This year, I was only able to pre-register for one game, the early signups was at midnight and I went to bed before then. When I woke up at 3:45am, only one game that I wanted to play in had an open slot. So, I had to register for all the other games and brave the shuffler. Funny thing was that I actually got into all the games I wanted to play in. I used a GM's priority slip for Jeff Yin's game, but didn't get in, so I showed up 1/2 hour early and got lucky -- I was 2nd in line and two people didn't show up. The facilities at Celesticon were great. Every RPG had their own room. The open gaming and tournaments were in clean, well lighted places with excellent air flow. Each of the RPG rooms had several pitchers of iced water and stacks of cups and they were continuously refilled. At other cons where they put a urn of water in the hallway, the cups and water always ran out and the spillage and drippage always left a mess. The bathrooms at Celesticon were continuously cleaned and supplied with paper towels. I had a really good experience this year at Celesticon. In this article, I'm going to focus on GM style and pacing.
Minimum spoilers below about the games I was in.
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The Only Good Bug is a Dead Bug!
Saturday 9 AM in Alexander Valley for 6 hours GM: Morgan Hua Type: RPG System: Nemesis/ORE Players: 6 Provided: All characters provided by GM Power Level: Pre-Gen Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome Game Content: Mainstream
Mars settlement went dark and your squad of Space Marines have been sent in to find out if Bugs have infested Mars.
For some reason, when I submitted this game online, I thought the word limit was something like 150 words, so I cut the description way back. Then when the games were posted, I noticed I had the shortest game description for any game. Oops.
Actually, without the Starship Trooper / Aliens mashup reveal, I think it made the game more interesting and surprising. I try to wear a t-shirt related to the game I run. The observant players seem to pick up on this. In my Scooby-Doo game, I actually changed t-shirts between acts. Each t-shirt showed the character progression for the next act. For this game, I wore a "Weyland Industries" t-shirt. Several players commented on that in this game and the game I ran at KublaCon. So, yes, if you pay attention, you might get some meta-game info.
For convention games, I like the standard story arc pacing of rising
tension, several minor conflict/resolutions, and a big climax at the
end.
I think the pacing of this game wasn't as good as the one I ran at
KublaCon. I think the KublaCon game was creepier and more Aliens than Starship
Troopers and this game was more action oriented Starship Troopers than Aliens, but since
this game was supposed to be a mashup of both, I guess it didn't
matter.
I'm a visual oriented person and I have very good memories of movies and scenes from movies. So, for me, these games play out like a movie. Sometimes I wonder if my players see what I see in my mind's eye. From my writing experience, one thing I learned was that a scene slows down when you use more words and a scene speeds up when less words are used. The same in a RPG game. When the GM starts describing things, the scene slows down and when less words are used the scene speeds up. For building tension and anticipation, you need more words. During action scenes, the less words the better, unless you're in that slow-motion action shot where every detail jumps out at you as unspeakable violence happens to someone -- then speeds up again.
Since I wanted a fast paced game, I supplied a number of visual aids, so I didn't need to describe every scene in detail.
I'm running this game one more time at BigBadCon. After that, I'll detail the construction of this game at that time.
Imp-possible odds
Saturday 7 PM in Alexander Valley for 6 hours GM: Travis Smalley Type: RPG System: Storyboard Players: 6 Provided: All characters provided by GM Power Level: Small, small elementals Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome Game Content: Teen
Oliver
the elementalist never really wanted to be a hero. He wanted to help
villages whose wells dried up and whose farms were going barren and
maybe scare off the occasional group of bandits with a flashy display,
but he was a apprentice of modest goals and modest abilities. Two years
ago, when a broken cart axle made him late to his own apprenticeship
graduation, he managed to become the lone healthy mage after a serious
assault and a royal kidnapping. With some sneaking, some ingenuity, and a
whole lot of luck, Oliver managed to save the princess, earn himself
the title of 'Court elementalist', and great renown! But he didn't do it
alone - he was assisted by his six small elemental imps, who have
become not only his companions and assistants, but best friends. He's
been tutored by the best mages the kingdom has to offer, and is blooming
into a competent young magus. However, when he's invited to represent
his entire plane in an interdimensional competition, he isn't allowed to
say no, although it's incredibly obvious he's far out of his league.
Without his imps to help him, can he pull victory from the jaws of
defeat?! Well, no, actually. Flatly no. He's going to need some help to
place, let alone win. And if he doesn't place, the Magical
Authorization, Generation and Exploitation council will strip his home's
right to access magical energy from conventional sources! As tiny
magical creatures, this is very worrying for his little friends, and so
there's only one thing for an imp to do - Cheat. Cheat like the dickens.
This was a very fun game. We were underpowered imps with a few days to rig several contests so our master would win. Lots of good and smart players. Travis does many things well. In horror games, he does amazing clue trails and description of creepy things. In this game, his rendering of NPCs were pitch perfect. He does the voices and mannerisms so well that we can understand all the nuances and subtexts. He also has a great understanding of a satisfying story arc. In this game, we spent a lot of time understanding the contests and working our imp shenanigans. By the time we rigged the first three contests, I was worried because it looked like we were going to run out of game time, but Travis deftly gave us a way to quickly rig the last few contests which didn't feel too rushed. So, we not only finished the competition, but we also resolved some issues in the home plane having to deal with the Princess, the M.A.G.E council, and Oliver's familiar. So, that was pretty amazing. I think we ran over by a half hour to an hour, but it was worth it.
The trick Travis pulled was that the last few contests were narrated by the GM, so less time was spent on player interaction. This way we sped through lots of story in the remaining time that we had. What made it engaging was that the narration relied on what we had previously done, so it wasn't like we were watching a pre-recorded ending, but the unfolding of something that we, as players, had set into motion. And the endings that we got fully rounded out the adventure we had started on, so it was very satisfying.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
There were 5 contests. Ten years ago, the previous mage contestant from our plane won 3 contests. The ranking determined how much magic your plane would receive. Our plane's oracle stated that he saw Oliver lose all 5 contests. So, we were told to help him win without him knowing. This became important as we found out that the Judges could read minds in order to see if a contestant cheated. We also figured that any untoward magic would be detected, so any direct intervention would be easily discovered.
The tests ranged from magical labyrinths, king of the hill, keeping a tower up vs taking the tower down, and creating beautiful art.
We had a hand in 3 of the contests and modified the rules for two of them, so Oliver won 4 contests.
Modifying the rules was the short-cut that Travis took. So, we found our way into the rules office and was able to slightly modify the last two contest rules. With the rules changed, Oliver was able to get an advantage. Since the last two contests were Oliver only, Travis could just narrate the outcomes without player interaction.
The subplots were:
1. The princess couldn't marry Oliver though she had a crush on him because he wasn't nobility. We suggested to Oliver's familiar, a talking armadillo, that he should ask for nobility if granted a boon and that happened when he returned to his own plane as a hero. Oliver was also horribly nerdy and totally mis-managed the romance, but we imps helped him out by rewriting some of his love letters.
2. The M.A.G.E council thought Oliver was above his station and would ruin them all. By doing so well in the competition, his standing and stature was raised in their eyes.
3. Oliver's familiar disliked us, but once he found out that we had helped Oliver, he thought better of us.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
After the End of Days
Sunday 4 PM in Alexander Valley for 6 hours GM: David Weinstein Type: RPG System: All Flesh Must Be Eaten Edition: 1 Players: 6 Provided: All characters provided by GM Power Level: Provided Normals Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome Game Content: Mature Themes
So
much for the world as we know it. Nobody knows where the Weeping
Sickness started, but it's effects have been roundly final thus far:
highly infectious secretions, fever, and an eventual comatose state.
Victims didn't stay comatose, though. Called, 'Weepers', they woke up
with a sole mission: spread the disease by any means possible.
You are some of the last uninfected, making a desperate run for the
coast, where rumors of a holdout have given hope for a future -- any
future.
I had played in David's game two Celesticon's ago and really enjoyed his game. Last year, Jill S. told me what a great time she had playing in David's game last year, so I wanted to get the David experience again.
This game was very creepy and scary. Players would partially open a door, then after a quick glance, close it and lie to the other players that there was nothing to be found.
David said his philosophy was that he put up the sign posts, but left the driving to the players. With half an hour of game time left, we seemed to have escaped, but from looking at the story arc, I knew we were only at the end of Chapter 1 and I said this out loud. Then David confirmed this and said we were only done with Act 1 of 3. Shannon and another player had to leave the game since they'd already promised to play in a scheduled Battlestar Galactica game with four other people. So, we got through the splitting off of those two characters in the remaining half hour. The rest of us wanted to continue with the game. So, David dropped Act 2 and we actually sped through Act 3. We finished 1-1/2 hours later and I was very glad that I did. The story arc was glorious and amazing.
I find the philosophy between David Weinstein and Todd Furler on the opposite ends of the spectrum and both work. David lets the game run at the pace the players want and Todd Furler runs his games at the pace that he wants. Act 1 of David's game felt very natural and fleshed out. The players were very careful which dictated a slow pace and he didn't rush us. His attention to descriptive detail matched our slow pace. Again, the more words the slower the game. But the details brought reality into the game and scared the heck out of us.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The game started with various characters arriving at a mostly looted truck stop/gas station/restaurant. We proceeded to explore and loot the place. The 1st Act was just all six characters meeting each other, looting, and getting out of there. Simple, huh? So, how and why did we spend 6 hours doing this?
As I mentioned before, the more description, the slower the pace and the longer the game.
First, I liked the character selection process. David dropped sealed envelopes on the table. Each envelope only had the character. Inside each envelope was either a short description of the character or quotes the character would say. My character was "Bucket, The Last One" and his slip was handwritten with crazy quotes written all over it. Later, I found that the others had nicely typed up slips probably with more descriptive text. The other characters were: "Sandy, the Wrench Monkey," "Big Jim," "Michelle, The Guardsman," "The Mean Old Man," and "The IT Guy." Once we read our slips, David handed out the character sheets.
As the characters met up at the gas station, we had to describe ourselves to each other. David also interjected and expanded the character concepts even further and helped pushed the envelope -- for example: describing how BIG "Big Jim" was.
Then as we explored each section of the building, David kept the tension up as people split up to look around. "Big Jim" refused to go into the dark shower area alone. We mostly explored in pairs.
Two of the creepiest rooms / scenes was the Women's Bathroom and The Storage Room with a Raccoon.
The Storage Room with a Raccoon was shear genius. We could only open the door part-way because a big barrel blocked the door from the other side, but only Big Jim could move it. Inside, we could see bags of rice and something that had damaged them. The room also smelled awfully bad. We can also hear some movement inside. Someone smaller could try to crawl inside or you can risk reaching inside to grab a bag or you an get Big Jim to open the door, but his bulk blocks the whole doorway. Us being chickens, got Big Jim to push the door wide enough so a smaller person could enter easily.
The Men's Bathroom smelled awfully bad and had a stall with seven dead bodies in it. Someone had dragged the bodies into the stall and the blood flowed from the stall to the drain in the middle of the room. When Big Jim saw the bodies, he failed a fortitude check and dry heaved for a long time. So, when the two women went to the Women's restroom which smelled awfully bad, they only checked the first two stalls and only used the first stall while the other stood guard. They refused to check the other stalls. We spent the night with no incidents. Later, in the morning, when Michelle had to go to the bathroom, she left her rifle behind and went alone. Then the thing in the bathroom woke up. It was a perfect setup, perfect timing, perfect pacing. We put the thing down, but the Weeper had puked on Michelle's clothing and hair. The puke was infectious and she had to quickly shower and shave her head, but the puke left welts on her scalp. And now she's not sure if she's infected. While showering, with the other woman on guard, she suddenly realized that maybe the thing wasn't dead and asked the other players to make sure. Everyone refused. So, we just put furniture to barricade the door to the Women's Room.
The Walk-In Fridge was also full of rotten and smelly food. Next to it was an office door. One character cracked the door open and smelled something awful and a splatter of blood on the far wall. He just closed the door and declared that the section was clear.
I've never seen players refuse to enter rooms like this before. The tension and creepiness of this game was incredible. David was a true master.
We, of course, fled the location in the morning when zombies started to surround us and gather outside.
For the 3rd Act, we went west and heard a pre-recorded radio broadcast about Salvation with coordinates. As we approached, the broadcast got interrupted and we found there as another competing settlement that claimed that Salvation was a trap.
At this point, the Mean Old Man and The IT Guy had to leave, so we left them at an abandoned farm (their choice) and continued towards Salvation.
When we get nearer to Salvation, we actually get to talk to Salvation over Michelle's HumVee's National Guardman's Radio and found out that they were religious nuts. We decide to go to the other settlement which was a by-the-book-military-type camp.
Let me explain the nature of the infection. Those infected actually became a disassociated hive-mind. If you recovered and didn't suffer any brain damage, you can telepathically command others that are infected. The infected ones call to each other, but in large numbers the communication becomes a giant bee hive of confusion as too many minds broadcast too many messages. With a strong mind, especially of someone who had recovered, they can control the hive-mind. Left alone, colonies of Weepers would either die out or finally gain purpose and emerge as separate hive-minds.
The various human settlements were each vying for dominance and so would the emerging colonies of hive-mind Weepers.
Bucket had recovered from the disease, but was brain damaged. He was safe from the Weepers; they ignored him. When he wore a Nixon mask, he can communicate with people normally, but with it off, he was mono-syllabic. Through various events, Bucket wound up curing Michelle. Michelle in turn convinced both Sandy and Jim to take the cure. Jim, the genius of our group decided he was going to rule the world with an army of Weepers once he was cured, and he would have except he botched two times during the cure process and wound up more brain damaged than Bucket. It was tragic and epic at the same time.
The biology of the Weepers, the whole story arc of curing humanity, destroying humanity, or enslaving humanity, the creepiness, and irony of everything made this a great game.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
The River Belle
Monday 10 AM in Alexander Valley for 6 hours GM: Jeff Yin Type: RPG System: Deadlands Noir Players: 6 Provided: All characters provided by GM Power Level: Standard Rules Knowledge: Beginners Welcome Game Content: Mainstream
It's
1924, and six strangers awake to find themselves on the River Belle.
How they got aboard the delta's most luxurious vessel, or what they were
doing before, is all a blur...
Gil T. and Jason F. told me about playing in an earlier Jeff Yin game similar to this. Jeff Yin gets his sister (with very legible hand writing) to write in invisible ink character skills and advantages and disads. The skills are revealed with a UV light pen as we try to succeed in various tasks. Jeff would tell us to reveal a skill at a specific line (such as line 8) when something happens. It's an interesting gimmick. Gil's game at Dead of Winter last year required different versions of character sheets with more and more skills revealed as we progressed through the game and recovered our memories. Skills were also revealed as we tried to do various tasks. After watching the play of both games, I think the disruption to the pacing of the game wasn't worth the attractiveness of the gimmick. It actually wears a bit thin as the GM fumbles around for your skill or in the case of this game sometimes telling players to reveal the wrong skill.
I still really enjoyed this game. Jeff did excellent NPCs (The Turk and The Sketcher were outstanding) and the ecosystem of the River Belle was really interesting. Near the end of the sixth hour (we had a hard stop at 4pm because the closing ceremonies were at that time, so we couldn't go over), Jeff skipped one combat scene and we got to act in the finale which was great since I've seen too many games where the whole ending got narrated. So, Jeff was smart enough to skip enough stuff, so we could interact at the very end of the game and determine our own fate.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
At about the halfway point, I was convinced we were in Purgatory. Some of us thought we were in Hell. The MacGuffin was a Golden Ticket out of Purgatory. At the end, only those who weren't selfish left the River Bell (or Styx).
The River Bell had the Exchange where Favors and Souls could be bought and sold. Below decks was the nefarious Game. People lost their memories or sold them for coins and everything of importance cost coin.
I loved Jeff's Turk who was the Fat Man from Casablanca. The Sketcher was this nerdy weaselly artist. We had an epic fight in his store. At one point, Max had a lighter threatening to burn The Sketcher's drawings. The Sketcher had a gun on Max. The Other Max (my character) had a gun on The Sketcher. Shannon's character was getting ready to beat up The Sketcher with his fists. The Sketcher agreed to tell us how to get into the Vault, but only to Max. I asked Max if he could trust The Sketcher and he said, "Yes." So my Max and Shannon's character backed out of The Sketcher's store. Once the door closed, The Sketcher shot Max. That double-cross was precious. Then an epic gun battle ensued with a shotgun, a possible hand grenade, and cops.
I haven't been to a Good Omens Con for a while. I found that the short time slots just gives you a good intro to a system and a very short and simple scenario. But this year, there were a number of good GMs running games and so I signed up. I don't have the game descriptions since the game events have been removed from End Game's website already -- it's only been one day since the event on July 20th. Both Rich and Gil won't be running the games again, so there are spoilers below in detail.
Ocean Blue
GM: Rich Taylor
System: World of Darkness
Duration: 4 hours
Players: 5
Paraphrased Description: You're the crew of a modern nuclear submarine and have been assigned to retrieve a cold war era's satelite's payload -- undeveloped film.
Interesting game and enough paranoia to keep us on our toes. We had a good group of players and I think we did everything right.
I got to play the scientist in charge of developing the film payload.
After finding the payload and developing the film, we found a picture of a giant space goat-eyeball looking down on the midlands of America. The Captain of the Submarine fainted on seeing the picture and fell sick for a short time. The sub then got attacked by a strange underwater creature which got scared off by a torpedo. Then two crew members went missing. We found one dead and eaten, but his uniform was neatly folded. We found the other hiding in an empty torpedo tube with a savage bite from a Piranha-Shark-Man.
We eventually suspected the top officers in the crew and weren't sure whether it was the Captain, the XO, and/or the Master of Arms who turned into this creature. We also weren't sure if it was a conspiracy. But once we got enough evidence on the Captain, we tried to get the XO to relieve the Captain of his duties. We didn't want to be labeled as mutineers. In the lab, while showing the XO the evidence, he turned into an Ogre-ish creature and we beat him up. We stabilized his wounds and restrained him. We then took his side-arm and broke into the weapons locker, took weapons, and jammed the weapons locker closed. Once armed, we revived and questioned him and he told us about his duty to protect the Captain as he now knows his true nature and they were awaiting the arrival of the Hydra for more instructions. After the interrogation, Shannon's character shot the XO twice in the head. Through the combat and interrogation, my character had video taped everything that had transpried as evidence -- I didn't want us to be tried as mutineers. We called the Captain to the lab telling hiim it was urgent and the XO needed him. We then ambushed the Captain, he turned into the Piranha-Shark-Man, and we shot him multiple times. Once dead, he reverted back to human form, just like the XO. The good news was that I had recorded everything, so when crew members rushed in to figure out what was going on, I could play it back. We were still thrown into the brig, but once back in port, we were recruited into a secret military hunter society.
What I really liked was that for a 4 hour game, we were able to have pretty good investigation and we had doubts as to whether the Captain was really the creature or whether he was being framed. The military structure also prevented us from taking the law in to our own hands without good proof -- if we were wrong, we'd be in deep trouble. The players did a great job, everyone acted smartly. I also did my best in trying to show everyone the giant eyeball in space and everyone was a good sport and took a look even though they knew they were going to have to make a stability check -- good role players. :-)
The Guns of Cap Gris Nez
GM: Gil Trevizo
System: Godlike
Duration: 4 hours
Players: 4
Paraphrased Desccription: You're part of D-Day. Your mission is to silence the guns of Cap Gris Nez.
Gil at the beginning warned us that because there's only 4 hours, there won't be much complexity and it'll be pretty simple and straight forward. This game was the prequel to a game that Paul, Shannon, and I played at KublaCon. So, we were stoked to enter Gil's world of Godlike again.
Basically, we were the characters from Saving Private Ryan, except we were all slightly damaged and twisted with Talents.
When we played at KublaCon, Gil gave us a choice of getting equipment, training, or R&R where we can gain some Will Points and if you include another player, they would gain some too. Due to time constraints, Gil only let us do some R&R.
My character was Private Caparzo (played by Vin Diesel). The write up was more Riddick than Caparzo -- Hyper-body with homocidal sociopathic tendencies. I was released from a mental institution, where I was being evaluated for a Lobotomy, so I could join D-Day. So, for my R&R, I decided to return to the mental institute and kill my evaluating doctor. Gil asked me whether I wanted to take someone along, so I had to choose between Paul's sniper who God told to kill bad people (I was worried that bringing him would be a bad idea since I didn't know if I would be considered a bad person), the Rube-Goldberg guy with a Psychic Healing machine (didn't think this was good idea either as he might think I have something against doctors), so I brought Shannon's Private Reiban character with me (he had a invisible psychic dog that kills people) and he decided he'd sic his bad dog on the whole hospital staff. After killing the doctor, I found my paperwork and the whole squad's paperwork. We were all slated for Lobotomies because we were all psycho killers of one sort or another. I destroyed the paperwork by starting a large fire. Shannon had already killed the rest of the hospital staff -- way to go Shannon.
So, we were really The Dirty Dozen played by the characters from Saving Private Ryan.
D-Day was just a meat grinder as every landing boat got sunk except for ours and another. We spotted a few German talents. One exuded an oil slick and another was the human torch. We just barely stopped our landing craft in time, but the other boat became a quick flambe.
We fought for every yard of beach and after many deaths (I was on my 3rd character at the end -- Private Mellish a Jewish SpiderMan who shot spider web from his butt. I tried to web some German Talents but only succeeded in mooning them), we finally got to the cliff side at the end of the 4th hour of gaming. We never got to the guns.
My favorite bit was the R&R and finding out how messed up the whole squad was. The beach landing was such a meat grinder it showed us the horror and hopelessness of combat.
I had run my own version of D-Day before with Godlike and I put them in an almost to scale beach assault. The beach actually ran from one end of the table to the other before you get to the cliffs. In D-Day, it was 200 yards of beach during high tide and I only let the players move 10 yards (2 squares) a round. Gil was nice to us and it was only 60 yards to the nearest Germans and he let us move much further, depending on our Run result.
Below was my D-Day setup.
Morgan's D-Day Setup (not Gil's) And, yes, I use green plastic army men for figures in Godlike.
D-Day diagram (from Morgan's D-Day game, not Gil's)
Again another very good year for me at KublaCon. The shuffler gods were very good to me and all the games I was in were excellent.
This time I'm going to talk about Great GMs and one of their particular strengths and what that brings to the table.
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D-Day, the Fifth of June
Game system
Godlike
Start time:
FRI, 6:00 PM
Category
RPG
Duration
8 Hours
Event ID
02007
Location
2071-A
# of Players:
6
GM / Judge
Gil Trevizo
Description
June 5, 1944: This day the soldiers of the First United States Army
Group set upon a mighty endeavor, to storm the beaches of Calais,
liberate occupied France from the yoke of Nazi tyranny, and begin the
Allied invasion of Western Europe. As the main amphibious force crosses
the narrow straits between Dover and Calais, you, the men and women of
the Third Talent Assault Group are to join the American 9th and 21st
Airborne Divisions to parachute deep behind enemy lines, take key
positions, and hold them against the onslaught of German infantry,
panzer, and SS-Überkommandogruppe that is certain to follow. History
will forever remember this place and this moment: Calais, the Fifth of
June.
GODLIKE is a game of super-powered role-playing set during
the Second World War. After the first superhuman appeared in 1936, over
150,000 “Talents” have since manifested across the globe by 1944. With
their abilities, the Talents can overwhelm mundane enemy soldiers, but
those same abilities make them vulnerable to other Talents, and even the
most powerful Talent can be killed by a single lucky bullet. In
GODLIKE, you play characters that are larger than life, but the war is
always larger than you.
The amount of prep work and attention to detail for this game was amazing. The combat system in Godlike is very deadly, so Gil pre-generated over 20 characters (I think he said 40). I've run Godlike before and I had to generate various NPCs with powers; It was a lot of work and requires a spreadsheet to keep track of the build points. Well, in addition to that, Gil also photoshopped pictures for all the PCs and NPCs. In my games, I just grab appropriate pictures from the internet for the character portraits. Gil actually matched up period clothing to the correct portrait angles and color corrected the pictures. That lead to a seamless portrait with nothing out of place. I had run "Castle Bravo" and that didn't include character portraits, so I decided I wanted John Wayne, Peter Lorrie, Danny Kaye, Spencer Tracy, and Basil Rathbone in my game as PCs. Well, I didn't find any with them in Navel uniform, so I had to photoshop them myself -- that took hours and I did a passing job; I found I could hide imperfections by zooming in and cropping out my errors. Also no one noticed I mainly used the same navel hat several times. Knowing this, I know that Gil spent days just doing the portraits.
Gil gave us period maps, complete list of equipment, and command hierarchy. He had also done a lot of research on the D-Day invasion.
All this prep work immersed us in the time period. What this buys the GM is the authority to tell the players, "Yes this is possible, No that is not possible." The verisimilitude gives the GM the authority to dictate various things without argument from the players.
I really enjoyed the game. My two favorite set pieces were the Sniper and the Beach where we had to make very difficult moral decisions. "That's some really f*cked up shit." and that's a quote from my character.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
I think another hallmark of a good GM are the little deceptions and mental kickers they build into their game. In Gil's game, we were only given choices between black characters and female characters. This was not revealed in the game description. I got to play Samuel L. Jackson, a veteran of WWI with 38 previous kills.
The Jackson character was a Zed, probably one of the least useful abilities in Godlike. I wanted to play a Zed just to see how useful he would be. In Godlike, Zeds can nullify another Talent's effect. The only thing is that it is only useful after the Zed can see what the other Talent's ability is. So if a Zed runs into a stranger Talent, he's going to get fried if the Talent decides to target the Zed first, since the Zed can't nullify the first use of the Talent. The good news was that we ran into German fliers that were strafing civilians on the road. Guess what happens when you nullify Flight? Splat! and Splat! "That's 42 and 43, you Hun Motherf*ckers!"
In the Sniper scene, it was a Friendly that had gone crazy that was killing a French village, one person at a time. We killed the Sniper, but then the Germans were coming and we had to decide if we were to help defend the French village or leave to complete our mission. Volunteers stayed as a holding action as the rest of the team left to complete the mission.
On the Beach, we found that a little boy was holding off the German army with illusionary toy soldiers, but it was clear that we were doomed. So, do you go against orders and save the boy, or hold out as long as you can?
My favorite moment was when two characters grabbed the boy (after some Player vs Player conflict over the fate of the boy) and started swimming from Calais to Dover. My character, torn between joining them and staying behind, stood on the beach and watched them swim away. The good news was that the remaining group of characters were surrounded by Germans and needed saving, so I got back into the action because some Hun Motherf*ckers needed killin'.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Fallen Sons
Game system
Unknown Armies
Start time:
SAT, 9:00 AM
Category
RPG
Duration
4 Hours
Event ID
22008
Location
2013-A
# of Players:
6
GM / Judge
Todd Furler
Description
This event is for mature players. A much-loved citizen of a small
Kansas town has lost his life in the War on Terror. The players are
townspeople who must, among other things, determine how to respond when a
hate group announces that they will picket the soldier's funeral.
Please
note that players will be exposed to the rhetoric of a real-world hate
group for part of this adventure.
Again amazing prep work. Todd knows his characters backwards and forwards and sideways. He gave us pages of background information for our characters and a relationship map to show how we were connected to the other people in the town. He also gave us real newsletters from the hate group.
But I'd like to focus on Todd's control over the game. I've heard a lot of good things about Todd's GMing and I wanted to experience it firsthand. First, he gives a very strong explanation of how he runs a game like a movie production. This explanation really sets the tone and his authority as producer and director of the game, so when he decides to cut a scene and move on, there is no argument. This is a great method to control pacing and game time.
It took about an hour to go over the game rules and our characters. Though that left 3 hours of game time, we had a very satisfying and enjoyable game. The reason for that was the tight control of scenes by Todd.
In another first, Todd was able to do a flash forward and then a flashback. It takes a lot of finesse to do that as most players may have an issue with fait accompli. With the flash forward, the fate of a character was set and then it was up to that player in the flashback to seamlessly merge the timeline. I think with a more difficult player it might have been a complete disaster.
Todd also does some interesting things with the Fight, Flight, Freeze responses when your character loses control and he takes over.
I can see why Todd likes to run 4 hour games as that is enough to get a full story arc for his gaming style. Most of us GMs take either 6 or 8 hours to do the same thing. Bravo.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
In the flash forward, a NPC is dead and a PC is in the hospital. So, when we flashback, the PC can't save the NPC and must become severely injured. Somehow Todd pulled this off.
As things unfold, people in the town are being sliced and diced by a crazy person with a magic sword.
The major reveal is that this was all the work of fallen angels or as they would like to put it, "Exiled, NOT Fallen."
As luck would have it, I picked one of the town's pastors as my character. I volunteered my church as the final battle ground and during the final confrontation, I was able to banish Lucifer back to Hell. Cool, huh?
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Our Little Town
Game system
Nemesis (One Roll Engine)
Start time:
SAT, 5:00 PM
Category
RPG
Duration
7 Hours
Event ID
42111
Location
2070-A
# of Players:
6
GM / Judge
Matthulhu Steele
Description
You wake up in a quaint hotel in a quaint little town. You don't
remember checking into the hotel. You're trying to recall what happened
before you arrived here. Hey, why is the door locked? Is there anybody
out there? Hello?
Our Little Town is a game of psychological
horror among six strangers. These are normal, interesting and competent
people who find themselves in an unusual situation. Nemesis uses the One
Roll Engine from Wild Talents and Godlike, customized for horror.
Matt also did a lot of prep work.In this game, we were only given character portraits to pick characters from, then he handed us multi-page character sheets with extensive backgrounds.
In this game, the six strangers never really stayed together. Matt was a master of parallel action and scene switching. Throughout the game, there were at least 2 to 3 groups separated from each other doing parallel actions and it all flowed together very well.
Matt had a really good feel for the right amount of screen time for each player, when to switch between groups, and how to keep the tension up. In some games, I've seen other players get bored when it isn't their turn. This doesn't happen in Matt's games.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
In Our Little Town, the game started a little bit slow as each character explored their escape proof hotel room. The problem was that we were in separate rooms and there was little character interaction as we did each of our scenes. So, when one player explored the room, the other players had to wait their turn.
But as we started pounding on the walls and screaming, we were able to communicate with each other and eventually escape.
One fun moment was when one of the characters escaped with a lamp (held like a baseball bat) and ran into another that had a gun. Blam! I think it was Matt's excellent sense of timing and scene switching that caused this to happen. It was a great moment.
The deception Matt pulled on us was that this was a Cthulhu game and Cthulhu creatures did come out of the woodwork. But shhhhhh, it's a secret. You shouldn't be reading this spoiler section unless you've already played the game.
Another great moment was when a Cthulhu creature got pulled down out of the sky. Through parallel actions we all got to the gazebo and got to act against it even though a fair number of characters were initially spread out in different parts of the town. It was masterful.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
The Only Good Bug is a Dead Bug!
Game system
Nemesis/The One Roll Engine
Start time:
SUN, 10:00 AM
Category
RPG
Duration
6 Hours
Event ID
72004
Location
2062-A
# of Players:
6
GM / Judge
Morgan Hua
Description
Mars settlement went dark and your squad of Space Marines have been sent in to find out if Bugs have infested Mars.
Your mission: find survivors, kill bugs, and get out alive.
Solider, what else do you need to know?
---
Would you like to know more? See below.
---
The
system is ORE which is a very deadly game system that uses up to 10d10.
This is a mash-up of Starship Troopers and Aliens. As a Space Marine,
you'll have state of the art weapons and armor, but if you bite it, you
might have to play a Civilian.
This is not a pure combat game.
It will be part investigation and part combat as your squad tries to
figure out what's really going on. If you don't, you might all just
die.
The game went very well for me. I incorporated feed back from my play test and those suggestions pushed the game up a notch.
In my games, I like to incorporate some video at the beginning as a shortcut to set the mood and setting. A picture is worth a thousand words. I've been in some games where the GM must take a lot of time explaining the world and society. Two minutes of video can cut out half an hour of exposition. In my Ghost in the Shell game, half the players never saw the Anime -- and I wasn't prepped for explaining the world to them. I wished I had a short video segment where I could have shown them what the world was like. So, that was a big fail.
This time, I had a video clip from Starship Troopers and I also created a video of Felix Baumgartner's supersonic jump from space.
This also helps in the case a player admits that they've never seen Starship Troopers nor Aliens -- which happened to be the case, this time with Jill S.
Hell Rides For Delamar
Game system
Boneslingers
Start time:
SUN, 7:00 PM
Category
RPG
Duration
6 Hours
Event ID
Pickup Game
Location
Brdrm-2
# of Players:
6
GM / Judge
Duane O'Brien
Description
Getting by as an undead gunslinger is tough. You hope this job in
Delamar will give you a chance to lift your burden. It's time to kill
some bad men.
Delamar was one of the most notorious towns in the old west. It was known as The Widowmaker. You're going to find out why.
You'll
be playing undead gunslingers in a setting called Boneslingers. If
you've played The Putrescent Seven, this setting is an evolution of that
game.
Bad things will happen in this game.
The shuffler wasn't good to a large number of us on Sunday night, but Duane was nice enough to run a pickup game for us.
Again lots of prep work. Maps, painted undead gunslinger minis, extensive character backgrounds, period poker cards, and a great looking GM screen that's a wooden period desk-set.
So far, I haven't been disappointed by any of the games that Duane has run.
I'll only go over one aspect of how Duane runs a game: Character selection.
In the game The Island Of Misfortune, we were asked seemingly random questions and then characters were assigned to us.
In the game, Goblin Ninjas Flipping Out And Killing Like A Hundred Guys, we generated characters and then did our signaturevignette. And if during the course of play, we recreated it, we would gain bonus dice.
In this game, Duane made each player do a small vignette and asked pointed questions about the character we're playing. He'd take notes and then through some magic, decides which character fits us.
I think the refinement of doing a small vignetteand asking us who we are in the scene worked much better than just asking questions and it made character selection a part of the game.
This method for character selection works really well. So far, I haven't been disappointed.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The two big reveals in this game was that the group of bandits were women and Delamar is a terrible, terrible place to live and die in.
Both were key reveals and totally turned the game on it's head for us.
Nice.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
TS Emulator V2.2
Game system
Paranoia XP
Start time:
MON, 10:00 AM
Category
RPG
Duration
6 Hours
Event ID
112004
Location
2044-A
# of Players:
5
GM / Judge
Matthulhu Steele
Description
Greetings Troubleshooters! On this mission you will be accompanied
by the next generation of BotShooters - bots designed to replace
Troubleshooters for those rare dangerous missions. Now with the upgraded
Emulator V2.2 circuit installed, these bots will learn to act just like
the Troubleshooter they are assigned to. Soon these new heroes of Alpha
Complex will walk, talk, shoot and act like real Troubleshooters.
Hail the Computer!
Again lots of prep work. Multi-page character sheets.
Comedy requires perfect timing and perfect timing must be Matt's Talent. I laughed so much in this game, I had to wipe the tears away.
Again, lots of split scenes and parallel action. All the trouble shooters started out in different parts of Alpha Complex and had to get to the Briefing room. Hilarity ensued.
Wilson Z. never played Paranoia before, but I think he was a natural. If Wilson didn't have to leave early for his flight home, he would have won one of the prizes that were handed out. Sorry, Wilson.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Mateo C. got one of his clones killed before the game even started, by
explaining one of the rules -- knowing the rules is treasonous and
punishable by death. :-)
I wonder how many other players ever made it into the Briefing Room. The big reveal was when we got to the hallway to the Briefing Room, the corridor was painted Green, above our security clearance.
I think we spent more than half the game trying to get into the Briefing Room.
Once inside, we were to be Borged. I was able to dance/maneuver my BotShooter into the Borging-booth in my stead.
Once briefed, we were to go to HAL Sector, but I don't want to spoil that ending...
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.
This year, I was only able to pre-register for one game, the early signups was at midnight and I went to bed before then. When I woke up at 3:45am, only one game that I wanted to play in had an open slot. So, I had to register for all the other games and brave the shuffler. Funny thing was that I actually got into all the games I wanted to play in. I used a GM's priority slip for Jeff Yin's game, but didn't get in, so I showed up 1/2 hour early and got lucky -- I was 2nd in line and two people didn't show up.
Sunday 4 PM in Alexander Valley for 6 hours
