MODCon 2020 was held Dec 4-6, 2020. It was advertised as a How to GM convention. I watched most of the seminars for the first two days and attended one game.
Here's the panel schedule:
Each panel ran from the start time to 15 mins before the hour, so most panels were only 45 mins long. My issue was that the panels were all Q&A panels, where audience members texted in questions, so it wasn't a seminar per se, but random Q&A of questionable value.
Things I Wish I knew When I Started GMing / Mastering the Basics. Only good nugget of info I got from both seminars: have a list of NPC names ready and blank space, so you can check off those used and add notes as to who that NPC is when chosen. Seth uses one adjective like Angry Blacksmith to describe the NPC when chosen and activated. Other GMs used 3 descriptives. After the game, GM should write down in a notebook notable events and next steps (something I already do as a GM for multipart scenarios or campaigns).
The best panel was Next Step GM Techniques which talked about foreshadowing and improv. Basically, GMs can add foreshadowing / scenario seeds during play and hope that some of it sticks. Lloyd Gyan was a great panelist with amazing energy and great ideas.
The Star Trek Adventures (Special Behind the Scenes Game) was interesting as it broke down decisions the GM had to make on the fly.
How to GM 2d20, Dune 2d20: The Making Of, Modiphius: Coming in 2021 were of limited value.
All of the panels are here, divided by each day (videos are about 6 hrs each): https://www.twitch.tv/modiphius
A small number of games were listed, about 10. I tried to get into a Dune and Star Trek game but failed and was only able to get into a Vampire (V5) game.
System: Vampire V5
Title: The In Crowd (scenario from the starter set, but game was originally listed as No Place Like London and was changed because Modiphius requested the GM to change the scenario).
GM: Louis Garcia
Players: 4 (Brad, A D, Joshua G, Morgan Hua)
Duration: 4 hrs (6 - 10pm)
Description: We were newly made Vampires and we all woke up in a meat locker with other newly made Vampires. (This did not match the original game description as we expected the London scenario.)
The players were all familiar with Vampire, but not with the published version of V5. I had play tested Beta V5 and ran the published version of V5 once. So, I wanted to see how the "published" version ran.
The published version is a lot simpler and cleaner than the beta version, toning down a lot of touches Ken Hite had added to the earlier beta version. The Discipline / Hunger / Frenzy cycle was played down a lot. A majority of Disciplines didn't require Hunger checks and were skills that were freely used without risk of losing control. All superficial damage can be healed with only one Rouse check.
I wanted to resist feeding and I ended the game with 2 Hunger boxes checked and it didn't really affect my character that much other than increasing the risk of a Messy Critical which happened once to my character.
How it works is you take your dice pool (Attribute + Skill) and replace a number of dice with Hunger dice equal to your Hunger. For example:
Dex 2 + Athletics 2 = 4 dice pool
Hunger 1
Roll 1 Hunger die and 3 Regular dice = 4 dice pool.
You only lost control with a Messy Critical or Bestial Failure. Throughout the game, the PCs got a few Messy Criticals and only one Bestial Failure.
A Messy Critical happens if you roll multiple 10s and there's a 10 on any Hunger die. You succeed, but you lose control and over do what you were trying to do. I crumpled the meat locker door while trying to remove it's hinges. In our play, the GM only looked at the 10 on the Hunger die. I looked up the rule and we didn't do it correctly, so there should have been a lot less Messy Criticals.
A Bestial Failure happens if you failed in a task and rolled a 1 on a Hunger die. At one point, I rolled 2 Hunger dice and 2 Regular dice, and got a 1 on a Hunger die, but I got a success on my Regular die, so I didn't lose control. In our game, one of the PCs instead of running, turned and faced an unmarked van in defiance due to his Bestial Failure (The PC tried to run, but got a Bestial Failure which dictated that he face the danger head on).
Overall, the system was cleaner, but lost some of the earlier edginess where every time your Vampire acted out, there was a chance you'd lose control of your inner beast.
My PC, a newly made Vampire had a Persuade dice pool of 9. A bit overkill. Another PC with a Persuade of 7 actually convinced a Primogen Justicar to lend us some vampire foot soldiers (he gave us guns, but was reluctant to give us some manpower). So something seems a bit wrong here. I'll look into this later.
Overall, I enjoyed the game and the Starter Set scenario was a good introduction to the rules and the world of Vampire.
No comments:
Post a Comment