Ember Costumes and Crafts

John here! This last weekend, we started a new LARP game in Kansas City, called King's Crossroad . It's set in a " Soloman Kane " themed setting with early industrial firearms (NERF guns), an underpowered magical presence, and a high mortality rate. This game was extremely new-player friendly, and we are trying to recruit as many new players to this game as possible. Here are some of the PCs that made up the hunting party: As the night went on, they started realizing that it was actually me who was hunting them: Overall, after five separate assaults on the party, I managed to convince them to send the strongest half of their party off into the woods after me. I circled back to their camp and attacked the rest of the PCs. I did eventually die, but only after leading them on a 4 hour chase and killing 25% of their forces. Other highlights of the event: A crazed, funny, grenade happy gnome; 5 solid meals cooked by Sally Sasparilla, the tavernkeep; ghouls setti

Ushicon 2005 was the first convention that I was allowed to go, spend the night, and basically have the entire con to do whatever I wanted with my friends and no parents. I was 18 and a senior in high school. I was PSYCHED. It happened, through a series of unfortunate circumstances, that I was promoted suddenly to Battalion Commander of my JROTC unit. The date of the military ball was announced, and I was extremely upset to learn that it was the same weekend as Ushicon. But not only was it the same weekend, but it was at the same hotel. I was generally a painfully honest young person, but I wasn't about to give up a weekend of convention awesomeness for a military ball. No way. My teacher, Major, wouldn't let any of the girls wear civilian dresses and I didn't have a date, so the matter was pretty much settled. I told Major that I had to go out of town that weekend, worked diligently on my costume, and just vowed to stay the hell away from the second floor on Saturday

We understand that not everyone is lucky enough to have such laid back, awesome family members and friends as John and I do. I mean, not everyone's (handsome, popular) little brother will just say "okay" and come along when handed a costume. Some people might have an aversion to dressing up like a cartoon character, a barbarian, or a Pokemon for some reason. To convince people to cosplay with you, it really helps to know the reason why a particular person doesn't want to make a near-fool out of himself for the sake of your costuming dreams. Certain reasons are harder to overcome than others, and many times the reasons are stacked on top of one another. It takes cunning and skill to figure out the why and how to convince an unwilling friend to Cosplay with you, but hopefully the following tips can help you achieve your costuming dreams. Level One: Lazy The first big block is, fortunately, the easiest to overcome. If you ask someone to cosplay and they hesitate or give

Nick (Spider Boy) and John and Angela in their first real home-made costumes Halloween 2002 I was going to say wow, we sure have come a long way since we started making costumes...but actually these aren't too shabby considering that we were only 12! Though the Spider-Man costume (worn daily by Nick from age 6-9) was store bought. The idea came from our favorite anime at the time, Ranma 1/2 . (Actually it's hilarious, you should check out the manga or the show if you can.) I had gone to the very first Ushicon Anime Convention in Austin the year before and told John all about it, so we decided that the next time around we would go with our friends and dress up as our favorite characters. The material for my Ukyo costume was a lucky garage-sale find of jersey knit in the perfect color and strips of cotton for the bindings. I spread my brand-new karate gi on the floor and traced the basic outline of it onto the blue knit, then cut it out and bound the edges with the white

This weekend I (Angela) finished the Tough Mudder course! I was waaaaay out of shape (by my standards, anyway) so I did more trekking than running and skipped a few of the 19 obstacles spread over the 10 mile course... but I got muddy, challenged myself, and made lots of great memories! That's what counts, right? I volunteered on Saturday and then ran the course on Sunday. And I survived!! I was pretty pleased with myself when I got home. The shirt I was wearing and my number. It looked worse after I cleaned the mud off and realized just how many scrapes and bruises I had. But they were so worth it. These have to be thrown away now... I'm just glad they stayed on the whole course! You know how sometimes when you're falling asleep after swimming all day and you feel like you're floating? Well as I was falling asleep Sunday night, it felt like my feet were being suctioned down into the mud! Overall it was a great event, both volunteering and participating! They travel ar