements.

DO: Alternately, if you want, avoid participating in advance and just show up prepared to be a little sneaky, at least when dealing with the cast and characters.

DO: be aware that while we have our gritty bits, the many Merchants of the Marketplace prefer to keep a general Faire-Day atmosphere. No matter how unpopular the apple-seller is, nobody wants them murdered until we’ve eaten the apples and they’ve helpfully pushed their carts out of our encampment and off to whatever convenient, out-of-sight place they’re choosing for their gruesome ends. We would definitely say we’re a little more like the Pirates of Penzance, and a little less like that one-eyed guy in that one movie who kept biting people’s ears off. Messy. Messy.

DO: Avoid actually scamming people. You know. This should be obvious. If it isn’t, this is definitely not going to be an exciting game by whatever your standards are. (We might run a “Paranoia” LARP someday, if you want to sign up.)

DO: Bring a pair of dice. You never know when you might need them after all.

DO: Disguise your nature beneath innocent-seeming clothes of another element.

DO: Forget that and dress like a Pirate. Sublety is for cowards!