As I begin to write this post July has come and gone and with it RPG Limit Break 2023. Most of the time I usually don’t really write about my experiences though that’s usually more out of forgetfulness and laziness than anything. Even now I’m not sure how long this will take me to type up but I’ll try to get it done while the iron is still mildly warm. To summarize things Limit Break was an unusual experience but a good time. I’ll expound on that first half… eventually.
This year I decided to go about my travels a bit differently. It had been about five years since I’ve done any road tripping, PXMacaiah was looking for someone to ride up from Las Vegas with him and by coincidence my preferred flight would have me stopping in Vegas anyways. Since I had never really been in Nevada outside of layovers I took up PX on his offer and on July 15th my journey began with a nonstop flight from Columbus to Las Vegas.
Before beginning on our journey northward we stopped at a café called The Broken Yolk; mildly at my insistence since I left early enough that between waiting at the airport and the flight over it had been well over six hours since I had a proper meal though I’m sure PX had no issue with grabbing a bite before our five hour trip.
The trip itself was fairly uneventful. We jammed to Japanese tunes (Love that Bocchi the Rock!) and made idle commentary on the odd things we saw along the road. There were a few odd spots of congestion and when we stopped for gas the station’s cooler was on the fritz but nothing that truly hampered us.
We eventually arrived at the vaunted Doubletree hotel about 4 PM after starting the drive somewhere after 9 AM. (Thanks time zone shenanigans!) Despite checking in on the Hilton app the previous day I found my requested room wasn’t ready yet and the only rooms available were farther back in the Highrise. After dropping off my luggage in my room I went off for my other check in, into the marathon.
While it was far from a full day my first day at Limit Break was already busy. I had volunteered for five different positions, got them all somehow, so I had to squeeze in an equal number of orientations and after that had a Safety shift from 11 PM to 3 AM. Mind that in Mountain time I had been active since 12 AM so kind of a long day altogether.
I did try to squeeze in a nap but unfortunately sleep didn’t come easy which totally wasn’t foreshadowing for the whole event. Orientations came and went and I can’t quite claim that my Safety shift was uneventful because a good chunk of it was spent in the Practice Room bullshitting with the few others that were still awake. (Hey, can’t say I wasn’t doing my job since I was keeping an eye on every one that was up.)
Sunday came and the marathon began in earnest. For the most part I don’t really pay attention to the games myself. Not that there aren’t things I’m interested in and if there is a run that catches my eye I try to volunteer for that slot but by and large Limit Break is a social event for me so I hang out with folks when I can. Most of the time that involves food.
From here events get slightly smushed together, though I largely blame that on the horrific bout of insomnia I had all week; I genuinely have no idea how I was still functional when it was all said and done, so I’m gonna go slightly non linear on events.
As I said earlier this year I volunteer for five different volunteer positions. In addition to Safety I also picked up Check-In, Stage Tech, Donation Station and Hosting. I won’t get into most of them if only because they’re all largely uneventful roles though no less important. I will say that I am a bit surprised I got picked up for Hosting again, I don’t really have a conventional voice for broadcast so it’s a bit strange to me that they’re willing to let me go live and talk.
Outside of volunteering and a certain other thing, which I’ll get around to shortly, I’m not sure of how much time I really spent in the marathon. Certainly I was in and out of the practice room and some time was spent in the puzzle room. (Shout out to the one piece I placed in the Kiki puzzle and to the partially completed Gundam kit I started on.) Don’t think I ever missed breakfast.
Most of the time I spent outside of the Doubletree was usually for some sort of food run. I think Wednesday was the only time I made it away that wasn’t explicitly a food run, instead we went to the Round1 arcade down south. I was a bit disappointed to find out that apparently their cards don’t stay loaded forever as I lost all my remaining cash and tickets in the intervening nine months. Not that I really lost much but still kinda sucks. Funnily enough we never got around to bowling despite going out to go bowling. Maybe next year.
Now while every Limit Break has been good this year’s was especially memorable because it’s the first time I’ve made it into the marathon as a full-on runner. Really the first time I’ve made it into any marathon. (Bit of a disclaimer on that; Limit Break is the only big marathon I’ve submitted to. I have done runs for Falcom RTA and I have been on the backup list for Limit Break since I’ve started coming in 2019.) Before I go on any farther I do want to take a moment to thank the Games Committee again for giving me a shot here.
So my run was a co-op with ChampionBeef and Schtolteheim (with dowolf on commentary) of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Second Chapter. If you follow me on Twitter you’ve probably seen me talk about the Trails series at some point. I won’t get into the run too much since it’s available on Youtube (I’ll link it here in a bit) but I do want to gush about this route since I don’t think we got a chance to during the run.
Now of course it’s a goal of any speedrun route to make things as efficient as possible. Sky SC’s route is amazing in its efficiency given that we are running this game without any skips at all. It’s amazing that we almost never have to farm for anything in order to finish the game. (There are three required farm spots throughout the entire five hour runs and generally they do not eat up very much time though there is some luck involved.) For the most part we can just pick up things along the game intended route and go. It’s really kind of cool.
Of course as it happens all good things must come to an end and Saturday arrived far sooner than it should have. I caught the end of the Kingdom Hearts shenanigans and mingled with folks at the end, catching goodbyes from some who were leaving very soon. Sleep didn’t come any easier so I woke up a few hours later for breakfast and more goodbyes.
I wasn’t leaving so soon myself as I had promised to stay for teardown since last year’s crew had struggled with it. (And any excuse to stay away from work for another day was perfectly fine in my book!) With all hands onboard, plus an additional crew from NAMI, I think we busted everything down in less than six hours? Masters of destruction, that’s us.
Of course I should remember that while everyone else was destroying I helped out Highspirits who had a rascally screw that made its way into one of his tires. It took a bit of time but we managed to get it to where he could get on the road all right. (I’d later find out that the repair didn’t super hold buuuut I’ll blame that more on the kit than any of us that did the repair.)
After teardown was complete and the doors metaphorically closed most of us left went out for Vietnamese for a last group meal together. Later a few gathered in the remnants of the practice room for one last round of Free Enterprise and someone else playing Dave the Diver on Steam Deck.
It was here, after we had some hugs and goodbyes, that things really started to feel like the end. I finally managed to get some decent sleep that night. I had got an afternoon flight from SLC so I left the hotel at the very last minute. One final free breakfast and constant overlooking the room I finally left the Doubletree shortly after noon, likely the last to leave and with my departure RPG Limit Break 2023 had left the building.
While it was far from the worst experience any Limit Breaker has had I should have realized I was in for trouble when I got to the airport and couldn’t self print my luggage tags… because my flight was four minutes delayed. The actual delay ended up taking about forty five minutes overall which wouldn’t have been terrible if that didn’t eat into all my layover time at Chicago Midway. I made it to my connecting flight okay but ended up sitting on the tarmac for roughly an hour and a half due to a storm hanging over my home airport. Several hours later I finally made it back home.
So overall Limit Break was a great time. I got to get away from things for a while, which I really needed, and got to reconnect with a lot of people. I didn’t get to do everything I would have liked but that’s par for the course for vacations. So I guess that wraps up this write up, right? Well…
While I am done with the Limit Break portion of this post there is still one thing I need to address, something from the very beginning. I’m deliberately separating this because while there is a tangential connection to Limit Break what I need to talk about here is an entirely different beast so it’s time for me to break out the big text warning.
Past this point I am going to be getting into stories of my mental health. Because I am going to be doing this stream of consciousness this is the only warning I am going to give. Assume the subject matter from hereon will be heavy and if you don’t want to get into it do not click past this point. I will be adding a page break to further separate this but this is your last chance to get off this ride.