A number of people I play online with were going to GenCon, so I decided to go too. They had rented a house (which fell through, one week before the convention) and we wound up in a 3 bedroom/1 bath house for 8 people. Arrgh. VRBO sucked big time. They even said they would put their emergency team on our issue and they never came through. One day before GenCon they told us to find something on Expedia, but no hotels were available by then. Luckily we found a small house that cost us an additional $1000 to book on AirBnB. The rent for 4 days was probably 3 months worth of rent for the place we were in, but beggars can't be choosers. The house was about 4 miles from the convention center.
GenCon is a zoo. Inside the convention center is packed with people. Hallways, dealer room, bathrooms, etc. Do not go if you have issues with crowds. Outside the convention center is hot (+85℉) and humid.
What I found unusual was that various vendors actually gave discounts off their MSRP or offerred freebies if you buy stuff. I heard if you go to the dealer room on Sunday near closing, you can sometimes get free product as the vendors don't want to spend money shipping product home.
When you sign up for games at GenCon (which sell out in the first day or two when online sign ups open up), you have to pay for each event (about $1-$2/hr) in addition to the GenCon pass ($121 + $10 shipping). The games are not in private rooms, but in massive shared rooms. My games were held in a room with 10 round tables. The noise level is atrocious. At least the seminars/talks were free.
For me it was a Delta Green all the time convention. I ran 4 Delta Green games, played in a Delta Green LARP, and played in a private Delta Green game run by Shane Ivey.
Delta Green also won 6 ENnie Awards (3 gold, 3 silver).
Overall, I had fun. I met Mike Mason (Chaosium), Cat Tobin (Pelgrane Press), Chris Spivey (Darker Hue Studios), Shane Ivey (Arc Dream Publishing), Dennis Detwiller (Arc Dream Publishing), Greg Stolze (Arc Dream Publishing) and saw in seminars Sandy Petersen (Petersen Games), Monte Cook (Monte Cook Games), and Greg Stafford (Chaosium).
Would I go again? Only if I need to do some business there. The cost of housing, plane tickets, convention pass, paying for events (events here in SF Bay Area are free), make it an expensive trip.
If I went again, I would definitely go to more NSDM lectures and get a hotel within walking distance of the convention center.
I hide spoiler sections with JavaScript. If you have JavaScript turned off, you can skip the spoiler sections I have marked.
Thursday (8/2/2018), 11am-1pm
Protect Yourself! Why Game Designers Need To Know Patents, Copyrights, & Trademarks
Presenters: Wood, Herron & Evans LLP
Tailored for game designers! Learn about patents, copyrights, & trademarks with 2 game aficionados & IP professionals who've educated on these topics at GenCon for over 5 years. Q&A included.
Interesting lecture about the difference between patents, copyrights ©, and trademarks™.
Copyrights are cheap and are good for life of author + 70 years, patents (including design patents) are expensive and are good for 15 years, trademarks cost is between copyrights and patents and need to be renewed every few years.
As examples, they went over the looks and design of Magic: The Gathering™ cards and their trademark. And what rights you have if you've registered your product/trademark. e.g. you get to sue infringers of your rights and recover not only damages, but court costs (which you don't get if you're not registered), and the right to have products seized at ports and destroyed.
Last Things Last
System: Delta Green
GM: Morgan Hua, Arc Dream Publishing
Players: 6/6 & 4/6 (2 no shows for 7pm game)
Ticket Cost: $4
Clyde Baughman was an active Delta Green agent from 1967 to 1970. 4 days ago he died in his apartment. The nearest available Agents conduct a sweep of his apartment.
First group did everything right, did research and preparation, and we had an exciting end with no deaths.
Second group. Research? What's that? Can we get some C4? In the end one PC went insane, opened fire with an automatic weapon, missed the creature and killed another PC. Then the creature killed the PC after two of his weapons jammed by rolling 88 twice in a row. One PC survived by running away. He called in for help with his burner phone. Classic DG ending.
One player came up with a great short description of Delta Green. Delta Green is as if Mulder and Scully worked for the Smoking Man.
Friday (8/3/2018), 10-11am
The Cold War: A Concise Overview: NSDM
Presenter: Dr. Craig Greathouse, National Security Decision Making Game, Inc.
Short Description:This lecture provides a quick overview of the Cold War period in terms of themes, influences, & significant events. It provides a background into the competition between the U.S. and USSR.
The Cold War was a period of change in the international system. Highlighted by competition between the US and USSR along ideological, economic and military lines, other events and influences affecting the current international system emerged from the Cold War. International and Supranational Organizations emerged: UN, IMF, World Bank, WTO (formerly GATT), EU. Decolonization and externalities emerging from breakdown of European empires set the stage for current ethnic and religious violence. Lastly, the period provided foundations for modern globalization: technological linkages between people and development of transportation systems reduced spatial distances, setting up potential for conflicts within the system. Presenter: Dr. Craig Greathouse, Professor of Political Science specializing in the EU, International Relations Theory and Security and Defense Policy, now on the NSDMG staff.
Wow, NSDM are a quality group of lecturers. Worthwhile. Too bad I missed the other two lectures I had signed up for, but due to scheduling and unable to get to the location early enough, due to late nights, I missed the morning lectures on Alien First Contact and Global Hotspots which I had tickets for.
The cold war was basically USSR wanting to take over the world with their brand of communism and the US trying to contain the USSR. The lecture covered lots of history and insights on why things happened.
Afterwards, I stayed for about 10 minutes to listen to the next lecture on why a submarine sunk, then I left to attend a lecture on poisons.
Friday (8/3/2018), 11am-12pm
Presenter: Michael Beuhler, Doctor Beuhler Events
A new, system-neutral presentation on select real primitive toxins with historical & speculative uses. Suggestions to incorporate them into your world by a physician toxicologist. 3rd GenCon year.
Fascinating lecture on poisons that primitive people can use and how unlikely you'd find an antidote. Lots of handouts with toxin info and game stats for them.
Friday (8/3/2018), 12-1pm
Making Better RPG Characters
Presenters: Geekspective
Short Description:If your tabletop RPG seems dull, one problem could be the characters. Learn how to create more vibrant characters with more personality. We will help you put the ‘role’ back into role-playing!
At geekspective.com, we firmly believe that role-playing characters are more than stats on a character sheet. Early RPGs didn’t encourage personality, favoring maps and equipment lists. The latest generation of RPGs, however, encourage storytelling and social role-play. If you aren’t sure how to adapt to a new system that requires more role-play, or just love the idea of more vivid and interesting characters, this is the discussion for you! We make actual play podcasts which requires us to create voices for our characters. That helps, but adding personality traits, interesting possessions, and personality quirks in addition to those voices, your characters will become much more fun and your RPG sessions will too.
Picked up a few tidbits, but this panel was light on content.
1. Beliefs should be actionable. e.g. "Love Children" isn't good enough, but "Love Children, must protect them" is. "Trust other PC" isn't good enough, but "Trust other PC, believe everything he says" is. And beliefs can change based on what happens during play. e.g. the PC you trusted had sold you down the river, so now that belief can be modified.
2. PCs should have instincts such as "Always dive during gun fire."
3. NPC should be a foil to the PC's beliefs. e.g. "Love Children, must protect them" PC should run into the "Worst child in the world" or an NPC who abuses children.
4. Ask players about the NPC to define the NPC if GM has no idea. e.g. some random faceless NPC can be defined with your player's help.
Observer Effect
System: Delta Green
GM: Morgan Hua, Arc Dream Publishing
Players: 6/6 & 6/6
Ticket Cost: $4
A power surge takes the Olympian Holobeam Array offline, but the engineers say everything is fine. Agents are sent undercover as Dept of Energy inspectors,will they unravel the true nature of reality?
When I play tested this game, the players failed to solve the mystery.
First group got frustrated at one point, but did solve the mystery with 3 of the PCs killing each other after killing all the NPCs. Three PCs survived.
Second group effectively solved the mystery and all of them survived, but they killed all the NPCs.
Saturday (8/4/2018), 11am-12pm
Creating a Horror RPG Scenario the Sandy Petersen Way
Presenter: Sandy Petersen, Petersen Games
Sandy Petersen shows you how he assembles Call of Cthulhu/Cthulhu Mythos adventures quickly & effectively.
Sandy gave his 3 rules for M.R. James's ghost stories:
1. It is malign. (no kind ghosts)
2. Place it where the players can imagine themselves. (it can be in a beat up rusty spaceship, but not the unrealistic white cleanliness of Star Trek)
3. No jargon. (describe the horror and frightfulness before asking for die rolls and system based mechanical effects, jargon meaning system centric jargon such as SAN check and SAN loss).
3 rules for generating a scenario:
1. Pick a eventful scene from a movie.
2. Pick a location.
3. Pick a monster.
Then figure out the purpose of the bad guy.
Creepy stuff rule: 3 chances to survive.
1. Hint of danger, lots of smell or weird events.
2. Solid evidence, like a body missing a head.
3. The Monster shows up.
When you follow the creepy stuff rule, the players will blame themselves for their death. They were forewarned.
During this workshop, we actually came up with a pretty good scenario. Completed scenario in spoiler section below.
Here's the full video of the event: Writing a Horror Scenario the Sandy Petersen Way
Presenter: Ben Riggs
How did a $40 million company that started the tabletop RPG industry go belly up? Ben Riggs has conducted dozens of interviews with TSR alumni to discover the surprising truth of what happened to TSR.
A fascinating story. TSR almost failed until it was purchased by the family that owned Buck Rogers. Then TSR was saved, but due to a crazy contract with Random House, where TSR got paid for every unit of product shipped (not sold). Initially TSR did sell every copy that was printed, but as sales grew, they over printed copies of books deliberately. They were in effect printing money. They also didn't pay their printing house and eventually had to hand over the deed to their building to the printing company as payment. What did TSR do with their money? They wanted to get into comics and movies, so they poured their money into those areas with their west coast branch of TSR run by one of the Buck Rogers family members. They pissed off DC comics, one of their partners, when they started to print their own comic books, so DC comics killed their contract. They pissed off their best selling authors by paying them way less than normal, so their book authors left TSR. They pissed off Random House by threatening to go to other publishers and refusing to pay for over printed product that was sitting in warehouse space. Finally, TSR was sold to The Wizards of the Coast to cover their debt to Random House and the printing house (who still wasn't being paid and who refused to print any more product until they were).
How to Have the Best RPG Session Ever
Presenters: Monte Cook, Monte Cook Games, LLC
Join members of Team MCG to get tips on having the best RPG session ever. There will be GM tips, player tips, & game stories with a positive spin.
This was basically a round table with Monte Cook and his crew basically selling their KickStarter. I felt the session was mostly content free and more of a sell job than anything else.
Saturday (8/4/2018), 1-2pm
Quickly Creating Interesting Characters to Roleplay
Presenter: Learn Larp, LLC
Short Description:Creating interesting characters that are both playable & meaningful takes more than just rolling stats. Learn how to make a robust character in less than 15 mins & enjoy the character arcs to come.
Offers a series of must-haves to create a dynamic and realistic character and a set of questions to ask and answer when making a new character. Taught by a writing professor and game designer, this presentation showcases shortcut creative writing techniques that can be used individually and in pairs or small groups to improve your character’s backstory, motivations, conflicts, quirks, and other traits that make them more playable, intense, meaningful, and dynamic. Includes samples of arcs you can have your character follow over short and long-term play.
This was a great lecture by an author. Loads of content vs some panels consisting of podcasters or LARPers just telling anecdotes.
Here are some tidbits:
1. Good characters contradict themselves.
They get tired, frustrated, make mistakes, they're never perfect all the time.
2. They have a past, present, and goal for the future.
3. They have a secret they want to protect, but bits and pieces must come out during play.
4. They must have a motivation. e.g. This is for my grandson.
5. They must have a goal. e.g. Live in a house by the seashore.
6. Must have a family structure. How were they raised?
7. They must have a weakness. e.g. Misty eyed seeing the stars, it keeps them off their A game. But this is NOT a flaw, it just makes them vulnerable, but not destroy them.
8. Have a quirk. e.g. physical traits such as twirling or twisting their hair, won't use silverware, etc.
9. What makes them happy, angry, afraid, fall in love?
What are their desires? (happy)
What pokes or peeves them? (angry)
What keeps them up at night or holds them back? (afraid)
What would someone do to gain your approval? (love)
10. What just happened? Where are they going?
Character arcs:
1. Corruption: good to bad
2. Redemption: bad to good
3. Destruction: destroy themselves or their enemy
4. Resurrection and rebirth: rebirth and redemption
5. Fortification: strengthening arc.
Put the answers on a sheet of paper and then have player interview each other.
Have the interviewer ask questions about the character.
Examples:
What are they proud about?
How do they talk? Quietly, stutter, repeat themselves?
How do they sit?
How do they walk?
How do they laugh?
External conflicts mirror internal conflicts.
And vice versa.
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| LARP was held in a National Landmark |
Redefining Pi
System: Delta Green LARP
GM: Aaron Vanek, Arc Dream Publishing
Players: 46/50
Ticket Cost: $46
You have been invited to a technological symposium at the Indiana Medical History Museum. Wonders, terrors, & betrayal await. Characters & transportation to & from the museum provided.
After given our characters and black light devices, we were Lyft'ed to the Indiana Medical History Museum. The museum decor was considered off limits, but 5 obvious props were seeded throughout the museum that we could interact with.
Part of the LARP included a reception (free snack food) and a lecture that didn't go as planned.
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| Lecture Hall |
The location was amazing and the props were cool, but only one prop would have been instrumental in the mystery at hand. It would have been better if the props would somehow tie-in together.
In the end, we ran out of time and the building got surrounded by men in hazmat suits and automatic weapons and we were led out one-by-one to be "debriefed." That was the end of our time in the museum and we were gathered outside to be Lyft'ed back to GenCon.
I had fun, but overall, as a game, plot-wise, it wasn't very satisfying.
As a side note, I played a Delta Green agent and was leery of the various props. My partner and I watched as newbies poked and prodded the props. In retrospect, it would have been fun to stick my hand into the egg sac, but as an experienced DG agent, that would have been stupid.
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Saturday (8/4/2018), 9:45pm-3am
Schemata
System: Delta Green
GM: Shane Ivey, a private game for GMs who ran 4 or more games at GenCon for Arc Dream Publishing
Players: 5 (Jason F, Jason J, Thad S, Morgan Hua, Greg Stolze)
First draft of “Schemata,” a scenario that was funded by the KickStarter for Delta Green: The Labyrinth.
My DG LARP got me back on time, so I found the hotel that the private game was being held at and found that you needed a hotel room card key to activate the elevator. A successful Persuade skill check got me up to the room. I got to hangout with Shane and Greg (and one more person who's name I forgot, my apologies) for about 30 mins until the other 3 players messaged us that they were stuck downstairs at the Starbucks.
This was a great game. I had a lot of fun and the players were great too. I guess when you have experienced GMs as players you get a good crew of players. Though I know that not all great players are great GMs and not all great GMs are great players.
Pendragon Round Table
Presenters: Greg Stafford, Chaosium Inc
Join legendary game designer Greg Stafford (founder and chair of the board for Chaosium) & his guests for a "round table" discussion about the latest for the King Arthur Pendragon RPG.
Interesting panel about new developments for King Arthur Pendragon RPG. There's a new line editor and a few new products, so they'll be interested in submissions for publication.
Here's the full audio of the event: Gen_Con_2018_Pendragon_Round_Table_Panel.mp3
Sunday (8/5/2018)
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| KV's typewriter |
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Sunday (8/5/2018)
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| Soldiers and Sailors Monument |
Next time, I should visit the Indiana War Memorial Museum, only several blocks from the Kurt Vonnegut Museum.
Monday (8/6/2018)
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| Hook's Drug Store Museum |
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| Inside Hook's |
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| Leeches anyone? |
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| Award winning cows |
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| Why does this goat have a star on its forehead? |
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| Massive Farm Equipment |
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| More Farm Equipment |
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| Need a tractor? |
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