Once upon a time, I used to run games at DunDraCon. I ran games at DunDraCon 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16. After 21 years, I've returned to running a game at DunDraCon 37. Wow, a 21 year absence.
I generally go on ski trips during February, but this year, after hearing so much about Matt Steele's CthulhuPorn game, I wanted to experience it myself, so after some prodding from Shannon and getting a request to run my Feng Shui game by Mark Schynert (event coordinator at DunDraCon) who played in my Feng Shui game at BigBadCon, I decided to go to DunDraCon this year.
All the games I played in were either good or great.
The DunDraCon shuffler was a bit messed up this year. I got into nothing on Friday, but got into a pickup game of Monster of the Week run by Bryan H. I ran my game on Sat and used my priority slip to get into Matt's CthulhuPorn game. On Sun morning, I got into my first choice (Rich Taylor's game) and I also got into my first choice for Sun afternoon (Matt Steele's), but the two games overlapped by two hours. So, I had to give up my seat in Matt's game (damn you shuffler). Because I got into those two games, I didn't get into any other game for the rest of the convention. I did run into Frank F. outside as I decided to go home after I tried to crash into several other games and failed. So, I asked Frank if I could be his #1 crasher for his game on Monday -- otherwise, I'd risk driving in Monday morning for no reason at all. Frank thought it wouldn't be a problem and it wasn't. There were lots of no show, five people were able to crash his game on Monday. Thanks, Frank.
In discussing the games I was in, I'm going to focus on Players and what they bring to the table, and I'm not talking about food.
I hide spoiler sections with JavaScript. If you have JavaScript turned off, you can skip the spoiler sections I have marked.
Little Trouble in Big China
Saturday 8 AM in 608 for 6 hours GM: Morgan Hua System: Feng Shui Players: 6 Provided: All characters provided by GM Power Level: Jackie Chan/Chow Yun-Fat Variations: Loyalties & Secrets Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome Game Content: Mainstream
You
are all Triad members in modern day Hong Kong. This game will be a mix
of John Woo over the top action with Jackie Chan stunts, Big Trouble in
Little China oddness, tests of loyalty and betrayal, Yakuza, other
competing Triads, and sometimes the PTU (Police Tactical Unit) will show
up at the most inopportune time.
The Dragon Head, the master of
your Triad, has sent you on a job. You better not F this one up like
last time. Very few people get a second chance, those who disappoint him
wind up inside the Steamed Pork Dumplings on Food Street. Sounds like a
simple job, so why are there so many of us involved? That Dragon Head
is one tricky fellow, there's something big going on and he's not
telling.
I got to run my game in the 6th floor suite. I had a video presentation that introduces a number of the characters and the setting. The flat screen TV's input button was disabled. I had brought an HDMI cable, but was unable to make the TV show my video presentation. I called the front desk and they quickly sent a technician with a TV remote and he was able to change the input, so I could show my video.
The game went very well. At the end, I got applause which Shannon mentioned happens to him once in a while, but this was the first time I got to experience it. The applause was much appreciated.
The players were very devious and crafty devils which was great for this game. They generated some nice surprises and at one point, one of those chaotic scenes with gang members, competing triads, Yakuza, and a hostage exchange happening at the same time.
I still think Feng Shui is hard to get one's head around as the players weren't very cinematic in their descriptions, but they certainly got the deviousness of Infernal Affairs which actually brought a lot to the table.
I'm not sure I'm going to run this game again, so I'm going to detail the construction of this game in the spoiler section below with descriptions of what happened in some of the sessions.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The whole inspiration behind this game was the movie Infernal Affairs which was remade into The Departed.
I wanted a game about betrayal and loyalties, but more about betrayal. I decided that one player would be tasked to find the traitor in the Triad Organization, but as an evil twist, all the other players would be traitors. So, I generated random loyalty and betrayal slips. One slip designated a player as the person tasked to find the traitor. The other slips gave motivations for all the other players. There was one police mole, one police informant, one informant for the Yakuza, one mole from another triad, and one member secretly creating a separate triad.
Each player selected a random slip. I have a master list and they only need to tell me which numbered slip they had picked for me to know what their motivation was.
To help get a common mindset for setting and characters, I made an eight minute video of various John Woo movie clips showcasing various famous Hong Kong actors (Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Q, Chow Yun Fat, Andy Lau, Tony Leung). Note that I have seven PCs and only six players at the table, so I can have a backup character. I also did a progressive slideshow going from the glitzy skyline to a more rundown section of Hong Kong. To make running the game flow smoothly, I actually do an overview of the Feng Shui core rules first, show the video, and then do character selection and customization.
Chow Yun Fat w/$100 bill
To help fuel suspicion, I handed out note paper that looked like $100 bills -- as per a Chow Yun Fat picture of him using money to light a cigarette. Players were told that they can speak freely on their cell phones in code and whatever they say can be written on the $100 bills and they can hand it to me. And to not tear the money apart, but to keep it as a log of their actions. In a previous play test, the players handed me bits of paper and I easily lost track of the conversations. This helped me keep track of what was going on. This also added to the paranoia as all players would be handing me notes and it would help confuse the player trying to figure out who the traitor was.
Triad Org Chart
I then asked each player to pick a job in the Triad and explained each position. Each player selected a token representing them and placed it on one of the available jobs. I also had a bag of these tokens, so I could randomly pick a player and "call" them with a cell phone, if I didn't get enough action from them.
PTU (Police Tactical Unit)
I then spoke to each player to make sure they know about their skills and to fill out more of their background and to tell the police informants that they can call on the PTU (Police Tactical Unit, the Hong Kong version of SWAT) at any time for a raid.
Now, we were ready to play. The first question I asked everyone around the table, and I told them this would be general knowledge, is how did they F-up the first time. This served two purposes: character building and setting up my hidden agenda, that this Triad has a lot of things going wrong for unexpected reasons. Well, with so many traitors in the organization, of course everything always goes wrong.
As background, I show everyone pictures of the earthquake, tidal
wave, Fukushima power plant disaster and present it as having happened just a few days ago. Unknown to the players, this event is tied to the McGuffin. I wanted to call it the Fuck-a-Shima power plant, but I never got to use that phrase in any of my games.
Now I needed a McGuffin. I needed something for players to go after, something so valuable that other triads, Yakuza, and the police would all want, but if you knew what it did, you wouldn't tell anyone for fear of never getting it into your own hands.
After much thought, I figured out what the item was and I found a picture of it on the internet. The cool thing is that it looks like a Karaoke mike or a vibrator. Few people will recognize it. One picture that I found had a red button. So, it was perfect. "Get it at all costs, but don't hit the RED button" would be the instruction that the Dragon Head would give the players.
Dragon Head (Sammo Hung)
The first thing the players learn is that there's a disturbance inside their territory. Some guy is tearing up a book store. Of course, I cropped the picture and took out the caption, but here's the original picture.
Also light rain is falling as a typhoon is approaching Hong Kong -- more foreshadowing for the McGuffin.
One Eyed Jack and his Yakuza gang
Inside the book store is the Yakuza head, One Eyed Jack with a baseball bat. He's looking for his missing daughter and the McGuffin. He was told to exchange the McGuffin for his daughter, but unknown to the kidnappers, the McGuffin was stolen from him and he didn't posses it anymore. So, through his contacts, he was told his daughter or McGuffin would be at this book store. His daughter was kidnapped from a foreigner's school in Hong Kong. Of course, the player who is the Yakuza informant works for One Eyed Jack. One Eyed Jack will be willing to help the players if they recover his daughter for him. In my test run and in both convention games, there is always a fight between One Eyed Jack (and his mooks) and the players. Sometimes One Eyed Jack gets away and sometimes he gets subdued. At BigBadCon, Mike G. drove his motorcycle through the plate glass window and mowed down mooks with his twin Uzi's. In that game, the players tried to use the book store's cat as a weapon. So I've used that as a reoccurring theme.
One Eyed Jack's daughter
There are various ways of finding One Eyed Jack's daughter, but the easiest is a book in the window that says "Three Doors Down." Three doors down is another book store. The Lai Ying Lo Book Store. Inside is a nervous clerk and two triad members that belong to the same triad that the triad mole belongs to. Under a trap door and a small roughly dug out basement with a low wattage naked light bulb is One Eyed Jack's daughter. Why would a rival gang use Dragon Head's territory as a hide out? Seems stupid. Or maybe they wanted to put the blame on Dragon Head's Triad if things go wrong?
Lips
Once the daughter is returned, either One Eyed Jack or his associates will tell the players that Lips, a free lance thief who One Eyed Jack was involved with, may have stolen the McGuffin.
At BigBadCon, the players sneaked into a high end charity ball and wound up in a massive fight in the women's bathroom in an effort to subdue Lips.
In my play test, the players pretended to have the McGuffin and offered to sell it -- in order to figure out who was involved -- and wound up in a massive three way fight with various triads and the Yakuza.
At DunDraCon, one player offered to exchange the Yakuza's daughter for his little sister and some money. Another player had informed the Red Circle triad that this deal was going down, so it wound up in a big gun fight at a construction site with the players, Yakuza, and the Red Circle Triad.
If negotiated with, Lips will tell the players that another Triad hired her to steal the McGuffin, but she knows where it is hidden, but she cannot get it. She can show the players how to get to it though.
By now, the weather should be definitely stormy with dark clouds, lightning, and heavy rain. More foreshadowing.
Lips will take one player with her on a drive and wander through Hong Kong looking at manhole covers. At this point, Smoke, one of the PCs, will know that entrances into the underworld are accessed via the sewers. Once the appropriate manhole cover is found, Lips will point to it and leave. I actually have various pictures of manhole covers for the players to look at. Here's a small sample:
Once underground the sewer will transform into something more natural and cave-like as they enter the underworld. As they enter the transition, an earthquake will occur, something that shouldn't happen in the underworld -- more foreshadowing that something is terribly wrong.
Once underground, their cell phones will have no reception.
Smoke (Andy Lau)
Smoke should be able to lead the players to the McGuffin. After multiple branches of tunnels and such, they will enter an enormous cavern and see a pagoda. Several figures can be seen at the base of the pagoda.
Hopping Vampire
The players will see four hopping vampires and the Judge of the Dead. He has been given the McGuffin for safe keeping by the triad boss who had hired Lips.
Hopping Vampire
Judge of the Dead
If the players speak to the Judge of the Dead he will display the McGuffin and tell the players that it is theirs if they can take it from him.
In the play test and BigBadCon, the players fought the vampires (sometimes slapping sheets of paper on the foreheads of the Vampires) and the Judge and grabbed the McGuffin from him. At DunDraCon, Grasshopper made an extraordinary roll and plucked it out of the Judge's hand on the first try.
In the play test, several players tried to take the McGuffin from each other. At BigBadCon, Adam, who had already made a dummy copy of the McGuffin, took the McGuffin and when asked, handed over the fake. At DunDraCon, the players played nice and took it with them back to the surface.
Before exiting the sewers, another earthquake will jolt the players. As they open the manhole cover, bits of concrete will fall into the sewer. The first players exiting the sewer will see:
At this point, the Dragon Head will finally be able to reach them on their cell phones. If Nikita (Dragon Head's daughter) is one of the players, he will call a random player and ask to speak to her. He will ask if she sees the creature and if she has the McGuffin. At that point, he'll tell her to hit the RED button.
At BigBadCon, Nikita asked Adam's character for the McGuffin, and he handed the fake one to her. When she hit the button, Adam hit the button on the real McGuffin and turned into:
Ultraman
Ultrawoman
Yes, the McGuffin is the Ultraman Beta Capsule. (So far, only one player figured this out and only seconds before the RED button was pushed.) At this point, Ultra-person gets to face off with Godzilla. At BigBadCon, the Ultra-Godzilla fight took a while and sort of left out some of the players. As a fix, I left abandoned military equipment laying around from the Chinese Army that had fled Godzilla. In both BigBadCon and DunDraCon, a player found a military helicopter with missiles and went after Godzilla with it.
After Godzilla is defeated, we go through each player's secrets.
I first ask the player tasked with finding the traitor who he thinks the traitor is. Then I go around the table and have the other players reveal their secret, that they were traitors too.
Godzilla is down for the count.
At BigBadCon, Adam, as Ultraman, picked up a double decker bus and asked his Triad-mates to get into the bus, they did and then he gave them their rights and arrested them -- he was the police mole.
At DunDraCon, Ultraman "accidentally" dropped Godzilla on Dragon Head's HQ, killing Dragon Head -- the player was a mole for a competing triad -- nice job. He was also tempted to kill Dragon Head's daughter with a missed bolt of Ultraman energy, but he was nice and didn't want to kill another PC -- aww.
At BigBadCon and DunDraCon, the player tasked with finding the traitor both fingered the Yakuza informant. At BigBadCon, the Yakuza informant decided to leave the country and played the backup character. At DunDraCon, Dragon Head called the Yakuza informant in for a meeting and the informant readily admitted to being a traitor -- oops -- time for steamed pork dumplings and a backup character.
I have various pictures of other potential NPCs for other eventualities. I've never been able to use the Yakuza babes, but I guess I get to show them to you here.
So, that's the game. Two major reveals with lots of behind the scenes player vs player action.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
A Blake Brothers Production (aka CthulhuPorn)
Saturday 4 PM in 160 for 8 hours GM: Matt "Matthulhu" Steel System: Call of Cthulhu Edition: 5.6.1 Players: 8 Provided: All characters provided by GM Power Level: normal people Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome Game Content: Mature Themes
Modern-Day
B-movie Cthulhu! Like their fathers before them, film
producer/writer/directors Wally and George Blake plan to make low-budget
movies until they can break into legit film. Their latest big-budget
production 'Deep Behind the Iron Curtain' is shooting in an ancient
unrestored castle in Estonia. A pre-production crew was sent to the
location a week ago to make it livable. A sat-phone call from the
Production Manager 2 days ago let everyone know that Principal
Photography begins tomorrow. The cast and crew head into the
mountains...
MATURE THEMES. Please refer to DunDraCon's game content guidelines; Mature Themes games are not appropriate for some players.
I was really excited about playing in Matt's game, Cthulhu-porn. I had heard so much about it and the character Shank, that on FB, I asked if I could play Shank in the game. Matt said, "Yes." Cool. I wanted dirty jokes, off-color jokes, and a good sex-comedy.
Well, some of the players embraced the porn stars that they were given, but four players (2 couples) were in the game with their significant others and should I say, they seemed a bit prudish? I guess they were afraid to show how depraved they could be in front of their significant other. Due to that, I felt I had to rein in my Shank-ness. One comment was, "I'm glad I wasn't there when you said that." That decreased the enjoyment of the game.
I really enjoyed Jason's Assistant Director character, the DP (director of photography, not double-penetration), and Lisa's Lead Porn Actress, Candice. At one point, there was a comment about close-ups and make-up. I had to bite my tongue about what type of close-ups they do in porn movies -- and it doesn't involve face make-up.
Advice if you play in this game, do all your high-jinks before you enter the castle.
Overall, still a very good game, but if the players could have been more uninhibited, it would have been a great game.
I ran into Frank F. outside taking a smoke break from Shannon's game and chatted to Frank about the game, there was an elderly lady, probably over 60 overhearing our conversation. "Cthulhu-porn?" she asked, "What game is that? I've been playing games with my son and now he's old enough to play in games by himself. I can now play in other games. I want to play in it." She was ready for some adult content. Too bad she wasn't in the game this year. I bet she would have played her character to the hilt.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
For a porn shoot, I think only my character got some sex (I got to shower with 3 female extras).
Starr, an over-the-hill porn star tried to pickup gals from the women's tent and struck out.
The NPC extras in the field definitely got some sex. The sex to character ratio was quite low. I blame the prudish players. How can you sign up for a Cthulhu-porn game and be so inhibited? Seriously, people.
On my character sheet, I noticed that Shank had a high climb skill and when volunteers were asked to climb into the hole for all eternity, I knew that Shank's skills was built for that role, but I think it's hard for such extremely selfish characters to sacrifice themselves.
In our game, there was a sudden rush to seal the hole. I thought it would have been pretty funny if people deliberately held back as they rushed to the hole and hoped that someone else would get there first.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Jungle Law
Sunday 10 AM in 376 for 8 hours GM: Richard "UnkyRich" Taylor System: Vampire: The Requiem Players: 6 Provided: All characters provided by GM Variations: Vampire: the Masquerade setting; some World of Darkness: Mirrors Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome Game Content: Mature Themes
Three
vampires in your city have been found dead - not destroyed, just
reverted to dead bodies. Your sires and the Prince have brought you
together to solve this situation, uncover who is behind this, and bring
them to the Prince.
You'll be rewarded for your service.
One of the better investigative games. Lots of clue trails, no dead ends. Lots of cools stuff. This game was set in Chicago and Rich used to live there, so he knew the area very well and it showed. Rich said he hadn't run White Wolf for over 10 years; I wouldn't have known that.
I was in his Monsterhearts game at Celesticon and I had a pretty tepid time -- due to lack of players -- it could have been better, much better.
This time, I really enjoyed the game and the character interactions. Some of the characters went in some strange tangents in the investigation, but since it was an investigation game, odd approaches could be valid avenues of investigation. So, I gave leeway to those unlikely choices.
Right before the final boss battle, Matt S. gave me a call and asked if I was showing up for his game at 4pm. Um, I didn't even know I got into Matt's game (since I didn't have time to check the postings). The tail end of this game, session 5, overlapped the start of Matt's game in session 6. I had to give up my seat in Matt's game and lost all my weight on the shuffler as this game and Matt's game were my first choices for session 5 and 6. Who would have guessed that the shuffler would let me get into first choices that overlapped and then inadvertently screw me for the rest of the convention? Damn you shuffler, you know how to really F* with people.
So, I stayed for the ending. The action sequence at the end of the game was really well done and it was a top notch game.
Calling All Stations!!! This is Attu!!!
Monday 8 AM in 508 for 6 hours GM: Frank A. Figoni System: Dread! Players: 6 Provided: All characters provided by GM Power Level: Gritty Reality!!! Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome Game Content: Mainstream
Attu
Island, an isolated, windswept, cold, and desolate place at the end of
the Aleutian Island chain. Not a great place to be stationed when you're
in the Coast Guard, but even less accommodating in the winter months
when darkness and snow cover the landscape. And, something goes horribly
wrong.
For the crew of the Coast Guard's high endurance cutter
Morgenthau, WHEC 722, winter means three months of an Alaskan fishery
patrol, a relatively mundane task. Five weeks into their cruise, a brief
all stations distress call comes in from the small Coast Guard
contingent on Attu Island only eighty nautical miles to the south.
However, the message is almost incoherent and the caller hysterical:
'Say again Attu! Say again!'
'Dead!!! Help us!!! Please God! HELP US!!!'
This was my favorite game of the convention. It was a great game. Frank definitely knows the Coast Guard and he helped us fill in the details of Coast Guard life for all of us. The game pacing was top notch and the dread (ha-ha) and fear kept us on our toes.
When I showed up, Mike G. and Gil T. were already waiting to crash the game. Lucky enough, four of the signed up players didn't show up, so all the crashers were able to play and Frank let Mateo C. play (after asking us if it was ok) as the 7th out of 6 players. Little did we know that Mateo would be the one to stop the boss monster and save the world. Luckily we let him play.
With such a good table of players, there was no question the game was going to be really good and I wasn't disappointed. We played off each others characters and had a great time.
We filled out our character questionnaire and at one point, I wanted one of the other players to have sexually harassed my female character. Frank told me that I had to okay it with the other player or modify it. It actually dovetailed with the other player's back story, so it was great, and Mike actually got to privately question both of us about what had happened.
We got to introduce our characters and my line was: "Strippers are not whores. And pole dancing is a sport."
Frank actually revealed that the backup characters actually had some seedy information that actually matched up with my character's back story. So, talk about synergy. When things go right, everything goes right and falls into place perfectly.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
At the end of the game, "Boats" was going to hand over the samurai sword to the ghost. My character wasn't there and it felt all wrong, but I couldn't do anything about it. Well, Mateo as "Bull" had just rushed up the mountain in time to push the Jenga Tower down for a heroic death. He rips the samurai sword out of the sheath that "Boats" was holding and impales the ghost with it. Both "Bull" and the possessed Japanese Professor are impaled upon each other's sword and die. The ghost is banished and the world is saved.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Pickup Game - Monster of the Week
Friday 7:30 PM in Open Gaming for 4.5 hours GM: Bryan Hitchcock System: Monster of the Week Players: 6 Provided: Generated at the table using templates
Bryan ran this game for us because the shuffler F* all of us and we got into nothing for our Friday night game. The players were Alicia H., Frank F., Nik G., and Ukelele girl and her boyfriend.
This was a very fun game.
I didn't like Monsterhearts because of the sex moves. In this game, that aspect of Apocalypse World is gone; there are no sex moves in Monster of the Week.
We went off the rails early in the game and Bryan was really good on winging it with us wacko players. The game became "The Mummy" on steroids. We went to Egypt and had a big fight in a pyramid -- all not part of the scenario.
Had a good time and mostly due to Bryan doing a great job and the players bringing to the table their brand of whack.
Little Trouble in Big China
A Blake Brothers Production (aka CthulhuPorn)
Calling All Stations!!! This is Attu!!!
