Tuesday, September 08, 2015

Morgan's CelestiCon 2015 Adventures

Special guest of CelestiCon this year was Sandy Petersen, game designer of Call of Cthulhu.
They also had a special drawing to see who would get into a game run by Sandy.

I didn't win a seat, but Shannon M. and William L. did get into the game.  Funny thing was that William L. played in my Eagle's Nest game instead of Sandy's game.  Mic DROP.  :-)

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Fifty Shades of Earl Grey

GM: Jeff Yin
Friday Noon for 4 hours
Type: RPG
System: Fading Suns
Edition: 2nd Ed
Players: 6
Provided: All characters provided by GM
Game Content: Mature Themes
A Questing Knight is charged with investigating the death of the Emperor's cousin. Fading Suns is a game of science fantasy, with a medieval Europe in space feel. Beginners welcome!

Interesting setting with a very good table of players.  We wound up f**king around so much doing side things that we didn't get into the murder mystery until the last half hour, so we poked around the crime scene for a bit and then stopped the game.  This means we can play this game all over again.  Yay!




It's a magical place

GM: David Weinstein
Friday 4 PM for 6 hours
Type: RPG
System: All Flesh Must Be Eaten
Edition: First
Players: 6
Provided: All characters provided by GM
Power Level: Norms
Game Content: Mature Themes
It's summer, and that means vacation! People of all stripes are packing themselves into the amusement park for summer fun and adventure! This year, however, some folks are going to get more of an adventure than they bargained for...

My two favorite games this CelestiCon was this game and Hamel's Cthulhu Azorian.

Pacing was great in this game.  No dead spots and the tension was kept up until the end.  A very fun game -- or at least I enjoyed it immensely for the fear and terror.



High and Dry

GM: Jeff Dee
Saturday 9 AM for 4 hours
Type: RPG
System: Bethorm: the Plane of Tekumel
Players: 6
Provided: All characters provided by GM
Power Level: beginning characters
Game Content: Mainstream
Grain shipments from the town of Mishábar, near an ancient ruined castle, to the Temple of Hnálla in the city of Katalál have inexplicably ceased. As priests of Hnálla, Lord of Light, you are sent to discover the reasons for this lapse and set things aright!

Jeff Dee, one of the writers of Tekumel, ran this game.  He had in depth knowledge of the world and this game had great NPC motivations and gave the PCs hard choices.

My main complaint is that the combat system seemed unnecessarily drawn out -- very old school.  I picked a sorcerer of light and wound up being a more effective combat character than our four-armed insectoid warrior (due to a lot of bad rolls).  I can create fighting phantasms and my quarterstaff seemed to do as much damage as the insectoid's weapons.  The only difference was the insectoid had natural armor.

After one and a half combats, we ran out of time, so we rushed through the ending and hand-waved through the remaining combats.

Overall, I liked the world and enjoyed the game, but I didn't like the mechanics and the long drawn out combats.



Reunification III

GM: Andrew Davis
Saturday 2 PM for 6 hours
Type: RPG
System: Star Trek RPG
Edition: Decipher
Players: 8
Provided: All characters provided by GM
Power Level: Enterprise Officers. Characters provided.
Game Content: Mainstream
Ambassador Spock and his party have been working with Romulan dissidents for the past 20 years on Romulus in the hope of forwarding an eventual reunification of Vulcan and Romulus. Ambassador Spock and his two Vulcan aides have been kidnapped on Romulus. Unknown agents are at work. The Enterprise must investigate his disappearance, recover Spock and his Vulcan aides and escort them to safety in Federation Space, and bring his kidnappers to justice. 

I loved the props and toys the GM brought.  It required a hotel handcart to bring everything into the room.
It's clear that the GM had in-depth knowledge of the world of Star Trek and was a great fan.

I had fun because I was able to play Jean-Luc Picard, but there were several issues with the game:

1. We had seats for 8 players, but only 6 were filled, so a lot of people showed up trying to fill the empty seats.  The GM let 11 players into the game and even said 12 would be ok.  IMHO, I think the ideal game should have been 6 players, not 12.  During play, I felt guilty that I had a lot of screen time and it seemed like the extra players had nothing to do.  So, I asked Riker to pick the away team members to give him something to do.   At some point, I started asking Riker to pick people who didn't have enough screen time, so they would have something to do.  I felt I was making a balancing act that the GM should have designed into the scenario.

2. If certain players made specific rolls, or needed plot nudges, they were given 3x5 cards to read out loud.  I understand what that was for, to give us clues and Trek-speak, but it also felt like giving lines for the players to read instead of letting them role play.

3. The plot was very complicated, but the solution was very A to B to C, so although what was going on had a fair amount of complexity, the solution felt like it was on rails.  We did finish the game early, so maybe we were better or luckier than expected.  Not sure about that, but events seem to gallop by and on auto pilot.  At one point, I asked the officers to gather in the ready room to discuss what was going on, just to get other player's impressions and input because things were just happening so fast without us being able to decide if what was happening was some elaborate deceptive plot or whether what was happening should be taken at face value.



Eagle's Nest

GM: Morgan Hua
Saturday 9 PM for 4 hours
Type: RPG
System: Godlike
Players: 6
Provided: All characters provided by GM
Game Content: Mainstream
Allied Talents, WWII soldiers with superpowers, are sent to capture the Eagle's Nest, one of Hitler's retreats.
Godlike is a brutal WWII system where one lucky bullet can kill a PC. Not only do you have to deal with trained soldiers, but the Germans have their own supermen too.


William L. got into Sandy Petersen's Call of Cthulhu game, but he didn't know he did, so he signed up for two other games that overlapped with Sandy's game.   One of those games was this one, so I get to brag that someone picked my game over Sandy's.  :-)

Actually, the game pacing felt a little flat to me as the GM; when I ran it at KublaCon, there were more ups and downs and more excitement.  The players finished the game early.  When I ran this game at KublaCon, it took 5 hours.  The players this time finished an hour early.  Only one player wasn't familiar with the ORE system and I was short two players, so maybe not having to take time to explain the system in detail and having less players shortened the play time.  See spoiler section for more musings on this.



Cthulhu Azorian

GM: Richard Hamel
Sunday 4 PM for 8 hours
Type: RPG
System: Call of Cthulhu
Edition:7
Players: 6
Provided: All characters provided by GM
Game Content: Mature Themes
June 1974. The CIA has assembled your team to assist with the covert recovery of the K-129 submarine that mysteriously sunk in the Pacific Ocean in 1968. What forgotten horrors lie on the ocean floor?

My two favorite games this CelestiCon was this game and Weinstein's It's a Magical Place.

The setup and plot had enough twists and turns to keep us on our toes.  I really enjoyed this game.

There were some issues with pacing and division of labor between PCs.  More in the spoiler section below.



Super Train

GM: Morgan Hua
Monday 9 AM for 4 hours
Type: RPG
System: Godlike
Players: 6
Provided: All characters provided by GM
Game Content: Mainstream
Allied Talents, WWII soldiers with superpowers, are notified by the French Resistance that a Nazi Super Train is loading secret cargo. Your mission, stop whatever the Germans are doing.
Godlike is a brutal WWII system where one lucky bullet can kill a PC. Not only do you have to deal with trained soldiers, but the Germans have their own supermen too.

This game went well and took exactly 4 hours.  The players were less tactical than the group of players I had at KublaCon.

It seems like the less tactical the group, the more foobar happens and actually the more ups and downs during the game with more interesting and unexpected things happening.